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We review some general aspects about the Black–Scholes equation, which is used for predicting the fair price of an option inside the stock market. Our analysis includes the symmetry properties of the equation and its solutions. We use the Hamiltonian formulation for this purpose. Taking into account that the volatility inside the Black–Scholes equation is a parameter, we then introduce the Merton–Garman equation, where the volatility is stochastic, and then it can be perceived as a field. We then show how the Black–Scholes equation and the Merton–Garman one are locally equivalent by imposing a gauge symmetry under changes in the prices over the Black–Scholes equation. This demonstrates that the stochastic volatility emerges naturally from symmetry arguments. Finally, we analyze the role of the volatility on the decisions taken by the holders of the options when they use the solution of the Black–Scholes equation as a tool for making investment decisions.

In the paper carried out by Wenjun et al. [Phys. Rev. A 95, 032124 (2017)], a generalization of the James effective dynamics theory based on a first version of the James method was presented. However, we contend that this is not a very rigorous way of deriving the effective third-order expansion for an interaction Hamiltonian with harmonic time-dependence. In fact, here we show that the third-order Hamiltonian obtained by Wenjun et al. is not Hermitian for general situations when we consider time dependence. Its non-Hermitian nature arises from the foundation of the theory itself. In this comment paper, the most general expression of the effective Hamiltonian expanded up to third order is obtained. Our derived effective Hamiltonian is Hermitian even in situations where we have time dependence.

Corporate leaders are constantly dealing with stress in parallel with continuous decision-making processes. The impact of acute stress on decision-making activities is a relevant area of study to evaluate the impact of the decisions made, and create tools and mechanisms to cope with the inevitable exposure to stress and better manage its impact. The intersection of leadership and neurosciences techniques is called Neuroleadership. In this work, an experiment is proposed to detect and measure the emotional arousal of two groups of business professionals, divided into two groups. The first one is the intervention/stress group, n=30, exposed to stressful conditions, and the control group, n=14, not exposed to stress. The participants are submitted to a sequence of computerized stimuli, such as watching videos, answering survey questions, and making decisions in a realistic office environment. The Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) biosensor monitors emotional arousal in real-time. The experiment design implemented stressors such as visual effects, defacement, unfairness, and time-constraint for the intervention group, followed by decision-making tasks. The results indicate that emotional arousal was statistically significantly higher for the intervention/stress group, considering Shapiro and Mann-Whitney tests. The work indicates that GSR is a reliable stress detector and may be useful to predict negative impacts on executive professionals during decision-making activities.

Human emotions can be associated with decision-making, and emotions can generate behaviors. Due to the fact that it could be biased and exhaustively complex to examine how human beings make choices, it is necessary to consider relevant groups of study, such as stock traders and non-traders in finance. This work aims to analyze the connection between emotions and the decision-making process of investors and non-investors submitted to the same set of stimuli to understand how emotional arousal might dictate the decision process. Neuroscience monitoring tools such as Real-Time Facial Expression Analysis (AFFDEX), Eye-Tracking, and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) were adopted to monitor the related experiments of this paper and its accompanying analysis process. Thirty-seven participants attended the study, 24 were classified as stock traders, and 13 were non-traders; the mean age for the groups was 35 and 25, respectively. The designed experiment initially disclosed a thought-provoking result between the two groups under the certainty and risk-seeking prospect theory; there were more risk-takers among non-investors at 75%, while investors were inclined toward certainty at 79.17%. The implication could be that the non-investing individuals were less complex in thought and therefore pursued higher returns besides a high probability of losing the game. In addition, the automatic emotion classification system indicates that when non-investors confronted a stock trending chart beyond their acquaintance or knowledge, they were psychologically exposed to fear, anger, sadness, and surprise. On the contrary, investors were detected with disgust, joy, contempt, engagement, sadness, and surprise, where sadness and surprise overlapped in both parties. Under time pressure conditions, 54.05% of investors or non-investors tend to make decisions after the peak(s) of emotional arousal. Variations were found in the deciding points of the slopes: 2.70% were decided right after the peak(s), 37.84% waited until the emotions turned stable, and 13.51% were determined as the emotional indicators started to slide downwards. Several combinations of emotional responses were associated with decisions. For example, negative emotions could induce passive decision-making, in this case, to sell the stock; nevertheless, it was also examined that as the slope slipped downwards to a particular horizontal point, the individuals became more optimistic and selected the "BUY" option. Future works may consider expanding the study to larger sample size, different demographic groups, and other biometrics for further analysis and conclusions.

