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1. What is in #P and what is not?

   Ikenmeyer, Christian; Pak, Igor (October 2022, Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science)

   We prove that deciding the vanishing of the character of the symmetric group is C=P-complete. We use this hardness result to prove that the square of the character is not contained in #P, unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses to the second level. This rules out the existence of any (unsigned) combinatorial description for the square of the characters. As a byproduct of our proof we conclude that deciding positivity of the character is PP-complete under many-one reductions, and hence PH-hard under Turing-reductions. 

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2. What is attentional refreshing in working memory?: What is attentional refreshing?

   https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13616  

   Camos, Valérie; Johnson, Matthew; Loaiza, Vanessa; Portrat, Sophie; Souza, Alessandra; Vergauwe, Evie (July 2018, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
3. What is mineral informatics?

   https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2022-8613  

   Prabhu, Anirudh; Morrison, Shaunna M.; Fox, Peter; Ma, Xiaogang; Wong, Michael L.; Williams, Jason R.; McGuinness, Kenneth N.; Krivovichev, Sergey V.; Lehnert, Kerstin; Ralph, Jolyon; et al (July 2023, American Mineralogist)

   Abstract Minerals are information-rich materials that offer researchers a glimpse into the evolution of planetary bodies. Thus, it is important to extract, analyze, and interpret this abundance of information to improve our understanding of the planetary bodies in our solar system and the role our planet’s geosphere played in the origin and evolution of life. Over the past several decades, data-driven efforts in mineralogy have seen a gradual increase. The development and application of data science and analytics methods to mineralogy, while extremely promising, has also been somewhat ad hoc in nature. To systematize and synthesize the direction of these efforts, we introduce the concept of “Mineral Informatics,” which is the next frontier for researchers working with mineral data. In this paper, we present our vision for Mineral Informatics and the X-Informatics underpinnings that led to its conception, as well as the needs, challenges, opportunities, and future directions of the field. The intention of this paper is not to create a new specific field or a sub-field as a separate silo, but to document the needs of researchers studying minerals in various contexts and fields of study, to demonstrate how the systemization and enhanced access to mineralogical data will increase cross- and interdisciplinary studies, and how data science and informatics methods are a key next step in integrative mineralogical studies. 

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4. What is microbial dormancy?

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2023.08.006  

   McDonald, Mark D.; Owusu-Ansah, Carlos; Ellenbogen, Jared B.; Malone, Zachary D.; Ricketts, Michael P.; Frolking, Steve E.; Ernakovich, Jessica Gilman; Ibba, Michael; Bagby, Sarah C.; Weissman, J.L. (September 2023, Trends in Microbiology)
5. What is Proxy Discrimination?

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3531146.3533242  

   Tschantz, Michael Carl (June 2022, ACM)

   The near universal condemnation of proxy discrimination hides a disagreement over what it is. This work surveys various notions of proxy and proxy discrimination found in prior work and represents them in a common framework. These notions variously turn on statistical dependencies, causal effects, and intentions. It discusses the limitations and uses of each notation and of the concept as a whole. 

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