Monetary policy transmission in the euro area: New evidence from micro data on firms and banks

This paper presents an overview of the results of a research project on monetary transmission pursued by the Eurosystem, which has analysed micro data on firms and banks in several countries of the euro area in great detail. There is strong empirical support for an interest rate channel working through firm investment. Furthermore, a credit channel can be identified with firm micro data. On the bank side, there is evidence that lending reacts differently to monetary policy according to bank balance sheet characteristics. In particular, banks that have a less liquid asset composition show a stronger loan supply response. This finding may be due to banks drawing on their liquid assets to cushion the effects of monetary policy on their loan portfolio, which is in line with the existence of close relationships between banks and their loan customers.monetary policy transmission, interest rate channel, credit channel, euro area

A blockchain-based healthcare platform for secure personalised data sharing

Funding: This research is funded by the EU H2020 project SERUMS (grant 826278).To facilitate personalised healthcare provision across Europe, we envision solutions that enable the secure integration and sharing of medical health records. These solutions should address privacy concerns, such as granular access control to personal data, establishing what should be accessible when and by whom, whilst complying with collective regulatory frameworks such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and adhering to international standards on how to manage information security. The proposed healthcare system design integrates technologies such as blockchain and scalable data lakes with adequate system routines to guarantee the secure access of confidential data. In this paper, we present the essential architectural components for the secure integration of medical records in a blockchain-based platform. We present a patient-centric data retrieval approach which incorporates a structured format to compose access rules.Publisher PD

Capability-based governance patterns over the product life-cycle

We investigate patterns of vertical governance over the product life-cycle as function of the capability regime properties imitability and substitutability. We use a novel neo-Schumpeterian model to study emerging governance patterns. We find that, in the era of incremental change, firms prefer vertical specialization. In the era of ferment, no governance form dominates. Imitability and substitutability, in interplay, determine the governance form preferred. High imitability frustrates appropriation and thereby integration for synergistic advantages. However, firms need not vertically specialize: under low substitutability, incompatibilities reduce the advantages of specialization. When both substitutability and imitability are low, firms can appropriate the value of their inventions and there is no combinatorial advantage of specialization, so firms predominantly integrate. If substitutability is high and imitability is low, the combinatorial advantage of specialization balances with the synergistic advantage of integration

Monetary policy transmission in the euro area: New evidence from micro data on firms and banks

International audienceThis paper presents an overview of the results of a research project on monetary transmission pursued by the Eurosystem, which has analysed micro data on firms and banks in several countries of the euro area in great detail. There is strong empirical support for an interest rate channel working through firm investment. Furthermore, a credit channel can be identified with firm micro data. On the bank side, there is evidence that lending reacts differently to monetary policy according to bank balance sheet characteristics. In particular, banks that have a less liquid asset composition show a stronger loan supply response. This finding may be due to banks drawing on their liquid assets to cushion the effects of monetary policy on their loan portfolio, which is in line with the existence of close relationships between banks and their loan customers.Cet article présente une vue d'ensemble des résultats d'un projet de recherche sur les canaux de transmission de la politique monétaire mené par l'Eurosystème, qui a analysé en détail des données individuelles d'entreprises et de banques dans plusieurs pays de la zone Euro. L'évaluation empirique met en évidence un canal du taux d'intérêt sur l'investissement. De plus, le canal large du crédit a été identifié pour différents groupes d'entreprises dans différents pays. Du côté du canal étroit du crédit,l'évaluation empirique montre que les banques qui ont une composition de leur actif moins liquide ont une offre de prêts qui réagit plus fortement aux changements de politique monétaire. Ce résultat peut provenir du fait que certaines banques conserventdes actifs liquides afin d'amortir les effets de la politique monétaire sur leur portefeuille de crédit, ce qui est cohérent avec l'existence de relations étroites entre les banques et leurs emprunteurs

Integrating healthcare data for enhanced citizen-centred care and analytics

This research is funded by the EU H2020 project SERUMS: Securing Medical Data in Smart Patient-Centric Healthcare Systems (grant code 826278).The potential of healthcare systems worldwide is expanding as new medical devices and data sources are regularly presented to healthcare providers which could be used to personalise, improve and revise treatments further. However, there is presently a large gap between the data collected, the systems that store the data, and any ability to perform big data analytics to combinations of such data. This paper suggests a novel approach to integrate data from multiple sources and formats, by providing a uniform structure to the data in a healthcare data lake with multiple zones reflecting how refined the data is: from raw to curated when ready to be consumed or used for analysis. The integration further requires solutions that can be proven to be secure, such as patient-centric data sharing agreements (smart contracts) on a blockchain, and novel privacy-preserving methods for extracting metadata from data sources, originally derived from partially-structured or from completely unstructured data. Work presented here is being developed as part of an EU project with the ultimate aim to develop solutions for integrating healthcare data for enhanced citizen-centred care and analytics across Europe.Publisher PD

A CMOS Compatible Silicon-on-Insulator Polarization Rotator Based on Symmetry Breaking of the Waveguide Cross Section

