MARKETING FINANCIAL PRODUCTS WITHIN THE ACTIVITY OF INVESTMENT BANKS

A production system which produces a large number of items in many steps can be modelled as a continuous flow problem. The resulting hyperbolic partial differential equation (PDE) typically is nonlinear and nonlocal, modeling a factory whose cycle time depends nonlinearly on the work in progress. One of the few ways to influence the output of such a factory is by adjusting the start rate in a time dependent manner.We study two prototypical control problems for this case: i) demand tracking where we determine the start rate that generates an output rate which optimally tracks a given time dependent demand rate and ii) backlog tracking which optimally tracks the cumulative demand. The method is based on the formal adjoint method for constrained optimization, incorporating the hyperbolic PDE as a constraint of a nonlinear optimization problem. We show numerical results on optimal start rate profiles for steps in the demand rate and for periodically varying demand rates and discuss the influence of the nonlinearity of the cycle time on the limits of the reactivity of the production system. Differences between perishable and non-perishable demand (demand vs. backlog tracking) are highlighted

Quantum Energy-Transport and Drift-Diffusion Models

We show that Quantum Energy-Transport and Quantum Drift-Diffusion models can be derived through diffusion limits of a collisional Wigner equation. The collision operator relaxes to an equilibrium defined through the entropy minimization principle. Both models are shown to be entropic and exhibit fluxes which are related with the state variables through spatially non-local relations. Thanks to an � expansion of these models, � 2 perturbations of the Classical Energy-Transport and Drift-Diffusion models are found. In the Drift-Diffusion case, the quantum correction is the Bohm potential and the model is still entropic. In the Energy-Transport case however, the quantum correction is a rather complex expression and the model cannot be proven entropic.

Stereotypic horses (Equus caballus) are not cognitively impaired

Stereotypies in animals are thought to arise from an interaction between genetic predisposition and sub-optimal housing conditions. In domestic horses, a well-studied stereotypy is crib-biting, an abnormal behaviour that appears to help individuals to cope with stressful situations. One prominent hypothesis states that animals affected by stereotypies are cognitively less flexible compared to healthy controls, due to sensitization of a specific brain area, the basal ganglia. The aim of this study was to test this hypothesis in crib-biting and healthy controls, using a cognitive task, reversal learning, which has been used as a diagnostic for basal ganglia dysfunction. The procedure consisted of exposing subjects to four learning tasks; first and second acquisition, and their reversals. For each task, we measured the number of trials to reach criterion and heart rate and heart-rate variability. Importantly, we did not try to prevent crib-biters from executing their stereotypic behaviour. We found that the first reversal learning task required the largest number of trials, confirming its challenging nature. Interestingly, the second reversal learning task required significantly fewer trials to reach criterion, suggesting generalisation learning. However, we did not find any performance differences across groups; both stereotypic and control animals required a similar numbers of trials and did not differ in their physiological responses. Our results thus challenge the widely held belief that crib-biting horses, and stereotypic animals more generally, are cognitively impaired. We conclude that cognitive underperformance may occur in stereotypic horses if they are prevented from crib-biting to cope with experienced stress.PostprintPeer reviewe

KINETICS DRIVEN BY LOCAL NASH EQUILIBRIA AND RISK AVERSE TRADING STRATEGIES

Particles vs. rational agents: Social or biological agents can behave like mechanical particles subject to forces: kinetic theory, minimize

Kinetic and fluid models for supply chains supporting policy attributes

We consider a supply chain consisting of a sequence of buffer queues and processors with certain throughput times and capacities. In a previous work, we have derived a hyperbolic conservation law for the part density and flux in the supply chain. In the present paper, we introduce internal variables (named attributes: e.g. the time to due-date) and extend the previously defined model into a kinetic-like model for the evolution of the part in the phase-space (degree-of-completion, attribute). We relate this kinetic model to the hyperbolic one through the moment method and a ’monokinetic’ (or single-phase) closure assumption. If instead multi-phase closure assumptions are retained, richer dynamics can take place. In a numerical section, we compare the kinetic model (solved by a particle method) and its two-phase approximation and demonstrate that both behave as expected