The Revived Bretton Woods System: The Effects of Periphery Intervention and Reserve Management on Interest Rates & Exchange Rates in Center Countries

In this paper we explore some implications of the revived' Bretton Woods system for exchange market intervention and reserve management in periphery countries. Financial policies in these countries are seen as a component of a more general portfolio management policy in which the formation of an efficient domestic capital stock is a key objective. Because intervention in financial markets is an important part of their development strategy, intervention in exchange and financial markets has, and we argue will continue to be, large and persistent enough to generate predictable deviations of exchange rates and relative yields in industrial country financial markets from normal cyclical patterns. We argue that management of the currency composition of international reserves by emerging market governments and central banks is unlikely to alter these conclusions.

A complete gauge-invariant formalism for arbitrary second-order perturbations of a Schwarzschild black hole

Using recently developed efficient symbolic manipulations tools, we present a general gauge-invariant formalism to study arbitrary radiative $(l\geq 2)$ second-order perturbations of a Schwarzschild black hole. In particular, we construct the second order Zerilli and Regge-Wheeler equations under the presence of any two first-order modes, reconstruct the perturbed metric in terms of the master scalars, and compute the radiated energy at null infinity. The results of this paper enable systematic studies of generic second order perturbations of the Schwarzschild spacetime. In particular, studies of mode-mode coupling and non-linear effects in gravitational radiation, the second-order stability of the Schwarzschild spacetime, or the geometry of the black hole horizon.Comment: 14 page

Structure-based discovery of fiber-binding compounds that reduce the cytotoxicity of amyloid beta.

Amyloid protein aggregates are associated with dozens of devastating diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, and diabetes type 2. While structure-based discovery of compounds has been effective in combating numerous infectious and metabolic diseases, ignorance of amyloid structure has hindered similar approaches to amyloid disease. Here we show that knowledge of the atomic structure of one of the adhesive, steric-zipper segments of the amyloid-beta (Aβ) protein of Alzheimer's disease, when coupled with computational methods, identifies eight diverse but mainly flat compounds and three compound derivatives that reduce Aβ cytotoxicity against mammalian cells by up to 90%. Although these compounds bind to Aβ fibers, they do not reduce fiber formation of Aβ. Structure-activity relationship studies of the fiber-binding compounds and their derivatives suggest that compound binding increases fiber stability and decreases fiber toxicity, perhaps by shifting the equilibrium of Aβ from oligomers to fibers. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00857.001

Generic folding and transition hierarchies for surface adsorption of hydrophobic-polar lattice model proteins

The thermodynamic behavior and structural properties of hydrophobic-polar (HP) lattice proteins interacting with attractive surfaces are studied by means of Wang-Landau sampling. Three benchmark HP sequences (48mer, 67mer, and 103mer) are considered with different types of surfaces, each of which attract either all monomers, only hydrophobic (H) monomers, or only polar (P) monomers, respectively. The diversity of folding behavior in dependence of surface strength is discussed. Analyzing the combined patterns of various structural observables, such as, e.g., the derivatives of the numbers of surface contacts, together with the specific heat, we are able to identify generic categories of folding and transition hierarchies. We also infer a connection between these transition categories and the relative surface strengths, i.e., the ratio of the surface attractive strength to the interchain attraction among H monomers. The validity of our proposed classification scheme is reinforced by the analysis of additional benchmark sequences. We thus believe that the folding hierarchies and identification scheme are generic for HP proteins interacting with attractive surfaces, regardless of chain length, sequence, or surface attraction.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 3 table