cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Combining dark matter detectors and electron-capture sources to hunt for new physics in the neutrino sector

In this letter we point out the possibility to study new physics in the neutrino sector using dark matter detectors based on liquid xenon. These are characterized by very good spatial resolution and extremely low thresholds for electron recoil energies. When combined with a radioactive ν e source, both features in combination allow for a very competitive sensitivity to neutrino magnetic moments and sterile neutrino oscillations. We find that, for realistic values of detector size and source strength, the bound on the neutrino magnetic moment can be improved by an order of magnitude with respect to the present value. Regarding sterile neutrino searches, we find that most of the gallium anomaly could be explored at the 95% confidence level just using shape information.
Topological Phases Protected by Point Group Symmetry

Not much is known about the role that geometric symmetries play in exotic states of quantum matter known as symmetry-protected topological phases. A new approach is developed to classify and understand these phases, which are shown to be comprised of simpler, lower-dimensional states.
Plan-structured deep neural network models for query performance prediction

Query performance prediction, the task of predicting a query's latency prior to execution, is a challenging problem in database management systems. Existing approaches rely on features and performance models engineered by human experts, but often fail to capture the complex interactions between query operators and input relations, and generally do not adapt naturally to workload characteristics and patterns in query execution plans. In this paper, we argue that deep learning can be applied to the query performance prediction problem, and we introduce a novel neural network architecture for the task: a plan-structured neural network. Our neural network architecture matches the structure of any optimizer-selected query execution plan and predict its latency with high accuracy, while eliminating the need for human-crafted input features. A number of optimizations are also proposed to reduce training overhead without sacrificing effectiveness. We evaluated our techniques on various workloads and we demonstrate that our approach can out-perform the state-of-the-art in query performance prediction.
Investigating the Role of Socially Mediated Metacognition during Collaborative Troubleshooting of Electric Circuits.

Students engage in socially mediated metacognition while troubleshooting during an introductory physics lab.
A Differential Abundance Analysis of Very Metal-poor Stars* **

We have performed a differential, line-by-line, chemical abundance analysis, ultimately relative to the Sun, of nine very metal-poor main sequence halo stars, near [Fe/H]=$-$2 dex. Our abundances range from $-2.66\leq\mathrm{[Fe/H]}\leq-1.40$ dex with conservative uncertainties of 0.07 dex. We find an average [$\alpha$/Fe]$=0.34\pm0.09$ dex, typical of the Milky Way. While our spectroscopic atmosphere parameters provide good agreement with HST parallaxes, there is significant disagreement with temperature and gravity parameters indicated by observed colors and theoretical isochrones. Although a systematic underestimate of the stellar temperature by a few hundred degrees could explain this difference, it is not supported by current effective temperature studies and would create large uncertainties in the abundance determinations. Both 1D and $\langle$3D$\rangle$ hydrodynamical models combined with separate 1D non-LTE effects do not yet account for the atmospheres of real metal-poor MS stars, but a fully 3D non-LTE treatment may be able to explain the ionization imbalance found in this work.
Localization and Symmetry Breaking in the Quantum Quasiperiodic Ising Glass

In disordered quantum systems, magnetic domains might be localized, indefinitely preserving their initial states. A theoretical analysis shows that disorder is not necessary for protecting this order and can be accomplished via quasiperiodic modulations.
Spectral Sum Rules and Magneto-Roton as Emergent Graviton in Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

We consider gapped fractional quantum Hall states on the lowest Landau level when the Coulomb energy is much smaller than the cyclotron energy. We introduce two spectral densities, ρ T (ω) and $$ {\overline{\rho}}_T\left(\omega \right) $$ , which are proportional to the probabilities of absorption of circularly polarized gravitons by the quantum Hall system. We prove three sum rules relating these spectral densities with the shift $$ \mathcal{S} $$ , the q 4 coefficient of the static structure factor S 4, and the high-frequency shear modulus of the ground state μ ∞, which is precisely defined. We confirm an inequality, first suggested by Haldane, that S 4 is bounded from below by $$ \left|\mathcal{S} - 1\right|/8 $$ . The Laughlin wavefunction saturates this bound, which we argue to imply that systems with ground state wavefunctions close to Laughlin’s absorb gravitons of predominantly one circular polarization. We consider a nonlinear model where the sum rules are saturated by a single magneto-roton mode. In this model, the magneto-roton arises from the mixing between oscillations of an internal metric and the hydrodynamic motion. Implications for experiments are briefly discussed.
A generalization of Zeckendorf’s theorem via circumscribed m-gons

