The role of earth-based observations of asteroids during the next decade

Present reconnaissance studies of asteroids shift ground based programs to more specialized, intensive studies of selected individual bodies and special classes. Two powerful techniques--radar and mid-IR spectroscopy--have yet to be widely applied to asteroids; high priority should be given to: (1) search programs with a large Schmidt telescope (especially for Mars- and Earth-approaching bodies); (2) a moderate resolution visible and near-IR spectrophotometric survey of at least half the asteroids; (3) high resolution spectrophotometry and radiometry of unusual objects; (4) radar studies of representative main belt asteroids; and (5) application of the full complement of astrophysical techniques to objects of high scientific interest and to potential space mission targets. The infrared astronomical satellite also has high potential for contributing to asteroid science

Effects of Age and Early Life Ozone Exposure on the Developmental Dynamics of Afferent Airway Neurons in Postnatal Rats

The environmental irritant ozone (O3) plays a role in airway inflammation and is known to cause airway hyperresponisiveness especially in susceptible populations such as asthmatics and young children. O3 exposure increases nerve growth fact (NGF) mRNA and protein levels in the airways, and alters the expression of substance P (SP) in nodose and jugular afferent airway neurons and in sensory nerve fibers in the airways. The growth and development of vagal afferent neurons is in part regulated by NGF, and because these sensory neurons continue to develop throughout postnatal life O3 exposures during this period may adversely affect their development. The objectives of these studies were to 1) characterize the normal postnatal development of vagal ganglia sensory neurons, tracheal epithelial innervation, and NGF levels in lung lavage and 2) investigate changes in nodose and jugular ganglia neuron number and SP content following acute O3 exposure in early postnatal life.;Initial studies determined that NGF levels in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and tracheal epithelial nerve fiber density (NFD) changed in an age-related manner, and both were maximally increased on postnatal day (PD) 10. Preliminary studies conducted to determine an efficient and accurate method for quantifying vagal sensory neurons used retrograde tracing techniques to identify afferent airway neurons located in the nodose and jugular ganglia. A novel quantification technique combining neuronal isolation, immunocytochemistry and flow cytometry was developed. Age-related changes were also noted in afferent airway neurons, which corresponded to the changes measured in NFD and NGF levels. These findings indicated that the early postnatal development of airway sensory neurons and innervation occurs in a rapid manner and may be influenced by NGF.;In the next set of studies, rats were exposed to O3 (2ppm for 3 hrs) on PD5 to evaluate possible changes in neuronal development and SP content. A significant decrease in the total number of nodose and jugular ganglia neurons was noted 16 days after the O3 exposure (PD21), and the number of SP-containing airway neurons was markedly increased on PD28 (23 days after O3) compared with filtered air (FA) controls. No differences in the total number of airway neurons between O3 and FA exposed groups were noted. These findings reveal that early life O 3 exposure can significantly alter vagal sensory neuron development.;In conclusion, sensory neuron development is significantly altered by exposure to O3 in early postnatal life, and increases in the number of SP containing airway neurons so far removed from the exposure, may provide insight into why early life O3 exposure enhances airway responses to subsequent irritant exposures later in life

Corrigendum to "A new modeling tool for the diffusion of gases in ice or amorphous binary mixture in the polar stratosphere and the upper troposphere" published in Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 3099–3105, 2010

No abstract available

Harold Jeffreys's Theory of Probability Revisited

Published exactly seventy years ago, Jeffreys's Theory of Probability (1939) has had a unique impact on the Bayesian community and is now considered to be one of the main classics in Bayesian Statistics as well as the initiator of the objective Bayes school. In particular, its advances on the derivation of noninformative priors as well as on the scaling of Bayes factors have had a lasting impact on the field. However, the book reflects the characteristics of the time, especially in terms of mathematical rigor. In this paper we point out the fundamental aspects of this reference work, especially the thorough coverage of testing problems and the construction of both estimation and testing noninformative priors based on functional divergences. Our major aim here is to help modern readers in navigating in this difficult text and in concentrating on passages that are still relevant today.Comment: This paper commented in: [arXiv:1001.2967], [arXiv:1001.2968], [arXiv:1001.2970], [arXiv:1001.2975], [arXiv:1001.2985], [arXiv:1001.3073]. Rejoinder in [arXiv:0909.1008]. Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-STS284 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Asset Management in Volatile Markets

