cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
On “Waterboarding”: Legal Interpretation and the Continuing Struggle for Human Rights

While some aspects of the “waterboarding” debate are largely political, the practice also implicates deeply normative underpinnings of human rights and law. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has steadfastly declined to declare waterboarding illegal or to launch an investigation into past waterboarding. His equivocations have generated anguished controversy because they raise a fundamental question: should we balance “heinousness and cruelty” against information that we “might get”? Mr. Mukasey’s approach appears to be careful lawyering. However, it portends a radical and dangerous departure from a fundamental premise of human rights law: the inherent dignity of each person. Although there is some lack of clarity about the precise definition of torture, all is not vagueness, or reliance on “circumstances,” and post hoc judgments. We have clear enough standards to conclude that waterboarding is and was illegal. Official legal equivocation about waterboarding preserves the potential imprimatur of legality for torture. It substitutes a dangerously fluid utilitarian balancing test for the hard-won respect for human dignity at the base of our centuries-old revulsion about torture. That is precisely what the rule of law (and the best lawyers) ought not to do. This is the destiny of a democracy—it does not see all means as acceptable, and the ways of its enemies are not always open before it. A democracy must sometimes fight with one hand tied behind its back. Even so, a democracy has the upper hand. The rule of law and the liberty of an individual constitute important components in its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its
Dressed for Excess: How Hollywood Affects the Professional Behavior of Lawyers

This article discusses two related points: first, that the way in which movies portray lawyers shapes how clients view effective/ineffective lawyer behavior, and second, that the portrayal also helps lawyers to forget appropriate professional behavior.
Pax Mercatoria: Globalization as a Second Chance at "Peace for Our Time"

This Essay completes a scholarly cycle in which I have defended free trade and international economic cooperation against charges that globalization will harm the environment and drain jobs from the high-wage economies of western Europe, Japan, and the United States. The demolition of geographic and social barriers since the end of the Cold War has delivered not only material wealth but also physical tranquility, political stability, and personal freedom to vast portions of the world’s population. The path to peace lies today, as it did in 1938, not in a retreat to obsolete notions of local sovereignty, but in a commitment to lawmaking on a global scale. PAX MERCATORIA: GLOBALIZATION AS A SECOND CHANCE AT "PEACE FOR OUR TIME"
Pricing Kernel Monotonicity and Conditional Information

A large literature finds evidence that pricing kernels estimated nonparametrically from option prices and historical returns are not monotonically decreasing in market index returns. We propose a new nonparametric estimator of the pricing kernel that reflects the information available to investors who set option prices. In simulations, the estimator outperforms current techniques. Our empirical estimates using S&P 500 index option data from 1996-2012 and FTSE 100 index option data from 2002-2013 suggest that the “pricing kernel puzzle” is a byproduct of econometric technique rather than a behavioral or economic phenomenon.
Agricultural extension and imperfect supervision in contract farming: evidence from Madagascar.

This article tests whether agricultural extension and imperfect supervision -- conflated here into the number of visits by a technical assistant -- increase productivity in a sample of contract farming arrangements between a processing �rm and small agricultural producers in Madagascar. Production functions are estimated which treat the number of visits by a technical assistant as an input and which exploit the variation in the number of visits between the contracted crops grown on a given plot by a speci�c grower, thereby accounting for district-, grower-, and plot-level unobserved heterogeneity. Results indicate that the elasticity of yield with respect to the number of visits lies between 1.3 and 1.7.
Corporate Taxation, Capital Formation , and the Substitution Elasticity between Labor and Capital

This study provides some perspective on analyzing the effects of corporate taxation on capital formation. Our framework translates tax policy legislation into real outcomes, and identifies three parameters that play a central role in determining the impact on policy. The remainder of the paper focuses on the substitution elasticity between labor and capital. Several of the prominent studies representing the major contours of this research area over the past 40 years are examined. Our review of five general equilibrium studies indicates that alternative values of this elasticity matter a great deal for the welfare changes following from proposed tax reforms. The paper concludes with two lessons for tax policy analysis and some suggestions for future research. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Verifying Documentation Standards in Spreadsheet Analysis

Teaching decision sciences to non-technical students presents numerous challenges. It is well-established that spreadsheets can overcome one such challenge by facilitating the teaching of technical topics in a more user-friendly manner than algebraic expressions can. However, despite their advantages in terms of user-friendliness, a major challenge when constructing spreadsheet models is documentability.
Moving to nice weather

