Derivatives at Agricultural Banks

Using data between 1995 and 2010, we find that agricultural banks are benefiting from the derivatives activities by reducing total risk without hurting their profit. In nonagricultural banks, both profitability and total risk are adversely affected, possibly due to speculative derivatives positions.Agricultural Banks, Financial Derivatives, Profitability, Risk Management, Agricultural Finance, Risk and Uncertainty,

Weighted bounds for multilinear operators with non-smooth kernels

Let $T$ be a multilinear integral operator which is bounded on certain products of Lebesgue spaces on $\mathbb R^n$. We assume that its associated kernel satisfies some mild regularity condition which is weaker than the usual H\"older continuity of those in the class of multilinear Calder\'on-Zygmund singular integral operators. In this paper, given a suitable multiple weight $\vec{w}$, we obtain the bound for the weighted norm of multilinear operators $T$ in terms of $\vec{w}$. As applications, we exploit this result to obtain the weighted bounds for certain singular integral operators such as linear and multilinear Fourier multipliers and the Riesz transforms associated to Schr\"odinger operators on $\mathbb{R}^n$. Our results are new even in the linear case

Model Counting for Formulas of Bounded Clique-Width

We show that #SAT is polynomial-time tractable for classes of CNF formulas whose incidence graphs have bounded symmetric clique-width (or bounded clique-width, or bounded rank-width). This result strictly generalizes polynomial-time tractability results for classes of formulas with signed incidence graphs of bounded clique-width and classes of formulas with incidence graphs of bounded modular treewidth, which were the most general results of this kind known so far.Comment: Extended version of a paper published at ISAAC 201

Molecular dynamics of folding of secondary structures in Go-type models of proteins

We consider six different secondary structures of proteins and construct two types of Go-type off-lattice models: with the steric constraints and without. The basic aminoacid-aminoacid potential is Lennard Jones for the native contacts and a soft repulsion for the non-native contacts. The interactions are chosen to make the target secondary structure be the native state of the system. We provide a thorough equilibrium and kinetic characterization of the sequences through the molecular dynamics simulations with the Langevin noise. Models with the steric constraints are found to be better folders and to be more stable, especially in the case of the $\beta$-structures. Phononic spectra for vibrations around the native states have low frequency gaps that correlate with the thermodynamic stability. Folding of the secondary structures proceeds through a well defined sequence of events. For instance, $\alpha$-helices fold from the ends first. The closer to the native state, the faster establishment of the contacts. Increasing the system size deteriorates the folding characteristics. We study the folding times as a function of viscous friction and find a regime of moderate friction with the linear dependence. We also consider folding when one end of a structure is pinned which imitates instantaneous conditions when a protein is being synthesized. We find that, under such circumstances, folding of helices is faster and of the $\beta$-sequences slower.Comment: REVTeX, 14 pages, EPS figures included, JCP in pres