| 27 Mins AgoCNBC.com New rules for trading Chinese stocks spooked European and U.S. markets on Friday. (Tweet This) Chinese exchanges and regulators announced Friday that they would crack down on over-the-counter margin trading and that they would allow fund managers to lend shares for short-selling. The type of stocks that investors can short sell will also be expanded soon to 1,100, from 900 currently. All of these moves could slow Chinese equities' wild run higher in recent months. Read MorePerfect storm for market correction: Expert
ChinaFotoPress | Getty Images Investors observe stock market at a stock exchange corporation on April 17, 2015 in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province of China. Although the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index rose 2.2 percent in Friday trading, Chinese after-hours stock futures fell about 5.5 percent in a response to the new regulations. Traders said U.S. and European markets were then in turn spooked by the move in those futures, and worries that the regulatory changes would be negative for the flow of recent money that has poured into Chinese exchanges. "The securities regulator is encouraging short-selling to institutional investors, and they are going to stop margin trading on OTC," Ioan Smith, managing director of KCG Europe, said. "Traders had to catch up with that news after the Bloomberg terminals came back online, and that's when we saw the falls in Europe." (Terminals were briefly down earlier Friday) Read MoreSee how US markets are trading here News of the Chinese changes followed comments from the China Securities Regulatory Commission indicating the agency expected future good fortunes for equities. Xiao Gang, who leads the CSRC, said investors should not think they are missing the boat if they had not yet invested in the Chinese stock market, which has surged around 70 percent since November. "So apparently they told us that the bull market in Chinese stocks was going to last, and then they pulled the rug? I is confused," Rhino Trading Partners' Michael Block (actually) wrote in a Friday note. He attributed a 14 point decline in S&P futures and a 4 percent decline in the iShares China Large-Cap exchange traded fund to this news. European shares also traded down in part because of the China news, Block added. "I didn't realize China would have such an effect on the U.S. and Europe," he wrote. "The [Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index] is up over 32% this year. The [S&P 500] is barely up over 2%. But c'est la vie, apparently." Although there has not been a perfect correlation between U.S. stocks and booming Chinese equities, any worries about the future of those markets would cause some doubts stateside, according to Jim Meyer, CEO of Tower Bridge Advisors. "The Chinese market has been a source of strength," he explained, so any decline could rattle equities traders. Read MoreForget China, this market is Asia's sweet spot Any global weakness from the Chinese regulatory changes should be temporary, however, said Adrian Day of Adrian Day Asset Management. Such a move was not unexpected, he said, given the fact that Chinese equities "have sort of gone crazy" with massive gains in recent months. And while the new rules may tamp down on those prices, the easily-spooked global markets should move along to the next focal point. "By next week the rest of the world will have forgotten about it," Day said. —Reuters and CNBC's Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.
|
sexta-feira, 17 de abril de 2015
Why China's rule changes are hitting US markets
Patents forecast technological change
| Thu, 04/16/2015 - 12:20pm MIT News Office How fast is online learning evolving? Are wind turbines a promising investment? And how long before a cheap hoverboard makes it to market? Attempting to answer such questions requires knowing something about the rate at which a technology is improving. Now engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have devised a formula for estimating how fast a technology is advancing, based on information gleaned from relevant patents. The researchers determined the improvement rates of 28 different technologies, including solar photovoltaics, 3-D printing, fuel-cell technology and genome sequencing. They searched through the U.S. Patent Office database for patents associated with each domain—more than 500,000 total—by developing a novel method to quickly and accurately select the patents that best represent each technology. Once these were identified, the researchers analyzed certain metrics across patents in each domain, and found that some were more likely to predict a technology’s improvement rate than others. In particular, forward citations—the number of times a patent is cited by subsequent patents—is a good predictor, as is the date of a patent’s publication: Technologies with more recent patents are likely innovating at a faster rate than those with older patents. The team devised an equation incorporating a patent set’s average forward citation and average publication date, and calculated the rate of improvement for each technology domain. Their results matched closely with the rates determined through the more labor-intensive approach of finding numerous historical performance data points for each technology. Among the 28 domains analyzed, the researchers found the fastest-developing technologies include optical and wireless communications, 3-D printing and MRI technology, while domains such as batteries, wind turbines and combustion engines appear to be improving at slower rates. Chris Benson, a former graduate student in MIT’s Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, says the new prediction tool may be of interest to venture capitalists, startups and government and industry labs looking to explore new technology. “There’s a lot of nuance to our method, and I don’t see it as something to hand out to the masses to play with,” says Benson, who helped developed the prediction tool. “I see it more as something where we work with somebody to help them understand what the future technological capabilities that they’re interested in are. We’re probably more like a real estate agent, and less like Zillow.” Benson and Chris Magee, a professor of the practice of engineering systems at MIT, have published their results in PLoS ONE. The paper contains the fundamental findings and equations relating technological improvement to a variety of patent characteristics. Technological dynamism “There were a lot of things that weren’t going as fast as Moore’s Law, and I started trying to get measures of them,” Magee recalls. Magee initially approached the problem on a case-by-case basis, determining which metrics best represent productivity for a given domain. He then compiled data for each metric, such as the price and speed of manufacturing a product, and used the data to calculate the overall rate of improvement. In 2010, he realized that one of the most comprehensive resources on technology lay in the U.S. patent record. “We thought, ‘Maybe there’s enough information there that we can do something about linking it to the dynamism of technical change,’” Magee says. For several years, he and his group identified the most relevant patents in a technological domain, by literally reading through thousands of patents—an incredibly time-intensive process. The approach was not very reliable, as two people may choose entirely different sets of patents to represent the same technology. A “Standard & Poor’s” for technology For each patent accepted by the U.S. Patent Office, a patent reviewer will file the patent under several classes within both classification systems. For instance, a solar photovoltaics patent may be entered under the U.S. classes “batteries” and “active solid-state devices” and within the international system as “semiconductor devices.” The team found that by looking for patent overlap between both classification systems, they could repeatedly identify the same set of patents that best represent a technology, within a matter of hours, rather than months. Once they identified a relevant set of patents, the researchers looked for metrics within patents that they could use to calculate a technology’s rate of improvement. They found that a patent set’s average forward citations within the first three years after publication, and the average date of publication, were the best predictors of technological improvement. Benson says they were also able to weed out less-helpful patent information. “If a technology has more patents in general, it should be moving faster, but that turns out not to be the case,” Benson says. “3-D printing only has 300 to 500 patents, and that’s improving at the same rate as semiconductors, which have about 150,000 patents. So there’s almost zero correlation.” The team devised a simple equation incorporating forward citation and publication date, and used the method to predict improvement rates for 28 technologies. The researchers then compared the rates with those they previously obtained using their more time-intensive, historical data-based approach, and found the results from both methods matched closely. They then used their more efficient approach to predict the improvement rates of 11 emerging technologies in the next 10 years. Among these, the fastest-growing domains appear to be online learning and digital representation, while slower technologies include food engineering and nuclear fusion. Doyne Farmer, a professor of mathematics at Oxford Univ., says that the notion that technological progress is predictable “is both intellectually fascinating and quite powerful in its practical implications.” “[The group’s] methods should be useful to any organization that is considering investments in technology, in particular government funding agencies such as the [U.S. Department of Energy] that fund engineering applications; venture-capital firms; or firms that are actually in the technology business,” says Farmer, who was not involved in the research. “Making the right bets on technological progress is essential for solving problems such as climate change. Thus, we should all benefit from this work.” Magee hopes the method may be used much like a rating system, similar to Standard & Poor’s and other stock-market indices. Such ratings could be useful for investors looking for the next big breakthrough, as well as scientific labs that are contemplating new research directions. Magee says knowing how various technologies may improve in the next decade could give innovators an idea of when “feeder technologies” may mature, and enable more pie-in-the-sky ideas, like mass-produced hoverboards and flying cars. “We can help reduce the uncertainty of the capabilities of a technology in the future, not to zero, but to a more manageable number,” Benson says. “I believe that’s valuable in a lot of different ways.” Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
|
Scientists discover protein that boosts immunity to viruses and cancer
April 16, 2015Imperial College London Scientists have discovered a protein that plays a central role in promoting immunity to viruses and cancer, opening the door to new therapies. Experiments in mice and human cells have shown that the protein promotes the proliferation of cytotoxic T cells, which kill cancer cells and cells infected with viruses. The discovery was unexpected because the new protein had no known function and doesn’t resemble any other protein. Scientists have discovered a protein that plays a central role in promoting immunity to viruses and cancer, opening the door to new therapies. Experiments in mice and human cells have shown that the protein promotes the proliferation of cytotoxic T cells, which kill cancer cells and cells infected with viruses. The discovery was unexpected because the new protein had no known function and doesn’t resemble any other protein. Researchers from Imperial College London who led the study are now developing a gene therapy designed to boost the infection-fighting cells, and hope to begin human trials in three years. The study also involved researchers at Queen Mary University of London, ETH Zurich and Harvard Medical School. Their discovery, which has been six years in the making, is reported today in the journal Science. Cytotoxic T cells are an important component of the immune system, but when faced with serious infections or advanced cancer, they are often unable to proliferate in large enough quantities to fight the disease. By screening mice with genetic mutations, the Imperial team discovered a strain of mice that produced 10 times as many cytotoxic T cells when infected with a virus compared with normal mice. These mice suppressed the infection more effectively, and were more resistant to cancer. They also produced more of a second type of T cells, memory cells, enabling them to recognise infections they have encountered previously and launch a rapid response. The mice with enhanced immunity produced high levels of a hitherto unknown protein, which the researchers named lymphocyte expansion molecule, or LEM. They went on to show that LEM modulates the proliferation of human T cells as well as in mice. The researchers now aim to develop a gene therapy designed to improve immunity by boosting the production of LEM. With the support of Imperial Innovations, the technology commercialisation company for the College, the researchers have filed two patents. A company called ImmunarT has been formed with the aim of commercialising the technology. Professor Philip Ashton-Rickardt from the Section of Immunobiology in the Department of Medicine at Imperial, who led the study, said: “Cancer cells have ways to suppress T cell activity, helping them to escape the immune system. Genetically engineering T cells to augment their ability to fight cancer has been a goal for some time and techniques for modifying them already exist. By introducing an active version of the LEM gene into the T cells of cancer patients, we hope we can provide a robust treatment for patients. “Next we will test the therapy in mice, make sure it is safe and see if it can be combined with other therapies. If all goes well, we hope to be ready to carry out human trials in about three years.” Dr Claudio Mauro, who led the research from the Centre for Biochemical Pharmacology, based within Queen Mary University of London’s William Harvey Research Institute, said: “This study has identified the novel protein LEM and unlocked an unexpected way of enhancing the ability of our immune system to fight viruses or cancers. This is based on the ability of the protein LEM to regulate specific energy circuits, and particularly mitochondrial respiration, in a subset of white blood cells known as cytotoxic T cells. This discovery has immediate consequences for the delivery of innovative therapeutic approaches to cancer. Its ramifications, however, are far greater as they can help explaining the biological mechanisms of widespread human diseases involving altered immune and inflammatory responses. These include chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, such as atherosclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.” The research was funded by the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the British Heart Foundation. Dr Mike Turner, Head of Infection and Immunobiology at The Wellcome Trust, said: “The discovery of a protein that could boost the immune response to not only cancer, but also to viruses, is a fascinating one. Further investigation in animal models is needed before human trials can commence, but there is potential for a new type of treatment that capitalises on the immune system’s innate ability to detect and kill abnormal cells.”
|
Facebook users' wishful thinking: Cyberbullying, depression won't happen to me
April 16, 2015Dartmouth College Facebook users with so-called optimistic bias think they're less likely than other users to experience cyberbullying, depression and other negative social and psychological effects from using the site, a study finds. The study suggests that optimistic bias, or an intrinsic tendency to imagine future events in a favorable light that enhances positive self-regard -- in other words, wishful thinking -- leaves those Facebook users vulnerable to the negative realities of social media. Facebook users with so-called optimistic bias think they're less likely than other users to experience cyberbullying, depression and other negative social and psychological effects from using the site, a Dartmouth-Cornell study finds. The study suggests that optimistic bias, or an intrinsic tendency to imagine future events in a favorable light that enhances positive self-regard -- in other words, wishful thinking -- leaves those Facebook users vulnerable to the negative realities of social media. The findings appear in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. "Our findings demonstrate important and novel discrepancies in how people perceive themselves and others concerning the positive and negative outcomes of Facebook use," says lead author Sunny Jung Kim, a postdoctoral research associate in the Psychiatric Research Center and the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. "A growing number of studies report possible benefits and risks of using Facebook and other social media, ranging from effects on self-esteem to cyberbullying. But little is known about how people perceive themselves to be likely to experience these mixed outcomes and what the implications of having these perceptions are." In the new study, the researchers surveyed 237 active Facebook users between ages 18 and 37. The participants were asked to assess their own and other people's likelihood of experiencing positive and negative outcomes on Facebook. They also were asked to rate their likelihood of supporting Internet regulations, their personal Facebook involvement and their attitudes toward Facebook use. The results show that Facebook users with optimistic bias tend to show strong support for Internet regulations to protect other users from social ostracizing, although not from psychologically negative effects, including depression and loneliness. The lack of support regarding psychological harms may be because mental health effects are perceived as less amenable to regulation or because their importance is underestimated, the researchers say. The results also show that Facebook users who view the site negatively or who use it infrequently think other people are more likely than themselves to have positive experiences on the site, a reversed optimistic bias that is new and intriguing. "When ostensibly positive outcomes, such as receiving social support from Facebook friends, are perceived to be unusual and irrelevant for themselves, the direction of the optimistic bias for these objectively positive outcomes can be dampened or even reversed," Kim says. Co-author Cornell Professor Jeffrey Hancock adds: "It's fascinating that well-established, third-person effects are also seen on Facebook, but the reversal shows how social media is not identical to mass media." "Although some might argue that it is still premature to claim that Facebook use is a direct predictor of extreme events such as clinical depression and suicidal attempts, a growing line of research indicates that negative events such as Facebook cyberbullying can result in detrimental consequences, including depression and substance use problems," Kim says. "Without adequate protections, the damage of these critical events can be severe. This is especially the case for those in a vulnerable health condition, in which this optimistic bias for risk events can leave them unprepared without adequate health protective behaviors. We argue that Facebook may serve as a source of emotional support between users and as a platform to disseminate protective health messages to prevent negative psychological consequences of Facebook use. Given that negative personal and health news such as stressful events and depressive symptoms are frequently shared on Facebook, it may be an important site for observing negative psychological states of users." Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by Dartmouth College. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference:
|