Surprising Effect Research Articles

The Impact of Monetary Policy Interventions on the Insurance Industry

This paper investigates the effect of the conventional and unconventional (e.g. Quantitative Easing - QE) monetary policy intervention on the insurance industry. We first analyze the impact on the stock performances of 166 (re)insurers from the last QE programme launched by the European Central Bank (ECB) by constructing an event study around the announcement date. Then we enlarge the scope by looking at the monetary policy surprise effects on the same sample of (re)insurers over a timeframe of 12 years, also extending the analysis to the Credit Default Swaps (CDS) market. In the second part of the paper by building a set of balance sheet-based indices, we identify the characteristics of (re)insurers that determine sensitivity to monetary policy actions. Our evidences suggest that a single intervention extrapolated from the comprehensive strategy cannot be utilized to estimate the effect of monetary policy intervention on the market. With respect to the impact of monetary policies, we show how the effect of interventions changes over time. Expansionary monetary policy interventions, when generating an instantaneous reduction of interest rates, generated movement in stock prices in the same direction till September 2010. This effect turned positive during the European sovereign debt crisis. However, the effect faded away in 2014-2015. The pattern is confirmed by the impact on the CDS market. With regard to the determinants of these effects, our analysis suggests that sensitivity is mainly driven by asset allocation and in particular by exposure to fixed income assets.

Interplay of orbital effects and nanoscale strain in topological crystalline insulators

Orbital degrees of freedom can have pronounced effects on the fundamental properties of electrons in solids. In addition to influencing bandwidths, gaps, correlation strength and dispersion, orbital effects have been implicated in generating novel electronic and structural phases. Here we show how the orbital nature of bands can result in non-trivial effects of strain on band structure. We use scanning–tunneling microscopy to study the effects of strain on the electronic structure of a heteroepitaxial thin film of a topological crystalline insulator, SnTe. By studying the effects of uniaxial strain on the band structure we find a surprising effect where strain applied in one direction has the most pronounced influence on the band structure along the perpendicular direction. Our theoretical calculations indicate that this effect arises from the orbital nature of the conduction and valence bands. Our results imply that a microscopic model capturing strain effects must include a consideration of the orbital nature of bands.

