Summarizing information from Web sites on distributed power generation and alternative energy development

The World Wide Web (WWW) has become a huge repository of information and knowledge, and an essential channel for information exchange. Many sites and thousands of pages of information on distributed power generation and alternate energy development are being added or modified constantly and the task of finding the most appropriate information is getting difficult. While search engines are capable to return a collection of links according to key terms and some forms of ranking mechanism, it is still necessary to access the Web page and navigate through the site in order to find the information. This paper proposes an interactive summarization framework called iWISE to facilitate the process by providing a summary of the information on the Web site. The proposed approach makes use of graphical visualization, tag clouds and text summarization. A number of cases are presented and compared in this paper with a discussion on future work

Sequential Monte Carlo pricing of American-style options under stochastic volatility models

We introduce a new method to price American-style options on underlying investments governed by stochastic volatility (SV) models. The method does not require the volatility process to be observed. Instead, it exploits the fact that the optimal decision functions in the corresponding dynamic programming problem can be expressed as functions of conditional distributions of volatility, given observed data. By constructing statistics summarizing information about these conditional distributions, one can obtain high quality approximate solutions. Although the required conditional distributions are in general intractable, they can be arbitrarily precisely approximated using sequential Monte Carlo schemes. The drawback, as with many Monte Carlo schemes, is potentially heavy computational demand. We present two variants of the algorithm, one closely related to the well-known least-squares Monte Carlo algorithm of Longstaff and Schwartz [The Review of Financial Studies 14 (2001) 113-147], and the other solving the same problem using a "brute force" gridding approach. We estimate an illustrative SV model using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for three equities. We also demonstrate the use of our algorithm by estimating the posterior distribution of the market price of volatility risk for each of the three equities.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOAS286 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

In Search for Yield? New Survey-Based Evidence on Bank Risk Taking

There is growing consensus that the conduct of monetary policy can have an impact on financial and economic stability through the risk-taking incentives of banks. Falling interest rates might induce a “search for yield” and generate incentives to invest into risky activities. This paper provides evidence on the link between monetary policy and commercial property prices and the risk-taking incentives of banks. We use a factor-augmented vector autoregressive model (FAVAR) for the U.S. for the years 1997-2008. We include standard macroeconomic indicators and factors summarizing information provided in the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Terms of Business Lending. These data allow modeling the reactions of banks’ new lending volumes and the riskiness of new loans. We do not find evidence for a risk-taking channel for the entire banking system after a monetary policy loosening or an unexpected increase in property prices. This masks, however, important differences across banking groups. Small domestic banks increase their exposure to risk, foreign banks lower risk, and large domestic banks do not change their risk exposure.FAVAR, bank risk taking, macro-finance linkages, monetary policy, commercial property prices

Strategic Planning Information for Boys Clubs of Omaha

The following study consists of a series of brief reports summarizing information collected by the Center for Applied Urban Research (CAUR) for the Boys Clubs of Omaha. This information can be used by the Boys Clubs for strategic planning. The information was collected to determine: If clients\u27 needs are being addressed; if the current program is effectively meeting clients\u27 needs; and if service delivery should be expanded. To address these issues, CAUR designed a work plan containing five elements. Each element focuses these issues using . a different data gathering approach, and is presented separately

Brookes equation: The basis for a qualitative characterization of information behaviours

Brookes equation, which has hitherto been regarded as a kind of non-mathematical shorthand description of information use, is extended so as to show the qualitative pattern of information access. Information inputs are represented by a simple power law, and changes in knowledge structure by possible changes to a simple mental map. The resulting pattern shows seven forms of information input and three forms of change in knowledge structure, giving 21 categories overall. These have the potential for use as an explanatory tool and taxonomy for studying and summarizing information behaviour, and offer the possibility of being developed into more sophisticated and quantitative treatments

A Structural Equation Model for Consumers’ Mobile-based Information Search: A Case of Outbound Chinese Tourists

This research responds to the call for more studies to validate a comprehensive model incorporating mobile Internet and other information channels to investigate their effects within the search process. Using 104 Chinese outbound tourists as the sample, this study investigates how they utilize multiple sources for trip planning. The research findings indicate that mobile-based search actions have been undertaken step by step: internal search mobile search preliminary collaborative TIS saving information summarizing information. Two search patterns were identified by using other information sources: 1. mobile Internet advanced collaborative TIS editorial communications; 2. mobile Internet PC Internet editorial communications. In spite of the studys limitations in relation to generalizing the results, this study presents new avenues for further research

The Health Related Components of Physical Fitness in People with Visual Impairment: A Systematic Review

Visual impairment is becoming progressively more common in America’s aging society. Physical inactivity contributes to the development of chronic health conditions. Therefore, it is important to understand the relationship between visual impairment and its impact on health related physical activity and fitness. The purpose of this systematic review is to examine the prevalence of physical activity and the five components of physical fitness in the visually impaired population. This review was limited to articles addressing individuals with “visual impairment,” as defined by the National Eye Institute. The data abstracted included documentation of visual impairment, physical activity rates, physical fitness measures, gender, age, number of participants, and sample size. Results confirm that persons with visual impairment tend to participate in physical activity significantly less than their sighted counterparts and are often less physically fit, especially in regards to body composition, cardiovascular endurance, and muscular strength. Consensus within the research attributes this decreased physical fitness to the lack of sufficient physical activity within the population. The observed lack of physical activity warrants intentionally improving upon the many physiopsychological and social factors which prevent visually impaired children and adults from having equal access to opportunities to engage regularly in physical fitness activities

LIME: Towards a Metadata Module for Ontolex

The OntoLex W3C Community Group has been working for more than a year on realizing a proposal for a standard ontol-ogy lexicon model. As the core-specification of the model is almost com-plete, the group started development of additional modules for specific tasks and use cases. We think that in many usage scenarios (e.g. linguistic enrichment, lo-calization and alignment of ontologies) the discovery and exploitation of linguis-tically grounded datasets may benefit from summarizing information about their linguistic expressivity. While the VoID vocabulary covers the need for general metadata about linked datasets, this more specific information demands a dedicated extension. In this paper, we fill this gap by introducing LIME (Linguistic Metadata), a new vocabulary aiming at completing the OntoLex standard with specifications for linguistic metadata.