117 research outputs found
The Discount to NAV of distressed German open-ended real estate funds
No full textThe German open-ended real estate fund industry was strongly hit by massive out flows in the course of the global financial crisis. In total, 18 public and institutional real estate funds had to stop the redemption of shares and were ultimately forced to liquidate their portfolios. Investors of these funds either have to await the stepwise liquidation of the funds' assets, which can take up to several years, or they can opt to sell their shares on the secondary market, often at a substantial discount to the Net Asset Value (NAV Spread). This paper attempts to explain the NAV Spread of distressed German public open-ended real estate funds. The unique monthly dataset contains fund specifics and macroeconomic indicators for the entire relevant period. Fundamentals like the leverage ratio and the liquidity ratio as well as industry-wide spillover effects from fund closures affect the NAV Spread. Moreover, we detect a considerably influence of macroeconomic uncertainty explaining the discount to NAV
Real Gas Thermodynamics: and the isentropic behavior of substances
No full textA generalized isentropic gas model is derived following earlier work by Kouremenos et al. in the 1980s, by replacing the traditional adiabatic exponent γ by the real exponents γPv, γTv, and γPT, describing the isentropic pressure-volume, temperature-volume, and pressure-temperature relations respectively. The real adiabatic exponents are expressed as functions of state variables to take into account compressibility effects on the isentropic behavior of substances. Due to the implicit analytical nature of the real exponents, any equation of state or thermodynamic library can be used for their evaluation. The theoretical limits and overall behavior of the real isentropic gas model are explored for a Van der Waals substance. In the two opposing physical limits, the model is shown to reduce to the incompressible substance model for liquid densities and the ideal gas model as the temperature increases or the pressure goes to zero.The relation of the generalized isentropic gas model with other thermodynamic properties is explored, leading to the development of specific heat relations and other thermodynamic properties in terms of the real exponents γPv, γTv, and γPT. Besides providing alternative schemes for their evaluation, special features of thermodynamic properties such as the state of maximum density and inversion temperature may be related to the value of the isentropic exponents determined by the local compressibility of the substance. Due to the exact definitions of the real adiabatic exponents at a state point, the relations between properties is thermodynamically consistent – another physical requirement.The generalized isentropic gas model is then applied to isentropic flows to derive traditional gas dynamic relations such as speed of sound, stagnation properties, and choked flow conditions for non-ideal compressible fluid flows. Exact solutions are provided for Prandtl-Meyer expansion fans, and approximate Rankine-Hugoniot jump conditions are explored for real gases. Finally, attributes of the fundamental derivative of gas dynamics are explored under the generalized isentropic gas model to gain new insights into its mathematical properties. Under the generalized isentropic model, the fundamental derivative is shown to satisfy both liquid and gaseous physical limits. Non-classical behavior is attributed to higher-order derivatives of the real exponents.The application of the generalized isentropic gas model is demonstrated and validated for use in non-ideal compressible fluid dynamic (NICFD) codes by simulation of the one-dimensional Euler equations for a standard shock tube problem. Several numerical schemes for the evaluation of thermodynamic properties of varying levels of accuracy are presented for evaluation of the isentropic gas model. In the application of the shock tube problem, the general equation for the speed of sound is demonstrated to be equivalent to the speed of sound of a Van der Waals gas, proving the validity of the model.<br/
Plagiarism in the construction of scientific papers
No full textIn different levels of access to knowledge, from elementary school to higher education, there are concerns regarding the ease of access to information available on the Internet, whose content is copied, often arbitrarily. However, there is a growing concern to ensure that “copies” are used as quotes and with due recognition of the real author
The sense of a beginning : Bakhtinian dialogic criticism on 'the gospel' in Mark.
