Shadow Banking and Systemic Risk in Europe and China

We compare the European and Chinese shadow banking systems. While the European shadow banking system is better developed than the Chinese shadow banking system, herd behavior and other factors in European markets create systemic risk, which contributed in part to the financial crisis. Dispersion of risk across the "under-developed" shadow banking system in China has led to some cases of localized, concentrated risk, but not to systemic risk. We discuss proposed European shadow banking regulation and its implications for systemic risk, and discuss what lessons China might glean from such policies. We also discuss what lessons China's diverse and systemically uncoordinated shadow banking sector might provide for Europe

Deviation of light curves of gamma-ray burst pulses from standard forms due to the curvature effect of spherical fireballs or uniform jets

As revealed previously, under the assumption that some pulses of gamma-ray bursts are produced by shocks in spherical fireballs or uniform jets of large opening angles, there exists a standard decay form of the profile of pulses arising from very narrow or suddenly dimming local (or intrinsic) pulses due to the relativistic curvature effect (the Doppler effect over the spherical shell surface). Profiles of pulses arising from other local pulses were previously found to possess a reverse S-feature deviation from the standard decay form. We show in this paper that, in addition to the standard decay form shown in Qin et al. (2004), there exists a marginal decay curve associated with a local $\delta$ function pulse with a mono-color radiation. We employ the sample of Kocevski et al. (2003) to check this prediction and find that the phenomenon of the reverse S-feature is common, when compared with both the standard decay form and the marginal decay curve. We accordingly propose to take the marginal decay curve (whose function is simple) as a criteria to check if an observed pulse could be taken as a candidate suffered from the curvature effect. We introduce two quantities $A_1$ and $A_2$ to describe the mentioned deviations within and beyond the $FWHM$ position of the decay phase, respectively. The values of $A_1$ and $A_2$ of pulses of the sample are calculated, and the result suggests that for most of these pulses their corresponding local pulses might contain a long decay time relative to the time scale of the curvature effect.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, 1 table accepted for publication in MNRA

Modelling human behaviours and reactions under dangerous environment

This paper describes the framework of a real-time simulation system to model human behavior and reactions in dangerous environments. The system utilizes the latest 3D computer animation techniques, combined with artificial intelligence, robotics and psychology, to model human behavior, reactions and decision making under expected/unexpected dangers in real-time in virtual environments. The development of the system includes: classification on the conscious/subconscious behaviors and reactions of different people; capturing different motion postures by the Eagle Digital System; establishing 3D character animation models; establishing 3D models for the scene; planning the scenario and the contents; and programming within Virtools (TM) Dev. Programming within Virtools (TM) Dev is subdivided into modeling dangerous events, modeling character's perceptions, modeling character's decision making, modeling character's movements, modeling character's interaction with environment and setting up the virtual cameras. The real-time simulation of human reactions in hazardous environments is invaluable in military defense, fire escape, rescue operation planning, traffic safety studies, and safety planning in chemical factories, the design of buildings, airplanes, ships and trains. Currently, human motion modeling can be realized through established technology, whereas to integrate perception and intelligence into virtual human's motion is still a huge undertaking. The challenges here are the synchronization of motion and intelligence, the accurate modeling of human's vision, smell, touch and hearing, the diversity and effects of emotion and personality in decision making. There are three types of software platforms which could be employed to realize the motion and intelligence within one system, and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed

A novel numerical mechanical model for the stress–strain distribution in superconducting cable-in-conduit conductors \ud

Besides the temperature and magnetic field, the strain and stress state of the superconducting Nb3Sn wires in multi-stage twisted cable-in-conduit conductors (CICCs), as applied in ITER or high field magnets, strongly influence their transport properties. For an accurate quantitative prediction of the performance and a proper understanding of the underlying phenomena, a detailed analysis of the strain distribution along all individual wires is required. For this, the thermal contraction of the different components and the huge electromagnetic forces imposing bending and contact deformation must be taken into account, following the complex strand pattern and mutual interaction by contacts from surrounding strands. In this paper, we describe a numerical model for a superconducting cable, which can simulate the strain and stress states of all single wires including interstrand contact force and associated deformation. The strands in the cable can be all similar (Nb3Sn/Cu) or with the inclusion of different strand materials for protection (Cu, Glidcop).\ud \ud The simulation results are essential for the analysis and conductor design optimization from cabling to final magnet operation conditions. Comparisons are presented concerning the influence of the sequential cable twist pitches and the inclusion of copper strands on the mechanical properties and thus on the eventual strain distribution in the Nb3Sn filaments when subjected to electromagnetic forces, axial force and twist moment. Recommendations are given for conductor design improvements. \ud \ud \u

Transfer-matrix renormalization group study of the spin ladders with cyclic four-spin interactions

The temperature dependence of the specific heat and spin susceptibility of the spin ladders with cyclic four-spin interactions in the rung-singlet phase is explored by making use of the transfer-matrix renormalization group method. The values of spin gap are extracted from the specific heat and susceptibility, respectively. It is found that for different relative strength between interchain and intrachain interactions, the spin gap is approximately linear with the cyclic four-spin interaction in the region far away from the critical point. Furthermore, we show that the dispersion for the one-triplet magnon branch can be obtained by numerically fitting on the partition function.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

A test of the power law relationship between gamma-ray burst pulse width ratio and energy expected in fireballs or uniform jets

Recently, under the assumption that the Doppler effect of the relativistically expanding fireball surface is important, Qin et al. showed that in most cases the power law relationship between the pulse width and energy of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)would exist in a certain energy range. We check this prediction with two GRB samples which contain well identified pulses. A power law anti-correlation between the full pulse width and energy and a power law correlation between the pulse width ratio and energy are seen in the light curves of the majority (around 65%) of bursts of the two samples within the energy range of BATSE, suggesting that these bursts are likely to arise from the emission associated with the shocks occurred on a relativistically expanding fireball surface. For the rest of the bursts, the relationships between these quantities were not predicted previously. We propose to consider other spectral evolutionary patterns or other radiation mechanisms such as a varying synchrotron or Comptonized spectrum to check if the observed relationships for these rest bursts can also be accounted for by the Doppler model. In addition, we find that the upper limits of the width ratio for the two samples do not exceed 0.9, in agrement with what predicted previously by the Doppler model. The plateau/power law/plateau and the peaked features predicted and detected previously by Qin et al. are generally observed, with the exceptions being noticed only in a few cases. According to the distinct values of two power law indices of FWHM and ratio and energy, we divide the bursts into three subsets which are located in different areas of the two indices plane. We suspect that different locations of the two indices might correspond to different mechanisms.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS accepte