Preserving the Ocean Circulation: Implications for Climate Policy

Climate modelers have recognized the possibility of abrupt climate changes caused by a reorganization of the North Atlantic's current pattern (technically known as a thermohaline circulation collapse). This circulation system now warms north-western Europe and transports carbon dioxide to the deep oceans. The posited collapse of this system could produce severe cooling in north-western Europe, even when general global warming is in progress. In this paper we use a simple integrated assessment model to investigate the optimal policy response to this risk. Adding the constraint of avoiding a thermohaline circulation collapse would significantly reduce the allowable greenhouse gas emissions in the long run along an optimal path. Our analysis implies that relatively small damages associated with a collapse (less than 1 % of gross world product) would justify a considerable reduction of future carbon dioxide emissions.

The 2011 FTA Corporate Treasury Survey: Australia and New Zealand

The importance that survey respondents have assigned to various treasury functions has changed significantly in this year’s survey. Interest rate and foreign exchange risk management are now the second and third most important functions respectively, eclipsing operational risk management which is now fourth. Cash and liquidity management remains the most dominant function, as in all previous surveys. A number of aspects of liquidity and cash management have strengthened. There has been an increase in the proportion of companies with a liquidity policy, and the vast majority monitor actual versus forecasted cash flows. As would be expected with the increased importance of foreign exchange and interest rate risk management, hedging of these risks has also increased. Swaps retain their dominance as the instrument of choice in hedging interest rate exposures, as in previous years. In hedging foreign exchange exposure, a decline in the use of forwards has been offset by an increase in the use of cross-currency swaps. This survey has uncovered a theme of increased diligence in monitoring credit risk and liquidity levels. The majority of respondents now monitor credit risk on a real-time basis. Almost all respondents now have a minimum liquidity policy. There have also been significant changes in the composition of and policies towards debt. The majority of respondents now have a policy to diversify borrowing sources, and there has been a significant increase in the proportion of funding sourced offshore. There has been a substantial level of deleveraging. We are pleased to note a significant increase in the level of board involvement in treasury policy and risk management. Board understanding of financial exposures is generally strong, and most organisations report interest rate and foreign exchange risk management to the board. There has also been an increase in both the proportion of companies with a treasury policy, and that measure treasury performance. Despite these positive findings, several negative trends have continued through this survey. Reporting of limit breaches and non-compliance with policy to the board appears to be relatively low. There has been no improvement in such reporting over previous years. There has also been a continued level of dissatisfaction with information received from business units. As in the previous survey, the main complaint concerns the inaccuracy of information provided. Unlike the 2006 survey which saw increases in nearly all responsibilities undertaken by treasuries, the 2011 survey presented data with no discernible trend. While small increases were seen in some functions, present tax planning (-23.6%), non-treasury risk management (-11.4%) and equity raising (-11.3%) showed significant decreases. These irregularities may be attributed to the global financial crisis (GFC) and subsequent recovery causing treasuries to restructure and become more streamlined. With respect to staffing numbers within treasury, there was a substantial decrease in the proportion of one person treasuries relative to 2006 levels (-29%). Conversely, steady rises were present in staffing levels above one person operations, particularly in the 4-8 person bracket (17.4%). Whereas there was an increase in the number of treasurers who found it ‘easy’ to recruit staff (2011: 12.5%, 2006: 7%), there was also an increase in the number of treasurers who had found it ‘difficult’ to recruit (2011: 39.6%, 2006: 22%

Chameleon: a Blind Double Trapdoor Hash Function for Securing AMI Data Aggregation

Data aggregation is an integral part of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) deployment that is implemented by the concentrator. Data aggregation reduces the number of transmissions, thereby reducing communication costs and increasing the bandwidth utilization of AMI. However, the concentrator poses a great risk of being tampered with, leading to erroneous bills and possible consumer disputes. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end integrity protocol using elliptic curve based chameleon hashing to provide data integrity and authenticity. The concentrator generates and sends a chameleon hash value of the aggregated readings to the Meter Data Management System (MDMS) for verification, while the smart meter with the trapdoor key computes and sends a commitment value to the MDMS so that the resulting chameleon hash value calculated by the MDMS is equivalent to the previous hash value sent by the concentrator. By comparing the two hash values, the MDMS can validate the integrity and authenticity of the data sent by the concentrator. Compared with the discrete logarithm implementation, the ECC implementation reduces the computational cost of MDMS, concentrator and smart meter by approximately 36.8%, 80%, and 99% respectively. We also demonstrate the security soundness of our protocol through informal security analysis

ESL Teachers’ Intention in Adopting Online Educational Technologies during COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic affected many countries across the globe tremendously. One of the consequences of this pandemic was the closure of educational institutions to curb the spread of the virus. In Malaysia, the Ministry of Education (MOE) encouraged teachers to adopt online educational technologies, such as Google Classroom, in executing teaching and learning processes during the pandemic. However, the sudden transition of the nature of education required teachers to prepare themselves to carry out online education in an instant. Past studies revealed that ICT competence, infrastructure and online resources and working environment affect teachers’ usage of online educational technologies in their teaching. This study examined the relationship amongst these three factors and teachers’ intention to adopt online educational technologies. This study also identified the most significant factor that affects teachers’ behavioural intentions. A total of 153 Malaysian ESL teachers participated in this study via a survey questionnaire. Findings revealed that although the working environment was moderately correlated with teachers’ behavioural intentions, the other two factors were strongly correlated with teachers’ behavioural intentions. This study found accessibility to infrastructure and online resources to be the most significant factors that affected teachers’ behavioural intentions

Highly Efficient Midinfrared On-Chip Electrical Generation of Graphene Plasmons by Inelastic Electron Tunneling Excitation

Inelastic electron tunneling provides a low-energy pathway for the excitation of surface plasmons and light emission. We theoretically investigate tunnel junctions based on metals and graphene. We show that graphene is potentially a highly efficient material for tunneling excitation of plasmons because of its narrow plasmon linewidths, strong emission, and large tunability in the midinfrared wavelength regime. Compared to gold and silver, the enhancement can be up to 10 times for similar wavelengths and up to 5 orders at their respective plasmon operating wavelengths. Tunneling excitation of graphene plasmons promises an efficient technology for on-chip electrical generation and manipulation of plasmons for graphene-based optoelectronics and nanophotonic integrated circuits.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

On the Capital Structure of Real Estate Firms

The leverage and debt maturity choices of real estate companies are interdependent, and are not made separately as is often assumed in the literature. We use three-stage least squares (3SLS) regression analysis to explore this interdependence for a sample of listed U.S. real estate companies and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) traded between 1973 and 2006.We find substantial differences in the nature of the relationship between leverage and maturity for the two firm types. Leverage is a determinant of maturity for non-REITs, whereas maturity is a determinant of leverage for REITs. We also find that the drivers of capital structure choices in real estate companies and REITs clearly reflect the effects of the REIT regulation

Leverage, Volatile Future Earnings Growth and Expected Stock Returns

We provide theory and evidence to complement Choi\u27s [RFS, 2013] important new insights on the returns to equity in `value\u27 firms. We show that higher future earnings growth ameliorates the value-reducing effect of leverage and, because the market for earnings is incomplete, reduces the earnings-risk sensitivity of the default option. Ceteris paribus, a levered firm with low (high) earnings growth is more sensitive to the first (second) of these effects thus generating higher (lower) expected returns. We demonstrate this by modeling equity as an Asian-style call option on net earnings and find significant empirical support for our hypotheses