cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Tunable time delay neural networks for isolated word recognition

Describes a new neural network structure and a corresponding new sequential training technique for speech recognition. The proposed system is a modification of the original time delay neural network (TDNN) structure of Waibel et al. [1989]. The new structure consists of a group of sub-nets, and each isolated word or phoneme to be recognized corresponds to one sub-net. Since each sub-net deals with only one recognition unit, it may be trained independently. Each sub-net is a TDNN which the authors train with a new sequential training algorithm. The system has attained close to 100% accuracy for a multi-speaker, isolated word recognition task and 86.44% accuracy for a three voiced-stop-consonants ("B", "D" and "G"), speaker-independent phoneme recognition task. Results for phoneme recognition compared favorably with the best result obtained by Bryant [1992] using Sawai's block windowed neural network architecture with improvement by 14.44% for the same task.
Weighted Minimum Mean–Square Distance from Independence Estimation

In this paper we introduce a family of semi-parametric estimators, suggested by Manski's minimum mean-square distance from independence estimator. We establish the strong consistency, asymptotic normality and consistency of bootstrap estimates of the sampling distribution and the asymptotic variance of these estimators. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Allocation of periodic task modules with precedence and deadline constraints in distributed real-time systems

This paper addresses the problem of allocating (assigning and scheduling) periodic task modules to processing nodes in distributed real-time systems subject to task precedence and timing constraints. Using the branch-and-bound technique, a module allocation scheme is proposed to find an "optimal" allocation that maximizes the probability of meeting task deadlines. The task system within a planning cycle is first modeled with a task flow graph which describes computation and communication modules, as well as the precedence constraints among them. To incorporate both timing and logical correctness into module allocation, the probability of meeting task deadlines is used as the objective function. The module allocation scheme is then applied to find an optimal allocation of task modules in a distributed system. The timing aspects embedded in the objective: function drive the scheme not only to assign task modules to processing nodes, but also to use a module scheduling algorithm (with polynomial time complexity) for scheduling all modules assigned to each node, so that all tasks maybe completed in time. In order to speed up the branch-and-bound process and to reduce the computational complexity, a dominance relation is derived. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed scheme.
A Harmonic Analysis Solution to the Static Basket Arbitrage Problem

We consider the problem of computing upper and lower bounds on the price of a European basket call option, given prices on other similar baskets. We focus here on an interpretation of this program as a generalized moment problem. Recent results by Berg & Maserick (1984), Putinar & Vasilescu (1999) and Lasserre (2001) on harmonic analysis on semigroups, the K-moment problem and its applications to optimization, allow us to derive tractable necessary and sufficient conditions for the absence of static arbitrage between basket straddles, hence between basket calls and puts.
Ethical, legal and social implications of incorporating personalized medicine into healthcare

As research focused on personalized medicine has developed over the past decade, bioethics scholars have contemplated the ethical, legal and social implications of this type of research. In the next decade, there will be a need to broaden the focus of this work as personalized medicine moves into clinical settings. We consider two broad issues that will grow in importance and urgency. First, we analyze the consequences of the significant increase in health information that will be brought about by personalized medicine. Second, we raise concerns about the potential of personalized medicine to exacerbate existing disparities in healthcare.
Tailored Microstructures for Infrared Detection

Using the effective medium approximation[1–4] and the theory of photoemission from small particles,[5] we look into the design-rules of infrared materials based upon the metalsemiconductor random heterostructures with Ag particles embedded in the semiconductor. It is found that semiconductor host matrices with higher dielectric constants show better optical absorption in the infrared and that optical properties are closely related to microstructural parameters such as volume fraction of metal particles, percentage of aggregation and particle size. Cu, Ag and Au particles all show similar characteristics. We synthesized materials with small silver particles embedded in Si. Their microstructures are analysized using X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy and sputter Auger profiling. Finally, we present the optical properties of these materials and make comparisons with our theoretical results.
Photoionization and recombination of Fe xix

Photoionization cross-sections and recombination rate coefficients are presented for the L-shell ground-state fine-structure levels 2s22p43P2,0,1 of Fe xix. Several sets of calculations including relativistic effects are carried out: (i) Breit–Pauli R-matrix (BPRM), (ii) relativistic distorted-wave (RDW), and (iii) a semirelativistic calculation. Non-relativistic LS-coupling calculations are also performed for comparison. The BPRM calculations employ a configuration-interaction target representation for Fe xx consisting of 12 LS terms (23 fine-structure levels), as in the recently reported BPRM calculations by Donnelly et al. The background cross-sections in all three sets of present calculations agree with one another, but differ considerably from those of Donnelly et al. Owing to much more extensive resonance structures in the present BPRM calculations, the sum of the corresponding recombination rate coefficients for the 3P2,0,1 levels is up to 50 per cent higher than the LS rates at low temperatures but comparable for higher temperatures; this is in contrast to the results of Donnelly et al. who obtained the LS rates to be higher than their BPRM results by about a factor of 2. Reasons for these discrepancies are discussed.
The Anthropology of Organized Labor in the United States

