The Index of Leading Economic Indicators as a Source of Expectational Shocks

A recurrent theme in the literature on business cycle fluctuations is the importance of expectational shocks that change the beliefs of agents concerning the future level of aggregate activity, but that do not reflect real movements in the fundamentals. This paper employs the ASA-NBER Survey of Forecasts by Economic Statisticians to measure expectations and investigates whether the errors in the initial announcements of the index of leading economic indicators serve as a source of this type of expectational shock. Our analysis strongly supports the idea that these errors are both a statistically significant and economically significant source of such shocks.Business Cycle; Cycle; Economic Indicator; Fluctuation; Forecast

The role of epidermal growth factor-like module containing mucin-like hormone receptor 2 in human cancers.

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are among the most diverse and ubiquitous proteins in all of biology. The epidermal growth factor-seven span transmembrane (EGF-TM7) subfamily of adhesion GPCRs is a small subset whose members are mainly expressed on the surface of leukocytes. The EGF domains on the N-terminus add significant size to these receptors and they are considered to be among the largest members of the TM7 family. Although not all of their ligands or downstream targets have been identified, there is evidence implicating the EGF-TM7 family diverse processes such as cell adhesion, migration, inflammation, and autoimmune disease. Recent studies have identified expression of EGF-TM7 family members on human neoplasms including those of the thyroid, stomach, colon, and brain. Their presence on these tissues is not surprising given the ubiquity of GPCRs, but because their functional significance and pathways are not completely understood, they are of tremendous clinical and scientific interest. Current evidence suggests that expression of certain EGF-TM7 receptors is correlated with tumor grade, confers a more invasive phenotype, and increases the likelihood of metastatic disease. In this review, we will discuss the structure, function, and regulation of these receptors. We also describe the expression of these receptors in human cancers and explore their potential mechanistic significance

Simulating the nanomechanical response of cyclooctatetraene molecules on a graphene device

We investigate the atomic and electronic structures of cyclooctatetraene (COT) molecules on graphene and analyze their dependence on external gate voltage using first-principles calculations. The external gate voltage is simulated by adding or removing electrons using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. This allows us to investigate how changes in carrier density modify the molecular shape, orientation, adsorption site, diffusion barrier, and diffusion path. For increased hole doping COT molecules gradually change their shape to a more flattened conformation and the distance between the molecules and graphene increases while the diffusion barrier drastically decreases. For increased electron doping an abrupt transition to a planar conformation at a carrier density of -8$\times$10$^{13}$ e/cm$^2$ is observed. These calculations imply that the shape and mobility of adsorbed COT molecules can be controlled by externally gating graphene devices

Kinetics and thermodynamics of ceramic/metal interface reactions related to high T(sub c) superconducting applications

Superconducting ceramic materials, no matter what their form, size or shape, must eventually make contact with non-superconducting materials in order to accomplish current transfer to other parts of a real operating system, or for testing and measurement of properties. Thus, whether the configuration is a clad wire, a bulk superconducting disc, tape, or a thick or thin superconducting film on a substrate, the physical and mechanical behavior of interface (interconnections, joints, etc.) between superconductors and normal conductor materials of all kinds is of extreme importance to the technological development of these systems. Fabrication heat treatments associated with the particular joining process allow possible reactions between the superconducting ceramic and the contact to occur, and consequently influence properties at the interface region. The nature of these reactions is therefore of great broad interest, as these may be a primary determinant for the real capability of these materials. Research related both to fabrication of composite sheathed wire products, and the joining contacts for physical property measurements, as well as, a review of other related literature in the field are described. Comparison are made between 1-2-3, Bi-, and Tl-based ceramic superconductors joined to a variety of metals including Cu, Ni, Fe, Cr, Ag, Ag-Pd, Au, In, and Ga. The morphology of reaction products and the nature of interface degradation as a function of time will be highlighted

Resonant line transfer in a fog: Using Lyman-alpha to probe tiny structures in atomic gas

Motivated by observational and theoretical work which both suggest very small scale ($\lesssim 1\,$pc) structure in the circum-galactic medium of galaxies and in other environments, we study Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) radiative transfer in an extremely clumpy medium with many "clouds" of neutral gas along the line of sight. While previous studies have typically considered radiative transfer through sightlines intercepting $\lesssim 10$ clumps, we explore the limit of a very large number of clumps per sightline (up to $f_{\mathrm{c}} \sim 1000$). Our main finding is that, for covering factors greater than some critical threshold, a multiphase medium behaves similar to a homogeneous medium in terms of the emergent Ly$\alpha$ spectrum. The value of this threshold depends on both the clump column density and on the movement of the clumps. We estimate this threshold analytically and compare our findings to radiative transfer simulations with a range of covering factors, clump column densities, radii, and motions. Our results suggest that (i) the success in fitting observed Ly$\alpha$ spectra using homogeneous "shell models" (and the corresponding failure of multiphase models) hints towards the presence of very small-scale structure in neutral gas, in agreement within a number of other observations; and (ii) the recurrent problems of reproducing realistic line profiles from hydrodynamical simulations may be due to their inability to resolve small-scale structure, which causes simulations to underestimate the effective covering factor of neutral gas clouds.Comment: 18 pages, 21 figures; submitted to A&A; animations available at http://bit.ly/a-in-a-fo

Fake Real Quadratic Orders

The study of fake real quadratic orders is fascinating as their class group structure is similiar to real quadratic fields. Statistical data strongly agree with the heuristics of Cohen and Lenstra of real quadratics with class number one. We will investigate why this holds true as well as explore other analogues to open conjecture on real quadratic fields, such as the Ankeny-Artin-Chowla Conjecture, and present various results that mark the similiarities between real quadratic fields and fake real quadratic orders. Fake real quadratics are defined by inverting an ideal above any prime p which is split in OK where K = Q(p D) is an imaginary quadratic field.