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Using a panel data set from 2007 to 2019, we empirically evaluate the impact of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology innovation on green total factor productivity (GTFP). The findings show that (1) CCUS technology innovation significantly improves GTFP. (2) CCUS technology innovation significantly contributes to GTFP by promoting industrial structure upgrading and carbon emissions efficiency. (3) Environmental regulation plays a positive moderating role in the nexus between CCUS technology innovation and GTFP. The findings of this paper provide guidance for China to achieve green energy transition and build a green energy system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) technology innovation on green total factor productivity (GTFP) in China. The study finds that CCUS technology innovation has a positive effect on GTFP by improving industrial structure and carbon emissions efficiency. Environmental regulations also contribute to this relationship. The author suggests further research to refine the measurement of GTFP and address potential issues in the analysis. They also recommend conducting a heterogeneity analysis and mediation test to understand the mechanism of CCUS technology innovation on GTFP. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the relationship between CCUS adoption and environmental productivity in China. [Extracted from the article]

This article, titled "Comments by Phouphet Kyophilavong on Toward a Green Energy System: How Does Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Technology Innovation Promote Green Total Factor Productivity?" explores the impact of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology innovation on green total factor productivity (GTFP). The author raises questions about the calculation of GTFP and the advantage of using the Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index. They also inquire about the variables and calculation of the CCUS technology innovation index and suggest conducting tests for normality, nonlinearity, and parameter stability. Additionally, the author recommends including more literature on mediating and moderating roles and addressing multicollinearity problems. [Extracted from the article]

While conducting a coordinated set of repeat runs of human evaluation experiments in NLP, we discovered flaws in every single experiment we selected for inclusion via a systematic process. In this squib, we describe the types of flaws we discovered, which include coding errors (e.g., loading the wrong system outputs to evaluate), failure to follow standard scientific practice (e.g., ad hoc exclusion of participants and responses), and mistakes in reported numerical results (e.g., reported numbers not matching experimental data). If these problems are widespread, it would have worrying implications for the rigor of NLP evaluation experiments as currently conducted. We discuss what researchers can do to reduce the occurrence of such flaws, including pre-registration, better code development practices, increased testing and piloting, and post-publication addressing of errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational typology has gained traction in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in recent years, as evidenced by the increasing number of papers on the topic and the establishment of a Special Interest Group on the topic (SIGTYP), including the organization of successful workshops and shared tasks. A considerable amount of work in this sub-field is concerned with prediction of typological features, for example, for databases such as the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) or Grambank. Prediction is argued to be useful either because (1) it allows for obtaining feature values for relatively undocumented languages, alleviating the sparseness in WALS, in turn argued to be useful for both NLP and linguistics; and (2) it allows us to probe models to see whether or not these typological features are encapsulated in, for example, language representations. In this article, we present a critical stance concerning prediction of typological features, investigating to what extent this line of research is aligned with purported needs—both from the perspective of NLP practitioners, and perhaps more importantly, from the perspective of linguists specialized in typology and language documentation. We provide evidence that this line of research in its current state suffers from a lack of interdisciplinary alignment. Based on an extensive survey of the linguistic typology community, we present concrete recommendations for future research in order to improve this alignment between linguists and NLP researchers, beyond the scope of typological feature prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how policy announcements can be used to manage expectations. Using regional variation in radio exposure, I evaluate the impact of FDR's 1935 Fireside Chat, in which he showcased the introduction of important social policies, establishing a new expansionary cycle of the New Deal. I document that cities with higher exposure to the announcement exhibited a significant increase in spending on durable goods. The estimated effect is consistent with changes in expectations in line with the policies announced. This paper shows the power of communication as a policy tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a dramatic increase in national debt levels across the world, with reported cases of downgrading sovereign debt ratings and difficulty of fulfilling debt obligations ("debt distress"), heavily concentrated in low- and middle-income countries. In this context, the unfolding sovereign debt crisis in Sri Lanka has attracted worldwide attention as the canary in the coal mine for what could become a global "development" crisis. This paper examines the Sri Lankan crisis encompassing both the sources of vulnerability to the COVD-19 shock, and stabilization and