A sparse grid approach to balance sheet risk measurement

In this work, we present a numerical method based on a sparse grid approximation to compute the loss distribution of the balance sheet of a financial or an insurance company. We first describe, in a stylised way, the assets and liabilities dynamics that are used for the numerical estimation of the balance sheet distribution. For the pricing and hedging model, we chose a classical Black & Scholes model with a stochastic interest rate following a Hull & White model. The risk management model describing the evolution of the parameters of the pricing and hedging model is a Gaussian model. The new numerical method is compared with the traditional nested simulation approach. We review the convergence of both methods to estimate the risk indicators under consideration. Finally, we provide numerical results showing that the sparse grid approach is extremely competitive for models with moderate dimension.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures. CEMRACS 201

The Receptor-Like Kinase SERK3/BAK1 Is Required for Basal Resistance against the Late Blight Pathogen Phytophthora infestans in Nicotiana benthamiana

BACKGROUND The filamentous oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora infestans causes late blight, an economically important disease, on members of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), such as the crop plants potato and tomato. The related plant Nicotiana benthamiana is a model system to study plant-pathogen interactions, and the susceptibility of N. benthamiana to Phytophthora species varies from susceptible to resistant. Little is known about the extent to which plant basal immunity, mediated by membrane receptors that recognise conserved pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), contributes to P. infestans resistance. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We found that different species of Phytophthora have varying degrees of virulence on N. benthamiana ranging from avirulence (incompatible interaction) to moderate virulence through to full aggressiveness. The leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase (LRR-RLK) BAK1/SERK3 is a major modulator of PAMP-triggered immunity (PTI) in Arabidopsis thaliana and N. benthamiana. We cloned two NbSerk3 homologs, NbSerk3A and NbSerk3B, from N. benthamiana based on sequence similarity to the A. thaliana gene. N. benthamiana plants silenced for NbSerk3 showed markedly enhanced susceptibility to P. infestans infection but were not altered in resistance to Phytophthora mirabilis, a sister species of P. infestans that specializes on a different host plant. Furthermore, silencing of NbSerk3 reduced the cell death response triggered by the INF1, a secreted P. infestans protein with features of PAMPs. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE We demonstrated that N. benthamiana NbSERK3 significantly contributes to resistance to P. infestans and regulates the immune responses triggered by the P. infestans PAMP protein INF1. In the future, the identification of novel surface receptors that associate with NbSERK3A and/or NbSERK3B should lead to the identification of new receptors that mediate recognition of oomycete PAMPs, such as INF1.This work was supported by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, BBSRC, Nuffield Foundation and the German Research Foundation (DFG). SS was supported by a personal research fellowship (SCHO1347/1-1). JPR is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (FT0992129). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Nanorhéomètre pour l’étude des liquides confiné

International audienceNanorhéomètre pour la mesure des propriétés mécaniques sans contac

The use of Polystyrene from Ballpen Barrels and Wood Ash as Additives in Making Lightweight Bricks.

This study aimed to determine the ability of polystyrene in ballpen barrels of making a brick to be more compacted than the ordinary clay bricks. Polystyrene is a synthetic aromatic hydrocarbon polymer made from the monomer styrene that also makes a brick denser. The Wood ash from burned wood are usually used by the gardeners as a good source of potash. Wood ash has an ability of making the bricks lighter than the usual clay bricks. Additional wood ash is better than coal ash, because coal ash has a dangerous chemicals that may harm human. The goal of this study is to lessen the ballpen barrels and wood ash that are not disposed properly and make this in a creative way. Five test was conducted to determine the potential of polystyrene and wood ash namely water absorption test, drop test, efflorescence test, compressive test and heat resistance test. Based from the data gathered, it concluded that polystyrene from ballpen barrel and wood ash with the ratio of 50% Cement, 25% Wood Ash, 25% Ballpen Barrels is effective additives in production of lightweigh

BonFIRE: A multi-cloud test facility for internet of services experimentation

BonFIRE offers a Future Internet, multi-site, cloud testbed, targeted at the Internet of Services community, that supports large scale testing of applications, services and systems over multiple, geographically distributed, heterogeneous cloud testbeds. The aim of BonFIRE is to provide an infrastructure that gives experimenters the ability to control and monitor the execution of their experiments to a degree that is not found in traditional cloud facilities. The BonFIRE architecture has been designed to support key functionalities such as: resource management; monitoring of virtual and physical infrastructure metrics; elasticity; single document experiment descriptions; and scheduling. As for January 2012 BonFIRE release 2 is operational, supporting seven pilot experiments. Future releases will enhance the offering, including the interconnecting with networking facilities to provide access to routers, switches and bandwidth-on-demand systems. BonFIRE will be open for general use late 2012

How Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys Differ in Their Use of Neuroscience Evidence