Zeckendorf’s theorem states that every positive integer can be uniquely decomposed as a sum of nonconsecutive Fibonacci numbers, where the Fibonacci numbers satisfy F1 = 1, F2 = 2, and Fn = Fn−1 + Fn−2 for n ≥ 3. The distribution of the number of summands in such a decomposition converges to a Gaussian, the gaps between summands converge to geometric decay, and the distribution of the longest gap is similar to that of the longest run of heads in a biased coin; these results also hold more generally, though for technical reasons previous work is needed to assume the coefficients in the recurrence relation are nonnegative and the first term is positive. We extend these results by creating an infinite family of integer sequences called the m-gonal sequences arising from a geometric construction using circumscribed m-gons. They satisfy a recurrence where the first m+1 leading terms vanish, and thus cannot be handled by existing techniques. We provide a notion of a legal decomposition, and prove that the decompositions exist and are unique. We then examine the distribution of the number of summands used in the decompositions and prove that it displays Gaussian behavior. There is geometric decay in the distribution of gaps, both for gaps taken from all integers in an interval and almost surely in distribution for the individual gap measures associated to each integer in the interval. We end by proving that the distribution of the longest gap between summands is strongly concentrated about its mean, behaving similarly as in the longest run of heads in tosses of a coin.
Explainable Recommendation via Interpretable Feature Mapping and Evaluation of Explainability

Latent factor collaborative filtering (CF) has been a widely used technique for recommender system by learning the semantic representations of users and items. Recently, explainable recommendation has attracted much attention from research community. However, trade-off exists between explainability and performance of the recommendation where metadata is often needed to alleviate the dilemma. We present a novel feature mapping approach that maps the uninterpretable general features onto the interpretable aspect features, achieving both satisfactory accuracy and explainability in the recommendations by simultaneous minimization of rating prediction loss and interpretation loss. To evaluate the explainability, we propose two new evaluation metrics specifically designed for aspect-level explanation using surrogate ground truth. Experimental results demonstrate a strong performance in both recommendation and explaining explanation, eliminating the need for metadata. Code is available from this https URL.
A size-free CLT for poisson multinomials and its applications

An (n,k)-Poisson Multinomial Distribution (PMD) is the distribution of the sum of n independent random vectors supported on the set Bk={e1,…,ek} of standard basis vectors in ℝk. We show that any (n,k)-PMD is poly(k/σ)-close in total variation distance to the (appropriately discretized) multi-dimensional Gaussian with the same first two moments, removing the dependence on n from the Central Limit Theorem of Valiant and Valiant. Interestingly, our CLT is obtained by bootstrapping the Valiant-Valiant CLT itself through the structural characterization of PMDs shown in recent work by Daskalakis, Kamath and Tzamos. In turn, our stronger CLT can be leveraged to obtain an efficient PTAS for approximate Nash equilibria in anonymous games, significantly improving the state of the art, and matching qualitatively the running time dependence on n and 1/є of the best known algorithm for two-strategy anonymous games. Our new CLT also enables the construction of covers for the set of (n,k)-PMDs, which are proper and whose size is shown to be essentially optimal. Our cover construction combines our CLT with the Shapley-Folkman theorem and recent sparsification results for Laplacian matrices by Batson, Spielman, and Srivastava. Our cover size lower bound is based on an algebraic geometric construction. Finally, leveraging the structural properties of the Fourier spectrum of PMDs we show that these distributions can be learned from Ok(1/є2) samples in polyk(1/є)-time, removing the quasi-polynomial dependence of the running time on 1/є from prior work.
Atmospheric Evolution on Low-gravity Waterworlds

Low-gravity waterworlds ($M\lesssim 0.1 M_{\oplus}$) are of interest for their potential habitability. The weakly bound atmospheres of such worlds have proportionally larger radiative surfaces and are more susceptible to escape. We conduct a unified investigation into these phenomena, combining analytical energy balance and hydrodynamic escape with line-by-line radiative transfer calculations. Because outgoing radiation is forced to increase with surface temperature by the expansion of the radiative surface, we find that these worlds do not experience a runaway greenhouse. Furthermore, we show that a long-lived liquid water habitable zone is possible for low-gravity waterworlds of sufficient mass. Its inner edge is set by the rate of atmospheric escape, because a short-lived atmosphere limits the time available for life to evolve. In describing the physics of the parameter space transition from "planet-like" to "comet-like", our model produces a lower bound for habitability in terms of gravity. These results provide valuable insights in the context of the ongoing hunt for habitable exoplanets and exomoons.
PRODUCTS OF BINOMIAL COEFFICIENTS AND UNREDUCED FAREY FRACTIONS

This paper studies the product G¯n of the binomial coefficients in the nth row of Pascal’s triangle, which equals the reciprocal of the product of all the reduced and unreduced Farey fractions of order n. It studies its size as a real number, measured by log(G¯n), and its prime factorization, measured by the order of divisibility νp(G¯n) = ordp(G¯n) by a fixed prime p, each viewed as a function of n. It derives three formulas for ordp(G¯n), two of which relate it to base p radix expansions of integers up to n, and which display different facets of its behavior. These formulas are used to determine the maximal growth rate of each ordp(G¯n) and to explain structure of the fluctuations of these functions. It also defines analogous functions νb(G¯n) for all integer bases b ≥ 2 using base b radix expansions replacing base p-expansions. A final topic relates factorizations of G¯n to Chebyshev-type prime-counting estimates and the prime number theorem.
Student Ownership of Projects in an Upper-Division Optics Laboratory Course: A Multiple Case Study of Successful Experiences.

