Computer trading and systemic risk: a nuclear perspective

Financial markets have evolved to become complex adaptive systems highly reliant on the communication speeds and processing power afforded by digital systems. Their failure could cause severe disruption to the provision of financial services and possibly the wider economy. In this study we consider whether a perspective from the nuclear industry can provide additional insights

A two measure model of dark energy and dark matter

In this work we construct a unified model of dark energy and dark matter. This is done with the following three elements: a gravitating scalar field, phi with a non-conventional kinetic term, as in the string theory tachyon; an arbitrary potential, V(phi); two measures -- a metric measure (sqrt{-g}) and a non-metric measure (Phi). The model has two interesting features: (i) For potentials which are unstable and would give rise to tachyonic scalar field, this model can stabilize the scalar field. (ii) The form of the dark energy and dark matter that results from this model is fairly insensitive to the exact form of the scalar field potential.Comment: 8 pages,no figures, revtex, typos corrected to match published versio

Stochastic Background Search Correlating ALLEGRO with LIGO Engineering Data

We describe the role of correlation measurements between the LIGO interferometer in Livingston, LA, and the ALLEGRO resonant bar detector in Baton Rouge, LA, in searches for a stochastic background of gravitational waves. Such measurements provide a valuable complement to correlations between interferometers at the two LIGO sites, since they are sensitive in a different, higher, frequency band. Additionally, the variable orientation of the ALLEGRO detector provides a means to distinguish gravitational wave correlations from correlated environmental noise. We describe the analysis underway to set a limit on the strength of a stochastic background at frequencies near 900 Hz using ALLEGRO data and data from LIGO's E7 Engineering Run.Comment: 8 pages, 2 encapsulated PostScript figures, uses IOP class files, submitted to the proceedings of the 7th Gravitational Wave Data Analysis Workshop (which will be published in Classical and Quantum Gravity

The Astropy Project : sustaining and growing a community-oriented open-source project and the latest major release (v5.0) of the core package

Funding: We acknowledge the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for their continued financial support. This work is partially supported by NASA under grant No. 80NSSC22K0347 issued through the NASA ROSES program. This work is partially supported by the international Gemini Observatory, a programof NSF’s NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, on behalf of the Gemini partnership of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, the Republic of Korea, and the United States of America. We also thank NumFOCUS and the Python Software Foundation for financial support. J.A.A.-M. acknowledges funding support from Macquarie University through the International Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (“iMQRES”). A.B. was supported by the Lendület Program of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, project No. LP2018-7, and the KKP-137523 “SeismoLab” Élvonal grant of the Hungarian Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH). M.B. gratefully acknowledges support from the ANID BASAL project FB210003 and the FONDECYT regular grant 1211000. F.D. E. acknowledges funding through the H2020 ERC Consolidator grant 683184, the ERC Advanced grant 695671 “QUENCH” and support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). N.K. acknowledges support from the MIT Pappalardo fellowship. K.A.O. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) through Advanced Investigator grant to C.S. Frenk, DMIDAS (GA 786910). C.P. is supported by the Canadian Space Agency under a contract with NRC Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics. S.P. has been supported by Spanish MINECO-FEDER grant RTI2018-096188-B-I00 J.P.G. acknowledges funding support from Spanish public funds for research from project PID2019-107061GB-C63 from the “Programas Estatales de Generación de Conocimiento y Fortalecimiento Científico y Tecnológico del Sistema de I+D+i y de I+D+i Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad,” as well as from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). N.S. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant 1842402. D.S. is supported by STFC grant ST/S000240/1. N.S. acknowledges the support of the Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Canadian Graduate Scholarship—Doctoral Program, [funding reference numbers CGSD547212020].The Astropy Project supports and fosters the development of open-source and openly developed Python packages that provide commonly needed functionality to the astronomical community. A key element of the Astropy Project is the core package astropy, which serves as the foundation for more specialized projects and packages. In this article, we summarize key features in the core package as of the recent major release, version 5.0, and provide major updates on the Project. We then discuss supporting a broader ecosystem of interoperable packages, including connections with several astronomical observatories and missions. We also revisit the future outlook of the Astropy Project and the current status of Learn Astropy. We conclude by raising and discussing the current and future challenges facing the Project.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Perspectives on ENCODE

The Encylopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project launched in 2003 with the long-term goal of developing a comprehensive map of functional elements in the human genome. These included genes, biochemical regions associated with gene regulation (for example, transcription factor binding sites, open chromatin, and histone marks) and transcript isoforms. The marks serve as sites for candidate cis-regulatory elements (cCREs) that may serve functional roles in regulating gene expression(1). The project has been extended to model organisms, particularly the mouse. In the third phase of ENCODE, nearly a million and more than 300,000 cCRE annotations have been generated for human and mouse, respectively, and these have provided a valuable resource for the scientific community

Induced Gravity and the Attractor Dynamics of Dark Energy/Dark Matter

Attractor solutions that give dynamical reasons for dark energy to act like the cosmological constant, or behavior close to it, are interesting possibilities to explain cosmic acceleration. Coupling the scalar field to matter or to gravity enlarges the dynamical behavior; we consider both couplings together, which can ameliorate some problems for each individually. Such theories have also been proposed in a Higgs-like fashion to induce gravity and unify dark energy and dark matter origins. We explore restrictions on such theories due to their dynamical behavior compared to observations of the cosmic expansion. Quartic potentials in particular have viable stability properties and asymptotically approach general relativity.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, accepted in JCAP, results unchanged, an explanation added on perfect fluids for general spinor Lagrangian

Managing the delivery of iconic football stadiums in England

The English football premier league has become the most popular sports league in the world; with ardent fans and audiences all over the world. The potential business opportunities that this growth holds have therefore attracted investors who are keen to buy shares in the clubs and sign up the best footballers that money can buy. Underpinning the growth in all of the premier league clubs is a desire to make a distinct statement of identity as part of a competitive strategy. One way to achieve this is through the design and construction of iconic football stadiums. This paper explores the specific project management challenges associated with delivery of iconic football stadiums in England and draws lessons for the management of similar iconic infrastructure projects. A study of project management best practice and some case studies shows that key issues which are common to these projects are centred on design management; choice of procurement route; client management; and stakeholder expectation management. These issues are not necessarily unique to the project management of iconic football stadiums but are amplified by the context of these projects. The emphasis on iconic status in a competitive market also means that stadium projects should be conceived and delivered in the context of other strategic projects which should be clearly understood by the project management team

Constraining the expansion history of the universe from the red shift evolution of cosmic shear

We present a quantitative analysis of the constraints on the total equation of state parameter that can be obtained from measuring the red shift evolution of the cosmic shear. We compare the constraints that can be obtained from measurements of the spin two angular multipole moments of the cosmic shear to those resulting from the two dimensional and three dimensional power spectra of the cosmic shear. We find that if the multipole moments of the cosmic shear are measured accurately enough for a few red shifts the constraints on the dark energy equation of state parameter improve significantly compared to those that can be obtained from other measurements.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure