This paper studies dealer trading profits, spread components and implications for market making costs for a representative dealer in the foreign exchange market. Though accounting for only about 14% of total trade volume, customer trades generate about 75% of the dealer’s gross trading profits. Inter-dealer trades have negligible profit implications for the dealer who maintains his function as ...

Just-in-time compilers for dynamic languages routinely generate code under assumptions that may be invalidated at run-time, this allows specialization of program to the common case in order avoid unnecessary overheads due uncommon cases. This form software speculation requires support deoptimization when some fail hold. paper presents a model just-in-time compiler with an intermediate represent...

A core aspect of working memory (WM) is the capacity to maintain goal-relevant information in mind, but little is known about how this capacity develops in the human brain. We compared brain activation, via fMRI, between children (ages 7-12 years) and adults (ages 20-29 years) performing tests of verbal and spatial WM with varying amounts (loads) of information to be maintained in WM. Children ...

The amount of information one can maintain in working memory (WM) increases between childhood and adulthood (Gathercole, 1994, 1999; Klingberg, 1998; Luciana, 1998; Luciana and Nelson, 1998). In addition to cognitive changes that occur early in life, childhood and adolescence are periods marked by significant neuroanatomical changes that are thought to underlie cognitive maturation. This study ...

Cognitive theories on consciousness propose a strong link between consciousness and working memory (WM). This link is also present at the neural level: Both consciousness and WM have been implicated in a prefrontal parietal network. However, the link remains empirically unexplored. The present study investigates the relation between consciousness and WM by studying the impact of WM load on one ...

Though there is an extensive literature investigating the ability of younger adults to learn non-native phonology, including investigations into individual differences in younger adults' lexical tone learning, very little is known about older adults' ability to learn non-native phonology, including lexical tone. There are several reasons to suspect that older adults would use different learning...

This study tested the hypothesis that affective content may undermine rather than facilitate working memory (WM) performance. To this end, participants performed a running WM task with positive, negative and neutral words. In typical running memory tasks, participants are presented with lists of unpredictable length and are asked to recall the last three or four items. We found that accuracy wi...

In this study we tested the idea that the food supplement l-Tyrosine (TYR) repletes resources required for cognitive-control operations. We investigated whether the "updating" (and monitoring) of working memory (WM) representations, a key cognitive-control function, can be promoted by administering TYR, the biochemical precursor of dopamine. Participants performed an N-back task where we compar...

Adolescence is characterized by rapid development of executive function. Working memory (WM) is a key element of executive function, but it is not known what brain changes during adolescence allow improved WM performance. Using a fractal n-back fMRI paradigm, we investigated brain responses to WM load in 951 human youths aged 8-22 years. Compared with more limited associations with age, WM perf...

Recent neural and behavioral findings provide support for the influential idea that in situations in which multiple action options are presented simultaneously, we prepare action plans for each competing option before deciding between and executing one of those plans. However, in natural, everyday environments, our available action options frequently change from one moment to the next, and ther...