[EN] A polarization rotator in silicon-on-insulator technology based on breaking the symmetry of the waveguide cross section is reported. The 25-mu m-long device is designed to be integrated with standard grating couplers without the need for extra fabrication steps. Hence, fabrication is carried out by a 2-etch-step complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor compatible process using 193-nm deep ultraviolet lithography. A polarization conversion efficiency of more than -0.85 dB with insertion losses ranging from -1 to -2.5 dB over a wavelength range of 30 nm is demonstrated. © 1989-2012 IEEEThis work was supported by the European Commission under Project HELIOS (pHotonics Electronics functional Integration on CMOS), FP7-224312, TEC2008-06333 SINADEC and PROMETEO-2010-087 R&D Excellency Program (NANOMET).Aamer, M.; Gutiérrez Campo, AM.; Brimont, ACJ.; Vermeulen, D.; Roelkens, G.; Fedeli, J.; Håkansson, OA.... (2012). A CMOS Compatible Silicon-on-Insulator Polarization Rotator Based on Symmetry Breaking of the Waveguide Cross Section. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. 24(22):2031-2034. https://doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2012.2218593S20312034242

Plan for development of case studies - Deliverable Report AD 15.1 WP 15 - Mixtures, HBM and human health risk

This deliverable describes the activities in task 15.3 leading up to the development of cases studies for mixture health effects and outlines the proposed case studies. The proposed case studies are: · Developmental neurotoxicity beyond polybrominated diphenylethers · Heavy metals and nephrotoxicity · Anti-androgenic chemicals and male reproductive health · Chromium (VI), nickel and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and lung cancer · Addressing exposure misclassification in mixture studies The Addendum provides further details about multi-year perspective and timing, as well as detailed budgetary aspects per case study.HBM4EU- Grant agreement 733032 HORIZON2020 Programmeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Retro American

Diesel exhaust is a suggested risk factor for ischemic heart disease (IHD), but evidence from cohorts using quantitative exposure metrics is limited. We examined the impact of respirable elemental carbon (REC), a key surrogate for diesel exhaust, and respirable dust (RD) on IHD mortality, using data from the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study in the United States. Using data from a cohort of male workers followed from 1948–1968 until 1997, we fitted Cox proportional hazards models to estimate hazard ratios for IHD mortality for cumulative and average intensity of exposure to REC and RD. Segmented linear regression models allowed for nonmonotonicity. Hazard ratios for cumulative and average REC exposure declined relative to the lowest exposure category before increasing to 0.79 and 1.25, respectively, in the highest category. Relative to the category containing the segmented regression change points, hazard ratios for the highest category were 1.69 and 1.54 for cumulative and average REC exposure, respectively. Hazard ratios for RD exposure increased across the full exposure range to 1.33 and 2.69 for cumulative and average RD exposure, respectively. Tests for trend were statistically significant for cumulative REC exposure (above the change point) and for average RD exposure. Our findings suggest excess risk of IHD mortality in relation to increased exposure to REC and RD. © 2018 Oxford University Press. All Rights Reserved

Silicon Differential Receiver With Zero-Biased Balanced Detection for Access Networks

[EN] We present an optimized differential receiver in silicon with a minimized footprint and balanced zero-biased Ge photodiodes. The receiver integrates a delay-line with a 2 ¿ 4 multimode interferometer 90° hybrid and two balanced photodiodes for differential quadrature phase-shift keying demodulation. Two receivers are tested, for 10 and 20 Gb/s operation, and well opened eye-diagrams and symbol constellations are obtained with error vector magnitude values as low as 12.5% and 19.57%, respectively. The results confirm the potential of integrated silicon receivers to become key building blocks for future passive optical access networks based on advanced modulation formats. © 1989-2012 IEEE.This work was supported in part by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program under Grant 224312 HELIOS.Aamer, M.; Sotiropoulos, N.; Brimont, ACJ.; Fedeli, J.; Marris-Morini, D.; Cassan, E.; Vivien, L.... (2013). Silicon Differential Receiver With Zero-Biased Balanced Detection for Access Networks. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. 25(13):1207-1210. https://doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2013.2262931S12071210251

Energy and Electron Transfer Dynamics within a Series of Perylene Diimide/Cyclophane Systems.

Artificial photosynthetic systems for solar energy conversion exploit both covalent and supramolecular chemistry to produce favorable arrangements of light-harvesting and redox-active chromophores in space. An understanding of the interplay between key processes for photosynthesis, namely light-harvesting, energy transfer, and photoinduced charge separation and the design of novel, self-assembling components capable of these processes are imperative for the realization of multifunctional integrated systems. We report our investigations on the potential of extended tetracationic cyclophane/perylene diimide systems as components for artificial photosynthetic applications. We show how the selection of appropriate heterocycles, as extending units, allows for tuning of the electron accumulation and photophysical properties of the extended tetracationic cyclophanes. Spectroscopic techniques confirm energy transfer between the extended tetracationic cyclophanes and perylene diimide is ultrafast and quantitative, while the heterocycle specifically influences the energy transfer related parameters and the acceptor excited state.S.T.J.R. thanks the Cambridge Home and European Scholarship Scheme and the Robert Gardiner memorial scholarship. S.T.J.R., A.F. and O.A.S. thank the ERC starting investigator grant ASPiRe (project no. 240629) and the EPSRC (reference no. EP/G060649/1). Femtosecond and nanosecond spectroscopy (R.M.Y.), EPR spectroscopy (M.D.K.) and phosphorescence spectroscopy (Y.W.) were supported as part of the ANSER Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under award no. DE-SC0001059. J.F.S., J.J.H., N.H., N.A.V. and E.D.J. acknowledge the Joint Center of Excellence in Integrated Nano-Systems (JCIN) between KACST and Northwestern University (Project 34-946) for their continued financial support. E.J.D. acknowledges NSF and Ryan fellowships. A.H. and W.M.N. thank the COST Action CM1005 “Supramolecular Chemistry in Water” and the DFG (grant NA-686/5) for financial support.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Chemical Society via http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5b1032