A Meeting of the Minds in Rome: Ending the Circular Conundrum of the U.S.-ICC Relationship

This Article’s explanation for what prevents a U.S.-ICC marriage, or at least more robust American governmental support of the ICC, is that the U.S. and ICC find themselves in a circular conundrum. The U.S. is hesitant to join the ICC or even provide robust and regular support to it—as evidenced by its anti-ICC legislation—until the latter improves its functional ability to carry out all aspects of its mandate on its own and to do so consistently in a complicated geopolitical environment. However, the ICC, for its part, cannot overcome all the challenges it faces without more comprehensive and sustained support from powerful States, including the U.S. So, ICC improvement requires U.S. support, and U.S. support requires ICC improvement; neither can happen without the other. As a result, it is clear that the biggest impediment to comprehensive progress in U.S.-ICC relations and possible U.S. ratification is not primarily a philosophical or political divide, but more a function of practical realities. Of course, the practical and political are intertwined. However, major progress in the practical is central to solving the political. This will require simultaneous progress towards one another by each party. The purpose of this Article is to help find a starting point to solve this problematic circle. The goal of improving the U.S.-ICC relationship should be desirable to both parties, as progress substantially benefits both, not to mention the cause of international criminal justice. This Article does not seek to judge either the U.S.’s or ICC’s role in their relationship, but rather to lay out the best ways to increase U.S. support of the ICC

Opinion: we need better data about the environmental persistence of plastic goods

Author Posting. © National Academy of Sciences, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of National Academy of Sciences for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117(26), (2020): 14618-14621, doi:10.1073/pnas.2008009117.Plastic pollution is one of the most visible and complex environmental issues today. Interested and concerned parties include researchers, governmental agencies, nongovernmental organizations, industry, media, and the general public. One key assumption behind the issue and the public outcry is that plastics last indefinitely in the environment, resulting in chronic exposure that harms animals and humans. But the data supporting this assumption are scant.We thank Briana Prado, Cassia Armstrong, and Anna Walsh for their help with the review, Kenneth Kostel, Katie Linehan, Daniel Ward, and Rose Cory for feedback on an earlier version of this piece, John Furfey for assistance with tracking down the original sources of the environmental lifetime estimates, and Natalie Reiner for help with Fig. 1. We acknowledge financial support from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Woods Hole, MA) and the Seaver Institute (Los Angeles, CA).2020-12-1

Does Entity Abstraction Help Generative Transformers Reason?

We study the utility of incorporating entity type abstractions into pre-trained Transformers and test these methods on four NLP tasks requiring different forms of logical reasoning: (1) compositional language understanding with text-based relational reasoning (CLUTRR), (2) abductive reasoning (ProofWriter), (3) multi-hop question answering (HotpotQA), and (4) conversational question answering (CoQA). We propose and empirically explore three ways to add such abstraction: (i) as additional input embeddings, (ii) as a separate sequence to encode, and (iii) as an auxiliary prediction task for the model. Overall, our analysis demonstrates that models with abstract entity knowledge performs better than without it. The best abstraction aware models achieved an overall accuracy of 88.8% and 91.8% compared to the baseline model achieving 62.9% and 89.8% on CLUTRR and ProofWriter respectively. However, for HotpotQA and CoQA, we find that F1 scores improve by only 0.5% on average. Our results suggest that the benefit of explicit abstraction is significant in formally defined logical reasoning settings requiring many reasoning hops, but point to the notion that it is less beneficial for NLP tasks having less formal logical structure.Comment: TMLR 2022; 28 pages; 9 tables; 1 figur

Taking Synchrony Seriously: A Perceptual-Level Model of Infant Synchrony Detection