structural adjustment reforms after the debt default, with emphasis on the systemic "solvency" challenge of dealing with the massive debt overhang evolved over the previous two decades. The prime focus of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program that Sri Lanka signed with the IMF in March 2023 is on economic stabilization through fiscal consolidation. This paper makes a strong case for combining economic stabilization with coherent structural adjustment policies to redress the long-standing antitradable bias in the incentive structure that underpinned vulnerability of the economy to external shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes Italian artist Auro Lecci's contribution to pioneering media art, beginning with his paintings and ending with his computer artworks (1969–1972). As the author suggests, Lecci's paintings were already characterized by an algorithmic method that the artist went on to develop in his computer-generated works. The paper first discusses the plotter drawings Lecci created at the Computing Center of the University of Pisa (CNUCE), and then focuses on his last computer art project, made at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, to suggest connections between Lecci's work and artificial intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple measures, such as WEAT or MAC, attempt to quantify the magnitude of bias present in word embeddings in terms of a single-number metric. However, such metrics and the related statistical significance calculations rely on treating pre-averaged data as individual data points and utilizing bootstrapping techniques with low sample sizes. We show that similar results can be easily obtained using such methods even if the data are generated by a null model lacking the intended bias. Consequently, we argue that this approach generates false confidence. To address this issue, we propose a Bayesian alternative: hierarchical Bayesian modeling, which enables a more uncertainty-sensitive inspection of bias in word embeddings at different levels of granularity. To showcase our method, we apply it to Religion, Gender, and Race word lists from the original research, together with our control neutral word lists. We deploy the method using Google, GloVe, and Reddit embeddings. Further, we utilize our approach to evaluate a debiasing technique applied to the Reddit word embedding. Our findings reveal a more complex landscape than suggested by the proponents of single-number metrics. The datasets and source code for the paper are publicly available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphors that compare the computer to a human brain are common in computer science and can be traced back to a fertile period of research that unfolded after the Second World War. To conceptualize the emerging "intelligent" properties of computing machines, researchers of the era created a series of virtual objects that served as interpretive devices for representing the immaterial functions of the computer. This paper analyses the use of the terms "artificial" and "virtual" in scientific papers, textbooks, and popular articles of the time, and examines how, together, they shaped models in computer science used to conceptualize computer processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address scientific collaboration at the Zoophysiological Laboratory during the 1911–1945 directorship of Nobel Prize winner August Krogh. Using authorship information and acknowledgments from the laboratory's publications, this paper maps the many researchers involved in the work. In total, 193 different people contributed to the work at the Zoophysiological Laboratory. The paper further analyzes what labor, materials, ideas, and knowledge were exchanged between the individuals in the laboratory. While science has become more collaborative throughout the twentieth century, this paper underlines that collaboration was very much part of the research process in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a way to understand the meaning of reality (in science) on the basis of the concepts of persistence and resistance. It first supports the ontological view that reality consists of persistent potentialities, which resist being excluded from existence. A study of the cases of the Higgs boson and the hypothetical Ϝ-particle helps to illustrate how real entities persist and resist. The paper then suggests that, perceptually speaking, the results of ordinary perception or observational processes persistently appear under appropriate conditions, and they resist disappearance even when the appropriate conditions are not completely prepared. Finally, it argues that, epistemologically speaking, a truthful theory resists being falsified and persists across replicable observations and experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines methods of inference concerning quantile treatment effects (QTEs) in randomized experiments with matched-pairs designs (MPDs). Standard multiplier bootstrap inference fails to capture the negative dependence of observations within each pair and is therefore conservative. Analytical inference involves estimating multiple functional quantities that require several tuning parameters. Instead, this paper proposes two bootstrap methods that can consistently approximate the limit distribution of the original QTE estimator and lessen the burden of tuning parameter choice. Most especially, the inverse propensity score weighted multiplier bootstrap can be implemented without knowledge of pair identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the dual narrative of William Rotch, a Quaker pacifist and successful whaling merchant in the eighteenth century. It explores the tension between his religious commitment to peace, which led to accusations of disloyalty, and his business-minded cosmopolitanism, highlighting how his opposition to nationalism and state power was informed by both his pacifist beliefs and his role in the global whaling industry.

