Euro Area Market Reactions to the Monetary Developments Press Release.

Using intra-day data, we assess the impact of the press release on euro area monetary data on the different segments of the euro area yield curve. For this purpose, we estimate a relation between the "news" or "surprise" in the released data for annual M3 growth and the move in the interest rates for a time-window surrounding the press release. We find that the publication of monetary data has a statistically significant impact on interest rates with maturities ranging from 1 to 10 years, with the largest effect on the 1-2 year segment. Turning to the short end of the yield curve, since mid-2001 rates with maturities up to 6 months do not react much to the monetary developments press release. Our results suggest that market participants may look through short-term movements of annual M3 growth and focus instead on the trend rate of monetary expansion over the medium term when gauging the policy relevant signals.High-frequency data ; Macroeconomic announcements ; Money growth.

Stress testing banks' profitability: the case of French banks

We build a stress testing framework to evaluate the sensitivity of banks’ profitability to plausible but severe adverse macroeconomic shocks. Specifically, we test the resilience of French banks using supervisory data over the period 1993-2009. First, we identify the macroeconomic and financial variables (GDP growth, interest rate maturity spread, stock market’s volatility) and bank-specific variables (size, capital ratio, ratio of non interest income to assets) that significantly affect French banks’ profitability. Second, our macroeconomic stress testing exercises based on a simulation of macroeconomic variables show that French banks’ profitability is resilient to major adverse macroeconomic scenarios. Specifically, our findings highlight that even severe recessions would leave the French banking system profitable.bank profitability, dynamic panel estimation, stress test.

Stress testing French banks' income subcomponents

Using a broad dataset of individual consolidated data of French banks over the period 1993-2007, we seek to evaluate the sensitivity to adverse macroeconomic scenarios of the three main sources of banking income, namely interest margins, fees and commissions, and trading income. First, we show that the determinants of banking income subcomponents are highly specific: whereas interest rates spread plays a significant role in determining net interest income, stock market measures are significant determinants of trading income. GDP growth impacts significantly on fees and commissions. Second, our macroeconomic stress testing exercises tend to show that fees and commission and to a lesser extent trading incomes are much more sensitive to some adverse macroeconomic shocks than interest income. This could support the view that income diversification is associated with higher banking revenue resilience.Banking income , Interest margins , Fees and commissions , Trading income , Dynamic panel estimation.

The Enduring Questions: What's for Dinner? Where's My Knife? …and Can I Use My Fingers? (Unanswered) Questions Related to Organic Matter and Microbes in Marine Sediments

Heterotrophic microbial communities play key roles in processing and remineralizing organic matter in marine sediments: they are the “final gatekeepers” that determine the types and quantity of organicmatter that is ultimately buried in sediments—processes important to our understanding of past global environments, as well as to the production of petroleum products that still fuel much of modern society. These communities’ capabilities also help us understand the energetic and metabolic boundaries of life. Work over the past decades has revealed much information about sedimentary microbial communities: their overall composition (Bacteria and Archaea), the sequence of terminal respiration processes occurring with progressive burial depth in sediments, and the depth to which they can be detected; research on the members and metabolism in the “deep biosphere” has assumed a central position in organic geochemistry, environmental microbiology, and molecular ecology (Orcutt et al., 2013; D’Hondt et al., 2019)

An 11 Earth-mass, Long-period Sub-Neptune Orbiting a Sun-like Star

Although several thousands of exoplanets have now been detected and characterized, observational biases have led to a paucity of long-period, low-mass exoplanets with measured masses and a corresponding lag in our understanding of such planets. In this paper we report the mass estimation and characterization of the long-period exoplanet Kepler-538b. This planet orbits a Sun-like star (V = 11.27) with M_* = 0.892 +/- (0.051, 0.035) M_sun and R_* = 0.8717 +/- (0.0064, 0.0061) R_sun. Kepler-538b is a 2.215 +/- (0.040, 0.034) R_earth sub-Neptune with a period of P = 81.73778 +/- 0.00013 d. It is the only known planet in the system. We collected radial velocity (RV) observations with HIRES on Keck I and HARPS-N on the TNG. We characterized stellar activity by a Gaussian process with a quasi-periodic kernel applied to our RV and cross correlation function full width at half maximum (FWHM) observations. By simultaneously modeling Kepler photometry, RV, and FWHM observations, we found a semi-amplitude of K = 1.68 +/- (0.39, 0.38) m s^-1 and a planet mass of M_p = 10.6 +/- (2.5, 2.4) M_earth. Kepler-538b is the smallest planet beyond P = 50 d with an RV mass measurement. The planet likely consists of a significant fraction of ices (dominated by water ice), in addition to rocks/metals, and a small amount of gas. Sophisticated modeling techniques such as those used in this paper, combined with future spectrographs with ultra high-precision and stability will be vital for yielding more mass measurements in this poorly understood exoplanet regime. This in turn will improve our understanding of the relationship between planet composition and insolation flux and how the rocky to gaseous transition depends on planetary equilibrium temperature

So close, so different:characterization of the K2-36 planetary system with HARPS-N

A.C.C. acknowledges support from the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) consolidated grant number ST/R000824/1. C.A.W. acknowledges support from the STFC grant ST/P000312/1. The HARPS-N project has been funded by the Prodex Program of the Swiss Space Office (SSO), the Harvard University Origins of Life Initiative (HUOLI), the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), the University of Geneva, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute (INAF), the University of St Andrews, Queen’s University Belfast, and the University of Edinburgh. The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007- 2013) under grant agreement number 313014 (ETAEARTH).Context. K2-36 is a K dwarf orbited by two small (Rb = 1.43 ± 0.08 R⊕ and Rc = 3.2 ± 0.3 R⊕), close-in (ab = 0.022 AU and ac = 0.054 AU) transiting planets discovered by the Kepler/K2 space observatory. They are representatives of two distinct families of small planets (Rp < 4 R⊕) recently emerged from the analysis of Kepler data, with likely a different structure, composition and evolutionary pathways. Aims. We revise the fundamental stellar parameters and the sizes of the planets, and provide the first measurement of their massesand bulk densities, which we use to infer their structure and composition. Methods. We observed K2-36 with the HARPS-N spectrograph over∼3.5 years, collecting 81 useful radial velocity measurements. The star is active, with evidence for increasing levels of magnetic activity during the observing time span. The radial velocity scatter is ∼17 m s−1 due to the stellar activity contribution, which is much larger than the semi-amplitudes of the planetary signals. We tested different methods for mitigating the stellar activity contribution to the radial velocity time variations and measuring the planet masses with good precision. Results. We found that K2-36 is likely a∼1 Gyr old system, and by treating the stellar activity through a Gaussian process regression, we measured the planet masses mb = 3.9 ± 1.1 M⊕ and mc = 7.8 ± 2.3 M⊕. The derived planet bulk densities ρb = 7.2+2.5−2.1 g cm−3 and ρc = 1.3+0.7-0.5 g cm−3 point out that K2-36 b has a rocky, Earth-like composition, and K2-36 c is a low-density sub-Neptune. Conclusions. Composed of two planets with similar orbital separations but different densities, K2-36 represents an optimal laboratory for testing the role of the atmospheric escape in driving the evolution of close-in, low-mass planets after ∼1 Gyr from their formation. Due to their similarities, we performed a preliminary comparative analysis between the systems K2-36 and Kepler-36, which we deem worthy of a more detailed investigation.PostprintPeer reviewe

Clinical Forms of Chikungunya in Gabon, 2010

Chikungunya fever (CHIK) is a disease caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected mosquitos. The virus is responsible for multiple outbreaks in tropical and temperate areas worldwide, and is now a global concern. Clinical and biological features of the disease are poorly described, especially in Africa, where the disease is neglected because it is considered benign. During a recent CHIK outbreak that occurred in southeast Gabon, we prospectively studied clinical and biological features of 270 virologically confirmed cases. Fever and arthralgias were the predominant symptoms. Furthermore, variable and distinct clinical pictures including pure febrile, pure arthralgic and unusual forms (neither fever nor arthralgias) were detected. No severe forms or deaths were reported. These findings suggest that, during CHIK epidemics, some patients may not have classical symptoms (fever and arthralgias). Local surveillance is needed to detect any changes in the pathogenicity of this virus

HARPS-N radial velocities confirm the low densities of the Kepler-9 planets

We investigated the discrepancy between planetary mass determination using the transit timing variations (TTVs) and radial velocities (RVs), by analysing the multi-planet system Kepler-9. Despite being the first system characterised with TTVs, there are several discrepant solutions in the literature, with those reporting lower planetary densities being apparently in disagreement with high-precision RV observations. To resolve this, we gathered HARPS-N RVs at epochs that maximised the difference between the predicted RV curves from discrepant solutions in the literature. We also re-analysed the full Kepler data-set and performed a dynamical fit, within a Bayesian framework, using the newly derived central and duration times of the transits. We compared these results with the RV data and found that our solution better describes the RV observations, despite the masses of the planets being nearly half that presented in the discovery paper. We therefore confirm that the TTV method can provide mass determinations that agree with those determined using high-precision RVs. The low densities of the planets place them in the scarcely populated region of the super-Neptunes / inflated sub-Saturns in the mass-radius diagram.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA