Fuzziness and Funds Allocation in Portfolio Optimization

Each individual investor is different, with different financial goals, different levels of risk tolerance and different personal preferences. From the point of view of investment management, these characteristics are often defined as objectives and constraints. Objectives can be the type of return being sought, while constraints include factors such as time horizon, how liquid the investor is, any personal tax situation and how risk is handled. It's really a balancing act between risk and return with each investor having unique requirements, as well as a unique financial outlook - essentially a constrained utility maximization objective. To analyze how well a customer fits into a particular investor class, one investment house has even designed a structured questionnaire with about two-dozen questions that each has to be answered with values from 1 to 5. The questions range from personal background (age, marital state, number of children, job type, education type, etc.) to what the customer expects from an investment (capital protection, tax shelter, liquid assets, etc.). A fuzzy logic system has been designed for the evaluation of the answers to the above questions. We have investigated the notion of fuzziness with respect to funds allocation.Comment: 21 page

A summary of the published data on host plants and morphology of immature stages of Australian jewel beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) : with additional new records

A summary is given of the published host plant and descriptive immature stage morphology data for 671 species and 11 subspecies in 54 genera of Australian jewel beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae). New host data for 155 species and 3 subspecies in 17 genera including the first published data for 75 species are included

Large-N supersymmetric beta-functions

We present calculations of the leading and O(1/N) terms in a large-N expansion of the \beta-functions for various supersymmetric theories: a Wess-Zumino model, supersymmetric QED and a non-abelian supersymmetric gauge theory. In all cases N is the number of a class of the chiral superfields in the theory.Comment: 9 pages, tex, five figures. Uses harvmac and epsf. Revised to include a discussion of higher loop DRED ambiguities. Some references added, and notation clarifie

A Study Of Some Effects Of Water Chemistry And Light On Growth Of Betta Splendens

28 leaves

An estimate of the stratospheric contribution to springtime tropospheric ozone maxima using TOPSE measurements and beryllium-7 simulations

Measurements of tropospheric ozone (O3) between 30°N and 70°N show springtime maxima at remote locations. The contribution of seasonal changes in stratosphere–troposphere exchange (STE) to these maxima was investigated using measurements from the Tropospheric Ozone Production about the Spring Equinox Experiment (TOPSE) campaign and the beryllium-7 (7Be) distribution from a calculation driven by fields from the Goddard Earth Observing System Data Assimilation System (GEOS DAS). Comparison with TOPSE measurements revealed that upper tropospheric model-calculated 7Be mixing ratios were reasonable (a change from previous calculations) but that lower tropospheric mixing ratios were too low most likely due to an overestimation of scavenging. Temporal fluctuations were well captured although their amplitudes were often underestimated. Analysis of O3measurements indicated that O3 mixing ratios increased by 5–10% month−1 for θ \u3c 300 K (the underworld) and by 10–15% month−1 for θ \u3e 300 K (the tropospheric middleworld). 7Be mixing ratios decreased with time for θ \u3c 290 K and increased with time for θ \u3e 300 K. Model-calculated middleworld increases of 7Be were a factor of 2 less than measured increases. 7Be with a stratospheric source (strat-7Be) increased by 4.6–8.8% month−1 along TOPSE flight paths within the tropospheric middleworld. Increases in strat-7Be were not seen along TOPSE flight paths in the underworld. Assuming changes in tropospheric O3 with a stratospheric source are the same as changes in strat-7Be and that 50% of O3 in the region of interest is produced in the stratosphere, changes in STE explain 20–60% of O3 increases in the tropospheric middleworld and less than 33% of O3 increases in the underworld

