1,048 research outputs found
A Reassessment of Japanfs Big Bang Financial Regulatory Reform
No full textThis paper reassesses the results of Japanfs financial deregulation over the last two decades. Japanfs Big Bang sought to transform a highly regulated bank-centered financial system to a transparent, market-centered financial system to revitalize Japanfs economy and aging society. Prior assessments generally view this reform effort as a failure due to Japanfs low economic growth rate. This paper finds, contrary to conventional wisdom, that government-led deregulatory and administrative reform was largely successful in removing legal and administrative obstacles to the development of a market-centered financial system. However, the persistence of past practices by market participants and strong headwinds such as low macroeconomic growth and poor financial market performance prevented achievement of the Big Bangf s ambitious goals. This illustrates both the limits of what can be accomplished through deregulation of financial markets and the problem inherent in using a results-oriented standard in evaluating Japanfs reform efforts.Big Bang, Financial Deregulation, Financial Reform, Corporate Bond Market, Venture Capital, Financial Center
Efficient Bang-Bang Model Predictive Control for Quadcopters
No full textTime-optimal model predictive control is important for achieving fast racing drones but is computationally intensive and thereby rarely used onboard small quadcopters with limited computational resources. In this work, we simplify the optimal control problem (OCP) of the position loop for several maneuvers by exploiting the fact that the solution resembles a so-called ‘bang-bang’ in the critical direction, where only the switching time needs to be found. The noncritical direction uses a ‘minimum effort’ approach. The control parameters are obtained through bisection search schemes on an analytical path prediction model. The approach is compared with a classical PID controller and theoretical time-optimal trajectories in simulations. We explain the effects of the OCP simplifications and introduce a method of mitigating one of these effects. Finally, we have implemented the ‘bang-bang’ controller as a model predictive controller (MPC) onboard a Parrot Bebop and performed indoor flights to compare the controller’s performance to a PID controller. We show that the light novel controller outperforms the PID controller in waypoint-to-waypoint flight while requiring only minimal knowledge of the quadcopter’s dynamics.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Control & Simulatio
Determinants of recovery from post-COVID-19 dyspnoea: analysis of UK prospective cohorts of hospitalised COVID-19 patients and community-based controls
No full textBackground: the risk factors for recovery from COVID-19 dyspnoea are poorly understood. We investigated determinants of recovery from dyspnoea in adults with COVID-19 and compared these to determinants of recovery from non-COVID-19 dyspnoea.Methods: we used data from two prospective cohort studies: PHOSP-COVID (patients hospitalised between March 2020 and April 2021 with COVID-19) and COVIDENCE UK (community cohort studied over the same time period). PHOSP-COVID data were collected during hospitalisation and at 5-month and 1-year follow-up visits. COVIDENCE UK data were obtained through baseline and monthly online questionnaires. Dyspnoea was measured in both cohorts with the Medical Research Council Dyspnoea Scale. We used multivariable logistic regression to identify determinants associated with a reduction in dyspnoea between 5-month and 1-year follow-up.Findings: we included 990 PHOSP-COVID and 3309 COVIDENCE UK participants. We observed higher odds of improvement between 5-month and 1-year follow-up among PHOSP-COVID participants who were younger (odds ratio 1.02 per year, 95% CI 1.01-1.03), male (1.54, 1.16-2.04), neither obese nor severely obese (1.82, 1.06-3.13 and 4.19, 2.14-8.19, respectively), had no pre-existing anxiety or depression (1.56, 1.09-2.22) or cardiovascular disease (1.33, 1.00-1.79), and shorter hospital admission (1.01 per day, 1.00-1.02). Similar associations were found in those recovering from non-COVID-19 dyspnoea, excluding age (and length of hospital admission).Interpretation: factors associated with dyspnoea recovery at 1-year post-discharge among patients hospitalised with COVID-19 were similar to those among community controls without COVID-19.Funding: PHOSP-COVID is supported by a grant from the MRC-UK Research and Innovation and the Department of Health and Social Care through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) rapid response panel to tackle COVID-19. The views expressed in the publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the National Health Service (NHS), the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.COVIDENCE UK is supported by the UK Research and Innovation, the National Institute for Health Research, and Barts Charity. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the funders
Marketing Communications Plan for a Fintech company. Case: Rundit Oy
No full textThe objective of this thesis was to analyze the operations and strategies of fundraising in the financial aspect. How companies communicate with their investors, how a Fintech company can help and enhance the connection between them.From there, the thesis will propose the marketing communications strategy that might im-prove the number of userbase, attract more companies and investors to join the platform, and further increase customer awareness. The conclusion includes the analysis of the com-pany’s current situation, the company's strengths, and its core values, identify the goal, vision, and strategic plan. More precisely, the author sought for the correct core values of the company to improve the effectiveness of online marketing communications.The thesis is commissioned by Rundit Oy, a Finnish Fintech startup. They provide a platform that can improve communication between investors and companies. Their aim is to create a platform where the investors can have a better overview and situation of the companies that they have invested in by standardizing the process of the financial report, metrics, charts, and forecasts, etc. Furthermore, they also help the company to promote themselves, to be able to open the fundraising, to connect them with potential investors, and provide them a professional tool for investor reporting.The author uses the qualitative research method that focuses on Participator observation method and conducts a series of Semi-structured interviews to gather data. The interview involved the CEO, Product owner, and lead designer of Rundit. After gathering the necessary data, the author will draw the Business Model Canvas to identify the current value of the company, then use different analyses such as SWOT and PESTEL to support making the mar-keting communications plan
Second-order analysis and numerical approximation for bang-bang bilinear control problems
No full textWe consider bilinear optimal control problems whose objective functionals do not depend on the controls. Hence, bang-bang solutions will appear. We investigate sufficient secondorder conditions for bang-bang controls, which guarantee local quadratic growth of the objective functional in L1 . In addition, we prove that for controls that are not bang-bang, no such growth can be expected. Finally, we study the finite-element discretization and prove error estimates of bang-bang controls in L1 -norms.The first author was partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía Industria y Competitividad under research projects MTM2014-57531-P and MTM2017-83185-P. The second author was partially supported by DFG under grant Wa 3626/1-1
A 33-ppm/°C 240-nW 40-nm CMOS Wakeup Timer Based on a Bang-Bang Digital-Intensive Frequency-Locked-Loop for IoT Applications
No full textThis paper presents a wakeup timer in 40-nm CMOS for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications based on a bang-bang Digital-intensive Frequency-Locked Loop (DFLL). A self-biased Σ Δ Digitally Controlled Oscillator (DCO) is locked to an RC time constant via a feedback loop consisting of a single-bit chopped comparator and a digital loop filter, thus maximizing the use of digital circuits while keeping only the RC network and the comparator as the sole analog blocks. Analysis and behavior level simulations of the DFLL have been carried out to guide the optimization of the long-term stability and frequency accuracy of the timer. High frequency accuracy and a 10× enhancement of long-term stability is achieved by the adoption of chopping to reduce the effect of comparator offset and 1/f noise and by the use of Σ Δ modulation to improve the DCO resolution. Such highly digitized architecture fully exploits the advantages of advanced CMOS processes, thus enabling operation down to 0.7 V and a small area (0.07 mm2). The proposed timer achieves the excellent energy efficiency (0.57 pJ/cycle at 417 kHz at 0.8-V supply) over prior art while keeping excellent on-par long-term stability (Allan deviation floor < 20 ppm) and temperature stability (33 ppm°Cat 0.8-V supply).Accepted Author Manuscript(OLD)Applied Quantum Architecture
Sufficient second-order conditions for bang-bang control problems
