424 research outputs found
Multinational Banking in Europe: Financial Stability and Regulatory Implications. Lessons from the Financial Crisis
This paper examines whether multinational banks have a stabilising or a destabilising role during times of financial distress. With a focus on Europe, it looks at how these banksâ foreign affiliates have been faring during the recent financial crisis. It finds that retail and corporate lending of these foreign affiliates have been stable and even increasing between 2007 and 2009. This pattern is related to the functioning of the internal capital market through which these banks funnel funds across their units. The internal capital market has been an effective tool to support foreign affiliates in distress and to isolate their lending from the local availability of financial resources, notwithstanding the systemic nature of the recent crisis. This effect has been particularly large within the EU integrated financial market and for the EMU countries, thus showing complementarity between economic integration and multinational banksâ internal capital markets. In light of these findings, this paper supports the call for an integration of the European supervisory and regulatory framework overseeing multinational banks. The analysis is based on an analytical framework which derives the main conditions under which the internal capital market can perform this support function under idiosyncratic and systemic stresses. The empirical evidence uses both aggregate evidence on foreign claims worldwide, and firm-level evidence on the behaviour of banking groupsâ affiliates, compared to standing alone national banks.multinational banking, financial stability, regulation and supervision, internal capital markets, financial crises
IVOA Recommendation: Data Model for Astronomical DataSet Characterisation
This document defines the high level metadata necessary to describe the
physical parameter space of observed or simulated astronomical data sets, such
as 2D-images, data cubes, X-ray event lists, IFU data, etc.. The
Characterisation data model is an abstraction which can be used to derive a
structured description of any relevant data and thus to facilitate its
discovery and scientific interpretation. The model aims at facilitating the
manipulation of heterogeneous data in any VO framework or portal. A VO
Characterisation instance can include descriptions of the data axes, the range
of coordinates covered by the data, and details of the data sampling and
resolution on each axis. These descriptions should be in terms of physical
variables, independent of instrumental signatures as far as possible.
Implementations of this model has been described in the IVOA Note available
at: http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/ImplementationCharacterisation.html
Utypes derived from this version of the UML model are listed and commented in
the following IVOA Note:
http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/UtypeListCharacterisationDM.html
An XML schema has been build up from the UML model and is available at:
http://www.ivoa.net/xml/Characterisation/Characterisation-v1.11.xsdComment: http://www.ivoa.ne
Harnessing Innovative Data and Technology to Measure Development Effectiveness
In this study, the authors discuss and show how new kinds of digital data and analytics methods and tools falling under the umbrella term of Big Data, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, can help measure development effectiveness. Selected case studies provide examples of assessments of the effectiveness of ODA-funded policies and programmes. They use different data and techniques. For example, analysis of mobile phone data and satellite images: to estimate poverty and inequality, traffic congestion, social cohesion or machine learning approaches to social media analysis to understand social interactions and networks, and natural language processing to study changes in public awareness. A toolkit contains resources and suggestions on key steps and considerations, including legal and ethical, when designing and implementing projects aimed at measuring development effectiveness through new digital data and tools. The chapter closes by describing the core principles and requirements of a vision of a âHuman AIâ, which would reflect and leverage the key features of current narrow AI systems that are able to identify and reinforce the neurons that help them reach their goals. A Human AI would be a data and machine-enabled human system (such as a society) that would seek to continuously learn and adjust to improveârather than prove after the factsâthe effectiveness of its collective actions, including development programming and public policies
Selective death of human breast cancer cells by lytic immunoliposomes: Correlation with their HER2 expression level
Trastuzumab (Herceptinâą) targets the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), which is overexpressed in 20â30% of breast and ovarian cancers carrying a bad prognosis. Our purpose was to target HER2-overexpressing human breast cancer cells with pegylated immunoliposomes bearing trastuzumab and containing melittin, which has recently shown anticancer properties. Using a panel of human breast cancer cells with different HER2 expression levels, these immunoliposomes decreased cancer cells viability in a doseâresponse manner and in correlation to their level of HER2 expression. Specific binding of the immunoliposomes to SKBr3 breast cancer cells was shown by ImageStream-based analysis. The morphological changes observed in the treated cells suggested a cytolytic process. This preclinical approach may suppose an effective strategy for the treatment of HER2-overexpressing tumors, and can support the development of an early phases IâII clinical trial. Trastuzumab resistant breast cancer cells (JIMT-1), can also be targeted using this approach
IVOA Recommendation: Simple Spectral Access Protocol Version 1.1
The Simple Spectral Access (SSA) Protocol (SSAP) defines a uniform interface
to remotely discover and access one dimensional spectra. SSA is a member of an
integrated family of data access interfaces altogether comprising the Data
Access Layer (DAL) of the IVOA. SSA is based on a more general data model
capable of describing most tabular spectrophotometric data, including time
series and spectral energy distributions (SEDs) as well as 1-D spectra; however
the scope of the SSA interface as specified in this document is limited to
simple 1-D spectra, including simple aggregations of 1-D spectra. The form of
the SSA interface is simple: clients first query the global resource registry
to find services of interest and then issue a data discovery query to selected
services to determine what relevant data is available from each service; the
candidate datasets available are described uniformly in a VOTable format
document which is returned in response to the query. Finally, the client may
retrieve selected datasets for analysis. Spectrum datasets returned by an SSA
spectrum service may be either precomputed, archival datasets, or they may be
virtual data which is computed on the fly to respond to a client request.
