In this paper we suggest the adoption of copula functions in order to price bivariate contingent claims. Copulas enable us to imbed the marginal distributions extracted from vertical spreads in the options markets in a multivariate pricing kernel. We prove that such kernel is a copula function, and that its super-replication strategy is represented by the Fréchet bounds. As applications, we pro...

The genetic diversity among 56 almond (Prunus dulcis) genotypes was analysed using 35 microsatellite markers and 14 morphological traits. Analysis of morphological traits revealed a wide range of variation among the studied genotypes. Out of 35 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) markers, 25 were polymorphic, producing 215 alleles that varied from 2 to 16 with an average of 8.76 alleles per locus. R...

We present an automated algorithm for global contrast enhancement of images with multimodal histograms. To locate modes and valleys, histogram analysis is performed by kernel density estimation, a robust nonparametric statistical method. Histogram warping by monotonic splines pushes the modes apart, spreading them out more evenly across the dynamic range. This technique can assist in the contra...

Orthogonality or near-orthogonality is an important property in the design of experiments. Supersaturated designs are natural when we wish to investigate the main effects for a large number of factors but are restricted to a small number of runs. These supersaturated designs, by definition, cannot satisfy pairwise orthogonality of all the factor columns in the designmatrix. Hence, we need amean...

In this paper we study the orthogonality conditions satisfied by Jacobi polynomials P (α,β) n when the parameters α and β are not necessarily > −1. We establish orthogonality on a generic closed contour on a Riemann surface. Depending on the parameters, this leads to either full orthogonality conditions on a single contour in the plane, or to multiple orthogonality conditions on a number of con...