cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Introducing Global Health Law.

This introductory column examines the development of the field, detailing the evolving scope and content of global health law. Beginning in the early history of international health law, national governments have long sought to address infectious disease threats through international regulations. This focus on international health law structured global governance for health in the aftermath of World War II, with the establishment of the World Health Organization (WHO) bringing states together to respond to common public health threats. Yet, WHO’s early efforts to stem the international spread of infectious diseases have proven too narrow to meet the expanding legal challenges faced by a globalizing world. This column ends by framing the new field of global health law and outlining the leading global health threats that will be explored in future columns, demonstrating the power of this emerging field in conceptualizing the legal response to global health.
Loss of vacuolar acidity results in iron-sulfur cluster defects and divergent homeostatic responses during aging in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The loss of vacuolar/lysosomal acidity is an early event during aging that has been linked to mitochondrial dysfunction. However, it is unclear how loss of vacuolar acidity results in age-related dysfunction. Through unbiased genetic screens, we determined that increased iron uptake can suppress the mitochondrial respiratory deficiency phenotype of yeast vma mutants, which have lost vacuolar acidity due to genetic disruption of the vacuolar ATPase proton pump. Yeast vma mutants exhibited nuclear localization of Aft1, which turns on the iron regulon in response to iron-sulfur cluster (ISC) deficiency. This led us to find that loss of vacuolar acidity with age in wild-type yeast causes ISC defects and a DNA damage response. Using microfluidics to investigate aging at the single-cell level, we observe grossly divergent trajectories of iron homeostasis within an isogenic and environmentally homogeneous population. One subpopulation of cells fails to mount the expected compensatory iron regulon gene expression program, and suffers progressively severe ISC deficiency with little to no activation of the iron regulon. In contrast, other cells show robust iron regulon activity with limited ISC deficiency, which allows extended passage and survival through a period of genomic instability during aging. These divergent trajectories suggest that iron regulation and ISC homeostasis represent a possible target for aging interventions.
Impact of the Plasmonic Metal Oxide-Induced Photocatalytic Processes on the Interaction of Quantum Dots with Metallic Nanoparticles

We study plasmonic control of photocatalytic properties of metal oxides and the ways they influence interaction of quantum dots with metallic nanostructures. For this, gold nanostructures are coate...
Wide Field Imager in Space for Dark Energy and Planets

A wide-field imager in space could make remarkable progress in two very different frontiers of astronomy: dark energy and extra-solar planets. Embedding such an imager on a much larger and more complicated DE mission would be a poor science-approach under any circumstances and is a prescription for disaster in the present fiscal climate. The 2010 Decadal Committee must not lead the lemming stampede that is driving toward a DE mega-mission, but should stand clearly in its path. 1. WMAP Model for DE: Faster, Cheaper, “Better” Dark energy (DE) is arguably the most important physics problem of the 21st century, with major implications for astronomy, fundamental physics, and perhaps even philosophy. Unfortunately, a variety of bureaucratic and sociological forces on several continents are now driving toward a dark energy mega-mission that would simultaneously attack this problem on 3 fronts: weak lensing (WL), baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and supernovae (SN). If adopted, this course of action will produce an utter disaster, delaying progress on a crucial frontier of science for many decades. While the science goals of these 3 experiments are complementary, the instrumentation is not, and hence the costs and engineering complexity are bound to spiral out of control. Moreover, we are entering an era of severe financial crisis when such exponentiating costs simply will not be tolerated. The siren call leading to this disaster is that only by obtaining agreement among 3 independent DE measurements, each with its own systematics, will it be possible to solve the DE problem. This is nonsense: DE will not be “solved” by this mega-mission, nor 2 or 3 of them. It will dominate 21st century physics. The missions currently conceived will at best offer some initial clues. WMAP offers a far better model for attacking such a scientifically compelling and technologically challenging problem: faster, cheaper, “better”. I have put “better” in quotes
Assignment Mechanisms Under Distributional Constraints

Assigning refugee families to different locations in a host country is a timely challenge due to the global refugee crisis. This paper studies how to assign refugees to different locations while ac...
Are You Being Asked ? Impacts of Respondent Selection on Measuring Employment

Accurate estimates of men's and women's employment are at the heart of understanding sources of productivity and economic growth and designing well-targeted, gender-sensitive labor policies. How respondent selection in household and labor force surveys affects these estimates is a key question, for which experimental evidence outside of high-income settings is limited. Leveraging two concurrent, national surveys in Malawi that differed in their approach to respondent selection, the analysis shows that compared to the best practice of privately interviewing adults about their employment outcomes, the common"business-as-usual"approach that permits the use of proxy respondents and non-private/group interviews leads to significant underreporting of employment across a range of wage- and self-employment activities, with stronger effects for women and for a longer (12-month) recall period. Under the business-as-usual approach, the main factors linked to under-reporting include household wealth, proxy reporting, and potential difficulties associated with interpreting/answering on questions regarding household non-farm enterprises.
Invariance of white noise for KdV on the line