Study of Lanthanum Diffusion in HfO2-Based High-k Gate Stack

La2O3 has been selected as a threshold voltage (Vt) tuning material for advanced nodes because of its uniqueness of reducing effective work function towards NFET band edge by creating dipoles at SiO2/HfO2 interface [1,2]. In this paper, we study the factors which influence the diffusion of Lanthanum (La) atoms through HfO2 during anneal. These factors include: (1) Crystallization state of HfO2; (2). HfO2 thickness; (3) Drive-in anneal temperature; (4) TiN capping material during drive-in anneal. We prepare the following stack: Si/SiO2/ HfO2/ La2O3 /TiN/a-Si, and anneal the stack to diffuse the La atoms into HfO2 layer. Then a-Si, cap TiN and excessive La2O3 were sequentially removed by wet etch. Final structure Si/SiO2/La-doped HfO2 is measured by XPS/XRF to determine the amount of La atoms that were diffused in. The diffusion of La is governed by its initial dosage (La2O3 deposition thickness), its adjacent layers (bottom HfO2, and top cap TiN), and the annealing temperature. By varying these parameters, we systematically study the effects of each factor, and correlate them to final Vt shift in the devices. The Vt shift in the MOSFET device is found to be proportional to the final diffused La amount in HfO2. The Vt shift shows obvious dependence on initial La dosage, annealing temperature and HfO2 thickness. On the other hand, the crystallization of HfO2 display a surprising blocking effect for La diffusion, indicating that La diffusion doesn’t follow the common grain-boundary diffusion mechanism. We found that HfO2 starts to crystallize when post-deposition anneal temperature is greater than 880C. La diffusion through crystallized HfO2 is significantly reduced compared to the case when HfO2 is still amorphous. On the contrary, Nitrogen atoms, which were incorporated during cap TiN deposition process, shows enhanced diffusion through HfO2. Fig.1 (a) shows the La signal in gate stack prior to and after La diffusion. The final La amount is much less for crystallized HfO2 (Hk PDA temp =900C and 950C) than for amorphous HfO2 (Hk PDA temp =800C and 850C). However, N signal, in Fig.1 (b) shows increased value for crystallized HfO2. Fig. 1(c) (d) show the Vt shift from NFET and PFET devices respectively, confirming less La diffusion (less Vt shift) in crystallized HfO2. The Vt of NFET is reduced while the Vt of PFET is enhanced because of the unipolar nature of the La-Si-O dipoles. We also conducted Angle-resolved XPS (AR-XPS) and TEM/EELS analysis and they both show that in crystallized HfO2, the La distribution is away from HfO2/SiO2 interface, while in amorphous HfO2, more La reside at HfO2/SiO2 interface. The capping material is also crucial for La diffusion in HfO2. We tested two types of TiN: (1) ALD TiN using a metalorganic precusor, tetrakis (dimethylamido) titanium and Nitrogen (TDMAT-TiN), (2) ALD TiN using TiCl4 precursor and NH3 (TiC4-TiN). We observe significant Vt difference between devices using these two TiN materials. The final diffused La is much less for TiC4-TiN based cap than TDMAT-TiN based cap. This is attributed to different La diffusion rate in the capping TiN material which in turn affects the La diffusion into HfO2. In summary, we evaluate the factors that influence La diffusion in HfO2-based Hk gate stack. Both crystallization of HfO2 and the absorption of La in top TiN material have great contributions to the effectiveness of La diffusion in HfO2. Some of these factors for La diffusion are especially intertwined with the growth of SiO2 interfacial layer (IL) which affects the Tinv and Toxgl of the MOSFET devices. Cares have to be taken to engineer the stack structure and integration scheme to achieve desired Vt shift and device performance. REFERENCE: [1] H. N. Alshareef et.al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 232103 (2006) [2] Koji Kita and Akira Toriumi, Appl. Phys. Lett. 94, 132902 (2009) Figure 1

Ending Open Defecation: A Review of Community-Led Sanitation Programs.

Ending Open Defecation: A Review of Community-Led Sanitation Programs.

The Anthropology of Corruption

The Anthropology of Corruption

The Effect of Large Macro Surprises on Mutual Funds' Liquidity Profile

We measure the liquidity profile of open-end mutual funds using the sensitivity of their daily returns to aggregate liquidity. We study how this sensitivity changes around real-activity macroeconomic announcements that reveal large surprises about the state of the economy and after three relevant market events: Bill Gross's departure from PIMCO, Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund's suspension of redemptions, and the effect of Lehman Brothers' collapse on Neuberger Berman. Results show that, following negative news, the sensitivity to aggregate liquidity increases for less-liquid mutual funds, like those that invest in the stocks of small companies and in high-yield corporate bonds. The effect is more pronounced during stress periods, suggesting that a deterioration in the funds' liquidity could amplify vulnerabilities in situations of already weak macroeconomic conditions.

A Developmental Switch in Microglial HDAC Function

The epigenetic mechanisms controlling microglia functions are largely unknown. In this issue of Immunity, Datta etal. (2018) uncover surprising and distinct effects of deleting the epigenetic regulators HDAC1 and HDAC2 during microglial development versus during the course of neurodegeneration.

Antigen Loading (e.g., Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase 65) of Tolerogenic DCs (tolDCs) Reduces Their Capacity to Prevent Diabetes in the Non-Obese Diabetes (NOD)-Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Model of Adoptive Cotransfer of Diabetes As Well As in NOD Mice.

