The Toll of the Great Recession: Childhood Poverty Among Hispanics Sets Record, Leads Nation

Compares the number and rates of children 17 and younger living in poverty in 2007 and 2010 by race/ethnicity. Analyzes child poverty rates among Latinos/Hispanics by age, region, family structure, and parents' nativity, education, and employment status

Liposomal-polyene preliposomal powder and method for its preparation

A method is disclosed for preparing a stable preliposomal powder which, when reconstituted with water or saline solution, forms a suspension of liposomes containing a polyene drug, such as nystatin. The method involves the steps of combining at least one phospholipid with a first organic solvent to form a first solution, adding a clarifying amount of water to the first solution, combining a polyene with a second organic solvent to form a second solution, combining the first and second solutions to produce a substantially clear combined solution, and then removing the organic solvents, leaving a powder.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

EAD calibration for corporate credit lines

Managing the credit risk inherent to a corporate credit line is similar to that of a term loan, but with one key difference. For both instruments, the bank should know the borrower's probability of default (PD) and the facility's loss given default (LGD). However, since a credit line allows the borrowers to draw down the committed funds according to their own needs, the bank must also have a measure of the line's exposure at default (EAD). Our study, which is based on a census of all corporate lending within Spain over the last 20 years, provides the most comprehensive overview of corporate credit line use and EAD calculations to date. Our analysis shows that defaulting firms have significantly higher credit line usage rates and EAD values up to five years prior to their actual default. Furthermore, we find that there are important variations in EAD values due to credit line size, collateralization, and maturity. While our results are derived from data for a single country, they should provide useful benchmarks for further academic, business and policy research into this underdeveloped area of credit risk management.Commercial loans ; Bank loans ; Credit

How does competition impact bank risk-taking?

A common assumption in the academic literature and in the actual supervision of banking systems worldwide is that franchise value plays a key role in limiting bank risk-taking. As the underlying source of franchise value is assumed to be market power, reduced competition has been considered to promote banking stability. Boyd and De Nicolo (2005) propose an alternative view where concentration in the loan market could lead to increased borrower debt loads and a corresponding increase in loan defaults that undermine bank stability. Martinez-Miera and Repullo (2007) encompass both approaches by proposing a nonlinear relationship between competition and bank risk-taking. Using unique datasets for the Spanish banking system, we examine the empirical nature of that relationship. After controlling for macroeconomic conditions and bank characteristics, we find that standard measures of market concentration do not affect the ratio of non-performing commercial loans (NPL), our measure of bank risk. However, using Lerner indexes based on bank-specific interest rates, we find a negative relationship between loan market power and bank risk. This result provides evidence in favor of the franchise value paradigm.Bank competition

Hydrophobic cis-platinum complexes efficiently incorporated into liposomes

The present invention involves the synthesis and use of new platinum compounds. These new platinum compounds are easy to encapsulate in liposomes at high efficiencies. They are further characterized as platinum (II) four coordinate complex having the formula: ##STR1## wherein R.sub.1 and R.sub.2 are carboxylato monoanions bearing a hydrophobic radical function or a single carboxylato dianion bearing a hydrophobic radical function and R.sub.3 is a vicinal diaminoalkane or vicinal diaminocycloalkane. The complex is substantially soluble in methanol or chloroform and substantially insoluble in water. Said complex may be incorporated into phospholipid liposomes. Such platinum complexes encapsulated in phospholipid liposomes are useful for chemotherapy of platinum complex-sensitive tumors.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

A new strategy for probing the Majorana neutrino CP violating phases and masses

We propose a new strategy for detecting the CP-violating phases and the effective mass of muon Majorana neutrinos by measuring observables associated with neutrino-antineutrino oscillations in $\pi^{\pm}$ decays. Within the generic framework of quantum field theory, we compute the non-factorizable probability for producing a pair of same-charged muons in $\pi^{\pm}$ decays as a distinctive signature of $\nu_{\mu}-\bar{\nu_{\mu}}$ oscillations. We show that an intense neutrino beam through a long baseline experiment is favored for probing the Majorana phases. Using the neutrino-antineutrino oscillation probability reported by MINOS collaboration, a new stringent bound on the effective muon-neutrino mass is derived.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur