Analyses on Gold and US Dollar in Vietnam's Transitional Economy

This paper looks into economic insights offerred by considerations of two important financial markets in Vietnam, gold and USD. In general, the paper focuses on time series properties, mainly returns at different frequencies, and test the weak-form efficient market hypothesis. All the test rejects the efficiency of both gold and foreign exchange markets. All time series exhibit strong serial correlations. ARMA-GARCH specifications appear to have performed well with different time series. In all cases the changing volatility phenomenon is strongly supported through empirical data. An additional test is performed on the daily USD return to try to capture the impacts of Asian financial crisis and daily price limits applicable. No substantial impacts of the Asian crisis and the central bank-devised limits are found to influence the risk level of daily USD return.

What the awkward relatives tell us about planetary nebulae hosting binary systems

Relatives to Planetary Nebulae, such as barium stars or symbiotic systems, can shed light on the connection between Planetary Nebulae and binarity. Because of the observational selection effects against direct spectroscopic detection of binary PNe cores with orbital periods longer than a few dozen days, at present these "awkward relatives" are a critical source of our knowledge about the binary PNe population at longer periods. Below a few examples are discussed, posing constraints on the attempts to model nebula, ejection process in a binary. © 2006 International Astronomical Union.

Patent litigation in Europe

We compare patent litigation cases across four European jurisdictions – Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the UK – covering cases filed during the period 2000-2008. For our analysis, we assemble a new dataset that contains detailed information at the case, litigant, and patent level for patent cases filed at the major courts in the four jurisdictions. We find substantial differences across jurisdictions in terms of case loads. Courts in Germany hear by far the largest number of cases in absolute terms, but also when taking country size into account. We also find important between-country differences in terms of outcomes, the share of cases that is appealed, as well as the characteristics of litigants and litigated patents. A considerable number of patents are litigated in multiple jurisdictions, but the majority of patents are subject to litigation only in one of the four jurisdictions.