cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Machine Learning Assisted Synthesis of Metal–Organic Nanocapsules

Herein, we report machine learning algorithms by training data sets from a set of both successful and failed experiments for studying the crystallization propensity of metal–organic nanocapsules (MONCs). Among a variety of studied machine learning algorithms, XGBoost affords the highest prediction accuracy of >90%. The derived chemical feature scores that determine importance of reaction parameters from the XGBoost model assist to identify synthesis parameters for successfully synthesizing new hierarchical structures of MONCs, showing superior performance to a well-trained chemist. This work demonstrates that the machine learning algorithms can assist the chemists to faster search for the optimal reaction parameters from many experimental variables, whose features are usually hidden in the high-dimensional space.
Trapezoid Order Classification

In this paper we show the nonequivalence of combinations of several natural geometric restrictions on trapezoid representations of trapezoid orders. Each of the properties unit parallelogram, unit trapezoid and proper parallelogram, unit trapezoid and parallelogram, unit trapezoid, proper parallelogram, proper trapezoid and parallelogram, proper trapezoid, parallelogram, and trapezoid is shown to be distinct from each of the others. Additionally, interval orders are shown to be both unit trapezoid and proper parallelogram orders.
Forecasting hourly emergency department arrival using time series analysis

Background/aims The stochastic arrival of patients at hospital emergency departments complicates their management. More than 50% of a hospital's emergency department tends to operate beyond its nor...
Quantum momentum distribution and quantum entanglement in the deep tunneling regime

In this paper, we consider the momentum operator of a quantum particle directed along the displacement of two of its neighbors. A modified open-path path integral molecular dynamics is presented to sample the distribution of this directional momentum distribution, where we derive and use a new estimator for this distribution. Variationally enhanced sampling is used to obtain this distribution for an example molecule, malonaldehyde, in the very low temperature regime where deep tunneling happens. We find no secondary feature in the directional momentum distribution and that its absence is due to quantum entanglement through a further study of the reduced density matrix.
Effects of milling on the metals analysis of soil samples containing metallic residues

Abstract Metallic residues are distributed heterogeneously onto small-arms range soils from projectile fragmentation upon impact with a target or berm backstop. Incremental Sampling Methodology (ISM) can address the spatially heterogeneous contamination of surface soils on small-arms ranges, but representative kilogram-sized ISM subsamples are affected by the range of metallic residue particle sizes in the sample. This study compares the precision and concentrations of metals in a small-arms range soil sample processed by a puck mill, ring and puck mill, ball mill, and mortar and pestle prior to analysis. The ball mill, puck mill, and puck and ring mill produced acceptable relative standard deviations of less than 15% for the anthropogenic metals of interest (Lead (Pb), Antimony (Sb), Copper (Cu), and Zinc (Zn)), with the ball mill exhibiting the greatest precision for Pb, Cu, and Zn. Precision by mortar and pestle, without milling, was considerably higher (40% to >100%) for anthropogenic metals. Median anthropogenic metal concentrations varied by more than 40% between milling methods, with the greatest concentrations produced by the puck mill, followed by the puck and ring mill and then the ball mill. Metal concentrations were also dependent on milling time, with concentrations stabilizing for the puck mill by 300 s but still increasing for the ball mill over 20 h. Differences in metal concentrations were not directly related to the surface area of the milled sample. Overall, the tested milling methods were successful in producing reproducible data for soils containing metallic residues. However, the effects of milling type and time on concentrations require consideration in environmental investigations.
A Skeptic's Guide to Modern Monetary Theory

This essay discusses a new approach to macroeconomics called modern monetary theory (MMT). It identifies the key differences between MMT and the approach found in mainstream textbooks. It concludes that while MMT contains some kernels of truth, its most novel policy prescriptions do not follow cogently from its premises.
Intrinsic Excitability Increase in Cerebellar Purkinje Cells after Delay Eye-Blink Conditioning in Mice