Anthropological research has produced a number of robust findings about organized labor. National and state policies are the chief determinates of unions' power to organize workers for concerted action to redress the imbalance between those who provide labor and those who control its use through ownership or management of capital. Unions are effective when workers do not accept management paradigms of shared interest; the organization of production promotes worker self-organization; discussion among workers is possible; unions show members how to address problems with space, ideology, and management manipulations of emotions; and unions draw on community contacts and social relations beyond the workplace. Unions are ineffective when they are corrupt, racist, and inattentive to change. Servicing and organizing functions of unions are contradictory. These and other findings leave many topics that anthropologists have not ethnographically explored and define an agenda for future research.
Bounds on the Bayes Error Given Moments

We show how to compute lower bounds for the supremum Bayes error if the class-conditional distributions must satisfy moment constraints, where the supremum is with respect to the unknown class-conditional distributions. Our approach makes use of Curto and Fialkow's solutions for the truncated moment problem. The lower bound shows that the popular Gaussian assumption is not robust in this regard. We also construct an upper bound for the supremum Bayes error by constraining the decision boundary to be linear.
Precise measurements of hyperfine components in the spectrum of molecular iodine

Absolute wave numbers with a typical uncertainty of 1 MHz (95% confidence) were measured for 102 hyperfine-structure components of 127I2. The data cover the range 560 to 656 nm with no gaps larger than 50 cm-1. The spectra were observed by use of Doppler-free frequency-modulation spectroscopy with a tunable cw laser. The laser was locked to selected iodine components, and its wave number was measured with a high-precision Fabry–Perot wavemeter. The accuracy of the results is confirmed by the good agreement of nine of the lines with previous results from other laboratories. These measurements provide a well-distributed set of precise reference lines for this spectral region.
Dimethyl sulfide production in a saline eutrophic lake, Salton Sea, California

The concentrations and distribution of volatile organic sulfur compounds were quantified over a 13-month period in the Salton Sea, a warm eutrophic saline lake in Southern California, U.S.A. The concentrations of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) appear to be the highest reported thus far for a natural body of water, with an average surface (0–2 m) concentration of 2.5 mmol L21. DMS concentrations as high as 11 mmol L21 were measured, and the concentrations of DMS correlated strongly with chlorophyll a (r2 5 0.62, n 5 265, p , 0.05). Dimethyl disulfide was also measured; concentrations were much lower than DMS and often below detection (,0.01–0.32 mmol L21). Carbon disulfide concentrations were low (,0.03 mmol L21) and associated with strongly reduced conditions. Very high concentrations of dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP), an osmolyte in marine algae, were also measured (average total DMSP of 2.4 mmol L21), with concentrations strongly correlated with chlorophyll a (r2 5 0.88, n 5 36, p , 0.05). The biomass of the Salton Sea is composed mostly of marine phytoplankton species that are high DMSP producers; based on the correlations of DMS, chlorophyll a, and DMSP, it appears that the DMS in the Salton Sea is directly linked to algal biomass through DMSP. As a result of its very high DMS concentrations, the average estimated volatilization at the Salton Sea (480 mmol m22 d21) was greater than estimates for other lakes and the open ocean. We calculate ,9.6 3 105 mol of DMS was volatilized off the surface of the Sea during the course of this study. Dimethyl sulfide (DMS), dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), carbon disulfide (CS2), and other volatile organic sulfur compounds (VOSCs) play a central role in the global sulfur cycle. DMS is the most important biogenic sulfur compound emitted, accounting for 90% of emissions from the ocean and .50% of total natural sulfur emissions to the atmosphere. DMS has been given much attention in recent decades because of its potential role in global warming, acid precipitation, and cloud formation (Charlson et al. 1987). DMS volatilized to the atmosphere undergoes photochemical oxidation to dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), sulfate (SO 2{
Evolution, efficiency and noise traders in a one-sided auction market

Abstract Natural selection is used to examine a one-sided buyer auction market. With each trader's behavior preprogrammed with its own inherent and fixed probabilities of overpredicting, predicting correctly and underpredicting the fundamental value of the asset, informational efficiency occurs. If each buyer's initial wealth is sufficiently small relative to the market supply and if the variation in the asset's random shock is sufficiently small, then as time gets sufficiently large, the proportion of time, that the asset price is arbitrarily close to the fundamental value, converges to one with probability one. This is established under a weak restriction regarding traders’ behavior.
A polynomial invariant of finite quandles

