cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The valuation effect of LIFO’s repeal on high pricing power firms

Purpose – The aim of the study is to provides a timely examination of the valuation effect of current initiatives to repeal LIFO by analyzing the valuation impact of the potential repeal of LIFO conditional on the pricing power of the firm. Design/methodology/approach – Using the methodology from prior research for all LIFO companies, we use price levels regressions to empirically test the potential tax effect of LIFO’s repeal on the value of the firm. To evaluate the robustness of these results, we also use event study methodology to estimate abnormal returns around the House Bill H. R. 3970. Findings – Results show a favorable (unfavorable) valuation effect for high (low) pricing power firms that are able (unable) to recover tax payments by reducing costs and/or charging higher prices. These findings are robust to alternative measures of valuation (price and returns), as well as long and short event windows and suggest that certain firms may be able to offset post-LIFO repeal increased tax payments by i...
Entrepreneurship And Economic Growth In China

Introduction: Three Major Directions in the Book Theoretical Framework The Uniqueness of Entrepreneurship in China The Role of Entrepreneurship in China's Rapid Economic Growth Policies to Develop Entrepreneurship in China Conclusion and Policy Implications.
Communication Scholars and Fair Use: The Case for Discipline-Wide Education and Institutional Reform

Although networked movements have often been described as leaderless, I propose that they not only display different kinds of leadership phenomena but, when understood in their own terms, also function in a similar way to the “societies against the state” described by Pierre Clastres: as systems whose functioning controls leadership, power, and (formal) organization by maintaining them in a fragile state. Whereas primitive societies aim to prevent change, however, networked movements exist in shifting conjunctures in which they must intervene and thus are under the imperative to act. The distributed leadership that characterizes them at once inhibits the autonomization of leadership and presupposes its emergence as a condition for action. Rather than choosing between centralized leadership and total leaderlessness, therefore, networked movements must balance two demands (controlling and eliciting leadership) in tension with one another—inhabiting a non-disjunctive space that I describe as “between Clastres and Machiavelli.”
Agricultural Trade and Freshwater Resources

Approximately 75% of all water used by humans goes towards food production, much of which is traded internationally. This study formally models how this works in the case of crop agriculture, making use of recent advances in international trade theory and new data on the productivity by which countries use water for crop agriculture. The strength of the model lies in its ability to predict, when there is a shock to the system, how trade between pairs of specific countries changes for products that use water intensively. In one application of the model, international trade in final products is shown to be a means for countries to deal with short- and long-run shocks to water resources that are too big for one country to handle by itself in isolation. In a second application of the model, trade liberalization is shown to be a means for conserving water at the global level, as production shifts to regions where it is of greater abundance.
Texture vision: a view from art conservation

The appreciation of many works of visual art derives from the observation and interpretation of the object surface. The visual perception of texture is key to interpreting those surfaces, for the texture provides cues about the nature of the material and the ways in which the artist has manipulated it to create the object. The quantification of texture can be undertaken in two ways: by recording the physical topography of the surface or by analyzing an image that accurately portrays the texture. For most art objects, this description of texture on a microscopic level is not very useful, since how those surface features are observed by viewers is not directly provided by the analysis. For this reason, image analysis seems a more promising approach, for in the images the surfaces will naturally tend to be rendered as they would when viewing the object. In this study, images of textured surfaces of prototype art objects are analyzed in order to identify the methods and the metrics that can accurately characterize slight changes in texture. Three main applications are illustrated: the effect of the conditions of illumination on perceived texture, the characterization of changes of object due to degradation, and the quantification of the efficiency of the restoration.
Toward a principled framework for benchmarking consistency

Large-scale key-value storage systems sacrifice consistency in the interest of dependability (i.e., partition-tolerance and availability), as well as performance (i.e., latency). Such systems provide eventual consistency, which--to this point--has been difficult to quantify in real systems. Given the many implementations and deployments of eventually-consistent systems (e.g., NoSQL systems), attempts have been made to measure this consistency empirically, but they suffer from important drawbacks. For example, state-of-the art consistency benchmarks exercise the system only in restricted ways and disrupt the workload, which limits their accuracy. In this paper, we take the position that a consistency benchmark should paint a comprehensive picture of the relationship between the storage system under consideration, the workload, the pattern of failures, and the consistency observed by clients. To illustrate our point, we first survey prior efforts to quantify eventual consistency. We then present a benchmarking technique that overcomes the shortcomings of existing techniques to measure the consistency observed by clients as they execute the workload under consideration. This method is versatile and minimally disruptive to the system under test. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate this tool on Cassandra.
Governance and Effectiveness of Japanese Aid : Towards Optimality

In this paper I have tried to pursue two related objectives. First, I have tried to gauge the impact of Japanese aid on South and Southeast Asia. My second objective in this paper is to offer an approach to relate governance and aid-effectveness that could be applied to the aid and macroeconomic time-series data from the region. Using a bounded rationality format presented in a model that allows to progress towards optimality over time invites thinking along the lines of inductive learning to improve both governance and aid-effectiveness. Although Japan comes out ahead of many western donors, particularly, large ones such as the US and UK, there is still much room for improving aid-effectiveness. Both model-based and qualitative interview-based investigations in this paper point to donor and recipient policies that can be geared towards improving democratic governance, openness and grassroots empowerment in order to promote further aid-effectiveness.
An Algorithm Designer’s Workbench for Platform FPGAs

Growing gate density, availability of embedded multipliers and memory, and integration of traditional processors are some of the key advantages of Platform FPGAs. Such FPGAs are attractive for implementing compute intensive signal processing kernels used in wired as well as wireless mobile devices. However, algorithm design using Platform FPGAs, with energy dissipation as an additional performance metric for mobile devices, poses significant challenges. In this paper, we propose an algorithm designer’s workbench that addresses the above issues. The workbench supports formal modeling of the signal processing kernels, evaluation of latency, energy, and area of a design, and performance tradeoff analysis to facilitate optimization. The workbench includes a high-level estimator for rapid performance estimation and widely used low-level simulators for detailed simulation. Features include a confidence interval based technique for accurate power estimation and facility to store algorithm designs as library of models for reuse. We demonstrate the use of the workbench through design of matrix multiplication algorithm for Xilinx Virtex-II Pro.
Scanning Electron Microscopy with Polarization Analysis: Studies of Magnetic Microstructure

When a beam of electrons with energies greater than several hundred eV is incident upon a ferromagnetic metal, spin polarized secondary electrons are emitted. The polarization of these secondary electrons is related to the polarization of the electrons in the ferromagnet. In the case of transition metal ferromagnets, the polarization of the secondary electrons is directly proportional to the magnetization. Spin polarization analysis of the secondary electrons, therefore, provides a direct measurement of the magnetization in the region probed by the incident electron beam. Scanning electron microscopy with polarization analysis (SEMPA), illustrated schematically in Fig. 11.1, combines the finely focused beam of the scanning electron microscope with secondary electron spin polarization analysis to obtain a technique that provides high resolution images of the surface magnetic microstructure of ferromagnetic materials. The purpose of this chapter is to review the SEMPA technique and to present several examples of magnetic microstructures that were studied using SEMPA.
A model of gendered production in colonial Africa and implications for development in the post-colonial period

This paper proposes a model to analyze the implications of colonial policies for gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. The model emphasizes segmentation of production under complete specialization. It shows that the colonial production model, underpinned by occupational job segregation in the agricultural sector and gender bias in the non-agricultural sector, exacerbated gender inequality by limiting employment opportunities for women outside the realm of home production and subsistence agriculture. Over the past few decades, the resilience of parameters underlying these models of colonial production has heightened the risks of macroeconomic volatility in the region, especially where the structural transformation from low to high-value-added activities has remained elusive.
An attraction-repulsion point process model for respiratory syncytial virus infections.

Summary How is the progression of a virus influenced by properties intrinsic to individual cells? We address this question by studying the susceptibility of cells infected with two strains of the human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV-A and RSV-B) in an in vitro experiment. Spatial patterns of infected cells give us insight into how local conditions influence susceptibility to the virus. We observe a complicated attraction and repulsion behavior, a tendency for infected cells to lump together or remain apart. We develop a new spatial point process model to describe this behavior. Inference on spatial point processes is difficult because the likelihood functions of these models contain intractable normalizing constants; we adapt an MCMC algorithm called double Metropolis–Hastings to overcome this computational challenge. Our methods are computationally efficient even for large point patterns consisting of over 10,000 points. We illustrate the application of our model and inferential approach to simulated data examples and fit our model to various RSV experiments. Because our model parameters are easy to interpret, we are able to draw meaningful scientific conclusions from the fitted models.
Increasing the applicability of scalar replacement

This paper describes an algorithm for scalar replacement, which replaces repeated accesses to an array element with a scalar temporary. The element is accessed from a register rather than memory, thereby eliminating unnecessary memory accesses. A previous approach to this problem combines scalar replacement with a loop transformation called unroll-and-jam, whereby outer loops in a nest are unrolled, and the resulting duplicate inner loop bodies are fused together. The effect of unroll-and-jam is to bring opportunities for scalar replacement into inner loop bodies. In this paper, we describe an alternative approach that can exploit reuse opportunities across multiple loops in a nest, and without requiring unroll-and-jam. We also use this technique to eliminate unnecessary writes back to memory. The approach described in this paper is particularly well-suited to architectures with large register files and efficient mechanisms for register-to-register transfer. From our experimental results mapping 5 multimedia kernels to an FPGA platform, assuming 32 registers, we observe a 58 to 90 percent of reduction in memory accesses and speedup 2.34 to 7.31 over original programs.
Key drivers of PPPs in electricity generation in developing countries : cross-country evidence of switching between PPP investment in fossil fuel and renewable-based generation

This paper presents new global evidence on the key determinants of public-private partnership investment in electricity generated by fossil fuels and renewable energy based on a panel data analysis for 105 developing countries over a period of 16 years from 1993 to 2008. It aims to identify the key factors affecting private investors' decision to enter electricity generation, through probit analysis, and the amount of investment sunk in this market segment, based on Heckman's sample selection analysis. The paper shows some evidence of switching from investment in fossil fuels to investment in hydro and renewables and within fossil fuels from oil to natural gas. An interesting result of the econometric analysis is that the likelihood of switching toward renewable investment is driven by long-run environmental factors, such as the increases in the price of oil and the introduction of the Kyoto protocol. Another interesting result is that sector governance support schemes, provided by feed-in tariffs, affect only the entry in renewable based electricity generation and have no impact in reducing the amount of investment in fossil fuel based generation. Economy-wide governance factors, including control for corruption and degree of political competition, are factored in by private investors only in the initial stage of the game when the decision to enter into the generation market is taken and not the amount of investment. This confirms that the first generations of independent power producers have been developed on the basis of long-term power purchase agreements guaranteeing a fixed rate of return, through take-or-pay clauses and/or government guarantees.
Metalations of imidazoles: (Poly)functionalization and conversions to imidazolones

Abstract N-SEM protected imidazoles can be sequentially derivatized at the 2- and then 5-positions in a 1-pot operation. Quenching with selected peroxides following initial lithiation leads directly to imidazolones.
Initializing the Amplitude Distribution of a Quantum State

To date, quantum computational algorithms have operated on a superposition of all basis states of a quantum system. Typically, this is because it is assumed that some function f is known and implementable as a unitary evolution. However, what if only some points of the function f are known? It then becomes important to be able to encode only the knowledge that we have about f. This paper presents an algorithm that requires a polynomial number of elementary operations for initializing a quantum system to represent only the m known points of a function f.
Chandra Observations of Abell 2029: No Cooling Flow and a Steep Abundance Gradient

We have obtained high spatial resolution temperature and abundance profiles for the galaxy cluster Abell 2029 with the Chandra ACIS-S instrument. Our observations reveal that the spectra are well fitted by a single-phase gas in each annulus. While the temperature of the intracluster medium drops from ~9 keV at 3' (260 h kpc) to 3 keV in the central 5'' (5 h kpc) of the cluster, there is no evidence of gas emitting at temperatures below 3 keV. The addition of a cooling flow component does not improve the fits, despite previous claims for a massive cooling flow. There is also no evidence of excess absorption above the Galactic NH-value. We also observe a steep Fe abundance gradient, such that ZFe 2 Z☉ (assuming meteoritic solar Fe abundance) in the core, consistent with significant enrichment from Fe-rich Type Ia supernovae in the cD galaxy. The Fe abundance drops to ≈0.5 Z☉ at 3' (260 h kpc), in good agreement with previous BeppoSAX measurements. The high-resolution image reveals neither a strong central point source nor any filamentary structure related to a cooling flow or a merger. The absence of a strong merger signature argues against the creation of the wide-angle-tailed radio source morphology in a merger event.
Enforcing Cooperation in Networked Societies

We endogenize social network formation and collective enforcement using a model in which players interact bilaterally and repeatedly along costly links. Cooperation is supported by the threat of collective punishments that spread through the network. Optimal networks are attainable in equilibrium. When the society is homogeneous, the optimal network consists of many separate cliques. Introducing heterogeneous match quality gives rise to more realistic ”small worlds” networks, with connectedness, small distances, and high clustering.
Theory of electron ejection from surfaces by highly charged ion impact

When highly charged ions collide with matter containing relatively loosely bound electrons, electrons typically become attached to the highly charged ion. In other words, capture is the most likely reaction. While this is generally the case, direct ejection of electrons is also an important process. In this report I will describe some recent calculations of the the electron energy distributions produced by highly charged ion impact. I will first discuss calculations pertinant to relatively high velocities. The basic idea is that electrons move in the field of the highly charged ion; in first approximation, and that the effect of the smaller potential which initially binds the electrons is treated as a perturbation.1 This picture appears to be appropriate for fast electrons produced by collisions at high velocity. For lower energy collisions this picture is still applicable, but does not lead to a simple description of ionization. Here a theory due Solov’ev,2 Ovchinnikov3, and co-workers4 is better adapted to describing the physical mechanisms. In particular, this work shows that at low velocities it may be necessary to explicitly consider that electrons move in the combined potential of the target and projectile. This latter picture may also apply to ion-surface interactions.
Fraud Detection and Financial Reporting and Audit Delay

