cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
HALO RETENTION AND EVOLUTION OF COALESCING COMPACT BINARIES IN COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS OF STRUCTURE FORMATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

Merging compact binaries are the one source of gravitational radiation so far identified. Because short-period systems that will merge in less than a Hubble time have already been observed as binary pulsars, they are important both as gravitational wave sources for observatories such as LIGO, but also as progenitors for short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs). The fact that these systems must have large systemic velocities implies that by the time they merge, they will be far from their formation site. The locations of merging sites depend sensitively on the gravitational potential of the galaxy host, which until now has been assumed to be static. Here we refine such calculations to incorporate the temporal evolution of the host's gravitational potential as well as that of its nearby neighbors using cosmological simulations of structure formation. This results in merger site distributions that are more diffusively distributed with respect to their putative hosts, with locations extending out to distances of a few Mpc for lighter halos. The degree of mixing between neighboring compact binary populations computed in this way is severely enhanced in environments with a high number density of galaxies. We find that SGRB redshift estimates based solely on the nearest galaxy in projection can be very inaccurate, if progenitor systems inhere large systematic kicks at birth.
A VLBI Search for Radio Supernovae in Wolf-Rayet Galaxies

We have used the VLBI High-Sensitivity Array (VLBA with Very Large Array [VLA], Green Bank Telescope, and Arecibo) to search for young radio supernovae in three nearby Wolf-Rayet dwarf galaxies containing super star clusters and signs of extreme star formation in the last few million years. No milliarcsecond radio sources were detected in II Zw 40, He 2-10, or NGC 5253, implying that these galaxies contain few radio supernovae, despite the fact that they have at least some star formation going back to 10 million years ago. The upper limits of the source powers range from ~6 × 1017 to ~2 × 1018 W Hz-1 at 5 GHz, roughly 0.6-2.2 times the power of the Galactic supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. Comparison with the radio supernova population in Arp 299 implies that the current supernova rates in the three dwarf galaxies are below 10-2 yr-1, consistent with standard star formation models that predict supernova rates of 10-3 yr-1 or less in our targets. In He 2-10, the VLBI nondetection of a compact VLA source with a significant nonthermal component indicates that this source may be dominated by one or more supernova remnants with ages of a few hundred years or more, which are comparable to Cas A in power and size.
Sampling to learn words: Adults and children sample words that reduce referential ambiguity.

How do learners gather new information during word learning? One possibility is that learners selectively sample items that help them reduce uncertainty about new word meanings. In a series of cross-situational word learning tasks with adults and children, we manipulated the referential ambiguity of label-object pairs experienced during training and subsequently investigated which words participants chose to sample additional information about. In the first experiment, adult learners chose to receive additional training on object-label associations that reduce referential ambiguity during cross-situational word learning. This ambiguity-reduction strategy was related to improved test performance. In two subsequent experiments, we found that, at least in some contexts, children (3-8 years of age) show a similar preference to seek information about words experienced in ambiguous word learning situations. In Experiment 2, children did not preferentially select object-label associations that remained ambiguous during cross-situational word learning. However, in a third experiment that increased the relative ambiguity of two sets of novel object-label associations, we found evidence that children preferentially make selections that reduce ambiguity about novel word meanings. These results carry implications for understanding how children actively contribute to their own language development by seeking information that supports learning.
Inner Boundary Condition in Quasi-Lagrangian Simulations of Accretion Disks

In simulations of viscously evolving accretion disks, the inner boundary condition is particularly important. If treated incorrectly, it induces incorrect behavior very quickly, because the viscous time is shortest near the inner boundary. Recent work has determined the correct inner boundary in Eulerian simulations. But in quasi-Lagrangian simulations (e.g., SPH, moving mesh, and mesh-less), where the inner boundary is modeled by removing mass within a finite zone, the inner density profile typically becomes anomalously depleted. Here we show how the boundary condition should be applied in such codes, via a simple modification of the usual approach: when one removes mass, one must speed up the remaining material so that the disk's angular momentum is unchanged. We show with both 1D and 2D moving-mesh (AREPO) simulations that this scheme works as desired in viscously evolving disks. It produces no spurious density depletions and is independent of the mass removal rate, provided that the disk is adequately resolved and that the mass removal rate is not so extreme as to trigger instabilities. This "torque-free" mass removal technique permits the use of quasi-Lagrangian codes to simulate viscously evolving disks, while including a variety of additional effects. As an example, we apply our scheme to a 2D simulation of an accretion disk perturbed by a very massive planet, in which the disk is evolved to viscous steady state.
Bayesian Nonparametric Monotone Regression