U.S. residents have been moving en masse to places with nice weather. Well known is the migration towards places with warm winters, which is often attributed to the introduction of air conditioning. But people have also been moving to places with cooler, less-humid summers, which is the opposite of what is expected from the introduction of air conditioning. Nor can the movement to nice weather be primarily explained by shifting industrial composition or by migration of the elderly. Instead, a large portion of weather-related movement appears to be driven by an increased valuation of nice weather as a consumption amenity, probably due to broad-based rising per capita income.
Sectarian Reflections on Lawyers' Ethics and Death Row Volunteers

What should lawyers think about and respond to death-row volunteers? When a defendant accused of a capital crime attempts to plead guilty, or instructs his lawyer not to present a particular defense; when a convicted killer refuses to permit the introduction of potentially life-saving mitigating evidence - or even urges the jury to impose a death sentence - at the sentencing phase of a death-eligible case; when a condemned inmate refuses to file, or to appeal the denial of, habeas corpus and other post-conviction petitions for relief; when he elects not to object to a particular capital-punishment method, to call into question his own competence to be executed, or to file an eleventh-hour, last-ditch appeal citing newly discovered evidence of his innocence -what should lawyers do? These are not questions of merely professional interest, narrowly conceived, for lawyers and judges. That said, the death-row volunteer is of particular interest to lawyers because he poses particularly chilling problems for lawyers. It is suggested in this paper that something is missing from our thinking and conversations about the death-row-volunteer problem: Our arguments - which sound primarily in the register of choice, competence, and autonomy - reflect and proceed from an unsound moral anthropology. That is, they proceed from a flawed account of what it is about the human person that does the work in moral arguments about what we ought or ought not to do and about how we ought or ought not to be treated. The unfortunate result is that the professed commitment to human dignity that drives and sustains so many capital-defense lawyers is often undermined by these same lawyers' responses to death-row volunteers.
Volatility Discovery Across Stock Limit Order Book and Options Markets

Foucault [Journal of Financial Markets, 2, 99–134, 1999] provides a theoretical basis for how stock price volatility influences the aggressiveness of limit order traders. I investigate volatility discovery across stock limit order book and options markets using a broad panel of NYSE-listed stocks from November 2007 to January 2008 and find strong evidence that, as predicted, the aggressiveness of the stock limit order book and option volatility trading Granger-cause each other. Further, I find that the aggressiveness of the stock limit order book and option volatility trading are inversely related, which is both statistically and economically significant. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 34:934–956, 2014
Stochastic Perron's Method for Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman Equations

We show that the value function of a stochastic control problem is the unique solution of the associated Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman equation, completely avoiding the proof of the so-called dynamic programming principle (DPP). Using the stochastic Perron's method we construct a supersolution lying below the value function and a subsolution dominating it. A comparison argument easily closes the proof. The program has the precise meaning of verification for viscosity solutions, obtaining the DPP as a conclusion. It also immediately follows that the weak and strong formulations of the stochastic control problem have the same value. Using this method we also capture the possible face-lifting phenomenon in a straightforward manner.
Price impact and asset pricing

Abstract Using intradaily order flows processed via the Lee and Ready (1991) algorithm for NYSE/AMEX-listed stocks over the past 27 years, I estimate a set of price-impact parameters. The results provide strong evidence that price impact is priced in the cross-section of stock returns, even after controlling for risk factors, firm characteristics, and other low-frequency-based illiquidity proxies prevalent in the literature. While the Amihud (2002) measure is the best proxy of its kind, no low-frequency-based proxies can parallel the price-impact parameters. This suggests that price impact as a measure of illiquidity can be estimated more precisely by intradaily order flows, because it incorporates incremental information that comes out of high-frequency data. Therefore, price impact does a better job in capturing the return premium for illiquidity.
Linking Network Structure and Diffusion Through Stochastic Dominance

Recent research identifies stochastic dominance as critical for understanding the relationship between network structure and diffusion. This paper introduces the concept of stochastic dominance, explains the theory linking stochastic dominance and diffusion, and applies this theory to a number of diffusion studies in the literature. The paper illustrates how the theory connects observations from different disciplines, and details when and how those observations can be generalized to broader classes of networks.
When Civil Society Uses an Iron Fist: The Roles of Private Associations in Rulemaking and Adjudication

Alexis de Tocqueville and Robert Putnam are but two of the many admirers of the countless private associations that lie at the core of civil society. This article seeks to advance understanding of the law-like activities of these associations. Residential community associations and sports leagues, for example, make rules and levy fines on members who violate them. The New York Diamond Dealers Club and the Writers Guild of America, like many other associations, have established internal arbitral panels for the resolution of member disputes. Courts are highly likely to defer to the outcomes of these arbitrations. The article’s central positive thesis, hedged with qualifications, is that a private association tends to engage in social control when it is the most cost-effective institution for addressing the issue at hand. This thesis is used to illuminate some otherwise puzzling associational practices, such as the efforts of the National Football League and other professional sports leagues to control players' domestic violence off the field of play.
Giving away the store: How the zero price constraint results in fewer add-on features

