10,146 research outputs found

    Fuzzy Logic and Its Uses in Finance: A Systematic Review Exploring Its Potential to Deal with Banking Crises

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    The major success of fuzzy logic in the field of remote control opened the door to its application in many other fields, including finance. However, there has not been an updated and comprehensive literature review on the uses of fuzzy logic in the financial field. For that reason, this study attempts to critically examine fuzzy logic as an effective, useful method to be applied to financial research and, particularly, to the management of banking crises. The data sources were Web of Science and Scopus, followed by an assessment of the records according to pre-established criteria and an arrangement of the information in two main axes: financial markets and corporate finance. A major finding of this analysis is that fuzzy logic has not yet been used to address banking crises or as an alternative to ensure the resolvability of banks while minimizing the impact on the real economy. Therefore, we consider this article relevant for supervisory and regulatory bodies, as well as for banks and academic researchers, since it opens the door to several new research axes on banking crisis analyses using artificial intelligence techniques

    The U.S. system for measuring cross-border investment in securities: a primer with a discussion of recent developments

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    The tremendous growth in cross-border securities investment in recent years has called attention to the systems used by the United States and other countries to measure international securities flows and holdings. Ideally, the data gathered by the United States could tell us the extent to which foreign investors hold U.S. securities, the types of securities held, and the countries in which the securities are held, for example, and could identify trends in investment. This article looks at how well the data shed light on these topics. Special attention is given to the system's design and the implications of the design for data analysis. Also discussed are anticipated changes to the system and international efforts to improve data collection systems worldwide.International finance ; Securities

    Carrying a Big Carrot: Linking Multilateral Disarmament and Development Assistance

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    This article proposes, as a new element of the liberal internationalism that should characterize the post-Cold War world, a simultaneous solution to these three problems. The nations of the world should negotiate a series of multilateral agreements to stop the spread of advanced weaponry, and include in each of them, as an overt incentive for developing states to accept the disarmament and verification obligations, provisions that explicitly require the affluent, developed states to make specified monetary and in-kind transfers to the third world parties. The new regime should also provide stronger-than-customary treaty procedures for clarifying ambiguities, adjudicating claims, and resolving disputes, and should designate one or more multilateral administrative and enforcement agencies dedicated to furthering the agreements. In short, the wealthy countries, which stand to benefit the most from the establishment of a more stable international military environment, should be willing to pay for it. They should provide aid and commercial grants to the developing states that, in turn, should agree to accept significant, verifiable limitations, particularly on high-technology armaments, as an explicit condition for these important financial advantages. While this package approach will not by itself solve all the security difficulties of the next century, it offers the best hope for gaining control over some of them and for channeling our collective energies into productive and mutually beneficial enterprises. The argument of the article is developed in the following six parts. Part I examines the problem of multilateral disarmament, summarizing the progress registered to date and the areas in which more needs to be done. It also demonstrates that the coming decades, even after the ending of the Cold War, will present stark new threats to United States security and world peace, threats that existing arms control institutions and treaty regimes have been unable to anticipate and preempt. Part II addresses the problems of economic development, drawing on the literature describing the importance of judicious foreign assistance in promoting sound economic growth in marginal economies, and assessing the international community\u27s currently inadequate response to this need. It describes the third world\u27s stake in economic development and presents the case for the advanced societies to do more--out of sheer economic and political self-interest, if nothing else. Part III then suggests that future arms control imperatives will present challenges and dangers that are systematically different from those that the world has confronted--and resolved inadequately--in the past. It marshals the evidence for the propositions that the world\u27s current strategies for dampening international conflict through existing types of treaty regimes are already insufficient, and that the trend is worsening. Part IV presents our proposal for a tradeoff, with the developed states frankly buying the arms control they need, and paying for it with guaranteed levels of development assistance that the poor states need. This Part then outlines seven principles that underlie the proposal as a whole and presents some of the nuts and bolts that could make it operational. While the suggestion may seem radical at first blush--legalized bribery or economic imperialism in some eyes--we think it offers a realistic, efficient solution to otherwise intractable global threats. Part V deals with some of the most serious objections that might be raised against our strategy, discussing the morality of the tradeoff, its political acceptability, the precedents for it, and possible alternatives to it. Finally, the Conclusion offers some observations about the proposal as one component in an overdue, more subtle, conceptualization of national security. The author’s thesis is that international agreements linking multilateral disarmament and economic development, though novel and potentially risky, offer the most promising way out of the international community\u27s emerging security impasse. Their program would give both developed and developing states what they need. It would fashion a flexible, enforceable scheme for dealing with the complex fears and incentives that are otherwise unaddressed or confined to under-the-table bargaining. Explicit trading may not seem palatable at first, but equipping future treaties with both positive incentives and negative sanctions, rather than relying exclusively upon negative sanctions alone, could prove to be far more tolerable than any of the alternatives