Cerebellar-based learning is thought to rely on synaptic plasticity, particularly at synaptic inputs to Purkinje cells. Recently, however, other complementary mechanisms have been identified. Intrinsic plasticity is one such mechanism, and depends in part on the downregulation of calcium-dependent SK-type K+ channels, which contribute to a medium-slow afterhyperpolarization (AHP) after spike bursts, regulating membrane excitability. In the hippocampus, intrinsic plasticity plays a role in trace eye-blink conditioning; however, corresponding excitability changes in the cerebellum in associative learning, such as in trace or delay eye-blink conditioning, are less well studied. Whole-cell patch-clamp recordings were obtained from Purkinje cells in cerebellar slices prepared from male mice ∼48 h after they learned a delay eye-blink conditioning task. Over a period of repeated training sessions, mice received either paired trials of a tone coterminating with a periorbital shock (conditioning) or trials in which these stimuli were randomly presented in an unpaired manner (pseudoconditioning). Purkinje cells from conditioned mice show a significantly reduced AHP after trains of parallel fiber stimuli and after climbing fiber evoked complex spikes. The number of spikelets in the complex spike waveform is increased after conditioning. Moreover, we find that SK-dependent intrinsic plasticity is occluded in conditioned, but not pseudoconditioned mice. These findings show that excitability is enhanced in Purkinje cells after delay eye-blink conditioning, and point toward a downregulation of SK channels as a potential underlying mechanism. The observation that this learning effect lasts at least up to 2 d after training shows that intrinsic plasticity regulates excitability in the long term.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Plasticity of membrane excitability ("intrinsic plasticity") has been observed in invertebrate and vertebrate neurons, coinduced with synaptic plasticity or in isolation. Although the cellular phenomenon per se is well established, it remains unclear what role intrinsic plasticity plays in learning and if it even persists long enough to serve functions in engram physiology beyond aiding synaptic plasticity. Here, we demonstrate that cerebellar Purkinje cells upregulate excitability in delay eye-blink conditioning, a form of motor learning. This plasticity is observed 48 h after training and alters synaptically evoked spike firing and integrative properties of these neurons. These findings show that intrinsic plasticity enhances the spike firing output of Purkinje cells and persists over the course of days.
The Conway knot is not slice

A knot is said to be slice if it bounds a smooth properly embedded disk in the 4-ball. We demonstrate that the Conway knot, 11n34 in the Rolfsen tables, is not slice. This completes the classification of slice knots under 13 crossings, and gives the first example of a non-slice knot which is both topologically slice and a positive mutant of a slice knot.
Organizational Powers: Contested Innovation and Loss of Professional Jurisdiction in the Case of Retail Medicine

Innovative technology may reduce organizations’ reliance on professionals in the performance of expert tasks, weakening professions’ control over work. However, professions resist and challenge suc...
Topography in the Bursting Dynamics of Entorhinal Neurons.

Summary Medial entorhinal cortex contains neural substrates for representing space. These substrates include grid cells that fire in repeating locations and increase in scale progressively along the dorsal-to-ventral entorhinal axis, with the physical distance between grid firing nodes increasing from tens of centimeters to several meters in rodents. Whether the temporal scale of grid cell spiking dynamics shows a similar dorsal-to-ventral organization remains unknown. Here, we report the presence of a dorsal-to-ventral gradient in the temporal spiking dynamics of grid cells in behaving mice. This gradient in bursting supports the emergence of a dorsal grid cell population with a high signal-to-noise ratio. In vitro recordings combined with a computational model point to a role for gradients in non-inactivating sodium conductances in supporting the bursting gradient in vivo. Taken together, these results reveal a complementary organization in the temporal and intrinsic properties of entorhinal cells.
How special is democracy?: An experimental study of recommendations in the minimum effort game

Abstract Democratic institutions aggregate voters’ preferences about policy options and thereby help determine which policies are implemented. Previous research has, however, suggested that such institutions can also have a direct, positive effect on cooperative and efficient behavior. In a laboratory experiment, we test this suggestion by comparing the effect of recommendations on how to play that are generated through a group vote to expert-generated recommendations, on play in a minimum effort game. We find no difference between the two: both expert recommendations and democratically generated recommendations increase the efficiency of choices. In addition, we find that merely considering potential recommendations, and knowing that others have done so as well, can help enhance efficient coordination.
Robust navigation of a soft growing robot by exploiting contact with the environment

Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigi...
Multiscale block averaging for QED in d = 3

We continue the study of the ultraviolet problem for quantum electrodynamics in d = 3. The model is defined on a fine toroidal lattice, and we seek control as the lattice spacing goes to zero. The problem is analyzed using Balaban’s formulation of the renormalization group. This involves a sequence of transformations consisting of a split into large and small field regions, then block averaging, and then scaling. The effective actions generated by this method depend strongly on certain multi-scale propagators and minimizers. The study of these objects both for fermions and for gauge fields is the content of this paper. Earlier work on the subject is reviewed. In addition for fermions, a polymer expansion is obtained for the determinants of the fermion propagators. For the gauge field, a detailed local regularity result is obtained for the minimizers.
Citation Databases for Legal Scholarship

Traditional citation sources, such as Web of Science, index limited numbers of law journals. Consequently, although not designed for generating scholarship citation metrics, many law scholarship ci...
GenomeQC: a quality assessment tool for genome assemblies and gene structure annotations