We consider the Korteweg–de Vries equation with white noise initial data, posed on the whole real line, and prove the almost sure existence of solutions. Moreover, we show that the solutions obey the group property and follow a white noise law at all times, past or future. As an offshoot of our methods, we also obtain a new proof of the existence of solutions and the invariance of white noise measure in the torus setting.
Another chemolithotrophic metabolism missing in nature: sulfur comproportionation

Chemotrophic microorganisms gain energy for cellular functions by catalyzing oxidation-reduction (redox) reactions that are out of equilibrium. Calculations of the Gibbs energy ( ΔG r ) can identify whether a reaction is thermodynamically favourable and quantify the accompanying energy yield at the temperature, pressure and chemical composition in the system of interest. Based on carefully calculated values of ΔG r , we predict a novel microbial metabolism - sulfur comproportionation (3H2 S + SO42- + 2H+ ⇌ 4S0 + 4H2 O). We show that at elevated concentrations of sulfide and sulfate in acidic environments over a broad temperature range, this putative metabolism can be exergonic ( ΔG r <0), yielding ~30-50 kJ mol-1 . We suggest that this may be sufficient energy to support a chemolithotrophic metabolism currently missing from the literature. Other versions of this metabolism, comproportionation to thiosulfate (H2 S + SO42- ⇌ S2O32- + H2 O) and to sulfite (H2 S + 3 SO42- ⇌ 4 SO32- + 2H+ ), are only moderately exergonic or endergonic even at ideal geochemical conditions. Natural and impacted environments, including sulfidic karst systems, shallow-sea hydrothermal vents, sites of acid mine drainage, and acid-sulfate crater lakes, may be ideal hunting grounds for finding microbial sulfur comproportionators.
Effects of myomas and myomectomy on assisted reproductive technology outcomes.

Abstract Objective To determine the effects of fibroids, and their removal, on ART outcomes. Materials and methods Single institution retrospective cohort study of infertility patients who underwent myomectomy prior to either in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intrauterine insemination (IUI) between August 2006 and October 2015 (N = 49). Two separate control groups were established: 1) women with fibroids left in situ during the ART process (N = 76), and 2) women with no fibroids (N = 103). The study was powered to detect a difference between a 42%, 11%, and 25% live birth (LB) rate in the myomectomy, fibroids in situ, and no fibroids groups at P Results There were no significant differences in IVF cycle parameters between groups. Fibroids that were either submucosal or intramural with associated cavity distortion were significantly more likely to be removed. Amongst women undergoing IVF, the cumulative incidence of clinical pregnancy (CP) was significantly higher in the myomectomy group than the in situ or no fibroids groups. Women who underwent pre-IVF myomectomy also achieved CP more quickly. Cumulative LB rates did not differ significantly amongst women undergoing IVF. CP and LB rates per cycle were similar between myomectomy, in situ, and no fibroids groups (CP 49% vs. 37.5% vs. 54.4%, P = 0.21; LB 41.7% vs. 27.1% vs. 43.9%, P = 0.17). Discussion IVF outcomes appear to be improved by judicious removal of clinically significant fibroids. Further prospective studies are required to confirm the role of fibroids, and their removal, on ART outcomes before advocating for routine myomectomy amongst women with fibroids undergoing ART.
Verfeinerung der Kristallstruktur von Monticellit

Im Rahmen neuerer Untersuchungen an Mineralen der Olivingruppe wurde die Struktur von Monticellit (MgCaSiO4) neu bestimmt und verfeinert. Die im Jahre 1927 vonBrown undWest bestimmte Struktur lies sich im wesentlichen bestatigen. In 13 Verfeinerungszyklen, nach der Methode der kleinsten Quadrate auf einer Rechenanlage des Typs IBM 7094 durchgefuhrt, lies sich der R-Faktor von 0,439 auf 0,068 fur 345 hkl-Reflexe herabdrucken. Ein Vergleich der Atomabstande und Winkel mit bereits bekannten Daten des Olivins und Fayalits zeigte eine bemerkenswerte Ubereinstimmung.
Improved approximation bounds for the minimum constraint removal problem

Abstract In the minimum constraint removal problem, we are given a set of overlapping geometric objects as obstacles in the plane, and we want to find the minimum number of obstacles that must be removed to reach a target point t from the source point s by an obstacle-free path. The problem is known to be intractable and no sub-linear approximations are known even for simple obstacles such as rectangles and disks. The main result of our paper is an approximation framework that gives an O ( n α ( n ) ) -approximation for polygonal obstacles, where α ( n ) denotes the inverse Ackermann's function. For pseudodisks and rectilinear polygons, the same technique achieves an O ( n ) -approximation. The technique also gives O ( n ) -approximation for the minimum color path problem in graphs. We also present some inapproximability results for the geometric constraint removal problem.
Split Aperture Imaging for High Dynamic Range

