Self-Correcting Kelly Strategies for Skeptical Traders

The Kelly criterion gives the appropriate bet size in idealized situations with known parameters. In financial trading situations parameters are generally unknown and the mathematical assumptions underlying the Kelly proof are not met precisely. Moreover a risk manager typically must cooperate with a trader who may be skeptical about both the Kelly criterion specifically and the concept of mathematical optimization of bet size in general. This presentation tackles the problem of designing a Kelly-based system for setting trade risk management parameters that is both self-correcting (the system delivers good results even if initial parameter are misestimated or parameters change) and acceptable to skeptics (its performance can be continuously validated)

Methods, Compositions, and Kits for Producing Beige Adipocytes and Treating Metabolic Disorders

Provided herein are, inter alia, methods, compositions, and kits for producing adipocyte populations such as beige adipocyte populations. Also included are methods and compositions for increasing the level of adipocyte populations (e.g., beige adipocyte populations) in a subject, as well as methods and compositions for treating subjects who are overweight, obese, or who have diabetes

Optimal Strategy for Gambling Pools

In gambling pools, entrants submit predictions and the prizes are awarded to the prediction or predictions closest to actual outcomes. Some well-known examples are football pools (both the global and American game versions), toto, NCAA March Madness bracket pools and horse racing tournaments. For small pools with complete information about outcome probabilities, exact game theory optimal solutions are straightforward to compute. If there is also complete information about the number and strategy of other players, optimal exploitive strategies are even easier to derive. These problems have been treated in the literature. This paper argues that the complete information approaches are not good approximations to practical optimal strategies, moreover they are usually computationally infeasible. A robust and computationally simple alternative is introduced

Culture Conditions for Expansion of Nephron Progenitor Cells

The present invention relates to compositions and methods associated with cocktails of growth factors and small molecules that target specific cell signaling pathways, the cocktails having been formulated to allow/promote the expansion of progenitor cells (e.g., nephron progenitor cells) within a defined culture system

Session 1-2-F: Rationality and Risk Intelligence in Binary Betting

We analyze 1.6 million binary bets on financial markets totaling $600 million in stakes, placed by 21,000 bettors at a large Internet betting site. The data set is unusually large and complete, plus has one additional important advantage: we can obtain objective independent estimates of the ex ante probability of winning each bet, using data from financial markets. This allows us to distinguish bettor profit due to superior prediction of financial events from bettor profit due to exploiting ex ante favorable odds situations. We focus on the degree or type of skill possessed by bettors (if any), and the amount of rationality and risk intelligence demonstrated in exploiting that skill

On variations of the brightness of type Ia supernovae with the age of the host stellar population

Recent observational studies of type Ia supernovae (SNeIa) suggest correlations between the peak brightness of an event and the age of the progenitor stellar population. This trend likely follows from properties of the progenitor white dwarf (WD), such as central density, that follow from properties of the host stellar population. We present a statistically well-controlled, systematic study utilizing a suite of multi-dimensional SNeIa simulations investigating the influence of central density of the progenitor WD on the production of Fe-group material, particularly radioactive Ni-56, which powers the light curve. We find that on average, as the progenitor's central density increases, production of Fe-group material does not change but production of Ni-56 decreases. We attribute this result to a higher rate of neutronization at higher density. The central density of the progenitor is determined by the mass of the WD and the cooling time prior to the onset of mass transfer from the companion, as well as the subsequent accretion heating and neutrino losses. The dependence of this density on cooling time, combined with the result of our central density study, offers an explanation for the observed age-luminosity correlation: a longer cooling time raises the central density at ignition thereby producing less Ni-56 and thus a dimmer event. While our ensemble of results demonstrates a significant trend, we find considerable variation between realizations, indicating the necessity for averaging over an ensemble of simulations to demonstrate a statistically significant result.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, accepted to ApJ

Simulation of Image Performance Characteristics of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS)

The next Landsat satellite, which is scheduled for launch in early 2013, will carry two instruments: the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). Significant design changes over previous Landsat instruments have been made to these sensors to potentially enhance the quality of Landsat image data. TIRS, which is the focus of this study, is a dual-band instrument that uses a push-broom style architecture to collect data. To help understand the impact of design trades during instrument build, an effort was initiated to model TIRS imagery. The Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Image Generation (DIRSIG) tool was used to produce synthetic “on-orbit” TIRS data with detailed radiometric, geometric, and digital image characteristics. This work presents several studies that used DIRSIG simulated TIRS data to test the impact of engineering performance data on image quality in an effort to determine if the image data meet specifications or, in the event that they do not, to determine if the resulting image data are still acceptable

Spectropolarimetry and Modeling of the Eclipsing T Tauri Star KH 15D

KH 15D is a strongly variable T Tauri star in the young star cluster NGC 2264 that shows a decrease in flux of 3.5 magnitudes lasting for 18 days and repeating every 48 days. The eclipsing material is likely due to orbiting dust or rocky bodies in a partial ring or warped disk that periodically occults the star. We measured the polarized spectrum in and out of eclipse at the Keck and Palomar observatories. Outside of the eclipse, the star exhibited low polarization consistent with zero. During eclipse, the polarization increased dramatically to ~2% across the optical spectrum, while the spectrum had the same continuum shape as outside of eclipse and exhibited emission lines of much larger equivalent width, as previously seen. From the data, we conclude that (a) the scattering region is uneclipsed; (b) the scattering is nearly achromatic; (c) the star is likely completely eclipsed so that the flux during eclipse is entirely due to scattered light, a conclusion also argued for by the shape of the ingress and egress. We argue that the scattering is not due to electrons, but may be due to large dust grains of size ~10 micron, similar to the interplanetary grains which scatter the zodiacal light. We construct a warped-disk model with an extended dusty atmosphere which reproduces the main features of the lightcurve, namely (a) a gradual decrease before ingress due to extinction in the atmosphere (similar for egress); (b) a sharper decrease within ingress due to the optically-thick base of the atmosphere; (c) a polarized flux during eclipse which is 0.1% of the total flux outside of eclipse, which requires no fine-tuning of the model. (abridged)Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ, MPEG simulation available at http://www.astro.washington.edu/agol/scatter2.mp