Genome assemblies are foundational for understanding the biology of a species. They provide a physical framework for mapping additional sequences, thereby enabling characterization of, for example, genomic diversity and differences in gene expression across individuals and tissue types. Quality metrics for genome assemblies gauge both the completeness and contiguity of an assembly and help provide confidence in downstream biological insights. To compare quality across multiple assemblies, a set of common metrics are typically calculated and then compared to one or more gold standard reference genomes. While several tools exist for calculating individual metrics, applications providing comprehensive evaluations of multiple assembly features are, perhaps surprisingly, lacking. Here, we describe a new toolkit that integrates multiple metrics to characterize both assembly and gene annotation quality in a way that enables comparison across multiple assemblies and assembly types. Our application, named GenomeQC, is an easy-to-use and interactive web framework that integrates various quantitative measures to characterize genome assemblies and annotations. GenomeQC provides researchers with a comprehensive summary of these statistics and allows for benchmarking against gold standard reference assemblies. The GenomeQC web application is implemented in R/Shiny version 1.5.9 and Python 3.6 and is freely available at https://genomeqc.maizegdb.org/ under the GPL license. All source code and a containerized version of the GenomeQC pipeline is available in the GitHub repository https://github.com/HuffordLab/GenomeQC.
PolyQ-independent toxicity associated with novel translational products from CAG repeat expansions

Expanded CAG nucleotide repeats are the underlying genetic cause of at least 14 incurable diseases, including Huntington’s disease (HD). The toxicity associated with many CAG repeat expansions is thought to be due to the translation of the CAG repeat to create a polyQ protein, which forms toxic oligomers and aggregates. However, recent studies show that HD CAG repeats undergo a non-canonical form of translation called Repeat-associated non-AUG dependent (RAN) translation. RAN translation of the CAG sense and CUG anti-sense RNAs produces six distinct repeat peptides: polyalanine (polyAla, from both CAG and CUG repeats), polyserine (polySer), polyleucine (polyLeu), polycysteine (polyCys), and polyglutamine (polyGln). The toxic potential of individual CAG-derived RAN polypeptides is not well understood. We developed pure C. elegans protein models for each CAG RAN polypeptide using codon-varied expression constructs that preserve RAN protein sequence but eliminate repetitive CAG/CUG RNA. While all RAN polypeptides formed aggregates, only polyLeu was consistently toxic across multiple cell types. In GABAergic neurons, which exhibit significant neurodegeneration in HD patients, codon-varied (Leu)38, but not (Gln)38, caused substantial neurodegeneration and motility defects. Our studies provide the first in vivo evaluation of CAG-derived RAN polypeptides in a multicellular model organism and suggest that polyQ-independent mechanisms, such as RAN-translated polyLeu peptides, may have a significant pathological role in CAG repeat expansion disorders.
Kinetic Analysis of Electrochemical Lactonization of Ketones Using Water as the Oxygen Atom Source

Lactones serve as key synthetic intermediates for the large-scale production of several important chemicals, such as polymers, pharmaceuticals, and scents. Current thermochemical methods for the fo...
A CLC-ec1 mutant reveals global conformational change and suggests a unifying mechanism for the CLC Cl-/H+ transport cycle.

Cells are shielded from harmful molecules and other threats by a thin, flexible layer called the membrane. However, this barrier also prevents chloride, sodium, protons and other ions from moving in or out of the cell. Channels and transporters are two types of membrane proteins that form passageways for these charged particles. Channels let ions flow freely from one side of the membrane to the other. To do so, these proteins change their three-dimensional shape to open or close as needed. On the other hand, transporters actively pump ions across the membrane to allow the charged particles to accumulate on one side. The shape changes needed for that type of movement are different: the transporters have to open a passageway on one side of the membrane while closing it on the other side, alternating openings to one side or the other. In general, channels and transporters are not related to each other, but one exception is a group called CLCs proteins. Present in many organisms, this family contains a mixture of channels and transporters. For example, humans have nine CLC proteins: four are channels that allow chloride ions in and out, and five are ‘exchange transporters’ that make protons and chloride ions cross the membrane in opposite directions. These proteins let one type of charged particle move freely across the membrane, which generates energy that the transporter then uses to actively pump the other ion in the direction needed by the cell. Yet, the exact three-dimensional changes required for CLC transporters and channels to perform their roles are still unknown. To investigate this question, Chavan, Cheng et al. harnessed a technique called X-ray crystallography, which allows scientists to look at biological molecules at the level of the atom. This was paired with other methods to examine a CLC mutant that adopts the shape of a normal CLC transporter when it is loaded with a proton. The experiments revealed how various elements in the transporter move relative to each other to adopt a structure that allows protons and chloride ions to enter the protein from opposite sides of the membrane, using separate pathways. While obtained on a bacterial CLC, these results can be applied to other CLC channels and transporters (including those in humans), shedding light on how this family transports charged particles across membranes. From bone diseases to certain types of seizures, many human conditions are associated with poorly functioning CLCs. Understanding the way these structures change their shapes to perform their roles could help to design new therapies for these health problems.
Effective difference elimination and Nullstellensatz

We prove effective Nullstellensatz and elimination theorems for difference equations in sequence rings. More precisely, we compute an explicit function of geometric quantities associated to a system of difference equations (and these geometric quantities may themselves be bounded by a function of the number of variables, the order of the equations, and the degrees of the equations) so that for any system of difference equations in variables $\mathbf{x} = (x_1, \ldots, x_m)$ and $\mathbf{u} = (u_1, \ldots, u_r)$, if these equations have any nontrivial consequences in the $\mathbf{x}$ variables, then such a consequence may be seen algebraically considering transforms up to the order of our bound. Specializing to the case of $m = 0$, we obtain an effective method to test whether a given system of difference equations is consistent.
Production Risk and the Estimation of Ex Ante Cost Functions

Cost function estimation under production uncertainty is problematic because the relevant cost is conditional on unobservable expected output. If input demand functions are also stochastic, then a nonlinear errors-in-variables model is obtained and standard estimation procedures typically fail to attain consistency. But by exploiting the full implications of the expected profit maximization hypothesis that gives rise to ex-ante cost functions, it is shown that the errors-in-variables problem can be effectively removed, and consistent estimation of the parameters of interest achieved. A Monte Carlo experiment illustrates the advantages of the proposed procedure as well as the pitfalls of other existing estimators.
X-ray Lithography

In this paper we briefly discuss the main concept and details of X-ray Lithography, a parallel lithographic technique belonging to the domain of UV lithography (UVL). The main difference lies on its usage of X-ray photons, which having a much shorter wavelength were supposed to provide for a ‘resolution reserve’ for Moore’s law requirements, long after UVL would fail to do so. However, new advances in UVL technology (e.g., Deep UV, projection exposure systems, etc.) had finally won the race and made XRL impractical for large scale industrial applications in integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing, but some of its characteristic properties still hold advantages in certain techniques (e.g., LIGA).
Old and Young Politicians

We consider the role of a politician's age in Italian municipal governments. When the term limit is not binding, younger mayors engage in political budget cycles more often than older mayors. Thus younger politicians behave more strategically in response to electoral incentives, probably because they expect to have a longer political career and stronger career concerns. We discuss and rule out several alternative interpretations.
CHAPTER 9 – Thematic Classification

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the production of thematic maps from remote-sensing images. A thematic map shows the spatial distribution of identifiable earth surface features; it provides an informational description over a given area, rather than a data description. Image classification is the process used to produce thematic maps from imagery. The themes can range, for example, from categories— such as soil, vegetation, and surface water in a general description of a rural area— to different types of soil, vegetation, and water depth or clarity for a more detailed description. It is implied in the construction of a thematic map from remote-sensing imagery that the categories selected for the map are distinguishable in the image data. A number of factors can cause confusion among spectral signatures, including topography, shadowing, atmospheric variability, sensor calibration changes, and class mixing within the ground instantaneous field of view (GIFOV). Although some of these effects can be modeled, some cannot, and so they must be treated simply as statistical variability. This chapter focuses on classification algorithms and the way their performance depends on the physical and data models. A wide assortment of techniques for thematic classification of remote-sensing imagery has been presented in the chapter. They range from heuristic, intuitive approaches to theoretically well-founded, statistical pattern-recognition techniques. Thematic classification methods are either heuristic (nonparametric) or based on statistical distribution assumptions (parametric).
A fractional subgrid-scale model for turbulent flows: Theoretical formulation and a priori study

Coherent structures/motions in turbulence inherently give rise to intermittent signals with sharp peaks, heavy-skirt, and skewed distributions of velocity increments, highlighting the non-Gaussian nature of turbulence. This suggests that the spatial nonlocal interactions cannot be ruled out of the turbulence physics. Furthermore, filtering the Navier–Stokes equations in the large eddy simulation of turbulent flows would further enhance the existing nonlocality, emerging in the corresponding subgrid scale fluid motions. This urges the development of new nonlocal closure models, which respect the corresponding non-Gaussian statistics of the subgrid stochastic motions. To this end and starting from the filtered Boltzmann equation, we model the corresponding equilibrium distribution function with a Levy-stable distribution, leading to the proposed fractional-order modeling of subgrid-scale stresses. We approximate the filtered equilibrium distribution function with a power-law term and derive the corresponding filtered Navier–Stokes equations. Subsequently in our functional modeling, the divergence of subgrid-scale stresses emerges as a single-parameter fractional Laplacian, (−Δ)α(·), α ∈ (0, 1], of the filtered velocity field. The only model parameter, i.e., the fractional exponent, appears to be strictly dependent on the filter-width and the flow Reynolds number. We furthermore explore the main physical and mathematical properties of the proposed model under a set of mild conditions. Finally, the introduced model undergoes a priori evaluations based on the direct numerical simulation database of forced and decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulent flows at relatively high and moderate Reynolds numbers, respectively. Such analysis provides a comparative study of predictability and performance of the proposed fractional model.
Chapter 5 – Single-Flash Steam Power Plants