I formulate a model to emphasize the fraud detection role of auditors in the financial market, providing a theoretical framework to examine the likelihood of and market reaction to a financial reporting and audit delay. The model has an auditor considering whether to perform extended audit procedures after observing a red flag generated from regular audit procedures. An audit delay is represented by the event of extending audit procedures and manifested as a financial reporting delay observed by the market. I find that the equilibrium likelihood of a delay decreases when the reliability of regular and extended audit procedures improves and/or when the ex ante probability of fraud reduces. My result on the market reaction to a delay suggests that while a negative average reaction is intuitive and has been documented, the reaction can be positive for an individual firm. I derive a closed-form condition indicating when a positive reaction is possible. Specifically, a delay can be good news to the market when the ex ante probability of fraud, the imprecision of a red flag, and the effectiveness of extended audit procedures for detecting fraud are all high. The result is new in the literature. I also discuss the model's empirical implications with suggestions for regression equation specifications.
A no-load RF calorimeter

The described device can be used to measure the output of any dc powered RF source. No dummy load is required for the measurements. The device is, therefore, called the 'no-load calorimeter' (NLC). The NLC measures the power actually fed to the antenna or another useful load. It is believed that the NLC can compete successfully with directional coupler type systems in measuring the output of high-power RF sources.
Ground-based studies of emission-line variability: Recent results for NGC 5548 and future plans

Ever since emission-line variability was first detected in AGNs, it has been clearly understood that light-travel time effects in the broadline region (BLR) afford a tool for studying the structure of these spatially unresolved regions. However, only within the last few years has the observational problem become well defined in terms of the sampling rates and quality of data necessary to address the problem correctly. The amount of data required to extract structural information about the BLR from the continuum and emission-line light curves is so considerable that the most promising approach seemed to be to combine the observational efforts. The goal was to work together to produce a large, high-quality database which would then be released to individual investigators for more complete analysis. The cornerstone of this effort, was a joint NASA/ESA/SERC program to monitor the spectrum of NGC 5548 every four days with IUE from December 1988 through August 1988. A concurrent ground-based program was organized in an effort to enhance the scientific return on the project by extending the wavelength coverage and providing higher spectral resolution and signal to noise ratios than would be possible with IUE. It also turned out that the temporal resolution of the ground-based program was somewhat better than the temporal resolution of the IUE program, and the temporal baseline is longer and continues to grow. The database and initial results are presented by Peterson et al., (1991). The important results of the ground-based program are summarized, some additional applications of the existing data are described, and a few comments are made on what can be done in the future to expand on this work.
Sharp transition between extinction and propagation of reaction

with x e R. This equation has been extensively studied in mathematical, physical and other literature, starting with the pioneering works of Fisher [7] and Kol mogorov, Petrovskii, Piskunov [11]. In these papers (1.2) was used to describe the propagation of advantageous genes in a population. The main object of study in these and many subsequent works was the existence and stability of traveling fronts for (1.2) and (1.1). In recent years most of the results have been extended to in clude an advection term u VT in (1.1), and we refer to the reviews [2, 16] for an extensive bibliography. The above equations are used to model more than just population genetics phe nomena. When f(0) > 0 for 9 G (0,1), then / is a combustion non-linearity and (1.1)/(1.2) model an exothermic chemical reaction in an infinite tube with a zero heat-loss boundary, in particular, flame propagation in a premixed combustible gas without advection (see Zel'dovich and Frank-Kamenetskii [17]). In this setting T is the normalized temperature taking values in [0,1]. We note that (1.1) is usu ally obtained from a system involving both the temperature and the concentration of the reactants after the simplifying assumption of equal thermal and material diffusivities. A special case of positive /, used particularly in chemical and biological lit erature, is the KPP type with f"(6) < c < 0 [11]. In combustion models the non-linearity is often considered to be of Arrhenius type with slow reaction rates at low temperatures, modeled by f(0) = e~A/e(l ? 0). This case is often approximated
Exponents for B-stable ideals

Let G be a simple algebraic group over the complex numbers containing a Borel subgroup B. Given a B-stable ideal I in the nilradical of the Lie algebra of B, we define natural numbers m 1 , m 2 ,..., m k which we call ideal exponents. We then propose two conjectures where these exponents arise, proving these conjectures in types A n , B n , C n and some other types. When / = 0, we recover the usual exponents of G by Kostant (1959), and one of our conjectures reduces to a well-known factorization of the Poincare polynomial of the Weyl group. The other conjecture reduces to a well-known result of Arnold-Brieskorn on the factorization of the characteristic polynomial of the corresponding Coxeter hyperplane arrangement.
Adaptive website design using caching algorithms

