Sizing the European Shadow Banking System: A New Methodology

One of the critical unanswered questions relating to the shadow-banking system has been to quantify its scale in an industry where entities, by design, are opaque and often outside of regulated and publically shared frameworks. However almost all shadow banking entities, including hedge funds, private equity funds and special purpose vehicles ("SPVs"), interact with the financial markets via regulated investment banks. For example, many SPVs are in fact originated as part of investment banking business and hedge funds typically transact in financial markets exclusively via the "prime brokerage" division of investment banks. This interface with the regulated banking environment combines with the typical practise by investment banks of equalizing compensation (Including bonus) ratios to revenues globally which then allows identification of the implied difference in revenues and hence assets that represents the shadow banking system. The paper will present for critique the results of this methodology to estimate the UK shadow banking system including European business managed from the UK. The estimate will imply a larger scale of shadow banking than previous estimates at £548 billion which, when combined with hedge fund assets of £360 billion (FSA, 2011) gives total shadow banking assets of over £900 billion. It is proposed that the large gap between the estimates of this paper and other estimates reflects the huge, and previously unknown, scale of offshore activities of UK investment banks

The relationship between Self-Esteem and sexual Self-Concept in people with Physical-Motor disabilities

Background: Self-esteem is the value that the individuals give themselves, and sexual self-concept is also a part of individuality or sexualself. Impairment or disability exists not only in the physical body of disabled people but also in their attitudes. Negative attitudes affect the mental health of disabled people, causing them to have lower self-esteem. Objectives: This study aimed to examine the relationship between self-esteem and sexual self-concept in people with physical-motor disabilities. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 random samples with physical-motor disabilities covered by Isfahan Welfare Organization in 2013. Data collection instruments were the Persian Eysenck self-esteem questionnaire, and five domains (sexual anxiety, sexual self-efficacy, sexual self-esteem, sexual fear and sexual depression) of the Persian multidimensional sexual selfconcept questionnaire. Because of incomplete filling of the questionnaires, the data of 183 people were analyzed by the SPSS 16.0 software. Data were analyzed using the t-test, Man-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests and Spearman correlation coefficient. Results: The mean age was 36.88 ± 8.94 years for women and 37.80 ± 10.13 for men. The mean scores of self-esteem among women and men were 15.80 ± 3.08 and 16.2 ± 2.90, respectively and there was no statistically significance difference. Comparison of the mean scores of sexual anxiety, sexual self-efficacy, sexual self-esteem, sexual fear and sexual depression among men and women showed that women scored higher than men in all domains. This difference was statistically significant in other domains except the sexual self-esteem (14.92 ± 3.61 vs. 13.56 ± 4.52) (P < 0.05). The Kruskal-Wallis test showed that except for sexual anxiety and sexual self-esteem, there was a statistical difference between other domains of people’s sexual self-concept and degree of disability (P < 0.05). Moreover, Spearman coefficient showed that there was only a correlation between men’s sexual anxiety, sexual self-esteem and sexual self-efficacy with their self-esteem. This correlation was positive in sexual anxiety and negative in two other domains. Conclusions: Lack of difference in self-esteem of disabled people in different degrees of disability and in both men and women suggests that disabled people should not be presumed to have low self-esteem, and their different aspects of life should be attended to, just like others. Furthermore, studies should be designed and implemented based on psychological, social and environmental factors that can help disabled people to promote their positive sexual self-concept through marriage, and reduce their negative self-concept. © 2015 Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal

High-quality quantum point contact in two-dimensional GaAs (311)A hole system

We studied ballistic transport across a quantum point contact (QPC) defined in a high-quality, GaAs (311)A two-dimensional (2D) hole system using shallow etching and top-gating. The QPC conductance exhibits up to 11 quantized plateaus. The ballistic one-dimensional subbands are tuned by changing the lateral confinement and the Fermi energy of the holes in the QPC. We demonstrate that the positions of the plateaus (in gate-voltage), the source-drain data, and the negative magneto-resistance data can be understood in a simple model that takes into account the variation, with gate bias, of the hole density and the width of the QPC conducting channel

Numerical Evidence for Robustness of Environment-Assisted Quantum Transport

Recent theoretical studies show that decoherence process can enhance transport efficiency in quantum systems. This effect is known as environment-assisted quantum transport (ENAQT). The role of ENAQT in optimal quantum transport is well investigated, however, it is less known how robust ENAQT is with respect to variations in the system or its environment characteristic. Toward answering this question, we simulated excitonic energy transfer in Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) photosynthetic complex. We found that ENAQT is robust with respect to many relevant parameters of environmental interactions and Frenkel-exciton Hamiltonian including reorganization energy, bath frequency cutoff, temperature, and initial excitations, dissipation rate, trapping rate, disorders, and dipole moments orientations. Our study suggests that the ENAQT phenomenon can be exploited in robust design of highly efficient quantum transport systems.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1104.481