The 27th SUERF Colloquium in Munich in June 2008: New Trends in Asset Management: Exploring the Implications was already topical in the Summer of 2008. The subsequent dramatic events in the Autumn of 2008 made the presentations in Munich even more relevant to investors and bankers that want to understand what happens in their investment universe. In the present SUERF Study, we have collected a sample of outstanding colloquium contributions under the fitting headline: Asset Management in Volatile Markets.derivatives, financial innovation, asset management, finance-growth-nexus; Relative Value Strategy, Pair Trading, Slippage, Implementation Shortfall, Asset Management, Fin4Cast

First albedo determination of 2867 Steins, target of the Rosetta mission

We present the first albedo determination of 2867 Steins, the asteroid target o f the Rosetta space mission together with 21 Lutetia. The data were obtained in polarimetric mode at the ESO-VLT telescope with the FORS1 instrument in the V and R filters. Observations were carried out from Jun e to August 2005 covering the phase angle range from 10.3 deg. to 28.3 deg., allowing the determination of the asteroid albedo by the well known experimenta l relationship between the albedo and the slope of the polarimetric curve at th e inversion angle. The measured polarization values of Steins are small, confirming an E-type cla ssification for this asteroid, as already suggested from its spectral propertie s. The inversion angle of the polarization curve in the V and R filters is resp ectively of 17.3 +/-1.5deg. and 18.4+/-1.0 deg., and the corresponding sl ope parameter is of 0.037+/-0.003 %/deg and 0.032+/-0.003 %/deg. On the basis of its polarimetric slope value, we have derived an albedo of 0.45 +/-0.1, that gives an estimated diameter of 4.6 km, assuming an absolute V ma gnitude of 13.18 mag.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, letter accepted for pubblication on A&

Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Data Analysis: Entropic Priors

The problem of assigning probability distributions which objectively reflect the prior information available about experiments is one of the major stumbling blocks in the use of Bayesian methods of data analysis. In this paper the method of Maximum (relative) Entropy (ME) is used to translate the information contained in the known form of the likelihood into a prior distribution for Bayesian inference. The argument is inspired and guided by intuition gained from the successful use of ME methods in statistical mechanics. For experiments that cannot be repeated the resulting "entropic prior" is formally identical with the Einstein fluctuation formula. For repeatable experiments, however, the expected value of the entropy of the likelihood turns out to be relevant information that must be included in the analysis. The important case of a Gaussian likelihood is treated in detail.Comment: 23 pages, 2 figure

Bayesian Analysis of Instrumental Variable Models: Acceptance-Rejection within Direct Monte Carlo

We discuss Bayesian inferential procedures within the family of instrumental variables regression models and focus on two issues: existence conditions for posterior moments of the parameters of interest under a flat prior and the potential of Direct Monte Carlo (DMC) approaches for efficient evaluation of such possibly highly non-elliptical posteriors. We show that, for the general case of m endogenous variables under a flat prior, posterior moments of order r exist for the coefficients reflecting the endogenous regressors' effect on the dependent variable, if the number of instruments is greater than m +r, even though there is an issue of local non-identification that causes non-elliptical shapes of the posterior. This stresses the need for efficient Monte Carlo integration methods. We introduce an extension of DMC that incorporates an acceptance-rejection sampling step within DMC. This Acceptance-Rejection within Direct Monte Carlo (ARDMC) method has the attractive property that the generated random drawings are independent, which greatly helps the fast convergence of simulation results, and which facilitates the evaluation of the numerical accuracy. The speed of ARDMC can be easily further improved by making use of parallelized computation using multiple core machines or computer clusters. We note that ARDMC is an analogue to the well-known "Metropolis-Hastings within Gibbs" sampling in the sense that one 'more difficult' step is used within an 'easier' simulation method. We compare the ARDMC approach with the Gibbs sampler using simulated data and two empirical data sets, involving the settler mortality instrument of Acemoglu et al. (2001) and father's education's instrument used by Hoogerheide et al. (2012a). Even without making use of parallelized computation, an efficiency gain is observed both under strong and weak instruments, where the gain can be enormous in the latter case