8,600 research outputs found
Mapping systemic risk: critical degree and failures distribution in financial networks
The 2008 financial crisis illustrated the need for a thorough, functional
understanding of systemic risk in strongly interconnected financial structures.
Dynamic processes on complex networks being intrinsically difficult, most
recent studies of this problem have relied on numerical simulations. Here we
report analytical results in a network model of interbank lending based on
directly relevant financial parameters, such as interest rates and leverage
ratios. Using a mean-field approach, we obtain a closed-form formula for the
"critical degree", viz. the number of creditors per bank below which an
individual shock can propagate throughout the network. We relate the failures
distribution (probability that a single shock induces failures) to the
degree distribution (probability that a bank has creditors), showing in
particular that the former is fat-tailed whenever the latter is. Our criterion
for the onset of contagion turns out to be isomorphic to the condition for
cooperation to evolve on graphs and social networks, as recently formulated in
evolutionary game theory. This remarkable connection supports recent calls for
a methodological rapprochement between finance and ecology.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure
A mesocosm experiment investigating the effects of substratum quality and wave exposure on the survival of fish eggs
In a mesocosm experiment, the attachment of bream (Abramis brama) eggs to spawning substrata with and without periphytic biofilm coverage and their subsequent survival with and without low-intensity wave exposure were investigated. Egg attachment was reduced by 73% on spawning substrata with a natural periphytic biofilm, compared to clean substrata. Overall, this initial difference in egg numbers persisted until hatching. The difference in egg numbers was even increased in the wave treatment, while it was reduced in the no-wave control treatment. Exposure to a low-intensity wave regime affected egg development between the two biofilm treatments differently. Waves enhanced egg survival on substrata without a biofilm but reduced the survival of eggs on substrata with biofilm coverage. In the treatment combining biofilm-covered substrata and waves, no attached eggs survived until hatching. In all treatments, more than 75% of the eggs became detached from the spawning substrata during the egg incubation period, an
First-Principles Calculation of Electric Field Gradients and Hyperfine Couplings in YBa2Cu3O7
The local electronic structure of YBa2Cu3O7 has been calculated using
first-principles cluster methods. Several clusters embedded in an appropriate
background potential have been investigated. The electric field gradients at
the copper and oxygen sites are determined and compared to previous theoretical
calculations and experiments. Spin polarized calculations with different spin
multiplicities have enabled a detailed study of the spin density distribution
to be made and a simultaneous determination of magnetic hyperfine coupling
parameters. The contributions from on-site and transferred hyperfine fields
have been disentangled with the conclusion that the transferred spin densities
essentially are due to nearest neighbour copper ions only with marginal
influence of ions further away. This implies that the variant temperature
dependencies of the planar copper and oxygen NMR spin-lattice relaxation rates
are only compatible with commensurate antiferromagnetic correlations. The
theoretical hyperfine parameters are compared with those derived from
experimental data.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, accepted to appear in EPJ
Are Suburban Firms More Likely to Discriminate Against African Americans?
This paper presents a test of the hypothesis that employers in suburban locations are more likely to discriminate against African Americans than are employers located in central cities. Using a difference-in-difference framework, we compare central-city/suburban differences in racial hiring outcomes for firms where a white person is in charge of hiring (white employers, for short) to similar geographic differences in outcomes for firms where a black person is in charge of hiring (black employers). We find that both suburban black and white employers hire fewer blacks than their central-city counterparts. Moreover, the central-city/suburban hiring gap among black employers is as large as, or larger than, that of white employers. Suburban black employers, however, receive many more applications from blacks and hire more blacks than do white firms in either location.
Ion beam micromachining of integrated optics components
Thin film integrated optics components such as light guides, modulators, directional couplers, and polarizers demand high quality edge smoothness and high resolution pattern formation in dimensions down to submicrometer size. Fabrication techniques combining holographic and scanning electron beam lithography with ion beam micromachining have produced planar phase gratings with intervals as small as 2800 Å, guiding channel couplers in GaAs, and also wire- grid polarizers for 10.6-µm radiation
Ground state properties of heavy alkali halides
We extend previous work on alkali halides by calculations for the heavy-atom
species RbF, RbCl, LiBr, NaBr, KBr, RbBr, LiI, NaI, KI, and RbI. Relativistic
effects are included by means of energy-consistent pseudopotentials,
correlations are treated at the coupled-cluster level. A striking deficiency of
the Hartree-Fock approach are lattice constants deviating by up to 7.5 % from
experimental values which is reduced to a maximum error of 2.4 % by taking into
account electron correlation. Besides, we provide ab-initio data for in-crystal
polarizabilities and van der Waals coefficients.Comment: accepted by Phys. Rev.
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