Tolerogenic DCs (tolDCs) are being researched as a promising intervention strategy also in autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes (T1D). T1D is a T-cell-mediated, organ-specific disease with several well-defined and rather specific autoantigens, i.e., proinsulin, insulin, glutamic acid decarboxylase 65 (GAD65), that have been used in animal as well as human intervention trials in attempts to achieve a more efficient, specific immunotherapy. In this study, we have tested tolerogenic DCs for their effectiveness to prevent adoptive transfer of diabetes by diabetogenic splenocytes into non-obese diabetes (NOD)-severe combined immunodeficiency (NOD-SCID) recipients. While i.p. application of tolDCs prepared from bone marrow of prediabetic NOD mice by vitamin D2 and dexamethasone significantly reduced diabetes transfer into the NOD-SCID females, this effect was completely abolished when tolDCs were loaded with the mouse recombinant GAD65, but also with a control protein—ovalbumin (OVA). The effect was not dependent on the presence of serum in the tolDC culture. Similar results were observed in NOD mice. Removal of possible bystander antigen-presenting cells within the diabetogenic splenocytes by negative magnetic sorting of T cells did not alter this surprising effect. Tolerogenic DCs loaded with an immunodominant mouse GAD65 peptide also displayed diminished diabetes-preventive effect. Tolerogenic DCs were characterized by surface maturation markers (CD40, CD80, CD86, MHC II) and the lipopolysaccharide stability test. Data from alloreactive T cell proliferation and cytokine induction assays (IFN-γ) did not reveal the differences observed in the diabetes incidence. Migration of tolDCs, tolDCs-GAD65 and tolDCs-OVA to spleen, mesenteric- and pancreatic lymph nodes displayed similar, mucosal pattern with highest accumulation in pancreatic lymph nodes present up to 9 days after the i.p. application. These data document that mechanisms by which tolDCs operate in vivo require much better understanding for improving efficacy of this promising cell therapy, especially in the presence of an antigen, e.g., GAD65.

Lexical Predictability During Natural Reading: Effects of Surprisal and Entropy Reduction.

What are the effects of word-by-word predictability on sentence processing times during the natural reading of a text? Although information complexity metrics such as surprisal and entropy reduction have been useful in addressing this question, these metrics tend to be estimated using computational language models, which require some degree of commitment to a particular theory of language processing. Taking a different approach, this study implemented a large-scale cumulative cloze task to collect word-by-word predictability data for 40 passages and compute surprisal and entropy reduction values in a theory-neutral manner. A separate group of participants read the same texts while their eye movements were recorded. Results showed that increases in surprisal and entropy reduction were both associated with increases in reading times. Furthermore, these effects did not depend on the global difficulty of the text. The findings suggest that surprisal and entropy reduction independently contribute to variation in reading times, as these metrics seem to capture different aspects of lexical predictability.

Joint evolution of dispersal propensity and site selection in structured metapopulation models

We propose a novel mathematical model for a metapopulation in which dispersal occurs on two levels: juvenile dispersal from the natal site is mandatory but it may take place either locally within the natal patch or globally between patches. Within each patch, individuals live in sites. Each site can be inhabited by at most one individual at a time and it may be of high or low quality. A disperser immigrates into a high-quality site whenever it obtains one, but it immigrates into a low-quality site only with a certain probability that depends on the time within the dispersal season. The vector of these low-quality-site-acceptance probabilities is the site-selection strategy of an individual. We derive a proxy for the invasion fitness in this model and study the joint evolution of long-distance-dispersal propensity and site-selection strategy. We focus on the way different ecological changes affect the evolutionary dynamics and study the interplay between global patch-to-patch dispersal and local site-selection. We show that ecological changes affect site-selection mainly via the severeness of competition for sites, which often leads to effects that may appear counterintuitive. Moreover, the metapopulation structure may result in extremely complex site-selection strategies and even in evolutionary cycles. The propensity for long-distance dispersal is mainly determined by the metapopulation-level ecological factors. It is, however, also strongly affected by the winter-survival of the site-holders within patches, which results in surprising non-monotonous effects in the evolution of site-selection due to interplay with long-distance dispersal. Altogether, our results give new additional support to the recent general conclusion that evolution of site-selection is often dominated by the indirect factors that take place via density-dependence, which means that evolutionary responses can rarely be predicted by intuition.