Spectrum datasets may conform to a standard data model defined by SSA, or may
be native spectra with custom project-defined content. Spectra may be returned
in any of a number of standard data formats. Spectral data is generally stored
externally to the VO in a format specific to each spectral data collection;
currently there is no standard way to represent astronomical spectra, and
virtually every project does it differently. Hence spectra may be actively
mediated to the standard SSA-defined data model at access time by the service,
so that client analysis programs do not have to be familiar with the
idiosyncratic details of each data collection to be accessed
IVOA Recommendation: Observation Data Model Core Components and its Implementation in the Table Access Protocol Version 1.0
This document defines the core components of the Observation data model that
are necessary to perform data discovery when querying data centers for
observations of interest. It exposes use-cases to be carried out, explains the
model and provides guidelines for its implementation as a data access service
based on the Table Access Protocol (TAP). It aims at providing a simple model
easy to understand and to implement by data providers that wish to publish
their data into the Virtual Observatory. This interface integrates data
modeling and data access aspects in a single service and is named ObsTAP. It
will be referenced as such in the IVOA registries. There will be a separate
document to cover the full Observation data model. In this document, the
Observation Data Model Core Components (ObsCoreDM) defines the core components
of queryable metadata required for global discovery of observational data. It
is meant to allow a single query to be posed to TAP services at multiple sites
to perform global data discovery without having to understand the details of
the services present at each site. It defines a minimal set of basic metadata
and thus allows for a reasonable cost of implementation by data providers. The
combination of the ObsCoreDM with TAP is referred to as an ObsTAP service. As
with most of the VO Data Models, ObsCoreDM makes use of STC, Utypes, Units and
UCDs. The ObsCoreDM can be serialized as a VOTable. ObsCoreDM can make
reference to more complete data models such as ObsProvDM (the Observation
Provenance Data Model, to come), Characterisation DM, Spectrum DM or Simple
Spectral Line Data Model (SSLDM).Comment: About the IVOA: http://www.ivoa.net; editors: Doug Tody, Alberto
Micol, Daniel Durand, Mireille Louy
Permeability Study of Polyphenols Derived from a Phenolic-Enriched Hibiscus sabdariffa Extract by UHPLC-ESI-UHR-Qq-TOF-MS
Previous findings on the capacity of Hibiscus sabdariffa (HS) polyphenols to ameliorate metabolic disturbances justify the necessity of studies oriented to find the potential metabolites responsible for such an effect. The present study examined the intestinal epithelial membrane permeability of polyphenols present in a phenolic-enriched Hibiscus sabdariffa extract (PEHS), free and encapsulated, using the Caco-2 cell line. Additionally, selected polyphenols (quercetin, quercetin-3-glucoside, quercetin-3-glucuronide, and N-feruloyltyramine) were also studied in the same absorption model. The powerful analytical platform used ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with ultra-high-resolution quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-ESI-UHR-Qq-TOF-MS), and enabled the characterization of seven new compounds in PEHS. In the permeation study, only a few compounds were able to cross the cell monolayer and the permeability was lower when the extract was in an encapsulated form. Pure compounds showed a moderate absorption in all cases. Nevertheless, these preliminary results may need further research to understand the complete absorption mechanism of Hibiscus polyphenols.This work was supported by projects AGL2011-29857-C03-02 and AGL2011-29857-C03-03 (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation), in addition to P10-FQM-6563 and P11-CTS-7625 (Andalusian Regional Government Council of Innovation and Science), PROMETEO/2012/007 and ACOMP/2013/093 (Generalitat Valenciana), and CIBER (CB12/03/30038, FisiopatologĂa de la Obesidad y la NutriciĂłn, CIBERobn, Instituto de Salud Carlos III). The authors are grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation for the grant FPI (BES-2009-028128), and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) in association with the European Social Fund (FSE) for the contract PTQ-13-06429. MH is a recipient of a VALi + D fellowship from GV (ACIF/2010/162). The authors are especially grateful to Bruker Daltonik GmbH (Bremen, Germany) for their help and support during this research
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