cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Lithographic stochastics: beyond 3σ

As lithography tools continue their progress in both numerical aperture and wavelength in pursuit of Moore’s law, we have reached the point where the number of features printed in a single pass can now easily surpass one trillion. Statistically, one should not be surprised to see some members of such a population exhibit fluctuations as great as 7σ. But what do these fluctuations look like? We consider the problem in terms of variations in the effective local resist sensitivity caused by feature-to-feature differences in absorbed photons and resist component counts, modeling these as a normal distribution. As the CD versus dose curve is generally nonlinear over large ranges, the normal distribution of the local effective sensitivity then maps to a nonnormal distribution in CD. For the case of individual vias printed near the resolution limit, it results in many more undersized or completely closed vias than one would expect from a normal distribution of the CDs. We show examples of this behavior from both EUV exposures in the fab and ebeam exposures in the lab.
Can tax reforms help achieve sustainable development

This paper focuses on reforms that offset government revenue loss from a decrease in capital income taxation with an increase in a tax on dirty goods or a tax on pollution emissions. We build an overlapping generations model with age-dependent mortality rates. We numerically assess environmental and non-environmental welfare effects that existing and future generations experience over a lifetime. First, when the reform involves the dirty goods tax, we find that individuals older than 65 years old and future generations do not experience a double dividend. When the reform involves the pollution emissions tax, we find individuals older than 25 years old and future generations do not experience a double dividend. Second, contrary to the reform relying on the dirty goods tax, the reform relying on the pollution emissions tax has larger negative non-environmental welfare effects and larger positive environmental welfare effects for future generations. Third, we compare our results to those of the perpetual youth model. We show that the two models yield a different qualitative and quantitative assessment of the double dividend. Furthermore, the perpetual youth model tends to overstate the potential of the reforms for Pareto improvements and understate their adverse effects on net intergenerational distribution. Thus, our analysis suggests that those tax reforms alone cannot help achieve sustainable development as they redistribute welfare unequally across generations. Modeling a realistic demographic process is key in assessing intergenerational welfare distribution.
The Bulgarian village: sustainability in transformation mode

The paper attempts to raise certain questions, the answers to which are probably the emanation of the Bulgarian village. What is the reason for its sustainability, manifested and outlined particularly in the transformation periods? In the periods of crisis the village is a social buffer of the society. The sustainability of the village is outlined in the report through a series of indicators. The roots of this process can be tracked in the three-unit chain: man – nature – society. The contemporary rural community upgrades the etymological definition, identifying the village as a settlement whose population is engaged in agriculture. In support of the village sustainability thesis, the report undertakes to reveal the significance of the changes in CAP and its greening. The man and his habitat are among the priorities of the 21st century.
State invariants of two-bridge knots

In this paper, we consider generalizations of the Alexander polynomial and signature of 2-bridge knots by considering the Gordon–Litherland bilinear forms associated with essential state surfaces of the 2-bridge knots. We show that the resulting invariants are well-defined and explore properties of these invariants. Finally, we realize the boundary slopes of essential surfaces as differences of signatures of the knot.
Gorenstein AC-projective complexes

Let R be any ring with identity and $$ Ch (R)$$ the category of chain complexes of (left) R-modules. We show that the Gorenstein AC-projective chain complexes of [1] are the cofibrant objects of an abelian model structure on $$ Ch (R)$$ . The model structure is cofibrantly generated and is projective in the sense that the trivially cofibrant objects are the categorically projective chain complexes. We show that when R is a Ding-Chen ring, that is, a two-sided coherent ring with finite self FP-injective dimension, then the model structure is finitely generated, and so its homotopy category is compactly generated. Constructing this model structure also shows that every chain complex over any ring has a Gorenstein AC-projective precover. These are precisely Gorenstein projective (in the usual sense) precovers whenever R is either a Ding-Chen ring, or, a ring for which all level (left) R-modules have finite projective dimension. For a general (right) coherent ring R, the Gorenstein AC-projective complexes coincide with the Ding projective complexes of [31] and so provide such precovers in this case.
On the low frequency theory of characteristic mode

We formulate a low frequency (LF) stabilized theory of characteristic mode (CM) to remedy LF breakdown and inaccuracy in computing dominant CMs, which are crucial for modal expansion and model order reduction in circuit applications.
Chapter 5 – Fluid and Thermal Systems

This chapter is dedicated to modeling the dynamics of fluid (liquid and pneumatic) systems, as well as of thermal systems. These systems are formed of elements similar to those of mechanical and electrical systems: inertance, capacitance, and resistance. In case only inertance and capacitance properties are present, the natural response of fluid systems is studied. In many applications, the inertia properties of fluid and thermal systems can be neglected. The corresponding mathematical models are based on only capacitive and resistive properties resulting in first-order systems. This chapter also studies the analogies between electrical, fluid, and thermal systems. The use of MATLAB and Simulink in solving for the natural and forced responses of fluid and thermal systems is illustrated by several solved examples.
A Micro-institutional Inquiry into Resistance to Environmental Pressures

