10,617 research outputs found

    Do jumbo-CD holders care about anything?

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    Uninsured deposits represent a theoretically appealing but relatively untested alternative to subordinated debt for incorporating market discipline into banking supervision. To make the deposit market a useful supervisory tool, it is necessary to know what types of risk are priced by depositors and in what proportions. Using a clustering technique to select from among a large set of potential regressors, as well as a carefully chosen set of control variables, we attempt to determine the types of risk that cause uninsured depositors to react in both the price and quantity dimensions. As a benchmark for economic significance, we estimate similar regressions on supervisory ratings. We find that, in contrast to government supervisors, depositors have not priced most types of risk since 1997. Indeed, the only risk variables that consistently come up as statistically significant are those that measure capital adequacy. Our interpretation of these results is that, because aggregate banking conditions are good, it is not worth depositors' effort to investigate individual bank quality very carefully. We conclude that, in the current economic and regulatory environment, the market is content to delegate most of its monitoring and discipline to the government. To the extent that it does monitor, it only monitors capital. The jumbo-CD market is thus not likely to be of much supervisory use, particularly given that examiners already have good information about capital levels. The depositor emphasis on capital also supports the conjecture that market discipline was responsible for much of the recent capital build-up.Bank deposits ; Bank supervision

    Stellar Kinematics of the Double Nucleus of M31

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    We report observations of the double nucleus of M31 with the f/48 long-slit spectrograph of the HST Faint Object Camera. We obtain a total exposure of 19,000 sec. over 7 orbits, with the 0.063-arcsec-wide slit along the line between the two brightness peaks (PA 42). A spectrum of Jupiter is used as a spectral template. The rotation curve is resolved, and reaches a maximum amplitude of ~250 km/s roughly 0.3 arcsec either side of a rotation center lying between P1 and P2, 0.16 +/- 0.05 arcsec from the optically fainter P2. We find the velocity dispersion to be < 250 km/s everywhere except for a narrow ``dispersion spike'', centered 0.06 +/- 0.03 arcsec on the anti-P1 side of P2, in which sigma peaks at 440 +/- 70 km/s. At much lower confidence, we see local disturbances to the rotation curve at P1 and P2, and an elevation in sigma at P1. At very low significance we detect a weak asymmetry in the line-of-sight velocity distribution opposite to the sense usually encountered. Convolving our V and sigma profiles to CFHT resolution, we find good agreement with the results of Kormendy & Bender (1998, preprint), though there is a 20% discrepancy in the dispersion that cannot be attributed to the dispersion spike. Our results are not consistent with the location of the maximum dispersion as found by Bacon et al. We find that the sinking star cluster model of Emsellem & Combes (1997) does not reproduce either the rotation curve or the dispersion profile. The eccentric disk model of Tremaine (1995) fares better, and can be improved somewhat by adjusting the original parameters. However, detailed modeling will require dynamical models of significantly greater realism.Comment: 29 pages, Latex, AASTeX v4.0, with 7 eps figures. To appear in The Astronomical Journal, February 199

    Position effects influence transvection in drosophila melanogaster

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    Transvection is an epigenetic phenomenon wherein regulatory elements communicate between different chromosomes in trans, and is thereby dependent upon the three-dimensional organization of the genome. Transvection is best understood in Drosophila, where homologous chromosomes are closely paired in most somatic nuclei, although similar phenomena have been observed in other species. Previous data have supported that the Drosophila genome is generally permissive to enhancer action in trans, a form of transvection where an enhancer on one homolog activates gene expression from a promoter on a paired homolog. However, the capacity of different genomic positions to influence the quantitative output of transvection has yet to be addressed. To investigate this question, we employed a transgenic system that assesses and compares enhancer action in cis and in trans at defined chromosomal locations. Using the strong synthetic eye-specific enhancer GMR, we show that loci supporting strong cis-expression tend to support robust enhancer action in trans, whereas locations with weaker cis-expression show reduced transvection in a fluorescent reporter assay. Our subsequent analysis is consistent with a model wherein the chromatin state of the transgenic insertion site is a primary determinant of the degree to which enhancer action in trans will be supported, whereas other factors such as locus-specific variation in somatic homolog pairing are of less importance in influencing position effects on transvection

    Rapid Circumstellar Disk Evolution and an Accelerating Star Formation Rate in the Infrared Dark Cloud M17 SWex

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    We present a catalog of 840 X-ray sources and first results from a 100 ks Chandra X-ray Observatory imaging study of the filamentary infrared dark cloud G014.225-00.506, which forms the central regions of a larger cloud complex known as the M17 southwest extension (M17 SWex). In addition to the rich population of protostars and young stellar objects with dusty circumstellar disks revealed by Spitzer Space Telescope archival data, we discover a population of X-ray-emitting, intermediate-mass pre--main-sequence stars (IMPS) that lack infrared excess emission from circumstellar disks. We model the infrared spectral energy distributions of this source population to measure its mass function and place new constraints on the inner dust disk destruction timescales for 2-8 MM_{\odot} stars. We also place a lower limit on the star formation rate (SFR) and find that it is quite high (M˙0.007 M\dot{M}\ge 0.007~M_{\odot} yr1^{-1}), equivalent to several Orion Nebula Clusters in G14.225-0.506 alone, and likely accelerating. The cloud complex has not produced a population of massive, O-type stars commensurate with its SFR. This absence of very massive (20 M{\ge}20~M_{\odot}) stars suggests that either (1) M17 SWex is an example of a distributed mode of star formation that will produce a large OB association dominated by intermediate-mass stars but relatively few massive clusters, or (2) the massive cores are still in the process of accreting sufficient mass to form massive clusters hosting O stars.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figures, accepted to Ap

    First detection of the RGB-bump in the Sagittarius dSph

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    We present V, I photometry of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal galaxy (Sgr) for a region of ~ 1^{circ} times 1^{circ}, centered on the globular cluster M 54. This catalog is the largest database of stars (~500,000) ever obtained for this galaxy. The wide area covered allows us to measure for the first time the position of the RGB-bump, a feature that has been identified in most Galactic globular clusters and only recently in a few galaxies of the Local Group. The presence of a single-peaked bump in the RGB differential Luminosity Function confirms that there is a dominant population in Sgr (Pop A). The photometric properties of the Pop A RGB and the position of the RGB bump have been used to constrain the range of possible ages and metallicities of this population. The most likely solution lies in the range -0.6 < [M/H] <= -0.4 and 4 Gyr <= age <= 8 Gyr.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, accepted by ApJ Letter

    Comparisons of Critical Thermal Maxima and Minima of Juvenile Red Drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) from Texas and North Carolina

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    The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department was Interested In Identifying cold-tolerant red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) for a supplemental bay stocking program to help prevent massive fish kills when winter temperatures drop to potentially dangerous levels. Critical thermal maxima (CTMax) and minima (CTMin) of Juvenile red drum from Texas and North Carolina were determined to test for possible geographically based differences In thermal tolerance limits. Juvenile red drum from the two regions acclimated to either 12°C or 20°C exhibited similar thermal tolerance limits while Texas red drum acclimated to 12°C exhibited a statistically higher CTMax, however the observed difference Is not Interpreted as biologically significant. The adjusted mean CTMin for the combined Texas and North Carolina red drum acclimated to 12°C was 1.6°C and adjusted mean CTMax for combined Texas and North Carolina red drum acclimated to 12°C was 29.5°C, and the adjusted mean CTMax for Individuals acclimated to 20°C was 34.8°C. These results suggest red drum from northern and southern parts of the species range have similar temperature tolerances
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