This article by Fukunari Kimura discusses Sri Lanka's sovereign debt crisis during the COVID-19 period. The paper highlights the chronic twin debt problem and the relative shrinkage of the tradable sector as key factors contributing to the crisis. It also examines the government fiscal balance, the structure of public external debt, and the anti-trade biases in policies. The author argues that regaining policy discipline and removing anti-trade policies are necessary for resolving the crisis. The paper emphasizes that the crisis was not solely caused by COVID-19 but was a result of long-term mismanagement of public external debt. [Extracted from the article]

Over the past 40 years, immersive visualization laboratories have existed in different forms across academia, industry, and government, each one typically unique in their own ways. The following paper will discuss the success story of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Virtual Environments (WIDVE) research group, located on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The paper will discuss the rich history of immersive visualization displays that members of the lab have worked with, display systems that exist throughout the lab space at present day, future plans, and thoughts on the importance of a focus on immersive displays beyond only commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) VR devices. The paper will highlight several workflows and data pipelines that the lab has developed over the years. Finally, the paper will outline a recommended set of dos and don'ts for immersive visualization laboratories in regards to sustainability, before providing some conclusions regarding the future of immersive visualization laboratories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU is becoming more inward-looking and more hesitant toward globalization. This paper examines recent transformations in the EU's economic policies, with a focus on international trade and industrial policy. It argues that these changes reflect the EU's response to the evolving global economic and political landscape, driven by factors such as China's rise and the United States' protectionist policies. By analyzing the potential consequences of these policy adjustments on EU industries' competitiveness and trade relations, the paper offers insights into the future prospects of EU economic policies and their role in shaping the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intensified geopolitical tension in Northeast Asia and the U.S.–China confrontation have shifted policy debates in Japan toward national security while the economic discussion has become thin. To regain more balanced policy talks, this paper tries to quantitatively comprehend the effect of the United States and its allies' export controls on the East Asian machinery production networks and Japan's trade performance. Major findings include the following four points: First, most of the supply chain decoupling policies by the Japanese government have been the ones to prepare for sudden interruptions of the supply of important items while decoupling policies for strategic competition are limited only in the context of the cooperation with the United States. Second, international trade statistics at the industry level do not show clear evidence of supply chain decoupling in East Asia due to the U.S. export controls, at least up to 2022. Third, however, the negative trade effect becomes visible at the product or individual firms' level, and the recent strengthening of the United States and its allies' export controls may augment the negative effect on machinery production networks. Fourth, although the scope of trade controls would expand further, the supply chain decoupling is likely to end up with a partial one. The paper claims that middle powers such as Japan must establish a well-balanced trade policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of a sudden and unexpected nationwide alcohol sales ban in South Africa. We find that this policy causally reduced injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14%. We argue that this estimate constitutes a lower bound on the true impact of alcohol on injury-induced mortality. We also document a sharp drop in violent crimes, indicating a tight link between alcohol and aggressive behavior in society. Our results underscore the severe harm that alcohol can cause and point toward a role for policy measures that target the heaviest drinkers in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effect of incarceration on mortality using administrative data from Ohio between 1992 and 2017. We first document that long-run survival is higher among the incarcerated than similar nonincarcerated defendants. Using event study designs centered around the time of release, we show why: mortality risk halves during the period of incarceration, with large reductions in murders, overdoses, and natural causes of death. However, incarceration does not increase postrelease mortality, and so the overall effect is increased longevity. These estimates reflect the high-risk environment faced by defendants when not incarcerated and suggest noncarceral policies to reduce these risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses minimum wage hikes to evaluate the susceptibility of low-wage employment to technological substitution. We find that automation is accelerating and supplanting a broader set of low-wage routine jobs since the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Simultaneously, low-wage interpersonal jobs are increasing and offsetting routine job loss. However, interpersonal job growth does not appear to be enough, as it was prior to the financial crisis, to fully offset the negative effects of automation on low-wage routine jobs. Employment losses are most evident among non-Asian people of color who experience outsized losses at routine jobs and smaller gains at interpersonal jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses exogenous variation in sleep induced by sunset time to present the first human capital estimates of (i) the effects of child sleep from the developing world and (ii) the long-run effects of child sleep in any context. Later sunset reduces children's sleep: when the sun sets later, children go to bed later but fail to compensate by waking up later. Sleep-deprived children study less and increase nap time and indoor leisure activities. Short-run sleep loss decreases children's test scores. Chronic sleep deficits translate into fewer years of education and lower primary and middle school completion rates among school-age