The single-flash steam plant is the mainstay of the geothermal power industry. It is often the first power plant installed at a newly developed liquid-dominated geothermal field. As of December 2014, there are 185 units of this kind in operation in 17 countries around the world. Single-flash plants account for 32% of all geothermal plants. They constitute about 43% of the total installed geothermal power capacity in the world, and the average unit power rating is slightly less than 28 MW per unit.
A Logic Simplification Approach for Very Large Scale Crosstalk Circuit Designs

Crosstalk computing, involving engineered interference between nanoscale metal lines, offers a fresh perspective to scaling through co-existence with CMOS. By capacitive manipulations and innovative circuit style, not only primitive gates can be implemented, but custom logic cells such as an Adder, Subtractor can be implemented with huge gains. In this paper, we introduce the Crosstalk circuit style and a key method for large-scale circuit synthesis utilizing existing EDA tool flow. We propose to manipulate the CMOS synthesis flow by adding two extra steps: conversion of the gate-level netlist to Crosstalk implementation friendly netlist through logic simplification and Crosstalk gate mapping, and the inclusion of custom cell libraries for automated placement and layout. Our logic simplification approach first converts Cadence generated structured netlist to Boolean expressions and then uses the synthesis tool (SIS) to obtain majority functions, which is further used to simplify functions for Crosstalk friendly implementations. We compare our approach of logic simplification to that of CMOS and majority logic-based approaches. Crosstalk circuits share some similarities to majority synthesis that are typically applied to Quantum Cellular Automata technology. However, our investigation shows that by closely following Crosstalk’s core circuit styles, most benefits can be achieved. In the best case, our approach shows 36% density improvements over majority synthesis for MCNC benchmark circuits.
THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF CORPORATE FINANCIAL REPORTING

We survey 401 financial executives, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 20, to determine the key factors that drive decisions related to performance measurement and voluntary disclosure. The majority of firms view earnings, especially EPS, as the key metric for an external audience, more so than cash flows. We find that the majority of managers would avoid initiating a positive NPV project if it meant falling short of the current quarter’s consensus earnings. Similarly, more than three-fourths of the surveyed executives would give up economic value in exchange for smooth earnings. Managers believe that missing an earnings target or reporting volatile earnings reduces the predictability of earnings, which in turn reduces stock price because investors and analysts dislike uncertainty. We also find that managers make voluntary disclosures to reduce information risk associated with their stock but at the same time, try to avoid setting a disclosure precedent that will be difficult to maintain. In general, management’s views support stock price motivations for earnings management and voluntary disclosure, but provide only modest evidence consistent with other theories of these phenomena (such as debt, political cost and bonus plan based hypotheses).
10 – Variance analysis

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses variance analysis. A variance is the difference between planned, budgeted, or standard cost and actual costs. Variances can arise on both costs and revenues. If a variance is worse than the budget/standard, that is, costs are excessive or revenues inadequate, then the resultant variance is described as an adverse variance. Similarly, if costs and revenues are better than budget/ standard then the variance is described as favorable. The direct materials total variance is defined as the difference between the standard direct material costs of the actual production volume and the actual cost of the material. An adverse price variance can usually indicate that a supplier has increased his or her price after the standard has been set. Direct labor efficiency variances is the difference between the standard hours for the actual production achieved and the hours actually worked, valued at the standard labor rate. Efficiency variances can arise from the lack of experience in the labor force, causing the job to take longer, or more rejects to be produced.
Experimental Comparison of Multi-Stage and One-Stage Contests

This article experimentally studies a two-stage elimination contest and compares its performance with a one-stage contest. Contrary to the theory, the two-stage contest generates higher revenue than the equivalent one-stage contest. There is significant over-dissipation in both stages of the two-stage contest and experience diminishes over-dissipation in the first stage but not in the second stage. Our experiment provides evidence that winning is a component in a subject’s utility. A simple behavioral model that accounts for a non-monetary utility of winning can explain significant over-dissipation in both contests. It can also explain why the two-stage contest generates higher revenue than the equivalent one-stage contest.
Effects of adrenocorticotrophic hormone on neuro-muscular function in patients with myasthenia gravis.

