93 research outputs found
Do wildflower strips enhance pest control in organic cabbage?
Within this project we assess whether wildflower strips and companion plants increase the control of cabbage pests Plutella xylostella L. (Lepidoptera: Plutellidae), Mamestra brassicae L. (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) and Pieris rapae L. (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) by (1) naturally occurring parasitoids and predators and (2) massâreleasedn Trichogramma brassciae (Bezdenko) (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) parasitoids. Two organic cabbage fields were used for this study: adjacent to each field a wildflower strip was sown and companion plants (Centaurea cyanus L. (Asteraceae)) intermixed within the crop. Within each field ~15,000 M. brassicae eggs were placed out to determine the parasitism rates by massâreleased T. brassicae and to assess the levels of egg predation. Over 1,000 lepidopteran larvae were collected and screened for hymenopteran and tachinid parasitoid DNA using a multiplex PCR assay. Invertebrate generalist predators (n=1,063) were collected for DNAâbased gut content analysis. The wildflower strip had a significant positive effect on M. brassicae egg parasitism rates as rates increased 5âfold in the vicinity to the strip. Moreover, companion plants enhanced invertebrate predation on M. brassicae eggs. Both, the release of T. brassicae and the use of companion plants, however, did not significantly increase egg parasitism rates. The infestation of plants by caterpillars increased with distance to the wildflower strip and there was a trend of decreasing larval parasitism rates with distance to the strip. Currently the invertebrate predators are being molecularly analysed to assess predation on unparasitized and parasitized lepidopteran pests
Drift dependence of optimal trade execution strategies under transient price impact
We give a complete solution to the problem of minimizing the expected
liquidity costs in presence of a general drift when the underlying market
impact model has linear transient price impact with exponential resilience. It
turns out that this problem is well-posed only if the drift is absolutely
continuous. Optimal strategies often do not exist, and when they do, they
depend strongly on the derivative of the drift. Our approach uses elements from
singular stochastic control, even though the problem is essentially
non-Markovian due to the transience of price impact and the lack in Markovian
structure of the underlying price process. As a corollary, we give a complete
solution to the minimization of a certain cost-risk criterion in our setting
Calibration of optimal execution of financial transactions in the presence of transient market impact
Trading large volumes of a financial asset in order driven markets requires
the use of algorithmic execution dividing the volume in many transactions in
order to minimize costs due to market impact. A proper design of an optimal
execution strategy strongly depends on a careful modeling of market impact,
i.e. how the price reacts to trades. In this paper we consider a recently
introduced market impact model (Bouchaud et al., 2004), which has the property
of describing both the volume and the temporal dependence of price change due
to trading. We show how this model can be used to describe price impact also in
aggregated trade time or in real time. We then solve analytically and calibrate
with real data the optimal execution problem both for risk neutral and for risk
averse investors and we derive an efficient frontier of optimal execution. When
we include spread costs the problem must be solved numerically and we show that
the introduction of such costs regularizes the solution.Comment: 31 pages, 8 figure
An Optimal Execution Problem with Market Impact
We study an optimal execution problem in a continuous-time market model that
considers market impact. We formulate the problem as a stochastic control
problem and investigate properties of the corresponding value function. We find
that right-continuity at the time origin is associated with the strength of
market impact for large sales, otherwise the value function is continuous.
Moreover, we show the semi-group property (Bellman principle) and characterise
the value function as a viscosity solution of the corresponding
Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. We introduce some examples where the forms of
the optimal strategies change completely, depending on the amount of the
trader's security holdings and where optimal strategies in the Black-Scholes
type market with nonlinear market impact are not block liquidation but gradual
liquidation, even when the trader is risk-neutral.Comment: 36 pages, 8 figures, a modified version of the article "An optimal
execution problem with market impact" in Finance and Stochastics (2014
A model for a large investor trading at market indifference prices. I: single-period case
We develop a single-period model for a large economic agent who trades with
market makers at their utility indifference prices. A key role is played by a
pair of conjugate saddle functions associated with the description of Pareto
optimal allocations in terms of the utility function of a representative market
maker.Comment: Shorten from 69 to 30 pages due to referees' requests; a part of the
previous version has been moved to "The stochastic field of aggregate
utilities and its saddle conjugate", arXiv:1310.728
Inverted Conformation Stability of a Motor Molecule on a Metal Surface
Molecular motors have been intensely studied in solution, but less commonly on solid surfaces that offer fixed points of reference for their motion and allow high-resolution single-molecule imaging by scanning probe microscopy. Surface adsorption of molecules can also alter the potential energy surface and consequently preferred intramolecular conformations, but it is unknown how this affects motor molecules. Here, we show how the different conformations of motor molecules are modified by surface adsorption using a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory. These results demonstrate how the contact of a motor molecule with a solid can affect the energetics of the molecular conformations
Optimal investments for risk- and ambiguity-averse preferences: a duality approach
Model uncertainty, Ambiguity, Convex risk measures, Optimal investments, Duality theory, 91B28, 90C46, 60G44, G11, D81,
Chirality-Specific Unidirectional Rotation of Molecular Motors on Cu(111)
Molecular motors have chemical properties that enable unidirectional motion, thus breaking microscopic reversibility. They are well studied in solution, but much less is known regarding their behavior on solid surfaces. Here, single motor molecules adsorbed on a Cu(111) surface are excited by voltages pulses from an STM tip, which leads to their rotation around a fixed pivot point. Comparison with calculations shows that this axis results from a chemical bond of a sulfur atom in the chemical structure and a metal atom of the surface. While statistics show approximately equal rotations in both directions, clockwise and anticlockwise, a detailed study reveals that these motions are enantiomer-specific. Hence, the rotation direction of each individual molecule depends on its chirality, which can be determined from STM images. At first glance, these dynamics could be assigned to the activation of the motor molecule, but our results show that this is unlikely as the molecule remains in the same conformation after rotation. Additionally, a control molecule, although it lacks unidirectional rotation in solution, also shows unidirectional rotation for each enantiomer. Hence, it seems that the unidirectional rotation is not specifically related to the motor property of the molecule. The calculated energy barriers for motion show that the propeller-like motor activity requires higher energy than the simple rotation of the molecule as a rigid object, which is therefore preferred
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