Most imaging sensors have limited dynamic range and hence are sensitive to only a part of the illumination range present in a natural scene. The dynamic range can be improved by acquiring multiple images of the same scene under different exposure settings and then combining them. In this paper, we describe a camera design for simultaneously acquiring multiple images. The cross-section of the incoming beam from a scene point is partitioned into as many parts as the required number of images. This is done by splitting the aperture into multiple parts and directing the beam exiting from each in a different direction using an assembly of mirrors. A sensor is placed in the path of each beam and exposure of each sensor is controlled either by appropriately setting its exposure parameter, or by splitting the incoming beam unevenly. The resulting multiple exposure images are used to construct a high dynamic range image. We have implemented a video-rate camera based on this design and the results obtained are presented.
Leveraging vision and kinematics data to improve realism of biomechanic soft tissue simulation for robotic surgery

Surgical simulations play an increasingly important role in surgeon education and developing algorithms that enable robots to perform surgical subtasks. To model anatomy, finite element method (FEM) simulations have been held as the gold standard for calculating accurate soft tissue deformation. Unfortunately, their accuracy is highly dependent on the simulation parameters, which can be difficult to obtain. In this work, we investigate how live data acquired during any robotic endoscopic surgical procedure may be used to correct for inaccurate FEM simulation results. Since FEMs are calculated from initial parameters and cannot directly incorporate observations, we propose to add a correction factor that accounts for the discrepancy between simulation and observations. We train a network to predict this correction factor. To evaluate our method, we use an open-source da Vinci Surgical System to probe a soft tissue phantom and replay the interaction in simulation. We train the network to correct for the difference between the predicted mesh position and the measured point cloud. This results in 15–30% improvement in the mean distance, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach across a large range of simulation parameters. We show a first step towards a framework that synergistically combines the benefits of model-based simulation and real-time observations. It corrects discrepancies between simulation and the scene that results from inaccurate modeling parameters. This can provide a more accurate simulation environment for surgeons and better data with which to train algorithms.
Spatially regularized active diffusion learning for high-dimensional images

Abstract An active learning method for the classification of high-dimensional images is proposed in which spatially-regularized nonlinear diffusion geometry is used to characterize cluster cores. The proposed method samples from estimated cluster cores in order to generate a small but potent set of training labels which propagate to the remainder of the dataset via the underlying diffusion process. By spatially regularizing the rich, high-dimensional spectral information of the image to efficiently estimate the most significant and influential points in the data, our approach avoids redundancy in the training dataset. This allows it to produce high-accuracy labelings with a very small number of training labels. The proposed algorithm admits an efficient numerical implementation that scales essentially linearly in the number of data points under a suitable data model and enjoys state-of-the-art performance on real hyperspectral images.
Policy with Dispersed Information

Information regarding economic fundamentals is widely dispersed in society, is only imperfectly aggregated through prices or other indicators of aggregate activity, and cannot be centralized by the government or any other institution. In this paper we seek to identify policies that can improve the decentralized use of such dispersed information without requiring the government to observe this information. We show that this can be achieved by appropriately designing the contingency of taxation on ex post public information regarding the realized fundamentals and aggregate activity. When information is common (as in the Ramsey literature) or when agents have private information only about idiosyncratic shocks (as in the Mirrlees literature), the contingency on fundamentals alone suffices for efficiency. When instead agents have private information about aggregate shocks, the contingency on aggregate activity is crucial. An appropriate combination of the two contingencies permits the government to: (i) dampen the impact of noise and hence reduce non-fundamental volatility, without also dampening the impact of fundamentals; (ii) induce agents to internalize informational externalities, and hence improve the speed of social learning; (iii) restore a certain form of constrained efficiency in the decentralized use of information; and (iv) guarantee that welfare increases with the provision of any additional information. (JEL: C72, D62, D82)
Imputation methods for addressing missing data in short-term monitoring of air pollutants.

Abstract Monitoring of environmental contaminants is a critical part of exposure sciences research and public health practice. Missing data are often encountered when performing short-term monitoring (
Algorithms for automatic ranking of participants and tasks in an anonymized contest

Abstract We introduce a new set of problems based on the Chain Editing problem. In our version of Chain Editing, we are given a set of participants and a set of tasks that every participant attempts. For each participant-task pair, we know whether the participant has succeeded at the task or not. We assume that participants vary in their ability to solve tasks, and that tasks vary in their difficulty to be solved. In an ideal world, stronger participants should succeed at a superset of tasks that weaker participants succeed at. Similarly, easier tasks should be completed successfully by a superset of participants who succeed at harder tasks. In reality, it can happen that a stronger participant fails at a task that a weaker participant succeeds at. Our goal is to find a perfect nesting of the participant-task relations by flipping a minimum number of participant-task relations, implying such a “nearest perfect ordering” to be the one that is closest to the truth of participant strengths and task difficulties. Many variants of the problem are known to be NP-hard. We propose six natural k-near versions of the Chain Editing problem and classify their complexity. The input to a k-near Chain Editing problem includes an initial ordering of the participants (or tasks) that the final solution is required to be “close” to, by moving each participant (or task) at most k positions from the initial ordering. We obtain surprising results on the complexity of the six k-near problems: Five of the problems are polynomial-time solvable using dynamic programming, but one of them is NP-hard.
A Phase-Selecting Digital Phase-Locked Loop With Bandwidth Tracking in 65-nm CMOS Technology