The invention of neuroscience has benefited medical practitioners and businesses in improving their management and leadership. Neuromarketing, a field that combines neuroscience and marketing, helps businesses understand consumer behaviour and how they respond to advertising stimuli. This study aims to investigate the consumer purchase intention and preferences to improve the marketing management of the brand, based on neuroscientific tools such as emotional arousal using Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) sensors, eye-tracking, and emotion analysis through facial expressions classification. The stimuli for the experiment are two advertisement videos from the Macau tea brand “Guanding Teahouse” followed by a survey. The experiment was conducted on 40 participants. 76.2% of participants that chose the same product in the first survey responded with the same choice of products in the second survey. The GSR peaks in video ad 1 measured a total of 60. On the other hand, video ad 2 counted a total of 55 GSR peaks. The emotions in ad1 and ad2 have similar responses, with an attention percentage of 76%. The results showed that ad1 has a higher engagement time of 11.1% and ad2 has 9.6%, but only 19 of the respondent’s conducted engagement in video ad1, and 31 showed engagement in video ad2. The results demonstrated that although ad 1 has higher engagement rates, the respondents are more attracted to video ad 2. Therefore, ad2 has better marketing power than ad 1. Overall, this study bridges the gap of no previous research on measuring tea brand advertisements with the neuroscientific method. The results provide valuable insights for marketers to develop better advertisements and marketing campaigns and understand consumer preferences by personalising and targeting advertisements based on consumers' emotional responses and behaviour of consumers' purchase intentions. Future research could explore advertisements targeting different demographics.

A growing number of people are becoming aware of the environmental footprint that our actions have on the environment. Research indicates that a key factor leading to the adoption of an electric vehicle is consumers’ high environmental concern. Indeed, the environmental concern (EC) construct is commonly associated with the purchase of sustainable and eco-friendly products in literature. Our study challenges this assumption. We examined how the environmental factor influenced the behavioral intention of Macau residents to adopt battery-electric vehicle (BEV) technology. For this purpose, we conducted a study based on the UTAUT-2 framework and used structural equation modeling (SmartPLS) to analyze the data. As a result, the choice of vehicles did not depend on the consumers’ level of concern. It appeared that consumers strongly perceived the benefits of a cleaner environment, however, when it comes to technology, environmental benefits are nice to have, rather than the primary incentive to purchase BEVs. Researchers should consider the role of environmental concern as a background factor in technology acceptance models, rather than a direct predictor of behavior. It is also recommended that marketers correctly consider this element when developing their product communications strategies, to appeal to the desired segment of customers.

This Practice Note considers challenges to the jurisdiction of arbitral tribunals under the Macau Arbitration Law, the scope of challenge before national courts and tribunals.

This Practice Note provides an overview of the powers of tribunals and courts to issue interim remedies including an anti-suit injunction pursuant to the Arbitration Law and the Civil Procedure Code of Macau and provisions dealing with emergency arbitrator appointments pursuant to the Macau Arbitration Law.

In any physical system, when we move from short to large scales, new spacetime symmetries emerge which help us to simplify the dynamics of the system. In this letter we demonstrate that certain variations on the symmetries of general relativity at large scales generate the effects equivalent to dark matter ones. In particular, we reproduce the Tully-Fisher law, consistent with the predictions proposed by MOND. Additionally, we demonstrate that the dark matter effects derived in this way are consistent with the predictions suggested by MOND, without modifying gravity.

