Co-creating Change

The open, flexible workplace modeled after best practices from Silicon Valley is hailed for promoting better communication, collaboration, and increased productivity. IT is known as a university change agent, but at IU Bloomington the future move into the new Cyberinfrastructure Building meant change on a radical scale, in every aspect of the workplace: physical space, business practices, and social and cultural environment. Many IT staff anticipated loss of privacy, personal space, and individuality. The challenge facing the executive project lead was to help staff begin to embrace the new culture while still occupying their old offices, a challenge not amenable to executive mandate or the change management process customary in IT. The solution was an experiment. Teams of staff led their co-workers in an organic process of articulating and addressing the issues, believing that socializing the change would encourage buy-in and investment and restore some sense of control. The experiment broke many models: Self-governing teams lead the initiative; teams crossed hierarchies and divisional boundaries. Team leads were sometimes junior staff. The book discusses the experiment and the many small and large decisions and strategies that helped make it a success: The process of creating teams, language and communication, situational leadership, the role of humor, team strategies for engaging staff, and team interactions with architects and planners. Teamwork was challenging — the organic process provided no steps to follow — but the team experience provided another benefit beyond socializing change: that of building leadership in the trenches. This experience involves a building, but the principles of change it confirms can apply to any kind of change, from altering the structure of a business to changing a culture. The discussion may be of interest to those in human resources, industrial psychology, sociology, business, academe, and architectur

Portfolio insurance

Diese Magisterarbeit stellt mehrere Wertsicherungs-Strategien vor und präsentiert die Ergebnisse einer Monte Carlo-Analyse zur Beurteilung der impliziten Kosten und der Zuverlässigkeit von zwei weit verbreiteten Strategien. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit wird die Nachfrage nach solchen Strategien erläutert und deren Entstehung dokumentiert. Im nachfolgenden Kapitel werden verschiedene Risko-Maße vorgestellt, welche später in der Simulation verwendet werden. Die einzelnen Strategien werden entsprechend ihrer Kategorisierung in statische und dynamische Strategie, beschrieben. Die vorgestellten statischen Strategien sind 1) Buy&Hold, 2) Stop-Loss, 3) Protective Put und 4) deren Equivalent mit Einsatz von Call-Optionen. Die vorgestellten dynamischen Strategien sind 1) Synthetic Put, 2) Modified Stop-Loss und 3) Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI). Der Hauptteil dieser Arbeit ist eine detaillierte Analyse der Synthetic Put und CPPI Strategien unter Einsatz der Monte-Carlo-Simulation. Das Ziel ist eine Beurteilung der impliziten Kosten und der Zuverlässigkeit beider Strategien durch das Betrachten der gesamten Wahrscheinlichkeitsverteilung der Renditen der abgesicherten Portfolios. Die Simulation zeigt, dass beide Strategien in der Lage sind eine asymmetrische Wahrscheinlichketsverteilung zu generieren welche eine Schiefe in Richtung positiver Renditen hat. Somit ermöglichen es beide einen Portfolio-Mindestwert zu sichern und gleichzeitg die Partizipation an steigenden Märkten zu erlauben. Allerdings verdeutlicht die Simulation auch die Kosten einer solchen Absicherung, welche sich durch eine Verringerung im Mittelwert und Median der Portfolio-Renditen niederschlägt. Die Synthetic Put Strategie hat sich als zuverlässig erwiesen, wenn die Schätzung der Volatilität genau ist. Es ergibt sich lediglich ein kleiner “Abischerungs-Fehler” wenn der Synthetic Put kurz vor auslaufen am Geld steht, welcher jedoch in der Höhe vernachlässigbar ist. Wird die Volatilität unterschätzt, so schafft es die Strategie nicht den gewünschten Mindestwert zu sichern. Die CPPI Strategie hat sich unter allen getesteten Parametern als zuverlässig erwiesen. Mit steigendem Multiplikator stieg auch der Mittelwert und Median der Portfolio-Renditen an. Jedoch zeigte sich auch eine deutliche Verschiebung der Wahrscheinlichkeitsmasse in Rendite-Bereiche weit unter dem risikolosen Zinssatz.This thesis introduces several portfolio insurance strategies and presents the results of an analysis of the implicit cost and reliability of two widely adopted strategies. The first part is an introduction into portfolio insurance and explains why there is a demand for such strategies and how they emerged. It is followed by a chapter on different risk measures, which will be used in the course of the analysis. Following their classification into static and dynamic strategies the properties of several portfolio insurance strategies are described. The static strategies presented are 1) Buy&Hold, 2) Stop-Loss, 3) Protective Put and 4) its equivalent using call options. The dynamic strategies presented are 1) Synthetic Put, 2) Modified Stop-Loss and 3) Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI). The main part of this thesis is a detailed analysis of the Synthetic Put and the CPPI strategies using Monte Carlo simulation. Specifically, considering the resulting probability distribution of the insured portfolio returns, the implicit cost and reliability will be assessed. The analysis proves that both strategies have the desired property of creating an asymmetric return distribution that is skewed toward positive returns. Thus, they effectively limit a portfolios downside to a prespecified floor, while retaining the ability to participate in favourable market movements. However, the analysis also reveals the implicit cost of this property, which is a lower mean and median return as compared to an uninsured portfolio. The Synthetic Put proved to be reliable in securing a desired floor when the volatility estimate was accurate. When the Synthetic Put was at the money while approaching expiration a minor “protection error” appeared in the simulation, which was negligible in its magnitude. When volatility is underestimated the Synthetic Put fails to offer the desired protection. The CPPI strategy was fully reliable under the tested parameter settings. Even though higher multipliers resulted in higher mean and median returns of the CPPI strategy, the probability distribution appeared to be very skewed with half of the probability mass lying in a range of modest returns below the risk-free rate

