cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Multiprocessor architectures for concurrent programs

This paper proposes a hierarchical multiprocessor architecture for real-time programs written in a concurrent programming language. The use of processes and monitors leads to a multiprocessor system in which each processor has a local store dedicated to a single process. The processors share a common store that contains the monitors. To avoid congestion in the common store the processes and monitors are partitioned into subsystems that share a hierarchy of common stores. The main goal is to develop a synthesis of an abstract language and a computer architecture that match in an obvious way.
A NOTE ON MUSTATA'S COMPUTATION OF MULTIPLIER IDEALS OF HYPERPLANE ARRANGEMENTS

In 2006, M. Mustaţa used jet schemes to compute the multiplier ideals of reduced hyperplane arrangements. We give a simpler proof using a log resolution and generalize to non-reduced arrangements. By applying the idea of wonderful models introduced by De Concini-Procesi in 1995, we also simplify the result. Indeed, Mustata's result expresses the multiplier ideal as an intersection, and our result uses (generally) fewer terms in the intersection.
On Approximate Electromagnetic Cloaking by Transformation Media

We give a comprehensive study on regularized approximate electromagnetic cloaking in the spherical geometry via the transformation optics approach. The following aspects are investigated: (i) near-invisibility cloaking of passive media as well as active/radiating sources; (ii) the existence of cloak-busting inclusions without lossy medium lining; (iii) overcoming the cloaking-busts by employing a lossy layer outside the cloaked region; and (iv) the frequency dependence of the cloaking performances. We address these issues and connect the obtained asymptotic results to singular ideal cloaking. Numerical verifications and demonstrations are provided to show the sharpness of our analytical study.
Microeconomics of Agricultural Grading: Impacts on the Marketing Channel

In this paper I focus on how grade prices affect the provision of product transformation skills in the food marketing system. A self-protection model is used to show how resources are allocated to protect the potential value of commodities in the marketing channel. Resource allocations may be complementary, and complementarity may be exploited to expand an industry. Further, uncertainty concerning skill levels may inhibit expansion. Because two primary objectives of agricultural extension involve facilitating skill acquisition and disseminating market information, the model confirms roles for extension personnel. The optimal location of transformation skills in a sequence of operations is also studied.
New dark matter candidates motivated from superstring derived unification

Abstract Perturbative gauge coupling unification in realistic superstring models suggests the existence of additional heavy down-type quarks, beyond the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model. The mass scale of the heavy down-type quarks is constrained by requiring agreement between the measured low energy gauge parameters and the string-scale gauge coupling unification. These additional quarks arise and may be stable due to the gauge symmetry breaking by “Wilson lines” in the superstring models. We argue that there is a window in the parameter space within which this down-type quark is a good candidate for the dark matter.
Simulations of Collision Cascades in Cu-Nb Layered Composites Using AN Eam Interatomic Potential

The embedded atom method (EAM) is used to construct an interatomic potential for modelling interfaces in Cu–Nb nanocomposites. Implementation of the Ziegler–Biersack–Littmark (ZBL) model for short-range interatomic interactions enables studies of response to ion bombardment. Collision cascades are modelled in fcc Cu, bcc Nb, and in Cu–Nb layered composites in the experimentally-observed Kurdjumov–Sachs (KS) orientation relation. The interfaces in these composites reduce the number of vacancies and interstitials created per keV of the primary knock-on atom (PKA) by 50–70% compared to fcc Cu or bcc Nb.
FaceNet: A unified embedding for face recognition and clustering

Despite significant recent advances in the field of face recognition [10, 14, 15, 17], implementing face verification and recognition efficiently at scale presents serious challenges to current approaches. In this paper we present a system, called FaceNet, that directly learns a mapping from face images to a compact Euclidean space where distances directly correspond to a measure of face similarity. Once this space has been produced, tasks such as face recognition, verification and clustering can be easily implemented using standard techniques with FaceNet embeddings as feature vectors.
Millimeter-Wave Transmittance and Reflectance Measurement on Pure and Diluted Carbonyl Iron

Transmittance and reflectance measurements on highly absorbing carbonyl iron materials over a broad millimeter-wave frequency range have been performed. The frequency dependence of the complex dielectric permittivity of a carbonyl iron diluted composite and pure powdered materials has been determined in the millimeter waves for the first time. The measurements have been employed using a free-space quasi-optical millimeter-wave spectrometer equipped with a set of high-power backward-wave oscillators as sources of coherent radiation, which are tunable in the range from 30 to 120 GHz. A significant transmission zone of millimeter-wave radiation at a frequency around 60 GHz has been observed in the transmittance spectra for the carbonyl iron materials.
Compact and Power Conscious Private-key Cryptosystem for Wireless Devices

This paper presents a compact and low power implementation of AES suitable for wireless networks. Since such networks are usually associated with battery-powered devices, power consumption and computation resources are increasingly important constraints. The proposed design uses combinatorial circuits for the implementation of Rijndael s-box transformations where general composite field properties of the Galois field arithmetic are exploited to reduce the area and power consumptions of the implementation. In this design, the complexity of the s-box transformation is reduced by first mapping elements from GF(28) to elements in GF((24)2). Then various architectures for finding suitable inversion in subfield GF(24) are explored and analyzed in terms of area, speed and power consumptions. NIST recommended confidentiality and the authentication modes of operation are implemented and their performances are also compared.
A novel sandwich-type polyoxometalate compound with visible-light photocatalytic H2 evolution activity.

