Annual conference assesses banking risk

Banking structure ; Bank supervision

Would banks buy daytime fed funds?

Federal Reserve banks ; Electronic funds transfers ; Federal funds market (United States) ; Overdrafts

Observation of Scaling Violations in Scaled Momentum Distributions at HERA

Charged particle production has been measured in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) events over a large range of $x$ and $Q^2$ using the ZEUS detector. The evolution of the scaled momentum, $x_p$, with $Q^2,$ in the range 10 to 1280 $GeV^2$, has been investigated in the current fragmentation region of the Breit frame. The results show clear evidence, in a single experiment, for scaling violations in scaled momenta as a function of $Q^2$.Comment: 21 pages including 4 figures, to be published in Physics Letters B. Two references adde

Early Caddo Period Ceramic Vessels from the Roger D. Simmos Site (41TT321), Titus County, Texas

The Roger D. Simmons site (41TT321) is in the Sulphur River basin in East Texas. A single ancestral Caddo burial was exposed in 1984 during the removal of sand from the site for the construction of a school in Talco, Texas. Associated with the burial were three ceramic vessels—documented herein—as well as a large (ca. 18 cm in length) chipped stone bifacial tool made from non-local chert (identified as Edwards formation chert on the site form), an adze, and a celt

The Accuracy of Morphological Decomposition of Active Galactic Nucleus Host Galaxies

In order to assess the accuracy with which we can determine the morphologies of AGN host galaxies, we have simulated more than 50,000 ACS images of galaxies with z < 1.25, using image and noise properties appropriate for the GOODS survey. We test the effect of central point-source brightness on host galaxy parameter recovery with a set of simulated AGN host galaxies made by adding point sources to the centers of normal galaxies. We extend this analysis and also quantify the recovery of intrinsic morphological parameters of AGN host galaxies with a set of fully simulated inactive and AGN host galaxies. We can reliably separate good from poor fit results using a combination of reasonable error cuts, in the regime where L_{host}:L_{PS} > 1:4. We give quantitative estimates of parameter errors as a function of host-to-point-source ratio. In general, we separate host and point-source magnitudes reliably at all redshifts; point sources are well recovered more than 90% of the time, although spurious detection of central point sources can be as high as 25% for bulge-dominated sources. We find a general correlation between Sersic index and intrinsic bulge-to-total ratio, such that a host galaxy with Sersic n < 1.5 generally has at least 80% of its light from a disk component. Likewise, "bulge-dominated" galaxies with n > 4 typically derive at least 70% of their total host galaxy light from a bulge, but this number can be as low as 55%. Single-component Sersic fits to an AGN host galaxy are statistically very reliable to z < 1.25 (for ACS survey data like ours). In contrast, two-component fits involving separate bulge and disk components tend to over-estimate the bulge fraction by ~10%, with uncertainty of order 50%.Comment: 45 pages, 20 figures, submitted to ApJ ; Accepted Version -- additions to introduction and conclusions; title changed, was "Simulations of AGN Host Galaxy Morphologies

Mission: Vol. 19, No. 7

Mission: Vol. 19, No. 7. The articles in this issue include: In this Issue from the Editor, Ethical Dilemmas for the Physician by Quinton H. Dickerson, Jr., Is the Fetus a Person--According to the Bible? by Roy Bowen Ward, The Fetus, Personhood, and the Biblical Witness by John D. Hannah, A WORD FOR OUR TIME: Justice and the Christian Life by Dwayne D. Simmons, Do You Enjoy the Trip? by John Wright, Memos from the Boss by Bob Burgess, Mission and the Church by Robert M. Randolph, When Brother Takes Brother to Court by Angela Laird and Jerry Butler, and Forum

Retinal adaptation to spatial correlations

The classical center-surround retinal ganglion cell receptive field is thought to remove the strong spatial correlations in natural scenes, enabling efficient use of limited bandwidth. While early studies with drifting gratings reported robust surrounds (Enroth-Cugell and Robson, 1966), recent measurements with white noise reveal weak surrounds (Chichilnisky and Kalmar, 2002). This might be evidence for dynamical weakening of the retinal surround in response to decreased spatial correlations, which would be predicted by efficient coding theory. Such adaptation is reported in LGN (Lesica et al., 2007), but whether the retina also adapts to correlations is unknown. &#xd;&#xa;&#xd;&#xa;We tested for adaptation by recording simultaneously from ~40 ganglion cells on a multi-electrode array while presenting white and exponentially correlated checkerboards and strips. Measuring from ~200 cells responding to 90 minutes each of white and correlated stimuli, we were able to extract precise spatiotemporal receptive fields (STRFs). We found that a difference-of-Gaussians was not a good fit and the surround was generally displaced from the center. Thus, to assess surround strength we found the center and surround regions and the total weight on the pixels in each region. The relative surround strength was then defined as the ratio of surround weight to center weight. Surprisingly, we found that the majority of recorded cells have a stronger surround under white noise than under correlated noise (p&#x3c;.05), contrary to naive expectation from theory. The conclusion was robust to different methods of extracting STRFs and persisted with checkerboard and strip stimuli.&#xd;&#xa;&#xd;&#xa;To test, without assuming a model, whether the retina decorrelates stimuli, we also measured the pairwise correlations between spike trains of simultaneously recorded neurons under three conditions: white checkerboard, exponentially correlated noise, and scale-free noise. The typical amount of pairwise correlation increased with extent of input correlation, in line with our STRF measurements