    Automatically learning patterns for self-admitted technical debt removal

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    Technical Debt (TD) expresses the need for improvements in a software system, e.g., to its source code or architecture. In certain circumstances, developers “self-admit” technical debt (SATD) in their source code comments. Previous studies investigate when SATD is admitted, and what changes developers perform to remove it. Building on these studies, we present a first step towards the automated recommendation of SATD removal strategies. By leveraging a curated dataset of SATD removal patterns, we build a multi-level classifier capable of recommending six SATD removal strategies, e.g., changing API calls, conditionals, method signatures, exception handling, return statements, or telling that a more complex change is needed. SARDELE (SAtd Removal using DEep LEarning) combines a convolutional neural network trained on embeddings extracted from the SATD comments with a recurrent neural network trained on embeddings extracted from the SATD-affected source code. Our evaluation reveals that SARDELE is able to predict the type of change to be applied with an average precision of ~55%, recall of ~57%, and AUC of 0.73, reaching up to 73% precision, 63% recall, and 0.74 AUC for certain categories such as changes to method calls. Overall, results suggest that SATD removal follows recurrent patterns and indicate the feasibility of supporting developers in this task with automated recommenders

    Using Environmental DNA and Occupancy Modeling to Examine Drivers of Eastern Hellbender Extirpation and Sampling Method Efficiency in West Virginia

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    Amphibian population declines and range constrictions are widespread but poorly understood. Effective conservation planning relies on accurate distribution data to develop a fundamental understanding of causal changes in species distributions. However, conventional detection methods for cryptic and elusive amphibians suffer from imperfect detection. Environmental DNA (eDNA) has emerged as an innovative and powerful conservation tool for detecting aquatic species presence; however comparative studies aimed at fully understanding eDNA detection probabilities are lacking. In this study, I used environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling methods and detailed historical records to identify drivers of extirpation and sampling method efficiency for an imperiled, long-lived giant salamander, the Eastern Hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis alleganiensis) in West Virginia, USA. I used a site occupancy and detection modeling framework (SODM) to test the influence of current land use, historical mining, hydrogeomorphic, and water quality variables on model-based predictions of occupancy and detection. Hellbenders are extirpated from 51% of the 49 historical sampling sites, and the topranked model indicated watershed-scale road density was the strongest predictor of Eastern Hellbender extirpation, and water turbidity and electrical conductivity were the best predictors of detection. Detection probability estimates for eDNA (84%) and conventional sampling methods (28%) suggest that eDNA provides a substantial performance advantage over conventional detection methods. Integrating eDNA data within a SODM framework allowed me to accurately and thoroughly assess causal changes in Eastern Hellbender distribution throughout their historical range in West Virginia, which will aid conservation planning. This study emphasizes the impacts of anthropogenic land alterations on freshwater ecosystems and the sensitivity of long-lived amphibian species to rapid environmental change

    Space infrared telescope facility project

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    The functions undertaken during this reporting period were: to inform the planetary science community of the progress and status of the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) Project; to solicit input from the planetary science community on needs and requirements of planetary science in the use of SIRTF at such time that it becomes an operational facility; and a white paper was prepared on the use of the SIRTF for solar system studies

    3d Seafloor Model Determination And Change Detection With Multitemporal Multi Beam Echo Sounder Bathymetry

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    Tez (Yüksek Lisans) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2017Thesis (M.Sc.) -- İstanbul Technical University, Institute of Science and Technology, 2017Topografya yeryüzü üzerinde ve altında bulunan çeşitli yer şekillerini detayları ile inceleyen çalışmaların tanımlanmasıdır. Yeryüzündeki hareketlerin anlaşılması için detaylı topografik bilgiye ihtiyaç vardır. Okyanuslarda deniz tabanının yapısı, taban yüzeyinin özellikleri ile doğal oluşumlar ve insan yapılarını içeren coğrafi nitelikler topoğrafyanın kapsamına girmektedir. Bu kapsamda detaylı deniz haritalarının hazırlanması, fiziksel oşinografi, biyoloji, deniz jeolojisi ve jeofiziği gibi bilimler açısından önem arz etmektedir. Bunun yanında seyir haritalarının oluşturulması, deniz ulaşımı açısından da kritik öneme sahiptir. Bu ise hidrografik ölçümlerin ve ölçüm sistemlerinin gerekliliğini vurgulamaktadır. Deniz tabanının haritalanması için birçok teknik geliştirilmiştir. En ilkel tekniklerden birisi olan bir ipin ucuna bağlanmış ağırlığın suya daldırılması yoluyla yapılan el iskandili yönteminden, uydu tabanlı altimetrik sistemlere kadar birçok yöntem kullanılmıştır. Elektronik ve bilgisayar teknolojilerinin gelişmesi ile birlikte, modern ölçüm sistemleri daha hassas ve etkin hale gelmiştir. Günümüzde deniz ölçümleri için etkin kullanılan optik ve sonar sistemler bulunmaktadır. Optik sistemler içerisinde teknolojisi hızla gelişen Lidar sistemleri yeşil lazer ışını kullanarak su içerisine gönderdiği sinyallerin saçılımlarını derinlik verisi olarak değerlendirir. Görünebilirliğin yüksek olduğu sığ sularda etkin çalışan bu sistem, derinlik arttıkça ve görünürlük azaldıkça hassasiyetini ve etkinliğini kaybeder. İskandil sistemi ‘su yüksekliği’ olarak adlandırılan derinlik verisini üretebilmek için ses dalgasını kullanan modern tekniklerden birdir. Ses dalgası ile ölçüm yapan sistemler basitçe sesin suda gidiş ve dönüş hızını hesaplayarak derinlik verisi elde ederler. İskandiller bir seferde ölçebildikleri derinlik verisi sayısına göre sınıflandırılmıştır. Tek bimli iskandil (TBİ) sistemi bir seferde aletin nadiri doğrultusunda tek bir derinlik verisi üretir. Bunun yanında, çok bimli iskandil (ÇBİ), bir seferde yüzlerce derinlik ölçümü sağlayarak deniz tabanında %100 kaplama sağlamaktadır. Deniz haritası üretimi için çok bimli iskandil sistemleri kullanan hidrografi kurumları/şirketler hidrografik ölçüm standartlarına uygun olarak ölçüm yapmalıdırlar. Bu standartlar genellikle Uluslararası Hidrografi Örgütü (IHO) standartları ile uyumludur. Bazı örgütler doğrudan bu standartları kullanırken, bazıları ise bu standartlardan daha sıkı olan standartlar geliştirilmiştir. Çok bimli iskandil sistemleri; iskandil, konumlandırma sistemi ve hareket sensörü gibi senkronize bir şekilde çalışması gereken birçok ölçüm aletini içermektedir. Bundan dolayı sistem elemanlarının iyi bir kurulum ile tekneye monteleri gerçekleştirilmeli ve ölçüm teknesinin 3B uzayı içerisinde birbiriyle olan ilişkileri tanımlanmalıdır. Ölçümler öncesinde ‘patch testi’ olarak adlandırılan kalibrasyon prosedürü, kurulum ve aletlerin senkronizasyonundan kaynaklanan hataların giderilmesi için gerekmektedir. Bu test kapsamında, sinyal gecikmesi testi (latency), Y ekseni dönüklüğü (roll), X ekseni dönüklüğü (pitch) ve Z ekseni dönüklüğü (yaw) hataları hesaplanmıştır. Bunlarla birlikte, özellikle zamansal veri analizi ve 3B yüzey modellemesi için su kolonu boyunca gerçekleştirilen ses hızı ölçümleri ve su seviyesi değişimleri göz önünde bulundurulmuştur. Bu tezde göz önüne alınan çalışma bölgesi KKTC (Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti) ‘Su Temini Projesi’ içerisinde yer alan, Anamur – KKTC ishale boru hattı güzergâhını kapsayan alandır. Bu proje, Türkiye’den Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti’ne, Akdeniz’de deniz altından boru hatları ile içme ve sulama suyu temini amacı ile gerçekleştirilmiş olup, özellikleri bakımından dünyada benzeri bulunmayan uluslararası bir su iletim hattı projesidir. Proje 4 bölümden oluşmaktadır. Bu bölümlerden birincisi Anamur Alaköprü Barajı’ndan, Ören kasabasına kadar olan iletim hattı, ikincisi boru hatlarının kazı gemisi tarafından oluşturulmuş kanal içerisinde deniz ile buluştuğu bölüm, üçüncüsü projeyi bu boyutlarda yapılmış tek proje özelliğini kazandıran Akdeniz geçiş kısmı ve dördüncüsü ise KKTC kıyılarından Geçitköy barajına su taşınması kısmıdır. Akdeniz geçiş kısmını önemli yapan özelliği ise 500m uzunluğundaki yekpare boruların su seviyesinin 250m kadar altında askıda kalıp, çelik halatlar ile deniz tabanına monte edilmiş olmasıdır.Topography is the term that indicates the study of various landforms that exist on or below the Earth and a detailed knowledge of topography is required to