Irreversibility of field-induced magnetostructural transition in NiCoMnSb shape memory alloy revealed by magnetization, transport and heat capacity studies

The effects of magnetic field on the martensitic transition have been studied in Ni45Co5Mn38Sb12. We find a large field-induced irreversibility in this system, as revealed by the field dependence of resistivity, magnetization, and heat capacity data. At the critical temperature, the field-induced conversion of the martensitic to austenite phase is not reversible under any field variation. At this temperature any energy fluctuation induces nucleation and growth of the equilibrium austenite phase at the expense of the metastable martensitic phase and gets arrested. All these three measurements completely rule out the coexistence of austenite and martensitic phases in the irreversibility regime.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

A specialized inventory problem in banks: optimizing retail sweeps

Deposits held at Federal Reserve Banks are an essential input to the business activity of most depository institutions in the United States. Managing these deposits is an important and complex inventory problem, for two reasons. First, Federal Reserve regulations require that depository institutions hold certain amounts of such deposits at the Federal Reserve Banks to satisfy statutory reserve requirements against customers* transaction accounts (demand deposits and other checkable deposits). Second, some inventory of such deposits is essential for banks to operate one of their core lines of business: furnishing payment services to households and firms. including wire transfers, ACH payments, and check clearing settlement. Because the Federal Reserve does not pay interest on such deposits used to satisfy statutory reserve requirements, banks seek to minimize their inventory of such deposits. In 1994, the banking industry introduced a new inventory management tool for such deposits, the retail deposit sweep program, which avoids the statutory requirement by reclassifying transaction deposits as savings deposits. In this analysis, we examine two algorithms for operating such sweeps programs within the limits of Federal Reserve regulations.Banks and banking ; Retail trade