Localized Liquid Secretion from a Photopatterned Liquid-Crystal Polymer Skin
Liquid-releasing artificial skins are made from films made of a smectic liquid-crystal polymer network (LCN) photopolymerized in the presence of a photoactive azobenzene chromophore and a liquid-crystal porogen. The nonreactive porogen phase separates during the polymerization process, and the polymer forms a spongy polymer network filled with liquid. The liquid is excreted from the film when exposed to UV light upon conversion of trans-azobenzene to its cis isomer. Here, localized liquid secretion at preset positions at the polymer film is described. The design principle is based on creating a hybrid molecular architecture with both smectic and nonordered isotropic alignments in a continuo…
Sentiment Across Asset Markets
In this paper, we study investor sentiment in five major asset markets: stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, and housing. Based on Thomson Reuter's sentiment measures extracted from 235 news and social media sources, we find that each market is predicted by its own sentiment. Cross-markets, kitchen sink regressions reveal that the stock market is influenced only by bond sentiment, while bond market is affected just by currency market, which is largely unexplained by others; the commodities are related to currencies and housing, and housing can be predicted by stock and bond sentiment. In an efficient information aggregation by the partial least square (PLS), the predictability of each ma…