In all organisms, translational initiation takes place on the small ribosomal subunit and two classes of methionine tRNA are present. The initiator is used exclusively for initiation of protein synthesis while the elongator is used for inserting methionine internally in the nascent polypeptide chain. The crystal structure of Escherichia coli initiator tRNA(f)(Met) has been solved at 3.1 A resol...

Spectra of molecular hydrogen (H2) are employed to search for a possible proton-to-electron mass ratio (μ) dependence on gravity. The Lyman transitions of H2, observed with the Hubble Space Telescope towards white dwarf stars that underwent a gravitational collapse, are compared to accurate laboratory spectra taking into account the high temperature conditions (T∼13 000  K) of their photosphere...

The purpose of this study is to assess how information sharing offices affect loan price and quantity in the African banking industry. The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks in 42 countries for the period 2001-2011. From the Generalised Method of Moments, public credit registries decrease loan price. With instrumental Quantile Regressions, two main findings are established. Pub...

Eighteen years after an infrared excess was discovered associated with the white dwarf G29-38, we report ground-based measurements (JHKsKL N ) with mJy-level sensitivity of GD 362 that show it to be a second single white dwarf with an infrared excess. As a first approximation, the excess around GD 362, which amounts to ∼3% of the total stellar luminosity, can be explained by emission from a pas...

We present new observations of the white dwarf G 29-38 with the camera (4.5 and 8 μm), photometer (24 μm), and spectrograph (5.5–14 μm) of the Spitzer Space Telescope. This star has an exceptionally large infrared excess amounting to 3% of the bolometric luminosity. The spectral energy distribution has a continuum peak around 4.5 μm and a 9–11 μm emission feature 1.25 times brighter than the co...

Bringing Financial Literacy and Education to Low and Middle Income Countries: The Need to Review, Adjust, and Extend Current Wisdom This paper presents a World Bank led and Russia trust fund financed work program to measure financial capability and the effectiveness of financial education in low and middle income countries. The two activities and their staging have been motivated by the lessons...

We present near-infrared spectroscopic observations of 20 previously known DAZ white dwarfs obtained at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. Two of these white dwarfs (G29-38 and GD 362) are known to display significant K-band excesses due to circumstellar debris disks. Here we report the discovery of excess K-band radiation from another DAZ white dwarf, WD 0408 041 (GD 56). Using spectroscopi...

In this paper, we examine the risk characteristics and capital adequacy of hedge funds using Value-at-Risk (based on Extreme Value Theory) as the criterion for measuring risk and estimating capital requirements. Using extensive data on nearly thirteen hundred live and dead hedge funds, we find that the vast majority of funds are adequately capitalized. In addition, a large fraction of hedge fun...

This study examines the proposition that political business cycle theory is relevant to private foreign lenders to developing countries. We find that: credit rating agencies downgrade developing country ratings more often in election years, and do so by approximately one rating level; bond spreads are higher in the 60 days before an election compared to spreads in the 60 days after an election;...

The Sharpe ratio is adequate for evaluating investment funds when the returns of those funds are normally distributed and the investor intends to place all his risky assets into just one investment fund. Hedge fund returns differ significantly from a normal distribution. For this reason, other performance measures for hedge fund returns have been proposed in both the academic and practiceorient...