This paper presents a digital phase-locked loop (DPLL) used for GHz clock generation in large digital systems with > 100 × range of operating frequency. The DPLL uses phase selection and interpolation as the digital-controlled oscillator (DCO). A bandwidth-tracking technique that uses replica delay cells in the DCO and the phase detector (PD) is introduced to enable stable operation across the frequency range without calibration. Measurement results show that the DPLL achieves an output frequency up to 1.8 GHz in a 65-nm CMOS technology. Nearly constant damping factor and the tracking of the loop bandwidth to reference frequency are shown with a dynamic sweep of 8 × reference frequency range (from 28 MHz to 225 MHz with core frequency of 3.6 GHz).
Leadership Development Workshops for Department Chairs

1 Joyce W. Yen, University of Washington, College of Engineering, 367 Loew Hall, Box 352180, Seattle, WA, 98195-2180, joyceyen@u.washington.edu 2 Sheila Edwards Lange, University of Washington, Center for Workforce Development, 101 Wilson Annex, Box 352130, Seattle WA 98195-2135, sredward@u.washington.edu 3 Denice D. Denton, University of Washington, College of Engineering, 371 Loew Hall, Box 352180, Seattle, WA 98195-2180, denton@engr.washington.edu 4 Eve A. Riskin, University of Washington, Electrical Engineering, 230 EE Bldg., Box 352500, Seattle, WA 98195-2500, riskin@ee.washington.edu Abstract ⎯ The University of Washington’s National Science Foundation-funded ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change (CIC) envisions a campus where all science, engineering, and mathematics (SEM) faculty are thriving, properly mentored, and achieving his or her maximum potential. A key focus of the CIC is leadership development. Each academic quarter, the CIC hosts a halfday leadership workshop for department chairs, deans, and emerging leaders. These workshops serve as a forum for cross-college networking and professional development for chairs and emerging leaders. Prior to this program, department chairs received little or no professional development beyond their initial orientation to the department chair position. Evaluations of these workshops have been uniformly high, and department chairs have stated these workshops are the “boot camp” they never got. This paper will provide details about the leadership workshops; offer guidelines for successfully implementing such a program; and give an update on efforts to institutionalize this program across campus.
Chapter 1 – Texture, Viscosity, and Food

Publisher Summary The four principal quality factors in food include its appearance, flavor, texture, and nutrition. Appearance, flavor, and texture are the “sensory acceptability factors” because they are perceived by the senses directly. Nutrition is a quality factor that is not perceived by the senses. The sensory acceptability factors of foods are extremely important because people obtain great enjoyment from eating their food. The importance of texture in the overall acceptability of foods varies widely, depending upon the type of food. Achieving the desired textural quality of food has important economic considerations. The importance of texture, relative to other quality factors of foods, may be affected by culture. The chapter describes the vocabulary of texture of food, as it is very important, especially in sensory testing and consumer verbalizations of quality. It is also reported that time of day exerted a strong influence on textural awareness and flavor. The chapter also presents the difference between texture and viscosity.
Simulating cilia-driven mixing and transport in complex geometries

An efficient hybrid numerical method for ciliary flow is proposed, combining the boundary integral method and the method of regularized stokeslets. It is capable of simulating ciliary flows and particle transport in complex 2D confined geometries. The effects of metachronal waves and geometries on ciliary transport as well as fluid mixing are analyzed. Size effect of submerged rigid particles inside the confined geometries is also studied.
Dynamical invariants of monomial correspondences

We focus on various dynamical invariants associated to monomial correspondences on toric varieties, using algebraic and arithmetic geometry. We find a formula for their dynamical degrees, relate the exponential growth of the degree sequences to a strict log-concavity condition on the dynamical degrees and compute the asymptotic rate of the growth of heights of points of such correspondences.
Orally Bioavailable Endochin-like Quinolone Carbonate Ester Prodrug Reduces Toxoplasma gondii Brain Cysts

