Estimating the cost of U.S. indexed bonds

A presentation of an equilibrium bond-pricing model driven by two stochastic factors: the real interest rate and the expected rate of inflation. The models parameters are estimated using a maximum-likelihood technique based on a Kalman filter.Government securities ; Inflation (Finance) ; Interest rates ; Indexation (Economics)

A Mixed Methods Exploration of Benefits for Youth Mentors in an Indigenous High School Peer Mentoring Program

This mixed methods case study investigated the benefits of serving as a youth mentor to younger peers as part of the Fourth R: Uniting Our Nations Peer Mentoring Program. Data were collected from 11 youth mentors via interviews and returned to them for interpretation and meaning-making through a statement sorting activity as part of a larger concept mapping procedure. The concept mapping was created through Concept Systems, and traditional thematic analysis of the data were conducted with Dedoose. The concept mapping revealed three themes: 1) Cultural Connections, 2) Benefits to Self, and 3) Relationships with Family and Friends. As part of the thematic analysis, open-coding was used to analyze each transcript, from which four root codes were derived: 1) Contributions, 2) Relationships, 3) Culture, and 4) Aspirations. The findings indicated that mentors identified the program’s cultural relevancy, such as participation in cultural practices, connecting with their Indigenous peers in a group setting, and exploring their cultural identities, as the biggest benefit in their roles mentoring their younger peers. Other benefits reported by mentors included perceived intrapersonal (i.e. self-perception, self-confidence, relationship with self) and interpersonal (i.e. relationships with others, self-advocacy skills) gains as a result of their participation in the program, as well as improved connection to school. This study contributes to strengths-based research that supports Indigenous youth development, cultural engagement and leadership potential

Assessing Morphology of ipRGCs After Traumatic Brain Injury

ipRGCs are retinal ganglion cells that project to visual processing centers of the brain for nonimage forming visual functions. The relation of ipRGCs to tramatic brain injury (TBI) is emerging as data has been published describing ipRGC functional changes in TBI affected military veterans. Major symptomologies of concussions, a mild form of TBI, also overlap with the function governed by sites in the brain with major ipRGC projection percentages. Assesing if a morphological change is occuring in the ipRGCs after a TBI could support the idea of a pathological mechanism of the injury. This study could also indicate further relevance for identification of cellular activities after TBI for an acurate mechanistic identification

Implementation of ROSA radio occultation data handling into EUMETSAT and GRAS SAF processing

Within this contribution, outcomes from a GRAS - SAF Visiting Scientist activity focused on the analysis of ROSA data quality for their use in operational weather forecasting will be described and main results will be shown. The ROSA Radio Occultation instrument has been developed by Thales-Alenia-Space, Italy and was funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Such instrument is actually flying on-board three opportunity missions: the Indian OCEANSAT-2, the Argentinean SAC-D and the Indian-French MEGATROPIQUES. Focus of this Visiting Scientist activity has primarily been the analysis of ROSA data from OCEANSAT-2.This activity was divided into two parts. In the first one, performed at EUMETSAT, ROSA data processing was implemented into the EUMETSAT YAROS processor. The required updates into such processing package were implemented in order to make it able to properly manage also ROSA raw observations. It has to be noted that this processor is the baseline for the operational next generation EUMETSAT Radio Occultation ground segment: any changes performed in the framework of YAROS can easily be transferred to the operational ground segment. The YAROS - EUMETSAT processor was then updated and adapted to work with the ROSA raw data, tracking frequencies and instrument database. Adaptation to open loop data, navigation bits acquisition and potentially ionospheric measurement will be performed in the next future. NetCDF-4 YAROS output files are phases, amplitudes, bending angles over impact parameter, along with all other required data. Robust bias and standard deviation of bending angles to ECMWF collocated data were the statistical indicators generated to evaluate the quality of the ROSA observations. The second part of the activity was the adaptation of the GRAS-SAF ROPP (Radio Occultation Processing Package) processor for ROSA data processing. This second part was performed at Danish Meteorological Institute and has been focused on bending angles, refractivity and higher level product generation and validation against ECMWF and co-located occultation profiles. For the first time, one month of ROSA data have been deeply analyzed by a state-of-the-art Radio Occultation processing software and results will be described in the framework of this contributio

Contagion in Financial Markets

This paper presents a model on contagion in nancial markets. We use a bank run framework as a mechanism to initiate a crisis and argues that liquidity crunch and imperfect information are the key culprits for a crisis to be contagious. The model proposes that a crisis is more likely to be contagious when (1) banks have similar cost-effciency structures (clustering) and (2) a large fraction of the investment is in the illiquid sector (illiquidity). The latter is an endogenous decision made by the banks. It increases with (1) the prospect of the risky asset (risk-return trade-off) and (2) the fraction of patient consumers (liquidity demand).contagion, liquidity crunch, market crash, bank run, capital flight

NEOGLOBOQUADRINA ATLANTICA PRAEATLANTICA, NEW SUBSPECIESFROM LATE MIDDLE MIOCENE

A new subspecies of Neogloboquadrina atlantica atlantica previously reported under different names, is here distinguished and named Neogloboquadrina atlantica praeatlantica. Its first occurrence into the Mediterranean dated at 11.78 Ma, is not evolutionary appearance but is related to a global climatic cooling which pushed southwards from high latitude this taxon; however, the area of its evolutionary appearance is not clearly defined; its extinction occurs within the Globigerinoides obliquus extremus Zone. N. atlantica atlantica which evolves from N. atlantica praeatlantica occurs in the Mediterranean at 11.15 Ma, just after the Mediterranean exit of Paragloborotalia siakensis (Le Roy).  &nbsp

Structure diversity of nitric oxide synthases (NOS): the emergence of new forms in photosynthetic organisms

Humans have enormously increased the level of nitrogen (N) circulating in the troposphere and the earth surface during the last century, correlating with the population increase. As an undesirable consequence, high levels of reactive N are polluting the environment where humans inhabit. Nitric oxide (NO) is one of the reactive N species with both positive and negative impact on life. NO synthases (NOS) are enzymes that oxidize arginine to citrulline and generate the denitrifying intermediate NO which can be subsequently reduced to N2O and N2. NOS are large modular enzymes present in all kingdoms which through evolution were the result of multiple gene and genome duplication events together with changes in protein architecture (Andreakis et al. 2011). A recently described NOS from the marine unicellular microalgae Ostreococcus tauri, belonging to the picoplankton in oceans, adds new insights to study the evolution of the complex organization of these enzymes. In this opinion we discuss the structure diversity of the emerging new NOS forms described in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Regarding the controversy about the existence of canonical NOS in higher plants, we propose that the latest findings support the existence of a high diversity of NOS forms in different lineages. Thereby, since higher plant species whose genomes have been fully sequenced, which are scarce, it cannot be discarded that a new form of NOS may have evolved in higher plants.Fil: Correa Aragunde, Maria Natalia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; ArgentinaFil: Foresi, Noelia Pamela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; ArgentinaFil: Lamattina, Lorenzo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; Argentin