The Impact of Foreign Investment Restrictions on the Stock Returns of Oil Sands Companies

In December 2012, prompted by the proposed purchase of Nexen by the Chinese SOE CNOOC, the federal government announced revised guidelines for investments by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the oil sands. Declaring the sale marked “the end of a trend and not the beginning of a trend,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper explained how the government would approach such decisions in the future, including placing the onus on foreign investors to demonstrate how deals would be of net benefit to Canada, as well as granting the industry minister the discretion to accept or deny proposed deals. Accounting for five per cent of Canadian GDP, $28 billion in government revenue and three per cent of all jobs nationwide, the oil sands are an integral component of Canada’s economy. The sector has long relied on foreign capital to finance projects, meaning that any move to deter outside investment could have profound consequences for the development of this critical economic asset. In this paper, the authors examine the impact of this policy change by measuring the stock returns of firms operating in the oil sands. Employing an event study analysis, they find empirical evidence that the government’s policy change has resulted in the material destruction of shareholder wealth, particularly in the case of the smaller oil companies. What is more, given the composition of the global oil industry has changed to one where SOEs dominate both reserves and production, is this a policy Canada can afford in the long term?“When we say that Canada is open for business, we do not mean that Canada is for sale to foreign governments.” - Prime Minister Stephen Harper, December 7, 2012“…going forward, the [industry] minister will find the acquisition of control of a Canadian oil-sands business by a state-owned enterprise to be of net benefit, only in an exceptional circumstance.” - Prime Minister Stephen Harper, December 7, 2012“A year after the new Investment Canada Act rules were announced in December 2012, investment dollars from state-owned enterprises have essentially stopped flowing into the bitumen extraction business. Energy-directed foreign direct investment – of which SOEs play an important role – fell off a cliff in 2013, declining 92 per cent year-to-year from$27 billion to $2 billion. These are very worrisome statistics for a nation highly dependent on foreign investment to fund its capital-intensive resource industries.” - Sebation Gault, December 2, 2013 Published in Alberta Oil Magazin

The Southern 2MASS AGN Survey: spectroscopic follow-up with 6dF

The Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) has provided a uniform photometric catalog to search for previously unknown red AGN and QSOs. We have extended the search to the southern equatorial sky by obtaining spectra for 1182 AGN candidates using the 6dF multifibre spectrograph on the UK Schmidt Telescope. These were scheduled as auxiliary targets for the 6dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. The candidates were selected using a single color cut of J - Ks > 2 to Ks ~ 15.5 and a galactic latitude of |b|>30 deg. 432 spectra were of sufficient quality to enable a reliable classification. 116 sources (or ~27%) were securely classified as type 1 AGN, 20 as probable type 1s, and 57 as probable type 2 AGN. Most of them span the redshift range 0.05<z<0.5 and only 8 (or ~6%) were previously identified as AGN or QSOs. Our selection leads to a significantly higher AGN identification rate amongst local galaxies (>20%) than in any previous galaxy survey. A small fraction of the type 1 AGN could have their optical colors reddened by optically thin dust with A_V<2 mag relative to optically selected QSOs. A handful show evidence for excess far-IR emission. The equivalent width (EW) and color distributions of the type 1 and 2 AGN are consistent with AGN unified models. In particular, the EW of the [OIII] emission line weakly correlates with optical--near-IR color in each class of AGN, suggesting anisotropic obscuration of the AGN continuum. Overall, the optical properties of the 2MASS red AGN are not dramatically different from those of optically-selected QSOs. Our near-IR selection appears to detect the most near-IR luminous QSOs in the local universe to z~0.6 and provides incentive to extend the search to deeper near-IR surveys.Comment: 57 pages, 12 figures, 4 tables, to appear in vol.27/4 of Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (PASA

The simplest demonstrations of quantum nonlocality

We investigate the complexity cost of demonstrating the key types of nonclassical correlations-Bell inequality violation, Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen (EPR)-steering, and entanglement-with independent agents, theoretically and in a photonic experiment. We show that the complexity cost exhibits a hierarchy among these three tasks, mirroring the recently discovered hierarchy for how robust they are to noise. For Bell inequality violations, the simplest test is the well-known Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt test, but for EPR-steering and entanglement the tests that involve the fewest number of detection patterns require nonprojective measurements. The simplest EPR-steering test requires a choice of projective measurement for one agent and a single nonprojective measurement for the other, while the simplest entanglement test uses just a single nonprojective measurement for each agent. In both of these cases, we derive our inequalities using the concept of circular two-designs. This leads to the interesting feature that in our photonic demonstrations, the correlation of interest is independent of the angle between the linear polarizers used by the two parties, which thus require no alignment

Thyroid hormone regulates distinct paths to maturation in pigment cell lineages

Thyroid hormone (TH) regulates diverse developmental events and can drive disparate cellular outcomes. In zebrafish, TH has opposite effects on neural crest derived pigment cells of the adult stripe pattern, limiting melanophore population expansion, yet increasing yellow/orange xanthophore numbers. To learn how TH elicits seemingly opposite responses in cells having a common embryological origin, we analyzed individual transcriptomes from thousands of neural crest-derived cells, reconstructed developmental trajectories, identified pigment cell-lineage specific responses to TH, and assessed roles for TH receptors. We show that TH promotes maturation of both cell types but in distinct ways. In melanophores, TH drives terminal differentiation, limiting final cell numbers. In xanthophores, TH promotes accumulation of orange carotenoids, making the cells visible. TH receptors act primarily to repress these programs when TH is limiting. Our findings show how a single endocrine factor integrates very different cellular activities during the generation of adult form