Toxoplasmosis is a potentially fatal infection for immunocompromised people and the developing fetus. Current medicines for toxoplasmosis have high rates of adverse effects that interfere with therapeutic and prophylactic regimens. Endochin-like quinolones (ELQs) are potent inhibitors of Toxoplasma gondii proliferation in vitro and in animal models of acute and latent infection. ELQ-316, in particular, was found to be effective orally against acute toxoplasmosis in mice and highly selective for the T. gondii cytochrome b over the human cytochrome b Despite oral efficacy, the high crystallinity of ELQ-316 limits oral absorption, plasma concentrations and therapeutic potential. A carbonate ester prodrug of ELQ-316, ELQ-334, was created to decrease crystallinity and increase oral bioavailability, which resulted in a six-fold increase in both C max (maximum plasma concentration) and AUC (area under the curve) of ELQ-316. The increased bioavailability of ELQ-316, when administered as ELQ-334, resulted in greater efficacy than the equivalent dose of ELQ-316 against acute toxoplasmosis and had similar efficacy against latent toxoplasmosis compared to intraperitoneal administration of ELQ-316. Carbonate ester prodrugs are a successful strategy to overcome the limited oral bioavailability of ELQs for the treatment of toxoplasmosis.
Learning mixtures of linear regressions in subexponential time via Fourier moments

We consider the problem of learning a mixture of linear regressions (MLRs). An MLR is specified by k nonnegative mixing weights p 1, …, p k summing to 1, and k unknown regressors w 1,...,w k ∈ℝ d . A sample from the MLR is drawn by sampling i with probability p i , then outputting (x, y) where y = ⟨ x, w i ⟩ + η, where η∼(0,ς2) for noise rate ς. Mixtures of linear regressions are a popular generative model and have been studied extensively in machine learning and theoretical computer science. However, all previous algorithms for learning the parameters of an MLR require running time and sample complexity scaling exponentially with k. In this paper, we give the first algorithm for learning an MLR that runs in time which is sub-exponential in k. Specifically, we give an algorithm which runs in time O(d)·exp(O(√k)) and outputs the parameters of the MLR to high accuracy, even in the presence of nontrivial regression noise. We demonstrate a new method that we call “Fourier moment descent,” which uses univariate density estimation and low-degree moments of the Fourier transform of suitable univariate projections of the MLR to iteratively refine our estimate of the parameters. To the best of our knowledge, these techniques have never been used in the context of high dimensional distribution learning, and may be of independent interest. We also show that our techniques can be used to give a sub-exponential time algorithm for a natural hard instance of the subspace clustering problem, which we call learning mixtures of hyperplanes.
Load-Balancing Parallel Relational Algebra

Relational algebra (RA) comprises a basis of important operations, sufficient to power state-of-the-art reasoning engines for Datalog and related logic-programming languages. Parallel RA implementations can thus play a significant role in extracting parallelism inherent in a wide variety of analytic problems. In general, bottom-up logical inference can be implemented as fixed-point iteration over RA kernels; relations dynamically accumulate new tuples of information according to a set of rules until no new tuples can be discovered from previously inferred tuples and relevant rules (RA kernels). While this strategy has been quite successful in single-node contexts, it poses unique challenges when distributed over many-node, networked clusters—especially regarding how the work-load is balanced across available compute resources.
New 25-point stencils with optimal accuracy for 2-D heat transfer problems. Comparison with the quadratic isogeometric elements

Abstract A new approach for the increase in the order of accuracy of high order elements used for the time dependent heat equation and for the time independent Poisson equation has been suggested on uniform square and rectangular meshes. It is based on the optimization of the coefficients of the corresponding discrete stencil equation with respect to the local truncation error. By a simple modification of the coefficients of 25-point stencils, the new approach exceeds the accuracy of the quadratic isogeometric elements by four orders for the heat equation and by twelve orders for the Poisson equation. Despite the significant increase in accuracy, the computational costs of the new technique are the same as those for the conventional quadratic isogeometric elements on a given mesh. The numerical examples are in a good agreement with the theoretical results for the new approach and also show that the new approach is much more accurate than the conventional isogeometric elements at the same number of degrees of freedom. Hybrid methods that combine the new stencils with the conventional isogeometric and finite elements and can be applied to irregular domains are also presented.
Numerical studies of multiple-encounter shock drift acceleration

Test particle simulation is performed to examine the mechanism previously proposed by Chiueh for particle acceleration by a nearly perpendicular shock where only downstream MHD turbulence is present. A nonnegligible fraction of low-energy particles is observed gaining energy by more than three orders of magnitude in a few hundred cyclotron periods. Criteria for effective acceleration given previously are examined and confirmed. The numerical results suggest that in the nonrelativistic energy range, a power-law particle energy spectrum, with the power index determined by the degree to which the criteria are satisfied, may form.
Transition of podosomes into zipper-like structures in macrophage-derived multinucleated giant cells.

