A New Metric for Banking Integration in Europe

Most observers have concluded that while money markets and government bond markets are rapidly integrating following the introduction of the common currency in the euro area, there is little evidence that a similar integration process is taking place for retail banking. Data on cross-border retail bank flows, cross-border bank mergers and the law of one price reveal no evidence of integration in retail banking. This paper shows that the previous tests of bank integration are weak in that they are not based on an equilibrium concept and are neither necessary nor sufficient statistics for bank integration. The paper proposes a new test of integration based on convergence in banks' profitability. The new test emphasises the role of an active market for corporate control and of competition in banking integration. European listed banks profitability appears to converge to a common level. There is weak evidence that competition eliminates high profits for these banks, and underperforming banks tend to show improved profitability. Unlisted European banks differ markedly. Their profits show no tendency to revert to a common target rate of profitability. Overall, the banking market in Europe appears far from being integrated. In contrast, in the U.S. both listed and unlisted commercial banks profits converge to the same target, and high profit banks see their profits driven down quickly. --

The problem of off duty time in long duration space missions. Volume 3 - An annotated bibliography

Annotated bibliography on studies pertaining to off duty time during long duration manned space flight

CO-OCCURRENCE OF NITROGEN FIXATION AND DENITRIFICATION ACROSS A STREAM NITROGEN GRADIENT IN A WESTERN WATERSHED

It is frequently assumed that N2 fixation and denitrification do not co-occur in streams because each process should be favored under different concentrations of reactive nitrogen. Yet, both N2 fixation and denitrification have been found to co-occur in marine and coastal ecosystems despite their differences in nitrogen requirements, and we cannot evaluate this assumption for streams because both processes are rarely quantified together. We asked if these processes could co-exist by measuring rates of N2 fixation using acetylene reduction, denitrification using acetylene block, and N2 flux using membrane inlet mass spectrometry on rocks and sediment in 8 southeastern Idaho streams encompassing a dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) gradient of 6-615 µg/L. N2 flux rates on rocks had a mean of -12,000 ± 4,900 µg/m2/h and on sediment of -2,400 ± 12,000 µg/m2/h, which were significantly different. N2 fixation rates were not significantly different among rock and sediment substrate with means of 22.9 ± 54.4 and 2.2 ± 2.0 µg/m2/h, respectively. Unamended denitrification rates were significantly different among rock and sediment substrates with means of 3 ± 7 and 2248 ±1565 μg/m2/h, respectively. Amended denitrification rates were also significantly different among substrates with a mean of 352 ± 690 µg/m2/h on rocks and 18,100 ± 6287 µg/m2/h on sediment. DIN concentration was not a significant predictor of unamended denitrification rates, but was a significant predictor of N2 flux and N2fixation rates on rocks in 2016, and amended denitrification rates on sediments in 2015 and 2016, indicating that DIN concentration alone cannot predict occurrence of processes on all substrates at all times. Multiple linear regression models relating environmental variables to measured rates showed that carbon and phosphorus availability were important predictors of denitrification rates and phosphorus, carbon, and light availability were important predictors of N2 flux rates across all sites. No significant model was produced for N2 fixation rates. Environmental characteristics measured at the scale of entire stream-reaches may not be at a fine enough spatial scale to characterize and predict the co-occurrence of these processes within stream reaches. N2 flux is balanced by the rates of N2 fixation and denitrification, and in order to better understand the fluxes and cycling of N through stream ecosystems we need to examine the co-occurrence of these processes

