Relative critical loci and quiver moduli

in Annales Scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure (in press)

Clinical relevance of attentional biases in pediatric chronic pain: an eye-tracking study

in Pain (in press)

Attentional biases have been posited as one of the key mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of chronic pain and co-occurring internalizing mental health symptoms. Despite this theoretical ... [more ▼]

Attentional biases have been posited as one of the key mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of chronic pain and co-occurring internalizing mental health symptoms. Despite this theoretical prominence, a comprehensive understanding of the nature of biased attentional processing in chronic pain and its relationship to theorized antecedents and clinical outcomes is lacking, particularly in youth. This study used eye-tracking to assess attentional bias for painful facial expressions and its relationship to theorized antecedents of chronic pain and clinical outcomes. Youth with chronic pain (n = 125) and without chronic pain (n = 52) viewed face images of varying levels of pain expressiveness while their eye gaze was tracked and recorded. At baseline, youth completed questionnaires to assess pain characteristics, theorized antecedents (pain catastrophizing, fear of pain, and anxiety sensitivity), and clinical outcomes (pain intensity, interference, anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress). For youth with chronic pain, clinical outcomes were reassessed at 3 months to assess for relationships with attentional bias while controlling for baseline symptoms. In both groups, youth exhibited an attentional bias for painful facial expressions. For youth with chronic pain, attentional bias was not significantly associated with theorized antecedents or clinical outcomes at baseline or 3-month follow-up. These findings call into question the posited relationships between attentional bias and clinical outcomes. Additional studies using more comprehensive and contextual paradigms for the assessment of attentional bias are required to clarify the ways in which such biases may manifest and relate to clinical outcomes. [less ▲]

Economic insecurity and political preferences

in Oxford Economic Papers (in press)

Economic insecurity has attracted growing attention, but there is no consensus as to its definition. We characterize a class of individual economic-insecurity measures based on the time profile of ... [more ▼]

Economic insecurity has attracted growing attention, but there is no consensus as to its definition. We characterize a class of individual economic-insecurity measures based on the time profile of economic resources. We apply this economic-insecurity measure to political-preference data in the USA, UK, and Germany. Conditional on current economic resources, economic insecurity is associated with both greater political participation (support for a party or the intention to vote) and more support for conservative parties. In particular, economic insecurity predicts greater support for both Donald Trump before the 2016 US Presidential election and the UK leaving the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum. [less ▲]

Are Family Firms Doing More Innovation Output With Less Innovation Input? A Replication and Extension

in Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice (in press)

Simulator-based explanation and debugging of hazard-triggering events in DNN-based safety-critical systems

in ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (in press)

When Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are used in safety-critical systems, engineers should determine the safety risks associated with failures (i.e., erroneous outputs) observed during testing. For DNNs ... [more ▼]

When Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are used in safety-critical systems, engineers should determine the safety risks associated with failures (i.e., erroneous outputs) observed during testing. For DNNs processing images, engineers visually inspect all failure-inducing images to determine common characteristics among them. Such characteristics correspond to hazard-triggering events (e.g., low illumination) that are essential inputs for safety analysis. Though informative, such activity is expensive and error-prone. To support such safety analysis practices, we propose SEDE, a technique that generates readable descriptions for commonalities in failure-inducing, real-world images and improves the DNN through effective retraining. SEDE leverages the availability of simulators, which are commonly used for cyber-physical systems. It relies on genetic algorithms to drive simulators towards the generation of images that are similar to failure-inducing, real-world images in the test set; it then employs rule learning algorithms to derive expressions that capture commonalities in terms of simulator parameter values. The derived expressions are then used to generate additional images to retrain and improve the DNN. With DNNs performing in-car sensing tasks, SEDE successfully characterized hazard-triggering events leading to a DNN accuracy drop. Also, SEDE enabled retraining leading to significant improvements in DNN accuracy, up to 18 percentage points. [less ▲]

L'hagiographie à l'aune du numérique. Nouvelles perspectives d'étude des légendiers latins

in In Monte Artium (in press)

Wortverbindungen in Paraphrase und Argumentation: Eine Untersuchung an Lernendentexten von Studierenden mit L2 Deutsch

in Akten des XIV. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses. Palermo 2021. Wege der Germanistik in transkulturellen Perspektiven (in press)

In diesem Beitrag wird der Umgang mit wissenschaftssprachlichen Wortverbindungen in den beiden Textmustern Paraphrase und Argumentation von Texten luxemburgischer Studienanfänger der Germanistik mit L2 ... [more ▼]

In diesem Beitrag wird der Umgang mit wissenschaftssprachlichen Wortverbindungen in den beiden Textmustern Paraphrase und Argumentation von Texten luxemburgischer Studienanfänger der Germanistik mit L2 Deutsch genau unter die Lupe genommen. Dafür wird ein Korpus von 37 Lernendentexten nach korpuslinguistischen Kriterien aufbereitet und qualitativ analysiert. Es wird untersucht, welche Wortverbindungen für die beiden Textmuster typisch sind, welche Wortverbindungen bereits beherrscht werden und wo Schwierigkeiten auftreten. Die Untersuchung ergibt, dass die Verwendung von Wortverbindungen textmusterspezifisch ist. Die Fehleranalyse zeigt außerdem, dass von 195 verwendeten Wortverbindungen fast ein Drittel fehlerhaft sind. Dabei treten die größten Schwierigkeiten bei der Trennung zwischen Alltagssprache/Umgangssprache und Wissenschaftssprache auf. Als Maßnahmen für den Unterricht wird das Arbeiten mit Wortverbindungslisten, das selbstständige Ergänzen solcher Listen durch Analysen wissenschaftlicher Mustertexte, die Selbstkontrolle am Eigentext und das Arbeiten mit Korpora empfohlen. [less ▲]

Monetary policy and venture capital markets

in Review of Corporate Finance (in press)

We assess the impact of monetary policy (i.e., central bank interest rates) on the activity of venture capitalists (VC). Using data from 31 countries from 2004 to 2019, we find that VC firms’ fundraising ... [more ▼]

We assess the impact of monetary policy (i.e., central bank interest rates) on the activity of venture capitalists (VC). Using data from 31 countries from 2004 to 2019, we find that VC firms’ fundraising activity increases when interest rates become negative. We explain this finding by referring to the principal-agent relationship between general and limited partners of VC firms in combination with behavioral finance arguments. Specifically, we identify three channels pertaining to a legal motivation (i.e., legislative hurdles and litigation risks), a liquidity motivation (i.e., substitution effect relative to other asset classes), and behavioral biases (i.e., mental accounting, conservatism, disposition effect, or prospect theory). [less ▲]

Inter-State Dispute Settlement and Africa’s Supranational Courts

in Joanna, Gomula; Wittich, Stephan (Eds.) Research Handbook on International Procedural Law (in press)

The Chapter examines the various regional and sub-regional judicial mechanisms in Africa highlighting their potential for effective inter-state dispute settlement. It explains the lack of inter-state ... [more ▼]

The Chapter examines the various regional and sub-regional judicial mechanisms in Africa highlighting their potential for effective inter-state dispute settlement. It explains the lack of inter-state disputes before Africa’s supranational courts despite the existence of multiple mechanisms providing them with such jurisdiction, and identifies ways through which the potential of these mechanisms can be harnessed to provide effective avenues for the settlement of disputes between African States. [less ▲]

Mehrsprachige urbane Verwaltungspraxis. Eine Studie zu Sprachverhältnissen und Sprachwahlmechanismen in den Luxemburger Pièces des Comptes des 17. Jahrhunderts

Book published by Universitätsverlag Winter (in press)