Financial Market Efficiency: Analysis of bond and derivatives market

1 In the economy, efficiency is essential for the wealth of nations, firms, and individuals. The role of financial market is getting more and more crucial in the modern economy. Consequently, efficiency of the financial market has become one of the core factors in the conomic development. The modern financial market system has rapidly developed in a very short time period. Like a growing business, the financial market has been attempting to put its numerous fascinating ideas and theories into practice for a single aim � wealth creation or maximization of scarce capital resources. Having had the common denominator of wealth creation or maximization, the financial market has had troubles in achieving the goal in an efficient way. If the financial market did not perform efficiently, it could lead into a lower economic activity and productivity as a result of the failure of the best use of scarce capital resources. Based on the debt and derivatives markets, this paper will examine how efficiently the two financial markets are functioning and contributing to the maximization of market participants' wealth or utilities. Considering the fact that accurate estimation and calculation of the risks and returns are the key factors in investment, there will be a discussion on how financial instruments in the debt and derivatives market are structured and priced from a fair valuation perspective. Interest rate risk will be the main topic in the debt market along with how credit risk is managed in the derivatives market

Finger-triggered portable PDMS suction cup for equipment-free microfluidic pumping

This study presents a finger-triggered portable polydimethylsiloxane suction cup that enables equipment-free microfluidic pumping. The key feature of this method is that its operation only involves a “pressing-and-releasing” action for the cup placed at the outlet of a microfluidic device, which transports the fluid at the inlet toward the outlet through a microchannel. This method is simple, but effective and powerful. The cup is portable and can easily be fabricated from a three-dimensional printed mold, used without any pre-treatment, reversibly bonded to microfluidic devices without leakage, and applied to various material-based microfluidic devices. The effect of the suction cup geometry and fabrication conditions on the pumping performance was investigated. Furthermore, we demonstrated the practical applications of the suction cup by conducting an equipment-free pumping of thermoplastic-based microfluidic devices and water-in-oil droplet generation.11Yscopu

Ultraviolet photodepletion spectroscopy of dibenzo-18-crown-6-ether complexes with alkali metal cations

Ultraviolet photodepletion spectra of dibenzo-18-crown-6-ether complexes with alkali metal cations (M+-DB18C6, M = Cs, Rb, K, Na, and Li) were obtained in the gas phase using electrospray ionization quadrupole ion-trap reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The spectra exhibited a few distinct absorption bands in the wavenumber region of 35450−37800 cm^(−1). The lowest-energy band was tentatively assigned to be the origin of the S_0-S_1 transition, and the second band to a vibronic transition arising from the “benzene breathing” mode in conjunction with symmetric or asymmetric stretching vibration of the bonds between the metal cation and the oxygen atoms in DB18C6. The red shifts of the origin bands were observed in the spectra as the size of the metal cation in M^+-DB18C6 increased from Li^+ to Cs^+. We suggested that these red shifts arose mainly from the decrease in the binding energies of larger-sized metal cations to DB18C6 at the electronic ground state. These size effects of the metal cations on the geometric and electronic structures, and the binding properties of the complexes at the S_0 and S_1 states were further elucidated by theoretical calculations using density functional and time-dependent density functional theories

Coordinated Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarms in Autonomous Mobile Access Applications

This paper proposes a novel centralized training and distributed execution (CTDE)-based multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) method for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) control in autonomous mobile access applications. For the purpose, a single neural network is utilized in centralized training for cooperation among multiple agents while maximizing the total quality of service (QoS) in mobile access applications.Comment: 2 pages, 4 figure

Overexpression of alfalfa mitochondrial HSP23 in prokaryotic and eukaryotic model systems confers enhanced tolerance to salinity and arsenic stress

The cloning and characterization of a gene (MsHSP23) coding for a heat shock protein in alfalfa in a prokaryotic and model plant system is described. MsHSP23 contains a 633 bp ORF encoding a polypeptide of 213 amino acids and exhibits greater sequence similarity to mitochondrial sHSPs from dicotyledons than to those from monocotyledons. When expressed in bacteria, recombinant MsHSP23 conferred tolerance to salinity and arsenic stress. Furthermore, MsHSP23 was cloned in a plant expressing vector and transformed into tobacco, a eukaryotic model organism. The transgenic plants exhibited enhanced tolerance to salinity and arsenic stress under ex vitro conditions. In comparison to wild type plants, the transgenic plants exhibited significantly lower electrolyte leakage. Moreover, the transgenic plants had superior germination rates when placed on medium containing arsenic. Taken together, these overexpression results imply that MsHSP23 plays an important role in salinity and arsenic stress tolerance in transgenic tobacco. This approach could be useful to develop stress tolerant crops including forage crops

Reduction of ECAL data volume using lossless data compression techniques

We investigate the possibility of reducing the data size of the electromagnetic calorimeter ( ECAL) of CMS. The Selective Readout is applied first to reduce the data size at a manageable level. Then various data compression methods are considered, and their performances are estimated using the data from the full simulation of the ECAL system. A reduction of the average event size by a factor of two or larger is obtained in most of the cases