Macrophage fusion resulting in the formation of multinucleated giant cells (MGCs) is a multistage process that requires many adhesion-dependent steps and involves the rearrangement of the actin cytoskeleton. The diversity of actin-based structures and their role in macrophage fusion is poorly understood. In this study, we revealed hitherto unrecognized actin-based zipper-like structures (ZLSs) that arise between MGCs formed on the surface of implanted biomaterials. We established an in vitro model for the induction of these structures in mouse macrophages undergoing IL-4-mediated fusion. Using this model, we show that over time MGCs develop cell-cell contacts containing ZLSs. Live-cell imaging using macrophages isolated from mRFP- or GFP-Lifeact mice demonstrated that ZLSs are dynamic formations undergoing continuous assembly and disassembly and that podosomes are precursors of these structures. Immunostaining experiments showed that vinculin, talin, integrin αMβ2, and other components of podosomes are present in ZLSs. Macrophages deficient in WASp or Cdc42, two key molecules involved in actin core organization in podosomes, as well as cells treated with the inhibitors of the Arp2/3 complex failed to form ZLSs. Furthermore, E-cadherin and nectin-2 were found between adjoining membranes, suggesting that the transition of podosomes into ZLSs is induced by bridging plasma membranes by junctional proteins. [Media: see text] [Media: see text] [Media: see text] [Media: see text].
Boolean functions with multiplicative complexity 3 and 4

Multiplicative complexity (MC) is defined as the minimum number of AND gates required to implement a function with a circuit over the basis (AND, XOR, NOT). Boolean functions with MC 1 and 2 have been characterized in Fisher and Peralta (2002), and Find et al. (IJICoT 4(4), 222–236, 2017), respectively. In this work, we identify the affine equivalence classes for functions with MC 3 and 4. In order to achieve this, we utilize the notion of the dimension dim(f) of a Boolean function in relation to its linearity dimension, and provide a new lower bound suggesting that the multiplicative complexity of f is at least ⌈dim(f)/2⌉. For MC 3, this implies that there are no equivalence classes other than those 24 identified in Calik et al. (2018). Using the techniques from Calik et al. and the new relation between the dimension and MC, we identify all 1277 equivalence classes having MC 4. We also provide a closed formula for the number of n-variable functions with MC 3 and 4. These results allow us to construct AND-optimal circuits for Boolean functions that have MC 4 or less, independent of the number of variables they are defined on.
Disability Type, Financial Capability, and Risky Asset Holding:

Risky financial asset holding is considered an indicator of financial well-being because risky asset holders are likely to accumulate more wealth than nonholders. Like the general population in the...
A model of investment under uncertainty with time to build, market incompleteness and risk aversion

Abstract In this paper I develop a theoretical framework of irreversible investment under uncertainty in which there is time to build (TTB). The novel aspects of this framework, compared with TTB models in the extant literature, are that the market is incomplete in that not all the uncertainty associated with investing can be diversified away by trading an appropriate spanning asset, and the decision-maker, who acts in the interest of an organisation, is risk averse. I show that models of investment under uncertainty with a TTB, and models of investment under uncertainty with market incompleteness and risk aversion, ought not to be mutually exclusive as they have been in research to date because the recognised results of market incompleteness and risk aversion on the optimal investment strategy are challenged when we incorporate a TTB feature. Conversely, there are also implications on the effect of a TTB when we incorporate market incompleteness and risk aversion. The framework I develop in this paper provides a robust and parsimonious means of facilitating this.
Persistence of Excitation in Uniformly Embedded Reproducing Kernel Hilbert (RKH) Spaces

This paper introduces two new notions of persistence of excitation (PE) in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS) that can be used to establish convergence of function estimates generated by the RKHS embedding method. The two PE conditions are proven to be equivalent provided a type of uniform equicontinuity holds for the composition operator g i→ g o x, where t i→ x(t) is the unknown state trajectory. The paper then establishes sufficient conditions for the uniform asymptotic stability (UAS) of the error equations of RKHS embedding in term of these PE conditions. The proof is self-contained and treats the general case. Numerical examples are presented that illustrate qualitatively the convergence of the RKHS embedding method where function estimates converge over the positive limit set, a smooth, regularly embedded submanifold of the state space.
Model-Based Reinforcement Learning with a Generative Model is Minimax Optimal

This work considers the sample and computational complexity of obtaining an $\eps$-optimal policy in a discounted Markov Decision Process (MDP), given only access to a generative model. In this model, the learner accesses the underlying transition model via a sampling oracle that provides a sample of the next state, when given any state-action pair as input. We are interested in a basic and\nunresolved question in model based planning: is this na\"ive ``plug-in'' approach --- where we build the maximum likelihood estimate of the transition model in the MDP from observations and then find an optimal policy in this empirical MDP --- non-asymptotically, minimax optimal? Our main result answers this question positively. With regards to computation, our result provides a simpler\napproach towards minimax optimal planning: in comparison to prior model-free results, we show that using \emph{any} high accuracy, black-box planning oracle in the empirical model suffices to obtain the minimax error rate. The key proof technique uses a leave-one-out analysis, in a novel ``absorbing MDP'' construction, to decouple the statistical dependency issues that arise in the analysis of model-based planning; this construction may be helpful more generally.
UNIFORM KAZHDAN CONSTANTS AND PARADOXES OF THE AFFINE PLANE

