Does the weather affect stock market volatility?

This paper investigates the empirical association between stock market volatility and investor mood-proxies related to the weather (cloudiness, temperature and precipitation) and the environment (nighttime length). Overall, our results suggest that cloudiness and length of nighttime are inversely related to historical, implied and realized measures of volatility. The strength of association seems to vary with the location of an exchange on Earth with respect to the equator. Weather deviations from seasonal norms and dummies representing extreme weather conditions do not offer additional explanatory power in our datasets.Stock market anomalies; Volatility; Sunshine effect; SAD effect; Behavioral Finance

Newer Combined (ESC & EASD) 2013 guidelines for Diabetes Mellitus and Cardiovascular Disease

It is estimated that 360 million people were affected by diabetes mellitus (DM) in 2011 with the great majority (namely 95%) being affected by type 2 DM (T2DM). Most importantly, approximately half of these individuals are not aware of this diagnosis. In addition, another 300 million individuals are at future risk of developing T2DM, including people with increased fasting glucose (IFG), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), gestational DM, and euglycaemic insulin resistance (IR)

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) dimensions in Greek Tertiary Education System

The European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model (EFQM Model) and Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Model (MBNQA model) are widely known models and are used as channels of Total Quality Management. MBNQA model can be applied by an organization or institution in order to implement the principles of Total Quality Management and to achieve excellence. In the present research the criteria of MBNQA model, such as Leadership, Strategic Planning, Customer Focus, Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management, Workforce focus, Process management. Results are recorded and the views of Pre-service teachers from ASPETE (School of Pedagogical & Technological Education), Thessaloniki, Greece, are analyzed in light of these criteria, highlighting thus the Quality Assurance dimensions of the Greek Tertiary education system. 123 Pre-service teachers from ASPETE Thessaloniki participated in the survey. The strong as well as the problematic situations of the criteria of the MBNQA model were registered and analyzed. Furthermore, the reasons of the low performance and obstacles of the learning process were discussed and ways contributing to Continuous Improvement, that requires constant awareness and focus, were proposed. These points support the MBNQA model as an operational framework for Total Quality Management and also strengthen the results obtained in previous studies for the EFQM Model suggesting that quality award models actually provide a suitable framework for quality management

Electricity futures prices in an emissions constrained economy: Evidence from European power markets

We investigate the economic factors that drive electricity risk premia in the European emissions constrained economy. Our analysis is undertaken for monthly baseload electricity futures for delivery in the Nordic, French and British power markets. We find that electricity risk premia are significantly related to the volatility of electricity spot prices, demand and revenues, and the price volatility of the carbon dioxide (CO2) futures traded under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). This finding has significant implications for the pricing of electricity futures since it highlights for the first time the role of carbon market uncertainties as a main determinant of the relationship between spot and futures electricity prices in Europe. Our results also suggest that for the electricity markets under scrutiny futures prices are determined rationally by risk-averse economic agents

Optimal Piecewise Linear Regression Algorithm for QSAR Modelling

Quantitative Structure‐Activity Relationship (QSAR) models have been successfully applied to lead optimisation, virtual screening and other areas of drug discovery over the years. Recent studies, however, have focused on the development of models that are predictive but often not interpretable. In this article, we propose the application of a piecewise linear regression algorithm, OPLRAreg, to develop both predictive and interpretable QSAR models. The algorithm determines a feature to best separate the data into regions and identifies linear equations to predict the outcome variable in each region. A regularisation term is introduced to prevent overfitting problems and implicitly selects the most informative features. As OPLRAreg is based on mathematical programming, a flexible and transparent representation for optimisation problems, the algorithm also permits customised constraints to be easily added to the model. The proposed algorithm is presented as a more interpretable alternative to other commonly used machine learning algorithms and has shown comparable predictive accuracy to Random Forest, Support Vector Machine and Random Generalised Linear Model on tests with five QSAR data sets compiled from the ChEMBL database