children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the joint impact of exporting and abatement on the environmental performance of Chinese manufacturers. For two common air pollutants (SO 2 and industrial dust) we document that (a) exporters are significantly less emissions-intensive relative to their nonexporting counterparts and (b) this difference cannot be explained by differential rates of abatement alone. Employing variation in trade and environmental conditions across time and space, we quantify the impact of endogenous export and abatement decisions on firm-level emissions. We find that exporting reduces emissions by at least 36% across pollutants. We explore underlying determinants of export-driven reductions in emissions intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we estimate the trade effects of a transit system upgrading that streamlines border processing in developing countries. Our empirical approach combines transaction-level export data from El Salvador with unique data that distinguishes export flows that were processed on the transit system. Our results indicate that the new transit system lowered regulatory border costs and raised exports. At the low end, our back-of-the-envelope estimate of the return to investment is US$ 3-to-1. This evidence informs a policy covered by the 2013 WTO Agreement of Trade Facilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the effect of universal free school meal access through the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) on child body mass index (BMI). Through the CEP, schools with high percentages of students qualified for free or reduced-priced meals can offer free breakfast and lunch to all students. With administrative data from a large school district in Georgia, we use student-level BMI measures from the FitnessGram to compare within-student outcomes before and after CEP implementation across eligible and non-eligible schools. We find one year of CEP exposure increased expected BMI percentile by about 0.085 standard deviation, equivalent to a nearly 1.88-pound weight increase for a student of average height. We also find that the program led to a small increase in the likelihood of overweight and limited evidence of a small decrease in the likelihood of underweight. We do not find that the program increased student obesity risk. Examining the effects of CEP on child BMI by grade suggests that the overall effect is largely driven by students in middle schools, highlighting potential heterogeneity in the program's impact across grades. The findings of this paper are relevant for researchers and policy makers concerned with the effects of universal free school meals on student health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The charter school sector has expanded beyond brick-and-mortar schools to cyber schools, where enrollment grew almost tenfold between 2015 and 2020. While a large literature documents the effects of charter schools on test scores, fewer studies explore impacts on attainment or postsecondary outcomes and there is almost no work exploring the consequences of cyber charter enrollment for these outcomes. In this paper, I examine the impacts of Pennsylvania's charter high schools on student attendance, achievement, graduation, and postsecondary enrollment, distinguishing the impacts of brick-and-mortar from cyber schools. I find that brick-and-mortar charters have no or positive effects across outcomes, and that effects are concentrated in urban districts and among Black and economically disadvantaged students. By contrast, attending a cyber charter is associated with almost universally worse outcomes, with little evidence of heterogeneity. Students who enroll in a cyber charter at the beginning of ninth grade are 9.5 percentage points (pp) less likely to graduate, 16.8 pp less likely to enroll in college, and 15.2 pp less likely to persist in a postsecondary institution beyond one semester. These results suggest that additional regulation and oversight of cyber charter schools is warranted and also bring into question the efficacy of online education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the current U.S.–China trade war on Malaysia. Malaysia's neutral stance leaves possibilities open for trade and investments from both sides. Our survey shows that the negative impacts have been minimal so far. The country seeks to capitalize on the trade war by promoting local industries that are substitutable to those from the United States and China. Efforts to improve competitiveness by improving physical and digital infrastructure, facilitating small- and medium-sized enterprises to export, and promoting potential domestic suppliers are being made to ensure favorable conditions to receive foreign direct investment relocating from China or the United States. Malaysia is also cooperating with its regional partners to further mitigate the effects of the trade war. Malaysia may, however, be its own greatest enemy in capitalizing from the trade war because the decline in human capital is making it difficult to harness the benefits from upcoming deglobalization headwinds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological progress may be less beneficial for older workers than younger workers. In this paper, we empirically examine the relationship between technological change and the wage share of old workers. More specifically, we look at five different types of technological advancement using data from 30 European and Asian countries at the forefront of global population aging. Our findings indicate that recent technological developments centered on information and communication technology, software, and robots do not adversely affect old workers. One possible explanation is that old workers may be more open to and capable of learning new technologies than widely presumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposing an evolutionary algorithm that is used to evolve robot controllers to variable conditions is necessary to obtain solutions which are robust and can cross the reality gap. However, we do not yet have methods for analyzing and understanding the impact of the varying morphological conditions which impact the evolutionary process, and therefore for choosing suitable variation ranges. By morphological conditions, we refer to the starting state of the robot, and to variations in its sensor readings during operation due to noise. In this paper, we introduce a method that permits us to measure the impact of these morphological variations and we analyze the relation between the amplitude of variations, the modality with which they are introduced, and