Repo Markets - Experiences and opportunities in Hungary

More and more questions have arisen recently in the National Bank of Hungary about repo markets. The topic came into the lime light with the latest changes of monetary policy instruments. In addition, speculative activity on repo markets has given rise to some interesting questions. We have tried to sum up the main characteristics of repos beginning with the definitions and with the practices of international and Hungarian repo markets. We have attempted to investigate whether the size of the Hungarian repo market is really as insignificant as statistics show. Finally, we make a few suggestions which may increase the effectiveness of monetary policy by the stimulation of repo markets. Given that Hungarian literature on this topic is very scarce, our study is mainly based on foreign publications and consultations with market participants. When analysing the Hungarian repo market we faced a lot of problematic questions, some of them we have already met, others we faced here for the first time. These problems arise be cause of the lack of over all regulation, the misinterpretation of existing regulations, the reserve requirements of the National Bank, the settlement and accounting standards of repos, and because of the insufficient knowledge of market participants.repo, market regulation, monetary transmission.

Effects of Afforestation with Pines on Collembola Diversity in the Limestone hills of Szárhalom (West Hungary)

We investigated the responses of collembolan communities to pine afforestation in an area formerly characterized by a mosaic of autochthonous downy oak woodland and steppe meadows. Study sites were selected in mixed stands of black pine and Scots pine and control samples were taken from downy oak stands and open steppe meadows. A total of 1884 Collembola specimens belonging to 66 species were collected. Three species, namely Protaphorura pannonica (Onychiuridae), Tomocerus mixtus (Tomoceridae) and Isotoma caerulea (Isotomidae) proved to be new to the Hungarian fauna. There are typical Collembola communities which are specific to different habitat types where species of a given composition can only or predominantly be found in that habitat, as well as some basic common species which occur in every habitat. The highest species richness (41) was found in steppe meadows, considerably lower (34) in downy oak forests, reaching the lowest value (25) in pine plantations. Although several forest species present in the oak woodland were completely missing from the pine forests, there was no significant difference between the Collembola diversities of the two forest habitats. The difference became more prominent in collembolan abundance which resulted in less than half of individuals/m2 in pine plantations compared to the soils of downy oak forests, most likely due to the changed soil conditions, especially of humus characteristics, caused by the pine needle litter. Jaccard similarity measure indicated approximately equal similarity (0.24–0.28) for paired comparison, suggesting that a relatively constant 'basic Collembola community' determined by the soil type typical for the area is present; while dissimilarity in communities between sites are partly provided by spatial heterogeneity of open and forest habitats and by the difference of the vegetation type

A Minimal Solution for Two-view Focal-length Estimation using Two Affine Correspondences

A minimal solution using two affine correspondences is presented to estimate the common focal length and the fundamental matrix between two semi-calibrated cameras - known intrinsic parameters except a common focal length. To the best of our knowledge, this problem is unsolved. The proposed approach extends point correspondence-based techniques with linear constraints derived from local affine transformations. The obtained multivariate polynomial system is efficiently solved by the hidden-variable technique. Observing the geometry of local affinities, we introduce novel conditions eliminating invalid roots. To select the best one out of the remaining candidates, a root selection technique is proposed outperforming the recent ones especially in case of high-level noise. The proposed 2-point algorithm is validated on both synthetic data and 104 publicly available real image pairs. A Matlab implementation of the proposed solution is included in the paper

Embeddedness and beyond: Conference on the state of economic sociology

Do Sociological Theories Meet Economic Realities?– went the provocative subtitle of the most recent international economic sociology conference ´Embeddedness and Beyon ´, held in Moscow, October 2012. Indeed, approaches towards dealing with the current economic turbulence show how different narratives can sometimes coexist in contested spaces without speaking to each other, as was the case of the Occupy Movement. Here, with their post capitalist vision, participants pitched their tents in front of the very symbol of capitalism: the London Stock Exchange. At the conference, Sandy Ross from the London School of Economics suggested that, as with the Occupy Movement, speaking at cross-purposes should be avoided in science as well. To better capture reality scholars should breach boundaries within economic sociology and between disciplines. To this end the conference was a success, as scholars with various academic backgrounds and inspiration ranging in fields from sociology to cognitive science, economic history and complex system research to science and technology studies gathered from around the world with their palette of research techniques, from ethnographic research to the state-of-the-art mathematicised (network) analytics

Engineering Application of Reverse Engineering Technology

Scanners operating on the optical principle are devices for recording the physical geometry of bodies suitable for non-contact measurement which work in the visible light range. These use the difference in contrasts and the strength of the reflected light for the measurement, by using the classic triangulation principle. This article focuses on reverse engineering technologies and optical scanning process

Investigation of Bearing Failures Using Vibration Analysis

Bearings are important components of most machinery and their working conditions influence the operation of the entire machinery. Even if bearings are being used under excellent conditions, sooner or later material fatigue will occur. Besides other things poor operating environment contaminated or peculiarly moist areas and improper handling practices cause premature failures. This article focuses on vibration analysis methods for detecting bearing failures and presents a special lifetime test procedure