No full textWe provide sufficient optimality conditions for optimal control problems with bang-bang controls. Building on a structural assumption on the adjoint state, we additionally need a weak second-order condition. This second-order condition is formulated with functions from an extended critical cone, and it is equivalent to a formulation posed on measures supported on the set where the adjoint state vanishes. If our sufficient optimality condition is satisfied, we obtain a local quadratic growth condition in L1(Ω)The first author was partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under project MTM2014-57531-P. The second author was partially supported by the DFG under grant Wa 3626/1-1
A 0.7-V 0.43-pJ/cycle Wakeup Timer based on a Bang-bang Digital-Intensive frequency-Locked-Loop for IoT Applications
No full textA 40-nm CMOS wakeup timer employing a bang-bang digital-intensive frequency-locked loop for Internet-of-Things applications is presented. A self-biased ΣΔ digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) is locked to an RC time constant via a single-bit chopped comparator and a digital loop filter. Such highly digitized architecture fully exploits the advantages of advanced CMOS processes, thus enabling operation down to 0.7 V and a small area (0.07 mm 2 ). Most circuitry operates at 32× lower frequency than the DCO in order to reduce the total power consumption down to 181 nW. High frequency accuracy and a 10× enhancement of long-term stability is achieved by the adoption of chopping to reduce the effect of comparator offset and 1/f noise and by the use of ΣΔ modulation to improve the DCO resolution. The proposed timer achieves the best energy efficiency (0.43 pJ/cycle at 417 kHz) over prior art while keeping excellent on-par long-term stability (Allan deviation floor <;20 ppm) and temperature stability (106 ppm/°C).Accepted Author Manuscript(OLD)Applied Quantum Architecture
Analytical Solution for Low-Thrust Transfer Orbits using Bang-Bang Control without Gravity Losses
No full textThis thesis research has focused on developing an analytical solution for low-thrust transfer orbits. Low-thrust propulsion is an attractive option for space manoeuvres and transfers, since it provides a large specific impulse and hence efficient use of propellant. Thus, the propellant mass can be decreased, which brings advantages such as higher payload mass and extended mission life.Two constraints have been posed on the thrust acceleration, which often appear as a result of optimal solutions. Firstly, only bang-bang control is allowed, thus the rocket engine can only be turned on or off. Secondly, no radial thrust is allowed, such that no gravity losses occur. The modified equinoctial elements have been chosen to describe the trajectory. If it is assumed that the eccentricity is equal to zero, analytical solutions have been derived. While this seems as a substantial restriction on the developed method, it is shown that the analytical solution provides very reasonable results for eccentricities smaller than 0.2. Furthermore, separate analytical expressions have been developed when no in-plane thrust acts on the spacecraft. For the implementation of the bang-bang control, each individual revolution around the central body is allowed to have two thrust arcs and two coasts arcs, where the analytical solutions have been used to describe the motion of the spacecraft during the thrust arcs. By cleverly choosing the switching points where the rocket engine is turned on and off, the transfer orbit is achieved in an efficient way. The performance of the developed algorithm has been assessed for different input parameters. More specifically, different magnitudes of thrust accelerations have been analyzed. Furthermore, the lengths of the thrust and coast arcs, together with the direction of the thrust force, have been varied to evaluate the applicability of the algorithm. Lastly, the algorithm has been tested with the introduction of a stop criterion, which determines the required propellant and time of flight to arrive at a set target element. The algorithm has proved to give results with relatively good accuracy for orbits with an eccentricity smaller than 0.2. However, if the time of flight or the thrust acceleration become too high, less feasible solutions are perceived.Aerospace Engineerin
Arithmetical Functions Associated with the k-ary Divisors of an Integer
No full textThe k-ary divisibility relations are a class of recursively defined relations beginning with standard divisibility and culminating in the so-called infinitary divisibility relation. We examine the summatory functions corresponding to the k-ary analogues of various popular functions in number theory, proving various results about the structure of the k-ary divisibility relations along the way
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