Merging monthly and quarterly forecasts: Experience with mqem

Forecasts from quarterly econometric models are typically revised on a monthly basis to reflect the information in current economic data. The revision process usually involves setting targets for the quarterly values of endogenous variables for which monthly observations are available and then altering the intercept terms in the quarterly forecasting model to achieve the target values. A formal statistical approach to the use of monthly data to update quarterly forecasts is described and the procedure is applied to the Michigan Quarterly Econometric Model of the US Economy. The procedure is evaluated in terms of both ex post and ex ante forecasting performance. The ex ante results for 1986 and 1987 indicate that the method is quite promising. With a few notable exceptions, the formal procedure produces forecasts of GNP growth that are very close to the published ex ante forecasts.     

On SETAR non‐linearity and forecasting

We compare linear autoregressive (AR) models and self‐exciting threshold autoregressive (SETAR) models in terms of their point forecast performance, and their ability to characterize the uncertainty surrounding those forecasts, i.e. interval or density forecasts. A two‐regime SETAR process is used as the data‐generating process in an extensive set of Monte Carlo simulations, and we consider the discriminatory power of recently developed methods of forecast evaluation for different degrees of non‐linearity. We find that the interval and density evaluation methods are unlikely to show the linear model to be deficient on samples of the size typical for macroeconomic data. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

领导创新的成功法则

今天我要跟大家说的主题是领导和加速创新的成功.当今世界商业竞争越来越激烈,企业要面对的竞争对手也越来越多,企业要想在激烈的竞争中不被淘汰,就需要加快创新的步伐.企业要获得并保持自身的竞争优势就必须创新,此时对于企业的领导者来讲,势在必行的任务就是促进和激励创新.然而,很多企业只是□头上空谈创新,却从未真正采取行动.我们必须有实施创新的紧迫感,也就是说,我们必须行动起来去实施创新.     

A screen of the complete protein kinase gene family identifies diverse patterns of somatic mutations in human breast cancer

We examined the coding sequence of 518 protein kinases, approximately 1.3 Mb of DNA per sample, in 25 breast cancers. In many tumors, we detected no somatic mutations. But a few had numerous somatic mutations with distinctive patterns indicative of either a mutator phenotype or a past exposure.     

Anthropology: the earliest toothless hominin skull

The site of Dmanisi in the Eurasian republic of Georgia has yielded striking hominin, faunal and archaeological material as evidence for the presence of early Homo outside Africa 1.77 million years ago, documenting an important episode in human evolution. Here we describe a beautifully preserved skull and jawbone from a Dmanisi hominin of this period who had lost all but one tooth several years before death. This specimen not only represents the earliest case of severe masticatory impairment in the hominin fossil record to be discovered so far, but also raises questions about alternative subsistence strategies in early Homo.     

A collimated jet of molecular gas from a star on the asymptotic giant branch

Evolved stars of about one solar mass are in general spherically symmetric, yet the planetary nebulae that they produce in the next phase of their evolution tend not to exhibit such symmetry. Collimated 'jets' and outflows of material have been observed up to approximately 0.3 parsec from the central stars of planetary nebulae, and precession of those jets has been proposed to explain the observed asymmetries. Moreover, it has recently been shown theoretically that magnetic fields could launch and collimate such jets. Here we report the detection of a collimated and precessing jet of molecular gas that is traced by water-vapour maser spots approximately 500 astronomical units (au) from the star W43A in Aquila. We conclude that the jet is formed in the immediate vicinity of the star, and infer that elongated planetary nebulae are formed by jets during the short period, of less than 1,000 years, when the star makes its transition through the proto-planetary nebula phase to become a planetary nebula.