No full textContemporary literary approaches have caused paradigm shifts in Biblical Studies in the last two decades as it appears in a great deal of Markan studies using narrative, reader-response, deconstructive, feminist, and new historicist approaches. However, literary studies on the Gospel of Mark have not taken into account theoretical questions underlying those approaches. As a result biblical critics are driven by new trends without ever having a chance to examine the critical baggage of the approaches. Consequently, there is a gap of communication between the old and the new one. Therefore this thesis is an attempt to meet the need of enhancing the quality of critical endeavour in biblical studies. In the light of most recent competing critical theories of literature, the first contribution of this thesis is the methodological finding that Bakhtinian dialogic criticism contains the most profound philosophical and practical foundations for solving some crucial theoretical problems in contemporary literary theories. It is a critique to a Saussurian linguistic system of language which becomes the very foundation of modern and postmodern literary criticism. Bakhtinian literary theory shifts the foundation of literary criticism on linguistic signs into the creative activity of the socio-cultural production of human communication. The shift into socio-cultural reality of language communication makes the notion of 'genre' very important to unlock the problem of text and context in literary studies. Since the Gospel of Mark has fascinated most literary critics in Biblical Studies, the problem of 'genre' of this gospel is chosen as the focus of this study. Secondly, as no agreement is reached as to what 'genre' the Gospel of Mark belongs, this thesis makes its contribution to the discussion by locating the problem of 'genre' of Mark in the context of genre theories and argues that the Bakhtinian suggestion to find genre in the socio-cultural sphere by analysing artistic intercourse between narrative agents in Mark has freed the competing analysis from the unresolved problem between the kerygmatic (content oriented) approach and the analogical (form oriented) approach. To achieve finding 'genre' in the socio-cultural sphere, this thesis focuses on Bakhtinian analysis of the process of artistic intercourse between narrative agents. The narrative communicative interrelationships between narrative agents is constructed in this thesis as a 'stereophonic' Bakhtinian model of dialogic communication. This model is an original contribution of this thesis for revising the traditional two dimensional model of narrative communication. Based on this dialogical model of communication, a special role is given to the Bakhtinian 'author-creator' in the realization process of genre through the interaction of polyphonic voices. Through the interaction of voices of the author-artist and the hero we are led to discover a relatively stable type of portraying and controlling reality in Mark, known as the genre of Roman 'satire'. The closest literary affinity is Satyrica by Petronius. This narrative strategy of 'satire' in Mark has its root in the prophetic discourse of the Old Testament which is saturating the speech of the narrator, John the Immerser, the centurion, the people, and even Jesus. Finally, the whole search for Markan 'genre' culminates in the analysis of the realization of genre through the analysis of Bakhtinian chronotope. The reality of the genre of Mark is its social reality that is in its role as dpxrj/ 'beginning'. As the Gospel of Mark proclaims itself as 'a beginning', it defines its claim of socio-cultural 'authority' in early Christianity. It is this 'sense of beginning' which enables the narrating and the narrated world of Mark to interact dialogically
The emerging legal framework for private sector development in Viet Nam's transitional economy
No full textA major objective of Viet Nam's transition to a market economy has been to reactivate the private sector in a mixed economy. Several new laws have been introduced in the past five years to implement this policy and to create an enabling environment for the private sector. The author reviews some of the more important laws and regulations that affect Viet Nam's private sector activities, including laws on real property, intellectual property, companies, domestic investment, foreign investment, bankruptcy, contracts, and dispute resolution. Anti-monopoly law has not yet been introduced in Viet Nam. The issue of competition is addressed in the context of trade law, the relative roles of the state and private sector, and restrictions in company law. These areas all establish the foundation of a legal framework for a market economy. The author concludes that Viet Nam's legal framework, like China's, is still influenced by ideology, which causes problems in such areas as private ownership of real property and with such fundamental legal concepts as"due process of law."It is noted that the private sector is constrained by the lack of an independent judiciary, the absence of private land ownership, other uncertainties in property law that limit the develpoment of financial markets, and the inherent bias of the system in favor of the state sector (and collective ownership). Also noted is a law-abiding attitude, equally important to development has been slow to develop. The author goes on to point out that the foreign investment process is too complicated, and its company law too restrictive. A first priority should be to strreamline regulations, as well as liberalize trade policy and increase efforts in privatization of state enterprises. In this respect the author notes that export processing zones may be a useful interim instrument to attract foreign investment but should be phased out over time. More important in the long term is a good investment climate resting on a strong legal foundation.Legal Products,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Housing and Land,Municipal Financial Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Housing and Land,Legal Products,Municipal Financial Management
Performance Estimation of a Processor Module in the Real-Time Motion Control Platform of an ASML Lithostepper
No full textAt the core of state of the art microelectronic industry's drive for better technology, lies the continuing advancement in the development of Integrated Circuits using highly complex lithography machines, known as lithosteppers, which embed complex mechanical sub-systems performing intricate motions. These systems are controlled by means of custom real-time computing platforms containing off-the-shelf and specialized hardware components, and are optimized to keep pace with the continuing growing trend in performance requirements. At the ASML Twinscan lithostepper's heart resides the Control Architecture Reference Model (CARM) motion control platform which manages, among others, the wafer-stage, a multiple degree of freedom module, able to position a 15 kg heavy wafer-table with nanometer accuracy at extremely high acceleration and velocity. As the industry requirements for feature-size, overlay accuracy, and throughput keep increasing, the ASML lithosteppers, and the CARM platform in particular, should anticipate these demands by making early changes and upgrades with respect to computational performance and accuracy. Given that the current lithostepper configurations are not capable of sustaining the anticipated updates, which requires the increase of the control loop execution frequency from 20kHz to 40kHz, an early evaluation of potential CARM High Performance Process Controller (HPPC) successors has been performed. This indicated that the NXP-Freescale T4240 processor can potentially fulfill the expected requirements, however, the evaluation lacks accuracy as it was performed on a benchmark code not reflecting the actual CARM workload. To circumvent this problem, in this thesis, we introduce a more accurate evaluation methodology, which relies on the actual motion control application running on the HPPC and is able to capture aspects as scheduling, parallelism, and processor resource usage. To this end we develop a set of custom performance benchmarks able to emulate the CARM environment and evaluate the Freescale T4240 processor in this new context. Our results indicate that the T4240 is able to deliver enough computation power to fulfill the control loop execution frequency upscaling requirement from 20kHz to 40kHz. Additionally, we demonstrate that due to its clustered hardware architecture one T4240 can sustain 20kHz loop execution frequency for the workload of three current HPPCs, which suggest that its utilization in current lithosteppers can be beneficial