Colloquially, Guangzhou is known as the ‘Factory of China’,and, in many respects, it may be one of the great factories of the world. Located in the Guangdong Province in Southern China, Guangzhou is an exemplar of twenty-first century metropolis. It is home to over 14 million residents and is in a state of extreme growth. Old farmlands encircling the city are incentivised, through government subsidies, to build apartment complexes that can accommodate the rapid growth as the city develops. The city is home to migrant population—from the rural areas of China that is larger than the entire population of Perth. The middle classin Guangzhou is outpacing the growth of middle classes in Australia and the US. Factories, shipping ports, apartment blocks, malls, and urban farms are mixed in a tightly knit tapestry across the city. ‘Guangzhou Places’ is a series of short videos that present viewers with a glimpse of urbanisation that is akin to app development. Guangzhou is a ‘beta city’, an environment

Sustainability takes priority with architect Matthew Barnett Howland. His house in England is made entirely of cork: 100 percent natural, 100 percent recyclable, with almost zero carbon emissions.

Agglomerated cork is a known material by its contribution to the sustainment of the environment, not only because it is a wholly natural material, without chemical additives, but also because its industrial process of production results from the lowest quality residues of cork or industrial waste material, unsuitable for other applications. It is a reusable material, which means, the cork facade elements can be converted into a new agglomerated material, demonstrating a huge potential for adaptation to existing buildings following a reversible process. It is durable, lightweight, water resistant, low-cost material, some of the properties that may qualify it as suitable for application in large surfaces of vertical construction façades. The aim of this article is to analyze the mechanical, thermal and acoustic characteristics of cork composites against site-specific climatic conditions of subtropical climates and its suitability as an external coating system for residential buildings with the goal to reduce the energy consumption for cooling the inner environment. In high-density cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong the majority of the buildings starting from the 1960s until early 21st century (Brach & Song 2006), did not integrate thermal insulation systems into external walls, producing a high level of heat transfer through the external façade from the outside environment during spring and summer seasons. Due to the extremely fast urban growth of the modern Chinese city, little importance is given to the quality of the external walls in current residential building construction. For at least during six months each year the consumption of energy due to air conditioning in Guangdong province is extremely high. The study concluded that substantial energy could be saved by implementing an external coating upgrade to existing buildings. Additionally, this study details the result obtained through software for energy simulations (Design Builder, ENVI-met) demonstrating the potential of this project to produce homogeneous and comfortable inside temperatures, which cools the indoor ambient temperature in summer time.

This study is an attempt to understand and describe the compositional principles of Chaoshan traditional houses (CTH) through a computational space syntax. In this approach, the space syntax is used to describe and verify the compositional rules of Chaoshan houses. Chaoshan rural residence is a classical Lingnan style building in Chaoshan area of eastern Guangdong province, associated with Teo-Swa people, a Han Chinese minority. This study takes the example the prototypes existing in the village of Zhupu, Haojiang District, Shantou city as a case study, to analyse the spatial form of the residences. The Zhupu village houses date from the Qing Dynasty - Qianlong period, around 1700 AD. The hypothesis of this study is that CTH buildings are a result of a space compositional rule system that can be described and replicated through a computational design methodology. This study will establish a computational architectural syntax, and is the first stage of an extended research work on the evolution of Chaoshan residential types. The understanding of this evolution may help, as future work, to develop urban strategies for adaptation of the CTH heritage buildings to the contemporary living conditions. As the result of this study is a computational 3D graphics modelling algorithm, the ability of the system to generate the house layouts is not limited to the reconstruction of existing typologies of CTH and its variations. The same algorithm will allow the generation of new housing schemes, with adaptation to design variables extracted from a particular site and region.