SPATIAL HETEROGENEITY OF NITROGEN CYCLING WITHIN AND ACROSS FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS

Dinitrogen (N2) fixation and denitrification are two nitrogen (N) cycling processes that despite differences in environmental requirements and constraints, co-occur in aquatic ecosystems. The overall goal of this dissertation was to evaluate how spatial heterogeneity of environmental variables 1) drive hot spots of N2 fixation, denitrification rates and gene abundances in streams, 2) facilitate co-occurrence of these processes across wetland – stream – lake interfaces, and 3) affect differences in microbial community composition in streams across U.S. ecoregions. We found hot spots of both processes within 7 stream reaches in Michigan and Idaho, but rates of N2 fixation were not directly related to relative gene abundances of nifH, while denitrification rates were related to relative gene abundances of nirS. Spatial heterogeneity of organic matter and dissolved oxygen concentrations were important predictors of rates of both processes. In a survey across 5 wetland – stream – lake interfaces of Lakes Superior and Huron, we found that rates of N2 fixation and denitrification occurred across stream, wetland and shallow lake habitats and that phosphorus (P) availability was important for predicting rates of both processes, while N availability was an important predictor of denitrification and carbon (C) availability was important predictor of N2 fixation. Finally, in a survey of microbial assemblages from 30 streams across 13 U.S. ecoregions, we found that microbial community composition differed across ecoregions in alpha diversity and relative Class abundances, but little of this variation was explained by environmental variables. Together, these studies show that N2 fixation and denitrification co-occurred in stream and coastal ecosystems and across spatial scales from stream reaches to ecoregions. However, rates and microbial community composition are not explained fully xii by differences in environmental variables on the microhabitat, cross-habitat, or ecoregion scale. N alone was not always an important predictor of the processes despite N being thought of as the best indicator of these processes in the past. Overall, these studies highlight the need to include both N2 fixation and denitrification measurements in biogeochemical studies for a better understanding of the complexity of N cycling in aquatic ecosystems

Linear beam-beam resonance due to coherent dipole motion

We study the transverse motion of the barycentres of bunches in two beams, which circulate in opposite direction in a storage ring, and are coupled by the beam-beam effect. the motion is described by a linear system of escillators, and represented by a matrix. We distinguish between perfect machines in which the bunch parameters and the arc and interaction point parameters are all equal, and machines with errors in which at least one of these conditions is not satisfied. We determine the regions in tune space where the motion is unstable, analytically for perfect machines, and numerically for machines with errors. We identify these regions as resonances related to the tunes of one of the two beams or to their sum. We establish what resonances are excited under given conditions. We find that more resonances occur in machines with errors than in perfect machines. by multi-particle tracking, we study the instability at finite amplitudes

The 3D structure of the Lagrangian acceleration in turbulent flows

We report experimental results on the three dimensional Lagrangian acceleration in highly turbulent flows. Tracer particles are tracked optically using four silicon strip detectors from high energy physics that provide high temporal and spatial resolution. The components of the acceleration are shown to be statistically dependent. The probability density function (PDF) of the acceleration magnitude is comparable to a log-normal distribution. Assuming isotropy, a log-normal distribution of the magnitude can account for the observed dependency of the components. The time dynamics of the acceleration components is found to be typical of the dissipation scales whereas the magnitude evolves over longer times, possibly close to the integral time scale.Comment: accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

An exact Coulomb cutoff technique for supercell calculations

We present a new reciprocal space analytical method to cutoff the long range interactions in supercell calculations for systems that are infinite and periodic in 1 or 2 dimensions, extending previous works for finite systems. The proposed cutoffs are functions in Fourier space, that are used as a multiplicative factor to screen the bare Coulomb interaction. The functions are analytic everywhere but in a sub-domain of the Fourier space that depends on the periodic dimensionality. We show that the divergences that lead to the non-analytical behaviour can be exactly cancelled when both the ionic and the Hartree potential are properly screened. This technique is exact, fast, and very easy to implement in already existing supercell codes. To illustrate the performance of the new scheme, we apply it to the case of the Coulomb interaction in systems with reduced periodicity (as one-dimensional chains and layers). For those test cases we address the impact of the cutoff in different relevant quantities for ground and excited state properties, namely: the convergence of the ground state properties, the static polarisability of the system, the quasiparticle corrections in the GW scheme and in the binding energy of the excitonic states in the Bethe-Salpeter equation. The results are very promising.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review B on Dec 23rd 200