This paper discusses an issue impacting intellectual property products with nearly zero marginal cost: the zero price constraint. As established in the literature, aftermarkets result in a subsidization of the primary market, sometimes resulting in prices below marginal cost. While aftermarket add-ons are now common in intellectual property products such as software, the rms usually can’t charge a primary market price below zero. This paper shows that with the zero price constraint in eect, rms give more of the overall product away for free and pricing in the aftermarket is determined by the number of competitors in the primary market; despite assuming all consumers are initially unaware of the aftermarket’s existence. With the constraint in eect, consumers are better o and rms can potentially earn less prot.
The Criminalization of Aggression and Soldiers’ Rights

This article identifies the core wrong of criminal aggression to be the entailed legally unjustified killing and human violence and not the violation of sovereignty or states’ rights. Its core contribution is to elaborate two implications of that normative account of the crime. First, soldiers have a right to refuse to fight in criminal wars and they must be recognized as refugees when they flee punishment for engaging in such refusal. Second, those killed or harmed by an aggressor force are the core victims of the crime. As such, they, and not the attacked state, have the primary claim to judicial participation as victims at the International Criminal Court and to the reparations that follow. Those who adhere to the orthodox notion of aggression as a crime against states miss both of these implications. Soldiers seeking asylum when they refuse to fight in aggressive wars are denied on the grounds that, if they were to fight, they would be far removed from the macro wrong against a foreign state, and so should have no difficulty “washing their hands of guilt.” This is misguided. Although there are good reasons for the “leadership element” that protects them from criminal liability for aggression, soldiers perpetrate directly the constituent wrongs of the criminal action and the reasons not to punish them for doing so are not reasons to deny them the right to disobey. Similarly, adherents to the traditional account would grant states the right to participate as victims and claim reparations in aggression prosecutions. This, too, is a mistake. The victims of the wrong that renders aggressive war criminally condemnable are soldiers killed or harmed fighting an aggressor force and collaterally killed or harmed civilians. These are the class members eligible for judicial participation and reparations.
The Lawyer's Humble Walk

A growing body of literature addresses the role faith plays in the work of many lawyers. This article argues that humility is the defining characteristic of the lawyer of faith.
On the anticipation of IPO underpricing: Evidence from equity carve-outs

Abstract We investigate IPO market efficiency using a sample of equity carve-outs offered during the period of 1985–2005. Unlike IPOs examined in previous studies where trading during the pre-IPO book-building period does not exist and trading on the IPO date is rationed, in equity carve-outs, investors can trade in the non-rationed market for shares of the parent, which holds a significant fraction of the subsidiary. We find that the subsidiary's initial day return is significantly related to its parent's return over the book-building period, but unrelated to its parent's contemporaneous return. Neither the pre-IPO price revision of the subsidiary nor the return to the parent on the initial trading day can be predicted. While the portion of the subsidiary's initial return unpredictable from information available during the book-building period is significantly related to its parent's contemporaneous return, the predictable component of the initial return is not. We interpret these results as evidence consistent with market efficiency.
The Wire as a Gap-Filling Class on Criminal Law and Procedure

In the world of television, The Wire is in a class by itself.2 In the world of law school, The Wire should be a class by itself. While many professors effectively show isolated scenes from The Wire to paint a vivid picture of interrogations and searches,3 basing an entire course around The Wire can cover huge gaps in law schools’ criminal-law curriculum. The most obvious doctrinal hole that the The Wire fills is the law of wiretapping. Most criminal procedure classes do not cover the heightened standard for obtaining a wiretap, the statutory requirement that police minimize their listening, or the need for officers to provide magistrates with progress reports about a wiretap. The Wire vividly demonstrates each of these legal concepts. More importantly, The Wire introduces us to the surprisingly complicated crime of possession of a controlled substance. The series repeatedly depicts open-air drug markets in which one young man takes the buyer’s money, another stands as a lookout while a third hands the drugs to the buyer. These scenes raise a multitude of legal questions: Are all three of the players in constructive possession of a controlled substance, even if only one of them is in physical proximity to the drugs? If the kingpins running the drug operation
SUNSPOTS, ANIMAL SPIRITS, AND ECONOMIC FLUCTUATIONS