Much of the public debate surrounding the intersection of neuroscience and criminal law is based on assumptions about how prosecutors and defense attorneys differ in their use of neuroscience evidence. For example, according to some commentators, the defense’s use of neuroscience evidence will abdicate criminals of all responsibility for their offenses. In contrast, the prosecution’s use of that same evidence will unfairly punish the most vulnerable defendants as unfixable future dangers to society. This “double- edged sword” view of neuroscience evidence is important for flagging concerns about the law’s construction of criminal responsibility and punishment: it demonstrates that the same information about the defendant can either be mitigating or aggravating depending on who is raising it. Yet empirical assessments of legal decisions reveal a far more nuanced reality, showing that public beliefs about the impact of neuroscience on the criminal law can often be wrong. This Article takes an evidence-based and multidisciplinary approach to examining how courts respond to neuroscience evidence in capital cases when the defense presents it to argue that the defendant’s mental state at the time of the crime was below the given legal requisite due to some neurologic or cognitive deficiency

Word and Face recognition processing based on response times and ex-Gaussian components

[EN] The face is a fundamental feature of our identity. In humans, the existence of specialized processing modules for faces is now widely accepted. However, identifying the processes involved for proper names is more problematic. The aim of the present study is to examine which of the two treatments is produced earlier and whether the social abilities are influent. We selected 100 university students divided into two groups: Spanish and USA students. They had to recognize famous faces or names by using a masked priming task. An analysis of variance about the reaction times (RT) was used to determine whether significant differences could be observed in word or face recognition and between the Spanish or USA group. Additionally, and to examine the role of outliers, the Gaussian distribution has been modified exponentially. Famous faces were recognized faster than names, and differences were observed between Spanish and North American participants, but not for unknown distracting faces. The current results suggest that response times to face processing might be faster than name recognition, which supports the idea of differences in processing nature.Moret-Tatay, C.; Garcia-Ramos, D.; Saiz Mauleón, MB.; Gamermann, D.; Bertheaux, C.; Borg, C. (2021). Word and Face recognition processing based on response times and ex-Gaussian components. Entropy. 23(5):1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23050580S11723

Influence du contexte paysager sur les attaques de processionnaire du pin en ville. Quelles perspectives de méthodes de lutte alternatives ?

We conducted an inventory of all the potential host trees of this species and of its winter tents over an urban area of about 6500 ha. Here we present the preliminary results of a spatial ecology approach and of a neighbourhood analysis exploring relationships between the level of infestation on a given tree and the features of the other host trees occurring around it. The ultimate goal of this work is to help defining urban green infrastructures unfavourable to the spread of this pest.La processionnaire du pin est un insecte défoliateur et urticant inféodé à des résineux forestiers. Elle se propage dans les milieux non forestiers en utilisant les plantations ornementales de ses arbres-hôtes. Dans les zones urbanisées, sa présence pose des problèmes de santé publique auxquels les collectivités territoriales doivent faire face. Nous avons réalisé un inventaire de tous les pins, cèdres et Douglas, et des nids d’hiver qu’ils hébergent, sur le territoire de cinq communes de l’agglomération orléanaise. Nous avons commencé à conduire sur ce jeu de données des analyses d’écologie spatiale et des analyses de voisinage prenant en compte l’influence sur le niveau d’infestation d’un arbre des caractéristiques des autres arbres-hôtes présents dans son environnement. Nous présentons ici les résultats préliminaires de cette approche paysagère en milieu urbain. A terme, l’objectif de ce travail est d’explorer les possibilités de concevoir des infrastructures vertes qui, au lieu de fournir des corridors d’expansion à cette espèce, pourraient en réduire le niveau de nuisance

Approches à base de fréquences pour la simplification lexicale

National audienceLa simplification lexicale consiste à remplacer des mots ou des phrases par leur équivalent plus simple. Dans cet article, nous présentons trois modèles de simplification lexicale, fondés sur différents critères qui font qu'un mot est plus simple à lire et à comprendre qu'un autre. Nous avons testé différentes tailles de contextes autour du mot étudié : absence de contexte avec un modèle fondé sur des fréquences de termes dans un corpus d'anglais simplifié ; quelques mots de contexte au moyen de probabilités à base de n-grammes issus de données du web ; et le contexte étendu avec un modèle fondé sur les fréquences de cooccurrences. ABSTRACT Studying frequency-based approaches to process lexical simplification Lexical simplification aims at replacing words or phrases by simpler equivalents. In this paper, we present three models for lexical simplification, focusing on the criteria that make one word simpler to read and understand than another. We tested different contexts of the considered word : no context, with a model based on word frequencies in a simplified English corpus ; a few words context, with n-grams probabilites on Web data, and an extended context, with a model based on co-occurrence frequencies. MOTS-CLÉS : simplification lexicale, fréquence lexicale, modèle de langue

Gauge invariant Boltzmann equation and the fluid limit

This article investigates the collisionless Boltzmann equation up to second order in the cosmological perturbations. It describes the gauge dependence of the distribution function and the construction of a gauge invariant distribution function and brightness, and then derives the gauge invariant fluid limit.Comment: 36 page