2,533 research outputs found
Regulatory Entrepreneurship
Numerous corporations, ranging from Airbnb to Tesla, and from DraftKings to Uber, have built huge businesses that reside in legal gray areas. Instead of taking the law as a given, these companies have become agents of legal change, focusing major parts of their business plans on changing the law. To achieve their political goals, these companies employ conventional lobbying techniques, but also more innovative tactics. In particular, some attempt to enter markets quickly, then grow too big to ban before regulators can respond. If regulators do take aim at them, they respond by mobilizing their users for political support. This Article offers the first focused study of what we term regulatory entrepreneurship â entering a line of business in which changing the law is a significant part of the business plan. We provide a framework for understanding this combination of business and political activity and a detailed account of the techniques that these companies employ. Further, the Article identifies and considers the conditions that are most likely to foster regulatory entrepreneurship, the prospects for regulatory entrepreneurship going forward, and its likely positive and negative implications for lawmaking
To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law
Recent years have seen an explosion of scholarship on âpersonalized law.â Commentators foresee a world in which regulators armed with big data and machine learning techniques determine the optimal legal rule for every regulated party, then instantaneously disseminate their decisions via smartphones and other âsmartâ devices. They envision a legal utopia in which every fact pattern is assigned societyâs preferred legal treatment in real time.
But regulation is a dynamic process; regulated parties react to law. They change their behavior to pursue their preferred outcomesâ which often diverge from societyâsâand they will continue to do so under personalized law: They will provide regulators with incomplete or inaccurate information. They will attempt to manipulate the algorithms underlying personalized laws by taking actions intended to disguise their true characteristics. Personalized law can also (unintentionally) encourage regulated parties to act in socially undesirable ways, a phenomenon known as moral hazard.
Moreover, regulators seeking to combat these dynamics will face significant constraints. Regulators will have imperfect information, both because of privacy concerns and because regulated parties and intermediaries will muddle regulatorsâ data. They may lack the authority or the political will to respond to regulated partiesâ behavior. The transparency requirements of a democratic society may hinder their ability to thwart gamesmanship. Concerns about unintended consequences may further lower regulatorsâ willingness to personalize law.
Taken together, these dynamics will limit personalized lawâs ability to optimally match facts to legal outcomes. Personalized law may be a step forward, but it will not produce the utopian outcomes that some envision
Capacitor Optimization in Power Distribution Networks Using Numerical Computation Techniques
This paper presents a power distribution network (PDN) decoupling capacitor
optimization application with three primary goals: reduction of solution times
for large networks, development of flexible network scoring routines, and a
concentration strictly on achieving the best network performance. Example
optimizations are performed using broadband models of a printed circuit board
(PCB), a chip-package, on-die networks, and candidate capacitors. A novel
worst-case time-domain optimization technique is presented as an alternative to
the traditional frequency-domain approach. The trade-offs and criteria for
scoring the computed network are presented. The output is a recommended set of
capacitors which can then be applied to the product design.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, DesignCon 202
Mass fluxes and isofluxes of methane (CH4) at a New Hampshire fen measured by a continuous wave quantum cascade laser spectrometer
We have developed a midâinfrared continuousâwave quantum cascade laser directâabsorption spectrometer (QCLS) capable of high frequency (â„1 Hz) measurements of 12CH4 and 13CH4 isotopologues of methane (CH4) with in situ 1âs RMS image precision of 1.5 â° and Allanâminimum precision of 0.2 â°. We deployed this QCLS in a wellâstudied New Hampshire fen to compare measurements of CH4 isoflux by eddy covariance (EC) to Keeling regressions of data from automated flux chamber sampling. Mean CH4 fluxes of 6.5 ± 0.7 mg CH4 mâ2 hrâ1 over two days of EC sampling in July, 2009 were indistinguishable from mean autochamber CH4 fluxes (6.6 ± 0.8 mgCH4 mâ2 hrâ1) over the same period. Mean image composition of emitted CH4 calculated using EC isoflux methods was â71 ± 8 â° (95% C.I.) while Keeling regressions of 332 chamber closing events over 8 days yielded a corresponding value of â64.5 ± 0.8 â°. Ebullitive fluxes, representing âŒ10% of total CH4 fluxes at this site, were on average 1.2 â° enriched in 13C compared to diffusive fluxes. CH4 isoflux time series have the potential to improve processâbased understanding of methanogenesis, fully characterize source isotopic distributions, and serve as additional constraints for both regional and global CH4 modeling analysis