We define a two-variable polynomial invariant of finite quandles. In many cases this invariant completely determines the algebraic structure of the quandle up to isomorphism. We use this polynomial to define a family of link invariants which generalize the quandle counting invariant.
Recent trends in 2D blind deconvolution for nondestructive evaluation

Ultrasonic imaging for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) applications is an important process for industrial applications. Such images are constrained by the sensor positions and indirect image formation. In this paper, some recent techniques in the areas of ultrasonic image enhancement and restoration, developed by the authors, are presented. Three new approaches have been presented to enhance the ultrasonic images with minimum or no information of the distortion function or the imaging system characteristics.
MC3D–3D continuum radiative transfer, Version 2

Abstract A revised and greatly improved version of the 3D continuum radiative transfer code MC3D is presented. It is based on the Monte Carlo method and solves the radiative transfer problem self-consistently. It is designed for the simulation of dust temperatures in arbitrary geometric configurations and the resulting observables: spectral energy distributions, wavelength-dependent images, and polarization maps. The main objective is the investigation of “dust-dominated” astrophysical systems such as young stellar objects surrounded by an optically thick circumstellar disk and an optically thin(ner) envelope, debris disks around more evolved stars, asymptotic giant branch stars, the dust component of the interstellar medium, and active galactic nuclei.
Potent, orally bioavailable HIV-1 protease inhibitors containing noncoded D-amino acids

Abstract Novel noncoded D-amino acids have been combined with decahydroisoquinoline, octahydrothienopyridine, and urea hydroxyethylamine isosteres to provide potent HIV-1 protease inhibitors with excellent HIV-1 antiviral activity. LY314613 shows a promising combination of potency and oral bioavailability. Trends in the SAR and comparisons to other isostere derivatives will be discussed.
Electromagnetic scattering from a buried cylinder in layered media with rough interfaces

A solution to scattering from a cylinder buried arbitrarily in layered media with rough interfaces based on extended boundary condition method (EBCM) and scattering matrix technique is developed. The reflection and transmission matrices of arbitrary rough interfaces as well as an isolated single cylinder are constructed using EBCM and recursive T-matrix algorithm, respectively. The cylinder/rough surface interactions are taken into account by applying the generalized scattering matrix technique. The scattering matrix technique is used to cascade reflection and transmission matrices from individual systems (i.e., rough surfaces or cylinders) in order to obtain the scattering pattern from the overall system. Bistatic scattering coefficients are then obtained by incoherently averaging the power computed from the resulting Floquet modes of the overall system. In numerical simulations, the bistatic scattering coefficients are first validated by comparing the simulation results with the existing solutions which are the limiting cases including scattering from two-interface rough surfaces without any buried object and from a buried cylinder beneath a single rough surface. Subsequently, the numerical simulations of scattering from a buried cylinder in layered rough surfaces are performed to investigate the relative importance and sensitivity of various physical parameters of layered rough surfaces to incoherent scattering coefficients. Results show layered rough interfaces can significantly alter the scattering behaviors of a buried cylinder
How Much Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations

Ten of the 15 seats on the U.N. Security Council are held by rotating members serving two-year terms. We find that a country’s U.S. aid increases by 59 percent and its U.N. aid by 8 percent when it rotates onto the council. This effect increases during years in which key diplomatic events take place (when members’ votes should be especially valuable), and the timing of the effect closely tracks a country’s election to, and exit from, the council. Finally, the U.N. results appear to be driven by UNICEF, an organization over which the United States has historically exerted great control.
Spherical functions on Euclidean space

We study spherical functions on Euclidean spaces from the viewpoint of Riemannian symmetric spaces. Here the Euclidean space E n = G/K where G is the semidirect product R n · K of the translation group with a closed subgroup K of the orthogonal group O(n). We give exact parameterizations of the space of (G, K)—spherical functions by a certain affine algebraic variety, and of the positive definite ones by a real form of that variety. We give exact formulae for the spherical functions in the case where K is transitive on the unit sphere in E n .
Reconciling the Old and New Census Bureau Education Questions: Recommendations for Researchers

Beginning with the 1990 Census and the January 1992 Current Population Survey (CPS), the Bureau of the Census changed the emphasis of its educational-attainment question from years of education to degree receipt. Using a matched sample from the 1991 and 1992 March CPS, this article addresses how to reconcile the old and new questions. The effects of those methods on the estimated return(s) to education are then examined. Both the estimated linear return and the estimated college–high-school wage differential are slightly larger using information from the new question.
Working Long Hours and Having No Choice: Time Poverty in Guinea

This paper provides a new definition of 'time poverty' as working long hours and having no choice to do otherwise. An individual is time poor if he/she is working long hours and is also monetary poor, or would fall into monetary poverty if he/she were to reduce his/her working hours below a given time poverty line. Thus being time poor results from the combination of two conditions. First, the individual does not have enough time for rest and leisure once all working hours (whether spent in the labor market or doing household chores such as cooking, and fetching water and wood) are accounted for. Second, the individual cannot reduce his/her working time without either increasing the level of poverty of his/her household (if the household is already poor) or leading his/her household to fall into monetary poverty due to the loss in income or consumption associated with the reduction in working time (if the household is not originally poor). The paper applies the concepts of the traditional poverty literature to the analysis of time poverty and presents a case study using data for Guinea in 2002-03. Both univariate and multivariate results suggest that women are significantly more likely to be time poor than men.
Enantiospecificity of sterol–lipid interactions: first evidence that the absolute configuration of cholesterol affects the physical properties of cholesterol–sphingomyelin membranes

Results from monolayer studies using the enantiomers of cholesterol (nat- and ent-cholesterol) and egg yolk sphingomyelin show for the first time that enantiospecific interactions between sterols and lipids can affect the physical properties of membranes.
Technology challenges for the global real-time enterprise

If there is one business concept that will drive distributed systems technology to the hilt in the coming years it is that of the real-time enterprise. The push for zero-latency access to a complete up-to-date view of all the business processes, inter-nally within a corporation, as well as to customers, will dominate the thinking of system architects for the years to come. Many of the technology components that need to become the building blocks for constructing and managing the real-time global information flow within large corporations do not exist yet. It is certain that issues such as security, robustness, manageability, combined with legacy system integration, and all enveloped with a scalability coating will be central in the dis-tributed system tools needed. It will require us to develop new technologies, re-package old ones, forge new tools and practices and to place these in an architec-tural vision in which many of these incompatible components can play together.
Encryption Modes with Almost Free Message Integrity

We define a new mode of operation for block ciphers which, in addition to providing confidentiality, also ensures message integrity. In contrast, previously for message integrity a separate pass was required to compute a cryptographic message authentication code (MAC). The new mode of operation, called Integrity Aware Parallelizable Mode (IAPM), requires a total of m+1 block cipher evaluations on a plain-text of length m blocks. For comparison, the well-known CBC (cipher block chaining) encryption mode requires m block cipher evaluations, and the second pass of computing the CBC-MAC essentially requires additional m+1 block cipher evaluations. As the name suggests, the new mode is also highly parallelizable.
Contact Stress Analysis in Ball Screw Mechanism Using the Tubular Medial Axis Representation of Contacting Surfaces

A simple method is presented for analysis of contact stresses and deformation conditions between the bearing balls, screw, and nut of the ball screw mechanism. The method is based on representation of contact geometry and curvature analysis of contacting surfaces using a generalization of the medial axis transform (MAT) to tubular surfaces. Simplified Hertzian contact solutions are obtained using the curvature information. The results are approximate but do include the effect of complex thread profiles as a result of the helical grooves and are suitable for mechanical design purposes.
Racial differences in homeownership: the effect of residential location

Abstract The rate of homeownership among African–American households is considerably lower than white households in American urban areas. This paper examines whether racial differences in residential location outcomes are among the factors that contribute to the large racial differences in homeownership rates in major US metropolitan areas. Based on the 1985 metropolitan sample of the American Housing Survey for Philadelphia, the paper does not find any evidence that existing racial differences in residential location in Philadelphia decrease the homeownership rate among African Americans. Rather, the empirical evidence suggests that African–American residential location outcomes are associated with lower than expected racial differences in homeownership. Therefore, after controlling for neighborhood, racial differences in homeownership are larger than originally believed, and the ability of racial differences in endowments to explain homeownership differences is more limited.
Legal Vices and Civic Virtue: Vice Crimes, Republicanism and the Corruption of Lawfulness

Vice crimes, crimes prohibited in part because they are viewed as morally corrupting, engage legal theorists because they reveal importantly contrasting views between liberals and virtue-centered theorists on the very limits of legitimate state action. Yet advocates and opponents alike focus on the role law can play in suppressing personal vice; the role of law is seen as suppressing licentiousness, sloth, greed etc. The most powerful advocates of the position that the law must nurture good character often draw on Aristotelian theories of virtue to ground the connection between law and virtue. While Aristotle believed that law and character were linked, it is ironic to note that he did not argue for the position evidenced in our vice laws that law was likely to succeed in instilling virtue. Indeed, Aristotle thought the project of using law to instill private virtue was nearly certain to fail. Aristotle’s deep concern was not for the way law protected private virtue within each person but the way law had to protect civic virtue between citizens. This article argues that even from its foundations, the project of vice crimes as moral instruction is misconceived. The use of law for overly instrumental or narrow reasons opens law and legal institutions to abuse and factionalism. Lawyers, judges and others specially connected to law must first and foremost aim at addressing “legal vices,” vices internal to the institutions of law. Particularly, increasing factionalism and instrumentalism which disconnects law from the pursuit of the common good threatens our civic bonds. Most importantly, where civic bonds are disrupted, citizens have no reason to remain law abiding. The striking lesson, captured both in ancient philosophy and modern history, is that when legal vices grow unchecked and factions use the law to pursue narrow interests, ultimately law abidingness is corrupted and interest groups harm themselves as much as others.
Manipulation of plasma membrane fatty acid composition of fetal rat brain cells grown in a serum-free defined medium.

Modifications of plasma membrane acyl-linked phospholipid fatty acid composition were produced by supplementing the culture medium with essential fatty acids. The plasma membrane fraction was purified by Percoll gradient centrifugation from dissociated fetal rat brain cells grown in a serum-free culture medium. Both the concentration dependence and the time course of the modifications were examined. Supplementation of the medium with essential polyunsaturated fatty acid, linolenic acid (18:3 omega 3) or linoleic acid (18:2 omega 6), produced incorporation of the elongated and desaturated products of omega 3 or omega 6 class, respectively, i.e., the incorporation was class specific. Within each class, the most unsaturated and elongated members, i.e., terminal members, were preferentially incorporated until they reached a maximum concentration within 6-7 days. At higher concentrations of supplemented fatty acids, additional class specific incorporation in plasma membrane was produced by an increase in the concentration of intermediate members. At the same time, the concentration of monounsaturated fatty acids declined and that of saturated fatty acids remained unchanged. The modifications in fatty acid composition were reversible, with the time course similar to that of incorporation. The total plasma membrane phospholipid and sterol contents did not change with alterations of fatty acid composition, but did change with time in culture. This preparation should prove useful for investigating the role of polyunsaturated fatty acids in brain cell functions, including neuronal excitability.
A convenient method for the synthesis of indole-3-acetic acids

Abstract Starting from the corresponding indoles, indole-3-acetic acids were synthesized through indole-3-glyoxylic acids, followed by hydrazone formation with p-toluenesulfonhydrazide, then reduction of the hydrazones with sodium borohydride.
Quantum magnetism and criticality

Quantum magnetism describes systems of magnetic spins in which quantum mechanical effects dominate, often in surprising ways. This review article covers phase transitions between these states, including quantum criticality and entangled electron states.
Range data from stereo images of edge points

The author presents an algorithm and implementation for recovering range data from stereo images of edge points. The recovered data are used for object identification and localization. Parallel laser light planes are projected on a polyhedral object. The light planes appear as a set of broken straight segments in images. Discontinuities along these straight segments correspond to normal discontinuities on the underlying surfaces. Points of discontinuities in the image are extracted as edge points and they lie on edges of the underlying object. Matching edge points between stereo images give range data. The matching algorithm uses the epipolar constraint, a relational constraint, and an ordering constraint. The range data can be arranged in order according to the light planes to which they belong. Experimental results of the matching process and the accuracy of recovered data are presented. >
Pricing-to-Market, Trade Costs, and International Relative Prices

International relative prices across industrialized countries show large and systematic deviations from relative purchasing power parity. We embed a model of imperfect competition and variable markups in a quantitative model of international trade. We find that when our model is parameterized to match salient features of the data on international trade and market structure in the United States, it can reproduce deviations from relative purchasing power parity similar to those observed in the data because firms choose to price-to-market. We then examine how pricing-to-market depends on the presence of international trade costs and various features of market structure.
Implementing Large-Scale Optimization Models in Excel Using VBA

We discuss the importance of spreadsheets for optimization modeling, including a description of their limitations for large-scale problems. We then describe efficient ways to overcome these limits. Our approach makes use of Excel's standard functionality but augments Excel with its programming language, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), where necessary. We show how using VBA within Excel to generate and solve large linear programs (LPs) overcomes many of the problems inherent in purely spreadsheet-based models and greatly increases model usability. The techniques described were instrumental in our successful development of a large-scale procurement/distribution LP that resulted in savings of approximately $1,000,000 in the first year, with even greater annual savings expected in the future.
Radiation damage in carbon–carbon composites: structure and property effects

Carbon–carbon composites are an attractive choice for fusion reactor plasma facing components because of their low atomic number, superior thermal shock resistance, and low neutron activation. Next generation tokamak reactors such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), will require high thermal conductivity carbon–carbon composites and other materials, such as beryllium, to protect their plasma facing components from the anticipated high heat fluxes. Moreover, ignition machines such as ITER will produce a large neutron flux. Consequently, the influence of neutron damage on the structure and properties of carbon–carbon composite materials must be evaluated. Data from two irradiation experiments are reported and discussed here. Carbon–carbon composite materials were irradiated in target capsules in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). A peak damage dose of 4.7 displacements per atom (dpa) at an irradiation temperature of ~600°C was attained. The carbon materials irradiated here included uni-directional, two-directional, and three-directional carbon–carbon composites. Irradiation induced dimensional changes are reported for the materials and related to single crystal dimensional changes through fiber and composite structural models. Moreover, carbon–carbon composite material dimensional changes are discussed in terms of their architecture, fiber type, and graphitization temperature. Neutron irradiation induced reductions in the thermal conductivity of two, three-directional carbon–carbon composites are reported, and the recovery of thermal conductivity due to thermal annealing is demonstrated. Irradiation induced strength changes are reported for several carbon–carbon composite materials and are explained in terms of in-crystal and composite structural effects.
Optimal Pricing in Networks with Externalities

We study the optimal pricing strategies of a monopolist selling a divisible good (service) to consumers who are embedded in a social network. A key feature of our model is that consumers experience a (positive) local network effect. In particular, each consumer's usage level depends directly on the usage of her neighbors in the social network structure. Thus, the monopolist's optimal pricing strategy may involve offering discounts to certain agents who have a central position in the underlying network. Our results can be summarized as follows. First, we consider a setting where the monopolist can offer individualized prices and derive a characterization of the optimal price for each consumer as a function of her network position. In particular, we show that it is optimal for the monopolist to charge each agent a price that consists of three components: (i) a nominal term that is independent of the network structure, (ii) a discount term proportional to the influence that this agent exerts over the rest of the social network (quantified by the agent's Bonacich centrality), and (iii) a markup term proportional to the influence that the network exerts on the agent. In the second part of the paper, we discuss the optimal strategy of a monopolist who can only choose a single uniform price for the good and derive an algorithm polynomial in the number of agents to compute such a price. Third, we assume that the monopolist can offer the good in two prices, full and discounted, and we study the problem of determining which set of consumers should be given the discount. We show that the problem is NP-hard; however, we provide an explicit characterization of the set of agents who should be offered the discounted price. Next, we describe an approximation algorithm for finding the optimal set of agents. We show that if the profit is nonnegative under any feasible price allocation, the algorithm guarantees at least 88% of the optimal profit. Finally, we highlight the value of network information by comparing the profits of a monopolist who does not take into account the network effects when choosing her pricing policy to those of a monopolist who uses this information optimally.
A machine learning approach to TCP throughput prediction

TCP throughput prediction is an important capability for networks where multiple paths exist between data senders and receivers. In this paper, we describe a new lightweight method for TCP throughput prediction. Our predictor uses Support Vector Regression (SVR); prediction is based on both prior file transfer history and measurements of simple path properties. We evaluate our predictor in a laboratory setting where ground truth can be measured with perfect accuracy. We report the performance of our predictor for oracular and practical measurements of path properties over a wide range of traffic conditions and transfer sizes. For bulk transfers in heavy traffic using oracular measurements, TCP throughput is predicted within 10% of the actual value 87% of the time, representing nearly a threefold improvement in accuracy over prior history-based methods. For practical measurements of path properties, predictions can be made within 10% of the actual value nearly 50% of the time, approximately a 60% improvement over history-based methods, and with much lower measurement traffic overhead. We implement our predictor in a tool called Path-Perf, test it in the wide area, and show that PathPerf predicts TCP throughput accurately over diverse wide area paths.
Child-rearing practices and motor performance of black and white children.

Abstract Black and white children from low socioeconomic areas were classified according to authoritarian control attitudes expressed by the children's mothers. Subjects were tested using a running task and a jumping task. Results indicated greater jumping and running skill for children reared by nonauthoritarian mothers. Black children, regardless of the parental style, showed greater skill than white children in both jumping and running.
For extreme parallelism, your OS is Sooooo last-millennium

High-performance computing has been on an inexorable march from gigascale to tera-and petascale, with many researchers now actively contemplating exascale (1018, or a million trillion operations per second) systems. This progression is being accelerated by the rapid increase in multi-and many-core processors, which allow even greater opportunities for parallelism. Such densities, though, give rise to a new cohort of challenges; for example, containing system software overhead, dealing with large numbers of schedulable entities, and maintaining energy efficiency.We are studying software and processor-architectural features that will allow us to achieve these goals. We believe that exascale operation will require significant "out of the box" thinking, specifically in terms of the role of operating systems and system software. We describe some of our research into how these goals can be achieved.
The Imperfect Substitutes Model in South Asia Pakistan–India Trade Liberalization in the Negative List

