FinTech Industrial Banks and Beyond: How Banking Innovations Affect the Federal Safety Net

The FinTech industry has been utilizing technological innovations to provide services traditionally offered by the banking and financial industry. Until now, many FinTech firms engaging in these activities had non-bank state licenses. The uncertainties surrounding their current business models and the desire to expand the operations led some of these firms to apply for industrial bank charters. An industrial bank charter is one of the few ways for a commercial firm to control a depository institution and allows FinTech firms to retain their technological investments that are not directly related to banking. However, access of these industrial banks to the federal insurance, payment services, and the discount window raise some concerns. It is claimed that the parent companies of these banks might gain an unfair advantage over their competitors, misguide their creditors, or limit their liabilities by benefitting from the federal subsidies given to the banking industry. This Note analyzes these claims and proposes two alternatives—credit card banks and state bank subsidiaries—for the FinTech firms seeking to engage in the business of banking. Particularly, engaging in non-bank activities through bank subsidiaries could eliminate some of the persistent moral hazard problems that the industrial bank model might entail. Although the industrial bank activities would not pose a significant risk to the federal safety net, these alternatives to the industrial banks could be preferable for sustaining the development of the FinTech industry as well as maintaining a safe and sound banking system

Natural language search of structured documents

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-47).This thesis focuses on techniques with which natural language can be used to search for specific elements in a structured document, such as an XML file. The goal is to create a system capable of being trained to identify features, of written English sentence describing (in natural language) part of an XML document, that help identify the sections of said document which were discussed. In particular, this thesis will revolve around the problem of searching through XML documents, each of which describes the play-by-play events of a baseball game. These events are collected from Major League Baseball games between 2004 and 2008, containing information detailing the outcome of every pitch thrown. My techniques are trained and tested on written (newspaper) summaries of these games, which often refer to specific game events and statistics. The choice of these training data makes the task much more complex in two ways. First, these summaries come from multiple authors. Each of these authors has a distinct writing style, which uses language in a unique and often complex way. Secondly, large portions of these summaries discuss facts outside of the context of the play-by-play events of the XML documents. Training the system with these portions of the summary can create a problem due to sparse data, which has the potential to reduce the effectiveness of the system. The end result is the creation of a system capable of building classifiers for natural language search of these XML documents.(cont.) This system is able to overcome the two aforementioned problems, as well as several more subtle challenges. In addition, several limitations of alternative, strictly feature-based, classifiers are also illustrated, and applications of this research to related problems (outside of baseball and sports) are discussed.by Stephen W. Oney.M.Eng

Computer program documentation for the patch subsampling processor

The programs presented are intended to provide a way to extract a sample from a full-frame scene and summarize it in a useful way. The sample in each case was chosen to fill a 512-by-512 pixel (sample-by-line) image since this is the largest image that can be displayed on the Integrated Multivariant Data Analysis and Classification System. This sample size provides one megabyte of data for manipulation and storage and contains about 3% of the full-frame data. A patch image processor computes means for 256 32-by-32 pixel squares which constitute the 512-by-512 pixel image. Thus, 256 measurements are available for 8 vegetation indexes over a 100-mile square

Polycation-siRNA nanoparticles can disassemble at the kidney glomerular basement membrane

Despite being engineered to avoid renal clearance, many cationic polymer (polycation)-based siRNA nanoparticles that are used for systemic delivery are rapidly eliminated from the circulation. Here, we show that a component of the renal filtration barrier—the glomerular basement membrane (GBM)—can disassemble cationic cyclodextrin-containing polymer (CDP)-based siRNA nanoparticles and, thereby, facilitate their rapid elimination from circulation. Using confocal and electron microscopies, positron emission tomography, and compartment modeling, we demonstrate that siRNA nanoparticles, but not free siRNA, accumulate and disassemble in the GBM. We also confirm that the siRNA nanoparticles do not disassemble in blood plasma in vitro and in vivo. This clearance mechanism may affect any nanoparticles that assemble primarily by electrostatic interactions between cationic delivery components and anionic nucleic acids (or other therapeutic entities)

On the quantificational force of Negative Sensitive Items in Turkish

Negative Sensitive Items (NSIs) in natural languages can manifest in either existential or universal forms. The equivalence in truth conditions between ¬∃ and ∀¬ obscures their underlying semantic import, complicating efforts to determine the true nature of NSIs. This paper addresses this issue within the context of Turkish - an agglutinative head-final language - where surface syntactic cues are insufficient to directly diagnose scopal relations. Through a series of controlled configurations, I distinguish between the two interpretations by (i) constructing non-anti-additive contexts where existential and universal analyses make different predictions, (ii) isolating the semantic locus of negation, and (iii) examining NSIs in conjunction with other neg-sensitive expressions. The empirical findings indicate that Turkish NSIs are best analyzed as wide-scope universal quantifiers, rather than narrow-scope existentials. Additional support comes from their complementary distribution with ordinary universal quantifiers, a pattern that not only reinforces the wide-scope universal analysis but also sheds light on the distributional constraints affecting ordinary universals in Turkish

