Input inefficiency in commercial banks: a normalized quadratic input distance approach

A normalized quadratic input distance function is proposed with which to estimate technical efficiency on commercial banks regulated by the Federal Reserve System. The study period covers 1990 to 2000 using individual bank information from the Call and Banking Holding Company Database. A stochastic frontier model is specified to estimate the input normalized distance function and obtain measures of technical efficiency.Banks and banking

IMPROVING PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

Models wagging the dog: are circuits constructed with disparate parameters?

In a recent article, Prinz, Bucher, and Marder (2004) addressed the fundamental question of whether neural systems are built with a fixed blueprint of tightly controlled parameters or in a way in which properties can vary largely from one individual to another, using a database modeling approach. Here, we examine the main conclusion that neural circuits indeed are built with largely varying parameters in the light of our own experimental and modeling observations. We critically discuss the experimental and theoretical evidence, including the general adequacy of database approaches for questions of this kind, and come to the conclusion that the last word for this fundamental question has not yet been spoken

New civil engineering program criteria: How the sausage is being made

The American Society of Civil Engineers organized the Civil Engineering Program Criteria Task Committee in October 2012 whose charge is to determine if the current ABET Civil Engineering Program Criteria (CEPC) should be changed to reflect one or more of the 24 outcomes of the second edition of the Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge published in 2008. After over a year of conference calls and face to face meetings, the committee has drafted and disseminated a proposed CEPC. This paper chronicles the development of the proposed criteria by sharing a review of the literature, the committee’s methodology and process, the key issues that emerged, the resulting proposed criteria, and the future work of the committee

When Consumers Diet, Should Producers Care? An Examination of Low-Carb Dieting and U.S. Orange Juice Consumption

From 2000 through 2004, per-capita orange juice purchases decreased by 12.3 percent in the United States, while the popularity and media coverage of low-carbohydrate dieting exploded. Content analysis was used to count selected newspaper articles topically related to low-carbohydrate dieting, the Atkins diet, and the South Beach diet. These data were included in a national orange juice demand model, where purchase data served as the independent variable and proxy for consumer demand of orange juice. Results indicate that media coverage of low-carbohydrate diets and dieting was negatively and significantly related to demand for orange juice in the United States.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

CHANGING PATTERNS OF ORANGE JUICE CONSUMPTION IN THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES

From 2000 through 2004, per capita orange juice purchases decreased by 12.3 percent while the popularity and media coverage of low-carbohydrate dieting exploded. Content analysis was used to count selected Southern region newspaper articles topically related to low-carbohydrate dieting, the Atkins diet, and the South Beach diet. This data was included in a Southern region orange juice demand model, where purchase data served as the independent variable and proxy for consumer demand of orange juice. Results indicated that media coverage of low-carbohydrate diets and dieting was negatively and significantly related to demand for orange juice in the Southern region.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

A Virtual Data Grid for LIGO

GriPhyN (Grid Physics Network) is a large US collaboration to build grid services for large physics experiments, one of which is LIGO, a gravitational-wave observatory. This paper explains the physics and computing challenges of LIGO, and the tools that GriPhyN will build to address them. A key component needed to implement the data pipeline is a virtual data service; a system to dynamically create data products requested during the various stages. The data could possibly be already processed in a certain way, it may be in a file on a storage system, it may be cached, or it may need to be created through computation. The full elaboration of this system will al-low complex data pipelines to be set up as virtual data objects, with existing data being transformed in diverse ways