Multiple-equilibria macroeconomic models suggest that consumers' and investors' perceptions about the state of the economy may be important independent factors for business cycles. In this paper, we verify empirically the interrelations between waves of optimism and pessimism and subsequent economic fluctuations. We focus on the behavior of nonfundamental movements in the consumer sentiment index, as a proxy for consumers' sunspots, and in the business formation index, representing investors' animal spirits, around economic turning points. We find that bearish consumers and entrepreneurs were present before the onset of some U.S. economic downturns, sometimes even when the fundamentals were all very strong. In particular, our analysis shows that self-fulfilling pessimism may have played a nontrivial role in the 1969–1970, the 1973–1975, and the 1981–1982 recessions. The results are robust to a range of alternative linear and nonlinear specifications. Our evidence provides some empirical support for the role of nonfundamental rational expectations in economic fluctuations.
The Influence of Ownership and Compensation Practices on Charitable Activities

Recent accounting research provides evidence that similar profit-based compensation incentives are used in for-profit and nonprofit hospitals. Because charity care reduces profits, such incentives should lead for-profit hospital managers to reduce charity care levels. Nonprofit hospital managers, however, may respond differently to the same incentives because they face a different set of institutional pressures and constraints. We compare the association between pay-for-performance incentives and charity care in for-profit and nonprofit hospitals. We find a negative and significant association between charity care and our proxy for profit-based incentives in for-profit hospitals, and no significant association in nonprofit hospitals. These results suggest that linking manager pay to profitability does not appear to discourage charity care in nonprofit hospitals. Apparently, the nonprofit mission, institutional pressures, and ownership constraints moderate the potentially negative effects of profit-based incentives. Because this evidence partially alleviates concerns over nonprofit compensation arrangements that mirror those used in for-profit hospitals, it should be of interest to regulators and policymakers. In addition, this study provides insights into accounting researchers about institutional and organizational influences that affect managerial responses to financial incentives in compensation contracts.
Zoning for Apartments: A Study of the Role of Law in the Control of Apartment Houses in New Haven, Connecticut 1912–1932

They assembled to protest the placement of Whitney Avenue—a street at the center of a primarily residential section of New Haven known for “beautiful houses and pleasant lawns” 2 —in the lowest of three proposed residential zones: a zone which permitted the construction of apartments and tenements, albeit subject to certain supplemental requirements. The residents of the area who were present at the hearing “[w]ithout exception . . . objected to putting apartments on the avenue.” 3
Optimal Merchandise Testing with Limited Inventory

The practice of \merchandise testing" refers to the deployment of fashion products to stores in limited quantities so that a retailer may learn about demand prior to the main selling season. We consider the optimal allocation of inventory to stores in a merchandise test, focusing on the tradeo between the quantity of stores tested and the quality of observations, which can be impacted by demand censoring due to inventory stockouts. We nd that the visibility into the timing of each sales transaction has a pivotal impact on the optimal allocation decisions. When such timing information is unobservable, the retailer may need to consolidate inventory in few stores to increase service levels during the test and thereby to minimize the negative impacts of demand censoring. When sales timing information is observable, the retailer is better o maximizing the number of sales during the test period without regard to stockouts in individual stores. Motivated by our analysis, we propose two heuristic allocation policies for the cases with and without sales timing information, respectively. A numerical study shows the heuristics to be near optimal for instances for which we can compare them to the optimal solution. On the other hand, inecient inventory allocations
Topological Hall effect in magnetic topological insulator films

Abstract Geometric Berry phase can be induced either by spin–orbit coupling, giving rise to the anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnetic materials, or by chiral spin texture, such as skyrmions, leading to the topological Hall effect. Recent experiments have revealed that both phenomena can occur in topological insulator films with magnetic doping, thus providing us with an intriguing platform to study the interplay between these two phenomena. In this work, we report on a numerical simulation of the anomalous Hall and topological Hall effects in a four-band model that can properly describe the quantum well states in the magnetic topological insulator films by combining Landauer–Buttiker formula and the iterative Green’s function method. Our numerical results suggest that spin–orbit coupling in this model plays a different role in the quantum transport in the clean and disordered limits. In the clean limit, spin–orbit coupling mainly influences the longitudinal transport but does not have much effect on topological Hall conductance. In the disordered limit, the longitudinal transport is determined by disorder scattering and spin–orbit coupling is found to affect strongly the topological Hall conductance. This sharp contrast unveils a dramatic interplay between spin–orbit coupling and disorder effect in topological Hall effect in magnetic topological insulator systems.
An empirical examination of the convexity bias in the pricing of interest rate swaps