Summary1. Five patients moderately to severely ill with myasthenia gravis received 400 mg adrenocorticotrophic hormone given in amounts of 20 mg every 6 hours.2. Changes that may indicate the beginnings of an incomplete remission occurred after completion of the injections. These changes consisted of decrease of the symptoms and outward manifestations of muscle dysfunction, disappearance of the abnormalities noted in the electromyogram, increased work performance on the ergograph, and increase to normal of the ability of serum to support acetylcholine synthesis. The incomplete remission is long lasting.
Quantifying cumulative effectiveness of green stormwater infrastructure in improving water quality

Abstract Stormwater runoff is one of the main sources of pollution in streams and receiving water bodies of major cities. Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) is a set of distributed stormwater best management practices that absorb excess water, filter out sediment and pollutants, and help recharge groundwater. Despite the increasing popularity of GSI as means of stormwater management, our knowledge of their cumulative performance is limited. In this research, we apply an empirical approach to study the effectiveness of GSI in improving the water quality of four major receiving water bodies of Seattle, Washington, at the watershed scale. We use a Bayesian structural time series model and synthetic control method to build counterfactual scenarios of water quality in absence of GSI implementation and estimate the causal impact of GSI on water quality. We use monthly time series data of water quality parameters (water temperature, dissolved oxygen, surface PAR, chlorophyll a, Secchi depth, pH, light transmission, and fecal coliform) in Seattle's urban watersheds from 2004 to 2017. We also use a set of nine control variables to estimate the counterfactual water quality parameters. Our findings show that GSI improve some water quality parameters such as chlorophyll a, light transmission and Secchi depth, but increase water temperature and decrease dissolved oxygen in some water bodies.
An “Augmentation-Free” Rotation Invariant Classification Scheme on Point-Cloud and Its Application to Neuroimaging

Recent years have witnessed the emergence and increasing popularity of 3D medical imaging techniques with the development of 3D sensors and technology. However, achieving geometric invariance in the processing of 3D medical images is computationally expensive but nonetheless essential due to the presence of possible errors caused by rigid registration techniques. An alternative way to analyze medical imaging is by understanding the 3D shapes represented in terms of point-cloud. Though in the medical imaging community, 3D point-cloud processing is not a “go-to” choice, it is a canonical way to preserve rotation invariance. Unfortunately, due to the presence of discrete topology, one can not use the standard convolution operator on point-cloud. To the best of our knowledge, the existing ways to do “convolution” can not preserve the rotation invariance without explicit data augmentation. Therefore, we propose a rotation invariant convolution operator by inducing topology from hypersphere. Experimental validation has been performed on publicly available OASIS dataset in terms of classification accuracy between subjects with (without) dementia, demonstrating the usefulness of our proposed method in terms of (a) model complexity (b) classification accuracy and last but most important (c) invariance to rotations.
Statistical Inference for Online Decision-Making: In a Contextual Bandit Setting.

Online decision making problem requires us to make a sequence of decisions based on incremental information. Common solutions often need to learn a reward model of different actions given the conte...
Attentional dwelling and capture by color singletons

Can salient stimuli—such as color singletons and abrupt onsets—involuntarily capture spatial attention? We previously reported evidence that abrupt onsets can capture attention, but the effects of this capture can become latent under easy visual search. The present experiments examined whether a similar pattern of latent capture occurs for task-irrelevant color singletons. Participants searched for a perfect circle among oval distractors. We manipulated search difficulty by varying the width of the oval distractors, making them more or less target-like (i.e., more or less circular). With search displays of homogeneous distractors, cue validity effects increased linearly with search difficulty, indicating capture by color singletons (Experiments 1 and 2). With heterogeneous distractors, however, discouraging the use of singleton-detection mode to find the target circle, cue validity effects from color singletons were negligible at all difficulty levels (Experiment 3). Using these exact same heterogeneous search displays, meanwhile, abrupt onsets produced very large cue validity effects (Experiment 4). We conclude that whereas abrupt onsets can capture attention based purely on salience, static color singletons capture attention only when made task-relevant by promoting singleton-detection mode (i.e., contingent capture). The data further support an attentional dwelling account of capture costs and reinforce the recommendation that, to ensure sensitivity to detect the presence (or absence) of attention capture, capture experiments should employ a difficult visual search.
Robust One-Bit Recovery via ReLU Generative Networks: Near-Optimal Statistical Rate and Global Landscape Analysis

We study the robust one-bit compressed sensing problem whose goal is to design an algorithm that faithfully recovers any sparse target vector $\theta_0\in\mathbb{R}^d$ \textit{uniformly} via $m$ quantized noisy measurements. Specifically, we consider a new framework for this problem where the sparsity is implicitly enforced via mapping a low dimensional representation $x_0 \in \mathbb{R}^k$ through a known $n$-layer ReLU generative network $G:\mathbb{R}^k\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^d$ such that $\theta_0 = G(x_0)$. Such a framework poses low-dimensional priors on $\theta_0$ without a known sparsity basis. We propose to recover the target $G(x_0)$ solving an unconstrained empirical risk minimization (ERM). Under a weak \textit{sub-exponential measurement assumption}, we establish a joint statistical and computational analysis. In particular, we prove that the ERM estimator in this new framework achieves a statistical rate of $m=\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(kn \log d /\varepsilon^2)$ recovering any $G(x_0)$ uniformly up to an error $\varepsilon$. When the network is shallow (i.e., $n$ is small), we show this rate matches the information-theoretic lower bound up to logarithm factors of $\varepsilon^{-1}$. From the lens of computation, we prove that under proper conditions on the network weights, our proposed empirical risk, despite non-convexity, has no stationary point outside of small neighborhoods around the true representation $x_0$ and its negative multiple; furthermore, we show that the global minimizer of the empirical risk stays within the neighborhood around $x_0$ rather than its negative multiple under further assumptions on the network weights.
Benchmarking Multimodal Regex Synthesis with Complex Structures.

Existing datasets for regular expression (regex) generation from natural language are limited in complexity; compared to regex tasks that users post on StackOverflow, the regexes in these datasets are simple, and the language used to describe them is not diverse. We introduce StructuredRegex, a new regex synthesis dataset differing from prior ones in three aspects. First, to obtain structurally complex and realistic regexes, we generate the regexes using a probabilistic grammar with pre-defined macros observed from real-world StackOverflow posts. Second, to obtain linguistically diverse natural language descriptions, we show crowdworkers abstract depictions of the underlying regex and ask them to describe the pattern they see, rather than having them paraphrase synthetic language. Third, we augment each regex example with a collection of strings that are and are not matched by the ground truth regex, similar to how real users give examples. Our quantitative and qualitative analysis demonstrates the advantages of StructuredRegex over prior datasets. Further experimental results using various multimodal synthesis techniques highlight the challenge presented by our dataset, including non-local constraints and multi-modal inputs.
Testing noisy linear functions for sparsity

We consider the following basic inference problem: there is an unknown high-dimensional vector w ∈ ℝ n , and an algorithm is given access to labeled pairs (x,y) where x ∈ ℝ n is a measurement and y = w · x + noise. What is the complexity of deciding whether the target vector w is (approximately) k-sparse? The recovery analogue of this problem — given the promise that w is sparse, find or approximate the vector w — is the famous sparse recovery problem, with a rich body of work in signal processing, statistics, and computer science. We study the decision version of this problem (i.e. deciding whether the unknown w is k-sparse) from the vantage point of property testing. Our focus is on answering the following high-level question: when is it possible to efficiently test whether the unknown target vector w is sparse versus far-from-sparse using a number of samples which is completely independent of the dimension n? We consider the natural setting in which x is drawn from an i.i.d. product distribution D over ℝ n and the noise process is independent of the input x. As our main result, we give a general algorithm which solves the above-described testing problem using a number of samples which is completely independent of the ambient dimension n, as long as D is not a Gaussian. In fact, our algorithm is fully noise tolerant, in the sense that for an arbitrary w, it approximately computes the distance of w to the closest k-sparse vector. To complement this algorithmic result, we show that weakening any of our conditions makes it information-theoretically impossible for any algorithm to solve the testing problem with fewer than essentially logn samples. Thus our conditions essentially characterize when it is possible to test noisy linear functions for sparsity with constant sample complexity. Our algorithmic approach is based on relating the cumulants of the output distribution (i.e. of y) with elementary power sum symmetric polynomials in w and using the latter to measure the sparsity of w. This approach crucially relies on a theorem of Marcinkiewicz from probability theory. In fact, to obtain effective sample complexity bounds with our approach, we prove a new finitary version of Marcinkiewicz’s theorem. This involves extending the complex analytic arguments used in the original proof with results about the distribution of zeros of entire functions.
Through the Looking Glass: Neural 3D Reconstruction of Transparent Shapes

