On the Clawbacks in the Madoff Liquidation Proceeding

At a Meeting of Creditors held on February 20, 2009, counsel for the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC, announced the advent of clawback suits seeking to recover sums paid out to defrauded investors.\u27 This Essay explains the legal framework for the clawback suits and anticipates that many investors in the Ponzi scheme 2 will not have submitted claims by the July 2, 2009 deadline, which may result in clawback litigation before multiple courts. The Essay then discusses ways to streamline clawbacks and other Madoff-related litigation so that investors who have already been defrauded are not further damaged by the measures taken to compensate them. It closes with an invitation for additional proposals

On the Clawbacks in the Madoff Liquidation Proceeding

At a Meeting of Creditors held on February 20, 2009, counsel for the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC, announced the advent of clawback suits seeking to recover sums paid out to defrauded investors.\u27 This Essay explains the legal framework for the clawback suits and anticipates that many investors in the Ponzi scheme 2 will not have submitted claims by the July 2, 2009 deadline, which may result in clawback litigation before multiple courts. The Essay then discusses ways to streamline clawbacks and other Madoff-related litigation so that investors who have already been defrauded are not further damaged by the measures taken to compensate them. It closes with an invitation for additional proposals

A Profile of Frail Older Americans and Their Caregivers

Provides a profile of older Americans and their caregivers, focusing on people age 65 and older who are not in nursing homes, and those with severe disabilities. Includes policy implications and recommendations for community-based home care options

Signatures of evanescent mode transport in graphene

We calculate the shot noise generated by evanescent modes in graphene for several experimental setups. For two impurity-free graphene strips kept at the Dirac point by gate potentials, separated by a long highly doped region, we find that the Fano factor takes the universal value F = 1/4. For a large superlattice consisting of many strips gated to the Dirac point interspersed among doped regions, we find F = 1/(8 ln 2). These results differ from the value F = 1/3 predicted for a disordered metal, providing an unambiguous experimental signature of evanescent mode transport in graphene.Comment: Added reference

Avoiding bias in reconstructing the largest observable scales from partial-sky data

Obscuration due to Galactic emission complicates the extraction of information from cosmological surveys, and requires some combination of the (typically imperfect) modeling and subtraction of foregrounds, or the removal of part of the sky. This particularly affects the extraction of information from the largest observable scales. Maximum-likelihood estimators for reconstructing the full-sky spherical harmonic coefficients from partial-sky maps have recently been shown to be susceptible to contamination from within the sky cut, arising due to the necessity to band-limit the data by smoothing prior to reconstruction. Using the WMAP 7-year data, we investigate modified implementations of such estimators which are robust to the leakage of contaminants from within masked regions. We provide a measure, based on the expected amplitude of residual foregrounds, for selecting the most appropriate estimator for the task at hand. We explain why the related quadratic maximum-likelihood estimator of the angular power spectrum does not suffer from smoothing-induced bias.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures. v2: replaced with version accepted by PRD (minor amendments to text only

Spreading dynamics on spatially constrained complex brain networks

The study of dynamical systems defined on complex networks provides a natural framework with which to investigate myriad features of neural dynamics and has been widely undertaken. Typically, however, networks employed in theoretical studies bear little relation to the spatial embedding or connectivity of the neural networks that they attempt to replicate. Here, we employ detailed neuroimaging data to define a network whose spatial embedding represents accurately the folded structure of the cortical surface of a rat brain and investigate the propagation of activity over this network under simple spreading and connectivity rules. By comparison with standard network models with the same coarse statistics, we show that the cortical geometry influences profoundly the speed of propagation of activation through the network. Our conclusions are of high relevance to the theoretical modelling of epileptic seizure events and indicate that such studies which omit physiological network structure risk simplifying the dynamics in a potentially significant way

Assessing the effect of advertising expenditures upon sales: a Bayesian structural time series model

We propose a robust implementation of the Nerlove--Arrow model using a Bayesian structural time series model to explain the relationship between advertising expenditures of a country-wide fast-food franchise network with its weekly sales. Thanks to the flexibility and modularity of the model, it is well suited to generalization to other markets or situations. Its Bayesian nature facilitates incorporating \emph{a priori} information (the manager's views), which can be updated with relevant data. This aspect of the model will be used to present a strategy of budget scheduling across time and channels.Comment: Published at Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/asmb.246

On inversions and Doob hh-transforms of linear diffusions

Let $X$ be a regular linear diffusion whose state space is an open interval $E\subseteq\mathbb{R}$. We consider a diffusion $X^*$ which probability law is obtained as a Doob $h$-transform of the law of $X$, where $h$ is a positive harmonic function for the infinitesimal generator of $X$ on $E$. This is the dual of $X$ with respect to $h(x)m(dx)$ where $m(dx)$ is the speed measure of $X$. Examples include the case where $X^*$ is $X$ conditioned to stay above some fixed level. We provide a construction of $X^*$ as a deterministic inversion of $X$, time changed with some random clock. The study involves the construction of some inversions which generalize the Euclidean inversions. Brownian motion with drift and Bessel processes are considered in details.Comment: 19 page

Using Decision Analysis to Improve Malaria Control Policy Making

Malaria and other vector-borne diseases represent a significant and growing burden in many tropical countries. Successfully addressing these threats will require policies that expand access to and use of existing control methods, such as insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) and artemesinin combination therapies (ACTs) for malaria, while weighing the costs and benefits of alternative approaches over time. This paper argues that decision analysis provides a valuable framework for formulating such policies and combating the emergence and re-emergence of malaria and other diseases. We outline five challenges that policy makers and practitioners face in the struggle against malaria, and demonstrate how decision analysis can help to address and overcome these challenges. A prototype decision analysis framework for malaria control in Tanzania is presented, highlighting the key components that a decision support tool should include. Developing and applying such a framework can promote stronger and more effective linkages between research and policy, ultimately helping to reduce the burden of malaria and other vector-borne diseases