Visitors enter a website through a variety of means, including web searches, links from other sites, and personal bookmarks. In some cases the first page loaded satisfies the visitor's needs and no additional navigation is necessary. In other cases, however, the visitor is better served by content located elsewhere on the site found by navigating links. If the path between a user's current location and his eventual goal is circuitous, then the user may never reach that goal or will have to exert considerable effort to reach it. By mining site access logs, we can draw conclusions of the form "users who load page p are likely to later load page q." If there is no direct link from p to q, then it is advantageous to provide one. The process of providing links to users' eventual goals while skipping over the in-between pages is called shortcutting. Existing algorithms for shortcutting require substantial offline training, which make them unable to adapt when access patterns change between training sessions. We present improved online algorithms for shortcut link selection that are based on a novel analogy drawn between shortcutting and caching. In the same way that cache algorithms predict which memory pages will be accessed in the future, our algorithms predict which web pages will be accessed in the future. Our algorithms are very efficient and are able to consider accesses over a long period of time, but give extra weight to recent accesses. Our experiments show significant improvement in the utility of shortcut links selected by our algorithm as compared to those selected by existing algorithms.
Abstracting probabilistic actions

This paper discusses the problem of abstracting conditional probabilistic actions. We identify two distinct types of abstraction: intra-action abstraction and inter-action abstraction. We define what it means for the abstraction of an action to be correct and then derive two methods of intra-action abstraction and two methods of inter-action abstraction which are correct according to this criterion. We illustrate the developed techniques by applying them to actions described with the temporal action representation used in the DRIPS decision-theoretic planner and we describe how the planner uses abstraction to reduce the complexity of planning.
Rupture directivity and slip distribution of the M 4.3 foreshock to the 1992 Joshua Tree earthquake, Southern California

Details of the M 4.3 foreshock to the Joshua Tree earthquake were studied using P waves recorded on the Southern California Seismic Network and the Anza network. Deconvolution, using an M 2.4 event as an empirical Green's function, corrected for complicated path and site effects in the seismograms and produced simple far-field displacement pulses that were inverted for a slip distribution. Both possible fault planes, north-south and east-west, for the focal mechanism were tested by a least-squares inversion procedure with a range of rupture velocities. The results showed that the foreshock ruptured the north-south plane, similar to the mainshock. The foreshock initiated a few hundred meters south of the mainshock and ruptured to the north, toward the mainshock hypocenter. The mainshock ( M 6.1) initiated near the northern edge of the foreshock rupture 2 hr later. The foreshock had a high stress drop (320 to 800 bars) and broke a small portion of the fault adjacent to the mainshock but was not able to immediately initiate the mainshock rupture.
A Supervisory Control Approach to Dynamic Cyber-Security

An analytical approach for a dynamic cyber-security problem that captures progressive attacks to a computer network is presented. We formulate the dynamic security problem from the defender’s point of view as a supervisory control problem with imperfect information, modeling the computer network’s operation by a discrete event system. We consider a min-max performance criterion and use dynamic programming to determine, within a restricted set of policies, an optimal policy for the defender. We study and interpret the behavior of this optimal policy as we vary certain parameters of the supervisory control problem.
Global (and local) analyticity for second order operators constructed from rigid vector fields on products of tori

We prove global analytic hypoellipticity on a product of tori for partial differential operators which are constructed as rigid (variable coefficient) quadratic polynomials in real vector fields satisfying the H6rmander condition and where P satisfies a "maximal" estimate. We also prove an analyticity result that is local in some variables and global in others for operators whose prototype is (0z ) 09X2 ) ( t1) (with analytic a(x), a(O) = 0, naturally, but not identically zero). The results, because of the flexibility of the methods, generalize recent work of Cordaro and Himonas in [4] and Himonas in [8] which showed that certain operators known not to be locally analytic hypoelliptic (those of Baouendi and Goulaouic [1], Hanges and Himonas [6], and Christ [3]) were globally analytic hypoelliptic on products of tori.
Singular R-Matrices and Drinfeld's Comultiplication

We compute the $$\mathcal{R}$$ -matrix which intertwines two dimensional evaluation representations with Drinfeld comultiplication for $${\text{U}}_q \left( {\widehat{{\text{sl}}}_{\text{2}} } \right)$$ . This $$\mathcal{R}$$ -matrix contains terms proportional to the δ-function. We construct the algebra $$A\left( \mathcal{R} \right)$$ generated by the elements of the matrices L±(z) with relations determined by $$\mathcal{R}$$ . In the category of highest-weight representations, there is a Hopf algebra isomorphism between $$A\left( \mathcal{R} \right)$$ and an extension $$\overline {\text{U}} _q \left( {\widehat{{\text{sl}}}_{\text{2}} } \right)$$ of Drinfeld's algebra.
The BGQ spectral sequence for noncommutative spaces

