The Institutional Structure and the Cost of Bank Loans: an International Comparison

In recent years international comparisons emphasized the importance of institutional and legal factors in capital market development and the performance of private firms. Here that approach is applied to the pricing of bank loans. Loan rates depend on contract parameters such as risk, the existence of covenants and loan size. Syndicate structure and the number of lenders also determine the cost of borrowing. Loan prices are also negatively impacted if the lending banks operate as part of larger conglomerates. Loan prices are also shown to depend on a number of institutional factors, such as the quality of protection of creditor rights and the quality of law enforcement. Curiously, we find that contracts with customers in "French tradition" countries were priced lower, as if having lower risk, than others, other things held equal. This is not in line with other segments of the literature on international capital market differences and institutional factors. It suggests that differences across legal traditions are more complicated than previously understood

Measurements in the near-wall region of a relaxing three-dimensional low speed turbulent air boundary layer

An experimental investigation was conducted at selected locations of the near-wall region of a three dimensional turbulent air boundary layer relaxing in a nominally zero external pressure gradient behind a transverse hump (in the form of a 30 deg swept, 5-foot chord wing-type model) faired into the side wall of a low speed wind tunnel. Wall shear stresses measured with a flush-mounted hot-film gage and a sublayer fence were in very good agreement with experimental data obtained with two Preston probes. With the upstream unit Reynolds number held constant at 325,000/ft. approximately one-fourth of the boundary layer thickness adjacent to the wall was surveyed with a single rotated hot-wire probe mounted on a specially designed minimum interference traverse mechanism. The boundary layer (approximately 3.5 in thick near the first survey station where the length Reynolds number was 5.5 million) had a maximum crossflow velocity ratio of 0.145 and a maximum crossflow angle of 21.875 deg close to the wall

An experimental investigation of a two and a three-dimensional low speed turbulent boundary layer

Experimental studies of a two and a three-dimensional low speed turbulent boundary layer were conducted on the side wall of a boundary layer wind tunnel. The 20 ft. long test section, with a rectangular cross section measuring 17.5 in. x 46 in., produced a 3.5 in. thick turbulent boundary layer at a free stream Reynolds number. The three-dimensional turbulent boundary layer was produced by a 30 deg swept wing-like model faired into the side wall of the test section. Preliminary studies in the two-dimensional boundary layer indicated that the flow was nonuniform on the 46 in. wide test wall. The nonuniform boundary layer is characterized by transverse variations in the wall shear stress and is primarily caused by nonuniformities in the inlet damping screens

Гендерний аспект соціокультурного аналізу музичного життя ( Gender Aspect of Social and Cultural Analysis of the Musical Life)

У статті звертається увага на ґендерні особливості функціонування музичної культури як синтезу різних видів мистецтва. Наголошується на винятковій ролі жінки в музично-композиторській культурі суспільства. Студіюється образ жінок-музикантів світу та України з метою чіткого зрозуміння ґендерних настроїв сьогодення. (In the article, the author draws attention to gender stereotypes that are characteristic for all cultures. Being the phenomenon, resistant to change, they consist of the personality traits, physical characteristics, social and biological roles. Lately gender problemetics becomes one of the most popular and interesting sectors of the new scientific awarness. Increased interest to it, first and foremost, is conected with the general process of humanization and democratization of the social life in which an important role is given to the woman. The establishment of the female creativity in the cultural history of mankind was not harmonious and conflictless. It has been a long and difficult way of establishing the self-reliance and independence. Woman’s right to creativity became the natural supplement to the rights to use cultural values. It is claimed that the women’s path in the development of the men’s profession (composer, pianist, lutenist, etc.) was long and difficult. They had to conquer the audience with its old-fashined attitude towards the new and commitment to old traditions, break the resistance of the musicians of the conservative camp, overcome a variety of obstacles, etc.. The women, who have managed to do the first «break» on the big stage, have thrown boldly the challenge to women’s discrimination, proving their creative ability (Francesca Caccini, Frangìz Alìaga, Kizi Alìzadeh, Sofia Gubaidulina). The author of the article concentrats the attention on the investments of the creative works into a musical Ukrainian treasure trove of such artists as Stephanie Turkevich, Lesya Dychko, Neonila Lagodyuk, Alla Zagaykevych, Hanna Havrylets.

Pseudospin lifetime in relaxed-shape armchair graphene nanoribbons due to in-plane phonon modes

We study the influence of ripple waves on the band structures of strained armchair graphene nanoribbons. We argue that the Zeeman pseudospin (p-spin) splitting energy induced by ripple waves might not be neglected for smaller widths of armchair graphene nanoribbons (GNRs). We show that the p-spin splitting energy breaks the symmetry of degeneracy due to the ripple-induced Zeeman effect in GNRs, originating from electromechanical coupling. We estimate the p-spin lifetime in strained armchair GNRs caused by in-plane phonon modes for possible applications in straintronics and quantum information processing. By considering higher order terms in the strain tensor expansion, we also demonstrate that highly asymmetric band structures of GNRs induce asymmetric phonon-mediated p-spin relaxation. Such asymmetric p-spin relaxation is not possible for unstrained armchair and zigzag GNRs. In particular, we report that the p-spin transition rate decreases like B05 (as a function of p-magnetic fields), L-9 (as a function of GNR width) and Ï„e-1, where Ï„e is the externally applied tensile edge stress

Stress induced polarization switching and coupled hysteretic dynamics in ferroelectric materials

The dynamic responses of ferroelectric materials upon external mechanical and electrical stimulations are inherently nonlinear and coupled. In the current paper, a macroscopic differential model is constructed for the coupled hysteretic dynamics via modeling the orientation switching induced in the materials. A non-convex potential energy is constructed with both mechanic and electric field contributions. The governing equations are formulated as nonlinear ordinary differential equations by employing the Euler-Lagrange equation, and can be easily recast into a state space form. Hysteresis loops associated with stress induced polarization switching and butterfly-shaped behavior in ferroelectric materials are also successfully captured. The effects of mechanical loadings on the electrically induced switching are numerically investigated, as well as the mechanically-induced switching with various bias electric fields

Trajectory attractors for the Sun-Liu model for nematic liquid crystals in 3D

In this paper we prove the existence of a trajectory attractor (in the sense of V.V. Chepyzhov and M.I. Vishik) for a nonlinear PDE system coming from a 3D liquid crystal model accounting for stretching effects. The system couples a nonlinear evolution equation for the director d (introduced in order to describe the preferred orientation of the molecules) with an incompressible Navier-Stokes equation for the evolution of the velocity field u. The technique is based on the introduction of a suitable trajectory space and of a metric accounting for the double-well type nonlinearity contained in the director equation. Finally, a dissipative estimate is obtained by using a proper integrated energy inequality. Both the cases of (homogeneous) Neumann and (non-homogeneous) Dirichlet boundary conditions for d are considered.Comment: 32 page