Fair value accounting and financial stability.

Market prices give timely signals that can aid decision making. However, in the presence of distorted incentives and illiquid markets, there are other less benign effects that inject artifi cial volatility to prices that distorts real decisions. In a world of marking-to-market, asset price changes show up immediately on the balance sheets of financial intermediaries and elicit responses from them. Banks and other intermediaries have always responded to changes in economic environment, but marking-to-market sharpens and synchronises their responses, adding impetus to the feedback effects in financial markets. For junior assets trading in liquid markets (such as traded stocks), marking-to-market is superior to historical cost in terms of the trade-offs. But for senior, long-lived and illiquid assets and liabilities (such as bank loans and insurance liabilities), the harm caused by distortions can outweigh the benefi ts. We review the competing effects and weigh the arguments.

Separation of long DNA chains using non-uniform electric field: a numerical study

We study migration of DNA molecules through a microchannel with a series of electric traps controlled by an ac electric field. We describe the motion of DNA based on Brownian dynamics simulations of a beads-spring chain. Our simulation demonstrates that the chain captured by an electrode escapes from the binding electric field due to thermal fluctuation. We find that the mobility of chain would depend on the chain length; the mobility sharply increases when the length of a chain exceeds a critical value, which is strongly affected by the amplitude of the applied ac field. Thus we can adjust the length regime, in which this microchannel well separates DNA molecules, without changing the structure of the channel. We also present a theoretical insight into the relation between the critical chain length and the field amplitude.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Comparative study on the construction cost including carbon emission cost for masonry walls

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions resulting from construction are one of the main factors causing global warming. It is therefore necessary to make efforts to reduce CO₂ emissions in the construction industry. Although some researchers have studied CO₂ emissions in the industry, there has been a lack of study on the cost of CO₂ emissions. Therefore, this study examines and compares the construction costs, including the cost of CO₂ emissions, of masonry wall types – including common brick, concrete brick, and fired brick walls. The study found that CO₂ emission cost was the highest for brick walls, followed by concrete brick walls. The findings provide information that can be used in engineering methods to determine the cost of CO₂ emissions

Dynamical evolution of the mass function and radial profile of the Galactic globular cluster system

Evolution of the mass function (MF) and radial distribution (RD) of the Galactic globular cluster (GC) system is calculated using an advanced and a realistic Fokker-Planck (FP) model that considers dynamical friction, disc/bulge shocks and eccentric cluster orbits. We perform hundreds of FP calculations with different initial cluster conditions, and then search a wide-parameter space for the best-fitting initial GC MF and RD that evolves into the observed present-day Galactic GC MF and RD. By allowing both MF and RD of the initial GC system to vary, which is attempted for the first time in the present Letter, we find that our best-fitting models have a higher peak mass for a lognormal initial MF and a higher cut-off mass for a power-law initial MF than previous estimates, but our initial total masses in GCs, M_{T,i} = 1.5-1.8x10^8 Msun, are comparable to previous results. Significant findings include that our best-fitting lognormal MF shifts downward by 0.35 dex during the period of 13 Gyr, and that our power-law initial MF models well-fit the observed MF and RD only when the initial MF is truncated at >~10^5 Msun. We also find that our results are insensitive to the initial distribution of orbit eccentricity and inclination, but are rather sensitive to the initial concentration of the clusters and to how the initial tidal radius is defined. If the clusters are assumed to be formed at the apocentre while filling the tidal radius there, M_{T,i} can be as high as 6.9x10^8 Msun, which amounts to ~75 per cent of the current mass in the stellar halo.Comment: To appear in May 2008 issue of MNRAS, 386, L6

Singularity structure of the pi N scattering amplitude in a meson-exchange model up to energies W < 2.0 GeV

Within the previously developed Dubna-Mainz-Taipei meson-exchange model, the singularity structure of the pi N scattering amplitudes has been investigated. For all partial waves up to F waves and c.m. energies up to W = 2 GeV, the T-matrix poles have been calculated by three different techniques: analytic continuation into the complex energy plane, speed-plot and the regularization method. For all 4-star resonances, we find a perfect agreement between the analytic continuation and the regularization method. We also find resonance poles for resonances that are not so well established, but in these cases the pole positions and residues obtained by analytic continuation can substantially differ from the results predicted by the speed-plot and regularization methods.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, 4 table

Localization of the relative phase via measurements

When two independently-prepared Bose-Einstein condensates are released from their corresponding traps, the absorbtion image of the overlapping clouds presents an interference pattern. Here we analyze a model introduced by Javanainen and Yoo (J. Javanainen and S. M. Yoo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 161 (1996)), who considered two atomic condensates described by plane waves propagating in opposite directions. We present an analytical argument for the measurement-induced breaking of the relative phase symmetry in this system, demonstrating how the phase gets localized after a large enough number of detection events.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur

Microlensing Binaries with Candidate Brown Dwarf Companions

Brown dwarfs are important objects because they may provide a missing link between stars and planets, two populations that have dramatically different formation histories. In this paper, we present the candidate binaries with brown dwarf companions that are found by analyzing binary microlensing events discovered during the 2004-2011 observation seasons. Based on the low mass ratio criterion of q < 0.2, we found seven candidate events: OGLE-2004-BLG-035, OGLE-2004-BLG-039, OGLE-2007-BLG-006, OGLE-2007-BLG-399/MOA-2007-BLG-334, MOA-2011-BLG-104/OGLE-2011-BLG-0172, MOA-2011-BLG-149, and MOA-201-BLG-278/OGLE-2011-BLG-012N. Among them, we are able to confirm that the companions of the lenses of MOA-2011-BLG-104/OGLE-2011-BLG-0172 and MOA-2011-BLG-149 are brown dwarfs by determining the mass of the lens based on the simultaneous measurement of the Einstein radius and the lens parallax. The measured masses of the brown dwarf companions are 0.02 ± 0.01 M_☉ and 0.019 ± 0.002 M_☉ for MOA-2011-BLG-104/OGLE-2011-BLG-0172 and MOA-2011-BLG-149, respectively, and both companions are orbiting low-mass M dwarf host stars. More microlensing brown dwarfs are expected to be detected as the number of lensing events with well-covered light curves increases with new-generation searches

Comparison of High-Strength Steel Pipe and H-Shaped Steel in the Strut of a Braced Wall System

Excavation work accounts for a high percentage of the total building construction cost. The most widely used method for excavation work in an urban area is a braced wall system with struts or rakers. H-shaped steel, which is the most commonly used component for struts in braced wall systems, has disadvantages such as cost-ineffectiveness and increased work interference associated with narrow strut spacing. Therefore, the use of high-strength steel pipe struts in braced wall systems can be an effective alternative to widening the strut spacing. In this study, the construction costs of a braced wall system using H-shaped steel and a braced wall system made with high strength steel pipe were compared by analyzing the required amounts of materials and the construction costs for four practical cases. All analyzed cases considered a change from H-shaped steel to high strength steel pipe in a design change during the construction stage. The results of this study show that the required amount of materials and the construction costs of a braced wall system with high strength steel pipe were lower than those of a braced wall system with H-shaped steel. Consequently, this study suggests that a high strength steel pipe strut is a more economical alternative than an H-shaped steel strut in braced wall systems for deep excavation work