Guest Column Research Articles

Reflections on Integrating a Therapist-guided CBT Website Into Routine Clinical Practice.

Psychotherapy remains a scarce resource for patients, as problems such as provider shortages result in waitlists and lack of timely access. In their academic medical center outpatient clinic, the coauthors piloted use of a therapist-guided CBT website, Good Days Ahead, in routine clinical practice. They reflect on the benefits and challenges of this approach in this guest column.

EDFAS' Role and Recent Progress in Cultivating Future Leaders

Abstract This guest column outlines pilot programs and activities undertaken by the Electronic Device Failure Analysis Society to engage students and young professionals.

Guest column Initial Findings from the Collaborative for Equitable Retirement Savings: Defined Contribution Plans Don’t Work the Same for All Workers

guest column Initial Findings from the Collaborative for Equitable Retirement Savings: Defined Contribution Plans Don’t Work the Same for All Workers

Guest Column: Structure in Communication Complexity and Constant-Cost Complexity Classes

Several theorems and conjectures in communication complexity state or speculate that the complexity of a matrix in a given communication model is controlled by a related analytic or algebraic matrix parameter, e.g., rank, sign-rank, discrepancy, etc. The forward direction is typically easy as the structural implications of small complexity often imply a bound on some matrix parameter. The challenge lies in establishing the reverse direction, which requires understanding the structure of Boolean matrices for which a given matrix parameter is small or large. We will discuss several research directions that align with this overarching theme.

Guest Column: New ways of studying the BPP = P conjecture

What's new in the world of derandomization? Questions about pseudorandomness and derandomization have been driving progress in complexity theory for many decades. In this survey we will describe new approaches to the BPP = P conjecture from recent years, as well as new questions, algorithmic approaches, and ways of thinking. For example: Do we really need pseudorandom generators for derandomization, or can we get away with weaker objects? Can we prove free lunch theorems, eliminating randomness with zero computational overhead? What hardness assumptions are necessary and sufficient for derandomization? And how do new advances in this area interact with progress in cryptography and in interactive proof systems?

The Politics of Apocalypse

Abstract This guest column examines the historical fate of Russia in its catastrophic confrontation with Ukraine and the West. The piece considers the negative self-definitions of Russia that have arisen in the aftermath of the communist utopia and its virtual transformation into an anti-world — a society whose purpose is to undermine and destroy. Emerging Russian cults of war, death, and apocalypticism are stressed, as are the paradoxes and inversions by which Russia, in attempting to become stronger, becomes weaker and indeed suicidal.

Guest column ICYMI: Highlights from DCIIA’s 2022 Academic Forum

guest column ICYMI: Highlights from DCIIA’s 2022 Academic Forum

Cinema’s Cosmic Shifts

Cinema’s Cosmic Shifts

Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares, Connecticut River Valley, Western Massachusetts, United States

Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares, Connecticut River Valley, Western Massachusetts, United States

Guest column How Would a Universal Auto IRA with Emergency Savings Impact Overall Wealth and Liquid Asset Accumulation?

1. Warren Cormier 1. is executive director of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association Retirement Research Center in Washington, DC. (warren.cormier{at}dciia.org) 2. David John 1. is a senior policy advisor at the AARP Public Policy Institute in Washington, DC. (

Guest column: A panorama of counting problems the decision version of which is in P 3

Since Valiant's seminal work, where the complexity class #P was defined, much research has been done on counting complexity, from various perspectives. A question that permeates many of these efforts concerns the approximability of counting problems, in particular which of them admit an efficient approximation scheme ( fpras ). A counting problem (a function from Σ * to N) that admits an fpras must necessarily have an easy way to decide whether the output value is nonzero. Having this in mind, we focus our attention on classes of counting problems, the decision version of which is in P (or in RP). We discuss structural characterizations for classes of such problems under various lenses: Cook and Karp reductions, path counting in non-deterministic Turing machines, approximability and approximation-preserving reductions, easy decision by randomization, descriptive complexity, and interval-size functions. We end up with a rich landscape inside #P, revealing a number of inclusions and separations among complexity classes of easy-to-decide counting problems.

Obituary: Éva S. Balogh (1936–2021)

Born in Pécs, Éva S. Balogh was a twenty-year-old undergraduate student at Eötvös Loránd University at the time of the 1956 revolution. During the uprising, she helped publish a revolutionary student newspaper and fled Hungary in December 1956 to find refuge in Canada following the Soviet suppression of the revolt. Balogh completed a B.A. in history at Carleton University in Ottawa, followed by an M.A. and PhD in history from Yale University. Her scholarly career included serving as a professor of Russian and Eastern European history, as well as working in senior academic administration as the dean of Yale’s Morse College from 1973 to 1978. After this, Balogh’s career shifted focus, and she helped establish Brevis Press, a publishing company.Balogh was an early user of the Internet in March 1994, being an active participant in two nascent discussion groups on Hungary and Hungarian politics. Eventually, she established and moderated her own online discussion group on Hungary, before launching the Hungarian Spectrum blog in June 2007 from her home in Bethany, Connecticut. In a video interview with journalist Benjamin Novak, Balogh once recounted a friend’s initial reaction to her first blog post. “Oh, Éva,” the friend said with a tone of gentle pity, “a blog isn’t meant to be a historical treatise.”1 That comment reflected the challenge of transitioning from academic to journalistic writing.However, it was a challenge that Balogh would meet head on, as she wrote daily blog posts that mostly read like long-form journalistic articles. Her pieces offered analysis of Hungarian current affairs and trends in contemporary society, based on a wide range of Hungarian-language sources, as well as on her own connections to, and discussions with, key people in Hungarian democratic opposition circles. Balogh’s writing combined informed opinion and news reporting—all from a broadly liberal democratic angle. Balogh also produced English translations of Hungarian written sources. Over the course of fourteen years, Balogh published some 5,000 articles in Hungarian Spectrum—rarely missing a day and writing nearly all the published pieces herself. Her process was to spend each morning reading Hungarian news sites—both from the left and the right political spectrum—and then the second half of the day on writing her daily blog posts, most of which exceeded 1,000 words in length.In 2011, Balogh’s commitment to democratic values in Hungary led her to become a founding member of the Canadian Hungarian Democratic Charter. Her diligent daily reporting in Hungarian Spectrum also brought her widespread recognition. In 2019, when George Soros won the Ridenhour Courage Prize, he donated the $10,000 that he had received to Hungarian Spectrum, in order to raise international awareness of Hungary’s slide into authoritarian rule. In addition to her thousands of Hungarian Spectrum articles, Balogh also published guest columns in the Hungarian daily Népszava.When Balogh died suddenly of cardiac arrest on November 30, 2021, Hungarian Spectrum had over 7,000 subscribers. The site became a true vocation for Éva—her commitment and passion never wavered. While her sudden death leaves a void for thousands of loyal readers, Hungarian Spectrum is archived by the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University and by the Library of Congress.2

