Forecasting Foreign Currency Exchange Rates for Air Force Budgeting

This thesis examines the current method of forecasting foreign currency exchange rates for the annual US Air Force budget. Using 5 methods against the status quo of a center-weighted average, the paper evaluates the absolute percent error (APE) over three time periods extending from Fiscal Year (FY) 1979 to FY 2014. The results strongly indicate that four of the alternative methods outperform over the short term, and one method for all three time periods. Furthermore, a non-parametric comparison of the median APE demonstrates statistical similarities between the four methods over the short term, and allows for the Air Force to choose which method to exercise for future forecasting. Overall, the paper recommends using a private firm s forecasts to decrease the median APE by 3.36% and avoiding $36.1 million opportunity cost

Soluble pre-fibrillar tau and β-amyloid species emerge in early human Alzheimer’s disease and track disease progression and cognitive decline

Acknowledgments We would like to gratefully acknowledge all donors and their families for the tissue provided for this study. Human tissue samples were supplied by the Brains for Dementia Research programme, jointly funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK, the Alzheimer’s Society and the Medical Research Council, and sourced from the MRC London Neurodegenerative Diseases Brain Bank, the Manchester Brain Bank, the South West Dementia Brain Bank (SWDBB), the Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource and the Oxford Brain Bank. The Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource and Oxford Brain Bank are also supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Units. The South West Dementia Brain Bank (SWDBB) receives additional support from BRACE (Bristol Research into Alzheimer’s and Care of the Elderly). Alz-50, CP13, MC-1 and PHF-1 antibodies were gifted from Dr. Peter Davies and brain lystates from BACE1−/−mice were obtained from Prof Mike Ashford. The work presented here was funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK (Grant refs: ARUKPPG2014A-21 and ARUK-NSG2015-1 to BP and DK and NIH/NIA grants NIH/NINDS R01 NS082730 and R01 AG044372 to NK)Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Coronavirus and the Risks to the Elderly in Long-Term Care

The elderly in long-term care (LTC) and their caregiving staff are at elevated risk from COVID-19. Outbreaks in LTC facilities can threaten the health care system. COVID-19 suppression should focus on testing and infection control at LTC facilities. Policies should also be developed to ensure that LTC facilities remain adequately staffed and that infection control protocols are closely followed. Family will not be able to visit LTC facilities, increasing isolation and vulnerability to abuse and neglect. To protect residents and staff, supervision of LTC facilities should remain a priority during the pandemic

Emission Line Galaxies in the STIS Parallel Survey II: Star Formation Density

We present the luminosity function of [OII]-emitting galaxies at a median redshift of z=0.9, as measured in the deep spectroscopic data in the STIS Parallel Survey (SPS). The luminosity function shows strong evolution from the local value, as expected. By using random lines of sight, the SPS measurement complements previous deep single field studies. We calculate the density of inferred star formation at this redshift by converting from [OII] to H-alpha line flux as a function of absolute magnitude and find rho_dot=0.043 +/- 0.014 Msun/yr/Mpc^3 at a median redshift z~0.9 within the range 0.46<z<1.415 (H_0 = 70 km/s/Mpc, Omega_M=0.3, Omega_Lambda=0.7. This density is consistent with a (1+z)^4 evolution in global star formation since z~1. To reconcile the density with similar measurements made by surveys targeting H-alpha may require substantial extinction correction.Comment: 16 preprint pages including 5 figures; accepted for publication in Ap

Actualizaciones sobre las supuestas ocurrencias de tiburón toro (Carcharhinus leucas) en la cuenca superior del río Mississippi de América del Norte

A previous paper in this journal by Shell and Gardner assessed various factors around the exploration of the Mississippi River by bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas Müller and Henle, 1839) based on two twentieth-century occurrences. Recent evidence has suggested one of these occurrences is a probable hoax. Here, we provide a correction to our earlier paper, as well as additional comments on extralimital euryhaline vertebrates in the Mississippi River system, the environmental and historical contexts for their exploration into riverine systems, and suggest steps for any future effort to detect the usage of these river systems by bull sharks.En un artículo anterior de Shell y Gardner en esta revista, se evaluaron varios factores en torno a la exploración del Río Mississippi por parte de los tiburones toro (Carcharhinus leucas Müller y Henle, 1839) basados en dos sucesos del siglo XX. La evidencia reciente sugiere que una de estas ocurrencias es un probable engaño. Brindamos aquí una corrección a nuestro artículo anterior, así como comentarios adicionales sobre los vertebrados eurihalinos extralimitantes en el sistema del Río Mississippi, los contextos ambientales e históricos para su exploración en los sistemas fluviales, y sugerimos los pasos para cualquier esfuerzo futuro en detectar el uso de estos sistemas fluviales por los tiburones toro

Rescuing Freedom

The School of Liberalism has faced mounting criticism in recent years by political philosophers arguing it has created a highly unequal and unjust set of societies. Critiques such as those by Thomas Piketty have fuelled those who argue that liberalism has failed to bring about freedom for the poorest in society and created unjustifiably large economic inequalities within societies. They point to democratic socialism or Rawlsian property-owning democracy frameworks as the best ways to deliver a society which is both free and socially just. I argue that there is another option which blends a form of classical liberalism and a genuine care for delivering social justice which meets the challenges many levy against Liberals and capitalists. I start by analysing G.A. Cohen’s critique of Liberalism’s ability to deliver freedom which is often overlooked in modern discourse on this topic. This argues that poverty is an unnecessary but sufficient condition to a Liberal conception of unfreedom. I then join the many in critiquing welfare state capitalism, which is the product of modern liberal philosophy. I then take a reviewed look at the scholarship of Milton Friedman, and argue that his work on freedom as choice, when combined with the work of John Tomasi on self-authorship, provides a potentially powerful avenue for Liberals looking to overcome the modern critiques of welfare-state capitalism while providing for freedom for all and creating a just society

Guided principal component analysis (GPCA): a simple method for improving detection of a known analyte

There is increasing interest in the application of Raman spectroscopy in a medical setting, ranging from supporting real-time clinical decisions e.g. surgical margins to assisting pathologists with disease classification. However, there remain a number of barriers for adoption in the medical setting due to the increased complexity of probing highly heterogeneous, dynamic biological materials. This inherent challenge can also limit the deployment of higher level analytical approaches such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) including convolutional neural networks (CNN), as there is a lack of a ground truth required for training purposes i.e. in complex clinical samples. Principal component analysis (PCA) is an unsupervised data reduction approach (orthogonal linear transformation) that has been used extensively in spectroscopy for 30+ years, due to its capability to simplify analysis of complex spectroscopic data. However, due to PCA being unsupervised features will inherently appear mixed and their rank may vary between experiments. Here we propose Guided PCA (GPCA), a simple approach that allows PCA to be guided with spectral data to ensure a consistent rank of a key target moiety by the inclusion of a reference (guiding) spectrum to the data set. This simplifies analysis, increases robustness of PCA analysis and improves quantification and the limits of detection and decreases RMSE

Rescuing Freedom

The School of Liberalism has faced mounting criticism in recent years by political philosophers arguing it has created a highly unequal and unjust set of societies. Critiques such as those by Thomas Piketty have fuelled those who argue that liberalism has failed to bring about freedom for the poorest in society and created unjustifiably large economic inequalities within societies. They point to democratic socialism or Rawlsian property-owning democracy frameworks as the best ways to deliver a society which is both free and socially just. I argue that there is another option which blends a form of classical liberalism and a genuine care for delivering social justice which meets the challenges many levy against Liberals and capitalists. I start by analysing G.A. Cohen’s critique of Liberalism’s ability to deliver freedom which is often overlooked in modern discourse on this topic. This argues that poverty is an unnecessary but sufficient condition to a Liberal conception of unfreedom. I then join the many in critiquing welfare state capitalism, which is the product of modern liberal philosophy. I then take a reviewed look at the scholarship of Milton Friedman, and argue that his work on freedom as choice, when combined with the work of John Tomasi on self-authorship, provides a potentially powerful avenue for Liberals looking to overcome the modern critiques of welfare-state capitalism while providing for freedom for all and creating a just society