A tin(II) tungstosilicate derivative K11H[Sn4(SiW9O34)2]·25H2O with four sandwiched Sn2+ cations was prepared by reaction of SnCl2, KCl and Na10[α-SiW9O34]·xH2O. Visible-light photocatalytic H2 evolution activity was observed with Pt nanoparticles as co-catalyst and methanol as sacrificial agent.
Acoustic Emission Linear Pulse Holography

Defects in a structure are imaged as they propagate, using their emitted acoustic energy as a monitored source. Short bursts of acoustic energy propagate through the structure to a discrete element receiver array. A reference timing transducer located between the array and the inspection zone initiates a series of time-of-flight measurements. A resulting series of time-of-flight measurements are then treated as aperture data and are transferred to a computer for reconstruction of a synthetic linear holographic image. The images can be displayed and stored as a record of defect growth.
Spatiotemporal patterns of fault slip rates across the Central Sierra Nevada frontal fault zone

Abstract Patterns in fault slip rates through time and space are examined across the transition from the Sierra Nevada to the Eastern California Shear Zone–Walker Lane belt. At each of four sites along the eastern Sierra Nevada frontal fault zone between 38 and 39° N latitude, geomorphic markers, such as glacial moraines and outwash terraces, are displaced by a suite of range-front normal faults. Using geomorphic mapping, surveying, and 10 Be surface exposure dating, mean fault slip rates are defined, and by utilizing markers of different ages (generally, ~ 20 ka and ~ 150 ka), rates through time and interactions among multiple faults are examined over 10 4 –10 5 year timescales. At each site for which data are available for the last ~ 150 ky, mean slip rates across the Sierra Nevada frontal fault zone have probably not varied by more than a factor of two over time spans equal to half of the total time interval (~ 20 ky and ~ 150 ky timescales): 0.3 ± 0.1 mm year − 1 (mode and 95% CI) at both Buckeye Creek in the Bridgeport basin and Sonora Junction; and 0.4 + 0.3/−0.1 mm year − 1 along the West Fork of the Carson River at Woodfords. Data permit rates that are relatively constant over the time scales examined. In contrast, slip rates are highly variable in space over the last ~ 20 ky. Slip rates decrease by a factor of 3–5 northward over a distance of ~ 20 km between the northern Mono Basin (1.3 + 0.6/−0.3 mm year − 1 at Lundy Canyon site) to the Bridgeport Basin (0.3 ± 0.1 mm year − 1 ). The 3-fold decrease in the slip rate on the Sierra Nevada frontal fault zone northward from Mono Basin is indicative of a change in the character of faulting north of the Mina Deflection as extension is transferred eastward onto normal faults between the Sierra Nevada and Walker Lane belt. A compilation of regional deformation rates reveals that the spatial pattern of extension rates changes along strike of the Eastern California Shear Zone-Walker Lane belt. South of the Mina Deflection, extension is accommodated within a diffuse zone of normal and oblique faults, with extension rates increasing northward on the Fish Lake Valley fault. Where faults of the Eastern California Shear Zone terminate northward into the Mina Deflection, extension rates increase northward along the Sierra Nevada frontal fault zone to ~ 0.7 mm year − 1 in northern Mono Basin. This spatial pattern suggests that extension is transferred from more easterly fault systems, e.g., Fish Lake Valley fault, and localized on the Sierra Nevada frontal fault zone as the Eastern California Shear Zone–Walker Lane belt faulting is transferred through the Mina Deflection.
Random Generation of Test Inputs for Implicitly Defined Subdomains

In traditional random testing, samples are taken from the set of all possible values for the input types. However, for many programs testing effectiveness can be improved by focusing on a relevant subdomain defined implicitly by the program behavior. This paper presents an algorithm for identifying and randomly selecting inputs from implicitly defined subdomains. The algorithm dynamically constructs and refines a model of the input domain and is biased toward sparsely covered regions in order to accelerate boundary identification and uniform coverage. This method has several desirable qualities: (1) it requires no knowledge of the source code of the software being tested, (2) inputs are selected from an approximately uniform distribution across the subdomain, and (3) algorithmic running time overhead is negligible. We present the requirements for a solution and our algorithm. We also evaluate our solution for both an artificial model and a real-world aircraft collision-avoidance program.
INVESTOR OVEROPTIMISM AND PRIVATE EQUITY PLACEMENTS

We reexamine investor tendency to overweight recent experiences when predicting future performance of firms by examining a sample of firms making private equity placements. Our findings are consistent with the projection argument that investors use the recent experiences of other firms to predict the success of placing firms. Specifically, we find that the placements preceded by a larger number of recently very successful firms are associated with the significantly more favorable market reaction to the placement announcement and significantly poorer post-placement stock price performance.
Plasmid DNA Replication

Introduction ColE1-Type Plasmids The R6K Plasmid pT181-Type Plasmids Linear Plasmids in Bacteria A Unique Plasmid Anatomy Replication of Linear Plasmids Bibliography Keywords: colE1; covalently closed circular DNA; extrachromosomal elements; incompatibility; linear plasmids; pT181; R6K
Linear network design for AC shipboard distribution systems

We apply relaxation procedures for polynomial optimization problems to shipboard distribution system design, and obtain new convex formulations for the AC case.
Constellation Precoded Beamforming

We present and analyze the performance of constellation precoded beamforming. This multi-input multi-output transmission technique is based on the singular value decomposition of a channel matrix. In this work, the beamformer is precoded to improve its diversity performance. It was shown previously that while single beamforming achieves full diversity without channel coding, multiple beamforming results in diversity loss. In this paper, we show that a properly designed constellation precoder makes uncoded multiple beamforming achieve full diversity order. We also show that partially precoded multiple beamforming gets better diversity order than multiple beamforming without constellation precoder if the subchannels to be precoded are properly chosen. We propose several criteria to design the constellation precoder. Simulation results match the analysis, and show that precoded multiple beamforming actually outperforms single beamforming without precoding at the same system data rate while achieving full diversity order.
Novel Characterization of GDI Engine Exhaust for Gasoline and Mid- Level Gasoline-Alcohol Blends

Gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines can offer improved fuel economy and higher performance over their port fuelinjected (PFI) counterparts, and are now appearing in increasingly more U.S. and European vehicles. Small displacement, turbocharged GDI engines are replacing large displacement engines, particularly in light-duty trucks and sport utility vehicles, in order for manufacturers to meet more stringent fuel economy standards. GDI engines typically emit the most particulate matter (PM) during periods of rich operation such as start-up and acceleration, and emissions of air toxics are also more likely during this condition. A 2.0 L GDI engine was operated at lambda of 0.91 at typical loads for acceleration (2600 rpm, 8 bar BMEP) on three different fuels; an 87 anti-knock index (AKI) gasoline (E0), 30% ethanol blended with the 87 AKI fuel (E30), and 48% isobutanol blended with the 87 AKI fuel. E30 was chosen to maximize octane enhancement while minimizing ethanol-blend level and iBu48 was chosen to match the same fuel oxygen level as E30. Particle size and number, organic carbon and elemental carbon (OC/EC), soot HC speciation, and aldehydes and ketones were all analyzed during the experiment. A new method for soot HC speciation is introduced using a direct, thermal desorption/pyrolysis inlet for the gas chromatograph (GC). Results showed high levels of aromatic compounds were present in the PM, including downstream of the catalyst, and the aldehydes were dominated by the alcohol blending.
Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter–Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle

Abstract The Schwabe frequency band of the Zurich sunspot record since 1749 is found to be made of three major cycles with periods of about 9.98, 10.9 and 11.86 years. The side frequencies appear to be closely related to the spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn (range between 9.5 and 10.5 years, and median 9.93 years) and to the tidal sidereal period of Jupiter (about 11.86 years). The central cycle may be associated to a quasi-11-year solar dynamo cycle that appears to be approximately synchronized to the average of the two planetary frequencies. A simplified harmonic constituent model based on the above two planetary tidal frequencies and on the exact dates of Jupiter and Saturn planetary tidal phases, plus a theoretically deduced 10.87-year central cycle reveals complex quasi-periodic interference/beat patterns. The major beat periods occur at about 115, 61 and 130 years, plus a quasi-millennial large beat cycle around 983 years. We show that equivalent synchronized cycles are found in cosmogenic records used to reconstruct solar activity and in proxy climate records throughout the Holocene (last 12,000 years) up to now. The quasi-secular beat oscillations hindcast reasonably well the known prolonged periods of low solar activity during the last millennium such as the Oort, Wolf, Sporer, Maunder and Dalton minima, as well as the 17 115 - year long oscillations found in a detailed temperature reconstruction of the Northern Hemisphere covering the last 2000 years. The millennial three-frequency beat cycle hindcasts equivalent solar and climate cycles for 12,000 years. Finally, the harmonic model herein proposed reconstructs the prolonged solar minima that occurred during 1900–1920 and 1960–1980 and the secular solar maxima around 1870–1890, 1940–1950 and 1995–2005 and a secular upward trending during the 20th century: this modulated trending agrees well with some solar proxy model, with the ACRIM TSI satellite composite and with the global surface temperature modulation since 1850. The model forecasts a new prolonged solar minimum during 2020–2045, which would be produced by the minima of both the 61 and 115-year reconstructed cycles. Finally, the model predicts that during low solar activity periods, the solar cycle length tends to be longer, as some researchers have claimed. These results clearly indicate that both solar and climate oscillations are linked to planetary motion and, furthermore, their timing can be reasonably hindcast and forecast for decades, centuries and millennia. The demonstrated geometrical synchronicity between solar and climate data patterns with the proposed solar/planetary harmonic model rebuts a major critique (by Smythe and Eddy, 1977 ) of the theory of planetary tidal influence on the Sun. Other qualitative discussions are added about the plausibility of a planetary influence on solar activity.
Adaptively-Localized-Continuation-Newton: Reservoir Simulation Nonlinear Solvers That Converge All the Time