A Comparative Analysis of the Fermentation Capabilities of Various Bifidobacterium Strains

Bifidobacterium is a genus of anaerobic bacteria that are commonly found to inhabit the gastrointestinal tract of many members of the animal kingdom. These microorganisms are adapted to obtain their carbon from the breakdown of complex carbohydrates. Marmosets, a mammal whose gut microbiome is inhabited by high levels of Bifidobacteria, consume gum Arabic as a major part of their diet. The purpose of this experiment is to determine whether Bifidobacterium strains isolated from the guts of marmosets are able to degrade and ferment this complex carbohydrate or one of its main constituents, arabinose. This was accomplished by inoculating isolates of Bifidobacterium species into tubes containing basal MRS medium supplemented with gum Arabic or arabinose and monitoring pH (color change) over time. Each of the 12 marmoset-derived isolates were tested in liquid media containing either 5% arabinose, 3% gum Arabic, or 1% gum Arabic. A positive phenotype indicating fermentation of the substrate was visualized by a shift in the media’s color from purple to yellow. The fermentative capabilities of the marmoset strains were then compared to 13 other Bifidobacterium strains that were isolated from other mammals such as rats, pigs, and humans. Two strains from each group expressed a negative phenotype for arabinose, while all other strains were positive. In the marmoset group, 6 of the strains expressed positive phenotypes for the 1% gum and 8 were positive for the 3% concentration. The group of strains from non-marmoset origins sported 5 positive phenotypes for the 1% concentration of gum Arabic, while 6 strains tested positive for the 3% concentration

The Influence of media displays and image quality attributes for HDR image reproductions

High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography has been in existence at least since the time of Ansel Adams, with his experiments using analog film and darkroom techniques for the production of black and white prints in the 1940\u27s (Ashbrook, 2010). This photographic method has the ability to provide a more accurate representation of a scene through a greater range of the light and dark areas captured in an image. In the mid-20th century HDR Photography it has continued to grow in popularity among those interested in photography wishing to optimize their resulting image beyond a more commonly used technique. Presently, the limitations of commonly available reproduction technologies can lead to unpredictable output results through media such as monitor displays and inkjet prints. The purpose of this research was to determine the influence of quality attributes and image content on the preference of display media for HDR image reproductions. To achieve this purpose, a psychophysical experiment was conducted of 38 observers with previous imaging related exposure. This part of the study consisted of HDR comparisons across both a monitor display device and inkjet prints. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, common trends were identified among observer responses. The results show that for inkjet prints are the most preferred for the output of HDR images, specifically when printed on a metallic substrate. Additionally, the content of displayed images can directly impact display preference depending on the viewer\u27s perception and relationship formed with the photographic image. When evaluating HDR images across two media platforms, quality attributes comprising of a strong influence towards preference are sharpness, naturalness, contrast and highlights while artifacts, physical qualities and shadows were found to have barely any influence. Within the attributes related to HDR, relationships between attributes are found to be significant regarding image evaluation, leading to areas of further research

Novel Hyperspectral Imagery and Platforms for Shallow Water Environments

Hyperspectral measurements of the water surface in urban coastal waters are presented. Oblique bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) imagery was acquired of coastal shallow waters within the watershed of the Indian River Lagoon, Florida and along littoral zone waters of the nearby Atlantic Ocean. Oblique imagery of the shoreline and subsurface features clearly shows subsurface bottom features and rip current features within the surf zone water column. The imagery was collected using a pushbroom hyperspectral imager mounted on a fixed platform with a calibrated circular mechatronic rotation stage. Hyperspectral imaging using the fixed platform techniques were used to calculate hyperspectral bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) signatures from locations at buildings and bridges in order to provide new opportunities to advance the scientific understanding of aquatic environments in urbanized regions. (Bostater & Oney, 2016). A method was tested to correct the increase in reflectance due to increased surface area of pixels at off nadir viewing angles that is inherent in high oblique hyperspectral imagery. The hyperspectral image reflectance channels were corrected using a Lambertian grey panel and cross-calibrated to an SE590 solid state, high sensitivity spectrograph. The hyperspectral reflectance imagery was transposed from high oblique viewing geometry to nadir viewing image using calculated (a) ground control points (GCPs) selected at known distances, (b) spatially varying pixel sizes (GSD) from the imaging system, and (c) anisotropic signatures. The imagery was then tested for constituent detection such as dissolved organic matter (DOM), seston, and chlorophyll using a second derivative estimator described by Bostater, 1996