Voices from the Field: Exploring Partnerships with the African American Library at Gregory School in Houston, Texas

Dr. Bernardo Pohl conducted an interview with Ms. Valerie Wade, the library’s historian and oral archivist, to discuss the library’s history, partnerships, and vital role in the community

Financial Market Runs

Our paper offers a minimalist model of a run on a financial market. The prime ingredient is that each risk-neutral investor fears having to liquidate after a run, but before prices can recover back to fundamental values. During the urn, only the risk-averse market-making sector is willing to absorb shares. To avoid having to possibly liquidate shares at the marginal post-run price in which case the market-making sector will already hold a lot of share inventory and thus be more reluctant to absorb additional shares all investors may prefer selling their shares into the market today at the average run price, thereby causing the run itself. Consequently, stock prices are low and risk is allocated inefficiently. Liquidity runs and crises are not caused by liquidity shocks per se, but by the fear of future liquidity shocks.

On the Evolution of Overconfidence and Entrepreneurs

This paper explains why seemingly irrational overconfident behavior can persist. Information aggregation is poor in groups in which most individuals herd. By ignoring the herd, the actions of overconfident individuals ("entrepreneurs") convey their private information. However, entrepreneurs make mistakes and thus die more frequently. The socially optimal proportion of entrepreneurs trades off the positive information externality against high attrition rates of entrepreneurs, and depends on the size of the group, on the degree of overconfidence, and on the accuracy of individuals' private information. The stationary distribution trades off the fitness of the group against the fitness of overconfident individuals.Evolution, overconfidence, behavioral economics

Analysis of pressure blips in aft-finocyl solid rocket motor

Ballistic anomalies have frequently occurred during the firing of several solid rocket motors (SRMs) (Inertial Upper Stage, Space Shuttle Redesigned SRM (RSRM) and Titan IV SRM Upgrade (SRMU)), producing even relevant and unexpected variations of the SRM pressure trace from its nominal profile. This paper has the purpose to provide a numerical analysis of the following possible causes of ballistic anomalies in SRMs: an inert object discharge, a slag ejection, and an unexpected increase in the propellant burning rate or in the combustion surface. The SRM configuration under investigation is an aft-finocyl SRM with a first-stage/small booster design. The numerical simulations are performed with a quasi-one-dimensional (Q1D) unsteady model of the SRM internal ballistics, properly tailored to model each possible cause of the ballistic anomalies. The results have shown that a classification based on the head-end pressure (HEP) signature, relating each other the HEP shape and the ballistic anomaly cause, can be made. For each cause of ballistic anomalies, a deepened discussion of the parameters driving the HEP signatures is provided, as well as qualitative and quantitative assessments of the resultant pressure signals

A Moral Debate at the Invisible Rainbow: Thoughts about Best Practices in Servicing LGBTQ Students in Special Education

Instead of occupying a marginal space within teacher preparation programs, special education courses and training should promote diversity in servicing marginalized groups such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Within these programs, issues related to LGBTQ students should occupy a meaningful and formative space in the training of future teachers in special education. Often, special education teachers are at a loss about how to educate LGBTQ students with disabilities. Rethinking the role of special education and LGBTQ students with special needs within teacher education programs enables pre-service teachers to cultivate new values and attitudes that can enrich the student/teacher relationship within public schools. As such, this article proposes to explore best practices for servicing LGTBQ students in special education by promoting better ways to train future teachers

Corporate ethical policies: evidence from large firms in Chile

This study explores the current status of corporate ethical policies in the large-size firms currently operating in Chile and focus on the edition of formal documents on corporate ethics by means of a survey sent to the companies whose manning table exceeds 350 employees (460 firms), using for this selection the 2005 Directorio ITV de Empresas en Chile (ITV Directory of Corporations in Chile). The results obtained from the 116 responses received reveal that almost 60% of the firms possess ethics corporate documents; that in general there is consensus about the need to bear in mind the ethical conduct in the personnel selection, promotion and bonuses; and that generally a greater proportion of foreign firms have documents on ethics, as compared with the domestic firms. Likewise, a statistical verification was performed –whose results are only extrapolated to the large-size firms– on the correlation between possession of formal ethics documents and performance (measured as the value of 2005 sales), which had positive results and was statistically significant; at the same time, evidence was found, although somewhat weaker, to support the hypothesis of statistically positive correlation between such documents possession and the number of employees.Corporate ethical documents; Business ethics policy; Codes of conduct; Chile

