The search for transient astrophysical neutrino emission with IceCube-DeepCore

We present the results of a search for astrophysical sources of brief transient neutrino emission using IceCube and DeepCore data acquired between 2012 May 15 and 2013 April 30. While the search methods employed in this analysis are similar to those used in previous IceCube point source searches, the data set being examined consists of a sample of predominantly sub-TeV muon-neutrinos from the Northern Sky (-5 degrees < delta < 90 degrees) obtained through a novel event selection method. This search represents a first attempt by IceCube to identify astrophysical neutrino sources in this relatively unexplored energy range. The reconstructed direction and time of arrival of neutrino events are used to search for any significant self-correlation in the data set. The data revealed no significant source of transient neutrino emission. This result has been used to construct limits at timescales ranging from roughly 1 s to 10 days for generic soft-spectra transients. We also present limits on a specific model of neutrino emission from soft jets in core-collapse supernovae

Stock repurchasing bias of mutual funds

This paper investigates whether the positive emotions mutual fund managers have when they have sold a stock for a gain lead to a higher repurchasing probability of this stock in the future. Controlling for fund, stock, and time fixed effects, we show that the probability of a stock being repurchased by a mutual fund is on average around 17% higher if it was previously sold for a gain rather than for a loss. The effect is less pronounced if the stock price has increased after the sale of the stock, which may cause regret and a negative feeling that the stock has been sold in the first place. In line with positive emotions driving the repurchasing behavior, we find that when fund managers change jobs and work at a different fund, they still prefer to repurchase stocks that they sold for a gain at the fund they managed before. We find supportive evidence that this behavior is associated with lower fund performance: repurchased winners underperform repurchased losers by around 5% p.a. after the repurchase. Thus, investors should be aware that mutual fund managers' repurchasing decisions can be biased and eventually may hurt their performance

Multimessenger search for sources of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos: Initial results for LIGO-Virgo and IceCube

We report the results of a multimessenger search for coincident signals from the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories and the partially completed IceCube high-energy neutrino detector, including periods of joint operation between 2007-2010. These include parts of the 2005-2007 run and the 2009-2010 run for LIGO-Virgo, and IceCube's observation periods with 22, 59 and 79 strings. We find no significant coincident events, and use the search results to derive upper limits on the rate of joint sources for a range of source emission parameters. For the optimistic assumption of gravitational-wave emission energy of 10-2 M⊙c2 at ˜150 Hz with ˜60 ms duration, and high-energy neutrino emission of 1 051 erg comparable to the isotropic gamma-ray energy of gamma-ray bursts, we limit the source rate below 1.6 ×1 0-2 Mpc-3 yr-1 . We also examine how combining information from gravitational waves and neutrinos will aid discovery in the advanced gravitational-wave detector era.status: publishe