Interpreting the Ionization Sequence in AGN Emission-Line Spectra

We investigate the physical cause of the great range in the ionization level seen in the spectra of narrow lined active galactic nuclei (AGN). Mean field independent component analysis identifies examples of individual SDSS galaxies whose spectra are not dominated by emission due to star formation (SF), which we designate as AGN. We assembled high S/N ratio composite spectra of a sequence of these AGN defined by the ionization level of their narrow-line regions (NLR), extending down to very low-ionization cases. We used a local optimally emitting cloud (LOC) model to fit emission-line ratios in this AGN sequence. These included the weak lines that can be measured only in the co-added spectra, providing consistency checks on strong line diagnostics. After integrating over a wide range of radii and densities our models indicate that the radial extent of the NLR is the major parameter in determining the position of high to moderate ionization AGN along our sequence, providing a physical interpretation for their systematic variation. Higher ionization AGN contain optimally emitting clouds that are more concentrated towards the central continuum source than in lower ionization AGN. Our LOC models indicate that for the objects that lie on our AGN sequence, the ionizing luminosity is anticorrelated with the NLR ionization level, and hence anticorrelated with the radial concentration and physical extent of the NLR. A possible interpretation that deserves further exploration is that the ionization sequence might be an age sequence where low ionization objects are older and have systematically cleared out their central regions by radiation pressure. We consider that our AGN sequence instead represents a mixing curve of SF and AGN spectra, but argue that while many galaxies do have this type of composite spectra, our AGN sequence appears to be a special set of objects with negligible SF excitation.Comment: 57 pages; 18 figures, accepted by MNRA

Classification and analysis of emission-line galaxies using mean field independent component analysis

We present an analysis of the optical spectra of narrow emission-line galaxies, based on mean field independent component analysis (MFICA). Samples of galaxies were drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and used to generate compact sets of `continuum' and `emission-line' component spectra. These components can be linearly combined to reconstruct the observed spectra of a wider sample of galaxies. Only 10 components - five continuum and five emission line - are required to produce accurate reconstructions of essentially all narrow emission-line galaxies; the median absolute deviations of the reconstructed emission-line fluxes, given the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of the observed spectra, are 1.2-1.8 sigma for the strong lines. After applying the MFICA components to a large sample of SDSS galaxies we identify the regions of parameter space that correspond to pure star formation and pure active galactic nucleus (AGN) emission-line spectra, and produce high S/N reconstructions of these spectra. The physical properties of the pure star formation and pure AGN spectra are investigated by means of a series of photoionization models, exploiting the faint emission lines that can be measured in the reconstructions. We are able to recreate the emission line strengths of the most extreme AGN case by assuming the central engine illuminates a large number of individual clouds with radial distance and density distributions, f(r) ~ r^gamma and g(n) ~ n^beta, respectively. The best fit is obtained with gamma = -0.75 and beta = -1.4. From the reconstructed star formation spectra we are able to estimate the starburst ages. These preliminary investigations serve to demonstrate the success of the MFICA-based technique in identifying distinct emission sources, and its potential as a tool for the detailed analysis of the physical properties of galaxies in large-scale surveys.Comment: MNRAS accepted. 29 pages, 24 figures, 3 table

Regulation of B cell fate by chronic activity of the IgE B cell receptor.

IgE can trigger potent allergic responses, yet the mechanisms regulating IgE production are poorly understood. Here we reveal that IgE+ B cells are constrained by chronic activity of the IgE B cell receptor (BCR). In the absence of cognate antigen, the IgE BCR promoted terminal differentiation of B cells into plasma cells (PCs) under cell culture conditions mimicking T cell help. This antigen-independent PC differentiation involved multiple IgE domains and Syk, CD19, BLNK, Btk, and IRF4. Disruption of BCR signaling in mice led to consistently exaggerated IgE+ germinal center (GC) B cell but variably increased PC responses. We were unable to confirm reports that the IgE BCR directly promoted intrinsic apoptosis. Instead, IgE+ GC B cells exhibited poor antigen presentation and prolonged cell cycles, suggesting reduced competition for T cell help. We propose that chronic BCR activity and access to T cell help play critical roles in regulating IgE responses