Sharemarket performance and the New Zealand dollar : inside the relationships : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of a Master of Applied Economics, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

New Zealand is often described as a small open economy with substantial foreign ownership of its assets. The economy is therefore sensitive to exchange rate movements and the sharemarket being the barometer of economic activities should be no exception. Further, exchange rates may also be endogenous to sharemarket fluctuations. This thesis analyses the relationship between the value of the New Zealand dollar vis a vis the currencies of its five largest trading partners and the New Zealand sharemarket performance between 1999 and mid-2005 using the vector autoregression (VAR) and vector error correction model (VECM) approaches. Findings from the research suggest the New Zealand sharemarket is robust to currency fluctuations in both the short- and long- term. The only exception to this is the New Zealand dollar-Australian dollar exchange rate (NZD/AUD), which has a negative short term effect on the sharemarket. The NZD/AUD is also the only exchange rate to depreciate following a positive shock to the sharemarket

Evolving gameplay elements into virtual terrains

With advancements in technology, consumers are expecting higher quality and more detailed video game content. This puts a strain on video game companies and their developers as they are required to manually design and create increasingly complex video game content. Procedural content generation can alleviate this burden by using technology to automatically generate video game content, effectively reducing development time and budget. This thesis presents a novel approach towards procedurally generating video game terrains that meet a set of gameplay requirements as specified by the user. This approach uses a genetic algorithm to evolve a set of modifications that, when applied to a user-specified terrain, incorporates the desired gameplay elements. This approach can aid developers by reducing time spent manually creating and editing video game terrains. An important aspect of this research involved designing a set of measures capable of characterising gameplay elements. A collection of isovist and graph-connectivity measures were discovered that can characterise different types of gameplay elements so that they can be automatically identified in a video game terrain. This set of measures may be useful in other procedural methods and related fields

Using genetic algorithms to find cellular automata rule sets capable of generating maze-like game level layouts

The video game industry has grown substantially over the last decade and the quality of video games has also been advancing rapidly. In recent years, video games have been advancing to a point that the increased time required to manually create their content is making this process too costly. This has made procedural content generation a desirable option for game developers due to its speed of generating content, and the variety of content that a single PCG method can produced. The main purpose of this dissertation is to detail a new approach to procedurally generate video game level layouts, and to aid in further research in the area of procedural video game content generation. The new PCG approach investigated and developed in this study combined a genetic algorithm with cellular automata and a maze generation technique into a method for generating game level layouts with desired maze-like properties. The GA in this approach was utilized to evolve CA rules that, when applied to a maze configuration, would produce layouts with desired properties. This research discovered that CA rules could be evolved to generate level layouts with desired properties, and that there were a number of parameters which could affect the layouts these rules produced. These parameters include the number of cell states used in the CA, as well as the CA’s neighbourhood size and the number of times the CA rules were applied to their maze configurations. This research also discovered that the one factor that had the largest impact on the visual aspect of the generated layouts was the chosen chromosome representation

Quantifiable isovist and graph-based measures for automatic evaluation of different area types in virtual terrain generation

© 2013 IEEE. This article describes a set of proposed measures for characterizing areas within a virtual terrain in terms of their attributes and their relationships with other areas for incorporating game designers\u27 intent in gameplay requirement-based terrain generation. Examples of such gameplay elements include vantage point, strongholds, chokepoints and hidden areas. Our measures are constructed on characteristics of an isovist, that is, the volume of visible space at a local area and the connectivity of areas within the terrain. The calculation of these measures is detailed, in particular we introduce two new ways to accurately and efficiently calculate the 3D isovist volume. Unlike previous research that has mainly focused on aesthetic-based terrain generation, the proposed measures address a gap in gameplay requirement-based terrain generation-the need for a flexible mechanism to automatically parameterise specified areas and their associated relationships, capturing semantic knowledge relating to high level user intent associated with specific gameplay elements within the virtual terrain. We demonstrate applications of using the measures in an evolutionary process to automatically generate terrains that include specific gameplay elements as defined by a game designer. This is significant as this shows that the measures can characterize different gameplay elements and allow gameplay elements consistent with the designers\u27 intents to be generated and positioned in a virtual terrain without the need to specify low-level details at a model or logic level, hence leading to higher productivity and lower cost

Quantifiable isovist and graph-based measures for automatic evaluation of different area types in virtual terrain generation

© 2013 IEEE. This article describes a set of proposed measures for characterizing areas within a virtual terrain in terms of their attributes and their relationships with other areas for incorporating game designers\u27 intent in gameplay requirement-based terrain generation. Examples of such gameplay elements include vantage point, strongholds, chokepoints and hidden areas. Our measures are constructed on characteristics of an isovist, that is, the volume of visible space at a local area and the connectivity of areas within the terrain. The calculation of these measures is detailed, in particular we introduce two new ways to accurately and efficiently calculate the 3D isovist volume. Unlike previous research that has mainly focused on aesthetic-based terrain generation, the proposed measures address a gap in gameplay requirement-based terrain generation-the need for a flexible mechanism to automatically parameterise specified areas and their associated relationships, capturing semantic knowledge relating to high level user intent associated with specific gameplay elements within the virtual terrain. We demonstrate applications of using the measures in an evolutionary process to automatically generate terrains that include specific gameplay elements as defined by a game designer. This is significant as this shows that the measures can characterize different gameplay elements and allow gameplay elements consistent with the designers\u27 intents to be generated and positioned in a virtual terrain without the need to specify low-level details at a model or logic level, hence leading to higher productivity and lower cost