Guest column Retirees in Profile: What We Can Learn from Four Distinct Spending Segments

1. Warren Cormier 1. is executive director of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association Retirement Research Center in Washington, DC. (warren.cormier{at}dciia.org) 2. Pamela Hess 1. is the vice president of research at the Defined Contribution Institutional

Keeping Quiet in Tove Jansson's Fair Play

Abstract As a follow-up to the Common Knowledge symposium “Apology for Quietism” (15:1 to 16:3), this guest column asks what it means to say nothing. Strictly speaking, to “say nothing” is a contradiction in terms (unless, of course, one says “Nothing,” which is another thing entirely and generally not nothing). This essay explores what it means to say nothing in Tove Jansson's novella Fair Play (first published in Finland Swedish as Rent spel, 1989), an episodic account of the intertwined lives of two elderly artists. Through its careful staging of saying nothing, the text calls attention to the many vital functions that silence serves: exposing tacit expectations, opening up creative and psychological space, enabling otherwise impossible relations. Bringing forth the diversity, complexity, and mystery behind hesitation and reticence, Jansson's novella emerges here as a quiet celebration of conversational practices associated with weakness, redefining the genre of the “love story” along the way.

GUEST COLUMN: Ongoing Collaboration and Discussion Crucial to Moving the Needle on Retirement Savings

1. Warren Cormier 1. is executive director of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association Retirement Research Center in Washington, DC. (warren.cormier{at}dciia.org) In this inaugural column on behalf of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association (DCIIA),

Communities of Disagreement

Abstract This guest column in Common Knowledge presents the concept of “communities of disagreement” to an international and interdisciplinary audience, perhaps for the first time. It takes as its starting point the contrast between agonistic and deliberative democratic theories, and it attempts to outline how democratic groups may live well with unresolved disagreement yet not give on up developing truth-sensitive decision-making processes. It argues against the widespread idea that shared values are the social glue of democratic communities. By developing arguments of Manfred Frank, the article outlines a model of the relationship between social context, interpretation, and information.

SIGACT News Complexity Theory Column 109

Warmest thanks to Alexander Knop, Shachar Lovett, Sam McGuire, and Weiqiang Yuan for this issue's guest column, \Models of computation between decision trees and communication." (Their article came in early, and I wrote back thanking them for being three days early, mentioning that that happens surprisingly rarely. Then two days later, I said, \Wow!", as I realized that they actually had somehow|even during a remote-teaching, social-distancing time period|prepared and sent in their article a month and three days early.)

SIGACT News Complexity Theory Column 108

Warmest thanks to Rafael Pass and Muthu Venkitasubramaniam for this issue's guest column, "Average-Case Complexity Through the Lens of Interactive Puzzles." When I mentioned to them that my introduction would have a section on Alan Selman's passing, they immediately wrote back that they were very sorry to hear of Alan's passing, and mentioned (as you will see discussed in the second page of their article), "The main problem that we are addressing actually goes back to a paper of Even, Selman, and Yacobi from 1984: "The Complexity of Promise Problems with Applications to Public-Key Cryptography'." It is beautiful, and a tribute to the lasting influence of Alan's research, that in the 2020s his work from many decades earlier is helping shape the field's dialogue.

Washington Hotline

From silos to ecosystems Editor’s note: This month’s Washington Hotline department features a guest column by Rachel Minkin, head of Reference Services at Michigan State and a member of the ALA Committee on Library Advocacy’s Ecosystem Subcommittee. When library professionals talk about silos, we focus internally—technical services, public services, digital services, etc. Outside of individual libraries, we see more silos—public libraries, K-12 libraries, special libraries, state libraries. The most siloed, of course, are the academic libraries, ensconced firmly in our ivory towers (a perception from both within and without). Within our larger library associations, we keep those same silos, taking great care to advocate for our library type—the needs of our patrons and work. What if we take one more giant step back to see an even larger picture that sees each silo as a node in a greater library ecosystem? What happens when we see the interconnectedness of all library types within a whole state?

Achieving the Transformational Vision for Universal Design for Learning: Guest Associate Editor Introduction

The potential of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has captured the imagination of policy makers, educators, administrators, teacher educators, as well as educational researchers. Over the past 20 years, there has been increasing interest in how the vision of UDL could be translated into practice. And yet, there is little agreement about whether or not UDL is a design intervention and therefore the responsibility of publishers and instructional designers as they create curricula and instructional materials. I am pleased to introduce this guest column that profiles the work of Drs. Matthew Marino and Eleazar Vasquez as they describe the relationship between executive functioning and learner variability in inclusive classrooms.