Quantum-circuit design for efficient simulations of many-body quantum dynamics
We construct an efficient autonomous quantum-circuit design algorithm for
creating efficient quantum circuits to simulate Hamiltonian many-body quantum
dynamics for arbitrary input states. The resultant quantum circuits have
optimal space complexity and employ a sequence of gates that is close to
optimal with respect to time complexity. We also devise an algorithm that
exploits commutativity to optimize the circuits for parallel execution. As
examples, we show how our autonomous algorithm constructs circuits for
simulating the dynamics of Kitaev's honeycomb model and the
Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer model of superconductivity. Furthermore we provide
numerical evidence that the rigorously proven upper bounds for the simulation
error here and in previous work may sometimes overestimate the error by orders
of magnitude compared to the best achievable performance for some
physics-inspired simulations.Comment: 20 Pages, 6 figure
Therapeutic targeting of integrin αvÎČ6 in breast cancer
BACKGROUND: Integrin ?v?6 promotes migration, invasion, and survival of cancer cells; however, the relevance and role of ?v?6 has yet to be elucidated in breast cancer.METHODS: Protein expression of integrin subunit beta6 (?6) was measured in breast cancers by immunohistochemistry (n > 2000) and ITGB6 mRNA expression measured in the Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium dataset. Overall survival was assessed using Kaplan Meier curves, and bioinformatics statistical analyses were performed (Cox proportional hazards model, Wald test, and Chi-square test of association). Using antibody (264RAD) blockade and siRNA knockdown of ?6 in breast cell lines, the role of ?v?6 in Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 (HER2) biology (expression, proliferation, invasion, growth in vivo) was assessed by flow cytometry, MTT, Transwell invasion, proximity ligation assay, and xenografts (n ? 3), respectively. A student's t-test was used for two variables; three-plus variables used one-way analysis of variance with Bonferroni's Multiple Comparison Test. Xenograft growth was analyzed using linear mixed model analysis, followed by Wald testing and survival, analyzed using the Log-Rank test. All statistical tests were two sided.RESULTS: High expression of either the mRNA or protein for the integrin subunit ?6 was associated with very poor survival (HR = 1.60, 95% CI = 1.19 to 2.15, P = .002) and increased metastases to distant sites. Co-expression of ?6 and HER2 was associated with worse prognosis (HR = 1.97, 95% CI = 1.16 to 3.35, P = .01). Monotherapy with 264RAD or trastuzumab slowed growth of MCF-7/HER2-18 and BT-474 xenografts similarly (P < .001), but combining 264RAD with trastuzumab effectively stopped tumor growth, even in trastuzumab-resistant MCF-7/HER2-18 xenografts.CONCLUSIONS: Targeting ?v?6 with 264RAD alone or in combination with trastuzumab may provide a novel therapy for treating high-risk and trastuzumab-resistant breast cancer patients.<br/
Genomic Epidemiology of Multidrug-Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis During Transcontinental Spread
The transcontinental spread of multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis is poorly characterized in molecular epidemiologic studies. We used genomic sequencing to understand the establishment and dispersion of MDR Mycobacterium tuberculosis within a group of immigrants to the United States. We used a genomic epidemiology approach to study a genotypically matched (by spoligotype, IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism, and mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units-variable number of tandem repeat signature) lineage 2/Beijing MDR strain implicated in an outbreak of tuberculosis among refugees in Thailand and consecutive cases within California. All 46 MDR M. tuberculosis genomes from both Thailand and California were highly related, with a median difference of 10 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The Wat Tham Krabok (WTK) strain is a new sequence type distinguished from all known Beijing strains by 55 SNPs and a genomic deletion (Rv1267c) associated with increased fitness. Sequence data revealed a highly prevalent MDR strain that included several closely related but distinct allelic variants within Thailand, rather than the occurrence of a single outbreak. In California, sequencing data supported multiple independent introductions of WTK with subsequent transmission and reactivation within the state, as well as a potential super spreader with a prolonged infectious period. Twenty-seven drug resistance-conferring mutations and 4 putative compensatory mutations were found within WTK strains. Genomic sequencing has substantial epidemiologic value in both low- and high-burden settings in understanding transmission chains of highly prevalent MDR strain
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