Take back our city: reclaiming shopping malls in Hong Kong

Shopping malls have replaced traditional public spaces and become an integral part of urban life in many cities. This paper seeks to explore the role of shopping malls as protest sites in Hong Kong during the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protest movement in 2019. As the protests decentralised and filtered throughout the city, shopping malls became sites of protest and battlegrounds between riot police and protesters. In addition to singing and chanting, organising sit-ins, and exhibiting protest art inside shopping malls, protesters also confronted mall employees as well as disrupted businesses. Based on information gathered through media reports, planning and policy documents, as well as ethnographic observations, this paper aims to examine the role of shopping malls in the urban development of Hong Kong, their function as public spaces during the protest movement, and how the politicisation of shopping malls shaped and sustained the protest movement. This paper contends that the protesters’ appropriation of shopping malls not only represented an important first step of reclaiming the right to the city, but also exemplified how such struggle and resistance can be extended beyond traditional protest sites and into different everyday spaces

The Last Urban Frontier : Commodification of Public Space and the Right to the City in Insurgent Hong Kong

This thesis explores the production and transformation of public spaces in Hong Kong, a city that is steeped in neoliberal ideals and has seen substantial deterioration in terms of democratic rights and freedoms in recent years. As a result of the expansion of neoliberal capitalism, commodification of urban space has not only exacerbated, but also become more far-reaching and indiscriminate. While existing lines of enquiry such as privatisation and commercialisation remain highly important, it could be argued that they may no longer suffice to encapsulate the exploitative motives and practices of public space due to the growing importance of public space in urban development, as well as the increasingly complex and dynamic models of funding, ownership, and management. Rather than fixating on certain characteristics like public ownership and commercial use of public spaces, the thesis argues that a broadened conceptualisation of public space commodification will be key to not only unpacking its multi-scalar socio-spatial impacts, but also revealing its connection to other urban processes. By rethinking commodification processes in relation to public space, this thesis sets out to establish the linkages between capitalist productive forces and the development and production of public space. Moreover, drawing upon recent protest movements in Hong Kong and the ways in which protesters appropriated and transformed different urban spaces into spaces of public discourse, the thesis argues that everyday contests over public space use and development are imperative to the city’s future political struggles. It is for this reason that the thesis started by examining the commodification of everyday public spaces in Hong Kong, and while inspirations for an alternative public space can be drawn from the sites of political struggles and contestations, it is ultimately in the spaces of everyday life where the right to the city can be formulated and enacted. The empirical cases are centred on three different public spaces in Hong Kong, as well as the protest sites of both the Umbrella Movement and the Anti-ELAB protest movement. By adopting a combination of both on-site and digital ethnographic approaches, this study examines the social production of different public spaces in Hong Kong. The main sources of data for this study include participant observations, interviews, documents, live stream footages, and online forums. The cases are analysed and presented across the four papers included in this thesis

Estimated Correlation Matrices and Portfolio Optimization

Financial correlations play a central role in financial theory and also in many practical applications. From theoretical point of view, the key interest is in a proper description of the structure and dynamics of correlations. From practical point of view, the emphasis is on the ability of the developed models to provide the adequate input for the numerous portfolio and risk management procedures used in the financial industry. This is crucial, since it has been long argued that correlation matrices determined from financial series contain a relatively large amount of noise and, in addition, most of the portfolio and risk management techniques used in practice can be quite sensitive to the inputs. In this paper we introduce a model (simulation)-based approach which can be used for a systematic investigation of the effect of the different sources of noise in financial correlations in the portfolio and risk management context. To illustrate the usefulness of this framework, we develop several toy models for the structure of correlations and, by considering the finiteness of the time series as the only source of noise, we compare the performance of several correlation matrix estimators introduced in the academic literature and which have since gained also a wide practical use. Based on this experience, we believe that our simulation-based approach can also be useful for the systematic investigation of several other problems of much interest in finance

Supplement to: Air concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in 2002-2004 at a rural site in the Great Lakes