Frustration and struggle are necessary features of learning environments that promote student ownership of projects, as opposed to obstacles that hinder ownership.
Yadage and Packtivity - analysis preservation using parametrized workflows

Preserving data analyses produced by the collaborations at LHC in a parametrized fashion is crucial in order to maintain reproducibility and re-usability. We argue for a declarative description in terms of individual processing steps – "packtivities" – linked through a dynamic directed acyclic graph (DAG) and present an initial set of JSON schemas for such a description and an implementation – "yadage" – capable of executing workflows of analysis preserved via Linux containers.
A Transiting Jupiter Analog

Decadal-long radial velocity surveys have recently started to discover analogs to the most influential planet of our solar system, Jupiter. Detecting and characterizing these worlds is expected to shape our understanding of our uniqueness in the cosmos. Despite the great successes of recent transit surveys, Jupiter analogs represent a terra incognita, owing to the strong intrinsic bias of this method against long orbital periods. We here report on the first validated transiting Jupiter analog, Kepler-167e (KOI-490.02), discovered using Kepler archival photometry orbiting the K4-dwarf KIC-3239945. With a radius of (0.91 ± 0.02) R_J, a low orbital eccentricity (0.06_(-0.04)^(+0.10), and an equilibrium temperature of (131 ± 3) K, Kepler-167e bears many of the basic hallmarks of Jupiter. Kepler-167e is accompanied by three Super-Earths on compact orbits, which we also validate, leaving a large cavity of transiting worlds around the habitable-zone. With two transits and continuous photometric coverage, we are able to uniquely and precisely measure the orbital period of this post snow-line planet (1071.2323 ± 0.0006d), paving the way for follow-up of this K = 11.8 mag target.
Robust hybrid zero-order optimization algorithms with acceleration via averaging in time

Abstract This paper presents a new class of robust zero-order algorithms for the solution of real-time optimization problems with acceleration. In particular, we propose a family of extremum seeking (ES) dynamics that can be universally modeled as singularly perturbed hybrid dynamical systems with restarting mechanisms. From this family of dynamics, we synthesize four fast algorithms for the solution of convex, strongly convex, constrained, and unconstrained optimization problems. In each case, we establish robust semi-global practical asymptotic or exponential stability results, and we also show how to obtain well-posed discretized algorithms that retain the main properties of the original dynamics. Given that existing averaging theorems for singularly perturbed hybrid systems are not directly applicable to our setting, we derive an extended averaging theorem that relaxes some of the assumptions made in the literature, allowing us to make a clear link between the K L bounds that characterize the rates of convergence of the hybrid dynamics and their average dynamics. We also show that our results are applicable to non-hybrid algorithms, thus providing a general framework for accelerated ES dynamics based on averaging theory. We present different numerical examples to illustrate our results.
A generalized Nachtmann theorem in CFT

Correlators of unitary quantum field theories in Lorentzian signature obey certain analyticity and positivity properties. For interacting unitary CFTs in more than two dimensions, we show that these properties impose general constraints on families of minimal twist operators that appear in the OPEs of primary operators. In particular, we rederive and extend the convexity theorem which states that for the family of minimal twist operators with even spins appearing in the reflection-symmetric OPE of any scalar primary, twist must be a monotonically increasing convex function of the spin. Our argument is completely non-perturbative and it also applies to the OPE of nonidentical scalar primaries in unitary CFTs, constraining the twist of spinning operators appearing in the OPE. Finally, we argue that the same methods also impose constraints on the Regge behavior of certain CFT correlators.
Cayley Graphs Without a Bounded Eigenbasis

Does every $n$-vertex Cayley graph have an orthonormal eigenbasis all of whose coordinates are $O(1/\sqrt{n})$? While the answer is yes for abelian groups, we show that it is no in general. On the other hand, we show that every $n$-vertex Cayley graph (and more generally, vertex-transitive graph) has an orthonormal basis whose coordinates are all $O(\sqrt{\log n / n})$, and that this bound is nearly best possible. Our investigation is motivated by a question of Assaf Naor, who proved that random abelian Cayley graphs are small-set expanders, extending a classic result of Alon--Roichman. His proof relies on the existence of a bounded eigenbasis for abelian Cayley graphs, which we now know cannot hold for general groups. On the other hand, we navigate around this obstruction and extend Naor's result to nonabelian groups.
Analysis of Industrial Device Architectures for Real-Time Operations Under Denial of Service Attacks.

