Optimal trading strategy during bull and bear markets for Hong Kong-listed stocks

The “buy-and-hold” strategy based on the EMH was believed by many people to be optimal for a long time. However, there has been more criticism on the EMH since the global financial crisis in 2008. Hence many people attempt to find a trading strategy to beat “buy-and-hold”. Moreover, the financial market fluctuates a lot. Sometimes it is in a bull market, but it may be in a bear market during other periods of time, so the optimal strategy during different periods of time may vary and hence switching of strategies may be necessary. In this study, we apply Hui and Chan (2018)’s generalized time-dependent strategy on 12 Hong Kong listed stocks during the whole period of observation and two sub-periods. The results show that when the sub-period December 31, 2004–December 31, 2008 is chosen, the strategy outperforms “buy-and-hold” by the largest extent. This reflects that the strategy is most effective during adverse market conditions. This study can help investors to apply appropriate trading strategies to earn more profits, and help property practitioners to improve their strategic property management to increase the value of their portfolio

Direct Capture Technologies for Genomics-Guided Discovery of Natural Products

Microbes are important producers of natural products, which have played key roles in understanding biology and treating disease. However, the full potential of microbes to produce natural products has yet to be realized; the overwhelming majority of natural product gene clusters encoded in microbial genomes remain “cryptic”, and have not been expressed or characterized. In contrast to the fast-growing number of genomic sequences and bioinformatic tools, methods to connect these genes to natural product molecules are still limited, creating a bottleneck in genome-mining efforts to discover novel natural products. Here we review developing technologies that leverage the power of homologous recombination to directly capture natural product gene clusters and express them in model hosts for isolation and structural characterization. Although direct capture is still in its early stages of development, it has been successfully utilized in several different classes of natural products. These early successes will be reviewed, and the methods will be compared and contrasted with existing traditional technologies. Lastly, we will discuss the opportunities for the development of direct capture in other organisms, and possibilities to integrate direct capture with emerging genome-editing techniques to accelerate future study of natural products

Distribution of Triamcinolone Acetonide after Intravitreal Injection into Silicone Oil-Filled Eye

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Multiply Folded Graphene

The folding of paper, hide, and woven fabric has been used for millennia to achieve enhanced articulation, curvature, and visual appeal for intrinsically flat, two-dimensional materials. For graphene, an ideal two-dimensional material, folding may transform it to complex shapes with new and distinct properties. Here, we present experimental results that folded structures in graphene, termed grafold, exist, and their formations can be controlled by introducing anisotropic surface curvature during graphene synthesis or transfer processes. Using pseudopotential-density functional theory calculations, we also show that double folding modifies the electronic band structure of graphene. Furthermore, we demonstrate the intercalation of C60 into the grafolds. Intercalation or functionalization of the chemically reactive folds further expands grafold's mechanical, chemical, optical, and electronic diversity.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figures (accepted in Phys. Rev. B

Trust as a mediator in the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and IL-6 level in adulthood

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been shown to predict the coupling of depression and inflammation in adulthood. Trust within intimate relationships, a core element in marital relations, has been shown to predict positive physical and mental health outcomes, but the mediating role of trust in partners in the association between CSA and inflammation in adulthood requires further study. The present study aimed to examine the impact of CSA on inflammatory biomarkers (IL-6 and IL-1β) in adults with depression and the mediating role of trust. A cross-sectional survey data set of adults presenting with mood and sleep disturbance was used in the analysis. CSA demonstrated a significant negative correlation with IL-6 level (r = -0.28, p<0. 01) in adults with clinically significant depression, while trust showed a significant positive correlation with IL-6 level (r = 0.36, p < .01). Sobel test and bootstrapping revealed a significant mediating role for trust between CSA and IL-6 level. CSA and trust in partners were revealed to have significant associations with IL-6 level in adulthood. Counterintuitively, the directions of association were not those expected. Trust played a mediating role between CSA and adulthood levels of IL-6. Plausible explanations for these counterintuitive findings are discussed

Cyclic voltammetric behaviour and high-performance liquid chromatography amperometric determination of levamisole

The electrochemical oxidation of levamisole, a glassy carbon electrode, was investigated over the pH range 2.0–10.0. Cyclic voltammetric investigations showed a single oxidation process was recorded, with a peak potential (Ep) shown to be pH-dependent in the range 5.0–8.0; between pH 2.0 and pH 5.0, and above pH 8.0, the Ep was found to be independent of pH, indicating apparent pKa values of 5.0 and 8.0. Peak currents were found to increase with increasing pH values. This voltammetric oxidation process was found to be consistent with a two-electron, two-proton oxidation to the corresponding sulfoxide. Based on these findings, the development of a of method based on the high-performance liquid chromatography separation of levamisole, with electrochemical detection being used for its determination, was explored. The chromatographic conditions required for the separation of levamisole were first investigated and optimized using UV detection. The conditions were identified as a 150 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 µm C18 column with a mobile phase consisting of 50% methanol, and 50%, 50 mM, pH 8.0 phosphate buffer. The technique of hydrodynamic voltammetry was applied to optimize the applied potential required for the determination of levamisole, identified as +2.3 V versus a stainless-steel pseudo-reference counter-electrode. Under the optimized conditions, levamisole exhibited a linear response of 1.00–20 mg/L (R2 = 0.999), with a detection limit of 0.27 mg/L. The possibility of determining levamisole in artificial urine was shown to be possible via simple dilution in the mobile phase. Mean recoveries of 99.7%, and 94.6%, with associated coefficients of variation of 8.2% and 10.2%, respectively, were obtained for 1.25 µg/mL (n = 5) and 2.50 µg/mL (n = 5)

Modifications of the BTZ black hole by a dilaton/scalar

We investigate some modifications of the static BTZ black hole solution due to a chosen asymptotically constant dilaton/scalar. New classes of static black hole solutions are obtained. One of the solutions contains the Martinez-Zanelli conformal black hole solution as a special case. Using quasilocal formalism, we calculate their mass for a finite spatial region that contains the black hole. Their temperatures are also computed. Finally, using some of the curvature singularities as examples, we investigate whether a quantum particle behaves singularly or not.Comment: 18 pages, Latex, in press in Phys. Rev.

New tests of calendar effects on equity and securitized real estate markets

We construct two new tests of calendar effects, apply them on 12 stock indices during 1996–2016, and compare the results with that using Hui and Chan (2016)’s method. The results show that the January and Halloween effects are significant for the four western generalized equity indices for small moving-window sizes. Furthermore, the securitized real estate indices show a greater difference in the overall calendar effect between the three methods than the general equity indices do. This study has an implication that a certain sector of the market is riskier than the whole market

Contagion across real estate and equity markets during European sovereign debt crisis

Standard methods of testing contagion may not work well if the data set is not normally distributed. To cope with this problem, Hatemi-J and Hacker (2005) proposed a new case-resampling bootstrap method to test contagion. In this paper, we extend this method to test the parameters in the Forbes-Rigobon multivariate (FRM) test. The new method has the advantage that the bivariate model is extended to a multivariate framework which jointly models and tests all combinations of contagious linkages. We apply our method to investigate contagion across equity and real estate markets of four countries: Greece, U.K., U.S. and Hong Kong, during the European sovereign debt crisis, and compare the result with that by performing the FRM test directly. Two important results are found. Firstly, both tests we use give similar p-values of the coefficients which indicate the significance of contagion. Secondly, for both tests, the contagion pattern in the equity and real estate markets are different. Our study has an implication to investors that they should regularly review their portfolio and be aware of contagion triggered by a crisis. This would help them reduce their loss and is useful in strategic property management