The secondary market for community development loans

Proceedings of the Conference on the Secondary Market for Community Development LoansCommunity development ; Loans ; Secondary markets

The struggle to establish a vibrant secondary market for community development loans

Securitization of loans and their sale to long-term investors has revolutionized many areas of finance: real estate, autos, consumer credit. But despite many efforts, it has not taken hold in community development financing. The obstacles to creating a secondary market for community development loans are similar to obstacles other markets faced: lack of data, standardization of documents and loan process, and loan volume. Other markets have managed to overcome these obstacles. Yet despite recent advances, such as the Community Reinvestment Fund’s issuance of rated securities in November 2004 and May 2006, the goal of a vibrant secondary market for community development loans seems as tantalizingly close today as it did nearly a decade ago, when a community development consultant wrote in Community Investments that “piece by piece, a secondary market is taking shape.” This development was in the “not-too-distant future. And, with the trend toward reduced public support, the sooner the better.”Asset-backed financing ; Community development ; Loans

Squarepants in a Tree: Sum of Subtree Clustering and Hyperbolic Pants Decomposition

We provide efficient constant factor approximation algorithms for the problems of finding a hierarchical clustering of a point set in any metric space, minimizing the sum of minimimum spanning tree lengths within each cluster, and in the hyperbolic or Euclidean planes, minimizing the sum of cluster perimeters. Our algorithms for the hyperbolic and Euclidean planes can also be used to provide a pants decomposition, that is, a set of disjoint simple closed curves partitioning the plane minus the input points into subsets with exactly three boundary components, with approximately minimum total length. In the Euclidean case, these curves are squares; in the hyperbolic case, they combine our Euclidean square pants decomposition with our tree clustering method for general metric spaces.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures. This version replaces the proof of what is now Lemma 5.2, as the previous proof was erroneou

Literacy Learning, Classroom Processes, and Race

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66565/2/10.1177_002193478201300205.pd

Expression of Human Microsomal Epoxide Hydrolase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Reveals a Functional Role in Aflatoxin B1 Detoxification

The metabolism and genotoxicity of the carcinogenic mycotoxin, aflatoxin B1 (AFB), was studied in the lower eukaryotic yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Recombinant strains of yeast were engineered to express human cDNAs for CYP1A1, CYP1A2, and microsomal epoxide hydrolase (mEH). Coexpression of mEH with CYP1A1 or CYP1A2 resulted in significant decreases in measurements of AFB genotoxicity. In cells expressing CYP1A2 and mEH, the level of AFB-DNA adducts was decreased by 50% relative to cells expressing CYP1A2 alone. Mitotic recombination, as assayed by gene conversion at thetrp5locus, was diminished by 50% or greater in cells coexpressing mEH and CYP1A2 compared to CYP1A2 alone. The mutagenicity of AFB in the Ames assay was also decreased by approximately 50% when AFB was incubated with microsomes containing CYP1A1 or CYP1A2 and mEH versus CYP1A1 or CYP1A2 alone. The biotransformation of AFB by CYPs is known to involve the generation of a reactive epoxide intermediate, AFB-8,9-epoxide, but previous direct biochemical and kinetic studies have failed to demonstrate any functional role for mEH in AFB detoxification. By reconstructing a metabolic pathway in intact yeast, we have shown, for the first time, that mEH may play a role in mitigating the carcinogenic effects of AF

An Exact Prediction of N=4 SUSYM Theory for String Theory

We propose that the expectation value of a circular BPS-Wilson loop in N=4 SUSYM can be calculated exactly, to all orders in a 1/N expansion and to all orders in g^2 N. Using the AdS/CFT duality, this result yields a prediction of the value of the string amplitude with a circular boundary to all orders in alpha' and to all orders in g_s. We then compare this result with string theory. We find that the gauge theory calculation, for large g^2 N and to all orders in the 1/N^2 expansion does agree with the leading string theory calculation, to all orders in g_s and to lowest order in alpha'. We also find a relation between the expectation value of any closed smooth Wilson loop and the loop related to it by an inversion that takes a point along the loop to infinity, and compare this result, again successfully, with string theory.Comment: LaTeX, 22 pages, 3 figures. Argument corrected and two new sections adde

Millstone Hill coherent-scatter radar observations of electric field variability in the sub-auroral polarization stream

[1] Coherent backscatter observations with the Millstone Hill UHF radar (MHR) are used to investigate spatial/temporal variations in the ionospheric sub‐auroral polarization stream (SAPS) electric field. For the 440 MHz MHR, coherent amplitude is on average linearly proportional to electric field strength. The use of both main‐beam and sidelobe returns and the great sensitivity of the MHR system permits observations spanning 3° of the SAPS region with 1‐sec temporal and 10‐km spatial resolution. For a moderately disturbed event on May 25, 2000, the SAPS channel moved steadily equatorward. Large‐scale (30 mV/m peak to peak) wave‐like oscillations in the electric field magnitude (200s–300s periodicity) were seen to propagate across the SAPS channel throughout the hour‐long event. It is suggested that such localized electric field intensifications, which exhibit many of the characteristics of the narrow SAID features described in the literature, arise as wavelike perturbations within the SAPS channel

Operators with large R charge in N=4 Yang-Mills theory

It has been recently proposed that string theory in the background of a plane wave corresponds to a certain subsector of the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. This correspondence follows as a limit of the AdS/CFT duality. As a particular case of the AdS/CFT correspondence, it is a priori a strong/weak coupling duality. However, the predictions for the anomalous dimensions which follow from this particular limit are analytic functions of the 't Hooft coupling constant $\lambda$ and have a well defined expansion in the weak coupling regime. This allows one to conjecture that the correspondence between the strings on the plane wave background and the Yang-Mills theory works at the level of perturbative expansions. In our paper we perform perturbative computations in the Yang-Mills theory that confirm this conjecture. We calculate the anomalous dimension of the operator corresponding to the elementary string excitation. We verify at the two loop level that the anomalous dimension has a finite limit when the R charge $J\to \infty$ keeping $\lambda/J^2$ finite. We conjecture that this is true at higher orders of perturbation theory. We show, by summing an infinite subset of Feynman diagrams, under the above assumption, that the anomalous dimensions arising from the Yang-Mills perturbation theory are in agreement with the anomalous dimensions following from the string worldsheet sigma-model.Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX, added references, small changes in the introductio