In many applications there is interest in estimating the relation between a predictor and an outcome when the relation is known to be monotone or otherwise constrained due to the physical processes involved. We consider one such application‐inferring time‐resolved aerosol concentration from a low‐cost differential pressure sensor. The objective is to estimate a monotone function and make inference on the scaled first derivative of the function. We proposed Bayesian nonparametric monotone regression, which uses a Bernstein polynomial basis to construct the regression function and puts a Dirichlet process prior on the regression coefficients. The base measure of the Dirichlet process is a finite mixture of a mass point at zero and a truncated normal. This construction imposes monotonicity while clustering the basis functions. Clustering the basis functions reduces the parameter space and allows the estimated regression function to be linear. With the proposed approach we can make closed‐formed inference on the derivative of the estimated function including full quantification of uncertainty. In a simulation study the proposed method performs similar to other monotone regression approaches when the true function is wavy but performs better when the true function is linear. We apply the method to estimate time‐resolved aerosol concentration with a newly developed portable aerosol monitor. The R package bnmr is made available to implement the method.
Saturated absorption at nanowatt power levels using metastable xenon in a high-finesse optical cavity

Strong saturated absorption at nanowatt power levels has been demonstrated using metastable xenon in a high finesse optical cavity. The use of metastable xenon allows a high quality factor of Q = 2 × 108 to be achieved at relatively high atomic densities without any contamination or damage to the optical surfaces, which is often a problem when using high-density rubidium or other alkali atoms. This technique provides a relatively straightforward way to produce nonlinearities at the single-photon level with possible applications in quantum communications and computing.
NEGATIVE PARTICLE PLANAR AND AXIAL CHANNELING AND CHANNELING COLLIMATION

While information exists on high energy negative particle channeling there has been little study of the challenges of negative particle bending and channeling collimation. Partly this is because negative dechanneling lengths are relatively much shorter. Electrons are not particularly useful for investigating negative particle channeling effects because their material interactions are dominated by channeling radiation. Another important factor is that the current central challenge in channeling collimation is the proton-proton Large Hadron Collider (LHC) where both beams are positive. On the other hand in the future the collimation question might reemerge for electron-positron or muon colliders. Dechanneling lengths increase at higher energies so that part of the negative particle experimental challenge diminishes. In the article different approaches to determining negative dechanneling lengths are reviewed. The more complicated case for axial channeling is also discussed. Muon channeling as a tool to inve...
BILINEAR MAPS ON ARTINIAN MODULES

It is shown that if a bilinear map f : A × B → C of modules over a commutative ring k is nondegenerate (i.e. if no nonzero element of A annihilates all of B, and vice versa), and A and B are Artinian, then A and B are of finite length. Some consequences are noted. Counterexamples are given to some attempts to generalize the above result to balanced bilinear maps of bimodules over noncommutative rings, while the question is raised whether other such generalizations are true.
Systemic: A Testbed for Characterizing the Detection of Extrasolar Planets. II. Numerical Approaches to the Transit Timing Inverse Problem

Transit timing variations (TTVs)—deviations from strict periodicity between successive passages of a transiting planet—can be used to probe the structure and dynamics of multiple-planet systems. In this paper, we examine prospects for numerically solving the so-called inverse problem, the determination of the orbital elements of a perturbing body from the TTVs it induces. We assume that the planetary systems under examination have a limited number of Doppler velocity measurements and show that a more extensive radial velocity (RV) characterization with precision comparable to the semi-amplitude of the perturber may remove degeneracies in the solution. We examine several configurations of interest, including (1) a prototypical non-resonant system, modeled after HD 40307 b and c, which contains multiple super-Earth-mass planets, (2) a hypothetical system containing a transiting giant planet with a terrestrial-mass companion trapped in low-order mean motion resonance, and (3) the HAT-P-13 system, in which forced precession by an outer perturbing body that is well characterized by Doppler RV measurements can give insight into the interior structure of a perturbing planet, and for which the determination of mutual inclination between the transiting planet and its perturber is a key issue.
New Parallaxes of Galactic Cepheids from Spatially Scanning the Hubble Space Telescope: Implications for the Hubble Constant

We present new parallax measurements of 7 long-period (> 10 days) Milky Way Cepheids (SS CMa, XY Car, VY Car, VX Per, WZ Sgr, X Pup and S Vul) using astrometry from spatial scanning of WFC3 on HST. Observations were obtained at 6 month intervals over 4 years. The distances are 1.7--3.6 kpc with a mean precision of 45 microarcseconds and a best of 29 microarcseconds (SNR = 14). The accuracy of the parallaxes is demonstrated through independent analyses of >100 reference stars. This raises to 10 the number of long-period Cepheids with significant parallax measurements, 8 obtained from this program. We also present high-precision F555W, F814W, and F160W magnitudes of these Cepheids, allowing a direct, zeropoint-independent comparison to >1800 extragalactic Cepheids in the hosts of 19 SNeIa. This sample addresses two outstanding systematic uncertainties affecting prior comparisons of Milky Way and extragalactic Cepheids used to calibrate H_0: their dissimilarity of periods and photometric systems. Comparing the new parallaxes to their predicted values derived from reversing the distance ladder gives a ratio (or independent scale for H_0) of 1.037+/-0.036, consistent with no change and inconsistent at the 3.5 sigma level with a ratio of 0.91 needed to match the value predicted by Planck+LCDM. Using these data instead to augment the Riess et al. (2016) measurement of H_0 improves the precision to 2.3%, yielding 73.48+/-1.66 km/s/Mpc, and tension with Planck+LCDM increases to 3.7 sigma. The future combination of Gaia parallaxes and HST spatial scanning photometry of 50 Milky Way Cepheids can support a < 1% calibration of H_0.
Benchmarking the noise sensitivity of different parametric two-qubit gates in a single superconducting quantum computing platform

The authors propose both a exchange-type and controlled-phase gates with high fidelity on a superconducting qubit platform and analyze their susceptibility to various error sources.
Gauge-invariant localization of infinitely many gravitational energies from all possible auxiliary structures

The problem of finding a covariant expression for the distribution and conservation of gravitational energy-momentum dates to the 1910s. A suitably covariant infinite-component localization is displayed, reflecting Bergmann's realization that there are infinitely many conserved gravitational energy-momenta. Initially use is made of a flat background metric (or rather, all of them) or connection, because the desired gauge invariance properties are obvious. Partial gauge-fixing then yields an appropriate covariant quantity without any background metric or connection; one version is the collection of pseudotensors of a given type, such as the Einstein pseudotensor, in _every_ coordinate system. This solution to the gauge covariance problem is easily adapted to any pseudotensorial expression (Landau-Lifshitz, Goldberg, Papapetrou or the like) or to any tensorial expression built with a background metric or connection. Thus the specific functional form can be chosen on technical grounds such as relating to Noether's theorem and yielding expected values of conserved quantities in certain contexts and then rendered covariant using the procedure described here. The application to angular momentum localization is straightforward. Traditional objections to pseudotensors are based largely on the false assumption that there is only one gravitational energy rather than infinitely many.
Hall conductance and the statistics of flux insertions in gapped interacting lattice systems

We study charge transport for zero-temperature infinite-volume gapped lattice systems in two dimensions with short-range interactions. We show that the Hall conductance is locally computable and is the same for all systems that are in the same gapped phase. We provide a rigorous version of Laughlin’s flux-insertion argument, which shows that for short-range entangled systems, the Hall conductance is an integer multiple of e2/h. We show that the Hall conductance determines the statistics of flux insertions. For bosonic short-range entangled systems, this implies that the Hall conductance is an even multiple of e2/h. Finally, we adapt a proof of quantization of the Thouless charge pump to the case of infinite-volume gapped lattice systems in one dimension.
Solution of the Crow-Kimura and Eigen Models for Alphabets of Arbitrary Size by Schwinger Spin Coherent States

To represent the evolution of nucleic acid and protein sequence, we express the parallel and Eigen models for molecular evolution in terms of a functional integral representation with an h-letter alphabet, lifting the two-state, purine/pyrimidine assumption often made in quasi-species theory. For arbitrary h and a general mutation scheme, we obtain the solution of this model in terms of a maximum principle. Euler’s theorem for homogeneous functions is used to derive this ‘thermodynamic’ formulation of evolution. The general result for the parallel model reduces to known results for the purine/pyrimidine h=2 alphabet and the nucleic acid h=4 alphabet for the Kimura 3 ST mutation scheme. Examples are presented for the h=4 and h=20 cases. We also derive the maximum principle for the Eigen model for general h. The general result for the Eigen model reduces to a known result for h=2. Examples are presented for the nucleic acid h=4 and the amino acid h=20 alphabet. An error catastrophe phase transition occurs in these models, and the order of the phase transition changes from second to first order for smooth fitness functions when the alphabet size is increased beyond two letters to the generic case. As examples, we analyze the general analytic solution for sharp peak, linear, quadratic, and quartic fitness functions.
Interpretable Rule Discovery Through Bilevel Optimization of Split-Rules of Nonlinear Decision Trees for Classification Problems

For supervised classification problems involving design, control, and other practical purposes, users are not only interested in finding a highly accurate classifier but they also demand that the obtained classifier be easily interpretable. While the definition of interpretability of a classifier can vary from case to case, here, by a humanly interpretable classifier, we restrict it to be expressed in simplistic mathematical terms. As a novel approach, we represent a classifier as an assembly of simple mathematical rules using a nonlinear decision tree (NLDT). Each conditional (nonterminal) node of the tree represents a nonlinear mathematical rule (split-rule) involving features in order to partition the dataset in the given conditional node into two nonoverlapping subsets. This partitioning is intended to minimize the impurity of the resulting child nodes. By restricting the structure of the split-rule at each conditional node and depth of the decision tree, the interpretability of the classifier is ensured. The nonlinear split-rule at a given conditional node is obtained using an evolutionary bilevel optimization algorithm, in which while the upper level focuses on arriving at an interpretable structure of the split-rule, the lower level achieves the most appropriate weights (coefficients) of individual constituents of the rule to minimize the net impurity of two resulting child nodes. The performance of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated on a number of controlled test problems, existing benchmark problems, and industrial problems. Results on 2–500 feature problems are encouraging and open up further scopes of applying the proposed approach to more challenging and complex classification tasks.
REMIND Your Neural Network to Prevent Catastrophic Forgetting

People learn throughout life. However, incrementally updating conventional neural networks leads to catastrophic forgetting. A common remedy is replay, which is inspired by how the brain consolidates memory. Replay involves fine-tuning a network on a mixture of new and old instances. While there is neuroscientific evidence that the brain replays compressed memories, existing methods for convolutional networks replay raw images. Here, we propose REMIND, a brain-inspired approach that enables efficient replay with compressed representations. REMIND is trained in an online manner, meaning it learns one example at a time, which is closer to how humans learn. Under the same constraints, REMIND outperforms other methods for incremental class learning on the ImageNet ILSVRC-2012 dataset. We probe REMIND’s robustness to data ordering schemes known to induce catastrophic forgetting. We demonstrate REMIND’s generality by pioneering online learning for Visual Question Answering (VQA) (https://github.com/tyler-hayes/REMIND).
Subspace Clustering using Ensembles of $K$-Subspaces

Subspace clustering is the unsupervised grouping of points lying near a union of low-dimensional linear subspaces. Algorithms based directly on geometric properties of such data tend to either provide poor empirical performance, lack theoretical guarantees, or depend heavily on their initialization. We present a novel geometric approach to the subspace clustering problem that leverages ensembles of the K-subspaces (KSS) algorithm via the evidence accumulation clustering framework. Our algorithm, referred to as ensemble K-subspaces (EKSS), forms a co-association matrix whose (i,j)th entry is the number of times points i and j are clustered together by several runs of KSS with random initializations. We prove general recovery guarantees for any algorithm that forms an affinity matrix with entries close to a monotonic transformation of pairwise absolute inner products. We then show that a specific instance of EKSS results in an affinity matrix with entries of this form, and hence our proposed algorithm can provably recover subspaces under similar conditions to state-of-the-art algorithms. The finding is, to the best of our knowledge, the first recovery guarantee for evidence accumulation clustering and for KSS variants. We show on synthetic data that our method performs well in the traditionally challenging settings of subspaces with large intersection, subspaces with small principal angles, and noisy data. Finally, we evaluate our algorithm on six common benchmark datasets and show that unlike existing methods, EKSS achieves excellent empirical performance when there are both a small and large number of points per subspace.
Focal Cortical Surface Cooling is a Novel and Safe Method for Intraoperative Functional Brain Mapping.

Objective Electric cortical stimulation (ECS) has been the gold standard for intraoperative functional mapping in neurosurgery, yet it carries the risk of induced seizures. We assess the safety of focal cortical cooling (CC) as a potential alternative to ECS. Methods We reviewed 40 patients (13 with tumor and 27 with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy) who underwent intraoperative CC at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics (CC group), of whom 38 underwent ECS preceding CC. Intraoperative and postoperative seizure incidence, postoperative neurologic deficits, and new postoperative radiographic findings were collected to assess CC safety. Fifty-five patients who underwent ECS mapping without CC (ECS-alone group) were reviewed as a control cohort. Another 25 patients who underwent anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) without CC or ECS (no ECS/no CC-ATL group) were also reviewed to evaluate long-term effects of CC. Results Seventy-nine brain sites in the CC group were cooled, comprising inferior frontal gyrus (44%), precentral gyrus (39%), postcentral gyrus (6%), subcentral gyrus (4%), and superior temporal gyrus (6%). The incidence of intraoperative seizure(s) was 0% (CC group) and 3.6% (ECS-alone group). The incidence of seizure(s) within the first postoperative week did not significantly differ among CC (7.9%), ECS-alone (9.0%), and no ECS/no CC-ATL groups (12%). There was no significant difference in the incidence of postoperative radiographic change between CC (7.5%) and ECS-alone groups (5.5%). Long-term seizure outcome (Engel I+II) for mesial temporal epilepsy did not differ among CC (80%), ECS-alone (83.3%), and no ECS/no CC-ATL groups (83.3%). Conclusions CC when used as an intraoperative mapping technique is safe and may complement ECS.
Interdependent regulation of stereotyped and stochastic photoreceptor fates in the fly eye

