Information transmission around block trades on the Spanish stock market

Current fmancial research is placing increasing attention on the effects of large transactions, or Block Trades (BT), on the fmancial markets. In order to analyze whether BT transmit information, we assume that information can be better reflected by changes in asset true value, proxied by the midpoint of bid-ask best quotes, instead of transactions prices or returns. Moreover, following market microstructure literature, we also look at changes in relative spread and in their adverse selection component. The Madrid Stock Exchange offers us a particularly appropriate testing ground for examining these issues, since this topic has not been facilitated as in other markets till 1998. We analyze 195 BT, classified according with trading volume, the side of the market initiating the BT (buyer, seller or indeterminate initiated), its type (inside the spread, sweeping or not classified) and if they change or not the asset true value. The main result of the paper is that it seems that there is BT information transmission when we look at adverse selection spread component in the different subsample classification, but there is no significant permanent effect in returns. We also observe changes in liquidity around BTs but the effect is related with temporary spread component

Use of structural adhesive joints in construction applications

The Research Group of Materials Performance works in the development of structural adhesive joints and their performance in service in collaboration with some adhesive manufacturer companies. It is sought to increase the number of adhesive manufacturer companies to work with, as well as to find construction companies interested in the application of this technology.Contrato Programa de Comercialización e Internacionalización. Sistema Regional de Investigación Científica e Innovación Tecnológica. (Comunidad de Madrid; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Use of paints in construction applications

The Research Group of Materials Performance works in collaboration with some paint manufacturer and paint applier companies. It is sought to open the scope of this activity through tests that include and link activities of both sectors. This improvement will widen the application areas to construction companies.Contrato Programa de Comercialización e Internacionalización. Sistema Regional de Investigación Científica e Innovación Tecnológica. (Comunidad de Madrid; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Investigational Drugs for the Treatment of Postherpetic Neuralgia: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials

The pharmacological treatment of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) is unsatisfactory, and there is a clinical need for new approaches. Several drugs under advanced clinical development are addressed in this review. A systematic literature search was conducted in three electronic databases (Medline, Web of Science, Scopus) and in the ClinicalTrials.gov register from 1 January 2016 to 1 June 2023 to identify Phase II, III and IV clinical trials evaluating drugs for the treatment of PHN. A total of 18 clinical trials were selected evaluating 15 molecules with pharmacological actions on nine different molecular targets: Angiotensin Type 2 Receptor (AT2R) antagonism (olodanrigan), Voltage-Gated Calcium Channel (VGCC) 2 subunit inhibition (crisugabalin, mirogabalin and pregabalin), Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel (VGSC) blockade (funapide and lidocaine), Cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) inhibition (TRK-700), Adaptor-Associated Kinase 1 (AAK1) inhibition (LX9211), Lanthionine Synthetase C-Like Protein (LANCL) activation (LAT8881), N-Methyl-D-Aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonism (esketamine), mu opioid receptor agonism (tramadol, oxycodone and hydromorphone) and Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) inhibition (fulranumab). In brief, there are several drugs in advanced clinical development for treating PHN with some of them reporting promising results. AT2R antagonism, AAK1 inhibition, LANCL activation and NGF inhibition are considered first-in-class analgesics. Hopefully, these trials will result in a better clinical management of PHNTraining University Lecturers program (FPU21/02736) of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO

Sample-Parallel Execution of EBCOT in Fast Mode

JPEG 2000’s most computationally expensive building block is the Embedded Block Coder with Optimized Truncation (EBCOT). This paper evaluates how encoders targeting a parallel architecture such as a GPU can increase their throughput in use cases where very high data rates are used. The compression efficiency in the less significant bit-planes is then often poor and it is beneficial to enable the Selective Arithmetic Coding Bypass style (fast mode) in order to trade a small loss in compression efficiency for a reduction of the computational complexity. More importantly, this style exposes a more finely grained parallelism that can be exploited to execute the raw coding passes, including bit-stuffing, in a sample-parallel fashion. For a latency- or memory critical application that encodes one frame at a time, EBCOT’s tier-1 is sped up between 1.1x and 2.4x compared to an optimized GPU-based implementation. When a low GPU occupancy has already been addressed by encoding multiple frames in parallel, the throughput can still be improved by 5% for high-entropy images and 27% for low-entropy images. Best results are obtained when enabling the fast mode after the fourth significant bit-plane. For most of the test images the compression rate is within 1% of the original

Energy efficiency improvement through MPC-based peripherals management for an industrial process test-bench

High energy costs evince the growing need for energy efficiency in industrial companies. This paper presents a solution at the industrial machine level to obtain efficient energy consumption. Therefore, a controller inspired by the well-known model predictive control (MPC) strategy was developed for the management of peripheral devices. The validation of the control requires a test-bench to emulate the energy consumption of a manufacturing machine. The test-bench has four devices, two used to emulate the periodic and fixed energy consumption of the manufacturing process and two as peripherals, subject to rules associated with the process. Consequently, a subspace identification (SI) was employed to identify energy models to simulate the behavior of the device. As a final step, a performance comparison between a rule-based control (RBC) and the proposed predictive-like controller revealed the remarkable energy savings. The MPC results show an energy saving of around 3% with respect to RBC as well as an instant maximum energy consumption reduction of 8%, approximately.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Understanding the ex-ante cost of liquidity in the limit order book: a note.

El presente trabajo estima una nueva medida de coste de liquidez de los activos financieros en un mercado dirigido por órdenes. Esta medida, denominada función de liquidez, recoge el coste ex-ante de comprar y vender simultáneamente una determinada cantidad de acciones haciendo uso de toda la información ofrecida por el libro de órdenes. De esta manera se superan las dificultades que la consideración por separado de la horquilla de precios o la profundidad ocasiona sobre la caracterización de la liquidez de los diferentes activos.This paper estimates a new measure of liquidity costs in a market driven by orders. It represents the cost of simultaneously buying and selling a given amount of shares, and it is given by a single measure of ex-ante liquidity that aggregates all available information in the limit order book for a given number of shares. The cost of liquidity is an increasing function relating bid-ask spreads with the amounts available for trading. This measure completely characterizes the cost of liquidity of any given asset. It does not suffer from the usual ambiguities related to either the bid-ask spread or depth when they are considered separately. On the contrary, with a single measure, we are able to capture all dimensions of liquidity costs on ex-ante basis.Función de liquidez; Coste de liquidez; Libro de órdenes límite; Horquilla de precios; Profundidad; liquidity function; liquidity cost; open limit order book; bid-ask spread; depth;

Information Transmission around Block Trades on the Spanish Stock Market.

This study investigates the informational effects of large transactions, or Block Trades (BT), in the Spanish Stock Exchange (SSE). In the open market period, this topic was not facilitated in the SSE as it was in other markets until 1998. The SSE thus provides a special environment for analysing the information transmission of these specific transactions. It is assumed that information can be better reflected by changes in true asset value, proxied by the midpoint of bid-ask best quotes. Therefore, we will look at changing true asset value orders instead of trades. Three different effects are studied around BTs: price, liquidity and information transmission. To capture them, three different endogenous variables are considered: true asset returns, relative spreads and adverse selection spread component. With this approach, no clear effects of BTs are found. The main result of the study is that there seems to be an increase in information asymmetries when one looks at the adverse selection spread component in some of the different subsample classifications (buyer, seller and sweeping BT), but there is no significant permanent effect on returns. This result could be related to insiders trading in the market. In sharp contrast with adverse selection evidence, a temporary decrease in bid/ask spread around BTs is also observed. These changes reflect temporary liquidity effects related to other spread components (order processing costs and inventory costs).

Aproximación a los usos de la comunidad scene en el intercambio no comercial de series televisivas en Internet

La disputa que subyace entre derechos de autor e Internet se asienta en la innovación disruptiva que supuso la digitalización de la imagen fílmica. Este sistema tecnológico permite a cualquier usuario la reproducción de réplicas exactas al original con gran facilidad y a bajo coste. Este proceso, representa, por tanto, la pérdida inmediata de la industria cinematográfica y televisiva de la exclusiva en la distribución de contenidos audiovisuales. De esta manera, el uso de la copia digital pone en riesgo la estabilidad del sistema clásico, que basa su beneficio económico en la comercialización de copias físicas. El cambio de paradigma tecnológico que surge tras la aparición de la codificación binaria, significó el perfecto catalizador del intercambio de material cinematográfico y televisivo en la Red. De igual forma, la disociación entre soporte y contenido que provocó la asimilación del proceso digital y que permitió la libre propagación de obras audiovisuales en Internet, ha supuesto un punto sin retorno en la forma de consumir estas obras fílmicas por parte de los espectadores actuales. En este sentido, las series de televisión, como producto de gran demanda, no han sido ajenas a esta situación. Así, este artículo expone, además de un breve recorrido histórico que identifica los principales hitos técnicos que sustentan el modelo actual de acceso, un análisis concreto de los usos de compartición en referencia a los contenidos seriados por parte de la comunidad scene, responsable inicial de este proceso.The problem behind copyright and the Internet is based on disruptive innovation that led to the digitization of the film image. This technological system allows any user the exact reproduction of the original replica easily and at low cost. This process causes immediate loss of exclusive film and television industry distribution of audiovisual content. Thus, the use of digital copying jeopardizes the stability of the classical system, which bases its economic benefit in marketing physical copies. The technological paradigm shift that comes after the appearance of the binary encoding, was the perfect catalyst for the file sharing of film and television products on the Web. Similarly, the dissociation between media and content that caused the assimilation of digital process and allowed the free propagation of audiovisual works on the Internet, has been a point of no return in the way people consume these filmic products. In this sense, the television series, as a result of high demand, have not been outside this situation. Thus, this article makes a brief historical tour that identifies the main technical milestones that support the current access model and also, performs a concrete analysis of the ways of file sharing about television series by the scene community, the initial responsable for this process.Ciencias de la Comunicació

Las subidas en los precios de los alimentos y las materias primas: la importancia de los factores financieros y monetarios

Las subidas en los precios de los alimentos y las materias primas tienen consecuencias de gran relevancia. En este ARI se exploran las posibles causas, y se centra en la interrelación de este fenómeno con factores financieros y monetarios. La subida de los precios de las materias primas es un fenómeno complejo, en el cual podemos destacar como causas principales la demanda de los países de Asia emergente y la incidencia de factores financieros y monetarios. Es necesario analizar el fenómeno de las subidas de los precios de los alimentos conjuntamente con los del resto de materias primas, al existir evoluciones comunes y posibles causas comunes. Se destaca la importancia del contexto financiero internacional, anómalo por las turbulencias financieras y la crisis inmobiliaria, los bajos niveles de tipos de interés reales internacionales y la incertidumbre sobre la inflación mundial y tipos de cambio, que han motivado una fuerte “migración de la liquidez” internacional hacia las materias primas. No obstante, sectorialmente tampoco se debe obviar la incidencia de la demanda de biocombustibles, de políticas comerciales de restricción a la exportación y de una moderada desaceleración en la oferta de alimentos, que por otra parte sería prematuro calificar de estructural