Discussion on “Effect of out-of-phase loading on fretting fatigue response of Al7075-T6 under cyclic normal loading using a new testing apparatus” by F. Abbasi and G.H. Majzoobi

Fretting fatigue has been studied mainly with constant normal load. Abbasi and Majzoobi (2017) suggest an new testing method where contact pressure can be independently varied during the test. The authors compare the case of constant normal load, with that of in phase or 90° and 180° degrees out-of-phase loads, but at the same frequency. However, the results are not obvious to interpret, and it is hoped that a reply from the authors and a discussion could lead to some progress. In particular, contact mechanics (and even the authors’ own numerical simulations) seem in contrast with some experiments. Also, the case of constant normal load is found to be the least damaging despite less frictional force is developed which seems to imply an oxidation phenomenon which depends on greater exposure to air, but the time of tests seems similar. If these surprising effects are confirmed, this varying normal load effect calls for some new models in fretting. Or there is something wrong in the experiments?

Linearized Navier–Stokes equations for aeroacoustics using stabilized finite elements: Boundary conditions and industrial application to aft-fan noise propagation

In this paper, a numerical method for solving the linearized Navier-Stokes equations is presented for aeroacoustic sound propagation problem. The Navier–Stokes equations are linearized in the frequency domain. The fan noise of jet engine is emitted nearly selectively at certain frequencies, which depend on the rotation velocity of the fan. A frequency domain approach is highly suitable for this kind of problem, instead of a costly time-dependent simulation which can handle a large range of frequencies depending on the time step and the mesh.The calculations presented here were all made using Aether, a Navier–Stokes code which uses finite elements stabilized with SUPG (Streamline Upwind Galerkin). Automatic code differentiation was used to linearize this code. Entropy variables bring interesting mathematical properties to the numerical scheme, but also prevent the easy implementation of boundary conditions. For instance, the pressure is a non-linear combination of the entropy variables. Imposing a pressure variation needs a linearization of this relation which is detailed herein. The performance of different types of boundary conditions used to impose the acoustic pressure variation inside the engine is studied in detail. Finally, a very surprising effect of the SUPG scheme was to transform a homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition on all variables to a transparent one which is able to let only outgoing waves pass through with no incoming wave. A one-dimensional toy model is given to explain how SUPG brings about this transformation.The last part of the article is dedicated to an industrial test case. The geometry of a model turbine from the Clean Sky European project was used for sound propagation of the fan exhaust noise of a jet engine. Computations on several modes with increasing complexities were done and the results compared to a boundary element method which served as a reference when no mean flow is present. Results of a computation with a mean flow are shown.

Unexpected refacetting of palladium nanoparticles under atmospheric N2 conditions.

We demonstrate an unexpected refacetting process of Pd nanoparticles, induced by N2 under atmospheric pressure at elevated temperatures, by in situ TEM observations. The morphology changes, with a notable increase in the fraction of Pd{110} facets, were visualized by atomic-scale TEM images and further explained by theoretical calculations. Firm evidence and rational understanding revealed that the "inert" gas N2 has the ability to modify the structure of metal nanoparticles. This surprising effect should be considered seriously in vast chemical applications that use N2 as a carrier gas or protective atmosphere.

Missing Events in Event Studies: Identifying the Effects of Partially-Measured News Surprises

Macroeconomic news announcements are elaborate and multi-dimensional. We consider a framework in which jumps in asset prices around macroeconomic news and monetary policy announcements reflect both the response to observed surprises in headline numbers and latent factors, reflecting other details of the release. The details of the non headline news, for which there are no expectations surveys, are unobservable to the econometrician, but nonetheless elicit a market response. We estimate the model by the Kalman filter, which essentially combines OLS- and heteroskedasticity-based event study estimators in one step, showing that those methods are better thought of as complements rather than substitutes. The inclusion of a single latent factor greatly improves our ability to explain asset price movements around announcements.

