The Importance of Safety Equity in Transportation System Safety

  Public transportation in the U.S. often relies on multi-modal components that represent a system of systems as exemplified by transit rail. Currently, transit rail safety is measured for individual railroads as the number of events/fatalities/injuries by productivity level (typically, revenue miles). Barriers for measuring the safety of the transit transportation system of systems include the aggregation of transit properties for a passenger’s trip and the varieties of safety management systems used by transit agencies.  An alternative perspective asks how safe passengers are, instead of how safe railroads are. It posits a fundamental shift to a human-centric perspective on transportation system safety which is the foundation for determining the level of transportation safety equity outcomes. The major barrier to ensuring safety equity outcomes is a lack of safety data for subgroups of the population, based on biodemographic, socioeconomic and disability data. These data are essential for determining if safety levels are equal across subgroups of the population, or if transportation safety inequities exist. If safety outcomes differ across subgroups of the popula-tion, then root causes for the disparity need to be determined and mitigated. The public service duty is to ensure that risk interventions and safety outcomes apply equitably to all.&nbsp

Back to the Future

Text commissioned by Skol for the group exhibition Sortons les archives / Embracing the Archive

Hunting in times of change: Uncovering indigenous strategies in the Colombian amazon using a role-playing game

Despite growing industrialization, the shift to a cash economy and natural resource overexploitation, indigenous people of the Amazon region hunt and trade wildlife in order to meet their livelihood requirements. Individual strategies, shaped by the hunters' values and expectations, are changing in response to the region's economic development, but they still face the contrasting challenges of poverty and overhunting. For conservation initiatives to be implemented effectively, it is crucial to take into account people's strategies with their underlying drivers and their adaptive capabilities within a transforming socio-economic environment. To uncover hunting strategies in the Colombian Amazon and their evolution under the current transition, we co-designed a role-playing game together with the local stakeholders. The game revolves around the tension between ecological sustainability and food security—hunters' current main concern. It simulates the mosaic of activities that indigenous people perform in the wet and dry season, while also allowing for specific hunting strategies. Socio-economic conditions change while the game unfolds, opening up to emerging alternative potential scenarios suggested by the stakeholders themselves. Do hunters give up hunting when given the opportunity of an alternative income and protein source? Do institutional changes affect their livelihoods? We played the game between October and December 2016 with 39 players—all of them hunters—from 9 different communities within the Ticoya reserve. Our results show that providing alternatives would decrease overall hunting effort, but impacts are not spatially homogenous. Legalizing trade could lead to overhunting except when market rules and competition come into place. When it comes to coupled human-nature systems, the best way forward to produce socially just and resilient conservation strategies might be to trigger an adaptive process of experiential learning and scenario exploration. The use of games as “boundary objects” can guide stakeholders through the process, eliciting the plurality of their strategies, their drivers and how outside change affects them

Equity research of Volkswagen : valuation amidst of an emissions scandal

Mestrado em FinançasThis project report follows the format recommended by the CFA Institute “(Pinto et. al., 2015)” and materials on this report will only reflect the public information issued on Volkswagen AG until September 30th, 2016. Volkswagen AG is Europe’s largest auto-manufacturer and one of the largest worldwide. The company offers a wide selection of brand portfolios and generates the highest economies scale in Europe in this industry. The emission scandal it faced on 2015 reflected negatively in the company’s financials and its stock price plunged to nearly 50%. Conducting an in-depth analysis on the company’s management, financials, market and risk assessment along with the application with the most realistic assumptions enabled a proper valuation on the company’s target price. Using the discounted cash flow (DCF) to the firm as the main valuation methodology, a target price of €146.36 for 2017YE was attained with an upside potential of 25.1% from its current price of €116.95 on September 30th, 2016 rated the company with a “Buy” recommendation with high risk. Complementary valuation methods were used and market uncertainties in our estimations were stressed, and all supported our “Buy” recommendation. The current target price of €146.36 is a downward revision by me if the company did not have such scandal. I have valued VW with and without the scandal and the impact on price target was a decrease of about €43.32 per share, or €21.7 billion (for 501 billion shares outstanding) in terms of present value at 2017YE. Despite the loss in its fundamental (present) value of around 29.6% (€21.7 billion), in this report the total estimated and not discounted ‘direct’ cost of the scandal reaches about €46.4 billion.Este relatório de projeto segue o formato recomendado pelo CFA Institute “(Pinto et. al., 2015)” e os conteúdos deste relatório apenas refletem a informação pública emitida sobre a Volkswagen AG até 30 de setembro de 2016. A Volkswagen AG é a maior produtora automóvel da Europa e uma das maiores do mundo. A empresa tem disponível um vasto portefólio de marcas e gera as maiores economias de escala da Europa na indústria. O escândalo das emissões que enfrentou em 2015 influenciou negativamente as contas da empresa e o preço das suas ações desvalorizou quase 50%. O desenvolvimento de uma análise detalhada da gestão da empresa, contas, mercado e avaliação de risco conjuntamente com a aplicação dos pressupostos mais realistas permitiram uma adequada avaliação do preço alvo da empresa. Através do modelo dos fluxos de caixa descontados (DCF) para a empresa como principal metodologia de avaliação, o preço alvo de €146,36 para 2017FA foi obtido com um potencial de crescimento de 25,1% do preço atual de €119,95 em 30 de setembro de 2016, classificou a empresa com uma recomendação de “Comprar” com elevado risco. Métodos de avaliação complementares foram usados e alterações em estimativas incertas de mercado foram testadas, tendo todas elas suportado a recomendação de “Comprar”. O preço alvo atual de €146,36 corresponde a uma revisão em baixa caso a empresa não tivesse tido o escândalo. Avaliei a VW com e sem o impacto do escândalo no preço alvo, correspondendo a uma diminuição de cerca de €43,32 por ação, ou €21,7 mil milhões (para 501 mil milhões de ações em circulação) em termos de valores atuais a 2017FA. Apesar da perda no seu valor fundamental (atual) de cerca de 29,6% (€21,7 mil milhões), neste relatório a estimativa do custo ‘direto’ total do escândalo, não descontado, chega a cerca de €46,4 mil milhões

The Move toward a Cashless Society: A Closer Look at Payment Instrument Economics

Ever since the first general-purpose charge card debuted in the early 1950s, pundits have been predicting the "cashless society." Over fifty years later, we may finally be getting close to that vision. This study is the first to examine empirically the move toward a cashless society using a cost-benefit framework. We find that when all key parties to a transaction are considered and benefits are added, cash and checks are more costly than many earlier studies suggest. In general, the shift toward a cashless society appears to be a beneficial one.

The Alestle - Vol. 67 No. 47 - 07/22/2015

Vol. 67 No. 4

Stillen als wissenschaftlicher Gegenstand. Epistemologische Überlegungen zur Untersuchung einer "natürlich sozialen Tatsache am Beispiel des medizinischen Diskurses

Im gesellschaftlichen Diskurs um das Stillen ist gegenwärtig, trotz fundierter sozialwissenschaftlicher Kritik, immer noch die Position als hegemonial zu bezeichnen, die das Stillen als die beste Form der Säuglingsernährung sieht. Um die Hintergründe für die Macht dieser Position besser verstehen zu können, befragt der Aufsatz medizinische Publikationen aus über einem Jahrhundert aus der wissenschaftstheoretischen Perspektive der französischen Epistemologie und zeichnet die sich darin zeigende Wissensordnung um das Stillen nach: Wie hat sich das Stillen als wissenschaftlicher Gegenstand infolge der Verwissenschaftlichung der Medizin konstituiert? Wie wurde er im Kontext moderner Dichotomien zwischen dem Natürlichen und dem Sozialen positioniert? Welche Hierarchien wurden damit bedient, stabilisiert oder unterlaufen? Zentral für die Argumentation sind drei Erkenntnishindernisse im Sinne Gaston Bachelards, die im Untersuchungszeitraum des 19. Jahrhunderts eine Verschiebung des Gegenstands Stillen von einer natürlichen zu einer "natürlich sozialen Tatsache" erschwerten: die Hybridität der Medizin als Disziplin, die kumulative Praxis der medizinischen Forschung und ihr Fokus auf die Mutter-Kind-Dyade.Although the social sciences have over the years expressed well-founded criticism, in the contemporary public discourse in Germany breastfeeding is still considered to be the best way to feed a baby. In order to be able to better understand why this is the case, this article discusses material taken from the medical discourse in Germany during the late 19th and 20th century while exploring the potential of the epistemological concept of rupture, which originates in the French sociological tradition. The following questions will be answered: How was breastfeeding constituted as a scientific subject of research during the process of scientification of medicine? Where did this scientific subject of research end up caught between the social and the natural? What kinds of hierarchy were stabilized or subverted as a result? This line of reasoning sheds light on three epistemological obstacles which exacerbate breastfeeding shifting from being a natural to becoming a naturally social fact in the period investigated: medicine as a hybrid discipline, cumulative practices of medical research and its focus on the dyad of mother and child