This article contributes to the emerging stream of micro-institutional research, which zooms in on the internal organizational processes that are responsible for organizations’ differential respons...
Modeling of reduced secondary electron emission yield from a foam or fuzz surface

Complex structures on a material surface can significantly reduce the total secondary electron emission yield from that surface. A foam or fuzz is a solid surface above which is placed a layer of isotropically aligned whiskers. Primary electrons that penetrate into this layer produce secondary electrons that become trapped and do not escape into the bulk plasma. In this manner the secondary electron yield (SEY) may be reduced. We developed an analytic model and conducted numerical simulations of secondary electron emission from a foam to determine the extent of SEY reduction. We find that the relevant condition for SEY minimization is u¯≡AD/2≫1 while D ≪ 1, where D is the volume fill fraction and A is the aspect ratio of the whisker layer, the ratio of the thickness of the layer to the radius of the fibers. We find that foam cannot reduce the SEY from a surface to less than 0.3 of its flat value.
Capital Inflows, Sovereign Debt and Bank Lending: Micro-Evidence from an Emerging Market

This paper uses a natural experiment to show that government access to foreign credit increases private access to credit. I identify a sudden, and unanticipated increase in capital inflows to the sovereign debt market in Colombia, due to a rebalancing in a government bond index by J.P. Morgan. I find that market makers banks in the treasury market reduced their sovereign debt by 7.8 percentage points of assets and increased their credit availability by 4.2 percentage points of assets. Using industry level data, I show that a higher exposure to market makers led to a higher growth in economic activity. Received August 17, 2017; editorial decision January 25, 2018 by Editor Philip Strahan. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.
Strict Convexity of the Free Energy of the Canonical Ensemble Under Decay of Correlations

We consider a one-dimensional lattice system of unbounded, real-valued spins. We allow arbitrary strong, attractive, nearest-neighbor interaction. We show that the free energy of the canonical ensemble (ce) converges uniformly in $$C^2$$ to the free energy of the grand ce (gce). The error estimates are quantitative. A direct consequence is that the free energy of the ce is uniformly strictly convex for large systems. Another consequence is a quantitative local Cramer theorem which yields the strict convexity of the coarse-grained Hamiltonian. With small adaptations, the argument could be generalized to systems with finite-range interaction on a graph, as long as the degree of the graph is uniformly bounded and the associated gce has uniform decay of correlations.
Treatment of Carbuncle with Short Wave Diathermy and Cautery Puncture

Abstract In the discussion of these cases the ease of application of short wave diathermy as compared with the previous conventional lower frequency diathermy is noteworthy. In addition, another advantage is the comparative comfort with which persons of this age may be treated. This plan of therapy is, therefore, considered a valuable adjunct to management of cases of this type.
Reimagining Relocation in a Regulatory Void: The Inadequacy of Existing us Federal and State Regulatory Responses to Kivalina’s Climate Displacement in the Alaskan Arctic

Relocation requires reimagining the role of law and policy in assisting community relocation planning in predisaster contexts. For decades, the 467-person Inupiaq whaling village of Kivalina, Alaska, has navigated agency-led relocation processes and sought legal remedies to pursue relocation as a comprehensive means of addressing overcrowding, inadequate water and sanitation services, and the impacts of climate change on permafrost and coastline stability. Despite Kivalina’s highly successful efforts to create media and public awareness of its situation, no actionable relocation plans have emerged out of Kivalina’s formal engagement with traditional legal and policy avenues. This article examines three issues: (1) Kivalina’s current efforts to relocate within the context of its colonial past; (2) the limited US federal and state regulatory mechanisms available to Kivalina and other displaced Arctic tribal communities; and (3) ad hoc models that embrace the complexity of self-reliant relocation in predisaster contexts.
Focused Ion Beam Micromachining of GaN Photonic Devices

Ga+ and Au+ focused ion beams (FIB) are used to micromachine GaN films. The GaN micromachining has been studied at energies from 30-90 keV, incident angle from 0-30°, and number of repetitive scans from 10 to 50 scans. Trenches milled in GaN have vertical and smooth side-walls and very smooth bottoms. The micromachining rate was found to be fairly independent of ion dose, ranging from 0.4 to 0.6 µm 3nC for Ga+ and 1 to 2 µm 3nC for Au+. This translates into an effective yield of of 6-7 atoms/ion for Ga+ and 21-26 atoms/ion for Au+. This represents the highest direct FIB removal yield reported to date. We have also investigated the micromachining of GaN substrate material: c-face sapphire. Using FIB Ga+, sapphire has an effective yield of ∼2-2.5 atoms/ion, or approximately 1/3 of the GaN sputtering yield. For the materials investigated, we found the sputtering yield to be inversely proportional to the strength of the material chemical bond. We also describe the application of the FIB μmachining technique to the fabrication of small period Distributed Bragg Reflector (DBR) mirrors for a short cavity GaN laser structure.
Multivariate Analysis of the Cotton Seed Ionome Reveals a Shared Genetic Architecture

