Exploring the effects of capital movements on M1 and the economy

Capital movements ; Money supply ; Investments, Foreign - United States

Does This App Ask For Too Much Data? The Role Of Privacy Perceptions In User Behavior Towards Facebook Applications And Permission Dialogs

Since Facebook has opened its platform to third-party developers, privacy concerns surrounding applications are mounting. By granting “permission” to an app request, users allow app providers to circumvent their privacy settings endangering their own privacy and that of their friends. Considering a rising use of Facebook apps and a paucity of research in this area, there is a pressing need to understand the rationale behind user acceptance of applications on Facebook and the role of different information items requested in this process. This study draws on experimental and survey findings gained on the basis of responses of 199 Facebook users. We find that users are affected by the number of information items included in a “permission” request, even though their concerns can be weakened by peer influence. Users tend to be particularly cautious when granting access to information of their friends, which rejects the assumption of “privacy egoism”. Exploratory Factor Analysis reveals that in terms of privacy concerns users tend to categorize requested information items across five major clusters - friends’, social, extended CV, basic CV and visual information. Our findings are relevant for Facebook page owners who employ applications to increase user engagement and learn more about their audience

Envy on Facebook: a hidden threat to users' life satisfaction?

The wealth of social information presented on Facebook is astounding. While these affordances allow users to keep up-to-date, they also produce a basis for social comparison and envy on an unprecedented scale. Even though envy may endanger users’ life satisfaction and lead to platform avoidance, no study exists uncovering this dynamics. To close this gap, we build on responses of 584 Facebook users collected as part of two independent studies. In study 1, we explore the scale, scope, and nature of envy incidents triggered by Facebook. In study 2, the role of envy feelings is examined as a mediator between intensity of passive following on Facebook and users’ life satisfaction. Confirming full mediation, we demonstrate that passive following exacerbates envy feelings, which decrease life satisfaction. From a provider’s perspective, our findings signal that users frequently perceive Facebook as a stressful environment, which may, in the long-run, endanger platform sustainability

The Parkinson's disease-linked Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) is required for insulin-stimulated translocation of GLUT4

Mutations within Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) are associated with late-onset Parkinson's disease. The physiological function of LRRK2 and molecular mechanism underlying the pathogenic role of LRRK2 mutations remain uncertain. Here, we investigated the role of LRRK2 in intracellular signal transduction. We find that deficiency of Lrrk2 in rodents affects insulin-dependent translocation of glucose transporter type 4 (GLUT4). This deficit is restored during aging by prolonged insulin-dependent activation of protein kinase B (PKB, Akt) and Akt substrate of 160 kDa (AS160), and is compensated by elevated basal expression of GLUT4 on the cell surface. Furthermore, we find a crucial role of Rab10 phosphorylation by LRRK2 for efficient insulin signal transduction. Translating our findings into human cell lines, we find comparable molecular alterations in fibroblasts from Parkinson's patients with the known pathogenic G2019S LRRK2 mutation. Our results highlight the role of LRRK2 in insulin-dependent signalling with potential therapeutic implications

Conformational control of benzophenone-sensitized charge transfer in dinucleotides

Charge transfer in DNA cannot be understood without addressing the complex conformational flexibility, which occurs on a wide range of timescales. In order to reduce this complexity four dinucleotide models 1X consisting of benzophenone linked by a phosphodiester to one of the natural nucleosides X = A, G, T, C were studied in water and methanol. The theoretical work focuses on the dynamics and electronic structure of 1G. Predominant conformations in the two solvents were obtained by molecular dynamics simulations. 1G in MeOH adopts mainly an open geometry with a distance of 12–16 Å between the two aromatic parts. In H2O the two parts of 1G form primarily a stacked conformation yielding a distance of 5–6 Å. The low-lying excited states were investigated by electronic structure theory in a QM/MM environment for representative snapshots of the trajectories. Photo-induced intramolecular charge transfer in the S1 state occurs exclusively in the stacked conformation. Ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy with 1X reveals fast charge transfer from S1 in both solvents with varying yields. Significant charge transfer from the T1 state is only found for the nucleobases with the lowest oxidation potential: in H2O, charge transfer occurs with 3.2 × 109 s−1 for 1A and 6.0 × 109 s−1 for 1G. The reorganization energy remains nearly unchanged going from MeOH to the more polar H2O. The electronic coupling is rather low even for the stacked conformation with HAB = 3 meV and explains the moderate charge transfer rates. The solvent controls the conformational distribution and therefore gates the charge transfer due to differences in distance and stacking

Evaluation of the LEP Centre-of-Mass Energy Above the W-Pair Production Threshold

Knowledge of the centre-of-mass energy at LEP2 is of primary importance to set the absolute energy scale for the measurement of the W-boson mass. The beam energy above 80 GeV is derived from continuous measurements of the magnetic bending field by 16 NMR probes situated in a number of the LEP dipoles. The relationship between the fields measured by the probes and the beam energy is calibrated against precise measurements of the average beam energy between 41 and 55 GeV made using the resonant depolarisation technique. The linearity of the relationship is tested by comparing the fields measured by the probes with the total bending field measured by a flux loop. This test results in the largest contribution to the systematic uncertainty. Several further corrections are applied to derive the the centre-of-mass energies at each interaction point. In addition the centre-of-mass energy spread is evaluated. The beam energy has been determined with a precision of 25 MeV for the data taken in 1997, corresponding to a relative precision of 2.7x10^{-4}. This is small in comparison to the present uncertainty on the W mass measurement at LEP. However, the ultimate statistical precision on the W mass with the full LEP2 data sample should be around 25 MeV, and a smaller uncertainty on the beam energy is desirable. Prospects for improvements are outlined.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, Latex, epsfig; replaced by version accepted by European Physical Journal

The Sound of Sonoluminescence

We consider an air bubble in water under conditions of single bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL) and evaluate the emitted sound field nonperturbatively for subsonic gas-liquid interface motion. Sound emission being the dominant damping mechanism, we also implement the nonperturbative sound damping in the Rayleigh-Plesset equation for the interface motion. We evaluate numerically the sound pulse emitted during bubble collapse and compare the nonperturbative and perturbative results, showing that the usual perturbative description leads to an overestimate of the maximal surface velocity and maximal sound pressure. The radius vs. time relation for a full SBSL cycle remains deceptively unaffected.Comment: 25 pages; LaTex and 6 attached ps figure files. Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Demographic variation in space and time : implications for conservation targeting

The dynamics of wild populations are governed by demographic rates which vary spatially and/or temporally in response to environmental conditions. Conservation actions for widespread but declining populations could potentially exploit this variation to target locations (or years) in which rates are low, but only if consistent spatial or temporal variation in demographic rates occurs. Using long-term demographic data for wild birds across Europe, we show that productivity tends to vary between sites (consistently across years), while survival rates tend to vary between years (consistently across sites), and that spatial synchrony is more common in survival than productivity. Identifying the conditions associated with low demographic rates could therefore facilitate spatially targeted actions to improve productivity or (less feasibly) forecasting and temporally targeting actions to boost survival. Decomposing spatio-temporal variation in demography can thus be a powerful tool for informing conservation policy and for revealing appropriate scales for actions to influence demographic rates.Peer reviewe