More and more industrial devices are connected to IP-based networks, as this is essential for the success of Industry 4.0. However, this interconnection also results in an increased attack surface for various network-based attacks. One of the easiest attacks to carry out are DoS attacks, in which the attacked target is overloaded due to high network traffic and corresponding CPU load. Therefore, the attacked device can no longer provide its regular services. This is especially critical for devices, which perform Real-Time (RT) operations in industrial processes. To protect against DoS attacks, there is the possibility of throttling network traffic at the perimeter, e.g. by a firewall, to develop robust device architectures. In this paper, we analyze various concepts for secure device architectures and compare them with regard to their robustness against DoS attacks. Here, special attention is paid to how the control process of an industrial controller behaves during the attack. For this purpose, we compare different schedulers on single-core and dual-core Linux-based systems, as well as a heterogeneous multi-core architecture under various network loads and additional system stress.
Viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 can be partially shielded from UV radiation when in particles generated by sneezing or coughing: Numerical simulations

UV radiation can inactivate viruses such as SARS-CoV-2. However, designing effective UV germicidal irradiation (UVGI) systems can be difficult because the effects of dried respiratory droplets and other fomites on UV light intensities are poorly understood. Numerical modeling of UV intensities inside virus-containing particles on surfaces can increase understanding of these possible reductions in UV intensity. We model UV intensities within spherical approximations of virions randomly positioned within spherical particles. The model virions and dried particles have sizes and optical properties to approximate SARS-CoV-2 and dried particles formed from respiratory droplets, respectively. In 1-, 5- and 9-µm diameter particles on a surface, illuminated by 260-nm UV light from a direction perpendicular to the surface, 0%, 10% and 18% (respectively) of simulated virions are exposed to intensities less than 1/100th of intensities in individually exposed virions (i.e., they are partially shielded). Even for 302-nm light (simulating sunlight), where absorption is small, 0% and 11% of virions in 1- and 9-µm particles have exposures 1/100th those of individually exposed virions. Shielding is small to negligible in sub-micron particles. Results show that shielding of virions in a particle can be reduced by illuminating a particle either from multiple widely separated incident directions, or by illuminating a particle rotating in air for a time sufficient to rotate through enough orientations. Because highly UV-reflective paints and surfaces can increase the angular ranges of illumination and the intensities within particles, they appear likely to be useful for reducing shielding of virions embedded within particles.
Stiffness of Nanoparticulate Mineralized Collagen Scaffolds Triggers Osteogenesis via Mechanotransduction and Canonical Wnt Signaling

The ability of the extracellular matrix (ECM) to instruct progenitor cell differentiation has generated excitement for the development of materials-based regenerative solutions. Described a nanoparticulate mineralized collagen glycosaminoglycan (MC-GAG) material capable of inducing in vivo skull regeneration without exogenous growth factors or ex vivo progenitor cell-priming is described previously. Here, the contribution of titrating stiffness to osteogenicity is evaluated by comparing noncrosslinked (NX-MC) and crosslinked (MC) forms of MC-GAG. While both materials are osteogenic, MC demonstrates an increased expression of osteogenic markers and mineralization compared to NX-MC. Both materials are capable of autogenously activating the canonical BMPR signaling pathway with phosphorylation of Smad1/5. However, unlike NX-MC, human mesenchymal stem cells cultured on MC demonstrate significant elevations in the major mechanotransduction mediators YAP and TAZ expression, coincident with β-catenin activation in the canonical Wnt signaling pathway. Inhibition of YAP/TAZ activation reduces osteogenic expression, mineralization, and β-catenin activation in MC, with less of an effect on NX-MC. YAP/TAZ inhibition also results in a reciprocal increase in Smad1/5 phosphorylation and BMP2 expression. The results indicate that increasing MC-GAG stiffness induces osteogenic differentiation via the mechanotransduction mediators YAP/TAZ and the canonical Wnt signaling pathway, whereas the canonical BMPR signaling pathway is activated independent of stiffness.
Distinguishing Electron and Hole Dynamics in Functionalized CdSe/CdS Core/Shell Quantum Dots Using Complementary Ultrafast Spectroscopies and Kinetic Modeling

The evolution of excitation energy and photogenerated charges in semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) functionalized with molecular acceptors can be probed on ultrafast time scales using techniques suc...
Tumor necrosis factor receptor signaling modulates carcinogenesis in a mouse model of breast cancer

