Motivated by questions arising in signal processing, computational complexity, and other areas, we study the ranks and border ranks of symmetric tensors using geometric methods. We provide improved lower bounds for the rank of a symmetric tensor (i.e., a homogeneous polynomial) obtained by considering the singularities of the hypersurface defined by the polynomial. We obtain normal forms for po...

Melioidosis is endemic in areas of Southeast Asia, however, there are no published reports from the Thai-Myanmar border. We report the first two documented cases of fatal melioidosis in this region. This is of great public health importance and highlights the need to both increase clinical awareness of melioidosis on the Thai-Myanmar border, and to assess the true burden of disease in the area ...

In this short summary report on the legal definition of trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal and improving cross-border collaboration in criminal cases, challenges, and recommendations in the areas of defining the crime, criminal investigation and prosecution, and cross-border cooperation are made. These are the outcomes of a working group discussion during the writers' ...

This article draws a comparison between two adjacent ethnic groups, namely the Ainu of Hokkaido and the Nivkh of Sakhalin. We shall follow the historical development of the border areas between Japan and Russia and describe the prevailing situation of these aboriginal peoples on both sides of the border. The legal measures taken by the Japanese government for the promotion of Ainu culture and t...

With the passage of Amendments 20 (2000) and 64 (2012), Colorado legalized the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana. Nebraskan law enforcement in border counties subsequently reported increases in arrests and reductions in jail space. In response, the Nebraska state legislature passed LR-520 to study potential increased costs incurred by criminal justice agencies in border counties. To i...

Humans are capable of rapidly determining whether regions in a visual scene appear as figures in the foreground or as background, yet how figure-ground segregation occurs in the primate visual system is unknown. Figures in the environment are perceived to own their borders, and recent neurophysiology has demonstrated that certain cells in primate visual area V2 have border-ownership selectivity...

We studied the characteristics of an electrophysiological border zone detected after healing of experimental myocardial infarction in cats. Thirty-two isolated left ventricles were studied in tissue bath 2-7 months after distal left coronary artery ligation. Action potentials were recorded from endocardial ventricular muscle cells in normal, lateral border and central infarct zones. Action pote...

Natural images are usually cluttered because objects occlude one another. A critical aspect of recognizing these visual objects is to identify the borders between image regions that belong to different objects. However, the neural coding of border ownership in human visual cortex is largely unknown. In this study, we designed two simple but compelling stimuli in which a slight change of context...

The Effects of Enforcement on Illegal Markets: Evidence from Migrant Smuggling along the Southwestern Border This paper analyzes how enforcement along the U.S.-Mexican border has affected the market for migrant smugglers. Using a unique dataset that links border crossing histories from illegal Mexican migrants to aggregate enforcement and punishment statistics, we find that the effect of enforc...