What Role Can an International Financial Centre's Law Play in the Development of a Sunrise Industry? The Case of Hong Kong and Solar Powered Investments

How can international financial centres like Hong Kong increase assets under management – and thus their size and ranking? Most policymakers and their advisors wrongly answer this question by focusing on financial institutions, and the law that governs them. Instead, policymakers need to start by looking at actual markets. What new tastes and technologies need funding? How can such funding fit into already existing geographies of production, distribution and finance? In this paper, we show how a focus on funding sunrise industries can help increase assets under management for the financial institutions operating in an international financial centre like Hong Kong. We show – using the specific example the photovoltaic (solar power) sector – how changes in financial law need to be contingent on market needs. We specifically show how legal changes which promote the securitisation of solar assets (and the sale of these securities) can help increase Hong Kong’s financial institutions’ assets under management. By using this specific case, we hope to provide insight into the broader question of how technological change, geography, and financial law interact.preprin

CELiS (Compact Eyesafe Lidar System): A Portable 1.5 μm Elastic Lidar System for Rapid Aerosol Concentration Measurement

CELiS (Compact Eyesafe Lidar System) is a tactical elastic lidar system commissioned by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) for the purpose of air quality environmental compliance issues surrounding the offroad use of wheeled and tracked vehicles. A complete CELiS instrument weighs less than 300 lbs., is less than 2 cubic meters in volume and uses 700 W of 120V AC power. CELiS has a working range of better than 2km and a range resolution of 5m

What Determines M&A Legal and Financial Advisors’ Competitiveness in an International Financial Centre: Using China's Going Out Policy as a Natural Experiment

Roughly 60% of all publically announced advisors to China’s 'Going Out' M&A transactions from 2000 to 2014 were from international financial centres (representing over 70% of deal value). Why did advisors, located so far away from both acquirer and target, manage to dominate the M&A advisory market in the early stages of the 'Going Out' policy? What can we learn from the smaller advisors located outside of these financial centres who managed to capture a growing share of this business in 'Going Out’s' more recent stages? In this paper, we hypothesize the existence of a 'legal complexity externality' that had the effect of increasing a financial centre’s ability to attract international business. We look at the way Going Out advisors have responded to advisory opportunities using what management theorists call 'blue ocean strategy.' We show that relationships across geography changed, as large global advisors lost their share of advisory business to advisors outside of international financial centres due to the interplay of these legal complexity externalities and blue ocean strategies. As cities helps foster changes in the law governing Going Out transactions – and as financial and legal advisors adapted their strategies to compete – cities gained or lost Going Out business. We provide 5 recommendations to existing and aspiring international financial centres looking to capture a larger share of global M&A and other investment advisory business.postprin

Aglite: A 3-Wavelength Lidar System for Quantitative Assessment of Agricultural Air Quality and Whole Facility Emissions

Ground based remote sensing technologies such as scanning lidar systems (light detection and ranging) are increasingly being used to characterize ambient aerosols due to key advantages (i.e., wide area of regard (10 km2), fast response time (s-1), high spatial resolution (\u3c10 \u3em) and high sensitivity). Scanning lidar allows for 3D imaging of atmospheric motion and aerosol variability, which can be used to quantitatively evaluate particulate matter (PM) concentrations and emissions. Space Dynamics Laboratory, in conjunction with USDA ARS, has developed and successfully deployed a lidar system called Aglite to characterize PM in diverse settings. Aglite is a portable scanning elastic lidar system with three wavelengths (355, 532, and 1064 nm), 6 m long range bins, and an effective range from 0.5 to 15 km. Filter-based PM samplers, optical particle counters, and various meteorological instruments were deployed to provide environmental and PM conditions for use in the lidar retrieval method. The developed retrieval algorithm extracts aerosol optical parameters, which were constrained by the point measurements, and converts return signals to PM concentrations. Once calibrated, the Aglite system can map the spatial distribution and temporal variation of the PM concentrations. Whole facility or operation-based emission rates were calculated from the lidar PM data with a mass balance approach. Concentration comparisons with upwind and downwind point sensors were made to verify data quality; lidar-derived PM levels were usually in good agreement with point sensor measurements. Comparisons of lidar-based emissions with emissions estimated through other methods using point sensor data generally show good agreement

Particulate-Matter Emission Estimates from Agricultural Spring-Tillage Operations Using LIDAR and Inverse Modeling