Let G = SL(2, ℤ) ⋉ ℤ2 and H = SL(2, ℤ). We prove that the action G ↷ ℝ2 is uniformly non-amenable and that the quasi-regular representation of G on l2(G/H) has a uniform spectral gap. Both results are a consequence of a uniform quantitative form of ping-pong for affine transformations, which we establish here.
Nonlocal complex potential theory of dissociative electron attachment: Inclusion of two vibrational modes

The process of dissociative electron attachment (DEA) to molecules with several vibrational degrees of freedom is usually treated in the approximation of the local potential for the description of the nuclear motion. We develop the nonlocal complex potential theory to treat the dissociation dynamics when there is more than one vibrational mode in the neutral molecule. We demonstrate the application of the multimode nonlocal theory to a generic molecule of the type $\mathrm{C}{Y}_{3}X$, where Y denotes the H or F atom and X denotes the halogen atom, with the inclusion of symmetric C--X stretch and $\mathrm{C}{Y}_{3}$ deform (``umbrella'') vibrational modes. We present results for the dependence of DEA cross sections on the electron energy and vibrational energy for the ${\mathrm{CF}}_{3}\mathrm{Cl}$ molecule in the two-mode approximation. The 1.5 eV peak in the DEA cross section is well described in the one-mode approximation. However, inclusion of additional modes is required to explain the experimentally observed low-energy peak in the DEA cross section at the vibrational temperature ${T}_{v}=800$ K.
Unification of aggregate growth models by emergence from cellular and intracellular mechanisms

Multicellular aggregate growth is regulated by nutrient availability and removal of metabolites, but the specifics of growth dynamics are dependent on cell type and environment. Classical models of...
Resolution Limits of Non-Adaptive Querying for Noisy 20 Questions Estimation

We study fundamental limits of estimation accuracy for the noisy 20 questions problem with measurement-dependent noise and introduce optimal non-adaptive procedures that achieve these limits. The minimal achievable resolution is defined as the absolute difference between the estimated and the true values of the target random variable, given a finite number of queries constrained by the excess-resolution probability. Inspired by the relationship between the 20 questions problem and the channel coding problem, we derive non-asymptotic bounds on the minimal achievable resolution. Furthermore, applying the Berry–Esseen theorem to our non-asymptotic bounds, we obtain a second-order asymptotic approximation to finite blocklength performance, specifically the achievable resolution of optimal non-adaptive query procedures with a finite number of queries subject to the excess-resolution probability constraint.
Antacids for the Sea? Artificial Ocean Alkalinization and Climate Change

There is increasing urgency for large-scale deployment of carbon-removal approaches to help avoid passing critical climatic thresholds. Given the severe risks of many terrestrial methods at extremely large scales, there is a compelling need to also assess the potential of marine negative-emissions technologies, such as artificial ocean alkalinization.
Learning Electron Transport Chain Process in Photosynthesis Using Video and Serious Game

This research investigates students’ learning about the electron transport chain (ETC) process in photosynthesis by watching a video followed by playing a serious board game -Electron Chute- that m...
Linear algebraic groups with good reduction

This article is a survey of conjectures and results on reductive algebraic groups having good reduction at a suitable set of discrete valuations of the base field. Until recently, this subject has received relatively little attention, but now it appears to be developing into one of the central topics in the emerging arithmetic theory of (linear) algebraic groups over higher-dimensional fields. The focus of this article is on the Main Conjecture (Conjecture 5.7) asserting the finiteness of the number of isomorphism classes of forms of a given reductive group over a finitely generated field that have good reduction at a divisorial set of places of the field. Various connections between this conjecture and other problems in the theory of algebraic groups (such as the analysis of the global-to-local map in Galois cohomology and the genus problem) are discussed in detail. The article also includes a brief review of the required facts about discrete valuations, forms of algebraic groups, and Galois cohomology.
A Framework for Secure Data Management for Medical Devices

Data is a valuable currency that our modern world thrives upon. Security and privacy for data are becoming critical concerns, especially in healthcare where sensitive information is exchanged amongst the healthcare stakeholders. The protection of medical data is considerably more apparent and significant with guidelines such as HIPAA and FDA regulations in place. In this paper, we propose a methodology to ensure data security throughout the medical device life cycle, ranging from data initiation to data processing and data transmission. The goal is to facilitate communication between patients and doctors in a fast and secure manner. We propose an Adaptive Mode Selection (AMS) scheme to investigate security threats amongst system functions. A Priority-Queue Based (PQB) process is established to improve data management and data isolation within medical devices. Further, we propose an Adaptive Protocol Selection (APS) to enhance data transmission over the most appropriate communication protocol based on risk values identified by AMS. The combination of AMS, PQB and APS contributes towards delivering health services with continual secured data feeds and reduction in time of medical intervention.
Speeding up Markov chains with deterministic jumps

We show that the convergence of finite state space Markov chains to stationarity can often be considerably speeded up by alternating every step of the chain with a deterministic move. Under fairly general conditions, we show that not only do such schemes exist, they are numerous.
Is It Lawful and Ethical to Prioritize Racial Minorities for COVID-19 Vaccines?

