Dissolving a Partnership Efficiently

Several partners jointly own an asset that may be traded among them. Each partner has a valuation for the asset; the valuations are known privately and drawn independently from a common probability distribution. We characterize the set of all incentive-compatible and interim- individually- rational trading mechanisms, and give a simple necessary and sufficient condition for such mechanisms to dissolve the partnership ex post efficiently. A bidding game is constructed that achieves such dissolution whenever it is possible. Despite incomplete information about the valuation of the asset, a partnership can be dissolved ex post efficiently provided no single partner owns too large a share; this contrasts with Myerson and Satterthwaite's result that ex post efficiency cannot be achieved when the asset is owned by a single party.Auctions; Trading Machanisms; Efficiency; Public Goods

Active megadetachment beneath the western United States

Geodetic data, interpreted in light of seismic imaging, seismicity, xenolith studies, and the late Quaternary geologic history of the northern Great Basin, suggest that a subcontinental-scale extensional detachment is localized near the Moho. To first order, seismic yielding in the upper crust at any given latitude in this region occurs via an M7 earthquake every 100 years. Here we develop the hypothesis that since 1996, the region has undergone a cycle of strain accumulation and release similar to “slow slip events” observed on subduction megathrusts, but yielding occurred on a subhorizontal surface 5–10 times larger in the slip direction, and at temperatures >800°C. Net slip was variable, ranging from 5 to 10 mm over most of the region. Strain energy with moment magnitude equivalent to an M7 earthquake was released along this “megadetachment,” primarily between 2000.0 and 2005.5. Slip initiated in late 1998 to mid-1999 in northeastern Nevada and is best expressed in late 2003 during a magma injection event at Moho depth beneath the Sierra Nevada, accompanied by more rapid eastward relative displacement across the entire region. The event ended in the east at 2004.0 and in the remainder of the network at about 2005.5. Strain energy thus appears to have been transmitted from the Cordilleran interior toward the plate boundary, from high gravitational potential to low, via yielding on the megadetachment. The size and kinematic function of the proposed structure, in light of various proxies for lithospheric thickness, imply that the subcrustal lithosphere beneath Nevada is a strong, thin plate, even though it resides in a high heat flow tectonic regime. A strong lowermost crust and upper mantle is consistent with patterns of postseismic relaxation in the southern Great Basin, deformation microstructures and low water content in dunite xenoliths in young lavas in central Nevada, and high-temperature microstructures in analog surface exposures of deformed lower crust. Large-scale decoupling between crust and upper mantle is consistent with the broad distribution of strain in the upper crust versus the more localized distribution in the subcrustal lithosphere, as inferred by such proxies as low P wave velocity and mafic magmatism

Quantity and quality of conflict of interest policies at German medical schools - a cross sectional study and survey

Objectives: To assess the quantity and evaluate the quality of policies and curricula focusing on conflicts of interests (COI) at medical schools across Germany. Design: Cross-sectional study, survey of medical schools, standardised web search. Setting: Medical schools, Germany. Participants: 38 German medical schools. Interventions: We collected relevant COI policies, including teaching activities, by conducting a search of the websites of all 38 German medical schools using standardised keywords for COI policies and teaching. Further, we surveyed all medical schools’ dean’s offices. Finally, we adapted a scoring system for results we obtained with 13 categories based on prior similar studies. Main outcomes and measures: Presence or absence of COI-related policies, including teaching activities at medical school. The secondary outcome was the achieved score on a scale from 0 to 26, with high scores representing restrictive policies and sufficient teaching activities. Results: We identified relevant policies for one medical school via the web search. The response rate of the deans’ survey was 16 of 38 (42.1%). In total, we identified COI-related policies for 2 of 38 (5.3%) German medical schools, yet no policy was sufficient to address all COI-related categories that were assessed in this study. The maximum score achieved was 12 of 26. 36 (94.7%) schools scored 0. No medical school reported curricular teaching on COI. Conclusions: Our results indicate a low level of action by medical schools to protect students from undue commercial influence. No participating dean was aware of any curriculum or instruction on COI at the respective school and only two schools had policies in place. The German Medical Students Association and international counterparts have called for a stronger focus on COI in the classroom. We conclude that for German medical schools, there is still a long way to go

Adversarial Privacy-preserving Filter

While widely adopted in practical applications, face recognition has been critically discussed regarding the malicious use of face images and the potential privacy problems, e.g., deceiving payment system and causing personal sabotage. Online photo sharing services unintentionally act as the main repository for malicious crawler and face recognition applications. This work aims to develop a privacy-preserving solution, called Adversarial Privacy-preserving Filter (APF), to protect the online shared face images from being maliciously used.We propose an end-cloud collaborated adversarial attack solution to satisfy requirements of privacy, utility and nonaccessibility. Specifically, the solutions consist of three modules: (1) image-specific gradient generation, to extract image-specific gradient in the user end with a compressed probe model; (2) adversarial gradient transfer, to fine-tune the image-specific gradient in the server cloud; and (3) universal adversarial perturbation enhancement, to append image-independent perturbation to derive the final adversarial noise. Extensive experiments on three datasets validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed solution. A prototype application is also released for further evaluation.We hope the end-cloud collaborated attack framework could shed light on addressing the issue of online multimedia sharing privacy-preserving issues from user side.Comment: Accepted by ACM Multimedia 202

Resources, Capabilities, and Routines in Public Organizations

States, state agencies, multilateral agencies, and other non-market actors are relatively under-studied in strategic management and organization science. While important contributions to the study of public actors have been made within the agency-theoretic and transaction-cost traditions, there is little research in political economy that builds on resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and behavioral approaches to the firm. Yet public organizations can be characterized as stocks of human and non-human resources, including routines and capabilities; they can possess excess capacity in these resources; and they may grow and diversify in predictable patterns according to behavioral and Penrosean logic. This paper shows how resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and behavioral approaches to understanding public agencies and organizations shed light on their nature and governance

Effects of schistosomes on host anti-viral immune response and the acquisition, virulence, and prevention of viral infections: A systematic review.

Although a growing number of studies suggest interactions between Schistosoma parasites and viral infections, the effects of schistosome infections on the host response to viruses have not been evaluated comprehensively. In this systematic review, we investigated how schistosomes impact incidence, virulence, and prevention of viral infections in humans and animals. We also evaluated immune effects of schistosomes in those coinfected with viruses. We screened 4,730 studies and included 103. Schistosomes may increase susceptibility to some viruses, including HIV and Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, and virulence of hepatitis B and C viruses. In contrast, schistosome infection may be protective in chronic HIV, Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus-Type 1, and respiratory viruses, though further research is needed. Schistosome infections were consistently reported to impair immune responses to hepatitis B and possibly measles vaccines. Understanding the interplay between schistosomes and viruses has ramifications for anti-viral vaccination strategies and global control of viral infections