We prove an analogue of the Brown-Gersten-Quillen (BGQ) spectral sequence for noncommutative spaces. As applications, we consider this spectral sequence over affine and projective spaces associated to right fully bounded noetherian (FBN) rings.
Constraints on intelligence collaboration: The domestic dimension

(1993). Constraints on intelligence collaboration: The domestic dimension. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 85-99.
HI and Cosmology: What We Need To Know

There are three distinct regimes in which radio observations of the redshifted 21 cm line of HI can contribute directly to cosmology in unique ways. The regimes are naturally divided by redshift, from high to low, into: inflationary physics, the Dark Ages and reionization, and galaxy evolution and Dark Energy. Each measurement presents its own set of technical, theoretical, and observational challenges, making “what we need to know” not so much an astrophysical question at this early stage as a comprehensive experimental question. A wave of new pathfinder projects are exploring the fundamental aspects of what we need to know (and what we should expect to learn in the coming years) in order to achieve the goals of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and beyond.
World Bank Policy Research : A Historical Overview

The World Bank is a leading intellectual institution on development. It is a world leader in analytical studies in areas including poverty measurement, delivery of social services, impact evaluation, measurement of development outcomes, international trade and migration. It is also a leader in development data, including the Living Standard Measurement Surveys; the enterprise surveys, and the International Price Comparison Project. World Bank research is resolutely empirical and policy oriented. By both learning from past policies and operations and thinking critically about future policies, research plays a critical role in the formulation of policy advice to developing countries. This paper reviews the intellectual and institutional forces that have shaped research at the World Bank since the latter started lending to developing countries in the early 1950s. It provides an overview of the shifts in development economics that have influenced Bank research and briefly surveys the changes in research organization, structure and approach. The first section, after a short introduction, examines the shifts in positive and normative views about development during the past half century that have influenced Bank thinking. The Bank itself has been an active participant in the rise and fall of long-lived development dogmas about the nature of development; the most appropriate policies and actions for achieving it; and the respective roles of government and markets. The second section examines how the World Bank has adapted its organization to keep abreast of emerging issues and produce relevant policy research of good quality. On the one hand, the Bank has experienced several reorganizations that have affected the research unit(s) as well as its relationship with operational units. On the other hand, the Banks research units themselves have been reorganized at several junctures, leading to new priorities and new means of achieving them.
Knowledge diffusion and industry growth: the case of Japan’s early cotton spinning industry

The diffusion of technological knowledge is key to industry growth. But not all knowledge is created equal. I use a nanoeconomic approach to examine knowledge diffusion-based growth in the Meiji-era Japanese cotton spinning industry, which enjoyed remarkable success after a decade of initial failure. By tracing sources of technological knowledge to individual engineers, I find that successful technology diffusion required the right kind of human capital embodying and transmitting knowledge, and a competitive environment that rewarded talent while weeding out incompetence
New techniques for algorithm portfolio design

We present and evaluate new techniques for designing algorithm portfolios. In our view, the problem has both a scheduling aspect and a machine learning aspect. Prior work has largely addressed one of the two aspects in isolation. Building on recent work on the scheduling aspect of the problem, we present a technique that addresses both aspects simultaneously and has attractive theoretical guarantees. Experimentally, we show that this technique can be used to improve the performance of state-of-the-art algorithms for Boolean satisfiability, zero-one integer programming, and A.I. planning.
Beyond nash equilibrium: solution concepts for the 21st century

An often useful way to think of security is as a game between an adversary and the “good” participants in the protocol. Game theorists try to understand games in terms of solutionconcepts; essentially, this is a rule for predicting how the game will be played. The most commonly used solution concept in game theory is Nashequilibrium. Intuitively, a Nash equilibrium is a strategyprofile (a collection of strategies, one for each player in the game) such that no player can do better by deviating. The intuition behind Nash equilibrium is that it represent a possible steady state of play. It is a fixed point where each player holds correct beliefs about what other players are doing, and plays a best response to those beliefs. Part of what makes Nash equilibrium so attractive is that in games where each player has only finitely many possible deterministic strategies, and we allow mixed (i.e., randomized) strategies, there is guaranteed to be a Nash equilibrium [11] (this was, in fact, the key result of Nash's thesis).
Ideal membership in polynomial rings over the integers

