The Rise of China: Political and Economic Implications

In November, former Hong Kong Solicitor-General Daniel R. Fung addressed a diverse audience of more than 150 UGA students, faculty and other guests as the distinguished speaker for the inaugural Willson Center – Dean Rusk Center Annual Lecture. Drawing on past experience and the insights he gained as a national delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the principal advisory body to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Fung provided his view of the political and economic challenges surrounding China’s new global role

Factors Affecting Foreign Investor Choice in Types of U.S. Real Estate

Using transaction level data, we present the first analysis of the way that foreign investors choose among different types of United States real estate. Our findings based on the conditional logit model analysis for the 1980-91 period are consistent with the hypothesis that foreign investors behave in a traditional profit maximizing, risk minimizing fashion. In choosing among investments in four major categories (apartment, office, retail and industrial) foreign investor choice is most sensitive to changes in capitalization rates, market activity and current rent levels.

Faster Predict-and-Optimize with Davis-Yin Splitting

In many applications, a combinatorial problem must be repeatedly solved with similar, but distinct parameters. Yet, the parameters $w$ are not directly observed; only contextual data $d$ that correlates with $w$ is available. It is tempting to use a neural network to predict $w$ given $d$, but training such a model requires reconciling the discrete nature of combinatorial optimization with the gradient-based frameworks used to train neural networks. When the problem in question is an Integer Linear Program (ILP), one approach to overcoming this issue is to consider a continuous relaxation of the combinatorial problem. While existing methods utilizing this approach have shown to be highly effective on small problems (10-100 variables), they do not scale well to large problems. In this work, we draw on ideas from modern convex optimization to design a network and training scheme which scales effortlessly to problems with thousands of variables

Cross linguistic influence in adult L2/L3 learners: The case of French on English Morphosyntax

Abstract—The potential ways in which learning a second or third language can influence other languages in the mind of the (emergent) bilingual is an increasingly important issue given the international importance of foreign language learning.  This study explored whether learning French as a foreign language influences knowledge of English morphosyntax in learners of L2 French with L1 English (n=21) and learners of L3 French with L2 English (n=9).  Comparing these two groups allowed us to identify whether and to what extent backwards cross linguistic influence (CLI) are different depending on whether French is L2 or L3, and whether English is L1 or L2.  Accuracy on tense-aspects of English morphosyntax was measured through two tasks (Grammaticality Judgement and Proofreading). Results indicated no inhibitive influence from L2 French to L1 English, with potential enhancement of explicit knowledge when compared to a control group of English-speaking participants with no French. In contrast, influence leading to inaccuracy was observed from L3 French to L2 English in that the L3 French learners made more errors in past simple and present perfect in the GJT. Results are discussed in the context of better understanding the nature of developing grammatical systems, together with implications for future work

Incident-Specific Cyber Insurance

In the current market practice, many cyber insurance products offer a coverage bundle for losses arising from various types of incidents, such as data breaches and ransomware attacks, and the coverage for each incident type comes with a separate limit and deductible. Although this gives prospective cyber insurance buyers more flexibility in customizing the coverage and better manages the risk exposures of sellers, it complicates the decision-making process in determining the optimal amount of risks to retain and transfer for both parties. This paper aims to build an economic foundation for these incident-specific cyber insurance products with a focus on how incident-specific indemnities should be designed for achieving Pareto optimality for both the insurance seller and buyer. Real data on cyber incidents is used to illustrate the feasibility of this approach. Several implementation improvement methods for practicality are also discussed

Spanish rapid methods and automation in food microbiology : a star is born

V Workshop Métodos Rápidos y Automatización en Microbiología Alimentaria (2006