Atmospheric PBDEs were measured on a monthly basis in 2002-2004 at Point Petre, a rural site in the Great Lakes. Average air concentrations were 7.0 ± 13 pg m**-3 for the sum of 14BDE (excluding BDE-209), and 1.8 ± 1.5 pg m**-3 for BDE-209. Concentrations of 3 dominant congeners (i.e., BDE-47, 99, and 209) were comparable to previous measurements at remote/rural sites around the Great Lakes, but much lower than those at urban areas. Weak temperature dependence and strong linear correlations between relatively volatile congeners suggest importance of advective inputs of gaseous species. The significant correlation between BDE-209 and 183 implies their transport inputs associated with particles. Particle-bound percentages were found greater for highly brominated congeners than less brominated ones. These percentages increase with decreasing ambient temperatures. The observed gas/particle partitioning is consistent with laboratory measurements and fits well to the Junge-Pankow model. Using air mass back-trajectories, atmospheric transport to Point Petre was estimated as 76% for BDE-47, 67% for BDE-99, and 70% for BDE-209 from west-northwest and southwest directions. During the same time period, similar congener profiles and concentration levels were found at Alert in the Canadian High Arctic. Different inter-annual variations between Point Petre and Alert indicate that emissions from other regions than North America could also contribute PBDEs in the Arctic. In contrast to weak temperature effect at Point Petre, significant temperature dependence in the summertime implies volatilization emissions of PBDEs at Alert. Meanwhile, episodic observations in the wintertime were likely associated with enhanced inputs through long-range transport during the Arctic Haze period

Mutual fund performance: Measurement and evidence

The paper provides a critical review of empirical findings on the performance of mutual funds, mainly for the US and UK. Ex-post, there are around 0-5% of top performing UK and US equity mutual funds with truly positive-alpha performance (after fees) and around 20% of funds that have truly poor alpha performance, with about 75% of active funds which are effectively zero-alpha funds. Key drivers of relative performance are, load fees, expenses and turnover. There is little evidence of successful market timing. Evidence suggests past winner funds persist, when rebalancing is frequent (i.e., less than one year) and when using sophisticated sorting rules (e.g., Bayesian approaches) - but transactions costs (load and advisory fees) imply that economic gains to investors from winner funds may be marginal. The US evidence clearly supports the view that past loser funds remain losers. Broadly speaking results for bond mutual funds are similar to those for equity funds. Sensible advice for most investors would be to hold low cost index funds and avoid holding past 'active' loser funds. Only sophisticated investors should pursue an active ex-ante investment strategy of trying to pick winners - and then with much caution. © 2010 New York University Salomon Center and Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Bayesian modeling of recombination events in bacterial populations

Background: We consider the discovery of recombinant segments jointly with their origins within multilocus DNA sequences from bacteria representing heterogeneous populations of fairly closely related species. The currently available methods for recombination detection capable of probabilistic characterization of uncertainty have a limited applicability in practice as the number of strains in a data set increases. Results: We introduce a Bayesian spatial structural model representing the continuum of origins over sites within the observed sequences, including a probabilistic characterization of uncertainty related to the origin of any particular site. To enable a statistically accurate and practically feasible approach to the analysis of large-scale data sets representing a single genus, we have developed a novel software tool (BRAT, Bayesian Recombination Tracker) implementing the model and the corresponding learning algorithm, which is capable of identifying the posterior optimal structure and to estimate the marginal posterior probabilities of putative origins over the sites. Conclusion: A multitude of challenging simulation scenarios and an analysis of real data from seven housekeeping genes of 120 strains of genus Burkholderia are used to illustrate the possibilities offered by our approach. The software is freely available for download at URL http://web.abo.fi/fak/ mnf//mate/jc/software/brat.html

Relationship between risk and expected returns: Evidence from the Dhaka Stock Exchange

In this study we examine a risk-return association within the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) structure in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) market.The study also aims at exploring whether the CAPM is applicable in DSE. For this study we have been used monthly stock returns from 80 non-financial companies for the period of January 2005 to December 2009.In order to examine the risk-return trade off in a sample of individual stocks, we apply the usual two stages regression. From the CAPM empirical analysis for individual stocks, it is observed that intercept term is significantly different from zero and slope is not equal to the excess return on the market portfolio.But, the CAPM's prediction for the intercept is that it should equal zero and the slope should equal the excess returns on the market portfolio.So, the results of the study refute the above hypothesis and offer evidence against the CAPM. Thus, it can be concluded that CAPM is not a suitable indicator of asset prices in Bangladesh over the chosen sample period.The securities market line shows linearity which means that the CAPM linear relationship is enough to express the returns generating process.Moreover, the investors are rewarded for market risk but not for unique risk because unique risk shows insignificancy during the period

The effects of corporate social performance on the cost of corporate debt and credit ratings

This study investigates the differential impact that various dimensions of corporate social performance have on the pricing of corporate debt as well as the assessment of the credit quality of specific bond issues. The empirical analysis, based on an extensive longitudinal data set, suggests that overall, good performance is rewarded and corporate social transgressions are penalized through lower and higher corporate bond yield spreads, respectively. Similar conclusions can be drawn when focusing on either the bond rating assigned to a specific debt issue or the probability of it being considered to be an asset of speculative grade

Molecular Dynamics Studies of the Nucleoprotein of Influenza A Virus: Role of the Protein Flexibility in RNA Binding

The influenza viruses contain a segmented, negative stranded RNA genome. Each RNA segment is covered by multiple copies of the nucleoprotein (NP). X-ray structures have shown that NP contains well-structured domains juxtaposed with regions of missing electron densities corresponding to loops. In this study, we tested if these flexible loops gated or promoted RNA binding and RNA-induced oligomerization of NP. We first performed molecular dynamics simulations of wt NP monomer and trimer in comparison with the R361A protein mutated in the RNA binding groove, using the H1N1 NP as the initial structure. Calculation of the root-mean-square fluctuations highlighted the presence of two flexible loops in NP trimer: loop 1 (73–90), loop 2 (200–214). In NP, loops 1 and 2 formed a 10–15 Å-wide pinch giving access to the RNA binding groove. Loop 1 was stabilized by interactions with K113 of the adjacent β-sheet 1 (91–112) that interacted with the RNA grove (linker 360–373) via multiple hydrophobic contacts. In R361A, a salt bridge formed between E80 of loop 1 and R208 of loop 2 driven by hydrophobic contacts between L79 and W207, due to a decreased flexibility of loop 2 and loop 1 unfolding. Thus, RNA could not access its binding groove in R361A; accordingly, R361A had a much lower affinity for RNA than NP. Disruption of the E80-R208 interaction in the triple mutant R361A-E80A-E81A increased its RNA binding affinity and restored its oligomerization back to wt levels in contrast with impaired levels of R361A. Our data suggest that the flexibility of loops 1 and 2 is required for RNA sampling and binding which likely involve conformational change(s) of the nucleoprotein

Magnetic field-induced non-trivial electronic topology in Fe3−xGeTe2

The anomalous Hall, Nernst and thermal Hall coefficients of Fe$_{3-x}$GeTe$_2$ display several features upon cooling, like a reversal in the Nernst signal below $T = 50$ K pointing to a topological transition (TT) associated to the development of magnetic spin textures. Since the anomalous transport variables are related to the Berry curvature, a possible TT might imply deviations from the Wiedemann-Franz (WF) law. However, the anomalous Hall and thermal Hall coefficients of Fe$_{3-x}$GeTe$_2$ are found, within our experimental accuracy, to satisfy the WF law for magnetic-fields $\mu_0H$ applied along its inter-layer direction. Surprisingly, large anomalous transport coefficients are also observed for $\mu_0H$ applied along the planar \emph{a}-axis as well as along the gradient of the chemical potential, a configuration that should not lead to their observation due to the absence of Lorentz force. However, as $\mu_0H$ $\|$ \emph{a}-axis is increased, magnetization and neutron scattering indicate just the progressive canting of the magnetic moments towards the planes followed by their saturation. These anomalous planar quantities are found to not scale with the component of the planar magnetization ($M_{\|}$), showing instead a sharp decrease beyond $\sim \mu_0 H_{\|} =$ 4 T which is the field required to align the magnetic moments along $\mu_0 H_{\|}$. We argue that locally chiral spin structures, such as skyrmions, and possibly skyrmion tubes, lead to a field dependent spin-chirality and hence to a novel type of topological anomalous transport. Locally chiral spin-structures are captured by our Monte-Carlo simulations incorporating small Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and biquadratic exchange interactions.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Applied Physics Review