Macroeconomic announcements, communication and order flow on the Hungarian foreign exchange market

We investigate the relation between the intradaily HUF/EUR exchange rate on the one hand and news announcements and order flow on the other hand. We extend the existing literature on foreign exchange market microstructure by considering a small open transition economy. We find that the intradaily exchange rate depends on both news announcements and order flow. We conclude that news on the HUF/EUR market are transmitted directly via immediate reactions to news announcements as well as indirectly via order flow. We decompose the news’ total effect on exchange rate and find that order flow accounts for approximately three quarters, compared to one quarter for direct news impact. Although the HUF is pegged to the EUR, the exchange rate reacts very qualitatively very similarly to exchange rates of major currencies as reported in the literature, whereas it quantiatively differs: the importance of indeirect news transmission is remarkably higher on the HUF/EUR market. Furthermore, we extend the commonly used news to communication of central bankers significantly improving the explanatory power of the estimates. Central bank communication is an important determinant for the HUF/EUR rate

Wave-number dependence of the transitions between traveling and standing vortex waves and their mixed states in the Taylor-Couette system

Previous numerical investigations of the stability and bifurcation properties of different nonlinear combination structures of spiral vortices in a counterrotating Taylor-Couette system that were done for fixed axial wavelengths are supplemented by exploring the dependence of the vortex phenomena waves on their wavelength. This yields information about the experimental and numerical accessability of the various bifurcation scenarios. Also backwards bifurcating standing waves with oscillating amplitudes of the constituent traveling waves are found.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Interactions with combined chemical cues inform harvester ant foragers' decisions to leave the nest in search of food.

Social insect colonies operate without central control or any global assessment of what needs to be done by workers. Colony organization arises from the responses of individuals to local cues. Red harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) regulate foraging using interactions between returning and outgoing foragers. The rate at which foragers return with seeds, a measure of food availability, sets the rate at which outgoing foragers leave the nest on foraging trips. We used mimics to test whether outgoing foragers inside the nest respond to the odor of food, oleic acid, the odor of the forager itself, cuticular hydrocarbons, or a combination of both with increased foraging activity. We compared foraging activity, the rate at which foragers passed a line on a trail, before and after the addition of mimics. The combination of both odors, those of food and of foragers, is required to stimulate foraging. The addition of blank mimics, mimics coated with food odor alone, or mimics coated with forager odor alone did not increase foraging activity. We compared the rates at which foragers inside the nest interacted with other ants, blank mimics, and mimics coated with a combination of food and forager odor. Foragers inside the nest interacted more with mimics coated with combined forager/seed odors than with blank mimics, and these interactions had the same effect as those with other foragers. Outgoing foragers inside the nest entrance are stimulated to leave the nest in search of food by interacting with foragers returning with seeds. By using the combined odors of forager cuticular hydrocarbons and of seeds, the colony captures precise information, on the timescale of seconds, about the current availability of food

The use of collective biography in research on the imperial Russian civil service

Die Unterlagen über die russische Beamtenschaft sind bisher wissenschaftlich nur ungenügend ausgewertet worden, obwohl die russische Administration seit Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts solche Unterlagen produziert hat. Der Autor gibt einen Überblick über den Stand der Erfassung dieser Quellen. Die Erfassung durch die Historiker und die computergestützte Verarbeitung der Daten wird durch die Art der Quellen erschwert, da die erhobenen Daten nur begrenzten biographischen Wert haben, soziale und ethnische Herkunft zum Beispiel aus den Unterlagen nicht direkt erschließbar sind. (BG

Bifurcation of standing waves into a pair of oppositely traveling waves with oscillating amplitudes caused by a three-mode interaction

A novel flow state consisting of two oppositely travelling waves (TWs) with oscillating amplitudes has been found in the counterrotating Taylor-Couette system by full numerical simulations. This structure bifurcates out of axially standing waves that are nonlinear superpositions of left and right handed spiral vortex waves with equal time-independent amplitudes. Beyond a critical driving the two spiral TW modes start to oscillate in counterphase due to a Hopf bifurcation. The trigger for this bifurcation is provided by a nonlinearly excited mode of different symmetry than the spiral TWs. A three-mode coupled amplitude equation model is presented that captures this bifurcation scenario. The mode-coupling between two symmetry degenerate critical modes and a nonlinearly excited one that is contained in the model can be expected to occur in other structure forming systems as well.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure