States Should Quickly Reform Unemployment Insurance

COVID-19 is causing mass layoffs and related economic hardship, as well as budget crises for state and local governments. This article is part of Project SAFE (State Action in Fiscal Emergencies), an academic effort to help states weather the fiscal crisis by providing policy recommendations backed by research. This article will focus on how state governments should reform unemployment insurance (UI) eligibility and benefits and the taxes funding these programs

Temporal regularity increases with repertoire complexity in the Australian pied butcherbird's song

Music maintains a characteristic balance between repetition and novelty. Here, we report a similar balance in singing performances of free-living Australian pied butcherbirds. Their songs include many phrase types. The more phrase types in a bird's repertoire, the more diverse the singing performance can be. However, without sufficient temporal organization, avian listeners may find diverse singing performances difficult to perceive and memorize. We tested for a correlation between the complexity of song repertoire and the temporal regularity of singing performance. We found that different phrase types often share motifs (notes or stereotyped groups of notes). These shared motifs reappeared in strikingly regular temporal intervals across different phrase types, over hundreds of phrases produced without interruption by each bird. We developed a statistical estimate to quantify the degree to which phrase transition structure is optimized for maximizing the regularity of shared motifs. We found that transition probabilities between phrase types tend to maximize regularity in the repetition of shared motifs, but only in birds of high repertoire complexity. Conversely, in birds of low repertoire complexity, shared motifs were produced with less regularity. The strong correlation between repertoire complexity and motif regularity suggests that birds possess a mechanism that regulates the temporal placement of shared motifs in a manner that takes repertoire complexity into account. We discuss alternative musical, mechanistic and ecological explanations to this effect

The genome of a songbird

The zebra finch is an important model organism in several fields1,2 with unique relevance to human neuroscience3,4. Like other songbirds, the zebra finch communicates through learned vocalizations, an ability otherwise documented only in humans and a few other animals and lacking in the chicken5—the only bird with a sequenced genome until now6. Here we present a structural, functional and comparative analysis of the genome sequence of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), which is a songbird belonging to the large avian order Passeriformes7. We find that the overall structures of the genomes are similar in zebra finch and chicken, but they differ in many intrachromosomal rearrangements, lineage-specific gene family expansions, the number of long-terminal-repeat-based retrotransposons, and mechanisms of sex chromosome dosage compensation. We show that song behaviour engages gene regulatory networks in the zebra finch brain, altering the expression of long non-coding RNAs, microRNAs, transcription factors and their targets. We also show evidence for rapid molecular evolution in the songbird lineage of genes that are regulated during song experience. These results indicate an active involvement of the genome in neural processes underlying vocal communication and identify potential genetic substrates for the evolution and regulation of this behaviour

Online 3-dimensional path planning with kinematic constraints in unknown environments using hybrid A* with tree pruning

In this paper we present an extension to the hybrid A* (HA*) path planner. This extension allows autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to plan paths in 3-dimensional (3D) environments. The proposed approach enables the robot to operate in a safe manner by accounting for the vehicle’s motion constraints, thus avoiding collisions and ensuring that the calculated paths are feasible. Secondly, we propose an improvement for operations in unexplored or partially known environments by endowing the planner with a tree pruning procedure, which maintains a valid and feasible search- tree during operation. When the robot senses new obstacles in the environment that invalidate its current path, the planner prunes the tree of branches which collides with the environment. The path planning algorithm is then initialised with the pruned tree, enabling it to find a solution in a lower time than replanning from scratch. We present results obtained through simulation which show that HA* performs better in known underwater environments than compared algorithms in regards to planning time, path length and success rate. For unknown environments, we show that the tree pruning procedure reduces the total planning time needed in a variety of environments compared to running the full planning algorithm during replanning

Extracting Gene Networks for Low-Dose Radiation Using Graph Theoretical Algorithms

Genes with common functions often exhibit correlated expression levels, which can be used to identify sets of interacting genes from microarray data. Microarrays typically measure expression across genomic space, creating a massive matrix of co-expression that must be mined to extract only the most relevant gene interactions. We describe a graph theoretical approach to extracting co-expressed sets of genes, based on the computation of cliques. Unlike the results of traditional clustering algorithms, cliques are not disjoint and allow genes to be assigned to multiple sets of interacting partners, consistent with biological reality. A graph is created by thresholding the correlation matrix to include only the correlations most likely to signify functional relationships. Cliques computed from the graph correspond to sets of genes for which significant edges are present between all members of the set, representing potential members of common or interacting pathways. Clique membership can be used to infer function about poorly annotated genes, based on the known functions of better-annotated genes with which they share clique membership (i.e., “guilt-by-association”). We illustrate our method by applying it to microarray data collected from the spleens of mice exposed to low-dose ionizing radiation. Differential analysis is used to identify sets of genes whose interactions are impacted by radiation exposure. The correlation graph is also queried independently of clique to extract edges that are impacted by radiation. We present several examples of multiple gene interactions that are altered by radiation exposure and thus represent potential molecular pathways that mediate the radiation response

Brief of Interested Law Professors As \u3ci\u3eAmici Curiae\u3c/i\u3e Supporting Petitioner in \u3ci\u3eBrohl v. Direct Marketing Association\u3c/i\u3e

Amici curiae are 14 professors of law who have devoted much of their teaching and research to the area of state taxes and the role of state tax policy in our federal system. The names and affiliations (for identification purposes only) of amici are included in an addendum to this brief. The amici are concerned with the effect of this Court’s dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence on the development of fair and efficient state tax systems. No decision of this Court has had more effect on state sales and use tax systems than Quill Corporation v. North Dakota. We believe the Tenth Circuit properly decided the case below. But if the Court decides to grant the Direct Marketing Association’s petition to review the issue of discrimination which it raises, we respectfully request that the Court also grant the conditional crosspetition filed by Executive Director Barbara J. Brohl of the Colorado Department of Revenue asking the Court to reconsider Quill. This brief sets forth the reasons for our support of that cross-petitio

Brief of Tax Law Professors as \u3ci\u3eAmici Curiae\u3c/i\u3e in Support of Petitioner in \u3ci\u3eLoudoun County, Virginia v. Dulles Duty Free, LLC\u3c/i\u3e

Amici are professors of tax law at universities across the United States. As scholars and teachers, they have considered the doctrinal roots and practical consequences of judicial limits on state and local taxation. Amici join this brief solely on their own behalf and not as representatives of their universities. A full list of amici appears in the Appendix to this brief

Search for R-Parity Violating Decays of Scalar Fermions at LEP

A search for pair-produced scalar fermions under the assumption that R-parity is not conserved has been performed using data collected with the OPAL detector at LEP. The data samples analysed correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 610 pb-1 collected at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) 189-209 GeV. An important consequence of R-parity violation is that the lightest supersymmetric particle is expected to be unstable. Searches of R-parity violating decays of charged sleptons, sneutrinos and squarks have been performed under the assumptions that the lightest supersymmetric particle decays promptly and that only one of the R-parity violating couplings is dominant for each of the decay modes considered. Such processes would yield final states consisting of leptons, jets, or both with or without missing energy. No significant single-like excess of events has been observed with respect to the Standard Model expectations. Limits on the production cross- section of scalar fermions in R-parity violating scenarios are obtained. Constraints on the supersymmetric particle masses are also presented in an R-parity violating framework analogous to the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model.Comment: 51 pages, 24 figures, Submitted to Eur. Phys. J.