the performance and robustness of evolving agents. Our results demonstrate that (i) the evolutionary algorithm can tolerate morphological variations which have a very high impact, (ii) variations affecting the actions of the agent are tolerated much better than variations affecting the initial state of the agent or of the environment, and (iii) improving the accuracy of the fitness measure through multiple evaluations is not always useful. Moreover, our results show that morphological variations permit generating solutions which perform better both in varying and non-varying conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we compare Bayesian Optimization, Differential Evolution, and an Evolution Strategy employed as a gait-learning algorithm in modular robots. The motivational scenario is the joint evolution of morphologies and controllers, where "newborn" robots also undergo a learning process to optimize their inherited controllers (without changing their bodies). This context raises the question: How do gait-learning algorithms compare when applied to various morphologies that are not known in advance (and thus need to be treated as without priors)? To answer this question, we use a test suite of twenty different robot morphologies to evaluate our gait-learners and compare their efficiency, efficacy, and sensitivity to morphological differences. The results indicate that Bayesian Optimization and Differential Evolution deliver the same solution quality (walking speed for the robot) with fewer evaluations than the Evolution Strategy. Furthermore, the Evolution Strategy is more sensitive for morphological differences (its efficacy varies more between different morphologies) and is more subject to luck (repeated runs on the same morphology show greater variance in the outcomes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces critical elements in the substantial, albeit mostly unpublished, correspondence between cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall and media theorist Marshall McLuhan related to artistic practice with emerging media technologies in the 1960s. It contextualizes their exchange within the broader theoretical discourses and artistic practices surrounding systems theory and media technology and highlights intersections between Hall and McLuhan's theoretical frameworks related to concepts of indeterminism, systems theory, and cybernetics in technology-based, kinesthetic, multisensory mediated environments in the 1960s. It particularly focuses on overlapping conceptual approaches toward the interrelation between the individual, the socio-cultural environment, and the emerging media-technological ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiential artificial intelligence (AI) is an approach to the design, use, and evaluation of AI in cultural or other real-world settings that foregrounds human experience and context. It combines arts and engineering to support rich and intuitive modes of model interpretation and interaction, making AI tangible and explicit. The ambition is to enable significant cultural works and make AI systems more understandable to nonexperts, thereby strengthening the basis for responsible deployment. This paper discusses limitations and promising directions in explainable AI, contributions the arts offer to enhance and go beyond explainability and methodology to support, deepen, and extend those contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes to teach students biology through dance. Knowledge of nucleotides, amino acids, and structures of DNA and protein is used to create dance music and choreography. The three nucleotides (A, T, G, or C) making up the amino acids of selected proteins are converted into a musical note. In accordance with DNA's double helix structure and base-pairing, the authors designed a low-cost, in-house Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) machine to allow for a dual player dance mode that requires students to synchronize their choreography during gameplay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Living Capsules is the umbrella name the authors give their art pieces, which are born from an ongoing collaboration between an artist and a sociologist who share interest in the relations between senses, bodies, and technologies. This reflective paper tells the story of the works' cocreation. The authors first introduce the notion of biohybrid systems as their sociotechnical inspiration. Second, they mark out the conceptual space in which they began to prototype Living Capsules. Third, they reflect on how and why they blend their disciplinary practices. And finally, they share and discuss prototype pieces, sketching future directions for their continued collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divergence of languages observed at the surface level is a major challenge encountered by multilingual data representation, especially when typologically distant languages are involved. Drawing inspiration from a formalist Chomskyan perspective towards language universals, Universal Grammar (UG), this article uses deductively pre-defined universals to analyze a multilingually heterogeneous phenomenon, event nominals. In this way, deeper universality of event nominals beneath their huge divergence in different languages is uncovered, which empowers us to break barriers between languages and thus extend insights from some synthetic languages to a non-inflectional language, Mandarin Chinese. Our empirical investigation also demonstrates this UG-inspired schema is effective: With its assistance, the inter-annotator agreement (IAA) for identifying event nominals in Mandarin grows from 88.02% to 94.99%, and automatic detection of event-reading nominalizations on the newly-established data achieves an accuracy of 94.76% and an F1 score of 91.3%, which significantly surpass those achieved on the pre-existing resource by 9.8% and 5.2%, respectively. Our systematic analysis also sheds light on nominal semantic role labeling. By providing a clear definition and classification on arguments of event nominal, the IAA of this task significantly increases from 90.46% to 98.04%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Concord Museum's exploration of history through material objects and storytelling. Topics include the nineteenth-century efforts of Cummings E. Davis to collect and preserve Concord's historical artifacts, the ongoing exhibition "What Makes History?" that challenges perspectives on whose histories are remembered and how, and the role of the Concord Antiquarian Society in shaping popular understandings of early American history.

This paper examines how scientific understanding is enhanced by virtual entities, focusing on the case of the synthetic cell. Comparing it to other virtual entities and environments in science, we argue that the synthetic cell has a virtual dimension, in that it is functionally similar to living cells, though it does not mimic any particular naturally evolved cell (nor is it constructed to do so). In being cell-like at most, the synthetic cell is akin to many other virtual objects as it is selective and only partially implemented. However, there is one important difference: it is constructed by using the same materials and, to some extent, the same kind of processes as its natural counterparts. In contrast to virtual reality, especially to that of digital entities and environments, the details of its implementation is what matters for the scientific understanding generated by the synthetic cell. We conclude by arguing for the close connection between the virtual and the artifactual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the notion of virtuality in the Bohr-Kramers-Slater theory of 1924. We situate the virtual entities of BKS within the tradition of the correspondence principle and the radiation theory of the Bohr model. We show how, in this context, virtual oscillators emerged as classical substitute radiators and were used to describe the otherwise elusive quantum transitions. They played an effective role in the quantum theory of radiation while remaining categorically distinct and ontologically separated from the quantum world of the Bohr model. The notion of virtuality thus differs markedly from its counterpart in quantum mechanics or QFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will not present a case study of the historical development of a virtual entity. Rather, I will develop an outlook on virtual entities in the sciences and propose a corresponding method for studying them (historically). In essence, my presentation can be considered a synthesis of different observations from the history and philosophy of science and has its roots in my dissertational research on the development of the virtual particle. Starting with a reflection on the role of presentism for the study of concept formation and development processes, I will show, through the example of the virtual particle, how current debates and interpretations can inform our access to a historical reconstruction. Following these reflections, I will argue for a pragmatist account of concepts as tools for the scientific practitioners. According to the approach presented in my article, concepts perform their functions through representations, and I will lay special focus on verbal representations and their different functions within scientific reasoning. In conclusion, I will frame the outcome of my discussion in terms of a proposal that might, through further research, enrich our understanding of virtual entities in the sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the health tradeoffs associated with the historical expansion in coal-fired electricity generation in the United States. We combine newly digitized data on all major coal-fired power plants for the period 1938–1962 with two complementary difference-in-differences strategies. Coal-fired plants imposed large negative health externalities that were partially offset by the benefits of local electricity generation. The health impacts varied widely according to initial electricity access and evolved as the stock of generating capacity expanded over the sample period. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for both current and future payoffs when designing environmental regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to leverage peer effects by changing assignment have often fallen short due to endogenous peer choice. To address this, I build a two-part model: agents form networks via continuous linking decisions; conditional on realized networks, outcomes are determined. I provide results on identification of both parts of the model. Using data from a randomized study in India, I estimate the model, assess its performance in out-of-sample prediction, and simulate outcomes under preferential assignment rules. This paper contributes new methodology for identifying effects of alternative assignments in the presence of network endogeneity, as well as identification of network formation models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a widespread belief that work is less secure than in the past, that an increasing share of workers are part of the "precariat." It is hard to find much evidence for this in objective measures of job security, but perhaps subjective measures show different trends. This paper shows that in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, workers feel as secure as they ever have in the past 30 years. This is partly because job insecurity is very cyclical and (pre-COVID) unemployment rates very low, but there is also no clear underlying trend towards increased subjective measures of job insecurity. This conclusion seems robust to controlling for the changing mix of the labor force, and it is true for specific subsets of workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delivering validated information to rural areas is a major challenge in low-income countries. In this paper, we study information provision to rural communities in the context of a global outbreak of an infectious disease—COVID-19. Two weeks after the initial lockdown in March 2020, we conducted a randomized experiment in rural Bangladesh and India to disseminate health information over the phone. We find that relative to information provided via SMS, phone calls can significantly improve people's awareness and compliance with health guidelines. We also find compliance to be substantially higher among women, which also persists after three months of the campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the impact of universities on urban innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth in Chinese cities. The authors provide empirical evidence showing that the number of university faculty and college students are positively correlated with the number of patents, enterprises, and economic growth. However, the paper also highlights some areas for improvement, such as the need for a systematic review of Chinese college reforms and the inclusion of specific cases that support the role of universities in Chinese innovations and entrepreneurship. The article also raises concerns about model specification, identification, and interpretation, suggesting the use of robustness checks and addressing issues of multicollinearity and reverse causality. Overall, the paper contributes to our understanding of the role of universities in generating externalities that foster innovation and drive economic growth in China. [Extracted from the article]

This article by Somkiat Tangkitvanich provides an extensive analysis of Sri Lanka's recent debt crisis. It examines the origins and progression of the crisis, highlighting the role of policy decisions, external shocks, and the COVID-19 pandemic in exacerbating Sri Lanka's economic vulnerabilities. The paper evaluates the response strategies of the Sri Lankan government and international organizations, particularly the IMF, and argues that timely action with IMF support could have mitigated the economic and sociopolitical costs of the crisis. The paper offers policy recommendations for addressing the crisis, advocating for a balanced approach that considers both immediate economic needs and long-term structural adjustment. It suggests measures such as floating the currency, using tariffs to alleviate pressure on foreign exchange reserves, and implementing social protection measures. The author commends the paper for its sensible and practical recommendations but suggests improvements such as providing a chronological summary of events and exploring additional options for structural adjustment. The need for further reform of economic institutions is also mentioned. [Extracted from the article]

The Review of Economics & Statistics 2024 Annual Report provides an overview of the journal's editorial board and presents data on manuscript submissions, acceptance rates, decision times, and subject matter of published papers. The journal saw an increase in submissions from 2019 to 2020, followed by a steady submission rate in 2020 to 2021 and a 10% decline in 2022. However, the number of published papers increased in 2022 and 2023. The report also highlights improved decision turnaround times, with most manuscripts receiving a decision within three to six months. The subject matter of published papers in 2023 covered a range of topics, with microeconomics, mathematical and quantitative methods, and health, education, and welfare being the most common. The report includes a table showing the distribution of first decision times for papers submitted in 2023, as well as a table categorizing the subject matter of published manuscripts in 2023 by JEL codes. [Extracted from the article]

The papers collected in this Special Focus, prompted by S. Buergers and U. Noppeney [The role of alpha oscillations in temporal binding within and across the senses. Nature Human Behaviour, 6, 732–742, 2022], have raised several interesting ideas, arguments, and empirical results relating to the alpha temporal resolution hypothesis. Here we briefly respond to these, and in the process emphasize four challenges for future research: defining the scope and limitation of the hypothesis; developing experimental paradigms and study designs that rigorously test its tenets; decomposing the scalp-level signal and isolating underlying neural circuits; and bringing uniformity to the current diversity of analysis and statistical methods. Addressing these challenges will facilitate the progression from merely correlating alpha frequency with various perceptual phenomena to establishing whether and (if so) how alpha frequency influences sensory integration and segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the COVID-19 virus continues to circulate, there is an increasing insistence that the world "return to normal." In this paper the authors resist this pull to normalcy and the way it devalues the knowledges, vitality, and livelihoods of disabled people. They examine the crip technoscience practices used during the 2022 digital gathering Practicing the Social: Entanglements of Art and Social Justice, situating them as examples of cultural accessibility that engage with slow technology to provoke crip(ped) ways of being in time. They argue that sustained engagement with cultural accessibility offers a different path through the pandemic, one that centers access and resists the way necropolitics devalues disabled life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]