Pro-inflammatory conditions have long been associated with mammary carcinogenesis and breast cancer progression. The underlying mechanisms are incompletely understood but signaling of pro-inflammatory cytokine TNFα through its receptors TNFR1 and TNFR2 is a major mediator of inflammation in both obesity and in the response of tissues to radiation, 2 known risk factors for the development of breast cancer. Here, we demonstrated the loss of one TNFR2 allele led to ductal hyperplasia in the mammary gland with increased numbers of mammary epithelial stem cell and terminal end buds. Furthermore, loss of one TNFR2 allele increased the incidence of breast cancer in MMTV-Wnt1 mice and resulted in tumors with a more aggressive phenotype and metastatic potential. The underlying mechanisms include a preferential activation of canonical NF-κB signaling pathway and autocrine production of TNFα. Analysis of the TCGA dataset indicated inferior overall survival for patients with down-regulated TNFR2 expression. These findings unravel the imbalances in TNFR signaling promote the development and progression of breast cancer, indicating that selective agonists of TNFR2 could potentially modulate the risk for breast cancer in high-risk populations.
Preserving Semantic Neighborhoods for Robust Cross-modal Retrieval

The abundance of multimodal data (e.g. social media posts) has inspired interest in cross-modal retrieval methods. Popular approaches rely on a variety of metric learning losses, which prescribe what the proximity of image and text should be, in the learned space. However, most prior methods have focused on the case where image and text convey redundant information; in contrast, real-world image-text pairs convey complementary information with little overlap. Further, images in news articles and media portray topics in a visually diverse fashion; thus, we need to take special care to ensure a meaningful image representation. We propose novel within-modality losses which encourage semantic coherency in both the text and image subspaces, which does not necessarily align with visual coherency. Our method ensures that not only are paired images and texts close, but the expected image-image and text-text relationships are also observed. Our approach improves the results of cross-modal retrieval on four datasets compared to five baselines.
Average Margin Regularization for Classifiers

Adversarial robustness has become an important research topic given empirical demonstrations on the lack of robustness of deep neural networks. Unfortunately, recent theoretical results suggest that adversarial training induces a strict tradeoff between classification accuracy and adversarial robustness. In this paper, we propose and then study a new regularization for any margin classifier or deep neural network. We motivate this regularization by a novel generalization bound that shows a tradeoff in classifier accuracy between maximizing its margin and average margin. We thus call our approach an average margin (AM) regularization, and it consists of a linear term added to the objective. We theoretically show that for certain distributions AM regularization can both improve classifier accuracy and robustness to adversarial attacks. We conclude by using both synthetic and real data to empirically show that AM regularization can strictly improve both accuracy and robustness for support vector machine’s (SVM’s), relative to unregularized classifiers and adversarially trained classifiers.
A lower bound for the number of odd-degree representations of a finite group

Let G be a finite group and P a Sylow 2-subgroup of G. We obtain both asymptotic and explicit bounds for the number of odd-degree irreducible complex representations of G in terms of the size of the abelianization of P. To do so, we, on one hand, make use of the recent proof of the McKay conjecture for the prime 2 by Malle and Spath, and, on the other hand, prove lower bounds for the class number of the semidirect product of an odd-order group acting on an abelian 2-group.
Assessing the Effects of Failure Alerts on Transitions of Control from Autonomous Driving Systems

Autonomous vehicle systems and their users need to collaborate to navigate the driving environment, particularly during an unstructured transition of control from automation, when the system releases control and expects the human to immediately assume driving responsibility. We investigated how such transitions affect the user's trust in the system and subsequent performance. In a full-vehicle driving simulator, participants encountered two system failures: the first varied in severity (mild or severe failure), and the second required a transition of control that was either detected and alerted (loud failure) or not (silent failure). We observed (i) significant changes in user trust in the system over time and between events, and (ii) that the first failure's severity level did not affect user performance in the subsequent failure; rather, the system's detection and alert both times was sufficient to successfully complete the transition of control.
Crude oil shocks and stock market returns

This article examines whether nonlinear crude oil effect observed in aggregate US stock return can be explained by unexpected shocks from the crude oil market. I separate the distribution of aggregate US stock return into variance component driven by smoothly arriving news information and discrete Poisson news arriving from the crude oil market. I find that unexpected crude oil shocks have nonlinear effect on excess US stock market return. Contemporaneous and lagged returns on crude oil futures have significant negative effect on jump distribution in US stock market returns. I also investigate if the volatility of aggregate US stock return is in any way related to information released at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meetings. The empirical result reveals no significant feedback effect from OPEC meetings to the US stock markets.
Defining American: The DREAM Act, Immigration Reform and Citizenship

The grassroots movement propelling the DREAM Act and immigration reform forward reveals how the definition of citizenship is undergoing a dramatic transformation, in ways both inspiring and troubling. The DREAM movement depends upon the compelling but exceptional stories of passionate, high-achieving, law-abiding youth who already define themselves as being American, and worthy of legal status. Situating this narrative in the rich literature of citizenship, the article shows how the DREAM movement effectively exposes the disjuncture between the DREAMers' identity as Americans and their lack of legal immigration status. The article celebrates how this narrative succeeds as a contrast to the prevailing political discourse and how the movement, led by youth from all corners of the globe, radically upends America’s history of deeming people of color unworthy of (and ineligible for) citizenship. The article also presents some unintended consequences of the movement, however, suggesting that the worthiness-based narrative strategy adopted by the DREAMers is both produced by and contributing to ever-narrowing standards for who is deemed worthy of inclusion. These narrowing standards may have negative consequences for the expansiveness of immigration reform more broadly, and even for citizenship beyond the field of immigration. This article explores how the worthiness narrative, which implicitly acknowledges a concept of unworthiness, inadvertently connects to attempts to restrict notions of citizenship, specifically by limiting the principle of jus soli citizenship, extending felon disenfranchisement and instituting voter identification laws.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM VERSUS SEXUAL EXPRESSION: A GUIDE

Claimed rights to sexual expression unlinked to the creation of children are among the strongest challenges facing the free exercise of religion in the United States today. Such rights gained importance by means of a series of Supreme Court opinions associating consensual sexual expression unlinked to children with human dignity and even personal identity. These were accompanied by legal and cultural movements, led by more privileged Americans, diminishing children's rights in favor of adults', in the context of sex, marriage, and parenting. Laws and regulations protecting and promoting sexual expression detached from children are powerfully affecting religious institutions that operate health care, educational, and social services available to all Americans; the Catholic Church is a particularly prominent supplier of all of these services. Respecting the Catholic Church, it is possible but quite difficult to maintain respect for its free exercise of religion in the current environment, potentially by highlighting its measurable contributions to the common good. It might also be useful to show the close link between Catholic teachings on sex and marriage and the entire Catholic cosmology, such that coercing Catholics to behave otherwise is tantamount to coercing them to practice a different faith.
Attractiveness, easiness and other issues: student evaluations of professors on Ratemyprofessors.com

Felton et al. (2004) reported that web‐based student evaluations of teaching (SET) demonstrated a student preference for course easiness and instructor sexiness. This study explores these same relationships with a larger and improved database. Results indicate even stronger relationships than previously reported. In addition, this study demonstrates significant cultural differences by institution and discipline in the relationships between Quality, Easiness, and ‘Hotness’ in web‐based SET.
Alcohol advertising and motor vehicle fatalities

The purpose of this paper is to estimate empirically the effect of alcohol advertising on motor vehicle fatalities. The data indicate that if a ban on broadcast alcohol advertising did not also inc...
Apprendi's Domain

Apprendi v. New Jersey and subsequent Supreme Court cases have extended the Sixth Amendment right of jury trial to some, but not all, factual disputes at sentencing. These court decisions require juries to resolve any non-recidivist sentencing fact that increases the ceiling on a defendant's punishment, but do not extend this requirement to facts that decrease a defendant's punishment or that establish mandatory minimums without raising the maximum allowable sentence. This fails to provide a coherent or sensible constitutional rule for distributing factfinding powers between judge and jury. The reason is that the Supreme Court has inexplicably decided that all facts subject to the Sixth Amendment jury requirement must also be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, as if they were elements of substantive criminal offenses. This tie-in arrangement between the jury right and the reasonable-doubt rule is mistaken, and has caused two serious problems with the Court's Apprendi jurisprudence. First, it has produced a formalistic jury right that is easily evaded by legislatures and that hinges on an untenable distinction between aggravating and mitigating sentencing facts. The criminal jury's role was traditionally understood as extending to all questions of fact, as opposed to questions of law, but the Supreme Court cannot adopt this approach because it is unwilling to countenance a corresponding expansion in the proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt requirement and the concept of elements. Second, Apprendi's all-too-limited efforts to expand the jury right have propagated an overbroad concept of elements that lacks historical support and brings needless doctrinal complications to judicial efforts to broaden the right of jury trial. This article urges a different approach that uncouples the Court's link between these two constitutional protections. Juries should decide all disputed questions of fact that aggravate or mitigate a defendant's guilt or punishment. But courts should not require these facts to be charged by prosecutors or proved beyond a reasonable doubt whenever they increase a defendant's maximum allowable punishment. This will give meaningful content to the right of jury trial while avoiding the historical and pragmatic problems caused by an expansive theory of elements.
The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps

Abstract The Pakistan Army elicits many concerns about terrorism, nuclear and the coherence of the state. However, very little is actually known about this institution. This article mobilizes unique data to address one important facet: the Army's geographical recruitment base. We find that the Pakistan Army has been successful at expanding the geographical recruitment base while some groups (namely those who are native to Sindh) remain highly under-represented. We also find that the officer corps is increasingly coming from urban areas. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these important shifts subject to the limitations of our data.
Reading the Twelfth Five-Year Plan: China’s Communication-Driven Mode of Economic Restructuring

The Twelfth Five-Year Plan that came out of 2011’s National People’s Congress meeting reveals that the broadly defined communication sector will be central to China’s attempts at transforming its economic developmental model. Recognizing that this five-year plan is an especially important programmatic framework for China’s future development, this article aims to spell out why and how communication will be entangled in China’s push for economic restructuring, as well as the potential constraints over its actual implementation. This article argues that, while the ICT, media, and culture sectors are given high expectations in the document to help expand socially and spatially domestic consumption orientation on the one hand, and to create sunrise, high-tech, and pillar industries on the other hand, it is crucial to remember that entrenched bureaucratic and transnational capitalist interests in and beyond the broadly defined communication sector may obstruct the realization of the plan.
Predicting currency fluctuations and crises: Do resident firms have an informational advantage?

