Inflation Targeting in Transition Countries: Experience and Prospects

This paper examines the inflation targeting experience in three transition countries: the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. While the examined countries have missed inflation targets often by a large margin, they nevertheless progressed well with disinflation. A key lesson from the experience of the inflation targeting transition countries is that economic performance will improve and support for the central bank will be higher if the central banks emphasize avoiding undershoots of the inflation target as much as avoiding overshoots. Also economic performance will be enhanced if inflation targeting central banks in transition countries do not engage in active manipulation of the exchange rate. The relationship between the central bank and the government in these countries has been quite difficult, but this can be alleviated by having a direct government involvement in the setting of the inflation target and with a more active role of the central bank in communicating with both the government and the public. In addition having technocrats appointed as the head of the central bank rather than politicians may help in depersonalizing the conduct of monetary policy and increase support for the independence of the central bank. The paper also addresses the future perspective of monetary policy in the transition economies and concludes that even after the EU accession, inflation targeting can remain the main pillar of monetary strategy in the three examined accession countries during the time before they will join the EMU.

Laboratory investigation of electric charging of dust particles by electrons, ions, and UV radiation

In many cosmic environments electric charging of dust particles occurs by electrons, ions, and UV radiation. In case of interstellar dust particles the value of their electric charge can have, for instance, very important consequences for their destruction rate in supernova remnant's shock waves and can globally influence the overall life cycle of dust particles in galaxies. For experimental simulation of charging processes a vacuum chamber was used in which the particles fall through an electron or ion beam of energies up to 10 KeV. The aim of the experiments was to attain maximum charge of dust particles. Furthermore the influence of the rest gas was also determined because electrons and ions produced by collisional ionization of the rest gas can result in significant effects. For measurement particles from 1 to 100 microns from glass, carbon, Al, Fe, MgO, and very loosely bound conglomerates of Al2O3 were used

Modeling Virus Transport and Removal during Storage and Recovery in Heterogeneous Aquifers

A quantitative understanding of virus removal during aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) in physically and geochemically heterogeneous aquifers is needed to accurately assess human health risks from viral infections. A two-dimensional axisymmetric numerical model incorporating processes of virus attachment, detachment, and inactivation in aqueous and solid phases was developed to systematically evaluate the virus removal performance of ASR schemes. Physical heterogeneity was considered as either layered or randomly distributed hydraulic conductivities (with selected variance and horizontal correlation length). Geochemical heterogeneity in the aquifer was accounted for using Colloid Filtration Theory to predict the spatial distribution of attachment rate coefficient. Simulation results demonstrate that the combined effects of aquifer physical heterogeneity and spatial variability of attachment rate resulted in higher virus concentrations in the recovered water at the ASR well (i.e. reduced virus removal). While the sticking efficiency of viruses to aquifer sediments was found to significantly influence virus concentration in the recovered water, the solid phase inactivation under realistic field conditions combined with the duration of storage phase had a predominant influence on the overall virus removal. The relative importance of physical heterogeneity increased under physicochemical conditions that reduced virus removal (e.g. lower value of sticking efficiency or solid phase inactivation rate). This study provides valuable insight on site selection of ASR projects and an approach to optimize ASR operational parameters (e.g. storage time) for virus removal and to minimize costs associated with post-recovery treatment

Qudit versions of the qubit "pi-over-eight" gate

When visualised as an operation on the Bloch sphere, the qubit "pi-over-eight" gate corresponds to one-eighth of a complete rotation about the vertical axis. This simple gate often plays an important role in quantum information theory, typically in situations for which Pauli and Clifford gates are insufficient. Most notably, when it supplements the set of Clifford gates then universal quantum computation can be achieved. The "pi-over-eight" gate is the simplest example of an operation from the third level of the Clifford hierarchy (i.e., it maps Pauli operations to Clifford operations under conjugation). Here we derive explicit expressions for all qudit (d-level, where d is prime) versions of this gate and analyze the resulting group structure that is generated by these diagonal gates. This group structure differs depending on whether the dimensionality of the qudit is two, three or greater than three. We then discuss the geometrical relationship of these gates (and associated states) with respect to Clifford gates and stabilizer states. We present evidence that these gates are maximally robust to depolarizing and phase damping noise, in complete analogy with the qubit case. Motivated by this and other similarities we conjecture that these gates could be useful for the task of qudit magic-state distillation and, by extension, fault-tolerant quantum computing. Very recent, independent work by Campbell, Anwar and Browne confirms the correctness of this intuition, and we build upon their work to characterize noise regimes for which noisy implementations of these gates can (or provably cannot) supplement Clifford gates to enable universal quantum computation.Comment: Version 2 changed to reflect improved distillation routines in arXiv:1205.3104v2. Minor typos fixed. 12 Pages,2 Figures,3 Table

Mesh Colours for Gradient Meshes

We present an extension of the popular gradient mesh vector graphics primitive with the addition of mesh colours, aiming to reduce the mesh complexity needed to describe intricate colour gradients and textures. We present interesting applications to user-guided authoring of detailed vector graphics and image vectorisation

Regulation of Nuclear Envelope Assembly/Disassembly by MAP Kinase

AbstractMouse eggs arrested in metaphase II display high levels of cdc2/cyclin B1 and MAP protein kinase activities. Following fertilization there is a time-dependent decrease in the activity of each of these protein kinases. The decline in cdc2/cyclin B1 protein kinase correlates with the resumption of meiosis and the emission of the second polar body and precedes the decline in MAP kinase activity, which correlates temporally with the formation of the male and female pronuclear envelopes. These results suggest that high levels of MAP kinase activity are incompatible with the presence of a pronuclear envelope. To test this possibility, we expressed in mouse eggs a constitutively active form of MAP kinase kinase (MEK) whose only known target is p42/p44 MAP kinase. We show that following fertilization cdc2/cyclin B1 kinase activity declines and a second polar body is emitted. The endogenous MAP kinase remains active, however, and no pronuclear envelopes form. Thus, high levels of MAP kinase activity by itself in mouse eggs appear incompatible with the presence of a pronuclear envelope