The Gould's Belt Very Large Array Survey III. The Orion region

We present results from a high-sensitivity (60 $\mu$Jy), large-scale (2.26 square degree) survey obtained with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array as part of the Gould's Belt Survey program. We detected 374 and 354 sources at 4.5 and 7.5 GHz, respectively. Of these, 148 are associated with previously known Young Stellar Objects (YSOs). Another 86 sources previously unclassified at either optical or infrared wavelengths exhibit radio properties that are consistent with those of young stars. The overall properties of our sources at radio wavelengths such as their variability and radio to X-ray luminosity relation are consistent with previous results from the Gould's Belt Survey. Our detections provide target lists for followup VLBA radio observations to determine their distances as YSOs are located in regions of high nebulosity and extinction, making it difficult to measure optical parallaxes.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; 51 pages, 15 figures, 5 table

The Gould's Belt Very Large Array Survey II: The Serpens region

We present deep ($\sim 17~\mu$Jy) radio continuum observations of the Serpens molecular cloud, the Serpens south cluster, and the W40 region obtained using the Very Large Array in its A configuration. We detect a total of 146 sources, 29 of which are young stellar objects (YSOs), 2 are BV stars and 5 more are associated with phenomena related to YSOs. Based on their radio variability and spectral index, we propose that about 16 of the remaining 110 unclassified sources are also YSOs. For approximately 65% of the known YSOs detected here as radio sources, the emission is most likely non-thermal, and related to stellar coronal activity. As also recently observed in Ophiuchus, our sample of YSOs with X-ray counterparts lies below the fiducial G\"udel & Benz relation. Finally, we analyze the proper motions of 9 sources in the W40 region. This allows us to better constrain the membership of the radio sources in the region.Comment: Accepted in The Astrophysical Journa

Filamin B Regulates Chondrocyte Proliferation and Differentiation through Cdk1 Signaling

Humans who harbor loss of function mutations in the actin-associated filamin B (FLNB) gene develop spondylocarpotarsal syndrome (SCT), a disorder characterized by dwarfism (delayed bone formation) and premature fusion of the vertebral, carpal and tarsal bones (premature differentiation). To better understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing these seemingly divergent processes, we generated and characterized FlnB knockdown ATDC5 cell lines. We found that FlnB knockdown led to reduced proliferation and enhanced differentiation in chondrocytes. Within the shortened growth plate of postnatal FlnB−/− mice long bone, we observed a similarly progressive decline in the number of rapidly proliferating chondrocytes and premature differentiation characterized by an enlarged prehypertrophic zone, a widened Col2a1+/Col10a1+ overlapping region, but relatively reduced hypertrophic zone length. The reduced chondrocyte proliferation and premature differentiation were, in part, attributable to enhanced G2/M phase progression, where fewer FlnB deficient ATDC5 chondrocytes resided in the G2/M phase of the cell cycle. FlnB loss reduced Cdk1 phosphorylation (an inhibitor of G2/M phase progression) and Cdk1 inhibition in chondrocytes mimicked the null FlnB, premature differentiation phenotype, through a β1-integrin receptor- Pi3k/Akt (a key regulator of chondrocyte differentiation) mediated pathway. In this context, the early prehypertrophic differentiation provides an explanation for the premature differentiation seen in this disorder, whereas the progressive decline in proliferating chondrocytes would ultimately lead to reduced chondrocyte production and shortened bone length. These findings begin to define a role for filamin proteins in directing both cell proliferation and differentiation through indirect regulation of cell cycle associated proteins

The Gould's Belt Very Large Array Survey. IV. The Taurus-Auriga Complex

We present a multi-epoch radio study of the Taurus-Auriga star-forming complex made with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array at frequencies of 4.5 GHz and 7.5 GHz. We detect a total of 610 sources, 59 of which are related to young stellar objects (YSOs) and 18 to field stars. The properties of 56% of the young stars are compatible with non-thermal radio emission. We also show that the radio emission of more evolved YSOs tends to be more non-thermal in origin and, in general, that their radio properties are compatible with those found in other star-forming regions. By comparing our results with previously reported X-ray observations, we notice that YSOs in Taurus-Auriga follow a Güdel-Benz relation with κ = 0.03, as we previously suggested for other regions of star formation. In general, YSOs in Taurus-Auriga and in all the previous studied regions seem to follow this relation with a dispersion of ~1 dex. Finally, we propose that most of the remaining sources are related with extragalactic objects but provide a list of 46 unidentified radio sources whose radio properties are compatible with a YSO nature