Waiting time distributions of the volatility in the Italian MIB30 index: Clustering or Poisson functions?

We investigate the time behaviour of the Italian MIB30 stock index collected every minute during two months in the period from May 17, 2006, up to July 24, 2006. We find short-range correlations in the price returns and, on the contrary, a long persistent time lag and slow decay in the autocorrelation functions of volatility. Besides, we find that the probability density functions (PDFs) of returns show fat tails, which are well fit by the log-normal model of Castaing [B. Castaing, Y. Gagne, E.J. Hopfinger, Physica D 46 (1990) 177], and a convergence toward a normal distribution for large time scales; we also find that the PDFs of volatility, for short time horizons, fit better with a log-normal distribution than with a Gaussian. Most of these features characterize the indexes and stocks of the largest American, European and Asian markets.We also investigate the distribution of stochastic separation between isolated strong events in the volatility signal. This is interesting because this gives us a deeper understanding about the price formation process. By using a test for the occurrence of local Poisson hypothesis, we show that the process we examined strongly departs from a Poisson statistics, the origin of this failure stemming from the presence of temporal clustering and of a certain amount of memory.     

Who's talking first? Consensus or lack thereof in coevolving opinion formation models

We investigate different opinion formation models on adaptive network topologies. Depending on the dynamical process, rewiring can either (i) lead to the elimination of interactions between agents in different states, and accelerate the convergence to a consensus state or break the network in noninteracting groups or (ii), counterintuitively, favor the existence of diverse interacting groups for exponentially long times. The mean-field analysis allows us to elucidate the mechanisms at play. Strikingly, allowing the interacting agents to bear more than one opinion at the same time drastically changes the model's behavior and leads to fast consensus.     

Is there a universality of the helix-coil transition in protein models?

The similarity in the thermodynamic properties of two completely different theoretical models for the helix-coil transition is examined critically. The first model is an all-atomic representation for a poly-alanine chain, while the second model is a minimal helix-forming model that contains no system specifics. Key characteristics of the helix-coil transition, in particular, the effective critical exponents of these two models agree with each other, within a finite-size scaling analysis. Received 8 December 1999     

Superconductivity in MgB2: clean or dirty?

A large number of experimental facts and theoretical arguments favor a two-gap model for superconductivity in MgB2. However, this model predicts strong suppression of the critical temperature by interband impurity scattering and, presumably, a strong correlation between the critical temperature and the residual resistivity. No such correlation has been observed. We argue that this fact can be understood if the band disparity of the electronic structure is taken into account, not only in the superconducting state, but also in normal transport.     

Ultrafast magneto-optics in nickel: magnetism or optics?

Several magnetic and optical processes contribute to the magneto-optical response of nickel thin films after excitation by a femtosecond laser pulse. We achieved a first complete identification by explicitly measuring the time-resolved Kerr ellipticity and rotation, as well as its temperature and magnetic field dependence in epitaxially grown (111) and (001) oriented Cu/Ni/Cu wedges. The first hundreds of femtoseconds the response is dominated by state filling effects. The true demagnetization takes approximately 0.5-1 ps. At the longer (sub-ns) time scales the spins are found to precess in their anisotropy field. Simple and transparent models are introduced to substantiate our interpretation.     

Singer's Formant in Sopranos: Fact or Fiction?

Although it is generally agreed that the singer's formant (F_S) is a prerequisite for successful stage performance, the results of this research do not support its presence in the soprano voices of trained female singers. Results are based on a recent investigation testing 10 advanced/professional sopranos in two groups singing sustained vowels at three frequencies: high (932 Hz), mid (622 Hz), and low (261 Hz). Spectrographic analysis shows that the nature of harmonic energy varies in relation to pitch. A resonance band somewhat resembling the tenor F_S was usually evident in vowels sung at low and mid pitch. However, unlike the F_S of typically less than 1 kHz bandwidth associated with tenors, sopranos singing similar pitches produced corresponding bandwidths which were significantly broader, usually at least 2-kHz wide. Vowels sung by sopranos at high-pitch levels exhibited strong fundamental frequency production with strong reinforcement of adjacent harmonics extending to 5 kHz and beyond. This type of production in essence nullifies the necessity for a typical F_S. Absence of the F_S in strong soprano voices might also imply the adaptation of a sufficiently different overall vocal tract configuration, so that techniques geared to developing maximal projection should not be the same as those developed to maximize the F_S in other voices.     

Multifractality in stock indexes: Fact or Fiction?

Multifractal analysis and extensive statistical tests are performed upon intraday minutely data within individual trading days for four stock market indexes (including HSI, SZSC, S&P 500, and NASDAQ) to check whether the indexes (instead of the returns) possess multifractality. We find that the mass exponent τ(q) is linear and the singularity α(q) is close to 1 for all trading days and all indexes. Furthermore, we find strong evidence showing that the scaling behaviors of the original data sets cannot be distinguished from those of shuffled time series. Hence, the so-called multifractality in the intraday stock market indexes is merely an illusion.     

Origin of Hawking radiation: firewall or atmosphere?

The Unruh vacuum not admitting any outgoing flux at the horizon implies that the origin of the outgoing Hawking radiation is the atmosphere of a near-horizon quantum region without resort to the firewall; however, the existence of the firewall of superplanckian excitations at the horizon can be supported by the infinite Tolman temperature at the horizon. In an exactly soluble model, we explicitly show that the firewall necessarily emerges out of the Unruh vacuum so that the Tolman temperature in the Unruh vacuum is divergent in essence due to the infinitely blueshifted negative ingoing flux crossing the horizon rather than the outgoing flux. We also show that the outgoing Hawking radiation in the Unruh vacuum indeed originates from the atmosphere, not just at the horizon, which is of no relevance to the infinite blueshift. Consequently, the firewall from the infinite Tolman temperature and the Hawking radiation from the atmosphere turn out to be compatible, once we waive the claim that the Hawking radiation in the Unruh vacuum originates from the infinitely blueshifted outgoing excitations at the horizon.     

Fracture of silicate glasses: ductile or brittle?

Atomic force microscopy is used to investigate the possibility of cavity formation during crack growth in silicate glasses. Matching areas on both fracture surfaces were mapped and then compared. For silica glass, and soda-lime-silicate glass, the fracture surfaces matched to a resolution of better than 0.3 nm normal to the surface and 5 nm parallel to the surface. We could find no evidence for cavity formation in our study and suggest that completely brittle fracture occurs in glass.     

The speed of light in confined QED vacuum: faster or slower than c?

We consider the propagation of light in the QED vacuum between an unusual pair of parallel plates, namely: a perfectly conducting one (ϵ→∞) and an infinitely permeable one (μ→∞). For weak fields and in the soft photon approximation we show that the speed of light for propagation normal to the plates is smaller than its value in unbounded space (in contrast to the original Scharnhorst effect [K. Scharnhorst, Phys. Lett. B 236 (1990) 354, G. Barton, Phys. Lett. B 237 (1990) 559, G. Barton, K. Scharnhorst, J. Phys. A 26 (1993) 2037]).     

Hall effect noise: Fluctuations in number or mobility?

The purpose of this paper is to show that the 1/f noise in the Hall voltage as reported by Brophy and Rostoker can be interpreted in terms of fluctuations in the mobility of free-charge carriers. Brophy and Rostoker have claimed that 1/f noise in the Hall voltage is a direct proof of 1/f fluctuations in the free-carrier density. Their conclusion is shown to be wrong.     

Causality in Reversed Time Series: Reversed or Conserved?

The inference of causal relations between observable phenomena is paramount across scientific disciplines; however, the means for such enterprise without experimental manipulation are limited. A commonly applied principle is that of the cause preceding and predicting the effect, taking into account other circumstances. Intuitively, when the temporal order of events is reverted, one would expect the cause and effect to apparently switch roles. This was previously demonstrated in bivariate linear systems and used in design of improved causal inference scores, while such behaviour in linear systems has been put in contrast with nonlinear chaotic systems where the inferred causal direction appears unchanged under time reversal. The presented work explores the conditions under which the causal reversal happens—either perfectly, approximately, or not at all—using theoretical analysis, low-dimensional examples, and network simulations, focusing on the simplified yet illustrative linear vector autoregressive process of order one. We start with a theoretical analysis that demonstrates that a perfect coupling reversal under time reversal occurs only under very specific conditions, followed up by constructing low-dimensional examples where indeed the dominant causal direction is even conserved rather than reversed. Finally, simulations of random as well as realistically motivated network coupling patterns from brain and climate show that level of coupling reversal and conservation can be well predicted by asymmetry and anormality indices introduced based on the theoretical analysis of the problem. The consequences for causal inference are discussed.     

Iron-mineral-based magnetoreceptor in birds: polarity or inclination compass?

In the present paper we demonstrate that the iron-mineral-based magnetoreceptor model developed in [1] can provide birds with a magnetic compass in addition to the generally believed “magnetic map". We show that the iron-mineral-based magnetoreceptor system possesses all properties of a polarity compass, which is extremely important for avian navigation. We study how parameters of the magnetoreceptor system influence on the properties of the compass and show that at certain conditions it acquires features of an inclination compass. In the present paper we address the question of avian magnetoreception theoretically and suggest several experiments which should be performed for better understanding of the iron-mineral-based compass in birds.