Forecast evaluation of small nested model sets

We propose two new procedures for comparing the mean squared prediction error (MSPE) of a benchmark model to the MSPEs of a small set of alternative models that nest the benchmark. Our procedures compare the bench-mark to all the alternative models simultaneously rather than sequentially, and do not require re-estimation of models as part of a bootstrap procedure. Both procedures adjust MSPE differences in accordance with Clark and West (2007); one procedure then examines the maximum t-statistic, the other computes a chi-squared statistic. Our simulations examine the proposed procedures and two existing procedures that do not adjust the MSPE differences: a chi-squared statistic, and White’s (2000) reality check. In these simulations, the two statistics that adjust MSPE differences have most accurate size, and the procedure that looks at the maximum t-statistic has best power. We illustrate, our procedures by comparing forecasts of different models for U.S. inflation. JEL Classification: C32, C53, E37Inflation forecasting, multiple model comparisons, Out-of-Sample, prediction, testing

The Impact of Social Constructivist Mathematics Learning Experiences on Latino, Middle School Students’ Proportional Reasoning

Due to its centrality in the curriculum, research on proportional reasoning (PR) has seen a resurgence of interest. Recent research examined students’ patterns, strategies, and achievement when solving PR problems. Other studies explored PR learning trajectories. Additional studies focused on instructional interventions such as the effect of number structure, continuous, discrete, and intensive quantities to promote the development of proportional reasoning skills (PRS). The subjects of these studies have been United States white middle school students, Icelandic grade 5 girls, Spanish secondary school students, Turkish middle school students, as well as Scottish and Korean upper primary grades’ students. Few studies examined the factors that explain how instructional experiences influence Latino, middle school students’ PRS proficiency. This study aims to contribute to the literature by examining the impact of instruction that involves manipulatives, representations, and discourse to foster the strategic competence of Latino middle school students on proportional reasoning tasks (PRT). Subjects were 80 sixth-grade Latino students with low socioeconomic background. A quasi-experimental, comparison group design was used involving two mathematics classrooms as the treatment and two classrooms as the comparison group. Each group was administered a pretest of mathematics ability and PR posttest. The teacher was a Mexican-heritage public school educator. Students varied in their mathematics ability and engaged in distinct curricula and pedagogical approaches to promote their PR development. Two treatment classrooms experienced tasks involving concrete manipulatives, multiple representations, and negotiation of meaning and two comparison classrooms received teacher-centered textbook instruction that consisted on a teacher explaining definitions and examples from the notes from the textbook, followed by individual problem-solving of worksheets from the textbook. Analysis of Covariance and Pearson Chi-Square tests reported statistically significant differences in performance and use of representational reasoning when solving proportional reasoning tasks. A significant impact was also observed on the performance in PR tasks involving one-step partitioning and non-integer relationships. Social constructivist experiences resulted in a meaningful understanding of PRS empowering Latino middle school students with stronger connections between the central ideas of PR. Participants receiving social constructivist instruction used significantly greater representational reasoning that resulted in statistically significantly higher PR strategic competence

Cooperative Approach for Composite Ontology Mapping

This paper proposes a cooperative approach for composite ontology mapping. We first present an extended classification of automated ontology matching and propose an automatic composite solution for the matching problem based on cooperation. In our proposal, agents apply individual mapping algorithms and cooperate in order to change their individual results. We assume that the approaches are complementary to each other and their combination produces better results than the individual ones. Next, we compare our model with three state of the art matching systems. The results are promising specially for what concerns precision and recall. Finally, we propose an argumentation formalism as an extension of our initial model. We compare our argumentation model with the matching systems, showing improvements on the results

The Effect of Job Related Stress on Employees’ Satisfaction: A Survey in Health Care

AbstractThis paper investigates the impact of job related stress on Job Satisfaction of nursing staff working in hospitals. Job stress is one of the most important workplace health risks for employees, and job satisfaction has been considered as a crucial factor in the provision of high quality services and superior performance at hospitals. This paper presents a field survey. Drawing on a sample of 271 nurses operating in Greek hospitals, we examined the degree to which stressors such as conflict, workload, interpersonal relationships, career development, information access and feedback influence job satisfaction aspects such as physical environment, career opportunities, management style, job enrichment, rewards and job security. Results showed that conflict, heavy workload and lack of job autonomy are negatively associated with all job satisfaction dimensions, while shortage in information access and feedback is positively related to employees’ satisfaction with rewards and job security

WISDOM: A Grid-Enabled Drug Discovery Initiative Against Malaria

The goal of this chapter is to present the WISDOM initiative, which is one of the main accomplishments in the use of grids for biomedical sciences achieved on grid infrastructures in Europe. Researchers in life sciences are among the most active scientifi c communities on the EGEE infrastructure. As a consequence, the biomedical virtual organization stands fourth in terms of resources consumed in 2007, with an average of 7000 jobs submitted every day to the grid and more than 4 million hours of CPU consumed in the last 12 months. Only three experiments on the CERN Large Hadron Collider have used more resources. Compared to particle physics, the use of resources is much less centralized as about 40 different scientifi c applications are now currently deployed on EGEE. Each of them requires an amount of CPU which ranges from a few to a few hundred CPU years. Thanks to the 20,000 processors available to the users of the biomedical virtual organization, crunching factors in the hundreds are witnessed routinely. Such performances were already achieved on supercomputers but at the cost of reservation and long delays in the access to resources. On the contrary, grid infrastructures are constantly open to the user communities. Such changes in the scale of the computing resources made continuously available to the researchers in biomedical sciences open opportunities for exploring new fi elds or changing the approach to existing challenges. In this chapter, we would like to show the potential impact of grids in the fi eld of drug discovery through the example of the WISDOM initiative

Inquire Within: The Connection between Teacher Training in Inquiry Learning Methodology and Classroom Practice.

This study describes the effects of an 11 week training for 2 preschool teachers focusing on systematizing an inquiry learning approach inspired by the literature on Reggio Emilia inspired practices. This study uses a qualitative, multi-methodology approach including interviews, examination of classroom documentation, and examination of the Broderick and Hong Cycle of Inquiry (© revised 2007) planning forms. Qualitative coding and narratives describe each teacher\u27s data taken at 3 intervals in the study and describe changes, challenges, and successes in teacher practices. Results indicate that these teachers learned successful inquiry learning strategies and grew in both their understanding of the process and their ability to translate this to the classroom. Further studies are needed to determine the effects of adding administration to the mentoring process and if a short-term training can change long-term classroom practices