Diversification of neuronal subtypes often requires stochastic gene regulatory mechanisms. How stochastically expressed transcription factors interact with other regulators in gene networks to specify cell fates is poorly understood. The random mosaic of color-detecting R7 photoreceptor subtypes in Drosophila is controlled by the stochastic on/off expression of the transcription factor Spineless (Ss). In SsON R7s, Ss induces expression of Rhodopsin 4 (Rh4), whereas in SsOFF R7s, the absence of Ss allows expression of Rhodopsin 3 (Rh3). Here, we find that the transcription factor Runt, which is initially expressed in all R7s, is sufficient to promote stochastic Ss expression. Later, as R7s develop, Ss negatively feeds back onto Runt to prevent repression of Rh4 and ensure proper fate specification. Together, stereotyped and stochastic regulatory inputs are integrated into feedforward and feedback mechanisms to control cell fate.
HVDC Surface Flashover in Compressed Air for Various Dielectrics

This study measures the voltage at which flashover occurs in compressed air for a variety of dielectric materials and lengths in a uniform field for DC voltages up to 100 kV. Statistical time lag is recorded and characterized, displaying a roughly exponential dependence on breakdown voltage. Of the materials tested, acrylic is observed to be the most resistant to flashover. These data are intended to facilitate the design of compressed-air insulated high voltage systems as an alternative to SF 6 insulated systems.
Learning Attribute-Based and Relationship-Based Access Control Policies with Unknown Values

Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) and Relationship-based access control (ReBAC) provide a high level of expressiveness and flexibility that promote security and information sharing, by allowing policies to be expressed in terms of attributes of and chains of relationships between entities. Algorithms for learning ABAC and ReBAC policies from legacy access control information have the potential to significantly reduce the cost of migration to ABAC or ReBAC.
Mobility-Aware Smart Charging of Electric Bus Fleets

We study the joint route assignment and charge scheduling problem of a transit system dispatcher operating a fleet of electric buses in order to maximize solar energy integration and reduce energy costs. Specifically, we consider a complex bus transit system with preexisting routes, limited charging infrastructure, limited number of electric buses, and time-varying electricity rates. We present a mixed integer linear program (MILP) that yields the minimal cost daily operation strategy for the fleet (i.e., route assignments and charging schedules using daily solar forecasts). We present numerical results from a real-world case study with Stanford University’s Marguerite Shuttle (a large-scale electric bus fleet) to demonstrate the validity of our solution and highlight the significant cost savings compared to the status quo.
Behavioral Competence Tests for Highly Automated Vehicles

It is necessary to evaluate the safety of highly automated vehicles (HAVs) rigorously before their deployment on public roads. This paper describes a procedure to conduct behavioral competence tests for HAVs using the unprotected left-turn as the illustrating scenario. We first describe a model-based method for test case generation. Subsequently, we propose two methods for synchronizing the motions of the primary other vehicle (POV) and the vehicle under test (VUT), one using fixed speed profile, the other using model predictive control (MPC). Finally, we implement the POV algorithm for the left-turn scenario on an experimental vehicle, and conduct field tests using both virtual and real VUT in the Mcity test facility.
Impact of Sharing Driving Attitude Information: A Quantitative Study on Lane Changing

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are expected to be an integral part of the next generation of transportation systems, where they will share the transportation network with human-driven vehicles during the transition period. In this work, we model the interactions between vehicles (two AVs or an AV and a human-driven vehicle) in a lane changing process by leveraging the Stackelberg game. We explicitly model driving attitudes for both vehicles involved in lane changing. We design five cases, in which the two vehicles have different levels of knowledge, and make different assumptions, about the driving attitude of the rival. We conduct theoretical analysis and simulations for different cases in two lane changing scenarios, namely changing lanes from a higher-speed lane to a lower-speed lane, and from a lower-speed lane to a higher-speed lane. We use four metrics (fuel consumption, discomfort, minimum distance gap and lane change success rate) to investigate how the performance of a single vehicle and that of the system will be influenced by the level of information sharing, and whether a vehicle trajectory optimized based on selfish criteria can provide system-level benefits.
Empirical Measure and Small Noise Asymptotics Under Large Deviation Scaling for Interacting Diffusions

