Market Architecture and Nonlinear Dynamics of Australian Stock and Future Indices.

This paper studies the All Ordinaries Index in Australia, and its futures contract known as the Share Price Index. We use a new form of smooth transition model to account for a variety of nonlinearities caused by transaction costs and other market/data imperfections, and given the recent interest in the effects of market automation on price discovery, we focus on how the nonlinear properties of the basis and returns have changed, now that floor trading in futures contract has been replaced by electronic trading.Arbitrage; Electronic trading; Mean reversion; Nonlinear error correction; Smooth transition models; Thresholds; Transaction Costs

U.S. and Canadian Industrial Production Indices as Coupled Oscillators.

This paper explores the impact of different types of dynamical linkages (coupling) between the indices of industrial production for the U.S. and Canada. The Ozaki model provides an appropriate empirical framework for analyzing the dynamic path of each economy's productive activity because it provides an effective approximation to continuous time differential equations. We examine a combination of six different types of linkage between the indices of production. Major questions we study include whether the linkages increase or decrease the stability of the equilibrium paths, whether the linkages encourage or discourage business cycle oscillations, and whether the oscillations are synchronized.PRODUCTION ; PROJECTIONS ; ECONOMETRICS

Capturing the Shape of Business Cycles with Nonlinear Autoregressive Leading Indicator Models.

This paper studies linear and linear autoregressive leading indicator models of business cycles in OECD countries. The models use the spread between short-term and long-term interest rates as leading indicators for GDP, and their success in capturing business cycles gauged by the non-parametric procedures developed by Harding and Pagan (2001). Our preliminary findings indicate that bivariate nonlinear models of output and the interest rate spread can successfully capture the shape of the business cycle. In particular, they can capture the features of recession and the deviation of the actual path of the cycles from a triangular approximation to this path, both characteristics that other models of GDP fail to reproduce.Business Cycles; Leading Indicators; Nonlinear Models; Yield Spread

Does International Trade Synchronize Business Cycles?

This paper studies the relationship between international trade and output fluctuations. The authors find evidence that the business cycles of countries that are more open to international trade are more likely to by synchronized with the business cycles of their major trading partners. A detailed study of the South Korean case shows that while business cycles are related to openness, the diversification of export destinations seems to weaken these links. The authors find no relationship between openness and output volatility.Coherence; Volatility; Business Cycles; Time Series

Reported Earnings and Analyst Forecasts as Competing Sources of Information: A New Approach

We study information flows between earnings and forecasts, using suitably adapted Granger causality tests. This approach complements existing cross-sectional studies by abstracting from stock market reactions to information, and focussing on dynamic interactions between information flows instead. We find bi-directional causality in timeseries of analyst earnings forecasts and reported earnings, supporting our expectation that forecasts contribute to information that is reflected in future reports. Further, our evidence of feedback suggests that past reports and forecasts are both reflected in future forecasts, implying that the information in reports has inherent value, and that forecasts do not fully substitute for reports.

The Middle Triassic Megafossil Flora of the Basin Creek Formation, Nymboida Coal Measures, New South Wales, Australia. Part 10. Miscellaneous Foliar (Rochipteris) and Fertile Genera (Fraxinopsis, Tomiostrobus, Umkomasia, Weltrichia)

Miscellaneous megafossil plants are described from two quarries in the Middle Triassic (Ladinian) Nymboida Coal Measures in northern New South Wales, Australia. These include the isoetalean lycopod Tomiostrobus; the petriellalean leaf Rochipteris, the fertile megasporophyll Umkomasia and associated dispersed seeds; the male bennettitalean Weltrichia, and a possible gnetalean winged seed Fraxinopsis. The Nymboida Flora, with Dicroidium the dominant element, is the most intensively collected and best documented flora of the Gondwana Australian Triassic with 60 genera and 121 species described in ten publications. The flora is of global importance in highlighting the re-establishment of peat-forming plant communities some 10 million years after the end-Permian extinction event

Porosity Study of Hybrid Silica Mesostructure in Aluminium Oxide Membrane Columnar by Cyclic Voltammetry Method

Silica mesostructure has been grown within with a porous aluminium oxide membrane columnar material (hybrid-AOM). This was prepared using a sol-gel technique with Pluronic P123 triblock copolymer as the structure-directing agent and tetraethyl orthosilicate as the inorganic source. The porosity of the hybrid-AOM after ethanol extraction was calculated from the cyclic voltammetry response of a neutral probe (FcMeOH), using Randles-SevÄik equation

Single exposure wavefront curvature estimation of high harmonic radiation by diffraction from a regular array

We present a novel technique for estimating the radius of curvature from a single exposure of EUV light from a high harmonic source diffracted by a grating of square apertures

Weak force detection using a double Bose-Einstein condensate

A Bose-Einstein condensate may be used to make precise measurements of weak forces, utilizing the macroscopic occupation of a single quantum state. We present a scheme which uses a condensate in a double well potential to do this. The required initial state of the condensate is discussed, and the limitations on the sensitivity due to atom collisions and external coupling are analyzed.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, Eq.(41) has been correcte

An Atom Laser Based on Raman Transitions

In this paper we present an atom laser scheme using a Raman transition for the output coupling of atoms. A beam of thermal atoms (bosons) in a metastable atomic state $|1 >$ are pumped into a multimode atomic cavity. This cavity is coupled through spontaneous emission to a single mode of another cavity for the ground atomic state, $|2 >$. Above a certain threshold pumping rate a large number of atoms, $N_2$, builds up in this single quantum state and transitions to the ground state of the cavity become enhanced by a factor $(N_2 + 1)$. Atoms in this state are then coupled to the outside of the cavity with a Raman transition. This changes the internal state of the atom and imparts a momentum kick, allowing the atoms to leave the system.Comment: 8 pages, 4 postscript figures, uses RevTex, home page at http://online.anu.edu.au/Physics/Welcome.html (Some aspects of the exact physical model have changed from original version. Other general improvements included