Abstract This paper examines the convexity bias, caused by the non-linearity of payoffs, in the pricing of interest rate swaps off the Eurocurrency futures curve. The evidence from four major currencies – $, £, DM and ¥ – during 1987–1996 suggests that swaps were initially being priced off the futures curve (ignoring the convexity adjustment); subsequently, the market swap rates drifted below the rates implied by futures prices. After rejecting alternative explanations, we use alternative term structure models to show that the convexity bias is related to the empirically observed swap-futures differential. We interpret these results as evidence of mispricing of swap contracts during the early years, which was eliminated over time.
Subsidiarity as a Structural Principle of International Human Rights Law

There is an inherent tension in international human rights law between affirming a universal substantive vision of human dignity and respecting the diversity and freedom of human cultures. Although understanding and securing human rights in international law requires us to grapple with that conflict, classic notions of state sovereignty cannot adequately address the issue. The principle of subsidiarity, instead, gives us a conceptual tool to mediate the polarity of pluralism and the common good in a globalized world and helps us make sense of international human rights law. I argue that we should regard subsidiarity as a structural principle of international human rights law.
VARIANCE, RETURN, AND HIGH-LOW PRICE SPREADS

We report three new findings that rely upon the high-low price range as an estimate of stock return variance. The predictability of variance is associated with persistence in high prices and with correlated shocks to high and low prices. Excess stock returns are positively related to anticipated variance and inversely related to unanticipated variance. Lagged squared residuals in GARCH(1,1) models have no incremental explanatory power in the presence of forecasts of conditional volatility generated from high-low price spread models.
Earnings dispersion and aggregate stock returns

This paper studies the relation between aggregate stock returns and contemporaneous and future cross-sectional earnings dispersion. We hypothesize that increases in expected earnings dispersion signal increases in uncertainty and increases in unemployment, thereby causing expected returns to rise, which in turn causes prices to decline. We find a positive relation between aggregate stock returns and contemporaneous earnings dispersion because higher earnings dispersion is associated with higher expected returns. Consequently, we also find a negative relation between aggregate stock returns and future (one-year ahead) earnings dispersion, as investors anticipate higher future earnings dispersion and higher expected returns.
Does risk management matter? Evidence from the U.S. agricultural industry

Abstract This article constructs triple-difference tests around shifts in the supply of risk management instruments available to agricultural producers to reveal a positive relation between risk management and productivity. This relation is more robust when producers adopt instruments with payoffs linked to group performance and weaker when payoffs are linked to individual performance. Additionally, productivity is particularly high among risk-managing producers in counties containing high levels of bank deposits, a proxy for access to finance. Overall, this article illuminates the relation between hedging and real firm outcomes as well as the interaction between access to finance and firms' risk management choices.
The role of risk management in mergers and merger waves

We show that merger activity and particularly waves are significantly driven by risk management considerations. Increases in cash flow uncertainty encourage firms to vertically integrate and this contributes to the start of merger waves. These effects are incremental to previously identified causes of wave activity. Our risk management hypothesis is further supported by cross-sectional differences in the likelihood that a firm vertically integrates, and by the post-acquisition characteristics of vertically integrating firms. These results are consistent with the view (from the industrial organization literature) that vertical integration is an operational hedging mechanism that reduces the cost of increased uncertainty.
SME policy and firms' productivity in Latin America

Very little is known about the effectiveness of SME policies, and a careful look at the structure, mechanisms and incentives provided by these policies suggest caution in their implementation and, most importantly, the need to carefully and closely monitor their results. This paper relies on the microeconometric analysis of a homogeneous dataset of sixteen Latin American and Caribbean countries to analyze the magnitude and determinants of the productivity gap between large and SME firms and to simulate of the impact on productivity of various policy scenarios.
Tax Reform and Automatic Stabilization

An income tax provides implicit insurance by dampening the variability of disposable income and consumption. Using an empirical framework derived from the consumption insurance literature and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics we examine the effect of federal income tax reforms of the 1980's on automatic stabilization of consumption. Overall, ERTA and TRA86 reduced consumption stability by about 50 percent. Recently increased EITC generosity restored or enhanced consumption insurance. The welfare cost of moving to the post-TRA86 system is sizable for relatively risk-averse households facing large income risk but is much more modest for the typical household. (JEL H21)
Jumps and betas: A new framework for disentangling and estimating systematic risks

We provide a new theoretical framework for disentangling and estimating the sensitivity towards systematic diffusive and jump risks in the context of factor models. Our estimates of the sensitivities towards systematic risks, or betas, are based on the notion of increasingly finer sampled returns over fixed time intervals. We show consistency and derive the asymptotic distributions of our estimators. In an empirical application of the new procedures involving high-frequency data for forty individual stocks, we find that the estimated monthly diffusive and jump betas with respect to an aggregate market portfolio differ substantially for some of the stocks in the sample.
Information shocks, disagreement, and drift

Abstract We examine the effects of investor disagreement on price discovery using a recurring public information event in the highly liquid crude oil futures market, a market free of short sale constraints. We show that prices reflect positive news within one-half second of trading but continue to drift for five minutes when news is negative. Evidence suggests the drift arises from a systematic surge in buying pressure that impedes the price discovery process when news is negative. Our results are consistent with price drift arising from differences in trading horizons, where traders taking long positions condition trades on information beyond the news.
Comparative Literature: Can This Marriage Be Saved?

