Human rights and democratic arms transfers : rhetoric versus reality with different types of major weapon systems

Since the height of the Cold War, the policies of major democratic arms suppliers have stated that human rights violations in the importing state affect their decision to export. After the Cold War, the focus on the importer's human rights record increase in exporter policies. We examine the arms transfer patterns of the four major democratic suppliers between 1976 and 2009 to determine empirically whether the patterns of transfers match policy. We argue that if practice matches policy, then democratic suppliers should not transfer weapons to states violating human rights. However, as global interests of these suppliers have shifted over time we condition our arguments by stating that if practice matches policy, then there still may be transfers of major weapon systems, but of types that are not as useful for violating human rights. We build on existing arms transfer literature by disaggregating exports based on weapons type. The ordered logits we run for each major democratic supplier from 1976-2009 show that the major democratic suppliers generally do not account for human rights violations in the importing state, with the one exception being the United States transfer of land weapon systems

Are Lengthy and Boilerplate Risk Factor Disclosures Inadequate? An Examination of Judicial and Regulatory Assessments of Risk Factor Language

Prior research finds that lengthy and boilerplate risk factor disclosures are associated with negative capital market consequences. Yet regulators and users of financial statements continue to criticize corporate risk factor disclosures as excessively long and boilerplate. We investigate two potential sources of firms’ incentives to issue lengthy, boilerplate risk factor disclosures by examining how judicial and regulatory assessments of firms’ risk factor disclosures correlate with measures of disclosure length and disclosure boilerplate. Our results suggest that lengthy and more boilerplate risk factor disclosures are less likely to be considered inadequate under judicial and regulatory review. Specifically, risk factor disclosures that are lengthier and less specific are less likely to be flagged as inadequate for safe harbor purposes under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. In addition, more standardized risk factor disclosures are less likely to be targeted by an SEC comment letter during the SEC’s filing review process

Toward More Versatile and Intuitive Cortical Brain–Machine Interfaces

Brain–machine interfaces have great potential for the development of neuroprosthetic applications to assist patients suffering from brain injury or neurodegenerative disease. One type of brain–machine interface is a cortical motor prosthetic, which is used to assist paralyzed subjects. Motor prosthetics to date have typically used the motor cortex as a source of neural signals for controlling external devices. The review will focus on several new topics in the arena of cortical prosthetics. These include using: recordings from cortical areas outside motor cortex; local field potentials as a source of recorded signals; somatosensory feedback for more dexterous control of robotics; and new decoding methods that work in concert to form an ecology of decode algorithms. These new advances promise to greatly accelerate the applicability and ease of operation of motor prosthetics

The nonlinear response of some multistory reinforced and prestressed concrete structures subjected to earthquake excitation

The nonlinear dynamic responses of two reinforced and six prestressed concrete versions of a twenty story frame structure to a strong earthquake are found, using a step-by-step integration technique. A special model beam is used to represent the concrete members. The effects of different member properties, different amounts of hysteretic damping, and two different viscous damping mechanisms on response and energy dissipation are compared. The prestressed concrete structures have higher lateral displacements and inter-story drifts, but lower ductility requirements, and the comparative results suggest that a prestressed structure of the type analyzed could withstand a strong earthquake

Parietal neural prosthetic control of a computer cursor in a graphical-user-interface task

Objective. To date, the majority of Brain–Machine Interfaces have been used to perform simple tasks with sequences of individual targets in otherwise blank environments. In this study we developed a more practical and clinically relevant task that approximated modern computers and graphical user interfaces (GUIs). This task could be problematic given the known sensitivity of areas typically used for BMIs to visual stimuli, eye movements, decision-making, and attentional control. Consequently, we sought to assess the effect of a complex, GUI-like task on the quality of neural decoding. Approach. A male rhesus macaque monkey was implanted with two 96-channel electrode arrays in area 5d of the superior parietal lobule. The animal was trained to perform a GUI-like 'Face in a Crowd' task on a computer screen that required selecting one cued, icon-like, face image from a group of alternatives (the 'Crowd') using a neurally controlled cursor. We assessed whether the crowd affected decodes of intended cursor movements by comparing it to a 'Crowd Off' condition in which only the matching target appeared without alternatives. We also examined if training a neural decoder with the Crowd On rather than Off had any effect on subsequent decode quality. Main results. Despite the additional demands of working with the Crowd On, the animal was able to robustly perform the task under Brain Control. The presence of the crowd did not itself affect decode quality. Training the decoder with the Crowd On relative to Off had no negative influence on subsequent decoding performance. Additionally, the subject was able to gaze around freely without influencing cursor position. Significance. Our results demonstrate that area 5d recordings can be used for decoding in a complex, GUI-like task with free gaze. Thus, this area is a promising source of signals for neural prosthetics that utilize computing devices with GUI interfaces, e.g. personal computers, mobile devices, and tablet computers