1,346,875 research outputs found
Hard currency and financial development
This paper investigates the relationship between hard currency and financial development. It creates four different series of hard currency based on different sets of data. The results of the paper suggest that indeed financial development and the hardness of currencies are highly correlated. However, we find that the relationship from currency hardness to financial development is fully captured by macro variables that represent overall macroeconomic stability. This suggest that having a hard currency is not a pre-condition for financial development but rather establishing a macroeconomic stable environment.
Negative virial coefficients and the dominance of loose packed diagrams for D-dimensional hard spheres
We study the virial coefficients B_k of hard spheres in D dimensions by means
of Monte-Carlo integration. We find that B_5 is positive in all dimensions but
that B_6 is negative for all D >= 6. For 7<=k<=17 we compute sets of Ree-Hoover
diagrams and find that either for large D or large k the dominant diagrams are
"loose packed". We use these results to study the radius of convergence and the
validity of the many approximations used for the equations of state for hard
spheres.Comment: 26 pages, 69 figures. Some typos corrected. Final version, to appear
in the Journal of Statistical Physic
Is the plateau state in GRS 1915+105 equivalent to canonical hard states?
GRS1915+105 is a very peculiar black hole binary that exhibits
accretion-related states that are not observed in any other stellar-mass black
hole system. One of these states, however -- referred to as the plateau state
-- may be related to the canonical hard state of black hole X-ray binaries.
Both the plateau and hard state are associated with steady, relatively lower
X-ray emission and flat/inverted radio emission, that is sometimes resolved
into compact, self-absorbed jets. However, while generally black hole binaries
quench their jets when the luminosity becomes too high, GRS1915+105 seems to
sustain them despite the fact that it accretes at near- or super-Eddington
rates. In order to investigate the relationship between the plateau and the
hard state, we fit two multi-wavelength observations using a steady-state
outflow-dominated model, developed for hard state black hole binaries. The data
sets consist of quasi-simultaneous observations in radio, near-infrared and
X-ray bands. Interestingly, we find both significant differences between the
two plateau states, as well as between the best-fit model parameters and those
representative of the hard state. We discuss our interpretation of these
results, and the possible implications for GRS 1915+105's relationship to
canonical black hole candidates.Comment: accepted for publication in MNRA
Approximating the least hypervolume contributor: NP-hard in general, but fast in practice
The hypervolume indicator is an increasingly popular set measure to compare
the quality of two Pareto sets. The basic ingredient of most hypervolume
indicator based optimization algorithms is the calculation of the hypervolume
contribution of single solutions regarding a Pareto set. We show that exact
calculation of the hypervolume contribution is #P-hard while its approximation
is NP-hard. The same holds for the calculation of the minimal contribution. We
also prove that it is NP-hard to decide whether a solution has the least
hypervolume contribution. Even deciding whether the contribution of a solution
is at most (1+\eps) times the minimal contribution is NP-hard. This implies
that it is neither possible to efficiently find the least contributing solution
(unless ) nor to approximate it (unless ).
Nevertheless, in the second part of the paper we present a fast approximation
algorithm for this problem. We prove that for arbitrarily given \eps,\delta>0
it calculates a solution with contribution at most (1+\eps) times the minimal
contribution with probability at least . Though it cannot run in
polynomial time for all instances, it performs extremely fast on various
benchmark datasets. The algorithm solves very large problem instances which are
intractable for exact algorithms (e.g., 10000 solutions in 100 dimensions)
within a few seconds.Comment: 22 pages, to appear in Theoretical Computer Scienc
Using weight aggregation in tabu search for multiobjective exams timetabling problem
EnExams timetabling is a difficult task in many educational institutions. We can distinct two major sets of constraints when defining exams timetabling problems, categorized in soft and hard constraints. Guaranteing that any student as a non overlapping exams schedule and that necessary requirements like rooms and teacher are available are consider hard constraints. An evenly distributed schedule, a short duration of the overall exams period can be regarded as soft constraints. To handle soft constraints under the hard constraints verification we adopted a multiobjective optimization approach. This problem is NP-hard for which we have developed an heuristic tabu search method to find a solution. Tabu search comprises an iterative local search defined as a neighborhood inspection of a certain point in the search space. To find an improved solution we have to evaluate points in this neighborhood which can be considered a multiple attribute decision problem. In this context we have used multicriteria methods in order to rank the solutions
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