To mitigate the effects of heat and drought stress, a better understanding of the genetic control of physiological responses to these environmental conditions is needed. To this end, we evaluated an upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) mapping population under water-limited and well-watered conditions in a hot, arid environment. The elemental concentrations (ionome) of seed samples from the population were profiled in addition to those of soil samples taken from throughout the field site to better model environmental variation. The elements profiled in seeds exhibited moderate to high heritabilities, as well as strong phenotypic and genotypic correlations between elements that were not altered by the imposed irrigation regimes. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping results from a Bayesian classification method identified multiple genomic regions where QTL for individual elements colocalized, suggesting that genetic control of the ionome is highly interrelated. To more fully explore this genetic architecture, multivariate QTL mapping was implemented among groups of biochemically related elements. This analysis revealed both additional and pleiotropic QTL responsible for coordinated control of phenotypic variation for elemental accumulation. Machine learning algorithms that utilized only ionomic data predicted the irrigation regime under which genotypes were evaluated with very high accuracy. Taken together, these results demonstrate the extent to which the seed ionome is genetically interrelated and predictive of plant physiological responses to adverse environmental conditions.
Molecular Electroporation and the Transduction of Oligoarginines

Certain short polycations, such as TAT and polyarginine, rapidly pass through the plasma membranes of mammalian cells by an unknown mechanism called transduction as well as by endocytosis and macropinocytosis. These cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) promise to be medically useful when fused to biologically active peptides. I offer a simple model in which one or more CPPs and the phosphatidylserines of the inner leaflet form a kind of capacitor with a voltage high enough to create a molecular electropore. The model is consistent with an empirical upper limit on the cargo peptide of about 50 amino acids. More importantly, it fits experimental data on how the transduction of a polyarginine-fluorophore into mouse C2C12 myoblasts depends on the number of arginines in the CPP and on the CPP concentration. The model makes three testable predictions.
Risky Traitor Tracing and New Differential Privacy Negative Results

In this work we seek to construct collusion-resistant traitor tracing systems with small ciphertexts from standard assumptions that also move toward practical efficiency. In our approach we will hold steadfast to the principle of collusion resistance, but relax the requirement on catching a traitor from a successful decoding algorithm. We define a f-risky traitor tracing system as one where the probability of identifying a traitor is \(f(\lambda ,n)\) times the probability a successful box is produced. We then go on to show how to build such systems from prime order bilinear groups with assumptions close to those used in prior works. Our core system achieves, for any \(k > 0\), \(f(\lambda ,n) \approx \frac{k}{n + k - 1}\) where ciphertexts consists of \((k + 4)\) group elements and decryption requires \((k + 3)\) pairing operations.
Externalities and Benefit Design in Health Insurance

Insurance benefit design has important implications for consumer welfare. In this article, we model insurer behaviour in the Medicare prescription drug coverage market and show that strategic private insurer incentives impose a fiscal externality on the traditional Medicare program. We document that plans covering medical expenses have more generous drug coverage than plans that are only responsible for prescription drug spending, which translates into higher drug utilization by enrolees. The effect is driven by drugs that reduce medical expenditure and treat chronic conditions. Our equilibrium model of benefit design endogenizes plan characteristics and accounts for asymmetric information; the model estimates confirm that differential incentives to internalize medical care offsets can explain disparities across plans. Counterfactuals show that strategic insurer incentives are as important as asymmetric information in determining benefit design.
Efficiency and its discontents

Review of Ruth Dukes, The Labour Constitution: The Enduring Idea of Labour Law (Oxford 2014).
Direct experimental visualization of waves and band structure in 2D photonic crystal slabs

We demonstrate for the first time the ability to perform time resolved imaging of terahertz (THz) waves propagating within a photonic crystal (PhC) slab. For photonic lattices with different orientations and symmetries, we used the electrooptic effect to record the full spatiotemporal evolution of THz fields across a broad spectral range spanning the photonic band gap. In addition to revealing real-space behavior, the data let us directly map the band diagrams of the PhCs. The data, which are in good agreement with theoretical calculations, display a rich set of effects including photonic band gaps, eigenmodes and leaky modes. S Online supplementary data available from stacks.iop.org/NJP/16/053003/ mmedia
Beauty-in-averageness and its contextual modulations: A Bayesian statistical account

Understanding how humans perceive the likability of high-dimensional ``objects'' such as faces is an important problem in both cognitive science and AI/ML. Existing models generally assume these preferences to be fixed. However, psychologists have found human assessment of facial attractiveness to be context-dependent. Specifically, the classical Beauty-in-Averageness (BiA) effect, whereby a blended face is judged to be more attractive than the originals, is significantly diminished or reversed when the original faces are recognizable, or when the blend is mixed-race/mixed-gender and the attractiveness judgment is preceded by a race/gender categorization, respectively. This "Ugliness-in-Averageness" (UiA) effect has previously been explained via a qualitative disfluency account, which posits that the negative affect associated with the difficult race or gender categorization is inadvertently interpreted by the brain as a dislike for the face itself. In contrast, we hypothesize that human preference for an object is increased when it incurs lower encoding cost, in particular when its perceived {\it statistical typicality} is high, in consonance with Barlow's seminal ``efficient coding hypothesis.'' This statistical coding cost account explains both BiA, where facial blends generally have higher likelihood than ``parent faces'', and UiA, when the preceding context or task restricts face representation to a task-relevant subset of features, thus redefining statistical typicality and encoding cost within that subspace. We use simulations to show that our model provides a parsimonious, statistically grounded, and quantitative account of both BiA and UiA. We validate our model using experimental data from a gender categorization task. We also propose a novel experiment, based on model predictions, that will be able to arbitrate between the disfluency account and our statistical coding cost account of attractiveness.
Towards Inferring Mechanical Lock Combinations using Wrist-Wearables as a Side-Channel

Wrist-wearables such as smartwatches and fitness bands are equipped with a variety of high-precision sensors that support novel contextual and activity-based applications. The presence of a diverse set of on-board sensors, however, also expose an additional attack surface which, if not adequately protected, could be potentially exploited to leak private user information. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of a new attack that takes advantage of a wrist-wearable's motion sensors to infer input on mechanical devices typically used to secure physical access, for example, combination locks. We outline an inference framework that attempts to infer a lock's unlock combination from the wrist motion captured by a smartwatch's gyroscope sensor, and uses a probabilistic model to produce a ranked list of likely unlock combinations. We conduct a thorough empirical evaluation of the proposed framework by employing unlocking-related motion data collected from human subject participants in a variety of controlled and realistic settings. Evaluation results from these experiments demonstrate that motion data from wrist-wearables can be effectively employed as a side-channel to significantly reduce the unlock combination search-space of commonly found combination locks, thus compromising the physical security provided by these locks.
Inflammation-induced DNA methylation of DNA polymerase gamma alters the metabolic profile of colon tumors

Inflammation, metabolism, and epigenetic modulation are highly interconnected processes that can be altered during tumorigenesis. However, because of the complexity of these interactions, direct cause and effect during tumorigenesis have been difficult to prove. Previously, using a murine model of inflammation-induced colon tumorigenesis, we determined that the promoter of the catalytic subunit of DNA polymerase gamma (Polg) is DNA hypermethylated and silenced in inflammation-induced tumors, but not in non-inflammation-induced (mock) tumors, suggesting that inflammation can induce silencing of Polg through promoting DNA methylation during tumorigenesis. Polg is the only mitochondrial DNA polymerase and mutations in Polg cause mitochondrial diseases in humans. Because of the role of mitochondria in metabolism, we hypothesized that silencing of Polg in inflammation-induced tumors would result in these tumors having altered metabolism in comparison to mock tumors. Inflammation-induced and mock colon tumors and colon epithelium from a mouse model of inflammation-induced colon tumorigenesis were assayed for alterations in Polg expression, mitochondria, and metabolism. Organoids derived from these tissues were used to study the direct effect of loss of Polg on mitochondria and metabolism. We demonstrate that inflammation-induced tumors with reduced Polg expression have decreased mitochondrial DNA content and numbers of mitochondria compared to normal epithelium or mock tumors. Tumoroids derived from mock and inflammation-induced tumors retained key characteristics of the original tumors. Inflammation-induced tumoroids had increased glucose uptake and lactate secretion relative to mock tumoroids. shRNA-mediated knockdown of Polg in mock tumoroids reduced mtDNA content, increased glucose uptake and lactate secretion, and made the tumoroids more resistant to oxidative stress. These results suggest that inflammation-induced DNA methylation and silencing of Polg plays an important role in the tumorigenesis process by resulting in reduced mitochondria levels and altered metabolism. An enhanced understanding of how metabolism is altered in and drives inflammation-induced tumorigenesis will provide potential therapeutic targets.
The sparse circular law under minimal assumptions

The circular law asserts that the empirical distribution of eigenvalues of appropriately normalized $${n \times n}$$ matrix with i.i.d. entries converges to the uniform measure on the unit disc as the dimension n grows to infinity. Consider an $${n \times n}$$ matrix $${A_n=(\delta_{ij}^{(n)}\xi_{ij}^{(n)})}$$ , where $${\xi_{ij}^{(n)}}$$ are copies of a real random variable of unit variance, variables $${\delta_{ij}^{(n)}}$$ are Bernoulli (0/1) with $${\mathbb{P}\{\delta_{ij}^{(n)} = 1\} = p_n}$$ , and $${\delta_{ij}^{(n)}}$$ and $${\xi_{ij}^{(n)}, i, j \in [n]}$$ , are jointly independent. In order for the circular law to hold for the sequence $${\big(\frac{1}{\sqrt{p_{n}n}}A_{n}\big)}$$ , one has to assume that $${p_{n}n \to \infty}$$ . We derive the circular law under this minimal assumption.
Detecting Large Indels Using Optical Map Data

