Under the Queen’s Throne: Analysis of \u3cem\u3eThe Lily of Life\u3c/em\u3e

This essay explores one of the older fairy tales that is not widely known by many people. The Lily of Life, published in 1913 and written by Queen Marie of Romania, touches on several topics that are still in effect in today’s society. The fairy tale is about a royal family with beautiful twin sisters and happily married queen and king; however, a brave young prince challenges the happiness. The adventure one of the sisters takes to save the prince reveals the hidden meanings, morals, and values of the story. The further research of author Seth Lerer has been applied to the analysis to connect to find similar contents in The Lily of Life and Puritanism. This also serves the purpose to discover further into Queen Marie’s psychology and the culture. The findings create another dimension of analysis by reading the magical fairy tales through realistic lenses

The role of foreign investors in debt market development - conceptual frameworks and policy issues

To take full advantage of foreign investors, a host country must provide an appealing environment: a stable economic and political environment; a fair, rational, and, comprehensive legal system; a fair, reasonable, and, balanced tax program; a fair, productive, and, balanced regulatory system; and transparency in economic, financial, legislative, and regulatory systems. The country should also liberalize capital account transactions. To do so successfully, and minimize risks associated with foreign investors, capital account liberalization must be properly sequenced. The chief danger is removing most restrictions on capital account transactions, before addressing major problems in the domestic financial system, and hence risking a crisis. Typical major problems include shaky, inconsistent macroeconomic management; severe asymmetric information problems (such as inadequate accounting, auditing, and disclosure practices) in the financial, and corporate sectors; implicit government guarantees; and inadequate prudential supervision, and regulation of domestic financial markets, and institutions. Essential infrastructure must be developed if domestic debt instruments are to be opened to international portfolio investment. Developing countries should implement well-synchronized settlement, and depository arrangements. The risks from short-term debt - which could threaten financial stability - are best through sound financial management, and prudential regulation. A case could de made for additional policy measures aimed at curbing over-reliance on short-term debt. (Chile, Colombia, and Israel, for example, have adopted measures to influence the level, and composition of portfolio capital inflows). Arguably, liberalization of trade in financial services is integral to full liberalization of capital markets. Foreign firms operating in a domestic market may transfer useful technology, and know-how. Concern that hedge funds can dominate, or manipulate markets, can be dealt with through measures to strengthen supervision, regulation, and market transparency - as well as by strengthening reporting requirements for larger traders, and positions. The ability of hedge funds, and other foreign investors to take positions in domestic financial markets, could also be limited to: a) Taxing short-term capital flows (as Chile does). b) requiring banks, and brokers to raise margin, and collateral requirements. c) Limiting financial institutions; ability to provide the domestic credit needed to short the currency, and their ability to loan the securities needed to short equity, and fixed-income markets.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Financial Intermediation,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Financial Intermediation,Banks&Banking Reform

Folding Mechanism of Small Proteins

Extensive Monte Carlo folding simulations for four proteins of various structural classes are carried out, using a single atomistic potential. In all cases, collapse occurs at a very early stage, and proteins fold into their native-like conformations at appropriate temperatures. The results demonstrate that the folding mechanism is controlled not only by thermodynamic factors but also by kinetic factors: The way a protein folds into its native structure, is also determined by the convergence point of early folding trajectories, which cannot be obtained by the free energy surface.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Hadoop Performance Analysis Model with Deep Data Locality

Background: Hadoop has become the base framework on the big data system via the simple concept that moving computation is cheaper than moving data. Hadoop increases a data locality in the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) to improve the performance of the system. The network traffic among nodes in the big data system is reduced by increasing a data-local on the machine. Traditional research increased the data-local on one of the MapReduce stages to increase the Hadoop performance. However, there is currently no mathematical performance model for the data locality on the Hadoop. Methods: This study made the Hadoop performance analysis model with data locality for analyzing the entire process of MapReduce. In this paper, the data locality concept on the map stage and shuffle stage was explained. Also, this research showed how to apply the Hadoop performance analysis model to increase the performance of the Hadoop system by making the deep data locality. Results: This research proved the deep data locality for increasing performance of Hadoop via three tests, such as, a simulation base test, a cloud test and a physical test. According to the test, the authors improved the Hadoop system by over 34% by using the deep data locality. Conclusions: The deep data locality improved the Hadoop performance by reducing the data movement in HDFS

Total Factor Productivity and R&D Capital in Manufacturing Industries

This study analyzes total factor productivity in manufacturing industries for a sample of OECD countries. The estimates of Malmquist indexes clearly indicate that research and development (R&D) capital is an important determinant of productivity growth in manufacturing industries. The empirical results also show that it is the pace, not the intensity, of R&D investment that is significantly related to the extent to which R&D capital formation contributes to output growth. Furthermore, this study finds that productivity gains in manufacturing industries depend importantly on R&D spillovers as well.

Collapse transition of a square-lattice polymer with next nearest-neighbor interaction

We study the collapse transition of a polymer on a square lattice with both nearest-neighbor and next nearest-neighbor interactions, by calculating the exact partition function zeros up to chain length 36. The transition behavior is much more pronounced than that of the model with nearest-neighbor interactions only. The crossover exponent and the transition temperature are estimated from the scaling behavior of the first zeros with increasing chain length. The results suggest that the model is of the same universality class as the usual theta point described by the model with only nearest-neighbor interaction.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure