The spirit of capitalism and savings behavior

This paper presents a capitalist-spirit model of savings by including wealth in the intertemporal utility function. While this model includes the life-cycle model and bequest model as two special cases, it sheds light on why wealth holding has tended to increase with age, why decumulation of wealth after retirement has not happened, and why households with and without children have not shown significant differences in their savings behavior. The capitalist-spirit approach is especially useful for understanding savings by the rich and savings across countries and over time.Savings puzzle, Capitalist spirit, Wealth accumulation

Modeling the data entities used in the financial diagnosis through onthologies

The field of economy and finance is a conceptually rich domain where information is complex, huge in volume and a highly valuable business product by itself. The correct perception of the financial condition of a company is dependent upon the quality of its information processing system and also an important role has the analyst’s expertise. Monitoring and correcting inappropriate conditions become critical tasks, particularly to small and medium companies, where the presence of an expert is not affordable. A system capable of spotting the condition and suggesting alternative actions to control anomalies brings important advantages to the company. Effective financial diagnosis requires accurate, timely and relevant information. The ideal system will be one able not only to analyze the financial problems, but also to suggest the solutions. In order to accomplish these tasks, the artificial intelligence technologies offer a valid solution. In this research, we propose some possibilities to identify and integrate the data structures involved in the financial diagnosis, through the use of onthologies.peer-reviewe

Master of Science

thesisData quality has become a significant issue in healthcare as large preexisting databases are integrated to provide greater depth for research and process improvement. Large scale data integration exposes and compounds data quality issues latent in source systems. Although the problems related to data quality in transactional databases have been identified and well-addressed, the application of data quality constraints to large scale data repositories has not and requires novel applications of traditional concepts and methodologies. Despite an abundance of data quality theory, tools and software, there is no consensual technique available to guide developers in the identification of data integrity issues and the application of data quality rules in warehouse-type applications. Data quality measures are frequently developed on an ad hoc basis or methods designed to assure data quality in transactional systems are loosely applied to analytic data stores. These measures are inadequate to address the complex data quality issues in large, integrated data repositories particularly in the healthcare domain with its heterogeneous source systems. This study derives a taxonomy of data quality rules from relational database theory. It describes the development and implementation of data quality rules in the Analytic Health Repository at Intermountain Healthcare and situates the data quality rules in the taxonomy. Further, it identifies areas in which more rigorous data quality iv should be explored. This comparison demonstrates the superiority of a structured approach to data quality rule identification

Mineral-scale trace element and U-Th-Pb age constraints on metamorphism and melting during the Petermann Orogeny (Central Australia)

High-pressure amphibolite-facies migmatitic orthogneisses from the Cockburn Shear Zone (CSZ), northern Musgrave Block in central Australia, were formed during the 580-520 Ma intraplate Petermann Orogeny. The shear-zone hosted orthogneisses are of an intermediate bulk composition that promoted the growth of rare earth element (REE)-bearing major phases (garne and hornblende), as well as numerous accessory phases (zircon, titanite, apatite, epidote and allanite), all of which are potential U-Th-Pb geochronometers and are involved in the distribution of REEs. We have integrated petrology and detailed in situ trace element analysis of major and accessory phases in samples collected outside and inside the CSZ to establish the relative timing of metamorphic mineral growth. This paper presents one of the first applications of newly developed in situ dating protocols on metamorphic allanite. Sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe geochronology on metamorphic zircon and allanite indicate that metamorphism and partial melting occurred between 5596 and 5516 Ma. Peak temperatures of 720-750C, determined from rutile included in garnet, necessitate the presence of fluids to flux partial melting in the CSZ quartzofeldspathic rocks. Metamorphic zircon formed during cooling in the presence of melt near the granitic wet solidus at T< 700 C. In contrast, allanite formed at different stages of the CSZ P-T path: (1) as a prograde sub-solidus phase (T&lt;650C) formed in the presence of fluids, and (2) as melt-precipitated Th- and REE-rich overgrowths on pre-existing allanite. The ages of the two growth episodes are not isotopically resolvable by allanite dating. Trace element compositions indicate that in both melted and unmelted rocks, garnet and hornblende growth was primarily controlled by prograde subsolidus hydration reactions that consumed feldspar below the metamorphic peak. REE compositions of the metamorphic zircon and allanite overgrowths that formed in the presence of melt also suggest disequilibrium with garnet. Thus, the major period of garnet and hornblende growth was not coeval with partial melting

A sequential data assimilation approach for the joint reconstruction of mantle convection and surface tectonics

International audienceWith the progress of mantle convection modelling over the last decade, it now becomes possible to solve for the dynamics of the interior flow and the surface tectonics to first order. We show here that tectonic data (like surface kinematics and seafloor age distribution) and mantle convection models with plate-like behaviour can in principle be combined to reconstruct mantle convection. We present a sequential data assimilation method, based on suboptimal schemes derived from the Kalman filter, where surface velocities and seafloor age maps are not used as boundary conditions for the flow, but as data to assimilate. Two stages (a forecast followed by an analysis) are repeated sequentially to take into account data observed at different times. Whenever observations are available, an analysis infers the most probable state of the mantle at this time, considering a prior guess (supplied by the forecast) and the new observations at hand, using the classical best linear unbiased estimate. Between two observation times, the evolution of the mantle is governed by the forward model of mantle convection. This method is applied to synthetic 2-D spherical annulus mantle cases to evaluate its efficiency. We compare the reference evolutions to the estimations obtained by data assimilation. Two parameters control the behaviour of the scheme: the time between two analyses, and the amplitude of noise in the synthetic observations. Our technique proves to be efficient in retrieving temperature field evolutions provided the time between two analyses is 10 Myr. If the amplitude of the a priori error on the observations is large (30 per cent), our method provides a better estimate of surface tectonics than the observations, taking advantage of the information within the physics of convection

Towards automated restructuring of object oriented systems

The work introduces a method for diagnosing design flaws in object oriented systems, and finding meaningful refactorings to remove such flaws. The method is based on pairing up a structural pattern that is considered pathological (e.g. a code smell or anti-pattern) with a so called design context. The design context describes the design semantics associated to the pathological structure, and the desired strategic closure for that fragment. The process is tool supported and largely automated

Prevalence and architecture of de novo mutations in developmental disorders.

The genomes of individuals with severe, undiagnosed developmental disorders are enriched in damaging de novo mutations (DNMs) in developmentally important genes. Here we have sequenced the exomes of 4,293 families containing individuals with developmental disorders, and meta-analysed these data with data from another 3,287 individuals with similar disorders. We show that the most important factors influencing the diagnostic yield of DNMs are the sex of the affected individual, the relatedness of their parents, whether close relatives are affected and the parental ages. We identified 94 genes enriched in damaging DNMs, including 14 that previously lacked compelling evidence of involvement in developmental disorders. We have also characterized the phenotypic diversity among these disorders. We estimate that 42% of our cohort carry pathogenic DNMs in coding sequences; approximately half of these DNMs disrupt gene function and the remainder result in altered protein function. We estimate that developmental disorders caused by DNMs have an average prevalence of 1 in 213 to 1 in 448 births, depending on parental age. Given current global demographics, this equates to almost 400,000 children born per year