Conducting K-12 Outreach to Evoke Early Interest in IT, Science, and Advanced Technology

This is a preprint of a paper presented at XSEDE '12: The 1st Conference of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, Chicago, Illinois.The Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute has engaged for several years in K-12 Education, Outreach and Training (EOT) events related to technology in general and computing in particular. In each event we strive to positively influence children’s perception of science and technology. We view K-12 EOT as a channel for technical professionals to engage young people in the pursuit of scientific and technical understanding. Our goal is for students to see these subjects as interesting, exciting, and worth further pursuit. By providing opportunities for pre-college students to engage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities first hand, we hope to influence their choices of careers and field-of-study later in life. In this paper we give an account of our experiences with providing EOT: we describe several of our workshops and events; we provide details regarding techniques that we found to be successful in working with both students and instructors; we discuss program costs and logistics; and we describe our plans for the future.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OCI-0503697. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation

Heterogeneous detection of circulating tumor cells in patients with colorectal cancer by immunomagnetic enrichment using different EpCAM-specific antibodies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Circulating tumor cells (CTC) and disseminated tumor cells (DTC) are thought to be responsible for metastasis, so the detection of CTC may serve as individual prognostic factor in patients suffering from colorectal cancer. Therefore, a series of immunomagnetic enrichment methods for CTC have been developed using a variety of monoclonal antibodies against the Epithelial Cell Adhesion Molecule (EpCAM). However, it remains unclear whether all commercially available EpCAM antibodies show the same sensitivity and specificity. Furthermore, it remains unclear which method of sample preparation and cell extraction is most suitable for immunomagnetic enrichment and detection of CTC. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether the detection of CTC by a cytokeratin 20 reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (CK20 RT-PCR) may be influenced by the use of various Epithelial Cell Adhesion Molecule (EpCAM) antibodies for immunomagnetic isolation of CTC.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using both EpCAM antibodies (mAb BerEP4 and mAb KS1/4) for immunomagnetic enrichment in blood samples of 39 patients with colorectal cancer we found heterogenous results in each patient with regard to tumor cell detection. In the tumor cell spiking experiments with whole blood samples the sensitivity of the CK 20 RT-PCR assay was higher using immunomagnetic beads coated with mAb KS1/4 compared to precoated mAb BerEP4 Dynabeads. Extraction of MNC fraction with Ficoll gradient centrifugation prior to immunomagnetic enrichment resulted in a higher sensitivity of the CK 20 RT-PCR assay.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We concluded that isolation and detection of CTC with immunomagnetic enrichment methods is critically dependent on the used EpCAM clone. Further studies with a larger number of patients should clarify if the enrichment protocol influences the prognostic value of the tumor cell detection protocol.</p

Cell and molecular transitions during efficient dedifferentiation

Dedifferentiation is a critical response to tissue damage, yet is not well understood, even at a basic phenomenological level. Developing Dictyostelium cells undergo highly efficient dedifferentiation, completed by most cells within 24 hr. We use this rapid response to investigate the control features of dedifferentiation, combining single cell imaging with high temporal resolution transcriptomics. Gene expression during dedifferentiation was predominantly a simple reversal of developmental changes, with expression changes not following this pattern primarily associated with ribosome biogenesis. Mutation of genes induced early in dedifferentiation did not strongly perturb the reversal of development. This apparent robustness may arise from adaptability of cells: the relative temporal ordering of cell and molecular events was not absolute, suggesting cell programmes reach the same end using different mechanisms. In addition, although cells start from different fates, they rapidly converged on a single expression trajectory. These regulatory features may contribute to dedifferentiation responses during regeneration