Optical Maps (OM) provide reads that are very long, and thus can be used to detect large indels not detectable by the shorter reads provided by sequence-based technologies such as Illumina and PacBio. Two existing tools for detecting large indels from OM data are BioNano Solve and OMSV. However, these two tools may miss indels with weak signals. We propose a local-assembly based approach, OMIndel, to detect large indels with OM data. The results of applying OMIndel to empirical data demonstrate that it is able to detect indels with weak signal. Furthermore, compared with the other two OM-based methods, OMIndel has a lower false discovery rate. We also investigated the indels that can only be detected by OM but not Illumina, PacBio or 10X, and we found that they mostly fall into two categories: complex events or indels on repetitive regions. This implies that adding the OM data to sequence-based technologies can provide significant progress towards a more complete characterization of structural variants (SVs). The algorithm has been implemented in Perl and is publicly available on https://bitbucket.org/xianfan/optmethod.
Teacher Professional Development around the World : The Gap between Evidence and Practice

Teachers, like all professionals, require ongoing professional development opportunities to improve their skills. This paper provides evidence on effective professional development characteristics and how at-scale programs incorporate those characteristics. The authors propose a standard set of 70 indicators—the In-Service Teacher Training Survey Instrument—for reporting on professional development programs as a prerequisite for understanding the characteristics of those programs that improve student learning. The authors apply the instrument to rigorously evaluated professional development programs in low- and middle-income countries. Across 33 programs, those programs that link participation to career incentives, have a specific subject focus, incorporate lesson enactment in the training, and include initial face-to-face training tend to show higher student learning gains. In qualitative interviews, program implementers also report follow-up visits as among the most effective characteristics of their professional development programs. The authors then apply the instruments to a sample of 139 government-funded, at-scale professional development programs across 14 countries. This analysis uncovers a sharp gap between the characteristics of teacher professional development programs that evidence suggests are effective and the global realities of most teacher professional development programs.
All Roads Lead to UD: Converting Stanford and Penn Parses to English Universal Dependencies with Multilayer Annotations.

We describe and evaluate different approaches to the conversion of gold standard corpus data from Stanford Typed Dependencies (SD) and Penn-style constituent trees to the latest English Universal Dependencies representation (UD 2.2). Our results indicate that pure SD to UD conversion is highly accurate across multiple genres, resulting in around 1.5% errors, but can be improved further to fewer than 0.5% errors given access to annotations beyond the pure syntax tree, such as entity types and coreference resolution, which are necessary for correct generation of several UD relations. We show that constituent-based conversion using CoreNLP (with automatic NER) performs substantially worse in all genres, including when using gold constituent trees, primarily due to underspecification of phrasal grammatical functions.
Distributed and optimal resilient planning of large-scale interdependent critical infrastructures

The complex interconnections between various critical infrastructure sectors make the system of systems (SoS) vulnerable to failures and highlight the importance of robustness and resilience. To this end, we first establish holistic probabilistic networks to model the interdependencies between infrastructure components. To capture the underlying failure and recovery dynamics, we further propose a Markov decision processes (MDP) model in which the response policy determines a long-term performance. To address the challenge of a large dimensionality, we exploit the sparsity of the network interconnections and solve an approximate linear program by the variable elimination, which leads to a distributed control policy under mild assumptions. Finally, we use a case study of the interdependent power and subway systems to corroborate the results and show that the optimal resilience resource planning and allocation can reduce the failure probability and mitigate the impact of failures caused by natural or artificial disasters.
New lower bounds for permutation arrays using contraction

