Educational and Professional Trends of Chief Financial Officers

Finance is a broad and dynamic field present in all aspects of business and industries. In any organization, the highest-ranking finance position is the Chief financial officer (CFO), a strategic partner to the Chief executive officer (CEO). In this position, CFOs hold the primary responsibility of planning, managing all finance activities of a company, including business planning, budgeting, mergers and acquisitions, forecasting, and negotiations. They must also provide leadership, direction, and management of the finance and accounting divisions. As a member of the executive management team, the CFO must provide financial, operational, and strategic insight that helps frame the decisions that will drive the future of the business. CFOs require a high level of experience not only with numbers but also in all aspects of an organization, CFO not only takes on the traditional roles of financial control, financial integrity, transparency, timely accounting, and checks and balances, but also has a 360-degree view of the business (EY Reporting, 2017). CFOs are held under scrutiny by investors, executives, and colleagues, due to this, positions are highly competitive and coveted among professionals. The purpose of this thesis is to uncover any trends that may impact the likelihood of an individual achieving the role of a successful CFO, through the analysis of the educational background and career paths of 100 CFOs, in public Fortune 500 Companies

Competing Interactions among Supramolecular Structures on Surfaces

A simple model was constructed to describe the polar ordering of non-centrosymmetric supramolecular aggregates formed by self assembling triblock rodcoil polymers. The aggregates are modeled as dipoles in a lattice with an Ising-like penalty associated with reversing the orientation of nearest neighbor dipoles. The choice of the potentials is based on experimental results and structural features of the supramolecular objects. For films of finite thickness, we find a periodic structure along an arbitrary direction perpendicular to the substrate normal, where the repeat unit is composed of two equal width domains with dipole up and dipole down configuration. When a short range interaction between the surface and the dipoles is included the balance between the up and down dipole domains is broken. Our results suggest that due to surface effects, films of finite thickness have a none zero macroscopic polarization, and that the polarization per unit volume appears to be a function of film thickness.Comment: 3 pages, 3 eps figure

Evolution of Subjective Hurricane Risk Perceptions: A Bayesian Approach

This paper studies how individuals update subjective risk perceptions in response to hurricane track forecast information, using a unique data set from an event market, the Hurricane Futures Market (HFM). We derive a theoretical Bayesian framework which predicts how traders update their perceptions of the probability of a hurricane making landfall in a certain range of coastline. Our results suggest that traders behave in a way consistent with Bayesian updating but this behavior is based on the perceived quality of the information received.risk perceptions, learning, Bayesian learning, event markets, prediction markets, favorite-longshot bias, hurricanes

A lock-in Transboundary Water Management Regime: the case of the Rio Grande/Bravo Basin

The study of the Rio Grande/Bravo (RGB) Basin water management demonstrates how the United States (US) and Mexico have consolidated a transboundary water regime based on groundwater sharing. Despite the lack of water management integration and common sustainable practices, both countries have succeeded in sharing groundwater resources in the past, but not for long. The transboundary water regime in RGB Basin is based on fixed groundwater extractions which do not match the ever increasing water demands and current adjustments for human and environmental needs, and the potential future natural conditions for a sustainable river system. The aim of this paper is to discuss that despite the fact that the US – Mexico water regime has given good results in terms of water allocation; the system is imperfect due to a lack of consideration of current and future environmental, economic and socio-political drivers, as well as seeing the system as a whole, promoting a conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater. Findings of this study are based on a qualitative interview study conducted with stakeholders in the RGB Basin and an analysis of historic water demands. Our sample included 54 respondents across the basin, they addressed a multitude of concerns in the context of environmental problems, fragmented water management, and citizen participation. This presentation elaborates on three key questions: (1) How the RGB water allocation regime can last with fixed water demands and without adapting to current changes in natural conditions? (2) What is the impact of this regime in the river ecosystem? (3) Does the RGB Basin water regime reflect a lock in situation that is blocking changes toward new water management practices? If so, how stakeholders can promote changes in the decision-making process? The situation of the RGB water regime can be explained through the concept of long-term predominance which results in a path-dependent process. This process helps to address sustained persistence and processes of institutions leading to a lock-in state. The RGB water regime needs major transformations, specifically in considering environmental, economical, and socio-political variables in groundwater management across the river basin, as well as the conjunctive use of surface and groundwater. A list of recommendations to enhance and optimize current water management regime is presented with a discussion of possibilities of dissolving binational organizational paths

