WHERE IS THE CHINESE BANKING SYSTEM GOING WITH THE ONGOING REFORM?

The Chinese banking system, characterized by a large proportion of state-ownership and low capitalization, has started a reform process based on three main pillars: (i) bank restructuring, with the cleaning- up of non-performing loans and public capital injections, particularly in the four largest state-owned banks; (ii) financial liberalization, with the gradual flexibilizaton of price and quantity controls and the opening-up to foreign competition; and (iii) strengthened financial regulation and supervision, as well as better risk management, corporate governance, disclosure, and the introduction of international standards. Although it is still early to judge on the success of the reform, the available evidence does not offer a very optimistic outlook. The solvency of Chinese banks is still very weak, with a stubbornly high level of non-performing loans, and profitability is poor. Given the commitment of the Chinese authorities to fully open up its banking system to foreign competition by 2006, it seems crucial that financial reform accelerates so that the Chinese banking system can compete at the international level. This is particularly the case for the reduction of NPLs and bank recapitalization as well as for a furthered improvement of bank regulation and supervision.Chinese financial system, financial reform, bank restructuring, financial liberalization, bank regulation and supervision

Unifying approach for fluctuation theorems from joint probability distributions

Any decomposition of the total trajectory entropy production for Markovian systems has a joint probability distribution satisfying a generalized detailed fluctuation theorem, when all the contributing terms are odd with respect to time reversal. The expression of the result does not bring into play dual probability distributions, hence easing potential applications. We show that several fluctuation theorems for perturbed non-equilibrium steady states are unified and arise as particular cases of this general result. In particular, we show that the joint probability distribution of the system and reservoir trajectory entropies satisfy a detailed fluctuation theorem valid for all times although each contribution does not do it separately

Generative Modelling for Unsupervised Score Calibration

Score calibration enables automatic speaker recognizers to make cost-effective accept / reject decisions. Traditional calibration requires supervised data, which is an expensive resource. We propose a 2-component GMM for unsupervised calibration and demonstrate good performance relative to a supervised baseline on NIST SRE'10 and SRE'12. A Bayesian analysis demonstrates that the uncertainty associated with the unsupervised calibration parameter estimates is surprisingly small.Comment: Accepted for ICASSP 201

A new gravitational wave background from the Big Bang

The reheating of the universe after hybrid inflation proceeds through the nucleation and subsequent collision of large concentrations of energy density in the form of bubble-like structures moving at relativistic speeds. This generates a significant fraction of energy in the form of a stochastic background of gravitational waves, whose time evolution is determined by the successive stages of reheating: First, tachyonic preheating makes the amplitude of gravity waves grow exponentially fast. Second, bubble collisions add a new burst of gravitational radiation. Third, turbulent motions finally sets the end of gravitational waves production. From then on, these waves propagate unimpeded to us. We find that the fraction of energy density today in these primordial gravitational waves could be significant for GUT scale models of inflation, although well beyond the frequency range sensitivity of gravitational wave observatories like LIGO, LISA or BBO. However, low-scale models could still produce a detectable signal at frequencies accessible to BBO or DECIGO. For comparison, we have also computed the analogous background from some chaotic inflation models and obtained similar results to those of other groups. The discovery of such a background would open a new observational window into the very early universe, where the details of the process of reheating could be explored. Thus, it could also serve as a new experimental tool for testing the Inflationary Paradigm.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of JGRG17, Nagoya (Japan), 3-7 December 200

Does China have an impact on foreign direct investment to Latin America?

We analyze empirically whether the emergence of China as a large recipient of FDI has affected the amount of FDI received by Latin American countries. For the longest time span possible given data availability (from 1984 to 2001), we do not find a substitution from Latin American inward FDI to China, when other relevant factors are taken into account. However, concentrating on the last few years (from 1995 to 2001), when FDI boomed worldwide and negotiations for China’s WTO membership accelerated, the “Chinese” effect becomes highly significant. Assessing the impact country by country, China’s inward FDI appears to have hampered that of Mexico and Colombia.China, Latin America, FDI

Does China have an impact on foreign direct investment to Latin America?

We analyze empirically whether the emergence of China as a large recipient of FDI has affected the amount of FDI received by Latin American countries. For the longest time span possible given data availability (from 1984 to 2001), we do not find a substitution from Latin American inward FDI to China, when other relevant factors are taken into account. However, concentrating on the last few years (from 1995 to 2001), when FDI boomed worldwide and negotiations for China’s WTO membership accelerated, the “Chinese” effect becomes highly significant. Assessing the impact country by country, China’s inward FDI appears to have hampered that of Mexico and Colombia.China, Latin America, FDI

Sandia National Laboratories\u27 Building 858/North Fabrication Facility

In this report, a fire protection and fire hazard analysis has been performed on a semi- conductor facility, abbreviated as the Fab, located on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Fab is part of the MESA complex which is operated by the NTESS Corporation for the Department of Energy (DOE) at Sandia National Laboratories. The prescriptive analysis of this report addresses the various fire protection systems in the facility such as fire suppression, and fire alarm. The prescriptive analysis is based on national codes and standards from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and from the International Code Council (ICC). Specific and unique requirements also stem from Sandia National Laboratories specifications and from the DOE orders and standards. The performance based section of this report analyzes two fire scenarios which were selected based upon current operations in the facility and the possibility (greater than 0%) of both scenarios occurring. These two fire scenarios compare the same situation with and without sprinklers. The design fire basis is based on lab coats and other gowning items stored in the corridor. The concern is that if the lab coats were to catch on fire, the integrity of the corridor as an egress path might be compromised. Through fire modeling and widely accepted tenability criteria, it was shown that the concern is valid and that a lab coat fire presents a significant challenge for the facility. The results of this report indicate that an exit should be added to the exterior in RM 1919, the hydraulic calculations for the facility should be reconstituted and the gowning operations should be moved from the tour aisle into the fabrication area