We will reproduce a proof, using Hermann's classical method, in Section 3 below. Note that the computable character of this bound reduces the question of whether fo G (fi,..., fn) for given fj G F[X] to solving an (enormous) system of linear equations over F. Hence, in this way one obtains a (naive) algorithm for solving the ideal membership problem for F[X] (provided F is given in some explicitly computable manner). Later, Buchberger in his Ph.D. thesis (1965) introduced the important concept of a Gr?bner basis and gave an algorithm for deciding ideal membership for F[X] which is widely used today (see, e.g., [6]). The doubly exponential nature of ? above is essentially unavoidable, as a family of examples due to Mayr and Meyer [27] shows. In fact, they prove that ideal membership for Q[X] is exponential-space hard: the amount of space needed by any algorithm to decide ideal membership for Q[X] (or Z[X]) grows exponentially in the size of the input. If we restrict to/o,...,/n ofa special form, often dramatic
The application of neural networks to electric power grid simulation

A neural network approach is being developed to enable real time simulations for large scale dynamic system simulations of the electric power grid. If the grid is decomposed into several subsystems, neural networks can be utilized to simulate computationally intensive subsystems. An electrical generator sub-system was created in MATLAB using the SIMULINK interface. The SIMULINK model provided corresponding input/output pairs by varying parameters in sample transmission lines. A feed-forward backpropagation neural network was created from this data. Integration of the generator neural network into the SIMULINK interface was also performed. The original SIMULINK model requires about 342,000 iterations to simulate a 30 second simulation and consumes about 27 minutes of execution time. Conversely, the neural network based system is able to determine accurate solutions in less than 75 seconds and 300 iterations, which is more than an order of magnitude reduction in the execution time.
Fast Private Data Release Algorithms for Sparse Queries

We revisit the problem of accurately answering large classes of statistical queries while preserving differential privacy. Previous approaches to this problem have either been very general but have not had run-time polynomial in the size of the database, have applied only to very limited classes of queries, or have relaxed the notion of worst-case error guarantees. In this paper we consider the large class of sparse queries, which take non-zero values on only polynomially many universe elements. We give efficient query release algorithms for this class, in both the interactive and the non-interactive setting. Our algorithms also achieve better accuracy bounds than previous general techniques do when applied to sparse queries: our bounds are independent of the universe size. In fact, even the runtime of our interactive mechanism is independent of the universe size, and so can be implemented in the “infinite universe” model in which no finite universe need be specified by the data curator.
Looking for Population III stars with He ii line intensity mapping

Constraining the properties of Population III (Pop III) stars will be very challenging because they reside in small galaxies at high redshift which will be difficult to directly detect. In this paper, we suggest that intensity mapping may be a promising method to study Pop III stars. Intensity mapping is a technique proposed to measure large-scale fluctuations of galaxy line emission in three dimensions without resolving individual sources. This technique is well suited for observing many faint galaxies because it can measure their cumulative emission even if they cannot be directly detected. We focus on intensity mapping of He II recombination lines. These lines are much stronger in Pop III stars than Pop II stars because the harder spectra of Pop III stars are expected to produce many He II ionizing photons. Measuring the He II 1640 \AA{} intensity mapping signal, along with the signals from other lines such as Ly$\alpha$, H$\alpha$, and metal lines, could give constraints on the initial mass function (IMF) and star formation rate density (SFRD) of Pop III stars as a function of redshift. To demonstrate the feasibility of these observations, we estimate the strength of the Pop III He II 1640 \AA{} intensity mapping signal from $z=10-20$. We show that at $z\approx10$, the signal could be measured accurately by two different hypothetical future instruments, one which cross-correlates He II 1640 \AA{} with CO(1-0) line emission from galaxies and the other with 21 cm emission from the intergalactic medium (IGM).
Evolution of nanoporosity in dealloying

Dealloying is a common corrosion process during which an alloy is 'parted' by the selective dissolution of the most electrochemically active of its elements. This process results in the formation of a nanoporous sponge composed almost entirely of the more noble alloy constituents. Although considerable attention has been devoted to the morphological aspects of the dealloying process, its underlying physical mechanism has remained unclear. Here we propose a continuum model that is fully consistent with experiments and theoretical simulations of alloy dissolution, and demonstrate that nanoporosity in metals is due to an intrinsic dynamical pattern formation process. That is, pores form because the more noble atoms are chemically driven to aggregate into two-dimensional clusters by a phase separation process (spinodal decomposition) at the solid-electrolyte interface, and the surface area continuously increases owing to etching. Together, these processes evolve porosity with a characteristic length scale predicted by our continuum model. We expect that chemically tailored nanoporous gold made by dealloying Ag-Au should be suitable for sensor applications, particularly in a biomaterials context.
Robust Multiple Manifolds Structure Learning

We present a robust multiple manifolds structure learning (RMMSL) scheme to robustly estimate data structures under the multiple low intrinsic dimensional manifolds assumption. In the local learning stage, RMMSL efficiently estimates local tangent space by weighted low-rank matrix factorization. In the global learning stage, we propose a robust manifold clustering method based on local structure learning results. The proposed clustering method is designed to get the flattest manifolds clusters by introducing a novel curved-level similarity function. Our approach is evaluated and compared to state-of-the-art methods on synthetic data, handwritten digit images, human motion capture data and motorbike videos. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, which yields higher clustering accuracy, and produces promising results for challenging tasks of human motion segmentation and motion flow learning from videos.
Conformational and Chiroptical Properties of Alkyl Halides

1 Introduction 2 Properties of Atoms and Bonds 3 Conformational Properties of Alkyl Halides 4 Chiroptical Properties of Alkyl Halides Keywords: alkyl halide conformational and chiroptical properties; torsion potentials; less symmetric rotors; halogen at both terminii; alkyl halide chiroptical properties; carbon–chlorine bond distances; alkyl halide conformational properties; methyl group rotation barriers
Root invariants in the Adams spectral sequence

Let E be a ring spectrum for which the E-Adams spectral sequence converges. We define a variant of Mahowald's root invariant called the 'filtered root invariant' which takes values in the E 1 term of the E-Adams spectral sequence. The main theorems of this paper are concerned with when these filtered root invariants detect the actual root invariant, and explain a relationship between filtered root invariants and differentials and compositions in the E-Adams spectral sequence. These theorems are compared to some known computations of root invariants at the prime 2. We use the filtered root invariants to compute some low-dimensional root invariants of v 1 -periodic elements at the prime 3. We also compute the root invariants of some infinite v 1 -periodic families of elements at the prime 3.
Annuity Markets and Pension Reform

1. The demand side of the annuity market 2. The supply side of the annuity market 3. The regulation of annuity providers 4. Experience with individual account reforms 5. Individual liberty versus security in retirement, and the government's role 6. Policy issues with both public and private sector provision of mandatory annuities 7. Policy issues with privatization of the provision of annuities 8. Conclusions and recommendations Appendix 1. The economics and financing of annuities Appendix 2. Aging and its impact on pension systems Glossary.
Automatic transversality in contact homology I: regularity

This paper helps to clarify the status of cylindrical contact homology, a conjectured contact invariant introduced by Eliashberg, Givental, and Hofer in 2000. We explain how heuristic arguments fail to yield a well-defined homological invariant in the presence of multiply covered curves. We then introduce a large subclass of dynamically convex contact forms in dimension 3, termed dynamically separated, and demonstrate automatic transversality holds, thereby allowing us to define the desired chain complex. The Reeb orbits of dynamically separated contact forms satisfy a uniform growth condition on their Conley–Zehnder index under iteration, typically up to large action; see Definition 1.15. These contact forms arise naturally as perturbations of Morse–Bott contact forms such as those associated to $$S^1$$ -bundles. In subsequent work, we give a direct proof of invariance for this subclass and, when further proportionality holds between the index and action, powerful geometric computations in a wide variety of examples.
CONTEMPORANEOUS XMM-NEWTON INVESTIGATION OF A GIANT X-RAY FLARE AND QUIESCENT STATE FROM A COOL M-CLASS DWARF IN THE LOCAL CAVITY

We report the serendipitous detection of a giant X-ray flare from the source 2XMM J043527.2?144301 during an XMM-Newton observation of the high latitude molecular cloud MBM20. The source has not been previously studied at any wavelength. The X-ray flux increases by a factor of more than 52 from quiescent state to peak of flare. A 2MASS counterpart has been identified (2MASS J04352724?1443017), and near-infrared colors reveal a spectral type of M8-M8.5 and a distance of (67 ? 13)?pc, placing the source in front of MBM20. Spectral analysis and source luminosity are also consistent with this conclusion. The measured distance makes this object the most distant source (by about a factor of four) at this spectral type detected in X-rays. The X-ray flare was characterized by a peak X-ray luminosity of ~8.2 ? 1028?erg?s?1 and integrated X-ray energy of ~2.3 ? 1032?erg. The flare emission has been characterized with a two-temperature model with temperatures of ~10 and 46?MK (0.82 and 4.0?keV) and is dominated by the higher temperature component.
INTEGRABLE SYSTEMS AND SUPERSYMMETRIC GAUGE THEORY

Abstract After the work of Seiberg and Witten, it has been seen that the dynamics of N = 2 Yang-Mills theory is governed by a Riemann surface ϵ In particular, the integral of a special differential ωSW over (a subset of) the periods of ϵ gives the mass formula for BPS-saturated states. We show that, for each simple group G, the Riemann surface is a spectral curve of the periodic Toda lattice for the dual group, GV whose affine Dynkin diagram is the dual of that of G. This curve is not unique, rather it depends on the choice of a representation ϱ of GV; however, different choices of ϱ lead to equivalent constructions. The Seiberg-Witten differential ωSW is naturally expressed in Toda variables, and the N = 2Yang-Mills pre-potential is the free energy of a topological field theory defined by the data eg, π and ωSW.