In large number of circumstances, trade policy modellers turn to partial equilibrium modelling in an imperfect substitutes framework. This article develops a formal representation of this imperfect substitutes model and applies it to trade liberalization within the negative list between Pakistan and India following Pakistan’s decision to grant most favoured nation (MFN) status to India. It provides estimates for ranges of output and welfare effects for a number of sectors of interest. It sets these results within the history of Pakistan–India trade and the political economy of the negative list.
Particle Radiative Feedback in Ammonium Perchlorate Deflagration

The deflagration behavior of ammonium perchlorate (AP) with carbon black and copper chromite catalyst additives was studied over a pressure range of 4.3-171 MPa (50-2500 psig) using light transmission and emission measurements in a window bomb and burn rate measurements in a conventional strand burner. It was found that a maximum value of the lower pressure limit PDL exists at intermediate values of carbon black concentration similar to that already reported for copper chromite catalyst. It was also found that sufficiently high concentrations of carbon black augment the steady deflagration rate of AP. Since carbon black is not a catalyst of AP decomposition , it is postulated that particle radiative feedback is more likely to be the cause of the observed behavior than previously suggested catalyst effects. To quantify the amount of radiative heat feedback, flame temperature and emissivity values were calculated from light emission/transmission measurements. These calculations yielded flame temperatures between 1406 and 1449 K and a value for the effective particle absorption efficiency over diameter Qa/d of 4.1 jun"1 in good agreement with expected values. A simple analysis shows that the observed trends (increasing PDL at low particle concentrations and decreasing PDL at higher concentrations) can be predicted from simple radiative transfer considerations together with particle and matrix continuity equations.
Gallager's exponent for MIMO channels: a reliability-rate tradeoff

In this paper, we derive Gallager's random coding error exponent for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Rayleigh block-fading channels, assuming no channel-state information (CSI) at the transmitter and perfect CSI at the receiver. This measure gives insight into a fundamental tradeoff between the communication reliability and information rate of MIMO channels, enabling to determine the required codeword length to achieve a prescribed error probability at a given rate below the channel capacity. We quantify the effects of the number of antennas, channel coherence time, and spatial fading correlation on the MIMO exponent. In addition, the general formulae for the ergodic capacity and the cutoff rate in the presence of spatial correlation are deduced from the exponent expressions. These formulae are applicable to arbitrary structures of transmit and receive correlation, encompassing all the previously known results as special cases of our expressions.
Urban growth and subcenter formation: A trolley ride from the Staples Center to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl

The long-term trends of urbanization suggest: not only have more cities formed, but the leading metropolises have grown larger, with a number of peripheral subcenters developing over time. Conventional models of urban growth are limited, in that commuting cost and congestion eventually result in decreasing returns in a monocentric city as population becomes very large. We construct a general-equilibrium model with dynamic interactions between spatial agglomeration and urban development, driven by location-dependent knowledge spillovers. Our contribution allows endogenous development of subcenters to capture benefits from knowledge spillovers and offset diminishing returns from urban congestion, thus permitting more sustained city growth.
JPTRAJ: the new JPL trajectory monitor

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology is under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to conduct space projects such as Ranger, Mariner, and Surveyor. These projects require an enormous amount of computer support in both trajectory design and spacecraft tracking. To this end, three IBM 7094 systems are always available, and other equipment is operational during a mission.
Stereoselective diels-alder reactions of chiral anthracenes

Various chiral (9-anthryl)carbinol templates undergo Diels−Alder cycloadditions with a variety of symmetric and nonsymmetric dienophiles with excellent π-facial selectivity and regioselectivity, under both thermal and Lewis acid catalyzed conditions.
Birationally rigid hypersurfaces

We prove that for N≥4, all smooth hypersurfaces of degree N in ℙ N are birationally superrigid. First discovered in the case N=4 by Iskovskikh and Manin in a work that started this whole direction of research, this property was later conjectured to hold in general by Pukhlikov. The proof relies on the method of maximal singularities in combination with a formula on restrictions of multiplier ideals.
Sound Practice in Government Debt Management