Ion condensation on charged patterned surfaces

We study ion condensation onto a patterned surface of alternating charges. The competition between self-energy and ion-surface interactions leads to the formation of ionic crystalline structures at low temperatures. We consider different arrangements of underlying ionic crystals, including single ion adsorption, as well as the formation of dipoles at the interface between charged domains. Molecular dynamic simulation illustrates existence of single and mixed phases. Our results contribute to understanding pattern recognition, and molecular separation and synthesis near patterned surfaces.Comment: 3 figure

Deconstructing Evolutionary Programming with ELISOR

The understanding of object-oriented languages is a confirmed obstacle. After years of confusing research into massive multiplayer online role-playing games, we disconfirm the development of scatter/gather I/O. ELISOR, our new heuristic for RAID, is the solution to all of these problems

Design and implementation of a compliant robot with force feedback and strategy planning software

Force-feedback robotics techniques are being developed for automated precision assembly and servicing of NASA space flight equipment. Design and implementation of a prototype robot which provides compliance and monitors forces is in progress. Computer software to specify assembly steps and makes force feedback adjustments during assembly are coded and tested for three generically different precision mating problems. A model program demonstrates that a suitably autonomous robot can plan its own strategy

Tunable entanglement distillation of spatially correlated down-converted photons

We report on a new technique for entanglement distillation of the bipartite continuous variable state of spatially correlated photons generated in the spontaneous parametric down-conversion process (SPDC), where tunable non-Gaussian operations are implemented and the post-processed entanglement is certified in real-time using a single-photon sensitive electron multiplying CCD (EMCCD) camera. The local operations are performed using non-Gaussian filters modulated into a programmable spatial light modulator and, by using the EMCCD camera for actively recording the probability distributions of the twin-photons, one has fine control of the Schmidt number of the distilled state. We show that even simple non-Gaussian filters can be finely tuned to a ~67% net gain of the initial entanglement generated in the SPDC process.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Energetically efficient behaviour may be common in biology, but it is not universal: a test of selective tidal stream transport in a poor swimmer

Selective tidal stream transport (STST) is a common migration strategy for a wide range of aquatic animals, facilitating energetically efficient transport, especially of species considered poor swimmers. We tested whether this mechanism applies during the upstream migration of a poor swimmer, the European river lamprey Lampetra fluviatilis, in a macrotidal estuary. Lamprey (n = 59) were acoustically tagged and tracked in a 40 km section of the River Ouse estuary (NE England) in autumn 2015. Against expectations, lamprey did not use STST and migrated upstream during flood, ebb and slack tide periods. Lamprey also migrated during both day and night in most of the study area, probably due to the high turbidity. The global migration speed (all individuals, over the entire track per individual) was (mean ± SD) 0.15 ± 0.07 m s-1. The migration speed varied significantly between tidal periods (0.38 ± 0.04 m s-1 during flooding tides, 0.12 ± 0.01 m s-1 during ebbing tides and 0.28 ± 0.01 m s-1 during slacks). It was also higher in areas not affected by tides during periods of high freshwater discharge (0.23 ± 0.08 m s-1) than in affected areas (0.17 ± 0.14 m s-1). If the energetic advantages of STST are not employed in macrotidal environments, it is likely that the fitness costs of that behaviour exceed potential energy savings, for example due to increased duration of exposure to predation. In conclusion, STST is evidently not universal in relatively poor swimmers; its use can vary between species and may vary under different conditions