Growing interest in understanding, predicting, and controlling advanced oil recovery methods emphasizes the importance of numerical methods that exploit the nature of the underlying physics. The Fully Implicit Method offers unconditional stability in the sense of discrete approximations. This stability comes at the expense of transferring the inherent physical stiffness onto the coupled nonlinear residual equations which need to be solved at each time-step. Current reservoir simulators apply safe-guarded variants of Newton’s method, and often can neither guarantee convergence, nor provide estimates of the relation between convergence rate and time-step size. In practice, time-step chops become necessary, and are guided heuristically. With growing complexity, such as in thermally reactive compositional models, this can lead to substantial losses in computational effort, and prohibitively small time-steps. We establish an alternate class of nonlinear iteration that both converges, and associates a time-step to each iteration. Moreover, the linear solution process within each iteration is performed locally. By casting the nonlinear residual for a given time-step as an initial-value-problem, we formulate a solution process that associates a time-step size with each iteration. Subsequently, no iterations are wasted, and a solution is always attainable. Moreover, we show that the rate of progression is as rapid as a standard Newton counterpart whenever it does converge. Finally, by exploiting the local nature of nonlinear waves that is typical to all multiphase problems, we establish a linear solution process that performs computation only where necessary. That is, given a linear convergence tolerance, we identify the minimal subset of solution components that will change by more than the specified tolerance. Using this a priori criterion, each linear step solves a reduced system of equations. Several challenging large-scale simulation examples are presented, and the results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed method as well as its performance.
Regularization of ill-posed problems with unbounded operators

Variational regularization and the method of quasisolutions are justified for unbounded closed operators.
Differential Attention to Attributes in Utility-Theoretic Choice Models

We show in a theoretical model that the benefit from additional attention to the marginal attribute within a choice set depends upon the expected utility loss from making a suboptimal choice if it is ignored. Guided by this analysis, we then develop an empirical method to measure an individual's propensity to attend to attributes. As a proof of concept, we offer an empirical example of our method using a conjoint analysis of demand for programs to reduce health risks. Our results suggest that respondents differentially allocate attention across attributes as a function of the mix of attribute levels in a choice set. This behaviour can cause researchers who fail to model attention allocation to estimate incorrectly the marginal utilities derived from selected attributes. This illustrative example is a first attempt to implement an attention-corrected choice model with a sample of field data from a conjoint choice experiment.
Synthesis of 1,3-bis(N,N-difluoroamino)adamantane: addition of difluoramino radicals to 1,3-dehydroadamantane

Abstract 1,3-Dehydroadamantane undergoes a facile reaction with tetrafluorohydrazine to give 1,3-bis( N , N -difluoroamino)adamantane, the product of 1,3-NF 2 radical addition.
Zero crossings of a non-orthogonal wavelet transform for object location

In this paper we address the task of segmentation of objects from photographs. A method of extraction of features based on the zero-crossings of a wavelet transform is described. The wavelet transform basis functions are derived from the second derivative of a Gaussian function. The extracted features are then used in a multilevel hypothesis generate and test algorithm to locate the objects of interest. The matching algorithm is based on the springs and templates framework of Fischler and Eschlanger (1973). The zero-crossings of the wavelet coefficients at different scales are combined in the model-matching stage to generate possible candidates. We apply this method to segment human faces from newspaper photographs.
Aid, Debt Burden and Government Fiscal Behaviour in Côte d'Ivoire

This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on public sector fiscal behaviour in Co^te d’Ivoire. A special interest is the relationship between aid, debt servicing and debt, given that Coˆte d’Ivoire is a highly indebted country. The theoretical model employed differs from those of previous studies by highlighting the interaction between debt servicing and the other fiscal variables, providing information on aid and fiscal behaviour that its predecessors cannot. This model is estimated using 1975–99 time series data. Two key findings emerge: (i) the majority of aid inflows are allocated to expenditure on debt servicing; and (ii) these inflows are associated with increases in the level of public debt.
Colorectal Cancer Screening and State Health Insurance Mandates

