Social and alternative banking: project selection and monitoring after the New Basel Capital Accord

Any economic activity calls for the exercise of moral judgement. There are some economic activities that actively promote collective benefit as a primary or secondary aim, and there are others that aim to increase the value of a firm. Investment decisions always have collective impact, but collective returns may be ignored or considered less important in company management if the objective is the maximisation of shareholder wealth. The allocative function exercised by banks in their credit activity may take this into account. Some banks nowadays focus on social profile, while others integrate the traditional approach with this new sensibility. But unfortunately banking regulations governing stability and soundness of the financial system make no mention of the social profile. The New Basel Capital Accord was an opportunity to recognise that bank's objectives may not consist only of the maximisation of shareholder wealth. But it was a missed opportunity, in that it gave advantages to traditional commercial banks and not to banks focussing on collective goals. This paper puts forward proposals for integrating the Basel II framework with profiles of collective bank credit policy. Social credit evaluation methods could help to identify those ethical banks which are more successful in meeting collective objectives. A sustainable credit appraisal methodology could have been examined by the Basel Committee and could have incentivated sustainable banking by giving it specific advantages.social banking, alternative banking, socially responsible investing, investments appraisal, Basel II, new capital accord

Black Holes in the Presence of Cosmological Constant and Large N Brane World

Analytic form has been obtained for four-dimensional black holes with a minimal Hawking temperature in a theory with cosmological constant, dilaton and gauge fields. In general dimensions, black hole solutions are shown to exist and their asymptotic behaviors are obtained. In theories of ten dimension, N coincident D3-branes as the boundary of an $AdS_5$ space are constructed by embedding black D3-branes, with a five-dimensional compactified space of negligible size if N is large, which provide natural realizations of the Randall-Sundrum scenario. For this $AdS_{5}$ background, the cosmological constant is a higher order perturbation and its effect on the spectra of standard model fields on the branes can be calculated.Comment: 12 pages, no figure

Propagation front of correlations in an interacting Bose gas

We analyze the quench dynamics of a one-dimensional bosonic Mott insulator and focus on the time evolution of density correlations. For these we identify a pronounced propagation front, the velocity of which, once correctly extrapolated at large distances, can serve as a quantitative characteristic of the many-body Hamiltonian. In particular, the velocity allows the weakly interacting regime, which is qualitatively well described by free bosons, to be distinguished from the strongly interacting one, in which pairs of distinct quasiparticles dominate the dynamics. In order to describe the latter case analytically, we introduce a general approximation to solve the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian based on the Jordan-Wigner fermionization of auxiliary particles. This approach can also be used to determine the ground-state properties. As a complement to the fermionization approach, we derive explicitly the time-dependent many-body state in the noninteracting limit and compare our results to numerical simulations in the whole range of interactions of the Bose-Hubbard model.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Combinatorial treatment for spinal muscular atrophy

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a severe autosomal recessive motor neuron disease caused by loss of SMN1, which encodes a protein essential for motor neuron survival. SMA patients have one or more copies of an alternate SMN gene, SMN2, which is nearly identical to SMN1. SMN2 differs at a single nucleotide from SMN1 which results in the skipping of exon 7 in the mRNA and produces an unstable protein (SMN\u3947). Therapeutic approaches that have been undertaken include i) replacement of SMN1 by gene delivery mediated by adeno-associated virus serotype 9 (AAV9) (Zolgensma), ii) correction of the aberrant SMN2 splicing using an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) or small molecule (nusinersin, risdiplam), and iii) increased expression of SMN2 mediated by histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors. Two of these three approaches have given rise to successful treatments for SMA, but they are very expensive, and their long-term safety is not well known. In addition, the ability of ASOs and viral vectors to reach their targets in the CNS with peripheral administration is limited. Small molecules may cross the brain blood barrier when orally delivered and can be discontinued if needed to mitigate adverse effects. This Editorial highlights the current study by Pagliarni et al. in which they used combined treatment of cell models of SMA with an ASO and an orally delivered HDAC inhibitor (panobinostat) to overcome the limitations of a single therapeutic approach. Panobinostat enhanced the expression of SMN2, increasing the amount of SMN2 mRNA available for splicing correction mediated by the ASO. In addition, panobinostat increased exon 7 retention in the SMN2 mRNA. This combinatorial treatment might allow lower or less frequent ASO doses, reducing the need for repeated intrathecal administration. The combined effects of panobinostat and nusinersen can now be tested in SMA animal models to determine whether this approach will be translatable to patients

Microstructured optical fibres for gas sensing: design fabrication and post-fab processing

Air/silica Microstructured Optical Fibers (MOFs) offer new prospects for fiber based sensor devices. In this paper, two topics of particular significance for gas sensing using air guiding Photonic Bandgap Fibers (PBGFs) are discussed. First, we address the issue of controlling the modal properties of PBGFs and demonstrate a single mode, polarization maintaining air guiding PBGF. Secondly, we present recent improvements of a femtosecond laser machining technique for fabricating fluidic channels in PBGFs, which allowed us to achieve cells with multiple side access channels and low additional loss

Dynamics of matter-wave solitons in a ratchet potential

We study the dynamics of bright solitons formed in a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive atomic interactions perturbed by a weak bichromatic optical lattice potential. The lattice depth is a biperiodic function of time with a zero mean, which realises a flashing ratchet for matter-wave solitons. The average velocity of a soliton and the directed soliton current induced by the ratchet depend on the number of atoms in the soliton. We employ this feature to study collisions between ratchet-driven solitons and find that soliton transport can be induced through their interactions. In the regime when matter-wave solitons are narrow compared to the lattice period the ratchet dynamics is well described by the effective Hamiltonian theory.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Negative Prognostic Effect of Baseline Antipsychotic Exposure in Clinical High Risk for Psychosis (CHR-P): Is Pre-Test Risk Enrichment the Hidden Culprit?

INTRODUCTION: Sample enrichment is a key factor in contemporary early-detection strategies aimed at the identification of help-seekers at increased risk of imminent transition to psychosis. We undertook a meta-analytic investigation to ascertain the role of sample enrichment in the recently highlighted negative prognostic effect of baseline antipsychotic (AP) exposure in clinical high-risk (CHR-P) of psychosis individuals. METHODS: Systematic review and meta-analysis of all published studies on CHR-P were identified according to a validated diagnostic procedure. The outcome was the proportion of transition to psychosis, which was calculated according to the Freeman‐Tukey double arcsine transformation. RESULTS: Thirty-three eligible studies were identified, including 16 samples with details on AP exposure at baseline and 17 samples with baseline AP exposure as exclusion criterion for enrollment. Those with baseline exposure to AP (n = 395) had higher transition rates (29.9%; 95% CI: 25.1%–34.8%) than those without baseline exposure to AP in the same study (n = 1289; 17.2%; 15.1%–19.4%) and those coming from samples that did not include people who were exposed to AP at baseline (n = 2073; 16.2%; 14.6%–17.8%; P < .05 in both the fixed-effects and the random-effects models). Heterogeneity within studies was substantial, with values above 75% in all comparisons. CONCLUSIONS: Sample enrichment is not a plausible explanation for the higher risk of transition to psychosis of CHR-P individuals who were already exposed to AP at the enrollment in specialized early-detection programs. Baseline exposure to AP at CHR-P assessment is a major index of enhanced, imminent risk of psychosis