29,185 research outputs found
HEDGING WITH FUTURES AND OPTIONS UNDER A TRUNCATED CASH PRICE DISTRIBUTION
Many agricultural producers face cash price distributions that are effectively truncated at a lower limit through participation in farm programs designed to support farm prices and incomes. For example, the 1996 Federal Agricultural Improvement Act (FAIR) makes many producers eligible to obtain marketing loans which truncate their cash price realization at the loan rate, while allowing market prices to freely equilibrate supply and demand. This paper studies the effects of truncated cash price distributions on the optimal use of futures and options. The results show that truncation in the cash price distribution facing an individual producer provides incentives to trade options as well as futures. We derive optimal futures and options trading rules under options as well as futures. We derive optimal futures and options trading rules under a range of different truncation scenarios. Empirical results highlights the impacts of basis risk and yield risk on the optimal futures and options portfolio.farm programs, futures, hedging, options, truncation, Marketing,
Schwinger Effect in Non-parallel D1-branes: A Path Integral Approach
We study the Schwinger effect in a system of non-parallel D1-branes for the
bosonic strings using the path integral formalism. We drive the string pair
creation rate by calculating the one loop vacuum amplitude of the setup in
presence of the background electric filed defined along one of the D1-branes.
We find an angle dependent minimum value for the background field and show that
the decaying of vacuum into string pairs takes place for the field above this
value. It is shown that in limit the vacuum
becomes stable and thus no pair creation occurs
Zika Virus: Can Artificial Contraception Be Condoned?
As the Zika virus pandemic continues to bring worry and fear to health officials and medical scientists, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) have recommended that residents of the Zika-infected countries, e.g., Brazil, and those who have traveled to the area should delay having babies which may involve artificial contraceptive, particularly condom. This preventive policy, however, is seemingly at odds with the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the contraceptive. As least since the promulgation of Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, the Church has explicitly condemned artificial birth control as intrinsic evil. However, the current pontiff, Pope Francis, during his recent visit to Latin America, remarked that the use of artificial contraception may not be in contradiction to the teaching of Humanae Vitae while drawing a parallel between the current Zika Crisis and the 1960’s Belgian Congo Nun Controversy. The pope mentioned that the traditional ethical principle of the lesser of two evils may be the doctrine that justified the exceptions. The authors of this paper attempt to expand the theological rationale of the pope’s suggestion. In so doing, the authors rely on casuistical reasoning as an analytic tool that compares the Belgian Congo Nun case and the given Zika case, and suggest that the former is highly similar to, if not the same as, the latter in terms of normative moral feature. That is, in both cases the use of artificial contraception is theologically justified in reference to the criteria that the doctrine of the lesser of two evils requires. The authors wish that the paper would provide a solid theological-ethical ground based on which condom-use as the most immediate and effective preventive measure can be recommended in numerous Catholic hospitals as well as among Catholic communities in the world, particularly the most Zika-affected and largest Catholic community in the world, Brazil – 123 million present Brazilian citizens are reported to be Roman Catholic
Quality engineering of a traction alternator by robust design
Robust design is an engineering methodology for improving productivity during research and development so that high-quality products can be developed and produced quickly and at low cost. A large electrical company was developing traction alternators for a diesel electrical engine. Customer requirement was to obtain very high efficiency which, in turn, was influenced by several design parameters. The usual approach of the 'design-build-test' cycle was considered time-consuming and costly; it used to take anywhere from 4 months to 1 year before finalizing the product design parameters as it involved physical assembly and also testing. Instead, the authors used Taguchi's parameter design approach. This approach took about 8 weeks to arrive at optimum design parameter values; clearly demonstrating the cutting edge of this methodology over the traditional design-build-test approach. The prototype built and tested accordingly gave satisfactory overall performance, meeting and even exceeding customer requirements
A proposed test of the Einstein theory of gravitation by means of an unshielded orbiting gyro using passive telemetry
Proposed test of theory of gravitation by an unshielded earth orbiting gyroscope using passive telemetr
Liquid-Drop Model and Quantum Resistance Against Noncompact Nuclear Geometries
The importance of quantum effects for exotic nuclear shapes is demonstrated.
Based on the example of a sheet of nuclear matter of infinite lateral
dimensions but finite thickness, it is shown that the quantization of states in
momentum space, resulting from the confinement of the nucleonic motion in the
conjugate geometrical space, generates a strong resistance against such a
confinement and generates restoring forces driving the system towards compact
geometries. In the liquid-drop model, these quantum effects are implicitly
included in the surface energy term, via a choice of interaction parameters, an
approximation that has been found valid for compact shapes, but has not yet
been scrutinized for exotic shapes.Comment: 9 pages with 3 figure
Super Jackstraws and Super Waterwheels
We construct various new BPS states of D-branes preserving 8 supersymmetries.
These include super Jackstraws (a bunch of scattered D- or (p,q)-strings
preserving supersymmetries), and super waterwheels (a number of D2-branes
intersecting at generic angles on parallel lines while preserving
supersymmetries). Super D-Jackstraws are scattered in various dimensions but
are dynamical with all their intersections following a common null direction.
Meanwhile, super (p,q)-Jackstraws form a planar static configuration. We show
that the SO(2) subgroup of SL(2,R), the group of classical S-duality
transformations in IIB theory, can be used to generate this latter
configuration of variously charged (p,q)-strings intersecting at various
angles. The waterwheel configuration of D2-branes preserves 8 supersymmetries
as long as the `critical' Born-Infeld electric fields are along the common
direction.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure
Nanoelectromechanical Resonator Arrays for Ultrafast, Gas-Phase Chromatographic Chemical Analysis
Miniaturized gas chromatography (GC) systems can provide fast, quantitative analysis of chemical vapors in an ultrasmall package. We describe a chemical sensor technology based on resonant nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) mass detectors that provides the speed, sensitivity, specificity, and size required by the microscale GC paradigm. Such NEMS sensors have demonstrated detection of subparts per billion (ppb) concentrations of a phosphonate analyte. By combining two channels of NEMS detection with an ultrafast GC front-end, chromatographic analysis of 13 chemicals was performed within a 5 s time window
Multi giant graviton systems, SUSY breaking and CFT
In this article, we describe giant gravitons in AdS_5 x S^5 moving along
generic trajectories in AdS_5. The giant graviton dynamics is solved by proving
that the D3-brane effective action reduces to that of a massive point particle
in AdS_5 and therefore the solutions are in one to one correspondence with
timelike geodesics of AdS_5. All these configurations are related via
isometries of the background, which induce target space symmetries in the world
volume theory of the D-brane. Hence, all these configurations preserve the same
amount of supersymmetry as the original giant graviton, i.e. half of the
maximal supersymmetry. Multiparticle configurations of two or more giant
gravitons are also considered. In particular, a binary system preserving one
quarter of the supersymmetries is found, providing a non trivial time-dependent
supersymmetric solution. A short study on the dual CFT description of all the
above states is given, including a derivation of the exact induced isometry map
in the CFT side of the correspondence.Comment: latex, 27+1 pages. v2: comment on mixing of states in section 4.3
added, reference added, typos corrected, final versio
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