The authors investigate whether resident enterprise managers have an informational advantage about the countries in which they work. They propose a method for extracting information available to resident managers but unknown to investors and forecasters. They rest their hypothesis of informational advantage using a unique data set, the Global Competitiveness Survey. The survey asks local managers about their outlook for the country in which they reside. They find that local managers do have useful private information. Local managers' responses improve on conventional forecasts of future volatility and changes in the exchange rate, which are based on economic fundamentals or interest rate differentials. They find that the local business community perceived in advance the recent crises in the Republic of Korea, Russia, and Thailand, but not those in Indonesia and Malaysia. Markets have had limited success predicting crises and might do better by drawing on private information available to resident enterprise managers, who seem to know better than markets about future movements in exchange rates.
An index-based measure of liquidity.

The liquidity shocks of ’08–’09 revealed that measures of liquidity risk being used in most financial institutions turned out to be woefully inadequate. The construction of long-short portfolios based on liquidity proxies introduces errors such as extraneous risk factors and hedging error. We develop a new measure for liquidity risk using exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that attempts to minimize this error. We form a theoretically-supported measure that is long ETFs and short the underlying components of that ETF, i.e., long and short a similar set of underlying securities with the same weights. Pricing discrepancies between the long and short positions are driven by liquidity differences between the ETF and its underlying components. Constructing liquidity risk factors in a number of markets, we undertake several tests to validate our new liquidity metric. The results show that our illiquidity measure is strongly related to other measures of illiquidity, explains bond index returns, and reveals a systematic illiquidity component across fixed-income markets.
Rumors and pre-announcement trading: why sell target stocks before acquisition announcements?

We track trading activity in the days preceding acquisition announcements for target firms and find that abnormally high trading volume precedes significant price movement. Using additional intraday data, we find increased active-selling in target stocks before acquisition announcements that offsets increased active-buying. This is unexpected because sellers often lose money when an acquisition is announced. After ruling out alternative explanations, we find evidence that sellers are rational investors who trade on the market’s perceived overreaction to takeover rumors. While sellers lose money when a rumor precedes an actual announcement, in most cases rumors fail to materialize into public announcements. We provide evidence that the significant pre-announcement volume we document reflects the market’s processing of highly uncertain information in takeover rumors.
Race-based judgments, race-neutral justifications: experimental examination of peremptory use and the Batson challenge procedure.

Practically speaking, the peremptory challenge remained an inviolate jury selection tool in the United States until the Supreme Court's decision in Batson v. Kentucky. 476 U.S. 79 (1986). Batson‘s prohibition against race-based peremptories was based on two assumptions: (1) a prospective juror's race can bias jury selection judgments; (2) requiring attorneys to justify suspicious peremptories enables judges to determine whether a challenge is, indeed, race-neutral. The present investigation examines these assumptions through an experimental design using three participant populations: college students, advanced law students, and practicing attorneys. Results demonstrate that race does influence peremptory use, but these judgments are typically justified in race-neutral terms that effectively mask the biasing effects of race. The psychological processes underlying these tendencies are discussed, as are practical implications for the legal system.
Allocating bank regulatory powers: Lender of last resort, deposit insurance and supervision

Abstract We examine the optimal institutional allocation of bank regulation. We find that centralizing the lending of last resort and deposit insurance functions in a regulator leads to excessive forbearance. It also leads the bank to invest suboptimally in loans. Giving this regulator supervision improves on both problems, but it still does not lead to the efficient outcome. In the multi-regulator arrangement, we find that it is beneficial to give supervision to the deposit insurer. The choice between the unified-regulator arrangement and the multi-regulator arrangement involves a trade-off: The multi-regulator arrangement reduces the forbearance problem at high levels of liquidity shortage but may exacerbate it at low levels. These results assume the absence of information frictions. When banks are better informed than regulators, we show that regulators may have an incentive not to share private information, suggesting it is important to consider regulators’ informational advantages when deciding on the allocation of regulation.
Debt financing: Does it boost or hurt firm performance in product markets?

