Chasing housing prices: Working paper series--06-08

If a person or organization is planning to buy real estate in the future but is unable or unwilling to buy it now, how can they best "hedge" this purchase? In what class of asset should they invest their money until they are ready to purchase the real estate? This paper uses Monte Carlo simulation and bootstrap techniques to help answer these questions. We find that the best "purchase early" hedge for both residential and commercial real estate is small value stocks. Small value stocks would be the most likely to provide returns at least as good as real estate and they would be least likely to suffer losses relative to real estate. The effectiveness of the hedge increases the longer the time horizon of the investor. Large value stocks and equity REITs are also quite good but not as good as small value stocks. Other asset classes are not nearly as effective. The least effective asset class is T-Bills

Chasing Housing Prices?

If a person or organization is planning to buy real estate in the future but is unable or unwilling to buy it now, how can they best “hedge” this purchase? In what class of asset should they invest their money until they are ready to purchase the real estate? This paper uses Monte Carlo simulation and bootstrap techniques to investigate the effectiveness of using traditional asset classes in managing the long-term risks associated with the future purchase of real estate. We find that the best “purchase early” hedge for both residential and commercial real estate is small value stocks. Small value stocks would be the most likely to provide returns at least as good as real estate and they would be least likely to suffer losses relative to real estate. The effectiveness of the hedge increases the longer the time horizon of the investor. Large value stocks and equity REIT’s are also quite good but not as good as small value stocks. Other asset classes are not nearly as effective. The least effective asset class is T-Bills

Excitation functions of proton induced nuclear reactions on natW up to 40 MeV

Excitation functions for the production of the 181,182m,182g,183,184g,186Re and 183,184Ta radionuclides from proton bombardment on natural tungsten were measured using the stacked-foil activation technique for the proton energies up to 40 MeV. A new data set has been given for the formation of the investigated radionuclides. Results are in good agreement with the earlier reported experimental data and theoretical calculations based on the ALICE-IPPE code. The thick target integral yields were also deduced from the measured excitation functions. The deduced yield values were compared with the directly measured thick target yield (TTY), and found acceptable agreement. The investigated radionuclide 186Re has remarkable applications in the field of nuclear medicine, whereas the data of 183,184gRe and 183Ta have potential applications in thin layer activation analysis and biomedical tracer studies, respectively.Comment: 21papes, 14 figure

Graphene defect formation by extreme ultraviolet generated photoelectrons

We have studied the effect of photoelectrons on defect formation in graphene during extreme ultraviolet (EUV) irradiation. Assuming the major role of these low energy electrons, we have mimicked the process by using low energy primary electrons. Graphene is irradiated by an electron beam with energy lower than 80 eV. After e-beam irradiation, it is found that the D peak, I(D), appears in the Raman spectrum, indicating defect formation in graphene. The evolution of I(D)/I(G) follows the amorphization trajectory with increasing irradiation dose, indicating that graphene goes through a transformation from microcrystalline to nanocrystalline and then further to amorphous carbon. Further, irradiation of graphene with increased water partial pressure does not significantly change the Raman spectra, which suggests that, in the extremely low energy range, e-beam induced chemical reactions between residual water and graphene is not the dominant mechanism driving defect formation in graphene. Single layer graphene, partially suspended over holes was irradiated with EUV radiation. By comparing with the Raman results from e-beam irradiation, it is concluded that the photoelectrons, especially those from the valence band, contribute to defect formation in graphene during irradiation.Comment: appears in Journal of Applied Physics 201

Emergency planning and response in Texas Catholic schools

textThe Texas Education Code has specific requirements for public schools as it relates to emergency planning and response expectations. There are no similar requirements for Catholic schools in state statute. Through a survey, this report will show that Catholic schools in Texas already have planning and response programs in place. This report will make specific recommendations intended to enhance those current programs.Public Affair

Encounters in the English Juvenile Periodical Press: The Reader-Responses of Boys and Girls, c. 1855-1900

This purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the role played by the English juvenile periodical press in the socialisation of boys and girls during the second half of the nineteenth century. Although scholars have long been familiar with the idea that juvenile periodicals were agents of socialisation, there has been little critical discussion about how readers responded to their magazines. Scholars usually attempt to discern the socialising messages that juvenile periodicals transmitted to young people by examining the texts rather than the response of the reader. The problem with this approach is that there is a danger of assuming that intended messages were absorbed without question by a passive readership. The relationship between reading and socialisation has thus been misunderstood and requires reassessment. This dissertation not only broadens the scope of the field of periodical studies, but also the wider history of juvenile reading. The difficulty of locating historical evidence of reader response has frustrated researchers since the mid-twentieth century. Despite recent breakthroughs in the field of book history, the responses of young people have largely remained elusive because they were often ephemeral and have rarely been preserved in historical archives. This dissertation, however, demonstrates that a study of “encounters” in the juvenile periodical press can offer mediated glimpses into reader response. Developing the work of Laurel Brake and Julie Codell, it considers how boys and girls were invited to become active participants in periodical culture through correspondence columns, prize competitions, and club pages. In doing so, the thesis sheds important new light on the following research questions: how did readers respond to socialising messages about informal education and self-improvement; how did juvenile periodicals prepare boys and girls for employment; and how successful were the editors of juvenile periodicals in moulding their readers’ understanding of recreation from a young age? This study of encounters in the juvenile periodical press complicates our understanding of socialisation in two ways. First, it challenges the assumption that young people were passive recipients of adult teaching. Rather, it suggests that socialisation should be understood as a dialogue between editors who were eager to mould the values and behaviours of the rising generation, and readers who consulted magazines for advice and entertainment. Although the editors of juvenile periodicals often had their own agendas, boys and girls were consumers whose needs and desires were influential in shaping the content of magazines. Second, a study of encounters reveals that while some readers conformed to editorial expectations, others resisted or ignored attempts at socialisation. Thus, this dissertation argues that the relationship between reading and socialisation was more complex than scholars have traditionally assumed

Disorder prediction methods, their applicability to different protein targets and their usefulness for guiding experimental studies

The role and function of a given protein is dependent on its structure. In recent years, however, numerous studies have highlighted the importance of unstructured, or disordered regions in governing a protein’s function. Disordered proteins have been found to play important roles in pivotal cellular functions, such as DNA binding and signalling cascades. Studying proteins with extended disordered regions is often problematic as they can be challenging to express, purify and crystallise. This means that interpretable experimental data on protein disorder is hard to generate. As a result, predictive computational tools have been developed with the aim of predicting the level and location of disorder within a protein. Currently, over 60 prediction servers exist, utilizing different methods for classifying disorder and different training sets. Here we review several good performing, publicly available prediction methods, comparing their application and discussing how disorder prediction servers can be used to aid the experimental solution of protein structure. The use of disorder prediction methods allows us to adopt a more targeted approach to experimental studies by accurately identifying the boundaries of ordered protein domains so that they may be investigated separately, thereby increasing the likelihood of their successful experimental solution

Influence of wheel size on muscle activity and tri-axial accelerations during Cross-Country mountain biking

This study aimed to investigate the influence of different mountain bike wheel diameters on muscle activity and whether larger diameter wheels attenuate muscle vibrations during cross-country riding. Nine male competitive mountain bikers (age 34.7 ± 10.7 years; stature 177.7 ± 5.6 cm; body mass 73.2 ± 8.6 kg) participated in the study. Riders performed one lap at race pace on 26, 27.5 and 29 inch wheeled mountain bikes. sEMG and acceleration (RMS) were recorded for the full lap and during ascent and descent phases at the gastrocnemius, vastus lateralis, biceps brachii and triceps brachii. No significant main effects were found by wheel size for each of the four muscle groups for sEMG or acceleration during the full lap and for ascent and descent (P > .05). When data were analysed between muscle groups, significant differences were found between biceps brachii and triceps brachii (P < .05) for all wheel sizes and all phases of the lap with the exception of for the 26 inch wheel during the descent. Findings suggest wheel diameter has no influence on muscle activity and vibration during mountain biking. However, more activity was observed in the biceps brachii during 26 inch wheel descending. This is possibly due to an increased need to manoeuvre the front wheel over obstacles

Conditional Random Fields and Supervised Learning in Automated Skin Lesion Diagnosis

Many subproblems in automated skin lesion diagnosis (ASLD) canbe unified under a single generalization of assigning a label, from an predefinedset, to each pixel in an image. We first formalize this generalizationand then present two probabilistic models capable of solving it. The firstmodel is based on independent pixel labeling using maximum a-posteriori(MAP) estimation. The second model is based on conditional randomfields (CRFs), where dependencies between pixels are defined using agraph structure. Furthermore, we demonstrate how supervised learningand an appropriate training set can be used to automatically determineall model parameters. We evaluate both models\u27 ability to segment achallenging dataset consisting of 116 images and compare our results to5 previously published methods

Growth and characterization of semiconductor nanoparticles in porous sol-gel films

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