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most deadly cancer in the USA. CRC screening is the most effective way to prevent CRC death, but compliance with recommended screenings is very low. In this study, we investigate whether CRC screening behavior changed under state mandated private insurance coverage of CRC screening in a sample of insured adults from the 1997 to 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). We present difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) estimates that compare insured individuals age 51 to 64 to Medicare age-eligible individuals (ages 66 to 75) in mandate and non-mandate states over time. Our DDD estimates suggest endoscopic screening among men increased by 2 to 3 percentage points under mandated coverage among 51 to 64 year olds relative to their Medicare age-eligible counterparts. We find no clear evidence of changes in screening behavior among women. DD estimates suggest no evidence of a mandate effect on either type of CRC screening for men or women. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Energy efficient AODV routing in CDMA ad hoc networks using beamforming

We propose an energy aware on-demand routing protocol for CDMA mobile ad hoc networks, for which improvements in the energy consumption are realized by both introducing an energy-based routing measure and by enhancing the physical layer performance using beamforming. Exploiting the cross-layer interactions between the network and the physical layer leads to a significant improvement in the energy efficiency compared with the traditional AODV protocol, and provides an alternative solution of link breakage detection in traditional AODV protocol. Several performance measures are considered for evaluating the network performance, such as data energy consumption, latency, and overhead energy consumption. An optimum SIR threshold range is determined experimentally for various implementation scenarios.
Algorithms for optimizing cross-overs in DNA shuffling

DNA shuffling generates combinatorial libraries of chimeric genes by stochastically recombining parent genes. The resulting libraries are subjected to large-scale genetic selection or screening to identify those chimeras with favorable properties (e.g., enhanced stability or enzymatic activity). While DNA shuffling has been applied quite successfully, it is limited by its homology-dependent, stochastic nature. Consequently, it is used only with parents of sufficient overall sequence identity, and provides no control over the resulting chimeric library. This paper presents efficient methods to extend the scope of DNA shuffling to handle significantly more diverse parents and to generate more predictable, optimized libraries. Our CODNS (cross-over optimization for DNA shuffling) approach employs polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithms to select codons for the parental amino acids, allowing for zero or a fixed number of conservative substitutions. We first present efficient algorithms to optimize the local sequence identity or the nearest-neighbor approximation of the change in free energy upon annealing, objectives that were previously optimized by computationally-expensive integer programming methods. We then present efficient algorithms for more powerful objectives that seek to localize and enhance the frequency of recombination by producing "runs" of common nucleotides either overall or according to the sequence diversity of the resulting chimeras. We demonstrate the effectiveness of CODNS in choosing codons and allocating substitutions to promote recombination between parents targeted in earlier studies: two GAR transformylases (41% amino acid sequence identity), two very distantly related DNA polymerases, Pol X and β (15%), and beta-lactamases of varying identity (26-47%). Our methods provide the protein engineer with a new approach to DNA shuffling that supports substantially more diverse parents, is more deterministic, and generates more predictable and more diverse chimeric libraries.
Oxidative cyclizations in a nonpolar solvent using molecular oxygen and studies on the stereochemistry of oxypalladation.

Oxidative cyclizations of a variety of heteroatom nucleophiles onto unactivated olefins are catalyzed by palladium(II) and pyridine in the presence of molecular oxygen as the sole stoichiometric oxidant in a nonpolar solvent (toluene). Reactivity studies of a number of N-ligated palladium complexes show that chelating ligands slow the reaction. Nearly identical conditions are applicable to five different types of nucleophiles: phenols, primary alcohols, carboxylic acids, a vinylogous acid, and amides. Electron-rich phenols are excellent substrates, and multiple olefin substitution patterns are tolerated. Primary alcohols undergo oxidative cyclization without significant oxidation to the aldehyde, a fact that illustrates the range of reactivity available from various Pd(II) salts under differing conditions. Alcohols can form both fused and spirocyclic ring systems, depending on the position of the olefin relative to the tethered alcohol; the same is true of the acid derivatives. The racemic conditions served as a platform for the development of an enantioselective reaction. Experiments with stereospecifically deuterated primary alcohol substrates rule out a “Wacker-type” mechanism involving anti oxypalladation and suggest that the reaction proceeds by syn oxypalladation for both mono- and bidentate ligands. In contrast, cyclizations of deuterium-labeled carboxylic acid substrates undergo anti oxypalladation.
Renormalized measure of regular languages

This paper modifies the signed real measure of regular languages, which has been reported in recent literature for analysis and synthesis of discrete event supervisory control laws. A new concept of renormalized measure is introduced to eliminate a user-selectable parameter in the present version of the language measure
Cobalt-catalyzed [4 + 2 + 2] cycloadditions of bicyclo[2.2.2]octadienes