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disproportionately affected racial minorities in the United States resulting in higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death. With a limited supply after the initial approval of a safe and effective vaccine, difficult legal and ethical choices will have to be made on priority access for individuals. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has recommended prioritization of racial minorities who are “worse off” socioeconomically and epidemiologically. TheWorld Health Organization (WHO) similarly cautioned that “colorblind” allocation frameworks could perpetuate or exacerbate existing injustices. Both NASEM and WHO urge policy makers to allocate vaccines in ways that reduce unjust health disparities. The ethics and legality of race-based policies in the United States have been fraught with controversy. This Viewpoint considers how COVID-19 vaccine priority allocations could be implemented ethically and legally.
Colorectal EMR outcomes in octogenarians versus younger patients referred for removal of large (≥20 mm) nonpedunculated polyps.

Background and Aims Data are limited on safety and outcomes of colorectal EMR in octogenarians (≥80 years old). We sought to review outcome data for patients aged ≥80 in a prospectively collected database of patients referred for large polyp removal. Methods We retrospectively evaluated a database of patients referred for large (≥20 mm) nonpedunculated polyp removal. From 2000 to 2019, we compared the rates of follow-up, recurrence, adverse events, and synchronous neoplasia detection between younger patients and patients aged ≥80. Results There were 167 patients aged ≥80 years and 1686 Conclusions EMR is safe and well tolerated for large polyp removal in patients over 80 years old. Patients aged ≥80 years are less likely to present for follow-up after EMR. They had a higher recurrence rate and a similarly high prevalence of synchronous precancerous lesions. Follow-up after EMR should be encouraged in the elderly, and an attempt to clear the colon of synchronous disease at the time of the initial EMR may be warranted.
Motivations and Preliminary Design for Mid-Air Deployment of a Science Rotorcraft on Mars

Mid-Air Deployment (MAD) of a rotorcraft during Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) on Mars eliminates the need to carry a propulsion or airbag landing system. This reduces the total mass inside the aeroshell by more than 100 kg and simplifies the aeroshell architecture. MAD’s lighter and simpler design is likely to bring the risk and cost associated with the mission down. Moreover, the lighter entry mass enables landing in the Martian highlands, at elevations inaccessible to current EDL technologies. This paper proposes a novel MAD concept for a Mars helicopter. We suggest a minimum science payload package to perform relevant science in the highlands. A variant of the Ingenuity helicopter is proposed to provide increased deceleration during MAD, and enough lift to fly the science payload in the highlands. We show in simulation that the lighter aeroshell results in a lower terminal velocity (30 m/s) at the end of the parachute phase of the EDL, and at higher altitudes than other approaches. After discussing the aerodynamics, controls, guidance, and mechanical challenges associated with deploying at such speed, we propose a backshell architecture that addresses them to release the helicopter in the safest conditions. Finally, we implemented the helicopter model and aerodynamic descent perturbations in the JPL Dynamics and Real-Time Simulation (DARTS)framework. Preliminary performance evaluation indicates landing and helicopter operations can be achieved up to +5 km MOLA (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter reference).
Public perceptions of the effectiveness of recommended non-pharmaceutical intervention behaviors to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented public health threat, both in scope and response. With no vaccine available, the public is advised to practice non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) including social distancing, mask-wearing, and washing hands. However, little is known about public perceptions of the effectiveness of these measures, and high perceived effectiveness is likely to be critical in order to achieve widespread adoption of NPI. Methods In May 2020, we conducted a cross-sectional survey among U.S. adults (N = 3,474). The primary outcome was a six-item measure assessing perceived effectiveness of recommended behaviors to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection from 1 (not at all effective) to 5 (extremely effective). The sample was divided into “higher” and “lower” perceived effectiveness groups. Covariates included demographics, healthcare characteristics, and health beliefs. Variables that were significant at p<0.01 in bivariate analyses were entered into a multivariable logistic regression and a best-fit model was created using a cutoff of p<0.01 to stay in the model. Results Mean age was 45.5 years and most participants were non-Hispanic White (63%) and female (52.4%). The high perceived effectiveness group was slightly larger than the low perceived effectiveness group (52.7% vs. 47.3%). Almost all health belief variables were significant in the best-fit regression model. COVID-19-related worry (aOR = 1.82; 95% CI = 1.64–2.02), and perceived threat to physical health (aOR = 1.32; 95% CI = 1.20–1.45) were positively associated with perceived effectiveness while perceived severity of COVID-19 (0.84; 95% CI = 0.73–0.96) and perceived likelihood of infection (0.85; 95% CI = 0.77–0.94) switched directions in the adjusted model and were negatively associated with perceived effectiveness. Conclusions This research indicates people generally believe NPI are effective, but there was variability based on health beliefs and there are mixed rates of engagement in these behaviors. Public health efforts should focus on increasing perceived severity and threat of SARS-CoV-2-related disease, while promoting NPI as effective in reducing threat.