The Impact of ECB Monetary Policy Decisions and Communication on the Yield Curve

We use intraday changes in money market rates to construct indicators of news about monetary policy stemming separately from policy decisions and from official communication of the ECB, and study their impact on the yield curve. We show that communication may lead to substantial revisions in expectations of monetary policy and, at the same time, exert a significant impact on interest rates at longer maturities. Thereby, the maturity response pattern to communication is hump-shaped, while that to policy decisions is downward sloping.money market rates; yield curve; ECB; central bank communication

Adaptive CBC : Are the Benefits Justifying its Additional Efforts Compared to CBC?

Currently, there is a big discussion ongoing among both practitioners and scientists whether the benefits of the Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint (ACBC) analysis in comparison to (standard) Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) analysis are justifying the additional costs and efforts of ACBC. To answer this question, recent studies in literature are reviewed and a conducted ACBC (n=205) about e-commerce in an international context is analyzed with regards to several aspects, e.g. excluded attribute levels and stimuli used for the Choice Tasks section. The results indicate that CBC is generally able to provide the main information about the most preferred attribute levels with less effort compared to ACBC. However, ACBC is very suitable for more complex products or services and for gaining deeper insights, such as information about the second-best options or completely unacceptable features. Furthermore, CBC requires a bigger sample size and is often less precise. Still, the related context will remain the main factor for or against the usage of one or the other method

Variable sediment oxygen uptake in response to dynamic forcing

Seiche-induced turbulence and the vertical distribution of dissolved oxygen above and within the sediment were analyzed to evaluate the sediment oxygen uptake rate (JO2), diffusive boundary layer thickness (δDBL), and sediment oxic zone depth (zmax) in situ. High temporal-resolution microprofiles across the sediment-water interface and current velocity data within the bottom boundary layer in a medium-sized mesotrophic lake were obtained during a 12-h field study. We resolved the dynamic forcing of a full 8-h seiche cycle and evaluated JO2 from both sides of the sediment-water interface. Turbulence (characterized by the energy dissipation rate, ε), the vertical distribution of dissolved oxygen across the sediment-water interface (characterized by δDBL and zmax), JO2, and the sediment oxygen consumption rate (RO2) are all strongly correlated in our freshwater system. Seiche-induced turbulence shifted from relatively active (ε = 1.2 × 10-8 W kg-1) to inactive (ε = 7.8 × 10-12 W kg-1). In response to this dynamic forcing, δDBL increased from 1.0 mm to the point of becoming undefined, zmax decreased from 2.2 to 0.3 mm as oxygen was depleted from the sediment, and JO2 decreased from 7.0 to 1.1 mmol m-2 d-1 over a time span of hours. JO2 and oxygen consumption were found to be almost equivalent (within ~ 5% and thus close to steady state), with RO2 adjusting rapidly to changes in JO2. Our results reveal the transient nature of sediment oxygen uptake and the importance of accurately characterizing turbulence when estimating JO2

Erfahrungen mit Nützlingen bei Schädlingsbefall in lebensmittelverarbeitenden Betrieben

Stored products may be prone for insect damage. Storage management and process-ing of organic products allow the use of chemicals in empty storage rooms only. Bene-ficial insects might be an alternative in special environments and for direct control in and on organic produce. The deliberate release of beneficial insects in storage rooms has not been tested to a large extend and if so, in small enterprises only. In the time span 2006 - 2008, a practical approach for the control of stored-product pest insects is followed amongst others in a pasta factory and a large bakery in Switzerland. Part of the project is the establishment of laboratory-mass-reared parasitoids and predators, e.g. the parasitic wasp Anisopteromalus calandrae for the control of the drugstore beetle Stegobium paniceum and the parasitic wasp Trichogramma evanescens for the control of the Indian meal moth, Plodia interpunctella. The objectives of the project are i) the development of release strategies of beneficial insects in the organic food proc-essing industry in order to prevent pesticide applications and ii) the establishment of a guidance document on the maintenance of beneficial insects prior and during release, the preparation of facilities and the inclusion of employees. To date, results have not yet been evaluated. However, the stored-product pest insects were kept in check by the released beneficial insects. In none of the environments tested, pesticides were applied

Magneto-optic dynamics in a ferromagnetic nematic liquid crystal

We investigate dynamic magneto-optic effects in a ferromagnetic nematic liquid crystal experimentally and theoretically. Experimentally we measure the magnetization and the phase difference of the transmitted light when an external magnetic field is applied. As a model we study the coupled dynamics of the magnetization, M, and the director field, n, associated with the liquid crystalline orientational order. We demonstrate that the experimentally studied macroscopic dynamic behavior reveals the importance of a dynamic cross-coupling between M and n. The experimental data are used to extract the value of the dissipative cross-coupling coefficient. We also make concrete predictions about how reversible cross-coupling terms between the magnetization and the director could be detected experimentally by measurements of the transmitted light intensity as well as by analyzing the azimuthal angle of the magnetization and the director out of the plane spanned by the anchoring axis and the external magnetic field. We derive the eigenmodes of the coupled system and study their relaxation rates. We show that in the usual experimental set-up used for measuring the relaxation rates of the splay-bend or twist-bend eigenmodes of a nematic liquid crystal one expects for a ferromagnetic nematic liquid crystal a mixture of at least two eigenmodes.Comment: 20 pages, 23 figures, 42 reference

Face Transfer with Multilinear Models

Face Transfer is a method for mapping videorecorded performances of one individual to facial animations of another. It extracts visemes (speech-related mouth articulations), expressions, and three-dimensional (3D) pose from monocular video or film footage. These parameters are then used to generate and drive a detailed 3D textured face mesh for a target identity, which can be seamlessly rendered back into target footage. The underlying face model automatically adjusts for how the target performs facial expressions and visemes. The performance data can be easily edited to change the visemes, expressions, pose, or even the identity of the target---the attributes are separably controllable. This supports a wide variety of video rewrite and puppetry applications.Face Transfer is based on a multilinear model of 3D face meshes that separably parameterizes the space of geometric variations due to different attributes (e.g., identity, expression, and viseme). Separability means that each of these attributes can be independently varied. A multilinear model can be estimated from a Cartesian product of examples (identities x expressions x visemes) with techniques from statistical analysis, but only after careful preprocessing of the geometric data set to secure one-to-one correspondence, to minimize cross-coupling artifacts, and to fill in any missing examples. Face Transfer offers new solutions to these problems and links the estimated model with a face-tracking algorithm to extract pose, expression, and viseme parameters.Engineering and Applied Science