Consider a collection of particles whose state evolution is described through a system of interacting diffusions in which each particle is driven by an independent individual source of noise and also by a small amount of noise that is common to all particles. The interaction between the particles is due to the common noise and also through the drift and diffusion coefficients that depend on the state empirical measure. We study large deviation behavior of the empirical measure process which is governed by two types of scaling, one corresponding to mean field asymptotics and the other to the Freidlin–Wentzell small noise asymptotics. Different levels of intensity of the small common noise lead to different types of large deviation behavior, and we provide a precise characterization of the various regimes. The rate functions can be interpreted as the value functions of certain stochastic control problems in which there are two types of controls; one of the controls is random and nonanticipative and arises from the aggregated contributions of the individual Brownian noises, whereas the second control is nonrandom and corresponds to the small common Brownian noise that impacts all particles. We also study large deviation behavior of interacting particle systems approximating various types of Feynman–Kac functionals. Proofs are based on stochastic control representations for exponential functionals of Brownian motions and on uniqueness results for weak solutions of stochastic differential equations associated with controlled nonlinear Markov processes
Droplet evaporation residue indicating SARS-COV-2 survivability on surfaces

We conducted a systematic investigation of droplet evaporation on different surfaces. We found that droplets formed even with distilled water do not disappear with evaporation but instead shrink to a residue of a few micrometers lasting over 24 h. The residue formation process differs across surfaces and humidity levels. Specifically, under 40% relative humidity, 80% of droplets form residues on plastic and uncoated and coated glass, while less than 20% form on stainless steel and none on copper. The formation of residues and their variability are explained by modeling the evaporation process considering the presence of nonvolatile solutes on substrates and substrate thermal conductivity. Such variability is consistent with the survivability of SARS-CoV-2 measured on these surfaces. We hypothesize that these long-lasting microscale residues can potentially insulate the virus against environmental changes, allowing them to survive and remain infectious for extended durations.
Disclosure Prominence and the Quality of Non-GAAP Earnings

The SEC prohibits the presentation of non‐GAAP measures before corresponding GAAP measures; however, a large proportion of non‐GAAP reporters present non‐GAAP EPS before GAAP EPS in their earnings announcements. This noncompliance raises questions about whether firms use prominence to highlight higher or lower quality non‐GAAP information. For firms reporting non‐GAAP EPS between 2003 and 2016, prominent non‐GAAP EPS is associated with higher quality non‐GAAP reporting. Further tests reveal that nonregulatory incentives, rather than regulatory costs, explain this relation. Specifically, prominence is associated with higher quality non‐GAAP reporting in settings where prominence is not regulated, investors ignore prominence when non‐GAAP reporting quality is lower, and the minority of firms using prominence to mislead exhibit characteristics associated with weaker investor monitoring. Overall, we provide evidence that regulatory noncompliance can reflect an intent to inform, and that most firms use prominence to highlight higher quality non‐GAAP information despite prohibitive regulation.
A Causation Approach to Criminal Omissions

This Article examines the scope of criminal laws that impose liability for failures to prevent a proscribed harm. Traditionally, courts have only imposed criminal sanctions upon individuals for their failure to act where the individual has a "legal duty" to prevent a specific harm. Professor Leavens rejects this conventional approach as being an artificial and ultimately unfair way to set the limits of omission liability. He asserts that in order for the courts validly to utilize any concept -- including "legal duty"-- to define the scope of omission liability, that concept must fairly reflect the underlying criminal prohibition; namely, that one may not cause particular harms. He argues that, at least in conventional omission analysis, "legal duty" is no more than an imperfect proxy for the law's requirement that there be an appropriate causal relationship between the omission and the harm before liability is imposed. Professor Leavens concludes by suggesting an alternative approach to imposing liability for omissions. He recommends eliminating the distinction between acts and omissions, claiming that it unnecessarily limits the courts' ability fully to evaluate the chain of causality between an actor's conduct and the prohibited harm. Instead, he suggests that courts consider the full course of the actor's conduct in light of the commonsense purposes of the criminal prohibition against causing certain harms. This approach, the Author states, will ensure that individuals have fair warning of the conduct expected of them and will avoid inconsistent applications of criminal liability.
The Empirics of Firm Heterogeneity and International Trade

This article reviews the empirical evidence on firm heterogeneity in international trade. A first wave of empirical findings from microdata on plants and firms proposed challenges for existing models of international trade and inspired the development of new theories emphasizing firm heterogeneity. Subsequent empirical research has examined additional predictions of these theories and explored other dimensions of the data not originally captured by them. These other dimensions include multiproduct firms, offshoring, intrafirm trade and firm export market dynamics.
Risk aversion as risk-neutral pessimism: A simple proof

Abstract It has long been understood that risk aversion reduces the likelihood of suit. This article offers a simple proof that risk aversion is observationally equivalent to risk-neutral pessimism by applying a change of measure to risk-neutral probabilities. The observational equivalence of risk aversion to risk-neutral pessimism may provide a useful framework for proving results in the study of several areas of interest, including (1) the role of risk-transfer mechanisms like contingency fees and litigation funding; (2) calls for prohibitions on, or judicial participation in, plea bargains; and (3) broader judicial review of the fairness, reasonableness, and adequacy of settlements in individual (that is, non-class) civil actions.
Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective

The paper studies how a person's concern for a future career may influence his or her incentives to put in effort or make decisions on the job. In the model, the person's productive abilities are revealed over time through observations of performance. There are no explicit output-contingent contracts, but since the wage in each period is based on expected output and expected output depends on assessed ability, an "implicit contract" links today's performance to future wages. An incentive problem arises from the person's ability and desire to influence the learning process, and therefore the wage process, by taking unobserved actions that affect today's performance. The fundamental incongruity in preferences is between the individual's concern for human capital returns and the firm's concern for financial returns. The two need be only weakly related. It is shown that career motives can be beneficial as well as detrimental, depending on how well the two kinds of capital returns are aligned. It is well understood by now that informational externalities may place special demands on the organization of economic exchange. Simple price-mediated markets will frequently fail in the presence of asymmetric information. In that case more elaborate contractual arrangements have to be used as substitutes for the price system. Lately, considerable effort has been devoted to the analysis of contracting under incomplete information with the objective to understand the range of economic institutions that emerge in response to the failure of the price system. The analysis of moral hazard has played a prominent role in this development.' Moral hazard problems arise when, for some reason or another, transacting parties cannot contract contingent on the delivery of the good. For instance, in buying labour services it may be that the amount of labour supplied is not directly observable, precluding a simple exchange of wage for labour. As a partial remedy to this problem, an imperfect, mutually observed signal about the supply of labour can be used as a proxy in the contract. Frequently, output is taken as such a proxy. The drawback is that output is often influenced by other factors than labour input, which induce undesirable risk into the contract. One is therefore faced with a tradeoff between allocating risk associated with incomplete observability and providing incentives for a proper supply of labour. Gaining insight into this tradeoff is important not only for understanding contracting in the small (e.g. managerial incentive schemes), but also because it is closely related to the fundamental tension between equity and efficiency in the society as a whole. While our understanding of moral hazard has advanced a lot in past years, it is clear that much work remains. An important question that has received little attention until
Tax reform and the market for tax-exempt debt

Abstract This paper provides clear evidence that the yield spread between long-term taxable and tax-exempt bonds responds to changes in expected individual tax rates, a finding that refutes theories of municipal bond pricing that focus exclusively on commercial banks or other financial intermediaries. The results support the conclusion that in the two decades prior to 1986, the municipal bond market was segmented, with different investor clienteles at short and long maturities. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 has affected this market by restricting tax benefits from tax-exempt bond investment by commercial banks, as well as by altering marginal tax rates. Individual investors are increasingly important suppliers of capital to states and localities, and their tax rates are likely to be the primary determinant of the yield spread between taxable and tax-exempt interest rates in the future.
Cooperative Search Advertising

The authors build a game-theoretic model to investigate how a manufacturer and its retailers should coordinate in search advertising and prescribe the manufacturer’s optimal cooperative search adve...
Which Treaties Reign Supreme? The Dormant Supremacy Clause Effect of Implemented Non-Self-Executing Treaties

The Supremacy Clause includes treaties in the list of supreme laws which state judges are bound to uphold against conflicting state laws. However, as the U.S. Supreme Court most recently affirmed in Medellin v. Texas, not all Article II treaties receive this Supremacy Clause effect immediately upon ratification. Some treaties, known as non-self-executing treaties, are domestically unenforceable by United States courts until passage of federal legislation implementing the treaty. Based on this distinction between nonself-executing and self-executing treaties, courts have disagreed as to whether an implemented non-self-executing treaty can preempt state law or whether only the implementing legislation can have such Supremacy Clause effect. This Note argues that the inclusion of the words “all Treaties” in the language of the Supremacy Clause is grounded in the decision that the federal government would dominate national foreign relations and in the necessity of reigning in conflicting state actions in that area. Due to this constitutional framework, once a non-self-executing treaty has been properly implemented, in some cases it can and should preempt state law. In short, implemented non-self-executing treaties should have Supremacy Clause effect where it is necessary to uphold United States foreign policy decisions and to stop states from placing the United States in breach of international obligations that have already been domestically executed.
Enlarging the Administrative Polity: Administrative Law and the Changing Definition of Pluralism, 1945-1970

This article argues that the development of administrative law in the 1950s and 1960s was shaped by changes in American political culture. This period saw a dramatic change in the way Americans believed their political system functioned. During the 1950s, American political culture was dominated by a belief in interest group pluralism. The state, it was argued, responded to battling interest groups that were capable of representing the interests of all Americans. Consequently, the United States had succeeded in creating a political system that many political theorists had once thought impossible: a functioning, representative democracy in a country that was large and heterogeneous. By the early 1960s, interest group pluralism had fallen into disrepute. Interest groups, it was argued, were unrepresentative institutions that corrupted the political process. Reformers demanded that the political process be made participatory, genuinely inclusive of and responsive to the people. This article suggests that this change altered administrative law. It demonstrates how contours of administrative law shifted to accommodate this new understanding of how government worked. Changes in standing doctrine, administrative due process, and judicial review of administrative action, as well as the passage of the Freedom of Information Act and Congress’ increasing use of citizen suit provisions are examples of how the shift to participatory conceptions of government affected administrative law.
Toeplitz Approximation to Empirical Correlation Matrix of Asset Returns: A Signal Processing Perspective

Empirical correlation matrix of asset returns has its intrinsic noise component. Eigen decomposition, also called Karhunen-Loeve Transform (KLT), is employed for noise filtering where an identified subset of eigenvalues replaced by zero. The filtered correlation matrix is utilized for calculation of portfolio risk and rebalancing. We introduce Toeplitz approximation to symmetric empirical correlation matrix by using auto-regressive order one, AR(1), signal model. It leads us to an analytical framework where the corresponding eigenvalues and eigenvectors are defined in closed forms. Moreover, we show that discrete cosine transform (DCT) with implementation advantages provides comparable performance as a good approximation to KLT for processing the empirical correlation matrix of a portfolio with highly correlated assets. The energy packing of both transforms degrade for lower values of correlation coefficient. The theoretical reasoning for such a performance is presented. It is concluded that the proposed framework has a potential use for quantitative finance applications.
Chevron Deference and Treaty Interpretation

One need not accept Hobbes's vision of international relations as a perpetual condition of warre to recognize that the rule of law does not always govern international affairs. The inevitable tension between foreign policy objectives and rule-of-law values in U.S. foreign affairs law has important implications for treaties, which play dual roles in the American constitutional system: Internationally, treaties represent sensitive political agreements with foreign nations having important implications for U.S. foreign policy. Domestically, treaties enacted pursuant to Article II become Supreme law on par with federal legislation. Thus, when interpreting treaties, domestic courts have sought to reconcile these two functions by defending the judicial prerogative to say what the law is while simultaneously affording executive treaty interpretations 'great weight.' A recent article by Professor Curtis Bradley defends judicial deference to executive treaty interpretation by analogizing this practice to the Supreme Court's two-part test for deference to administrative agency interpretations established in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. Accepting that some judicial deference in this realm may be both appropriate and desirable, this Comment nevertheless challenges Chevron's adaptability to judicial treaty interpretation in light of prevailing constitutional and customary international law. In place of Bradley's Chevron paradigm, this Comment offers an alternative analogy from administrative law--Skidmore deference--as a superior paradigm for conceptualizing judicial deference to executive treaty interpretation.
You're An Uncle Tom!: The Behavioral Regulation of Blacks On The Right Side of The Criminal Justice System

This Article concerns the laws created to govern the behavior of blacks carrying influence within the criminal justice system. Two periods are discussed. In the 1960s to the early 1970s, blacks devised social laws targeting the black cop. Blacks held an image of the white cop as an agent of brutality, racism and injustice. Black cops deemed no different violated the social law that demanded blacks neither abuse their fellow race members nor disregard oppressive conditions in the criminal justice system. Uncle Tom accusations were the common penalty. In the ‘80s and the ‘90s, new social laws were constructed to govern the new influx of blacks who occupied positions of increased and varied authority from within the justice system. The same law that governed the behavior of the black cop remained on the books and was applied to lawyers, judges and the like. Two new laws, though, emerged. First, there was often an expectation that the “black insider,” so to speak, should use their status to generate positive outcomes for other blacks. And second, we observe blacks involved in a specific altercation define the boundaries of blackness and make adherence to those boundaries a condition of racial loyalty. Those contravening these social laws were considered disloyal and frequently branded as Uncle Toms. In this Article, I argue that in response to legal and social subordination, blacks, at least those interested in the task, created a system of law to regulate behavior. The venture’s purpose was to encourage the racial solidarity crucial to contest legal subordination and societal ostracism. Especially critical components of these cultural laws were those laws drafted to govern the actions of blacks working or possessing influence from within the criminal justice system. This Article follows Uncle Tom in effort to trace the development, maintenance and enforcement of these social laws.
Do busy directors and CEOs shirk their responsibilities? Evidence from mergers and acquisitions

Abstract We examine the effects of busy directors on merger premiums and conclude that busy directors are not uniformly detrimental. We provide evidence that busy CEOs of acquirer firms are associated with lower premiums suggesting they do not shirk their responsibilities. Busy CEOs of target firms either accept lower premiums or do not play a significant role in determining the price, indicating they may either shirk or have hidden self-incentives. We find that when the majority of directors in target firms are busy, they negotiate better deals. The results show that busyness does not fully explain whether a CEO or director shirks responsibility. Additionally, our results confirm previous findings that the market reacts more negatively to high merger premiums.