Recovering the 3D shape of transparent objects using a small number of unconstrained natural images is an ill-posed problem. Complex light paths induced by refraction and reflection have prevented both traditional and deep multiview stereo from solving this challenge. We propose a physically-based network to recover 3D shape of transparent objects using a few images acquired with a mobile phone camera, under a known but arbitrary environment map. Our novel contributions include a normal representation that enables the network to model complex light transport through local computation, a rendering layer that models refractions and reflections, a cost volume specifically designed for normal refinement of transparent shapes and a feature mapping based on predicted normals for 3D point cloud reconstruction. We render a synthetic dataset to encourage the model to learn refractive light transport across different views. Our experiments show successful recovery of high-quality 3D geometry for complex transparent shapes using as few as 5-12 natural images. Code and data will be publicly released.Recovering the 3D shape of transparent objects using a small number of unconstrained natural images is an ill-posed problem. Complex light paths induced by refraction and reflection have prevented both traditional and deep multiview stereo from solving this challenge. We propose a physically-based network to recover 3D shape of transparent objects using a few images acquired with a mobile phone camera, under a known but arbitrary environment map. Our novel contributions include a normal representation that enables the network to model complex light transport through local computation, a rendering layer that models refractions and reflections, a cost volume specifically designed for normal refinement of transparent shapes and a feature mapping based on predicted normals for 3D point cloud reconstruction. We render a synthetic dataset to encourage the model to learn refractive light transport across different views. Our experiments show successful recovery of high-quality 3D geometry for complex transparent shapes using as few as 5-12 natural images. Code and data will be publicly released.
Lamplighter groups, bireversible automata, and rational series over finite rings

We realize lamplighter groups $A\wr \mathbb Z$, with $A$ a finite abelian group, as automaton groups via affine transformations of power series rings with coefficients in a finite commutative ring. Our methods can realize $A\wr \mathbb Z$ as a bireversible automaton group if and only if the $2$-Sylow subgroup of $A$ has no multiplicity one summands in its expression as a direct sum of cyclic groups of order a power of $2$.
Why are pollution damages lower in developed countries? Insights from high income, high-particulate matter Hong Kong

Conventional wisdom suggests that marginal damages from particulate matter pollution are high in less-developed countries because they are highly polluted. Using administrative data on the universe of births and deaths, we explore birthweight and mortality effects of gestational particulate matter exposure in high-pollution yet high-income Hong Kong. The marginal effects of particulates on birthweight are large but we fail to detect an effect on neonatal mortality. We interpret our stark mortality results in a comparative analysis of pollution-mortality relationships across studies. We provide early evidence that marginal mortality damages from pollution are high in less-developed countries because they are less developed, not because they are more polluted.
The Effects of Accounting Expertise of Board Committees on the Short- and Long-Term Consequences of Financial Restatements:

Using financial restatements as the contextual setting, we examine whether the accounting expertise of board committees affects the consequences of financial reporting quality. We analyze both shor...
Neural closed-loop deep brain stimulation for freezing of gait.

Abstract Freezing of gait (FOG), a devastating symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD), can be refractory to current treatments such as medication and open-loop deep brain stimulation (olDBS). Recent evidence suggests that closed-loop DBS (clDBS), using beta local field potential power from the subthalamic nucleus (STN) as the control variable, can improve tremor and bradykinesia; however, no study has investigated the use of clDBS for the treatment of FOG. In this study, we provide preliminary evidence that clDBS was superior to olDBS in reducing percent time freezing and in reducing freezing behavior (gait arrhythmicity) in a person with PD and FOG. These findings warrant further investigation into the use of clDBS to treat FOG while also minimizing the total energy delivered to maintain a therapeutic effect.
Eruptive solar magnetic fields

This paper considers the quasi-steady evolution of solar magnetic fields in response to gradual photospheric changes. Special interest is taken in the threshold of a sudden eruption in the solar atmosphere. The formal model of an evolving, force-free field dependent on two Cartesian coordinates has been treated previously, and we extend it to a field which is not force free but in static equilibrium with plasma pressure and gravity. The basic physics is illustrated by the evolution of a loop-shaped electric current sheet enclosing a potential bipolar field with footpoints rooted in the photosphere. A free-boundary problem is posed and solved for the equilibrium configuration of the current sheet in a hydrostatically supported isothermal atmosphere. As the footpoints move appart to spread a constant photospheric magnetic flux over a larger region, the equilibria available extend the field to increasingly great heights. Two basic behaviors are possible, depending on the ratio of the total magnetic flux to an equivalent flux constructed dimensionally from the pressure difference across the current sheet and the density scale height. For a small, total magnetic flux, nonequilibrium can set in with the appearance of a marginally stable equilibriu, as demonstrated previously for the frece-free fields. Formore » a total magnetic flux exceeding a certain critical value, the field lines rise high enough for gravity to play a significant role. The sequence of equilibria in this case suggests that nonequilibrium can set in with the opening of the field lines by magnetic buoyancy. This eruption can also take place with a prominence filament and may be the origin of the white light coronal transient.« less