"With comparative literature becoming American world literature or globalized cultural studies, comparatists need to ask themselves whether they want to remain in such a dysfunctional relationship. It is one thing to go along with comparative literature’s theoretical promiscuity...and its flirtations with other disciplines...; but did we really sign up for this level of deception and inauthenticity?... It is clear that in the twenty-first century, students need to be able to experience and interrogate the totality of the world’s literatures, not just the constricted and diluted products packaged and marketed by the self-serving managers of American academia."
Epigenetics and expression of key genes associated with cardiac fibrosis: NLRP3, MMP2, MMP9, CCN2/CTGF and AGT.

Aims: Excessive inflammatory signaling and pathological remodeling of the extracellular matrix drive cardiac fibrosis and require changes in gene expression. Materials and methods: Using bioinformatics, both tissue-specific expression profiles and epigenomic profiles of some genes critical for cardiac fibrosis were examined, namely, NLRP3, MMP2, MMP9, CCN2/CTGF, AGT (encodes angiotensin II precursors) and hsa-mir-223 (post-transcriptionally regulates NLRP3). Results: In monocytes, neutrophils, fibroblasts, venous cells, liver and brain, enhancers or super-enhancers were found that correlate with high expression of these genes. One enhancer extended into a silent gene neighbor. These enhancers harbored tissue-specific foci of DNA hypomethylation, open chromatin and transcription factor binding. Conclusions: This study identified previously undescribed enhancers containing hypomethylated transcription factor binding subregions that are predicted to regulate expression of these cardiac fibrosis-inducing genes.
Auction Learning as a Two-Player Game

Designing an incentive compatible auction that maximizes expected revenue is a central problem in Auction Design. While theoretical approaches to the problem have hit some limits, a recent research direction initiated by Duetting et al. (2019) consists in building neural network architectures to find optimal auctions. We propose two conceptual deviations from their approach which result in enhanced performance. First, we use recent results in theoretical auction design to introduce a time-independent Lagrangian. This not only circumvents the need for an expensive hyper-parameter search (as in prior work), but also provides a single metric to compare the performance of two auctions (absent from prior work). Second, the optimization procedure in previous work uses an inner maximization loop to compute optimal misreports. We amortize this process through the introduction of an additional neural network. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by learning competitive or strictly improved auctions compared to prior work. Both results together further imply a novel formulation of Auction Design as a two-player game with stationary utility functions.
Gluing II: boundary localization and gluing formulas

We describe applications of the gluing formalism discussed in the companion paper. When a d-dimensional local theory $$\hbox {QFT}_d$$ is supersymmetric, and if we can find a supersymmetric polarization for $$\hbox {QFT}_d$$ quantized on a $$(d-1)$$ -manifold W, gluing along W is described by a non-local $$\hbox {QFT}_{d-1}$$ that has an induced supersymmetry. Applying supersymmetric localization to $$\hbox {QFT}_{d-1}$$ , which we refer to as the boundary localization, allows in some cases to represent gluing by finite-dimensional integrals over appropriate spaces of supersymmetric boundary conditions. We follow this strategy to derive a number of “gluing formulas” in various dimensions, some of which are new and some of which have been previously conjectured. First we show how gluing in supersymmetric quantum mechanics can reduce to a sum over a finite set of boundary conditions. Then we derive two gluing formulas for 3D $${\mathcal {N}}=4$$ theories on spheres: one providing the Coulomb branch representation of gluing and another providing the Higgs branch representation. This allows to study various properties of their (2, 2)-preserving boundary conditions in relation to mirror symmetry. After that we derive a gluing formula in 4D $${\mathcal {N}}=2$$ theories on spheres, both squashed and round. First we apply it to predict the hemisphere partition function, then we apply it to the study of boundary conditions and domain walls in these theories. Finally, we mention how to glue half-indices of 4D $${\mathcal {N}}=2$$ theories.
Motion Planning for Collision-resilient Mobile Robots in Obstacle-cluttered Unknown Environments with Risk Reward Trade-offs

