Suitability Obligations Applicable to Securities and Annuities

(Excerpt) Brokers are subject to different regulatory obligations depending on the type of product being recommended to a customer. Generally, brokers are subjected to overlapping oversight and are regulated at both the federal and state level. This oversight becomes even further complicated when a broker sells a product that spans multiple regulatory schemes such as certain annuities, which may be both insurance and securities products. This article describes a broker’s suitability obligations under the new suitability rule when making recommendations which are covered by that rule. Next, it describes the additional obligations that a broker has when making a recommendation of a variable annuity. Last, it describes the obligations a broker has when recommending an equity-indexed annuity, which has sometimes been viewed as both a security and insurance and sometimes solely as an insurance product

Classroom Etiquette, Social Behavior and the Academic Performance of College of Teacher Education Students at the Laguna State Polytechnic University, Los Baños Campus, A.Y. 2015-2016

This study aimed to determine the significant relationship between students’ classroom etiquette, students’ social behaviour and their academic performance of College of Teacher Education students at Laguna State Polytechnic University, Los Baños Campus, Academic Year 2015-2016. Descriptive correlational research design was employed in this study. The respondents of the study were the 207 Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSEd) and Bachelor of Elementary Education students (BEEd) from second year, third year and fourth year level. A valid survey questionnaire on acceptability of students’ classroom etiquette and social behavior was utilized. Mean and Chi-square were used as statistical tools. Results revealed that students’ classroom etiquette is slightly acceptable with a mean of 1.25 as well as social behavior with a mean of 2.72. Most of the respondents GWA is range form 1.75-2.00. The results determined that a significant relationship was found between the level of acceptability of students’ classroom etiquette and academic performance with the pvalue of 0.002 as well as social behavior and academic performance of the respondents with the p-value of 0.000. The researcher concluded that the students’ classroom etiquette and social behavior affect their academic performance. Those with higher level of acceptability of etiquette and social behavior performed better academically. The researchers recommended the continuous implementation of proper classroom etiquette by instructors. Seminars on values formation and social behavior may be conducted by the College to deepen the students’ values as future educators. Further study is also recommended by the researchers since it is limited only in theCollege of Teacher Education. Keywords: Academic Performance, Classroom Etiquette, Social Behavio

Extended sources in the XMM-Newton slew survey

The low background, good spatial resolution and great sensitivity of the EPIC-pn camera on XMM-Newton give useful limits for the detection of extended sources even during the short exposures made during slewing maneouvers. In this paper we attempt to illustrate the potential of the XMM-Newton slew survey as a tool for analysing flux-limited samples of clusters of galaxies and other sources of spatially extended X-ray emission.Comment: 2 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of "The X-ray Universe 2005", San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Spain), 26-30 September 200

The XMM-Newton Slew Survey: towards the XMMSL1 catalogue

The XMM-Newton satellite is the most sensitive X-ray observatory flown to date due to the great collecting area of its mirrors coupled with the high quantum efficiency of the EPIC detectors. It performs slewing manoeuvers between observation targets tracking almost circular orbits through the ecliptic poles due to the Sun constraint. Slews are made with the EPIC cameras open and the other instruments closed, operating with the observing mode set to the one of the previous pointed observation and the medium filter in place. Slew observations from the EPIC-pn camera in FF, eFF and LW modes provide data, resulting in a maximum of 15 seconds of on-source time. These data can be used to give a uniform survey of the X-ray sky, at great sensitivity in the hard band compared with other X-ray all-sky surveys.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of "The X-ray Universe 2005", San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Spain), 26-30 September 200

The systemic and governmental agendas in presidential attention to climate change in Mexico, 1994-2018

Ambitious climate action requires sustained long-term attention from political leaders. To understand how climate change entered the political agenda in a developing country, we examine from an agenda-setting perspective the attention paid by Mexican presidents to this issue from 1994 to 2018. We perform a longitudinal analysis of 968 documents referring to climate change published by four presidencies to describe changes in attention levels over time and to determine how changes in international agreements and public policies (i.e. systemic agenda) and National Development Plans (NDPs)(i.e. governmental agenda) influence them. Our results indicate international agreements and national legislation establish a baseline for inclusion of climate change into governmental actions. Agenda changes driven by international agreements result in reactive changes in attention, while ambitious approaches are aligned with proactive NDPs. Our results also indicate public awareness and electoral periods can open windows of opportunity for reframing agendas and promoting ambitious climate action

Energy Analysis of Received Signal Strength Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents the investigation of energy demands during localization of wireless nodes in ad-hoc networks. We focus on the method based on the received signal strength (RSS) to estimate the distances between the nodes. To deal with the uncertainty of this technique, statistical methods are used. It implies more measurement samples to be taken and consequently more energy to be spent. Therefore, we investigate the accuracy of localization and the consumed energy in the relation to the number of measurement samples. The experimental measurements were conducted with IRIS sensor motes and their results related to the proposed energy model. The results show that the expended energy is not related linearly to the localization error. First, improvement of the accuracy rises fast with more measurement samples. Then, adding more samples, the accuracy increase is moderate, which means that the marginal energy cost of the additional improvement is higher

Respiratory Rate Derived from Pulse Photoplethysmographic Signal by Pulse Decomposition Analysis

A novel technique to derive respiratory rate from pulse photoplethysmographic (PPG) signals is presented. It exploits some morphological features of the PPG pulse that are known to be modulated by respiration: amplitude, slope transit time, and width of the main wave, and time to the first reflected wave. A pulse decomposition analysis technique is proposed to measure these features. This technique allows to decompose the PPG pulse into its main wave and its subsequent reflected waves, improving the robustness against noise and morphological changes that usually occur in long-term recordings. Proposed methods were evaluated with a data base containing PPG and plethysmography-based respiratory signals simultaneously recorded during a paced-breathing experiment. Results suggest that normal ranges of spontaneous respiratory rate (0.1-0.5 Hz) can be accurately estimated (median and interquartile range of relative error less than 5%) from PPG signals by using the studied features

How Double-Fetch Situations turn into Double-Fetch Vulnerabilities: A Study of Double Fetches in the Linux Kernel

We present the first static approach that systematically detects potential double-fetch vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel. Using a pattern-based analysis, we identified 90 double fetches in the Linux kernel. 57 of these occur in drivers, which previous dynamic approaches were unable to detect without access to the corresponding hardware. We manually investigated the 90 occurrences, and inferred three typical scenarios in which double fetches occur. We discuss each of them in detail. We further developed a static analysis, based on the Coccinelle matching engine, that detects double-fetch situations which can cause kernel vulnerabilities. When applied to the Linux, FreeBSD, and Android kernels, our approach found six previously unknown double-fetch bugs, four of them in drivers, three of which are exploitable double-fetch vulnerabilities. All of the identified bugs and vulnerabilities have been confirmed and patched by maintainers. Our approach has been adopted by the Coccinelle team and is currently being integrated into the Linux kernel patch vetting. Based on our study, we also provide practical solutions for anticipating double-fetch bugs and vulnerabilities. We also provide a solution to automatically patch detected double-fetch bugs