Can Polarization Be Positive? Conflict and Institutional Development in Africa

Can political polarization, typically viewed as detrimental for political development, have positive effects on institution-building and democratization in the long run? This article argues that the overall impact of polarization on a political system is determined by two factors: the character of preexisting identity cleavages and the balance of forces between groups on either side of the political divide. Where there exists a history of formal group exclusion or differential citizenship rights, political polarization is more likely to result in large-scale violence and democratic breakdown. Where power is strongly imbalanced, on the other hand, polarization is unlikely to be sustained, and the status quo ante will be retained. When these two conditions are absent, however, a relatively high degree of polarization can have surprising institution-building effects for new democracies. The article illustrates these arguments with reference to four key cases in sub-Saharan Africa.

Students Lead the Library: The Importance of Student Contributions to the Academic Library. Sara Arnold-Garza and Carissa Tomlinson, eds. Chicago: Association of College & Research Libraries, 2017. 322p. $62.00 (ISBN 978-0-8389-8867-1). LC 2016-055675.

When trying to inspire students to engage with the library, a book titled Students Lead the Library turns out to be an excellent way to get their attention. Displaying this title while promoting a student advisory board last fall had the surprising effect of immediately drawing students in, as they expressed their pleasant surprise at learning that they could offer significant contributions to their college or university library. For academic librarians, of course, this is less of a surprise, since, as the editors state in the very first sentence of the book: “[Academic librarians] are driven by the belief that student scholars are at the heart of the academic library.” Yet even the most student-focused librarians may find themselves astonished by the diverse selection of student leadership roles represented in this collection of case studies.

Linda Wolfsgruber: A Multi-talented Artist

Linda WolfsgruberA Multi-talented Artist Sabine Fuchs (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution "I love being able to invent something truly special for all my books." We can recognize this ability in every single book Linda Wolfsgruber has written; each of her more than eighty books surprises with unexpected techniques, diverse figures, special spaces, and remarkable compositions of the visual and the literal. Her tenacity in researching and experimenting most likely originated in her childhood in between the Alps and the Dolomites in South Tirol, Italy. Born 1961 in Bruneck, Wolfsgruber grew up bilingual and communicated early with foreigners, as her parents hosted tourists in their house to make ends meet. Her cosmopolitanism may well have taken root there. Her talent was recognized early and she attended art college in St. Ulrich in Gröden (Italy), where three languages were taught and spoken. Realizing that languages are confined only to groups of people knowing the code might have sparked the conviction that images are a language without limits. Subsequently, she completed [End Page 38] her training in typesetting in Munich, Germany, and graphic design in Bruneck, Italy, and with her study at the Scuola del Libro in Urbino, Italy. She started her work as a freelancing graphic designer, illustrator, and artist first in Bruneck and later on in Vienna, Austria, where she lives now. Linda Wolfsgruber lets children participate in her creative process not only at schools but also at kindergarten and cultural institutions, thus stimulating their own creativity. The childlike perspective and their playful discovery of the world in turn provide the artist with new impulses. Since 1996, she has been teaching various techniques of illustration at the International Scuola d'illustrazione di Sarmede in Italy, where she supports and promotes many young illustrators. "I get bored, when using the same over and over again." Since her first publication in 1983, her artistic expression has been growing and developing for thirty-five years. It seems unbelievable that one single hand can work so diversely with colors, shapes, formats, moods, emotions, genres, narrative, and illustrative techniques. Over the course of her career, she has painted with acrylic colors, switched to tempera, later on became a master of etching and monotype, experimented with collage, and used photos of self-made figures before switching to drawing with pen and ink on handmade paper. She has continuously expanded her technical repertoire and has increasingly applied a mix of techniques, which have culminated in truly multi-layered images. Besides these techniques for illustrations, she works on big oil paintings, embroideries on handmade paper, and on frescos in public spaces; she is currently working on CD and book covers, as well as on animated films. Combining diverse techniques allows the artist to break up familiar patterns of seeing. She uses mixed media as a technique to create surprising effects and to add value to the original text—from authors like H.C. Artmann, Kim Echlin, Inge Fasan, Christian Morgenstern, Heinz Janisch, Norbert C. Kaser, and Jorge Luján ao—which only reveals itself to the reader upon closer inspection. This plethora of tools also makes it possible for the pictures to stand on their own. Their major purpose is not to serve the story they depict; instead, they claim their own space—which turns into the readers' viewing space. All these aspects can be discovered in Der Halskragen. Ein Skizzenbuch (The Collar. A Sketch Book, 2005). In this story of a vain collar, written by Hans Christian Andersen, the text-picture combination looks arbitrary. In one line at the bottom of the page, we read the story of the collar, who wants to marry someone but no one wants him. Finally, he invents his unsatisfied life as quite an extraordinary story. In a playful, postmodern associative manner, Der Halskragen offers a well-chosen selection of Wolfsgruber's work in the form of a sketchbook to both underline and counteract the text. A firework of artistic power unfolds before us from oil paintings, drawings, etchings, and collages, which she uses to stimulate a broad range of associations. The individual images sometimes reference real people and other works of literature, thus creating further layers...

