Interrelationships among international stock market indices: Europe, Asia and the Americas

In this paper, we investigate the price interdependence between seven international stock markets, namely Irish, UK, Portuguese, US, Brazilian, Japanese and Hong Kong, using a new testing method, based on the wavelet transform to reconstruct the data series, as suggested by Lee (2002). We find evidence of intra-European (Irish, UK and Portuguese) market co-movements with the US market also weakly influencing the Irish market. We also find co-movement between the US and Brazilian markets and similar intra-Asian co-movements (Japanese and Hong Kong). Finally, we conclude that the circle of impact is that of the European markets (Irish, UK and Portuguese) on both American markets (US and Brazilian), with these in turn impacting on the Asian markets (Japanese and Hong Kong) which in turn influence the European markets. In summary, we find evidence for intra-continental relationships and an increase in importance of international spillover effects since the mid 1990’s, while the importance of historical transmissions has decreased since the beginning of this century

Interdependence between emerging and major markets

In this paper, we investigate the price spillover effects among two developed markets, (the US and the UK ), and two developing markets, (Irish and Portuguese), using a new testing method suggested by Lee (2002). We find that there are interrelationships between any two of the Irish, the UK and Portuguese markets and that the co-movements between the emerging markets and the US are statistically significant but weak. We also found that the US market is slightly influenced by the UK but not vice versa

Validation of a new method for designing air traffic control alarms

Abstract: Alarms, alerts, and warnings are critical to maintaining safety in the National Airspace System and should be designed to support aircraft separation as well as supplementary tasks such as weather avoidance. The purpose of this study is to validate a novel alarm design framework by asking air traffic controllers to evaluate an existing alarm. Methods: We invited four air traffic controllers to participate in a structured interview that is part of a novel Signal Design Framework. Controllers were asked a series of scripted questions about 15 specific alarm properties. They were then asked to choose the three properties most important to the design of the conflict alert. Lastly, controllers were asked a series of questions about the overall quality of the taxonomy and its potential for impacting aviation safety. Results: All participants agreed that the taxonomy captured all the important characteristics of an alarm and that no gaps or failures existed in the alarm framework. They also agreed that the framework was easy to understand, that the structured interview was easy to understand, and that applying the framework to alarm design and revision would improve alarm ease of use, reduce confusion, and improve overall safety. Conclusions: The structured interview encouraged controllers to think about the Conflict Alert and helped them to develop novel solutions that could potentially improve this alarm in the Air Traffic Control environment.</p

Modelling drug coatings: A parallel cellular automata model of ethylcellulose-coated microspheres

Pharmaceutical companies today face a growing demand for more complex drug designs. In the past few decades, a number of probabilistic models have been developed, with the aim of improving insight on microscopic features of these complex designs. Of particular interest are models of controlled release systems, which can provide tools to study targeted dose delivery. Controlled release is achieved by using polymers with different dissolution characteristics. We present here an approach for parallelising a large-scale model of a drug delivery system based on Monte Carlo methods, as a framework for Cellular Automata mobility. The model simulates drug release in the gastro-intestinal tract, from coated ethylcellulose microspheres. The objective is high performance simulation of coated drugs for targeted delivery. The overall aim is to understand the importance of various molecular effects with respect to system evolution over time. Important underlying mechanisms of the process, such as erosion and diffusion, are described

Apples and oranges: the difference between the reaction of the emerging and mature markets to crashes

We study here the behavior of the eigenvalues of the covariance matrices of returns for emerging and mature markets at times of crises. Our results appear to indicate that mature markets respond to crashes differently to emerging ones and that emerging markets take longer to recover than mature markets. In addition, the results appear to indicate that the second largest eigenvalue gives additional information on market movement and that a study of the behavior of the other eigenvalues may provide insight on crash dynamics

Techniques for clustering gene expression data

Many clustering techniques have been proposed for the analysis of gene expression data obtained from microarray experiments. However, choice of suitable method(s) for a given experimental dataset is not straightforward. Common approaches do not translate well and fail to take account of the data profile. This review paper surveys state of the art applications which recognises these limitations and implements procedures to overcome them. It provides a framework for the evaluation of clustering in gene expression analyses. The nature of microarray data is discussed briefly. Selected examples are presented for the clustering methods considered

In-flight medical emergencies: time for a registry?

When a passenger becomes sick while flying on board a commercial airline flight, the cabin crew commonly solicit the assistance of a volunteer physician. Although in-flight medical emergencies take place every day, little is known about the epidemiology of these events. A new study by Sand and colleagues sheds light on the incidence of specific illnesses that occurred on board commercial flights

Intra- and Interspecific Variation in Demographic Rates and Niche Across the Range of a Species, the Saltmarsh Sparrow (Ammodramus caudacutus)

In this project, we examined various hypotheses that address one of the fundamental questions in ecology and evolution: what determines the range of a species? We used demographic data for saltmarsh sparrows (Ammodramus caudacutus) collected over the majority of the global breeding range. Saltmarsh sparrows are considered threatened by climate change, specifically sea level rise, which is predicted to result in loss of the tidal marsh habitat where saltmarsh sparrows live across their entire life cycle. For my dissertation, I investigated the reproductive biology of saltmarsh sparrows both to provide vital information for wildlife managers and to explore broad questions in ecological and evolutionary theory. We examined the spatial variation in risks to fecundity, vital rates, and niches across the global range of a species. We were thus able to investigate some of the most fundamental concepts in ecology, the drivers of species’ distributions and spatial and temporal variation in niches. Specifically, I 1) explored competing risks to saltmarsh sparrow fecundity across their global range; 2) quantified saltmarsh sparrow fecundity across the range and tested whether fecundity decreases from the range center to its periphery; 3) characterized the nesting niche of saltmarsh sparrows across a large spatial scale to determine whether niche conservatism holds in this system; and 4) investigated differences in nesting niches between saltmarsh and sympatric Nelson’s sparrows and the fitness consequences of those differences. The results of these chapters suggest that though saltmarsh sparrow fecundity is influenced by large-scale factors such as global predation gradients, the saltmarsh sparrow range is not determined by large-scale trends in demographic rates or habitat marginality with latitude or between sister species