Rebound effects could offset more than half of avoided food loss and waste

Acknowledgements We thank Peter Newton, Sebastian Dueñas-Ocampo, Rayna Benzeev, Lee Frankel-Goldwater, Waverly Eichhorst, Ryan Langendorf, and Hilary Brumberg for their feedback on earlier drafts of this document; and Ryan Langendorf for helpful feedback and discussion on the economic analysis. M.H. and M.G.B. acknowledge funding from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) (Award number: 2020-38420-30727), and the University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) (start-up grant to M.G.B.). S.J.D. was supported by the US National Science Foundation and US Department of Agriculture (INFEWS grant EAR 1639318) and by the ClimateWorks Foundation (grant 22-2100). .Peer reviewedPostprin

Redshifts and Velocity Dispersions of Galaxy Clusters in the Horologium-Reticulum Supercluster

We present 118 new optical redshifts for galaxies in 12 clusters in the Horologium-Reticulum supercluster (HRS) of galaxies. For 76 galaxies, the data were obtained with the Dual Beam Spectrograph on the 2.3m telescope of the Australian National University at Siding Spring Observatory. After combining 42 previously unpublished redshifts with our new sample, we determine mean redshifts and velocity dispersions for 13 clusters, in which previous observational data were sparse. In six of the 13 clusters, the newly determined mean redshifts differ by more than 750 km/s from the published values. In the case of three clusters, A3047, A3109, and A3120, the redshift data indicate the presence of multiple components along the line of sight. The new cluster redshifts, when combined with other reliable mean redshifts for clusters in the HRS, are found to be distinctly bi-modal. Furthermore, the two redshift components are consistent with the bi-modal redshift distribution found for the inter-cluster galaxies in the HRS by Fleenor et al. (2005).Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, Accepted to A

Cutaneous and Muscle Reactive Hyperemia in Young Adults with Major Depressive Disorder

The reactive hyperemic vasodilatory response to a brief period of tissue ischemia provides an index of microvascular function and is an independent predictor of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. As such, reactive hyperemia is a non-invasive technique that is commonly utilized to provide an index of vascular health in various patient groups. Major depressive disorder (MDD), a non-traditional risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), has been associated with blunted reactive hyperemia, though this is not a universal finding. Further, to date, the quantification of the reactive hyperemic response in adults with MDD has been limited to the forearm muscle, assessed as Doppler ultrasound derived blood velocity in the brachial artery following a period of suprasystolic cuff occlusion. PURPOSE: Here, we sought to more comprehensively assess microvascular reactive hyperemia in otherwise healthy young adults with MDD. We tested the hypothesis that both muscle and cutaneous vasodilation would be blunted in adults with MDD compared to non-depressed young adults. METHODS: Nine healthy adults (HA; age: 22±2 yrs: body mass index: 26.5 ± 1.8 kg/m2) and ten adults with MDD (non-medicated; age: 22±2 yrs: body mass index: 22.6 ± 4.4 kg/m2) participated. Forearm reactive hyperemia was assessed as the increase in blood velocity in the brachial artery following 5-min of suprasystolic cuff occlusion (distal to the olecranon process). In a subset of adults (n=5 HA; n=4 MDD), cutaneous reactive hyperemia was concurrently assessed via laser Doppler flowmetry-derived flux (perfusion units; PU). Peak and total (area-under-the-curve; AUC) reactive hyperemia were quantified for each methodological approach. RESULTS: Neither the brachial artery Doppler ultrasound-derived peak (HA: 1020±383 vs. MDD: 950±239 s-1; p=0.65) nor the total blood flow (HA: 284±77 vs. MDD: 233±153 a.u.; p=0.41) reactive hyperemic response was different between groups. Further, there were no group differences in cutaneous reactive hyperemia (peak: 83±37 HA vs. 79±15 PU MDD, p=0.85; AUC: 8764±2273 HA vs. 8935±1439 a.u. MDD; p=0.90). CONCLUSION: These preliminary data indicate that neither the muscle nor cutaneous vasodilatory response to a brief period of tissue ischemia is blunted in young adults with MDD, suggesting preserved microvascular function

Microwave observations of spinning dust emission in NGC6946

We report new cm-wave measurements at five frequencies between 15 and 18GHz of the continuum emission from the reportedly anomalous "region 4" of the nearby galaxy NGC6946. We find that the emission in this frequency range is significantly in excess of that measured at 8.5GHz, but has a spectrum from 15-18GHz consistent with optically thin free-free emission from a compact HII region. In combination with previously published data we fit four emission models containing different continuum components using the Bayesian spectrum analysis package radiospec. These fits show that, in combination with data at other frequencies, a model with a spinning dust component is slightly preferred to those that possess better-established emission mechanisms.Comment: submitted MNRA

Overscreening and Underscreening in Solid-Electrolyte Grain Boundary Space-Charge Layers

Polycrystalline solids can exhibit material properties that differ significantly from those of equivalent single-crystal samples, in part, because of a spontaneous redistribution of mobile point defects into so-called space-charge regions adjacent to grain boundaries. The general analytical form of these space-charge regions is known only in the dilute limit, where defect-defect correlations can be neglected. Using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of a three-dimensional Coulomb lattice gas, we show that grain-boundary space-charge regions in non-dilute solid electrolytes exhibit overscreening -- damped oscillatory space-charge profiles -- and underscreening -- decay lengths that are longer than the corresponding Debye length and that increase with increasing defect-defect interaction strength. Overscreening and underscreening are known phenomena in concentrated liquid electrolytes, and the observation of functionally analogous behaviour in solid electrolyte space-charge regions suggests that the same underlying physics drives behaviour in both classes of systems. We therefore expect theoretical approaches developed to study non-dilute liquid electrolytes to be equally applicable to future studies of solid electrolytes