A permutation array A is a set of permutations on a finite set $$\Omega $$ , say of size n. Given distinct permutations $$\pi , \sigma \in \Omega $$ , we let $$hd(\pi , \sigma ) = |\{ x\in \Omega : \pi (x) \ne \sigma (x) \}|$$ , called the Hamming distance between $$\pi $$ and $$\sigma $$ . Now let $$hd(A) =$$ min $$\{ hd(\pi , \sigma ): \pi , \sigma \in A \}$$ . For positive integers n and d with $$d\le n$$ we let M(n, d) be the maximum number of permutations in any array A satisfying $$hd(A) \ge d$$ . There is an extensive literature on the function M(n, d), motivated in part by suggested applications to error correcting codes for message transmission over power lines. A basic fact is that if a permutation group G is sharply k-transitive on a set of size $$n\ge k$$ , then $$M(n,n-k+1) = |G|$$ . Motivated by this we consider the permutation groups AGL(1, q) and PGL(2, q) acting sharply 2-transitively on GF(q) and sharply 3-transitively on $$GF(q)\cup \{\infty \}$$ respectively. Applying a contraction operation to these groups, we obtain the following new lower bounds for prime powers q satisfying $$q\equiv 1$$ (mod 3). These results resolve a case left open in a previous paper (Bereg et al. in Des Codes Cryptogr 86(5):1095–1111, 2018), where it was shown that $$M(q-1, q-3) \ge q^{2} - q$$ and $$M(q,q-3) \ge q^{3} - q$$ for all prime powers q such that $$q\not \equiv 1$$ (mod 3). We also obtain lower bounds for M(n, d) for a finite number of exceptional pairs n, d, by applying this contraction operation to the sharply 4 and 5-transitive Mathieu groups.
Spatio‐Temporal data fusion for massive sea surface temperature data from MODIS and AMSR‐E instruments

Remote sensing data have been widely used to study various geophysical processes. With the advances in remote sensing technology, massive amount of remote sensing data are collected in space over time. Different satellite instruments typically have different footprints, measurement‐error characteristics, and data coverages. To combine data sets from different satellite instruments, we propose a dynamic fused Gaussian process (DFGP) model that enables fast statistical inference such as filtering and smoothing for massive spatio‐temporal data sets in a data‐fusion context. Based upon a spatio‐temporal‐random‐effect model, the DFGP methodology represents the underlying true process with two components: a linear combination of a small number of basis functions and random coefficients with a general covariance matrix, together with a linear combination of a large number of basis functions and Markov random coefficients. To model the underlying geophysical process at different spatial resolutions, we rely on the change‐of‐support property, which also allows efficient computations in the DFGP model. To estimate model parameters, we devise a computationally efficient stochastic expectation‐maximization algorithm to ensure its scalability for massive data sets. The DFGP model is applied to a total of 3.7 million sea surface temperature data sets in the tropical Pacific Ocean for a one‐week time period in 2010 from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer‐Earth Observing System (AMSR‐E) instruments.
Psychometric Validation of the Family Nurse Caring Belief Scale in a Neonatal Nursing Population.

Abstract Purpose To psychometrically validate and strengthen the construct validity of the Family Nurse Caring Belief Scale (FNCBS) with a sample of neonatal nurses. Design and Methods Confirmatory factor analysis of the 25-item FNCBS, using the factor structure based on the original exploratory principal components analysis, was performed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the FNCBS with the neonatal nurse population. Results Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) examined the factor structure of the FNCBS using the sample of neonatal nurses. The chi-square test determined overall model fit. Comparative fit index (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) were both 0.06 and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) of the sample data is >0.08 and, therefore, the data did not demonstrate good fit. In addition, the factor correlations between the four latent variables were small. This suggests there is no parsimony and the sample data with neonatal nurses did not fit the model. Conclusion The findings suggest the FNCBS was not psychometrically validated with the population of neonatal nurses and this study was unable to strengthen the construct validity of the FNCBS beyond the pediatric nurse sample in the original study. Implications for Practice This study highlighted the opportunity for continued research in the area of measuring nurses' beliefs regarding the provision of family-sensitive care to families in crisis and will generate a revision of the FNCBS to incorporate concepts which are important to care for a family unit.
Nationwide Trends in Heart-Sparing Techniques Utilized in Radiation Therapy for Breast Cancer.

Abstract Purpose Radiation dose to the heart correlates with cardiac-related deaths and may partially diminish the benefit of radiation for breast cancer. This study assessed the current nationwide trends in heart-sparing techniques for breast cancer radiation. Methods and Materials In November 2017, an institutional review board–approved survey was sent to radiation oncologists in the United States. Questions assessed demographics and the type and frequency of heart-sparing techniques. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and χ2 tests. Results In total, 530 responses (13%) were obtained. Most physicians had practiced >15 years (46%), with most in a private setting (59%). Eighty-three percent of physicians offered prone positioning and/or deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH). This was more common in academic practice (P Conclusions Most respondents offer heart-sparing techniques for breast cancer radiation; this is more common in academic centers. DIBH is the most common technique across all practice settings. DIBH is much less commonly used in right-sided patients but is still used by >20% of practitioners, with lung and heart sparing cited as reasons for use. More data are needed to determine if and when this technique should be used in right-sided cases.
Leveraging Technology to Enhance Doctor of Nursing Practice Student Health Policy Engagement.

Background Doctor of nursing practice (DNP) students need to develop health policy competencies. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing formed the Faculty Policy Think Tank (FPTT) in 2015, which developed recommendations about health policy curriculum at all levels of nursing education including the DNP. Problem Prior to the FPTT recommendations, there were no standardized examples of health policy competencies and their evaluation. Approach A DNP health policy course was redesigned based on the FPTT recommendations. Technological capabilities were leveraged to provide an active and experiential learning environment integrating the concepts of cultural competence, health equity, and social awareness. Outcomes At the conclusion of the course, DNP students are actively engaged in health policy and have increased confidence in their advocacy abilities. Conclusions Providing DNP students with an experiential, technologically driven learning platform gives students practical tools and applications they can use beyond the classroom to influence health policy.
Guaranteed employment or guaranteed income

Abstract The paper critically reviews the arguments for and against both employment guarantees and income guarantees when viewed as rights-based policy instruments for poverty reduction in a developing economy. Decentralized implementation of the right-to-work poses serious challenges in poor places. Evidence on India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act does not suggest that the potential for either providing work when needed or reducing current poverty is realized, despite pro-poor targeting. Instead, work is often rationed by local leaders, and the poverty impact is small when all the costs are considered. The option of income support using cash transfers also has both pros and cons. Widely-used methods for finely targeting cash transfers tend to miss many poor people, and can discourage those reached from earning extra income. Yet it cannot be presumed that switching to a universal basic income will reduce poverty more than workfare or finely-targeted transfers. That is an empirical question and the answer will undoubtedly vary across settings, belying the generalizations often heard from advocates. Nonetheless, more incentive-neutral, universal and/or state-contingent transfer schemes merit consideration in settings in which existing public spending is skewed against poor people and/or there is scope for raising taxes on the rich.
IoT Lotto: Utilizing IoT Devices in Brute-Force Attacks

The number of IoT devices in use is increasing rapidly and so is the number of IoT applications. As in any new technology, the rapid development means rapid increase in security threats and attack surfaces.IoT security has proven to be challenging throughout the past few years. However, another challenging task is to prevent IoT devices from becoming a tool used by malicious attackers to break into other systems.In this paper, we present a conceptual design in which IoT devices are used as tools in brute-force attacks to break encryption keys of block ciphers. The proposed design shows that with adequate number of IoT devices employed in the attack, the attack can succeed in breaking large-key block ciphers.
Fast Mesh Refinement in Pseudospectral Optimal Control

Mesh refinement in pseudospectral (PS) optimal control is embarrassingly easy: simply increase the order N of the Lagrange interpolating polynomial, and the mathematics of convergence automates the...
A Persona-Based Multi-turn Conversation Model in an Adversarial Learning Framework

In this paper, we extend the persona-based sequence-to-sequence (Seq2Seq) neural network conversation model to multi-turn dialogue by modifying the state-of-the-art hredGAN architecture. To achieve this, we introduce an additional input modality into the encoder and decoder of hredGAN to capture other attributes such as speaker identity, location, sub-topics, and other external attributes that might be available from the corpus of human-to-human interactions. The resulting persona hredGAN (phredGAN) shows better performance than both the existing persona-based Seq2Seq and hredGAN models when those external attributes are available in a multi-turn dialogue corpus. This superiority is demonstrated on TV drama series with character consistency (such as Big Bang Theory and Friends) and customer service interaction datasets such as Ubuntu dialogue corpus in terms of perplexity, BLEU, ROUGE, and Distinct n-gram scores.
Older Age and Disease Duration Are Highly Associated with Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Patients with Autoimmune Hepatitis

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is rare in patients with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH). However, the overall burden of AIH cirrhosis in causing HCC and patients’ risk factors are not well understood. To characterize the proportion of HCC linked to AIH at a large academic health center, and to identify variables associated with HCC in patients with AIH in a case–control study design. Over a 14.5-year period, medical records of all patients with HCC were reviewed. Cases are AIH patients identified from the cohort, and controls are patients with AIH without HCC. Three controls were randomly chosen from the Genetic Repository of Autoimmune Liver Disease and Coexisting Exposures database for each eligible case. Out of 1250 eligible patients, 20 were linked to AIH (1.6%). Their median age was 64 years, 40% men and 100% Caucasian. Ten percent of AIH patients did not have evidence of cirrhosis at HCC diagnosis. The proportion of HCCs due to AIH decreased during the time intervals of the study. Compared to controls, cases were more likely men (40.0% vs. 18%, p = 0.049), with longer AIH duration (median 16 years vs. 5 years, p = 0.004). Prolonged AIH duration (OR 1.68, p = 0.006) and older age (OR 1.15, p = 0.049) were risk factors for HCC. AIH is a rare cause (1.6%) for HCC in Midwestern USA with a decreasing trend over 14.5 years. Ten percent of AIH-HCC patients did not have cirrhosis at time of HCC diagnosis. Patients with prolonged duration of the disease and older age are at high risk to develop HCC.
Costume evolution during the development of romantic relationships and its impact on the positions of power in the Star Wars prequel and original trilogies

This study explored the costume evolution of the Star Wars film characters Padme Amidala and Leia Organa as romantic relationships were introduced and progressed and how this impacted their positions of power. The study aimed to investigate how female characters have their position of power minimized through the use of costume as their involvement in romantic relationships evolves throughout the films. Objectification theory was used as a theoretical framework under which the study was carried out. The researchers utilized a qualitative content analysis of the audio and visual content of the first six Star Wars films. The results indicated that both characters were objectified through costume. Before romantic relationships were introduced, both women were acknowledged for their positions of power which were emphasized by their costumes. It was observed that as both women progressed in their romantic relationships, their perceived power decreased, and an increase of objectification through greater skin exposure occurred.
Trade Diversion and Trade Deficits: The Case of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement

Russ, Katheryn N.; Swenson, Deborah L..February, 2019.Trade diversion and trade deficits,Report,CambridgeNational Bureau of Economic Research,NBER Working Paper Series/25613,28
Shotgun LC/MS proteomics of breast cancer sera from African American women

3949 African American (AA) women are less likely than Caucasian women to have breast cancer but are more likely to die from it. Recent research has indicated that breast tumor biology in AA women is different from that in Caucasian women. AA women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer at an earlier age and with more aggressive form of the disease, characterized by higher grade and negative estrogen and progesterone receptor status. The purpose of our study was to profile the serum proteins from healthy and cancer patients in order to identify differentially expressed proteins between the two groups, and to complement the LC/MS data to the protein expression data obtained previously from the 2D-DIGE/MS analysis on similar type of samples. This pilot study included six AA breast cancer women and six healthy AA controls. Hypothesis : We expected that changes taking place in the mammary gland prior to the appearance of breast cancer will be reflected in proteins that will appear in the blood. Methods : Serum samples were processed on IgY12 (Beckman) antibody column to remove the top 12 proteins. The flow through fraction was digested using trypsin for LC/MS analysis. The protein digest serum samples were analyzed in triplicates on a high performance LTQFT( thermo Electron) mass spectrometer coupled to an online Surveyor LC system equipped with an autosmapler. Samples were loaded on to a trap column using sample pump. MS pump was used for eluting the peptides onto an analytical column for further separation and online nano-ESI LC/MS/MS analysis. The raw MS data files were imported into DeCyderMS (GE Healthcare) module and data was processed for peptide/protein expression analysis. Results: DeCyder/MS analysis revealed significant altered expression of 215 peptides between the two groups (t-test: 2 and presence of peptides in all replicates was >2.0). Most of these peptides were mapped to 28 proteins in the Swiss-Prot database. DeCyderMS analysis on all the replicates from each sample are underway to identify the peptide pattern differences between the healthy and cancer samples. In addition to high abundant proteins identified by 2-D DIGE/MS in our earlier study, we identified low abundant proteins such as Angiotensinogen precursor, Insulin-like growth factor-binding protein complex acid labil, Vitamin D -binding protein precursor and others. Some of these proteins have been implicated in breast cancer and either served as individual biomarkers or are under investigation as potential biomarkers for early detection of breast cancer. Conclusions: A panel of proteins differed in abundance in the sera of AA cancer patients vs. healthy controls; these could serve as biomarkers of early-stage breast cancer. Future efforts will focus on further validation of this panel of biomarkers to gain insight into their role(s) in the etiology of aggressive breast tumors in AA women. Supported by The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
Collaborative gesture as a case of extended mathematical cognition

Abstract Gestures have been shown to play a key role in mathematical reasoning and to be an indicator that mathematical understanding is embodied – inherently linked to action, perception, and the physical body. As learners collaborate and engage in mathematical discussions, they use discourse practices like explaining, refuting, and building on each other’s reasoning. Here we examine how gestural embodied actions become distributed over multiple learners confronting mathematical tasks. We define collaborative gestures as gestural exchanges that take place as learners discuss and explore mathematical ideas, using their bodies in concert to accomplish a shared goal. We identify several ways in which learners’ gestures can be used collaboratively and explore patterns in how collaborative gestures arise while proving geometric conjectures. Learners use collaborative gestures to extend mathematical ideas over multiple bodies as they explore, refine, and extend each other’s mathematical reasoning. With this work, we seek to add to notions of important talk moves in mathematical discussions to also include a consideration of important gesture moves.
Modular, stereocontrolled Cβ-H/Cα-C activation of alkyl carboxylic acids.

The union of two powerful transformations, directed C–H activation and decarboxylative cross-coupling, for the enantioselective synthesis of vicinally functionalized alkyl, carbocyclic, and heterocyclic compounds is described. Starting from simple carboxylic acid building blocks, this modular sequence exploits the residual directing group to access more than 50 scaffolds that would be otherwise extremely difficult to prepare. The tactical use of these two transformations accomplishes a formal vicinal difunctionalization of carbon centers in a way that is modular and thus, amenable to rapid diversity incorporation. A simplification of routes to known preclinical drug candidates is presented along with the rapid diversification of an antimalarial compound series.