Social and alternative banking: project selection and monitoring after the New Basel Capital Accord

Any economic activity calls for the exercise of moral judgement. There are some economic activities that actively promote collective benefit as a primary or secondary aim, and there are others that aim to increase the value of a firm. Investment decisions always have collective impact, but collective returns may be ignored or considered less important in company management if the objective is the maximisation of shareholder wealth. The allocative function exercised by banks in their credit activity may take this into account. Some banks nowadays focus on social profile, while others integrate the traditional approach with this new sensibility. But unfortunately banking regulations governing stability and soundness of the financial system make no mention of the social profile. The New Basel Capital Accord was an opportunity to recognise that bank's objectives may not consist only of the maximisation of shareholder wealth. But it was a missed opportunity, in that it gave advantages to traditional commercial banks and not to banks focussing on collective goals. This paper puts forward proposals for integrating the Basel II framework with profiles of collective bank credit policy. Social credit evaluation methods could help to identify those ethical banks which are more successful in meeting collective objectives. A sustainable credit appraisal methodology could have been examined by the Basel Committee and could have incentivated sustainable banking by giving it specific advantages.social banking, alternative banking, socially responsible investing, investments appraisal, Basel II, new capital accord

Density-Dependent Synthetic Gauge Fields Using Periodically Modulated Interactions

We show that density-dependent synthetic gauge fields may be engineered by combining periodically modu- lated interactions and Raman-assisted hopping in spin-dependent optical lattices. These fields lead to a density- dependent shift of the momentum distribution, may induce superfluid-to-Mott insulator transitions, and strongly modify correlations in the superfluid regime. We show that the interplay between the created gauge field and the broken sublattice symmetry results, as well, in an intriguing behavior at vanishing interactions, characterized by the appearance of a fractional Mott insulator.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Steering Bose-Einstein condensates despite time symmetry

A Bose-Einstein condensate in an oscillating spatially asymmetric potential is shown to exhibit a directed current for unbiased initial conditions despite time symmetry. This phenomenon occurs only if the interaction between atoms, treated in mean-field approximation, exceeds a critical value. Our findings can be described with a three-mode model (TMM). These TMM results corroborate well with a many-body study over a time scale which increases with increasing atom number. The duration of this time scale probes the validity of the used mean-field approximation.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Energy and seismic retrofit of historic timber-framed houses in Portugal: Building predictive models in future scenarios

This research addresses the comparison of building performance before and after implementing energy and seismic retrofitting techniques within simulation models, under the current climate condition vs. predicted environment conditions (2030-2100). It aims to identify a set of feasible interventions within distinct indoor building conditions (number of inhabitants and occupancy schedule) in three design scenarios. To this end, we adopt parametric modelling tools (Rhinoceros, Grasshopper, EnergyPlus) combined with a multicriteria decision analysis (M-MACBETH, Measuring Attractiveness through a Categorical-Based Evaluation Technique). This model is tested in an historic house, a multi-storey overhanging timber-framed house in Lisbon parish, which is representative of valuable traditional construction systems in high seismic hazard zone in the Mediterranean basin. Future studies can address other building simulations evaluated against architectural, structural, environmental, and economic-related parameters. The influence of weighting on the interventions against different criteria can be addressed also considering the uncertainty about the impact of each group of intervention in sensitivity and robustness analyses.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Comparing 17-β-estradiol supply strategies for applying the XVE-Cre/loxP system in grape gene transfer (Vitis vinifera L.)

Assays for enhancing the performance of 17-β-estradiol induction in the XVE-Cre/loxP system were performed on two transgenic 'Brachetto' plants obtained with the pX6-pKcpGVA construct, which is derived from the chemical-inducible pX6 vector carrying the neomycin phosphotransferase (nptII) gene and the XVE-Cre/loxP sequence. The 17-β-estradiol supply is expected to induce Cre recombinase expression resulting in nptII gene removal. We compared different hormone supply strategies during shoot organogenesis from meristematic proliferative tissue (MPT) or from the cut surface between leaf and petiole (SOLP) or during micropropagation from bud (MB). The effectiveness of the estradiol induction was evaluated on different tissues of the regenerated plantlets by means of nptII copy number quantification with Real time PCR. Results showed that the Cre/loxP inducible system functions effectively – however with different efficiencies- in both root and leaf tissues, and that micropropagation from buds combined with constant wetting with 17-β-estradiol is the most efficient and reproducible strategy for effective in vivo hormone induction.

Charged Dilaton Black Holes with a Cosmological Constant

The properties of static spherically symmetric black holes, which are either electrically or magnetically charged, and which are coupled to the dilaton in the presence of a cosmological constant, are considered. It is shown that such solutions do not exist if the cosmological constant is positive (in arbitrary spacetime dimension >= 4). However, asymptotically anti-de Sitter black hole solutions with a single horizon do exist if the cosmological constant is negative. These solutions are studied numerically in four dimensions and the thermodynamic properties of the solutions are derived. The extreme solutions are found to have zero entropy and infinite temperature for all non-zero values of the dilaton coupling constant.Comment: 12 pages, epsf, phyzzx, 4 in-text figures incl. (minor typos fixed, 1 reference added

Controlled transport of matter waves in two-dimensional optical lattices

We propose a method for achieving dynamically controllable transport of highly mobile matter-wave solitons in a driven two-dimensional optical lattice. Our numerical analysis based on the mean-field model and the theory based on the time-averaging approach, demonstrate that a fast time-periodic rocking of the two-dimensional optical lattice enables efficient stabilization and manipulation of spatially localized matter wavepackets via induced reconfigurable mobility channels.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Density-dependent synthetic magnetism for ultracold atoms in optical lattices

10 pags.; 6 figs.; PACS number(s): 67.85.−d, 03.65.Vf, 03.75.Lm© 2015 American Physical Society. Raman-assisted hopping can allow for the creation of density-dependent synthetic magnetism for cold neutral gases in optical lattices. We show that the density-dependent fields lead to a nontrivial interplay between density modulations and chirality. This interplay results in a rich physics for atoms in two-leg ladders, characterized by a density-driven Meissner-superfluid to vortex-superfluid transition, and a nontrivial dependence of the density imbalance between the legs. Density-dependent fields also lead to intriguing physics in square lattices. In particular, it leads to a density-driven transition between a nonchiral and a chiral superfluid, both characterized by nontrivial charge density-wave amplitude. We finally show how the physics due to the density-dependent fields may be easily probed in experiments by monitoring the expansion of doublons and holes in a Mott insulator, which presents a remarkable dependence on quantum fluctuations.We acknowledge support by the cluster of excellence QUEST, the DFG Research Training Group 1729, the SUTD start-up grant (Grant No. SRG-EPD-2012-045), and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through Grants No. FIS-2012- 34479, No. BES-2010-031607, and No. EEBB-14-09077.Peer Reviewe

Do naked singularities generically occur in generalized theories of gravity?

A new mechanism for causing naked singularities is found in an effective superstring theory. We investigate the gravitational collapse in a spherically symmetric Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton system in the presence of a pure cosmological constant "potential", where the system has no static black hole solution. We show that once gravitational collapse occurs in the system, naked singularities necessarily appear in the sense that the field equations break down in the domain of outer communications. This suggests that in generalized theories of gravity, the non-minimally coupled fields generically cause naked singularities in the process of gravitational collapse if the system has no static or stationary black hole solution.Comment: 4 pages including 2 eps figures, to be published in Physical Review Letter