Particulate-matter (PM) emissions from a typical spring agricultural tillage sequence and a strip–till conservation tillage sequence in California’s San Joaquin Valley were estimated to calculate the emissions control efficiency (η) of the strip–till conservation management practice (CMP). Filter-based PM samplers, PM-calibrated optical particle counters (OPCs), and a PM-calibrated light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system were used to monitored upwind and downwind PM concentrations during May and June 2008. Emission rates were estimated through inverse modeling coupled with the filter and OPC measurements and through applying a mass balance to the PM concentrations derived from LIDAR data. Sampling irregularities and errors prevented the estimation of emissions from 42% of the sample periods based on filter samples. OPC and LIDAR datasets were sufficiently complete to estimate emissions and the strip–till CMP η, which were ∼90% for all size fractions in both datasets. Tillage time was also reduced by 84%. Calculated emissions for some operations were within the range of values found in published studies, while other estimates were significantly higher than literature values. The results demonstrate that both PM emissions and tillage time may be reduced by an order of magnitude through the use of a strip–till conservation tillage CMP when compared to spring tillage activities

FY 2005 Quantum Cascade Laser Alignment System Final Report

The Alignment Lasers Task of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's (PNNL's) Remote Spectroscopy Project (Project PL211I) is a co-funded project between DOE NA-22 and a Classified Client. This project, which began in the second half of FY03, involved building and delivering a Quantum Cascade (QC) Laser Alignment System to be used for testing the pupil alignment of an infrared sensor by measuring the response from four pairs of diametrically opposed QC lasers. PNNL delivered the system in FY04 and provided technical assistance in FY05 culminating into a successful demonstration of the system. This project evolved from the Laser Development Task of PL211I, which is involved in developing novel laser technology to support development of advanced chemical sensors for detecting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The laser systems are based on quantum cascade (QC) lasers, a new semiconductor source in the infrared. QC lasers can be tailored to emit light throughout the infrared region (3.5 ? 17 ?m) and have high output power and stability. Thus, these lasers provide an infrared source with superb power and spectral stability enabling them to be used for applications such as alignment and calibration in addition to chemical sensing

Measurement and Theory of Gas-Phase Ion Mobility Shifts Resulting from Isotopomer Mass Distribution Changes

The unanticipated discovery of recent ultra-high-resolution ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) measurements revealing that isotopomers—compounds that differ only in the isotopic substitution sites—can be separated has raised questions as to the physical basis for their separation. A study comparing IMS separations for two isotopomer sets in conjunction with theory and simulations accounting for ion rotational effects provides the first-ever prediction of rotation-mediated shifts. The simulations produce observable mobility shifts due to differences in gas−ion collision frequency and translational-to-rotational energy transfer. These differences can be attributed to distinct changes in the moment of inertia and center of mass between isotopomers. The simulations are in broad agreement with the observed experiments and consistent with relative mobility differences between isotopomers. These results provide a basis for refining IMS theory and a new foundation to obtain additional structural insights through IMS

Broadening the horizon – level 2.5 of the HUPO-PSI format for molecular interactions

BACKGROUND: Molecular interaction Information is a key resource in modern biomedical research. Publicly available data have previously been provided in a broad array of diverse formats, making access to this very difficult. The publication and wide implementation of the Human Proteome Organisation Proteomics Standards Initiative Molecular Interactions (HUPO PSI-MI) format in 2004 was a major step towards the establishment of a single, unified format by which molecular interactions should be presented, but focused purely on protein-protein interactions. RESULTS: The HUPO-PSI has further developed the PSI-MI XML schema to enable the description of interactions between a wider range of molecular types, for example nucleic acids, chemical entities, and molecular complexes. Extensive details about each supported molecular interaction can now be captured, including the biological role of each molecule within that interaction, detailed description of interacting domains, and the kinetic parameters of the interaction. The format is supported by data management and analysis tools and has been adopted by major interaction data providers. Additionally, a simpler, tab-delimited format MITAB2.5 has been developed for the benefit of users who require only minimal information in an easy to access configuration. CONCLUSION: The PSI-MI XML2.5 and MITAB2.5 formats have been jointly developed by interaction data producers and providers from both the academic and commercial sector, and are already widely implemented and well supported by an active development community. PSI-MI XML2.5 enables the description of highly detailed molecular interaction data and facilitates data exchange between databases and users without loss of information. MITAB2.5 is a simpler format appropriate for fast Perl parsing or loading into Microsoft Excel