Characterizing the Habitable Zones of Exoplanetary Systems with a Large Ultraviolet/Visible/Near-IR Space Observatory

Understanding the surface and atmospheric conditions of Earth-size, rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of low-mass stars is currently one of the greatest astronomical endeavors. Knowledge of the planetary effective surface temperature alone is insufficient to accurately interpret biosignature gases when they are observed in the coming decades. The UV stellar spectrum drives and regulates the upper atmospheric heating and chemistry on Earth-like planets, is critical to the definition and interpretation of biosignature gases, and may even produce false-positives in our search for biologic activity. This white paper briefly describes the scientific motivation for panchromatic observations of exoplanetary systems as a whole (star and planet), argues that a future NASA UV/Vis/near-IR space observatory is well-suited to carry out this work, and describes technology development goals that can be achieved in the next decade to support the development of a UV/Vis/near-IR flagship mission in the 2020s.Comment: Submitted in response to NASA call for white papers: "Large Astrophysics Missions to Be Studied by NASA Prior to the 2020 Decadal Survey

Estimating the adequacy of life insurance reserves

This project created a tool that will allow John Hancock to test how adequate their reserves are for a given life insurance policy under varying interest rates and mortality assumptions for each individual. Policies were tested and analyzed to estimate the parameters that would make them adequate. John Hancock was presented with this tool that returns adequacy results across different interest rate scenarios and morality distributions, where an adequate policy implies that it is funded sufficiently to cover expenses

Paired Comparison Models for Ranking National Soccer Teams

National soccer teams are currently ranked by soccer’s governing body, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Although the system used by FIFA is thorough, taking into account many different factors, many of the weights used in the system’s calculations are somewhat arbitrary. It is investigated here how the use of a statistical model might better compare the teams for ranking purposes. By treating each game played as a pairwise comparison experiment and by using the Bradley-Terry model as a starting point some suitable models are presented. A key component of the final model introduced here its ability to differentiate between friendly matches and competitive matches when determining the impact of a match on a teams ranking. Posterior distributions of the rating parameters are obtained, and the rankings and results obtained from each model are compared to FIFA’s rankings and each other

Developing a bank-wide energy conservation program

This report presents the research, methods, analysis, and results of the creation of an energy conservation program for FirstBank of Puerto Rico. Options and ideas from different departments of the bank were incorporated into the final recommendations for a truly bank-wide energy conservation program. With the implementation of this program, FirstBank can save an estimated $103,000 to$301,000 annually, while furthering its image as Puerto Rico's "green" bank through energy conservation