Does currency wealth or substitiution effect matters? recent evidence from money demand in China

This study investigates the stability of money demand function for China, using an innovation ARDL framework for co-integration test for the time period 1986-2018. Specifically, this study used narrow money (M1) and broad money (M2) as a measurement of money. To consider currency wealth and substitution effects, the estimated money demand model includes the real effective exchange rate in addition to income and interest rate. By incorporating the CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests for stability in conjunction with co-integration analysis, the results confirm that there exists a stable long-run relationship for narrow money demand function. Importantly, the finding also discovers that real effective exchange rate appears to have a significant substitution effect on narrow money demand, which its omission can lead to biased result and misspecifications in the money demand function. This further corroborates that narrow money, (M1) act as a better measurement, which may have systematic influence on the trend of monetary aggregates

Optimisation of vehicle routing problem with time windows using Harris Hawks optimiser

Vehicle routing problem is one of the combinatorial optimisation problems that have gained attraction for studies because of its complexity and significant impact to service providers and passengers. Vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) is a variant where vehicles need to visit the predetermined stop points within the given time frame. This problem has been widely studied and optimised using different methods. Since the performance of algorithms in different problems is dissimilar, the study to optimise the VRPTW is ongoing. This paper presents a VRPTW study for a public transportation network in Kuantan and Pekan districts, located in East Pahang, Malaysia. There were 52 stop points to be visited within two hours. The main objective of the study is to minimise the number of vehicles to be assigned for the routing problem subjected to the given time windows. The problem was optimised using a new algorithm known as Harris Hawks Optimiser (HHO). To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to build HHO algorithm for VRPTW problem. Computational experiment indicated that the HHO came up with the best average fitness compared with other comparison algorithms in this study including Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO), Moth Flame Optimiser (MFO), and Whale Optimisation Algorithm (WOA). The optimisation results also indicated that all the stop points can be visited within the given time frames by using three vehicles

High-E_T dijet photoproduction at HERA

The cross section for high-E_T dijet production in photoproduction has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 81.8 pb-1. The events were required to have a virtuality of the incoming photon, Q^2, of less than 1 GeV^2 and a photon-proton centre-of-mass energy in the range 142 < W < 293 GeV. Events were selected if at least two jets satisfied the transverse-energy requirements of E_T(jet1) > 20 GeV and E_T(jet2) > 15 GeV and pseudorapidity requirements of -1 < eta(jet1,2) < 3, with at least one of the jets satisfying -1 < eta(jet) < 2.5. The measurements show sensitivity to the parton distributions in the photon and proton and effects beyond next-to-leading order in QCD. Hence these data can be used to constrain further the parton densities in the proton and photon.Comment: 36 pages, 13 figures, 20 tables, including minor revisions from referees. Accepted by Phys. Rev.

Measurement of (anti)deuteron and (anti)proton production in DIS at HERA

The first observation of (anti)deuterons in deep inelastic scattering at HERA has been made with the ZEUS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 300--318 GeV using an integrated luminosity of 120 pb-1. The measurement was performed in the central rapidity region for transverse momentum per unit of mass in the range 0.3<p_T/M<0.7. The particle rates have been extracted and interpreted in terms of the coalescence model. The (anti)deuteron production yield is smaller than the (anti)proton yield by approximately three orders of magnitude, consistent with the world measurements.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables, submitted to Nucl. Phys.

Compatible solid polymer electrolyte based on methyl cellulose for energy storage application: structural, electrical, and electrochemical properties

Compatible green polymer electrolytes based on methyl cellulose (MC) were prepared for energy storage electrochemical double-layer capacitor (EDLC) application. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was conducted for structural investigation. The reduction in the intensity of crystalline peaks of MC upon the addition of sodium iodide (NaI) salt discloses the growth of the amorphous area in solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs). Impedance plots show that the uppermost conducting electrolyte had a smaller bulk resistance. The highest attained direct current DC conductivity was 3.01 × 10−3 S/cm for the sample integrated with 50 wt.% of NaI. The dielectric analysis suggests that samples in this study showed non-Debye behavior. The electron transference number was found to be lower than the ion transference number, thus it can be concluded that ions are the primary charge carriers in the MC–NaI system. The addition of a relatively high concentration of salt into the MC matrix changed the ion transfer number from 0.75 to 0.93. From linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), the green polymer electrolyte in this work was actually stable up to 1.7 V. The consequence of the cyclic voltammetry (CV) plot suggests that the nature of charge storage at the electrode–electrolyte interfaces is a non-Faradaic process and specific capacitance is subjective by scan rates. The relatively high capacitance of 94.7 F/g at a sweep rate of 10 mV/s was achieved for EDLC assembly containing a MC–NaI system

Adaptive Value of Phenological Traits in Stressful Environments: Predictions Based on Seed Production and Laboratory Natural Selection

Phenological traits often show variation within and among natural populations of annual plants. Nevertheless, the adaptive value of post-anthesis traits is seldom tested. In this study, we estimated the adaptive values of pre- and post-anthesis traits in two stressful environments (water stress and interspecific competition), using the selfing annual species Arabidopsis thaliana. By estimating seed production and by performing laboratory natural selection (LNS), we assessed the strength and nature (directional, disruptive and stabilizing) of selection acting on phenological traits in A. thaliana under the two tested stress conditions, each with four intensities. Both the type of stress and its intensity affected the strength and nature of selection, as did genetic constraints among phenological traits. Under water stress, both experimental approaches demonstrated directional selection for a shorter life cycle, although bolting time imposes a genetic constraint on the length of the interval between bolting and anthesis. Under interspecific competition, results from the two experimental approaches showed discrepancies. Estimation of seed production predicted directional selection toward early pre-anthesis traits and long post-anthesis periods. In contrast, the LNS approach suggested neutrality for all phenological traits. This study opens questions on adaptation in complex natural environment where many selective pressures act simultaneously