understand the most Earth processes. In the oceans, sea floor topography refers the geographic features of the sea floor including the configuration of a surface and the position of its natural and man-made features; and detailed nautical charts are fundamental for many sciences such as physical oceanography, biology and marine geology. Besides, it is significant for navigational requirement. This revealed the necessity of hydrographic measurements and measurement systems. For this purpose, many techniques developed and used to create the map of the seafloor. From the first primitive technique which involved lowering a weighted line into the water to satellite derived altimetry many systems used for determination of seafloor. After the development of electronic and computer technology, the modern systems become more accurate and effective. An echo sounder system is one of the modern techniques that use the sound waves to determine the depth which is also called ‘sounding’. Echo sounders are classified with the capability of producing sounding in one time. Single beam echo sounder (SBES) system can produce single sounding in each measurement. Besides, multi beam echo sounder (MBES) system can produce hundreds of sounding in each measurement sets and provide 100% seafloor coverage. The hydrographic offices, which use the Multi Beam Echo Sounder (MBES) system for the establishment of nautical charts, have their own set of accuracy standards for hydrographic surveys, which generally comply with the standards defined by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). MBES systems include multiple measurement systems such as sonar head, positioning system, motion sensor that work in a synchronized manner. Therefore, the system components are installed and established to each other in 3D space of vessel. Before the measurements, the ‘Patch Test’ is required to eliminate the systematic errors due to instrumental synchronization and installation. In this test, signal delay test (latency), Y-axis rotation (roll), X-axis rotation (pitch), Z-axis rotation (yaw) errors are calculated. Besides, the effects of the sound velocity measurement through water column and the sea level changes need to be taken into consideration especially in the multi-temporal data analysis and 3D modeling. In this thesis, the seafloor of the Anamur -TRNC Drinking Water Pipeline route in the ‘Northern Cyprus Water Project’ is selected as a study area. This project, a unique in the world, is an international water diversion project designed to supply water for drinking and irrigation from southern Turkey to Northern Cyprus via pipeline under Mediterranean Sea. The dredged channels for pipe laying in the Anamur and TRNC shores are considered in this study and two MBES surveys are conducted in different periods to determine the surface differences. Multi temporal multi beam echo sounder measurements are used in the change analysis and surface modeling and the efficiency of this system is outlined together with its limitations.Yüksek LisansM.Sc

    Net errors and omissions in balance of payments statistics

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    Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Statistics and Information Management, specialization in Information Analysis and ManagementThis dissertation researches a discrepancy that is a part of the production of Balance of Payments statistics, i.e. Net Errors and Omissions. The possible causes, potential methods of detection and remedies are discussed. Statistical analysis is used to analyze time series data of most of the countries that adhere to the Special Data Dissemination Standard of the International Monetary Fund. The Net Errors and Omissions item is analyzed, both for randomness, systematic behavior, correlation with other Balance of Payments items, and other major economic variables. Revision histories of all the underlying items of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position are researched in search for clues of the most common caused for revisions. A survey among the compilers of Balance of Payments Accounts was conducted, asking for their opinions on the potential causes of, and remedies for Net Errors and Omissions. The main conclusions are; that there are cases where there are evidences of systematic behavior of the Net Errors and Omissions, which can indicate a potential for improvement. Financial Account items seem to be more subjected to revisions than those of the Current Account and Capital Account items. The compilers see counter accounting in the double-entry accounting system as the most likely source of errors, and exchanging information amongst themselves across borders as the best way of improving the accounts
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