Forecasting Foreign Exchange Rates, A comparison between forecasting horizons and Bayesian vs. Frequentist approaches

Forecasting foreign exchange rates and financial asset prices in general is a hard task. The best model has often been shown to be a simple random walk, which implies that the price movements are unpredictable. In this thesis models that have been somewhat successful in the past are developed and investigated for different forecasting horizons. The aim is to find models that significantly dominate the prediction performance of a random walk, and also to suggest a trading strategy that systematically can make profits using the model predictions. After investigating the data at different sampling frequencies, some significant predictive information is found for very short horizons (10 minutes) and for relatively long horizons (one week), while no useful information is found for daily data. With a forecasting horizon of 10 minutes, it is shown that a Markov model accurately predicts positive or negative returns in more than 50% of the cases for all currencies considered, with significance at the 1% level, and that the performance seems to increase with a Bayesian model. For a horizon of one week, it is shown that a Bayesian Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model outperforms the frequentist VAR model and also the random walk (although with low significance). The performance of trading strategies highly depends on the transaction costs involved. The transaction costs seem to ruin the performance on the 10 minutes horizon, while having less influence on the weekly horizon. A strategy that would have generated good profits on a weekly horizon past 2011, out of sample, is found

Human mast cells decrease SLPI levels in type II - like alveolar cell model, in vitro.

Background Mast cells are known to accumulate at sites of inflammation and upon activation to release their granule content, e.g. histamine, cytokines and proteases. The secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI) is produced in the respiratory mucous and plays a role in regulating the activity of the proteases. Result We have used the HMC-1 cell line as a model for human mast cells to investigate their effect on SLPI expression and its levels in cell co-culture experiments, in vitro. In comparison with controls, we found a significant reduction in SLPI levels (by 2.35-fold, p < 0.01) in a SLPI-producing, type II-like alveolar cell line, (A549) when co-cultured with HMC-1 cells, but not in an HMC-1-conditioned medium, for 96 hours. By contrast, increased SLPI mRNA expression (by 1.58-fold, p < 0.05) was found under the same experimental conditions. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed mast cell transmigration in co-culture with SLPI-producing A549 cells for 72 and 96 hours. Conclusion These results indicate that SLPI-producing cells may assist mast cell migration and that the regulation of SLPI release and/or consumption by mast cells requires interaction between these cell types. Therefore, a "local relationship" between mast cells and airway epithelial cells might be an important step in the inflammatory response

Mobiili biomassan HTC-prosessointiyksikkö

Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a process that produces coal-like hydrochar from wet biomass. As some of these biomass resources are in remote locations, in forests or fields far from industrial areas, transporting biomass with high moisture content to a central facility is not always possible or feasible. A novel approach to this problem is to bring a processing unit to the raw material and process it on site. A mobile pro-cess can be shipped to different remote locations to access raw materials that are scarce available only temporarily. As hydrochar is hydrophobic, excess water can easily be expelled from the solid product through mechanical means without the need for drying. Thus excess water does not need to be transported. A mobile HTC-processing unit was designed to fit into a 40-foot ISO-container that can be transported on the back of a truck. The processing unit uses 3 reactors to process biomass for two hours at a temperature of 220 °C and 3000 kPa pressure. Heat recovery for the process was designed using two flash tanks, a spiral heat exchanger and liquid recircu-lation. Separation of the liquid and solid products is performed with a filter press. The equipment was sized with the help of Computer Aided Design (CAD). Tinkercad was used to make a 3D model of the process. The major equipment costs were estimated using literature and cost correlations. Other costs of the process, such as installation of major equipment, electrical set up and equipment insulation, were obtained through cost factors based on the cost of major equipment. Thus the final price of the process was obtained as 1.2 million €. The economic feasibility of the process and the main process variables affecting it were studied using two business cases and a sensitivity analysis.Märkähiilto (Hydrothermal carbonization, HTC) on prosessi, joka tuottaa biohiiltä märästä biomassasta. Koska osa bio-massaresursseista on syrjäisissä paikoissa, metsissä tai pelloilla kaukana teollisista alueista, ei kostean biomassan kuljetus keskitettyyn laitokseen ole usein mahdollista ja kannattavaa. Uusi lähestymistapa tähän ongelmaan on prosessin tuominen raaka-aineen luo ja sen prosessointi paikan päällä. Siirrettävä prosessilaitos voidaan viedä paikkoihin, joissa prosessoitavia raaka-aineita on vähän tai niitä on saatavilla vain tilapäisesti. Lisäksi ylimääräinen vesi voidaan poistaa hydrofobisesta kiinteästä biohiilituotteesta mekaanisesti eikä tuotetta tarvitse erikseen kuivata. Tällöin ylimääräistä vettä ei tarvitse turhaan kuljettaa. Tässä työssä kehitettiin siirrettävä HTC-prosessointiyksikkö 40 jalan ISO-konttiin, joka voidaan kuljettaa kuorma-autolla. Yksikössä biomassaa prosessoidaan kolmessa reaktorissa kahden tunnin ajan 220 °C lämpötilassa ja 3000 kPa paineessa. Lämmön talteenotto toteutetaan kahden paisunta-astian, spiraalilämmönsiirtimen ja prosessiveden kierrättämisen avulla. Kiinteä aine erotetaan puristimella. Laitteiden koot määritettiin tietokoneavusteisen suunnittelun (Computer Aided Design, CAD) avulla. Tinkercad-ohjelmistolla luotiin prosessin 3D-malli. Päälaitteiden hinnat arvioitiin kirjallisuuden ja hintakorrelaatioiden avulla. Pienemmät kustannukset, kuten laitteiden asennus, sähkötyöt ja laitteiden eristys, laskettiin hintakertoimilla pohjautuen päälaitteiden kustannuksiin. Prosessin hinnaksi saatiin 1,2 miljoonaa euroa. Prosessin taloudellista kannattavuutta ja tärkeimpiä siihen vaikuttavia tekijöitä tutkittiin kahden liiketoimintamallin sekä herkkyysanalyysin keinoin

GNSS Interference Localization Through PDOA-Methods

As GPS signals are of low power, the receiving end is always highly susceptible to interference, both unintentional and deliberate. As such there is a need to develop practical ways of detecting and localizing interference sources. This paper evaluates different methods of localization, and also demonstrates a novel method of both practical and cheap localization

Secretory Leukocyte Protease Inhibitor (SLPI) in the gastrointestinal tract in man.

Secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor is a 11.7 kDa acid stable serine protease inhibitor. SLPI has been shown to be the dominant protease inhibitor in bronchial secretions and has been used in treatment of pulmonary emphysema. In ulcerative colitis faecal extracts has been shown to contain an abundance of free proteolytic activity, mainly leukocytic and pancreatic proteases. SLPI is a strong inhibitor of many of these proteases. In this thesis, we demonstrated immunoreactive SLPI in goblet like cells in the large bowel and in the small intestine. SLPI was also found in Paneth cells in the small intestine as well as in colonic adenomas. Pepsin as well as gastric and duodenal juice was found to rapidly degrade SLPI in vitro. After instillation of radiolabelled SLPI in the duodenum, no intact SLPI was found in faeces. We found mRNA for SLPI in pancreatic tissue and using immunohistochemical methods, the cells of Langerhan were shown to contain SLPI. In patients with ulcerative colitis, plasma SLPI was shown to be elevated and also to be correlated to the severity of the disease. In addition plasma levels of Neutrophil Gelatinase Associated Lipocalin (NGAL) were elevated and could possibly be a useful indicator of remission in patients with ulcerative colitis. Finally, a quantitative method for culturing colonic mucosa using punch biopsies was developed. The possible effect of added agents on the colonic mucosa production of SLPI and other inflammatory mediators such as cytokines, can be studied using this method. In conclusion, this thesis showed the presence of SLPI in Paneth cells in the small intestines and in goblet cells both in the small and large intestines. Colonic adenomas were shown to contain SLPI as well. SLPI was degraded by gastric and duodenal juice and also by pepsin. SLPI production in the pancreas was shown as well as the presence of SLPI in the Islets of Langerhan. SLPI was significantly correlated to severity in patients with ulcerative colitis. NGAL could possibly be useful as an indicator of remission in UC. A quantitative method of standardised in vitro culturing of colonic mucosa was developed. In accordance, actual release of SLPI from the mucosa was shown

Human mast cells decrease SLPI levels in type II – like alveolar cell model, <it>in vitro</it>

Abstract Background Mast cells are known to accumulate at sites of inflammation and upon activation to release their granule content, e.g. histamine, cytokines and proteases. The secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI) is produced in the respiratory mucous and plays a role in regulating the activity of the proteases. Result We have used the HMC-1 cell line as a model for human mast cells to investigate their effect on SLPI expression and its levels in cell co-culture experiments, in vitro. In comparison with controls, we found a significant reduction in SLPI levels (by 2.35-fold, p Conclusion These results indicate that SLPI-producing cells may assist mast cell migration and that the regulation of SLPI release and/or consumption by mast cells requires interaction between these cell types. Therefore, a "local relationship" between mast cells and airway epithelial cells might be an important step in the inflammatory response.</p

The presence of elafin, SLPI, IL1-RA and STNFalpha RI in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas and their relation to the degree of tumour differentiation.

Biopsy samples of head and neck carcinomas were investigated with regard to elafin, secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI), interleukin 1-receptor antagonist [(IL)1-RA] and soluble tumour necrosis factor alpha receptor antagonist (STNFalpha RI). SLPI and elafin are serine protease inhibitors produced in the serous cells of the upper respiratory airways and in the keratinocytes, respectively. We have now found the presence of elafin and SLPI in squamous cell carcinomas of the upper respiratory tract (tonsillar, hypopharyngeal, tongue, mouth floor, gingival and laryngeal cancer). Significantly higher amounts of SLPI and elafin are present in well-differentiated and moderately differentiated tumours than in poorly differentiated tumours (p < 0.0001 and p < 0.0015). Tumour necrosis factor-alpha and IL-1beta have been shown to stimulate the production of SLPI and elafin. Since these cytokines can both be difficult to detect, we chose to study their inhibitors, STNFalpha RI and IL1-RA, instead. IL1-RA was expressed in highly differentiated tumours as well as in poorly differentiated ones. No significant difference was seen between the groups. STNFalpha RI was only found in very small amounts, sparsely distributed in the tumours, and was not related to the degree of differentiation