Do mutual funds have consistency in their performance?

Using a comprehensive data set of 714 Chinese mutual funds from 2004 to 2015, the study investigates these funds’ performance persistence by using the Capital Asset Pricing model, the Fama-French three-factor model and the Carhart Four-factor model. For persistence analysis, we categorize mutual funds into eight octiles based on their one year lagged performance and then observe their performance for the subsequent 12 months. We also apply Cross-Product Ratio technique to assess the performance persistence in these Chinese funds. The study finds no significant evidence of persis- tence in the performance of the mutual funds. Winner (loser) funds do not continue to be winner (loser) funds in the subsequent time period. These findings suggest that future performance of funds cannot be predicted based on their past performance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Bridging Time Scales in Cellular Decision Making with a Stochastic Bistable Switch

Cellular transformations which involve a significant phenotypical change of the cell's state use bistable biochemical switches as underlying decision systems. In this work, we aim at linking cellular decisions taking place on a time scale of years to decades with the biochemical dynamics in signal transduction and gene regulation, occuring on a time scale of minutes to hours. We show that a stochastic bistable switch forms a viable biochemical mechanism to implement decision processes on long time scales. As a case study, the mechanism is applied to model the initiation of follicle growth in mammalian ovaries, where the physiological time scale of follicle pool depletion is on the order of the organism's lifespan. We construct a simple mathematical model for this process based on experimental evidence for the involved genetic mechanisms. Despite the underlying stochasticity, the proposed mechanism turns out to yield reliable behavior in large populations of cells subject to the considered decision process. Our model explains how the physiological time constant may emerge from the intrinsic stochasticity of the underlying gene regulatory network. Apart from ovarian follicles, the proposed mechanism may also be of relevance for other physiological systems where cells take binary decisions over a long time scale.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

An Introduction and High Yield Summary of Female Contraceptive Methods

Globally, contraceptive studies and their use are major challenges in the realm of public health. The ideal goal is to obtain a contraceptive method that is highly effective at minimizing unplanned pregnancies and nullifying the chance of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Abstinence is currently the only way to attain such a dualistic goal, and while effective, it may not be suitable for sexually active individuals. While there is an abundance of methodspecific information regarding the use of any one female contraceptive device, there is a paucity of resources that compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of such methods and enable an individual to optimize family planning. This paper attempts to address many of these topics by reviewing a multitude of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved contraceptive methods. This work is intentionally written towards educating medical students, educators and teachers at all levels of training with foundational knowledge regarding female contraception

A computational framework to emulate the human perspective in flow cytometric data analysis

Background: In recent years, intense research efforts have focused on developing methods for automated flow cytometric data analysis. However, while designing such applications, little or no attention has been paid to the human perspective that is absolutely central to the manual gating process of identifying and characterizing cell populations. In particular, the assumption of many common techniques that cell populations could be modeled reliably with pre-specified distributions may not hold true in real-life samples, which can have populations of arbitrary shapes and considerable inter-sample variation. <p/>Results: To address this, we developed a new framework flowScape for emulating certain key aspects of the human perspective in analyzing flow data, which we implemented in multiple steps. First, flowScape begins with creating a mathematically rigorous map of the high-dimensional flow data landscape based on dense and sparse regions defined by relative concentrations of events around modes. In the second step, these modal clusters are connected with a global hierarchical structure. This representation allows flowScape to perform ridgeline analysis for both traversing the landscape and isolating cell populations at different levels of resolution. Finally, we extended manual gating with a new capacity for constructing templates that can identify target populations in terms of their relative parameters, as opposed to the more commonly used absolute or physical parameters. This allows flowScape to apply such templates in batch mode for detecting the corresponding populations in a flexible, sample-specific manner. We also demonstrated different applications of our framework to flow data analysis and show its superiority over other analytical methods. <p/>Conclusions: The human perspective, built on top of intuition and experience, is a very important component of flow cytometric data analysis. By emulating some of its approaches and extending these with automation and rigor, flowScape provides a flexible and robust framework for computational cytomics

N₂ Electroreduction to NH₃ by Selenium Vacancy‐Rich ReSe₂ Catalysis at an Abrupt Interface

Vacancy engineering has been proved repeatedly as an adoptable strategy to boost electrocatalysis, while its poor selectivity restricts the usage in nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) as overwhelming competition from hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Revealed by density functional theory calculations, the selenium vacancy in ReSe₂ crystal can enhance its electroactivity for both NRR and HER by shifting the d‐band from −4.42 to −4.19 eV. To restrict the HER, we report a novel method by burying selenium vacancy‐rich ReSe₂@carbonized bacterial cellulose (V_{r}‐ReSe₂@CBC) nanofibers between two CBC layers, leading to boosted Faradaic efficiency of 42.5 % and ammonia yield of 28.3 μg h^{-1} cm^{-2} at a potential of −0.25 V on an abrupt interface. As demonstrated by the nitrogen bubble adhesive force, superhydrophilic measurements, and COMSOL Multiphysics simulations, the hydrophobic and porous CBC layers can keep the internal V_{r}‐ReSe₂@CBC nanofibers away from water coverage, leaving more unoccupied active sites for the N₂ reduction (especially for the potential determining step of proton‐electron coupling and transferring processes as *NN → *NNH)

Вимоги видавничого відділу ІМФЕ ім. М. Т. Рильського до оформлення авторами рукописів

Industrial parts are manufactured to tolerances as no production process is capable of delivering perfectly identical parts. It is unacceptable that a plan for a manipulation task that was determined on the basis of a CAD model of a part fails on some manufactured instance of that part, and therefore it is crucial that the admitted shape variations are systematically taken into account during the planning of the task. We study the problem of orienting a part with given admitted shape variations by means of pushing with a single frictionless jaw. We use a very general model for admitted shape variations that only requires that any valid instance must contain a given convex polygon PI while it must be contained in another convex polygon PE. The problem that we solve is to determine, for a given h, the sequence of h push actions that puts all valid instances of a part with given shape variation into the smallest possible interval of final orientations. The resulting algorithm runs in O(hn) time, where n=|PI|+|PE|

How to do it: the difficult thyroid

There is a paucity of publications detailing how to deal with the difficult thyroid cancer. When compared to other cancers, it is relatively rare with several histopathological subtypes which run differing clinical courses and respond to different therapies. It is a condition predominately treated by specifically trained General and now ENT surgeons who already have a thorough knowledge of vocal fold assessment and rehabilitation as well as emergency airways management both to avoid and treat common complications should they occur

A [4Fe-4S]-Fe(CO)(CN)-L-cysteine intermediate is the first organometallic precursor in [FeFe] hydrogenase H-cluster bioassembly.

Biosynthesis of the [FeFe] hydrogenase active site (the 'H-cluster') requires the interplay of multiple proteins and small molecules. Among them, the radical S-adenosylmethionine enzyme HydG, a tyrosine lyase, has been proposed to generate a complex that contains an Fe(CO)2(CN) moiety that is eventually incorporated into the H-cluster. Here we describe the characterization of an intermediate in the HydG reaction: a [4Fe-4S][(Cys)Fe(CO)(CN)] species, 'Complex A', in which a CO, a CN- and a cysteine (Cys) molecule bind to the unique 'dangler' Fe site of the auxiliary [5Fe-4S] cluster of HydG. The identification of this intermediate-the first organometallic precursor to the H-cluster-validates the previously hypothesized HydG reaction cycle and provides a basis for elucidating the biosynthetic origin of other moieties of the H-cluster