Abstract The cobalt catalyzed [4 + 2 + 2] cycloadditions of bicyclo[2.2.2]octadiene and several benzobarrelenes are reported, marking the first [4 + 2 + 2] cycloadditions of these homoconjugated dienes. The [2 + 2 + 2] reaction of benzobarrelene with diphenylacetylene was also successful.
Tunable all electric spin polarizer

We propose a tunable all-electric spin polarizer made of a quantum point contact (QPC) with four gates—two in-plane side gates in series. The pair of gates near the source is asymmetrically biased to create spin polarization in the QPC channel, the second pair near the drain is symmetrically biased and this bias is varied to maximize the QPC spin polarization. The range of common mode bias on the first set of gates over which maximum spin polarization is achieved is much broader for the four gate structure compared to a QPC with a single pair of gates.
Search for a standard explanation of the Pioneer anomaly

The data from Pioneer 10 and 11 shows an anomalous, constant, Doppler frequency drift that can be interpreted as an acceleration directed towards the Sun of aP = (8.74 ± 1.33) × 10-8cm/s2. Although one can consider a new physical origin for the anomaly, one must first investigate the contributions of the prime candidates, which are systematics generated on board. Here we expand upon previous analyses of thermal systematics. We demonstrate that thermal models put forth so far are not supported by the analyzed data. Possible ways to further investigate the nature of the anomaly are proposed.
Maximum angle of stability of a wet granular pile

Anyone who has built a sandcastle recognizes that adding liquid to the sand grains increases the overall stability. However, measurements of the stability in wet granular materials often conflict with theory and with each other1,2,3,4,5,6,7. The friction-based Mohr–Coulomb model3,8 distinguishes between granular friction and interparticle friction, but uses the former without providing a physical mechanism. A frictionless model for the geometric stability of dry particles on the surface of a pile2 is in excellent agreement with experiment. However, the same model applied to wet grains overestimates the stability and predicts no dependence on system size. Here we take a frictionless liquid-bridge model and perform a stability analysis within the pile. We reproduce our experimentally observed dependence of the stability angle on system size, particle size and surface tension. Furthermore, we account for past discrepancies in experimental reports by showing that sidewalls can significantly increase the stability of granular material.
An Experimental Study of Fluid Flow in Disk Cavities

Results are presented for an experimental study of fluid flow in models of gas turbine disk cavities. Experiments were performed on 70-cm-dia disks for rotational Reynolds numbers up to 2.29×10 6 . Velocity and pressure distributions are presented and compared to previous theoretical and experimental studies for a free disk, and an unshrouded plane rotor-stator disk system. Minimum coolant flow rates for the prevention of ingress, determined for the case of a simple axial rim seal, compare well with previously published data
The structure and evolution of a skyway network

We study the structure and evolution of the downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota skyway network. Developed by private building-owners, the network evolved from tree-like to grid-like over the course of 50 years. We find that decentralized forces with the goal of maximizing individual buildings’ profitability shaped the network. Our analysis shows that a building with greater office size, a sign of greater accessibility, was more likely to be connected earlier. The distribution of existing skyway segments is found to follow a power-law function of the average degree, closeness, and eigenvector centralities of the vertices. We further explain and model the evolutionary process using an agent-based model. The simulation results suggest that the model replicates the network structure and its evolutionary process.
Presaging the Moderns: Demosthenes’ Critique of Popular Government

Modern political theorists, including Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Publius, consider popular government detrimental to the security of the political community, because they see it as being characterized by imprudence, indecisiveness, and indiscretion. It has not been widely acknowledged that this critique of popular government was, in many respects, presaged by the famous Greek orator Demosthenes. This essay retrieves his critique and argues that it reveals that conflict between the norms of democracy on one hand, and the demands of security on the other, cannot be resolved by urging “democratization,” as this would only reintroduce the difficulties he brings to our attention.
Bayesian Robustness in the Control of Gene Regulatory Networks

The errors originating in the data extraction process, gene selection and network inference prevent the transition probabilities of a gene regulatory network from being accurately estimated. Thus, it is important to study the effect of modeling errors on the final outcome of an intervention strategy and to design robust intervention strategies. Two major approaches applied to the design of robust policies in general are the minimax (worst case) approach and the Bayesian approach. The minimax control approach is typically conservative because it gives too much importance to the scenarios which hardly occur in practice. Consequently, in this paper, we formulate the Bayesian approach for the control of gene regulatory networks. We characterize the errors emanating from the data extraction and inference processes and compare the performance of the minimax and Bayesian designs based on these uncertainties.
Institutions and Equilibrium in the United States Supreme Court

Over the last decade the scholarship on judicial politics has increasingly emphasized the strategic aspects of decision making in the United States Supreme Court. This scholarship, however, has struggled with two significant limitations—the restriction to unidimensional policy spaces and the assumption of binary comparisons of alternatives. These two assumptions have the advantage of implying stable, predictable outcomes, but lack a sound theoretical foundation and assume away potentially important aspects of strategic behavior on the Court. In this article, we identify institutional features of the Court that, under certain conditions, allow us to relax these two assumptions without sacrificing stable, predictable policy outcomes. In particular, we formalize the “part-by-part” opinion voting used by the justices, a feature that, together with separable preferences over policy issues, implies stable policy outcomes around the issue-by-issue median of the justices.
Using semantic web technology in multi-agent systems: a case study in the TAGA trading agent environment

Travel Agent Game in Agentcities (TAGA) is the framework that extends and enhances the Trading Agent Competition (TAC) scenario to work in Agentcities, an open multi agent environment based on FIPA compliant pla tforms. TAGA uses the semantic web languages and tools (RDF and OWL) to specify and publish the underlying common ontologies; as a content language within the FIPA ACL messages; as the basis for agent knowledge bases via XSB-based reasoning tools; to describe and reason about services. TAGA extends the FIPA protocols to support open market auctions and enriches the Agentcities with auction services. The introducing of the semantic web languages improves the interoperability among agents. TAGA is intended as a platform for research in multi-agent systems, the semantic web and automated trading in dynamic markets as well as a self-contained application for teaching and experimentation with these technologies.
Beyond Molecular Beacons: Optical Sensors Based on the Binding‐Induced Folding of Proteins and Polypeptides

Many polypeptides and small proteins can be readily engineered such that they only fold upon binding a specific target ligand. This approach couples target recognition with a considerable change in polymer structure and dynamics. Recent years have seen the development of a number of biosensors that couple these large changes to readily measurable optical (fluorescent) outputs. These sensors afford the detection of a wide variety of macromolecular targets including proteins, polypeptides, and nucleic acids. Here we describe the design of such biosensors, from the first iterations as protein engineering experiments, to the development of biosensors targeting a range of protein and nucleic acid targets.
MTI science, data products and ground data processing overview

The mission of the Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI) satellite is to demonstrate the efficacy of highly accurate multispectral imaging for passive characterization of urban and industrial areas, as well as sites of environmental interest. The satellite makes top-of-atmosphere radiance measurements that are subsequently processed into estimates of surface properties such as vegetation health, temperatures, material composition and others. The MTI satellite also provides simultaneous data for atmospheric characterization at high spatial resolution. To utilize these data the MTI science program has several coordinated components, including modeling, comprehensive ground-truth measurements, image acquisition planning, data processing and data interpretation and analysis. Algorithms have been developed to retrieve a multitude of physical quantities and these algorithms are integrated in a processing pipeline architecture that emphasizes automation, flexibility and programmability. In addition, the MTI science team has produced detailed site, system and atmospheric models to aid in system design and data analysis. This paper provides an overview of the MTI research objectives, data products and ground data processing.
Promoter directionality is controlled by U1 snRNP and polyadenylation signals

Transcription of the mammalian genome is pervasive, but productive transcription outside of protein-coding genes is limited by unknown mechanisms. In particular, although RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) initiates divergently from most active gene promoters, productive elongation occurs primarily in the sense-coding direction. Here we show in mouse embryonic stem cells that asymmetric sequence determinants flanking gene transcription start sites control promoter directionality by regulating promoter-proximal cleavage and polyadenylation. We find that upstream antisense RNAs are cleaved and polyadenylated at poly(A) sites (PASs) shortly after initiation. De novo motif analysis shows PAS signals and U1 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein (snRNP) recognition sites to be the most depleted and enriched sequences, respectively, in the sense direction relative to the upstream antisense direction. These U1 snRNP sites and PAS sites are progressively gained and lost, respectively, at the 5' end of coding genes during vertebrate evolution. Functional disruption of U1 snRNP activity results in a dramatic increase in promoter-proximal cleavage events in the sense direction with slight increases in the antisense direction. These data suggest that a U1-PAS axis characterized by low U1 snRNP recognition and a high density of PASs in the upstream antisense region reinforces promoter directionality by promoting early termination in upstream antisense regions, whereas proximal sense PAS signals are suppressed by U1 snRNP. We propose that the U1-PAS axis limits pervasive transcription throughout the genome.
The Incidence of an Oil Glut: Who Benefits from Cheap Crude Oil in the Midwest?