Government debt management has a long tradition. More than three centuries ago, the Bank of England was managing government debt, and the origins of Sweden's National Debt Office go back to 1789.1 In recent years, there has been a move toward building the professionalism of government debt management, beginning with the establishment of the New Zealand Debt Management Office in 1988 and Ireland's National Treasury Management Agency in 1990. It is no accident that the countries that were the first to substantially upgrade their government debt management in the late 1980s and early 1990s were those with histories of fiscal problems, high ratios of public sector debt to gross domestic product (GDP), and a large proportion of foreign currency debt in their government debt portfolios.2 These same features are characteristic of many developing countries today. Concern over rising government indebtedness has been a factor behind debt management reforms in Brazil, China, Colombia, India, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, South Africa, and Thailand, and it helps explain why several other governments, including those of Jordan, Lebanon, and Peru, are considering extensive reforms in government debt management.
The Future Trajectory of US CO2 Emissions: The Role of State vs. Aggregate Information

Author(s): Auffhammer, Maximilian; Steinhauser, Ralf | Abstract: This paper provides comparisons of a variety of time series methods for short run forecasts of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, for the United States, using a recently released state level data set from 1960-2001. We test the out-of-sample performance of univariate and multivariate forecasting models by aggregating state level forecasts versus forecasting the aggregate directly. We find evidence that forecasting the disaggregate series and accounting for spatial effects drastically improves forecasting performance under Root Mean Squared Forecast Error Loss. Based on the in-sample observations we attempt to explain the emergence of voluntary efforts by states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We find evidence that states with decreasing per capita emissions and a "greener" median voter are more likely to push towards voluntary cutbacks in emissions.
Multidimensional transformation-based learning

This paper presents a novel method that allows a machine learning algorithm following the transformation-based learning paradigm (Brill, 1995) to be applied to multiple classification tasks by training jointly and simultaneously on all fields. The motivation for constructing such a system stems from the observation that many tasks in natural language processing are naturally composed of multiple subtasks which need to be resolved simultaneously; also tasks usually learned in isolation can possibly benefit from being learned in a joint framework, as the signals for the extra tasks usually constitute inductive bias.The proposed algorithm is evaluated in two experiments: in one, the system is used to jointly predict the part-of-speech and text chunks/baseNP chunks of an English corpus; and in the second it is used to learn the joint prediction of word segment boundaries and part-of-speech tagging for Chinese. The results show that the simultaneous learning of multiple tasks does achieve an improvement in each task upon training the same tasks sequentially. The part-of-speech tagging result of 96.63% is state-of-the-art for individual systems on the particular train/test split.
Discovery of Cesium, Lanthanum, Praseodymium and Promethium Isotopes

Currently, forty-one cesium, thirty-five lanthanum, thirty-two praseodymium, and thirty-one promethium isotopes have been observed and the discovery of these isotopes is described here. For each isotope a brief synopsis of the first refereed publication, including the production and identification method, is presented.
Complications of anesthesia for cesarean delivery.

Objective:To quantify anesthesia-related complications associated with cesarean delivery in a well-described, prospectively ascertained cohort from multiple university-based hospitals in the United States and to evaluate whether certain factors would identify women at increased risk for a failed reg
Least squares superposition codes of moderate dictionary size, reliable at rates up to capacity

Sparse superposition codes are developed for the additive white Gaussian noise channel with average codeword power constraint. Codewords are linear combinations of subsets of vectors, with the possible messages indexed by the choice of subset. Decoding is by least squares, tailored to the assumed form of linear combination. Communication is shown to be reliable with error probability exponentially small for all rates up to the Shannon capacity.
On-Chip Weighted Random Patterns

Even though there has been a considerable effort in proposing weighted random pattern testing schemes over the years, insufficient attention has been devoted to their implementation. This paper describes the design details, operation, cost, and performance of a distributed weighted pattern test approach at the chip level. The traditional LSSD SRLs are being replaced by WRP SRLs designed specifically to facilitate a weighted random pattern (WRP) test. A two-bit code is transmitted to each WRP SRL to determine its specific weight. The WRP test is then divided into groups, where each group is activated with a different set of weights. The weights are dynamically adjusted during the course of the test to “go after” the remaining untested faults. The cost and performance of this design system are explored on ten pilot chips. Results of this experiment are provided in the paper.
Complete isolation and characterization of silybins and isosilybins from milk thistle (Silybum marianum)

Complete separation, isolation, and structural characterization of four diastereoisomeric flavonolignans, silybins A (1) and B (2), and isosilybins A (3) and B (4) from the seeds of milk thistle (Silybum marianum) were achieved for the first time using a preparative reversed-phase HPLC method. In addition, three other flavonolignans, silychristin (5) isosilychristin (6) and silydianin (7), and a flavonoid, taxifolin (8) were isolated. Structures, including absolute stereochemistries of 1-4, were confirmed using 2D NMR and CD spectroscopy.