Professionals’ and amateurs’ pasts: a decolonizing reading of post-war Romanian histories of gendered interwar activism

This article provides an illustration of a decolonial and gendered approach that can shape ‘new global labour histories’ by re-reading histories of Communist women’s interwar activism produced in state-socialist Romania with attention to the power context in which they were created and the clues about the work of social reproduction during the interwar that these histories provide. After discussing the main concepts and rationale in the first section, in the second section the author shows that women’s history and women historians were marginalized in Romania after 1958 despite promising post-war beginnings. She shows that this evolution was made possible by the symbiosis between nationalist historians and autochthonist politicians in search of a break with Stalinist policies. She then hones in, in the third part of the paper, on the content of the Revue des Etudés Sud-Est Européenes (RESEE) and two women’s history volumes, as publications issuing from the conditions described in the second part. With regard to the standalone volumes, the author shows that in this body of work, the interwar period is described as one of women’s increased activism within the social-democratic or Communist movements. On the other hand, the period is also described as one of worsening living conditions for proletarians. The intersection of these two narratives creates in this rather limited historiographical body the surprising effect of granting high visibility to reproductive labour.

Heterogeneous parallel computing accelerated iterative subpixel digital image correlation

Parallel computing techniques have been introduced into digital image correlation (DIC) in recent years and leads to a surge in computation speed. The graphics processing unit (GPU)-based parallel computing demonstrated a surprising effect on accelerating the iterative subpixel DIC, compared with CPU-based parallel computing. In this paper, the performances of the two kinds of parallel computing techniques are compared for the previously proposed path-independent DIC method, in which the initial guess for the inverse compositional Gauss-Newton (IC-GN) algorithm at each point of interest (POI) is estimated through the fast Fourier transform-based cross-correlation (FFT-CC) algorithm. Based on the performance evaluation, a heterogeneous parallel computing (HPC) model is proposed with hybrid mode of parallelisms in order to combine the computing power of GPU and multicore CPU. A scheme of trial computation test is developed to optimize the configuration of the HPC model on a specific computer. The proposed HPC model shows excellent performance on a middle-end desktop computer for real-time subpixel DIC with high resolution of more than 10000 POIs per frame.

Ethnic Homogeneity and Community Policing: The Surprising Effects of Social Capital in Two Cape Town Neighborhoods

AbstractUnder what conditions does coethnicity undermine mutually beneficial collective action? One of the most enduring hypotheses in a comparative political economy decade is that ethnic diversity tends to undermine public goods provision. Ethnically homogenous communities are assumed to have a distinct advantage in local goods provision because shared identities tend to facilitate cooperation among coethnics. However, one can observe variation in the success of local goods provision across homogenous communities. To explain this puzzling occurrence, I explore the relationship between coethnicity and social capital, examining how they interact differently in different contexts. Empirically, I conduct an analysis of my own fieldwork on community policing efforts in two ethnically homogenous communities in Cape Town, South Africa. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that, in some contexts, coethnicity facilitates the development of bonding social capital, a type of social capital that constricts opportunities for individual action by creating certain expectations about behavior. In the context of community policing, those expectations can discourage individuals from participating in collective efforts.