Probability of informed trading: an empirical application to the euro overnight market rate.

This paper presents a microstructure model for the unsecured overnight euro money market, similar to that developed for stock markets by Easley and O'Hara (1992). More specifically, this paper studies the role of heterogeneity in the population of banks participating on this market, and the influence of the institutional framework and market organizational aspects of the overnight deposit market. A first empirical assessment of the functioning of this market is based on the probability of informed trade which measures the ability of traders (banks) to interpret signals on the expected evolution of the overnight rate. This indicator is estimated on real-time data publicly available to market participants. Results show that between 2000 and 2004 a heterogeneous learning process of market mechanisms within participants could be observed. From 2005 onwards, however, heterogeneity in the learning process sharply decreased. Moreover, the empirical evidence show that the March 2004 changes in Eurosystem's operational framework have modified the informational patterns of order flow in the euro area money market: informed trades became even more predominant between the last main refinancing operation and the end of the reserves maintenance period than they were before March 2004.Euro overnight market ; PIN models ; Microstructure, Monetary policy.

Is porto sinusoidal vascular disease to be actively searched in patients with portal vein thrombosis?

Porto sinusoidal vascular liver disease (PSVD) and portal vein thrombosis (PVT) are distinct vascular liver diseases characterized, respectively, by an intrahepatic and a prehepatic obstacle to the flow in the liver portal system. PVT may also occur as a complication of the natural history of PSVD, especially if a prothrombotic condition coexists. In other cases, it is associated to local and systemic pro-thrombotic conditions, even if its cause remains unknown in up to 25% despite an active search. In our opinion, the presence of PSVD should be suspected in patients with PVT especially in those with PVT "sine causa" and the active search of this condition should be included in their diagnostic work-out. However, sometimes the diagnosis of pre-existing PSVD is very hard. Biopsy cannot be fully discriminant as similar histological data have been described in both conditions. Liver stiffness may help as it has been shown to be higher in PSVD than in "pure" PVT, due to the presence of sclerosis in the portal venous radicles observable in PSVD patients. Nevertheless, comparing liver stiffness between PVT and PSVD has until now been restricted to very limited series of patients. In conclusion, even if it is still totally hypothetical, our point of view may have clinical consequences, especially when deciding to perform a liver biopsy in patients with a higher liver stiffness and suspending the anticoagulation in patients with PVT and no detectable prothrombotic factors

Spontaneous polarization and piezoelectricity in boron nitride nanotubes

Ab initio calculations of the spontaneous polarization and piezoelectric properties of boron nitride nanotubes show that they are excellent piezoelectric systems with response values larger than those of piezoelectric polymers. The intrinsic chiral symmetry of the nanotubes induces an exact cancellation of the total spontaneous polarization in ideal, isolated nanotubes of arbitrary indices. Breaking of this symmetry by inter-tube interaction or elastic deformations induces spontaneous polarization comparable to those of wurtzite semiconductors.Comment: 5 pages in PRB double column format, 3 figure

Value Propagation Networks

We present Value Propagation (VProp), a set of parameter-efficient differentiable planning modules built on Value Iteration which can successfully be trained using reinforcement learning to solve unseen tasks, has the capability to generalize to larger map sizes, and can learn to navigate in dynamic environments. We show that the modules enable learning to plan when the environment also includes stochastic elements, providing a cost-efficient learning system to build low-level size-invariant planners for a variety of interactive navigation problems. We evaluate on static and dynamic configurations of MazeBase grid-worlds, with randomly generated environments of several different sizes, and on a StarCraft navigation scenario, with more complex dynamics, and pixels as input.Comment: Updated to match ICLR 2019 OpenReview's versio

Radiological Intervention for Shunt Related Encephalopathy

Hepatic Encephalopathy (HE) is a neuropsychiatric syndrome that occurs in up to 30% of patients with cirrhosis. HE may be a consequence of pure liver failure, as in patients with fulminant hepatitis, or of the combination of liver failure and portal-systemic shunting, as in patients with liver cirrhosis. Several clinical and pathophysiologic observations suggest the importance of portal-systemic shunts in the development of HE. Episodes of HE are usually related to precipitating events, such as infections or gastrointestinal bleeding; a minority of cirrhotic patients experienced a chronic HE, refractory to standard medical treatment. This latter type of HE should be related to spontaneous or radiological (such as Transjugular Intrahepatic Portosystemic Shunt (TIPS)) portal systemic shunts, that could be restricted or occluded in patients with chronic HE. Both TIPS reduction and shunt occlusion are radiological procedures, safe and effective to ameliorate neurological symptoms in patients with refractory HE

AFLOW-QHA3P: Robust and automated method to compute thermodynamic properties of solids

Accelerating the calculations of finite-temperature thermodynamic properties is a major challenge for rational materials design. Reliable methods can be quite expensive, limiting their applicability in autonomous high-throughput workflows. Here, the three-phonon quasiharmonic approximation (QHA) method is introduced, requiring only three phonon calculations to obtain a thorough characterization of the material. Leveraging a Taylor expansion of the phonon frequencies around the equilibrium volume, the method efficiently resolves the volumetric thermal expansion coefficient, specific heat at constant pressure, the enthalpy, and bulk modulus. Results from the standard QHA and experiments corroborate the procedure, and additional comparisons are made with the recently developed self-consistent QHA. The three approaches—three-phonon, standard, and self-consistent QHAs—are all included within the open-source ab initio framework aflow, allowing the automated determination of properties with various implementations within the same framework