NetEvo: A computational framework for the evolution of dynamical complex networks

NetEvo is a computational framework designed to help understand the evolution of dynamical complex networks. It provides flexible tools for the simulation of dynamical processes on networks and methods for the evolution of underlying topological structures. The concept of a supervisor is used to bring together both these aspects in a coherent way. It is the job of the supervisor to rewire the network topology and alter model parameters such that a user specified performance measure is minimised. This performance measure can make use of current topological information and simulated dynamical output from the system. Such an abstraction provides a suitable basis in which to study many outstanding questions related to complex system design and evolution

Modelling and Forecasting Dynamic VaR Thresholds for Risk Management and Regulation

The paper presents methods of estimating Value-at-Risk (VaR) thresholds utilising two calibrated models and three conditional volatility or GARCH models. These are used to estimate and forecast the VaR thresholds of an equally-weighted portfolio, comprising: the S & P500, CAC40, FTSE100 a Swiss market index (SMI). On the basis of the number of (non-)violations of the Basel Accord thresholds, the best performing model is PS-GARCH, followed by VARMA-AGARCH, then Portfolio-GARCH and the RiskmetricsTM -EWMA models, both of which would attract a penalty of 0.5. The worst forecasts are obtained from the standard normal method based on historical variances.Value at Risk (VaR) modelling, forecasting risk thresholds, Portfolio Spillover-Garch, risk management and regulation Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank Felix Chan, Suhejla Hoti, Alex Zsimayer and seminar participants at the Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, Ling Tung Institute of Technology, Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology, and University of Queensland for helpful comments and suggestions. The first and second authors wish to thank the Australian Research Council for financial support. The third author wishes to acknowledge a University Postgraduate Award and an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship at the University of Western Australia.

Digital transformation in recruitment : best practices in the Portuguese market

The “war for talent” is leading organizations to focus on recruitment process agility and employer branding as a way to successfully recruit the best individuals. For this, companies are increasingly turning to implementing new technological developments in their recruitment and selection processes. This dissertation focuses on identifying the impact these technologies can cause, and what the best practices are for implementing them into recruitment processes, from the perspective of the internal recruiters. For this, a qualitative analysis was conducted through researching existing literature and conducting semi-structured interviews with recruiters. The results show that the implementation of automatic CV screening, asynchronous video interviewing and assessment games have a positive impact on recruitment processes, namely through increased accuracy of assessment, shortening the process duration, increasing diversity among recruits and enabling higher candidate pools. Companies are also focusing on increased software integration and gathering of recruitment metrics for continuous process improvement. For the successful implementation of these changes, recruiters see organizational culture as a key factor.A “guerra pelo talento” está a levar a que as organizações se foquem na agilidade do processo de recrutamento e em employer branding para recrutar os melhores candidatos. Para tal, as empresas estão a recorrer cada vez mais à implementação de novas tecnologias nos seus processos de recrutamento e seleção. Esta dissertação foca-se em identificar o impacto que estas tecnologias podem causar, e quais as melhores práticas para a sua integração em processos de recrutamento da perspetiva dos recrutadores internos. Para tal, uma análise qualitativa foi conduzida através da investigação da literatura existente e da condução de entrevistas semiestruturadas com recrutadores. Os resultados mostram que a implementação de triagem de CV automática, entrevistas em vídeo assíncronas e jogos de avaliação têm um impacto positivo em processos de recrutamento, nomeadamente através de um aumento na precisão das avaliações, encurtamento da duração do processo, aumento da diversidade entre recrutados e permitir um volume de candidaturas maior. As empresas também se estão a focar em aumentar a integração de software e a coleta de métricas de recrutamento para melhoria contínua dos processos. Para a implementação bem-sucedida destas alterações, os recrutadores vêm a cultura organizacional como um fator chave

Reporte de formación complementaria en área de concentración en sistemas embebidos y telecomunicaciones

En este trabajo se presentan tres proyectos relacionados con sistemas embebidos y telecomunicaciones: diseño e implementación de un sistema operativo para sistemas embebidos; transmisión de datos en equivalente pasa-bajas con modulación 4-PSK, y K64 Audio Player V1.0 y amplificador de audio