Collision avoidance in unknown obstacle-cluttered environments may not always be feasible. This paper focuses on an emerging paradigm shift in which potential collisions with the environment can be harnessed instead of being avoided altogether. To this end, we introduce a new sampling-based online planning algorithm that can explicitly handle the risk of colliding with the environment and can switch between collision avoidance and collision exploitation. Central to the planner’s capabilities is a novel joint optimization function that evaluates the effect of possible collisions using a reflection model. This way, the planner can make deliberate decisions to collide with the environment if such collision is expected to help the robot make progress toward its goal. To make the algorithm online, we present a state expansion pruning technique that significantly reduces the search space while ensuring completeness. The proposed algorithm is evaluated experimentally with a built-in-house holonomic wheeled robot that can withstand collisions. We perform an extensive parametric study to investigate trade-offs between (user-tuned) levels of risk, deliberate collision decision making, and trajectory statistics such as time to reach the goal and path length.
Learning Long-term Visual Dynamics with Region Proposal Interaction Networks

Learning long-term dynamics models is the key to understanding physical common sense. Most existing approaches on learning dynamics from visual input sidestep long-term predictions by resorting to rapid re-planning with short-term models. This not only requires such models to be super accurate but also limits them only to tasks where an agent can continuously obtain feedback and take action at each step until completion. In this paper, we aim to leverage the ideas from success stories in visual recognition tasks to build object representations that can capture inter-object and object-environment interactions over a long range. To this end, we propose Region Proposal Interaction Networks (RPIN), which reason about each object's trajectory in a latent region-proposal feature space. Thanks to the simple yet effective object representation, our approach outperforms prior methods by a significant margin both in terms of prediction quality and their ability to plan for downstream tasks, and also generalize well to novel environments. Results are available at https://sites.google.com/view/iclr21-rpin.
A clustering-based biased Monte Carlo approach to protein titration curve prediction

In this work, we developed an efficient approach to compute ensemble averages in systems with pairwise-additive energetic interactions between the entities. Methods involving full enumeration of the configuration space result in exponential complexity. Sampling methods such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms have been proposed to tackle the exponential complexity of these problems; however, in certain scenarios where significant energetic coupling exists between the entities, the efficiency of the such algorithms can be diminished. We used a strategy to improve the efficiency of MCMC by taking advantage of the cluster structure in the interaction energy matrix to bias the sampling. We pursued two different schemes for the biased MCMC runs and show that they are valid MCMC schemes. We used both synthesized and real-world systems to show the improved performance of our biased MCMC methods when compared to the regular MCMC method. In particular, we applied these algorithms to the problem of estimating protonation ensemble averages and titration curves of residues in a protein.
Inter-body coupling in electro-quasistatic human body communication: theory and analysis of security and interference properties.

Radiative communication using electromagnetic fields is the backbone of today’s wirelessly connected world, which implies that the physical signals are available for malicious interceptors to snoop within a 5–10 m distance, also increasing interference and reducing channel capacity. Recently, Electro-quasistatic Human Body Communication (EQS-HBC) was demonstrated which utilizes the human body’s conductive properties to communicate without radiating the signals outside the body. Previous experiments showed that an attack with an antenna was unsuccessful at a distance more than 1 cm from the body surface and 15 cm from an EQS-HBC device. However, since this is a new communication modality, it calls for an investigation of new attack modalities—that can potentially exploit the physics utilized in EQS-HBC to break the system. In this study, we present a novel attack method for EQS-HBC devices, using the body of the attacker itself as a coupling surface and capacitive inter-body coupling between the user and the attacker. We develop theoretical understanding backed by experimental results for inter-body coupling, as a function of distance between the subjects. We utilize this newly developed understanding to design EQS-HBC transmitters that minimizes the attack distance through inter-body coupling, as well as the interference among multiple EQS-HBC users due to inter-body coupling. This understanding will allow us to develop more secure and robust EQS-HBC based body area networks in the future.
Harnessing Digital Technologies to Promote SMEs in the MENAP Region

Policy makers in the MENAP region have been formulating policies and designing programs to develop small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) with a view to create jobs and achieve inclusive growth. But while the programs have helped increase the number of enterprises, growth of SMEs continues to face barriers to growth. As a result, microenterprises predominate and SMEs contribution to employment remains below potential. Partial implementation of reforms explain some of the underperformance, but frictions in strategy design also played an important role. Sustaining current reforms is, therefore, not sufficient to achieve inclusive growth. Digital technologies have potential to boost SMEs productivity and growth and economies are rapidly digitalizing, thus SMEs need to embrace digital solutions to compete and survive. Therefore, for SMEs to be effective engines of inclusive growth, a rethinking of the SME development strategy is needed that makes SMEs' digital transformation a priority.
High-velocity micro-projectile impact testing

