Fails-to-deliver, short selling, and market quality

We investigate the collective net impact on market liquidity and pricing efficiency of equity trades that result in fails to deliver (“FTDs”). Given the nature of the US electronic trade settlement system for stocks, such “FTD trades” should originate almost exclusively from short sales, and we confirm this empirically on the basis of a natural experiment arising from a regulatory event. For a sample of 1,492 NYSE common stocks over a 42-month period from 2005 to 2008, we find that such trades lead to the same beneficial impact on liquidity and pricing efficiency as short sales that result in timely delivery. We do not find evidence that such trades are causally related to subsequent price declines or distortions, or to the failure of financial firms during the 2008 financial crisis

Naked short selling: The emperor`s new clothes?

Regulatory and media concern has focused heavily on the potentially manipulative distortion of market prices associated with naked short selling. However, naked shorting can also have beneficial effects for liquidity and pricing efficiency. We empirically investigate the impact of naked short-selling on market quality, and find that naked shorting leads to significant reduction in positive pricing errors, the volatility of stock price returns, bid-ask spreads, and pricing error volatility. We study naked shorting surrounding the demise of financial institutions hardest hit by the financial crisis in 2008 and find no evidence that stock price declines were caused by naked shorting. We also find that naked short-selling intensifies after rather than before credit downgrade announcements during the 2008 financial crisis. In general, we find that naked short sellers respond to public news and intensify their activity after price declines rather than triggering these price declines. We study the impact of the SEC ban on naked short selling of financial securities during July and August 2008, and find that the ban did not slow the price decline of those securities and had a negative impact on liquidity and pricing efficiency. Finally, after examining the speeds of mean reversion of pricing errors and order imbalances, we infer that Regulation SHO was successful in curbing the impact of manipulative naked short selling, and this reduction in the impact of manipulative naked shorting has continued through the 2008 financial crisis. Overall, our empirical results are in sharp contrast with the extremely negative preconceptions that appear to exist among media commentators and market regulators in relation to naked shortselling. --Naked Short Selling,Short Selling,Pricing Efficiency

Closed Form Expressions for Delay to Ramp Inputs for On-Chip VLSI RC Interconnect

In high speed digital integrated circuits, interconnects delay can be significant and should be included for accurate analysis. Delay analysis for interconnect has been done widely by using moments of the impulse response, from the explicit Elmore delay (the first moment of the impulse response) expression, to moment matching methods which creates reduced order trans impedance and transfer function approximations. However, the Elmore delay is fast becoming ineffective for deep submicron technologies, and reduced order transfer function delays are impractical for use as early-phase design metrics or as design optimization cost functions. This paper describes an approach for fitting moments of the impulse response to probability density functions so that delay can be estimated accurately at an early physical design stage. For RC trees it is demonstrated that the inverse gamma function provides a provably stable approximation. We used the PERI [13] (Probability distribution function Extension for Ramp Inputs) technique that extends delay metrics for ramp inputs to the more general and realistic non-step inputs. The accuracy of our model is justified with the results compared with that of SPICE simulations. Keywords¾ Moment Matching, On-Chip Interconnect, Probability Distribution function, Cumulative Distribution function, Delay calculation, Slew Calculation, Beta Distribution, VLSI

Intracranial extramedullary hematopoiesis in a thalassemic girl: A Case report

Beta-thalassemia is a haemolytic disorder with ineffective erythropoiesis and red blood cell destruction. Extramedullary hematopoiesis is one of the complications associated with beta-thalassemia. Extramedullary hematopoiesis is the ectopic production of blood cells outside the marrow in liver, spleen, lymph nodes and many other sites. Intracranial involvement is extremely rare. We report a case of 17-year-old girl with thalassemia major and intracranial extramedullary hematopoiesis who came with the complaints of seizure, headache and generalised weakness. Imaging and blood profile leads to the final diagnosis with MRI playing a key role and patient was managed successfully. With this report, we discuss the imaging findings of intracranial extramedullary hematopoiesis in details

Genetic variability in wood apple (Feronia limonia) from Gujarat

Considering the wide genetic diversity in wood apple (Feronia limonia) in terms of fruit shape, size, colour and qualitative characters, an extensive survey of diversity rich area of Gujarat was made and twenty five genotypes in the form of fruits were collected from the different locations during 2015-16 to identify elite genotypes having desirable horticultural traits. All the existing trees are of seedling origin which offer a great scope for selection of suitable genotypes of high yield potentiality with good fruit quality traits having precocity in bearing, less spine intensity and other desirable characters. Variations in morphological characters were noticed in the naturally grown trees at their locations, whereas chemical analysis was done in laboratory of the station. Fruits of genotype, viz. GW-1, GW-4, GW-12, GW-14, GW-16, GW-18, Gw-20 and GW-24 were observed to be round, whereas flattened round in GW-2, GW-5, GW-6, GW-8, GW-9, GW-10, GW-13, GW-17, GW-21and GW-23; triangular in GW-7 and GW-11, and oblong in GW-3, GW-15, GW-19, GW-22 and GW-25 fruit shape was observed. Physico-chemical analysis of fruits divulged that the fruit weight ranged between 156.45-432.93g, while fruit length and width between 5.25-9.46 cm and 5.10-9.29 cm, respectively. Shell thickness, shell weight, pulp weight, number of seeds per fruit and seed weight per fruit ranged between 0.31 to 0.47cm, 67.94-109.77g, 80.04 to 319.32g, 132.34 to 525.81 and 2.36 to 7.93g, respectively. Results of study revealed that the different genotypes exhibited wide range of variability in qualitative characters, viz. total soluble solids (11.07-19.36 0Brix), acidity (3.23-6.86%), ascorbic acid (7.08-19.60mg/ per100 g), potassium (1.29-1.86%), phosphorus (0.037- 0.078%), calcium (0.11- 0.39%), magnesium (3.18-5.92 %), sodium (3.07-7.54%) and pectin content (1.39-1.65%), among all the genotypes studied for their qualitative characters