Synchrony detection between different sensory and/or motor channels appears critically important for young infant learning and cognitive development. For example, empirical studies demonstrate that audio-visual synchrony aids in language acquisition. In this paper we compare these infant studies with a model of synchrony detection based on the Hershey and Movellan (2000) algorithm augmented with methods for quantitative synchrony estimation. Four infant-model comparisons are presented, using audio-visual stimuli of increasing complexity. While infants and the model showed learning or discrimination with each type of stimuli used, the model was most successful with stimuli comprised of one audio and one visual source, and also with two audio sources and a dynamic-face visual motion source. More difficult for the model were stimuli conditions with two motion sources, and more abstract visual dynamics—an oscilloscope instead of a face. Future research should model the developmental pathway of synchrony detection. Normal audio-visual synchrony detection in infants may be experience-dependent (e.g., Bergeson, et al., 2004)

Measuring Systematic Generalization in Neural Proof Generation with Transformers

We are interested in understanding how well Transformer language models (TLMs) can perform reasoning tasks when trained on knowledge encoded in the form of natural language. We investigate systematic generalization abilities on an inductive logical reasoning task in natural language, which involves reasoning over relationships between entities grounded in first-order logical proofs. Specifically, we perform soft theorem-proving by leveraging TLMs to generate logical proofs represented in natural language. We systematically test proof generation capabilities, along with inference capabilities leveraging the generated proofs. We observe length-generalization issues in proof generation and inference when evaluated on longer-than-trained sequences. However, we observe TLMs improve their generalization performance after being exposed to longer, exhaustive proofs. In addition, we discover that TLMs are able to generalize better using backward-chaining proofs compared to their forward-chaining counterparts, while they find it easier to generate forward chaining proofs. We observe that models that are not trained to generate proofs are better at generalizing to problems based on longer proofs. This result suggests that Transformers have efficient, yet not interpretable reasoning strategies internally. These results also highlight the systematic generalization issues in TLMs in the context of logical reasoning, and we believe this work will motivate deeper inspection of their underlying reasoning strategies.Comment: NeurIPS 2020; 17 pages; 9 figures; 6 table

Molybdate Based Ceramic Negative-Electrode Materials for Solid Oxide Cells

Novel molybdate materials with varying Mo valence were synthesized as possible negative-electrode materials for solid oxide cells. The phase, stability, microstructure and electrical conductivity were characterized. The electrochemical activity for H2O and CO2 reduction and H2 and CO oxidation was studied using simplified geometry point-contact electrodes. Unique phenomena were observed for some of the materials - they decomposed into multiple phases and formed a nanostructured surface upon exposure to operating conditions (in certain reducing atmospheres). The new phases and surface features enhanced the electrocatalytic activity and electronic conductivity. The polarization resistances of the best molybdates were two orders of magnitude lower than that of donor-doped strontium titanates. Many of the molybdate materials were significantly activated by cathodic polarization, and they exhibited higher performance for cathodic (electrolysis) polarization than for anodic (fuel cell) polarization, which makes them especially interesting for use in electrolysis electrodes.</jats:p

Corticosteroid implants for chronic non-infectious uveitis.

BACKGROUND: Uveitis is a term used to describe a heterogeneous group of intraocular inflammatory diseases of the anterior, intermediate, and posterior uveal tract (iris, ciliary body, choroid). Uveitis is the fifth most common cause of vision loss in high-income countries, accounting for 5% to 20% of legal blindness, with the highest incidence of disease in the working-age population.Corticosteroids are the mainstay of acute treatment for all anatomical subtypes of non-infectious uveitis and can be administered orally, topically with drops or ointments, by periocular (around the eye) or intravitreal (inside the eye) injection, or by surgical implantation. OBJECTIVES: To determine the efficacy and safety of steroid implants in people with chronic non-infectious posterior uveitis, intermediate uveitis, and panuveitis. SEARCH METHODS: We searched CENTRAL (which contains the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Trials Register) (Issue 10, 2015), Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid MEDLINE In-Process and Other Non-Indexed Citations, Ovid MEDLINE Daily, Ovid OLDMEDLINE (January 1946 to November 2015), EMBASE (January 1980 to November 2015), PubMed (1948 to November 2015), Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature Database (LILACS) (1982 to November 2015), the metaRegister of Controlled Trials (mRCT) (www.controlled-trials.com) (last searched 15 April 2013), ClinicalTrials.gov (www.clinicaltrials.gov), and the World Health Organization (WHO) International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) (www.who.int/ictrp/search/en). We did not use any date or language restrictions in the electronic search for studies. We last searched the electronic databases on 6 November 2015.We also searched reference lists of included study reports, citation databases, and abstracts and clinical study presentations from professional meetings. SELECTION CRITERIA: We included randomized controlled trials comparing either fluocinolone acetonide (FA) or dexamethasone intravitreal implants with standard-of-care therapy with at least six months of follow-up after treatment. We included studies that enrolled participants of all ages who had chronic non-infectious posterior uveitis, intermediate uveitis, or panuveitis with vision that was better than hand-motion. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two review authors independently reviewed studies for inclusion. Two review authors independently extracted data and assessed the risk of bias for each study. MAIN RESULTS: We included data from two studies (619 eyes of 401 participants) that compared FA implants with standard-of-care therapy. Both studies used similar standard-of-care therapy that included administration of prednisolone and, if needed, immunosuppressive agents. The studies included participants from Australia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We assessed both studies at high risk of performance and detection bias.Only one study reported our primary outcome, recurrence of uveitis at any point during the study through 24 months. The evidence, judged as moderate-quality, showed that a FA implant probably prevents recurrence of uveitis compared with standard-of-care therapy (risk ratio (RR) 0.29, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.14 to 0.59; 132 eyes). Both studies reported safety outcomes, and moderate-quality evidence showed increased risks of needing cataract surgery (RR 2.98, 95% CI 2.33 to 3.79; 371 eyes) and surgery to lower intraocular pressure (RR 7.48, 95% CI 3.94 to 14.19; 599 eyes) in the implant group compared with standard-of-care therapy through two years of follow-up. No studies compared dexamethasone implants with standard-of-care therapy. AUTHORS\u27 CONCLUSIONS: After considering both benefits and harms reported from two studies in which corticosteroids implants were compared with standard-of-care therapy, we are unable to conclude that the implants are superior to traditional systemic therapy for the treatment of non-infectious uveitis. These studies exhibited heterogeneity in design and outcomes that measured efficacy. Pooled findings regarding safety outcomes suggest increased risks of post-implant surgery for cataract and high intraocular pressure compared with standard-of-care therapy

Detection of X-Ray Damage Repair by the Immediate Versus Delayed Plating Technique is Dependent on Cell Shape and Cell Concentration

A method commonly used to measure the ability of cells to repair potentially lethal damage (PLD) is to compare immediate plating (IP) and delayed plating (DP) survival. Lower cell survival under IP conditions relative to that after DP conditions has been interpreted to indicate a higher ability of cells to repair potentially lethal damage (PLO) under DP conditions. However, this IP radiosensitization has not been observed in several cell lines and tumor models. IP conditions involve treatment of cells with trypsin and plating them into fresh growth medium. We have investigated the possibility that radiosensitization under IP conditions may be related to both the cell-shape and the nutrient concentration in growth medium (GM, MEM+15% serum). This idea predicts that the IP and DP survival of spheroids will show a response similar to the IP survival of cells in monolayers and that the IP and DP survival of crowded monolayer cells in high densities will be the same. Chinese hamster V79 cells grown in monolayers (spread cells) and spheroids (clumps of round cells) were used. The IP survival was lower than the DP survival for spread log phase monolayer cells but not for round log phase cells in spheroids. Radiosensitization of cells by fresh (as opposed to spent) growth medium was absent for high density plateau phase cells in monolayers at or above 2x106 cells/ml. However, PLO repair could be demonstrated in spheroid cells and in high density plateau phase cultures by exposing cells to hyperthermia or hypertonic saline. Comparison of immediate plating versus delayed plating survival detects PLO repair only in well spread low density monolayer cells, but not in round spheroid cells nor in dense monolayer cells at \u3e 107 cells/25 cm2 flask/5 ml medium. The absence of a difference between IP and DP cell survival does not mean that PLO repair is absent. Incorrect prediction of tumor response to radiotherapy can occur when PLO repair capacity is assayed as a ratio of DP/IP survival. More than one method must be used to measure the capacity of cells to repair their PLO