Beginning in early 2011, crude oil production in the U.S. Midwest and Canada surpassed the pipeline capacity to transport it to the Gulf Coast where it could access the world oil market. As a result, the U.S. “benchmark” crude oil price in Cushing, Oklahoma, declined substantially relative to internationally traded oil. In this paper, we study how this development affected prices for refined products, focusing on the markets for motor gasoline and diesel. We find that the relative decrease in Midwest crude oil prices did not pass through to wholesale gasoline and diesel prices. This result is consistent with evidence that the marginal gallon of fuel in the Midwest is still imported from coastal locations. Our findings imply that investments in new pipeline infrastructure between the Midwest and the Gulf Coast, such as the southern segment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, will not raise gasoline prices in the Midwest.
Development Models and Industrial Upgrading in China and Mexico

China and Mexico have both pursued export-oriented development strategies in the global economy, but with different implications for national development and industrial upgrading. While Mexico has been the paradigm for the neoliberal (‘Washington consensus’) development model associated with foreign direct investment, extensive privatization, and open markets, China has attained record levels of foreign capital inflows and export growth utilizing a more strategic, statist approach to its development. In the past decade, China has surpassed Mexico in their battle for pre-eminence in the US market. One of the keys to China’s success has been a unique form of industrial organization called supply-chain cities, which has permitted it to achieve both economies of scale and scope in global value chains.
HBench:Java: An application-specific benchmarking framework for Java Virtual Machines

Java applications represent a broad class of programs, ranging from programs running on embedded products to high-performance server applications. Standard Java benchmarks ignore this fact and assume a fixed workload. When an actual application's behavior differs from that included in a standard benchmark, the benchmark results are useless, if not misleading. In this paper, we present HBench:Java, an application-specific benchmarking framework, based on the concept that a system's performance must be measured in the context of the application of interest. HBench:Java employs a methodology that uses vectors to characterize the application and the underlying Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and carefully combines the two vectors to form a single metric that reflects a specific application's performance on a particular JVM such that the performance of multiple JVMs can be realistically compared. Our performance results demonstrate HBench:Java's superiority over traditional benchmarking approaches in predicting relative performance of real applications and its ability to pinpoint performance problems, even with a simplified vector. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The extremal values of the Wiener index of a tree with given degree sequence

The Wiener index of a graph is the sum of the distances between all pairs of vertices, it has been one of the main descriptors that correlate a chemical compound's molecular graph with experimentally gathered data regarding the compound's characteristics. In [M. Fischermann, A. Hoffmann, D. Rautenbach, L.A. Szekely, L. Volkmann, Wiener index versus maximum degree in trees, Discrete Appl. Math. 122 (1-3) (2002) 127-137], the tree that minimizes the Wiener index among trees of given maximal degree is studied. We characterize trees that achieve the maximum and minimum Wiener index, given the number of vertices and the degree sequence.
Does 401(k) eligibility increase saving?: Evidence from propensity score subclassification

Abstract By comparing 401(k) eligible and ineligible households’ wealth, this paper estimates that, on average, about one half of 401(k) balances represent new private savings, and about one quarter of 401(k) balances represent new national savings. Responses to eligibility vary considerably, however, with households who normally save the most largely contributing funds they would have saved anyway. This paper improves on previous research by: (1) employing propensity score subclassification to control more completely for observed household characteristics, (2) controlling for more household characteristics, including several correlated with unobserved savings preferences, and (3) adjusting the observed measure of households’ wealth to reduce measurement error.
Semistable reduction for overconvergent $F$-isocrystals on a curve

Given a smooth affine curve X over a field k of positive characteristic, and an overconvergent F-isocrystal on X, we prove after replacing k by a finite purely inseparable extension, there exists a finite separable cover of X, the pullback of the isocrystal along which extends to a log-F-isocrystal on a smooth compactification. This resolves a weak form of the global version of a conjecture of Crew; the proof uses the local version of the conjecture, established separately by Andre, Mebkhout and the author.
X-Ray Emission from the Radio Pulsar PSR J1105–6107

We have detected significant X-ray emission from the direction of the young radio pulsar PSR J1105-6107 using the ASCA observatory. The 11 σ detection includes 459 background-subtracted source counts derived using data from all four ASCA detectors. The emission shows no evidence of pulsations; the pulsed fraction is less than 31%, at the 90% confidence level. The X-ray emission can be characterized by a power-law spectrum with photon index α=1.8±0.4, for a neutral hydrogen column density NH = 7 × 1021 cm-2. The unabsorbed 2-10 keV flux assuming the power-law model is (6.4±0.8) × 10−13 ergs cm-2 s-1. The implied efficiency for conversion of spin-down luminosity to ASCA-band emission is (1.6±0.2) × 10−3, assuming a distance of 7 kpc to the source. Within the limited statistics, the source is consistent with being unresolved. We argue that the X-rays are best explained as originating from a pulsar-powered synchrotron nebula.
Monetary business cycle accounting

This paper investigates the quantitative importance of various types of distortions for inflation and nominal interest rate dynamics by extending business cycle accounting to monetary models. Representing various classes of real and nominal distortions as ‘wedges’ in standard equilibrium conditions allows a quantitative assessment of those distortions. Decomposing the data into movements due to these wedges shows that distortions generating movements in TFP and wedges in equilibrium conditions for asset markets are essential. In contrast, wedges capturing the effects of sticky prices play less important role. These results are robust to alternative implementations of the accounting method.