Bank competition and financial stability

Under the traditional"competition-fragility"view, more bank competition erodes market power, decreases profit margins, and results in reduced franchise value that encourages bank risk taking. Under the alternative"competition-stability"view, more market power in the loan market may result in greater bank risk as the higher interest rates charged to loan customers make it more difficult to repay loans and exacerbate moral hazard and adverse selection problems. But even if market power in the loan market results in riskier loan portfolios, the overall risks of banks need not increase if banks protect their franchise values by increasing their equity capital or engaging in other risk-mitigating techniques. The authors test these theories by regressing measures of loan risk, bank risk, and bank equity capital on several measures of market power, as well as indicators of the business environment, using data for 8,235 banks in 23 developed nations. The results suggest that - consistent with the traditional"competition-fragility"view - banks with a greater degree of market power also have less overall risk exposure. The data also provide some support for one element of the"competition-stability"view - that market power increases loan portfolio risk. The authors show that this risk may be offset in part by higher equity capital ratios.Banks&Banking Reform,Debt Markets,Access to Finance,,Markets and Market Access

Transversity and Collins functions from SIDIS and e+e- data

A global analysis of the experimental data on azimuthal asymmetries in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS), from the HERMES and COMPASS Collaborations, and in e+e- --> h1 h2 X processes, from the BELLE Collaboration, is performed. It results in the extraction of the Collins fragmentation function and, for the first time, of the transversity distribution function for u and d quarks. These turn out to have opposite signs and to be sizably smaller than their positivity bounds. Predictions for the azimuthal asymmetry A_{UT}^{sin(phi_h + phi_S)}, as will soon be measured at JLab and COMPASS operating on a transversely polarized proton target, are then presented.Comment: Revised version to appear in Phys. Rev. D. Few misprints corrected, new figure

The Sivers Function from SIDIS Data

We study the Sivers effect in transverse single spin asymmetries (SSA) for pion and kaon production in Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS) processes. We perform a fit of A^{sin(phi_h-phi_S)}_UT taking into account the recent data from HERMES and COMPASS Collaborations, which allow a new determination of the Sivers distribution functions for quark and anti-quark with u, d and also s flavours. Estimates for forthcoming SIDIS experiments at COMPASS and JLab are given.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. To appear in the proceedings of the XVI International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects, DIS 2008, London, U.K., 7-11 April 200

Heavy Metals Distribution and Pollution in the Sediments of the Wadi Gaza Mouth, Eastern Mediterranean Coast, Palestine

Wadi Gaza is the most important wetland in Gaza Strip. Due to the difficult economic conditions, the Israeli occupation and lack of the resources, Wadi Gaza became a place for solid and liquid waste disposal from surrounding provinces. The aim of this study is to assess the heavy metals in the sediments of the Wadi Gaza, North, and South of downstream along the beach of Gaza Strip. This was achieved through sediment sampling along the course of the Wadi downstream; north and south of the beach sands, and the geochemical analysis was done in the Ministry of Health Laboratories. The concentrations of Mn, Zn, Ni, Cd, Cu, and Pb were determined in the sediments, using atomic absorption spectrophotometer

Geometry: The leading parameter for the Poisson’s ratio of bending-dominated cellular solids

Control over the deformation behaviour that a cellular structure shows in response to imposed external forces is a requirement for the effective design of mechanical metamaterials, in particular those with negative Poisson’s ratio. This article sheds light on the old question of the relationship between geometric microstructure and mechanical response, by comparison of the deformation properties of bar-and-joint-frameworks with those of their realisation as a cellular solid made from linear-elastic material. For ordered planar tessellation models, we find a classification in terms of the number of degrees of freedom of the framework model: first, in cases where the geometry uniquely prescribes a single deformation mode of the framework model, the mechanical deformation and Poisson’s ratio of the linearly-elastic cellular solid closely follow those of the unique deformation mode; the result is a bending-dominated deformation with negligible dependence of the effective Poisson’s ratio on the underlying material’s Poisson’s ratio and small values of the effective Young’s modulus. Second, in the case of rigid structures or when geometric degeneracy prevents the bending-dominated deformation mode, the effective Poisson’s ratio is material-dependent and the Young’s modulus View the MathML sourceE˜cs large. All analysed structures of this type have positive values of the Poisson’s ratio and large values of View the MathML sourceE˜cs. Third, in the case, where the framework has multiple deformation modes, geometry alone does not suffice to determine the mechanical deformation. These results clarify the relationship between mechanical properties of a linear-elastic cellular solid and its corresponding bar-and-joint framework abstraction. They also raise the question if, in essence, auxetic behaviour is restricted to the geometry-guided class of bending-dominated structures corresponding to unique mechanisms, with inherently low values of the Young’s modulus

Local Anisotropy of Fluids using Minkowski Tensors

Statistics of the free volume available to individual particles have previously been studied for simple and complex fluids, granular matter, amorphous solids, and structural glasses. Minkowski tensors provide a set of shape measures that are based on strong mathematical theorems and easily computed for polygonal and polyhedral bodies such as free volume cells (Voronoi cells). They characterize the local structure beyond the two-point correlation function and are suitable to define indices $0\leq \beta_\nu^{a,b}\leq 1$ of local anisotropy. Here, we analyze the statistics of Minkowski tensors for configurations of simple liquid models, including the ideal gas (Poisson point process), the hard disks and hard spheres ensemble, and the Lennard-Jones fluid. We show that Minkowski tensors provide a robust characterization of local anisotropy, which ranges from $\beta_\nu^{a,b}\approx 0.3$ for vapor phases to $\beta_\nu^{a,b}\to 1$ for ordered solids. We find that for fluids, local anisotropy decreases monotonously with increasing free volume and randomness of particle positions. Furthermore, the local anisotropy indices $\beta_\nu^{a,b}$ are sensitive to structural transitions in these simple fluids, as has been previously shown in granular systems for the transition from loose to jammed bead packs

Senior Leonard Hayes Wins National Piano Competition

Lawrence University’s Leonard Hayes, a senior from Dallas, Texas, won the recent Young Artists’ Division of the 2011 Tourgee Debose National Piano Competition conducted at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La. This was Hayes’ second first-place showing in the competition having previously won the Tourgee Debose’s sophomore division in 2009. Hayes received a first-place prize of $1,000 for his winning performance of Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata Op. 90,” Cesar Franck’s “Poco Allegro and Fugue” and two movements from George Walker’s “Piano Sonata No. 2.” A third-place finisher in the 2010 National Association of Negro Musicians’ Piano Scholarship competition, Hayes studies in the piano studio of Catherine Kautsky

Robot-mediated interviews: : Do robots possess advantages over human interviewers when talking to children with special needs?

Wood L.J., Dautenhahn K., Lehmann H., Robins B., Rainer A., Syrdal D.S. (2013) 'Robot-Mediated Interviews: Do Robots Possess Advantages over Human Interviewers When Talking to Children with Special Needs?', In: Herrmann G., Pearson M.J., Lenz A., Bremner P., Spiers A., Leonards U. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8239. Springer, Cham Available online at doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-02675-6-6 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013Children that have a disability are up to four times more likely to be a victim of abuse than typically developing children. However, the number of cases that result in prosecution is relatively low. One of the factors influencing this low prosecution rate is communication difficulties. Our previous research has shown that typically developing children respond to a robotic interviewer very similar compared to a human interviewer. In this paper we conduct a follow up study investigating the possibility of Robot-Mediated Interviews with children that have various special needs. In a case study we investigated how 5 children with special needs aged 9 to 11 responded to the humanoid robot KASPAR compared to a human in an interview scenario. The measures used in this study include duration analysis of responses, detailed analysis of transcribed data, questionnaire responses and data from engagement coding. The main questions in the interviews varied in difficulty and focused on the theme of animals and pets. The results from quantitative data analysis reveal that the children interacted with KASPAR in a very similar manner to how they interacted with the human interviewer, providing both interviewers with similar information and amounts of information regardless of question difficulty. However qualitative analysis suggests that some children may have been more engaged with the robotic interviewer