Female rat hippocampal cell density after conditioned place preference

The hippocampus is important for learning tasks, such as conditioned place preference (CPP), which is widely used as a model for studying the reinforcing effects of drugs with dependence liability. Long-term opiate use may produce maladaptive plasticity in the brain structures involved in learning and memory, such as the hippocampus. We investigated the phenomenon of conditioning with morphine on the cell density of female rat hippocampus. Forty-eight female Wistar rats weighing on average 200-250 g were used. Rats were distributed into eight groups. Experimental groups received morphine daily (three days) at different doses (2.5, 5, 7.5 mg/kg) and the control-saline group received normal saline (1 ml/kg), and then the CPP test was performed. Three sham groups received only different doses (2.5, 5, 7.5 mg/kg) of morphine without CPP test. Forty-eight hours after behavioural testing animals were decapitated under chloroform anaesthesia and their brains were fixed, and after tissue processing, slices were stained with cresyl violet for neurons and phosphotungstic acid haematoxylin for astrocytes. The maximum response was obtained with 5 mg/kg of morphine. The density of neurons in CA1 and CA3 areas of hippocampus after injection of morphine and CPP was decreased. The number of astrocytes in different areas of hippocampus was increased after injection of morphine and CPP. It seems that the effective dose was 5 mg/kg, as it led to the CPP. We concluded that both injection of morphine and CPP can decrease the density of neurons and also increase the number of astrocytes in the rat hippocampus

Human emotional response to steering wheel vibration in automobiles

This is the post-print (final draft post-refereeing) version of the final published paper that is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.This study investigates what form of correlation may exist between measures of the valence and the arousal dimensions of the human emotional response to steering wheel vibration and the vibration intensity metrics obtained by means of the unweighted and the frequency weighted root mean square (rms). A laboratory experiment was performed with 30 participants who were presented 17 acceleration time histories in random order and asked to rate their emotional feelings of valence and arousal using a self-assessment manikin (SAM) scale. The results suggest a highly linear correlation between the unweighted, Wh weighted and Ws weighted vibration intensity metrics and the arousal measures of the human emotional response. The results also suggest that while vibration intensity plays a significant role in eliciting emotional feelings, there are other factors which influence the human emotional response to steering wheel vibration such as the presence of high peaks or high frequency band amplitudes

Relationship of serum lactate and glucose with oxygen saturation, heart rate and VO2max in response to L-carnitine during exhaustive exercise in active young men

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the serum level of lactate and glucose with oxygen saturation, maximal heart rate and VO2max in response to L-carnitine during exhaustive exercise in young active men. Materials and Methods: In this study, 10 young men (age: 26.4&plusmn;0.96 years, height: 173.9&plusmn;9.45 cm and weight: 71.8&plusmn;5.36 kg) were participated. The subjects performed two sessions of the Bruce test. Serum levels of lactate, glucose, oxygen saturation (SO2), VO2max, HRmax were recorded before, immediately and 4min after the exhaustive exercise. Results: The results showed that in the supplement group there was a significant relationship between the serum levels of lactate and VO2max 4min after the termination of the exercise. Also, there was a significant relationship between the serum levels of glucose and SO2 immediately after the exercise (P&lt;0.05). There was no significant relationship between the other factors. Conclusions: According to the results of this study, the L-carnitine supplementation has positive effects on the relationship between serum levels of lactate with VO2max and serum levels of glucose and SO2 immediately after the exhaustive exercise. So, the L-carnitine supplementation through increasing the exhaustion threshold has a significant effect on aerobic power in performing the intensive exhausting activities

Vanishing quantum discord is necessary and sufficient for completely positive maps

Two long standing open problems in quantum theory are to characterize the class of initial system-bath states for which quantum dynamics is equivalent to (1) a map between the initial and final system states, and (2) a completely positive (CP) map. The CP map problem is especially important, due to the widespread use of such maps in quantum information processing and open quantum systems theory. Here we settle both these questions by showing that the answer to the first is "all", with the resulting map being Hermitian, and that the answer to the second is that CP maps arise exclusively from the class of separable states with vanishing quantum discord.Comment: 4 pages, no figures. v2: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let