Chemical Protection Studies of Activated Carbon Spheres based Permeable Protective Clothing Against Sulfur Mustard, a Chemical Warfare Agent

Technological advancements in the field of chemical threat have made it possible to create extremely dangerous chemical warfare agents (CWA). Hence, the effective protection of personnel is very important in a chemical warfare scenario amidst the current climate of terrorism awareness. In particular, body protection plays a substantial role in the chemical defence considering the urgency of situation in the nuclear, biological and chemical environment. Activated carbon spheres (ACS) based permeable chemical protective clothing (coverall) was developed for protection against CWA. The adsorbent material i.e, ACS used in this protective clothing provided higher adsorption capacity (1029 mg/g in terms of iodine) and low thermal burden (34 °C WBGT index) compared to earlier indigenously developed NBC suit. This article focuses on the extensive evaluation of chemical protective clothing against sulfur mustard (HD), a CWA. The results revealed that the developed protective clothing provided more than 24 h protection against HD. This chemical protective suit is light weight (< 2.75 kg for XL size). It also has higher air permeability (> 30 cm3/s/cm2) as well as less water vapour resistance (< 9.6 m2Pa/W). With continued innovations in materials and attention to key challenges it is expected that advanced, multifunction chemical protective suit will play a pivotal role in the CWA protection scenario

Computed tomography texture-based radiomics analysis in gallbladder cancer: initial experience

Aim of the study: To investigate computed tomography (CT) texture parameters in suspected gallbladder cancer (GBC) and assess its utility in predicting histopathological grade and overall survival. Material and methods: This retrospective pilot study included consecutive patients with clinically suspected GBC. CT images, clinical, and histological or cytological data were retrieved from the database. CT images were reviewed by two radiologists. A single axial CT section in the portal venous phase was selected for texture analysis. Radiomic feature extraction was done using commercially available research software. Results: Thirty-eight patients (31 females, mean age 53.1 years) were included. Malignancy was confirmed in 29 patients in histopathology or cytology analysis, and the rest had no features of malignancy. Exophytic gallbladder mass with associated gallbladder wall thickening was present in 22 (58%) patients. Lymph nodal, liver, and omental metastases were present in 10, 1, and 3 patients, respectively. The mean overall survival was 9.7 months. There were significant differences in mean and kurtosis at medium texture scales to differentiate moderately differentiated and poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma (p < 0.05). The only texture parameter that was significantly associated with survival was kurtosis (p = 0.020) at medium texture scales. In multivariate analysis, factors found to be significantly associated with length of overall survival were mean number of positive pixels (p = 0.02), skewness (p = -0.046), kurtosis (0.018), and standard deviation (p = 0.045). Conclusions: Our preliminary results highlight the potential utility of CT texture-based radiomics analysis in patients with GBC. Medium texture scale parameters including both mean and kurtosis, or kurtosis alone, may help predict the histological grade and survival, respectively

Development and Application of High-Density Axiom Cajanus SNP Array with 56K SNPs to Understand the Genome Architecture of Released Cultivars and Founder Genotypes

As one of the major outputs of next-generation sequencing (NGS), a large number of genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been developed in pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Huth.]. However, SNPs require a genotyping platform or assay to be used in different evolutionary studies or in crop improvement programs. Therefore, we developed an Axiom Cajanus SNP array with 56K SNPs uniformly distributed across the genome and assessed its utility in a genetic diversity study. From the whole-genome resequencing (WGRS) data on 104 pigeonpea lines, ∼2 million sequence variations (SNPs and insertion–deletions [InDels]) were identified, from which a subset of 56,512 unique and informative sequence variations were selected to develop the array. The Axiom Cajanus SNP array developed was used for genotyping 103 pigeonpea lines encompassing 63 cultivars released between 1960 and 2014 and 40 breeding, germplasm, and founder lines. Genotyping data thus generated on 103 pigeonpea lines provided 51,201 polymorphic SNPs and InDels. Genetic diversity analysis provided in-depth insights into the genetic architecture and trends in temporal diversity in pigeonpea cultivars. Therefore, the continuous use of the high-density Axiom Cajanus SNP array developed will accelerate high-resolution trait mapping, marker-assisted breeding, and genomic selection efforts in pigeonpea