SASCNN: A Systolic Array Simulator for CNN
No full textConvolution Neural Networks (CNN) are used in many applications ranging from real-time object detection to robot-motion planning. CNNs are implemented on high-performance systems like multi-core CPU and GPU, these are of high power in nature and thus cannot be deployed in edge devices due to their limited battery power. The edge device has to provide real-time performance along with being low power, this prompts for an exploration of novel architectures catered towards the processing of CNNs. The recent works towards this goal have been the development of CNN accelerators using systolic array spatial architectures. The row-column stationary data-flow approach maximizes the reuse of weights, input feature maps and output feature maps across the array. Different applications require different performance, area and energy needs, and this makes it imperative to quickly prototype the architectural ideas and perform design space exploration. The challenging part is the non-trivial interactions between different architectural design parameters, as they play an important part in the complex design decisions. Hence, a hardware simulator to accelerate CNN is designed in this work. It is based on systolic array and uses row-column stationary data-flow with a near memory computing approach. The simulator supports different numerical precision such as 16-bit and 8-bit floating-point along with numerous design parameters such as the size of the systolic array, latency of MAC operation, PE local memory size, PE local memory latency and external memory latency. The functionality of the proposed design is verified on AlexNet. The Destiny memory modelling tool, along with energy and area estimation model, is used to perform a system study to investigate the trade-offs between different architectural design parameters.PRYSTINEElectrical Engineering | Circuits and System
A 41 μW real-time adaptive neural spike classifier
No full textRobust, power- and area-efficient spike classifier, capable of accurate identification of the neural spikes even for low SNR, is a prerequisite for the real-time, implantable, closed-loop brain-machine interface. In this paper, we propose an easily-scalable, 128-channel, programmable, neural spike classifier based on nonlinear energy operator spike detection, and a boosted cascade, multiclass kernel support vector machine classification. The power-efficient classification is obtained with a combination of the algorithm and circuit techniques. The classifier implemented in a 65 nm CMOS technology consumes less than 41 μW of power, and occupy an area of 2.64 mm2
Development of a design methodology for transonic rotor blades with ORC application
No full textOrganic Rankine Cycles (ORCs) are one of the technologies that can play an important role in the reduction of green house emissions. By converting low temperature energy sources in electricity, they are suitable for the exploitation of renewable sources (as solar and geothermal) and industrial waste heat. One of the most critical components in ORCs is the gas turbine, which usually has a radial inflow and one single expansion stage. The difficulties of the turbine design are related to real gas effects of the working fluids (organic compounds)and high expansion ratios, which lead to a supersonic flow at the turbine exit.The objective of this work is to develop a blade design methodology for a transonic turbine rotor. This is done by setting the focus on the blade passage and shaping it as a rotating nozzle. First, theory of rotating nozzles is developed, assuming the flow to be one dimensional and isentropic. Relations with respect to chocked conditions and the analytic solution to the flowfield are derived. Afterwards, the blade designmethodology is developed based on the rotating nozzle theory. Inputs of the methodology are total conditions, mass flowand static pressure at the rotor inlet, static pressure at the rotor outlet. Both the theory developed and the blade design methodology are validated. The relations derived for a one dimensional flow through an isentropic nozzle are valid for an ideal gas, while validation for real gas is not carried out. The location of the physical throat and its cross sectional area are determined and the analytic solution method of the flow field is proved to be precise. The blade design methodology is based on a one dimensional approximation and represents a first step towards a more precise blade design: the flow conditions along the nozzle mid line follow the expected trend. However, the boundary conditions are not respected and the flow varies considerably far from the mid line. Additional levels of complexity (as 2D approximation) have to be implemented in future work
Quantifying the influence of membrane forces, curvature, and imperfections on the nonlinear buckling load of thin-shells
No full textShells tend to be thin because their curvature enables them to carry distributed loads as membrane forces. The property of thinness stems from shells’ capacity to store membrane strain energy without much deformation. As a result, buckling failures often govern the design of shell structures. These buckling failures usually start locally, at a location where a combination of curvature and membrane forces is met. Moreover, shells tend to be imperfection-sensitive structures, that is, real-life shells (with initial geometric imperfections) usually cannot resist loads as high as the theoretically predicted critical buckling load. Advanced finite element analyses can accurately predict these so-called nonlinear buckling loads but require significant time and computation effort. On the other hand, current design equations are simple yet highly inaccurate and often penalize strength significantly. This treatise caters a Python script that executes nonlinear finite element analyses (using ANSYS Mechanical APDL) to generate a database of the nonlinear buckling loads of shell portions with varying membrane forces, curvatures and magnitudes of initial geometric imperfections. The aim, beyond the scope of this treatise, is to perform a parametric regression on said database to device design equation(s) that accurately predict the nonlinear buckling load of linear-elastic shell structures with initial geometric imperfections based merely on the linear elastic results of a geometrically perfect shell model
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