High-velocity microparticle impacts are relevant to many fields, from space exploration to additive manufacturing, and can be used to help understand the physical and chemical behaviors of materials under extreme dynamic conditions. Recent advances in experimental techniques for single microparticle impacts have allowed fundamental investigations of dynamical responses of wide-ranging samples, including soft materials, nano-composites, and metals, under strain rates up to 108 s−1. Here we review experimental methods for high-velocity impacts spanning 15 orders of magnitude in projectile mass and compare method performances. This review aims to present a comprehensive overview of high-velocity microparticle impact techniques to provide a reference for researchers in different materials testing fields and facilitate experimental design in dynamic testing for a wide range of impactor sizes, geometries, and velocities. Next, we review recent studies using the laser-induced particle impact test platform comprising target, projectile, and synergistic target-particle impact response, hence demonstrating the versatility of the method with applications in impact protection and additive manufacturing. We conclude by presenting the future perspectives in the field of high-velocity impact.
On collapsing Calabi–Yau fibrations

We develop some techniques to study the adiabatic limiting behaviour of Calabi–Yau metrics on the total space of a fibration, and obtain strong control near the singular fibres by imposing restrictions on the singularity types. We prove a uniform lower bound on the metric up to the singular fibre, under fairly general hypotheses. Assuming a result in pluripotential theory, we prove a uniform fibre diameter bound for a Lefschetz K3 fibred Calabi–Yau $3$‑fold, which reduces the study of the collapsing metric to a locally non-collapsed situation, and we identify the Gromov–Hausdorff limit of the rescaled neighbourhood of the singular fibre.
Clique immersions in graphs of independence number two with certain forbidden subgraphs

Abstract The Lescure–Meyniel conjecture is the analogue of Hadwiger’s conjecture for the immersion order. It states that every graph G contains the complete graph K χ ( G ) as an immersion, and like its minor-order counterpart it is open even for graphs with independence number 2. We show that every graph G with independence number α ( G ) ≥ 2 and no hole of length between 4 and 2 α ( G ) satisfies this conjecture. In particular, every C 4 -free graph G with α ( G ) = 2 satisfies the Lescure–Meyniel conjecture. We give another generalisation of this corollary, as follows. Let G and H be graphs with independence number at most 2, such that | V ( H ) | ≤ 4 . If G is H -free, then G satisfies the Lescure–Meyniel conjecture.
The Intersection of Punctuated Equilibrium and Leadership Emergence Within the Framework of Naturalistic Decision Making

Punctuated equilibrium, a theory of unexpected and sudden change arising out of evolutionary biology and paleontology, has been applied to decision sciences, physics, organizational theory, and group behavior but never to leadership emergence theories. The purpose of the study was to discover how leadership emerges during a period of punctuated equilibrium, a sudden and unexpected change event, using a naturalistic decision making framework. Thus, the research question probed how leadership emergence could be theoretically modeled in a critical event. In other words, the study offers insight into the mechanism of real time leadership emergence, that is, behaviors that appeared within seconds or minutes of a critical change event. In this study, change was not viewed as an incremental or continues process, but rather, a sudden and unexpected, almost catastrophic event. To frame this process I drew from 4 areas of scientific literature. The study was particularly unique because it drew from, and helped unify the four scientific foundations of complexity science, leadership emergence, punctuated equilibrium theory, and naturalistic decision making. Naturalistic decision making is the study of individual decision-making process that occurs in a situation that is unexpected, sudden, and often dangerous that is associated with a high cost of failure or success (Carroll, Klein, & Lipshitz, 2006). NDM helped to define and confine the event into a narrow time frame. Punctuated equilibrium theory, in physical sciences, posits that evolutionary change is not gradual; but rather, quick and sporadic change that occurs after long periods when nothing changes (Drazin et al., 2004; Gersick, 1991; Gould, 2002). For this study, a critical incident simulated a punctuated event but its relationship to leadership emergence was yet to be defined. There is much research accumulating in the area of complexity science and leadership that posits an entirely new way of thinking about leadership. This study defined leadership as a confluence of skills, motives, behaviors, and characteristics that quickly assemble in an individual for the purpose of service to the common good of others, and not themselves, often triggered by a crucible experience (Bennis, 2007; Sternberg, 2007). Complexity science is the study of interrelationships and interconnectedness among microcosmic or macrocosmic parts. It is a way of seeing, similar to a kaleidoscope lens, that brings into focus elements that were not visible before. Complexity science illuminates order beneath chaos and complexity that integrates ideas that â€œtranscends the physical, biological, and social sciencesâ€ (Schneider & Sommers, 2006, p. 351) that has recently entered into the study of change, innovation, and leadership behavior (Poole & Van de Ven, 2005).