Abstract Previous research seeks to establish whether debt boosts or hurts a firm's product market performance. This paper proposes that both of these outcomes can be observed: debt can boost and hurt performance. I first model a nonmonotonic relation between debt-like finance and competitive conduct. I then empirically examine the within-industry relation between leverage and sales performance using data from 115 industries over 30 years. My tests deal with the endogeneity of debt in a novel fashion: I use creditors’ valuation of assets in liquidation to identify financial leverage. I find that moderate debt taking is associated with relative-to-rival sales gains; high indebtedness, however, leads to product market underperformance.
The Antebellum Courthouse as Creditors' Domain: Trial-Court Activity in South Carolina and The Concomitance of Lending and Litigation

Charleston cotton merchants Ker Boyce and George Henry cut a thick lock of hair from the head of the corpse of William Kincaid, whom a fever had taken on the morning of 20 November 1834. Kincaid, a wealthy slaveholder and cotton planter from South Carolina's Fairfield District, had gone to Charleston for business. He died under the watchful care of Boyce and Henry, his cotton factors. The morning of the death, Boyce penned a hasty note in which he informed Kincaid's wife of her widowhood. That evening, perhaps fearful of Kincaid's disease, the factors oversaw Kincaid's burial in Charleston's First Presbyterian Church. The next day, Henry described Kincaid's final earthly moments in a longer letter to Mrs. Kincaid, but he forgot to enclose the hair in that letter. Just over two weeks later, Boyce enclosed the clump of black hair in a consolatory letter that he sent to the Kincaid's oldest daughter, 23-year-old Elizabeth.1 After her husband's death, Elizabeth Calmese Kincaid assumed a greater role in his worldly affairs, which had included the management of slaves, land, and agricultural production. For legal matters concerning the family wealth, Kincaid had the counsel of one of Fairfield District's leading lawyers, David McDowell. McDowell taught Mrs. Kincaid how to be a creditor. Most importantly, McDowell instructed Kincaid how to put herself in a more secure position when she made loans. He explained that she could obtain judgments against her debtors at the same time that she lent them money, that is, she could combine litigation with lending. She
Capital Flow Waves: Surges, Stops, Flight, and Retrenchment

Abstract This paper analyzes waves in international capital flows. We develop a new methodology for identifying episodes of extreme capital flow movements using data that differentiates activity by foreigners and domestics. We identify episodes of “surges” and “stops” (sharp increases and decreases, respectively, of gross inflows) and “flight” and “retrenchment” (sharp increases and decreases, respectively, of gross outflows). Our approach yields fundamentally different results than the previous literature that used measures of net flows. Global factors, especially global risk, are significantly associated with extreme capital flow episodes. Contagion, whether through trade, banking, or geography, is also associated with stop and retrenchment episodes. Domestic macroeconomic characteristics are generally less important, and we find little association between capital controls and the probability of having surges or stops driven by foreign capital flows. The results provide insights for different theoretical approaches explaining crises and capital flow volatility.
Labor market institutions, firm-specific skills, and trade patterns

Abstract This paper studies how a country's labor market institutions, by affecting workers' skill acquisition, can shape its export patterns. I develop an open-economy model in which workers undertake non-contractible activities to acquire firm-specific skills on the job. In the model, labor market protection raises workers' incentives to acquire firm-specific skills relative to general skills, turning labor laws into a source of comparative advantage. In particular, the model shows that countries with more protective labor laws export relatively more in firm-specific skill-intensive sectors at both the intensive and extensive margins. To test the theoretical predictions, I construct sector proxies for the firm-specific and industry-specific skill intensity by estimating returns to firm tenure and industry tenure for different U.S. manufacturing sectors during the 1974–1993 period. By estimating sector-level gravity equations for 84 countries using the Helpman–Melitz–Rubinstein (2008) framework, I find evidence supporting the predicted effects of labor market institutions at both margins of exports.
Fundamental analysis and option returns

This article investigates whether fundamental volatility information is appropriately priced in the options market. We find that fundamental signals exhibit incremental predictive power with respect to future option returns above and beyond what is captured by implied and historical stock volatility, suggesting that the options market does not fully incorporate fundamental information into option prices. Transaction costs substantially reduce the overall profitability of hedge strategies that exploit only the fundamental volatility information in these accounting signals; however, fundamental signals provide a useful complement for strategies based on historical volatility.
Tough love: the emergence of criminal statutes and disciplinary actions against managed care plans for inadequate care.

The ascent of managed care organizations (MCO) since the enactment of the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974 is well documented. Critics of managed care assert that MCOs are corrupt, greedy and provide dangerously unsafe health care. However, supporters contend that criticism of managed care is misplaced and marvel at the ability of MCOs to provide comprehensive health care to millions despite increasing medical costs. MCOs deny physician-recommended treatment based on vague definitions of medical necessity but frequently fail to disclose the basis of these standards to the attending physician. Regardless of posturing, the current system needs to change.Based on FDA, elder care and environmental prosecutions, this article contends the enactment of health care criminal statutes that establish a standard of medically necessary care and accompanying MCO obligations will not only survive legal challenges, but is the socially, legally and morally correct path to take.