Valuing American Style Options by Least Squares Methods

We investigate the finite sample performance of some recent Monte Carlo estimators under different market scenarios. We find that the accuracy and efficiency of these estimators are remarkable, even when more exotic financial instruments are considered. Finally, we extend the Glasserman and Yu (2004b) methodology to price Asian Bermudan options and basket options

A continuing mission to optimize the care of older women with breast cancer

The majority of cases of breast cancer occur in the older population who are often un-represented in clinical trials. Given the growing ageing population globally, it becomes urgent and important to identify an optimal approach so that older women with breast cancer are neither under- or over-treated. An inter-disciplinary research program is ongoing to investigate differing tumor biology according to age, and the potential use of a geriatric assessment tool, aiming to help select older women with primary breast cancer for a personalized and optimal treatment. Full considerations of the biology of the patient’s cancer and the geriatric domains of the patient must be taken into account when making treatment decisions

Treatment Strategies and Survival Outcomes in Breast Cancer

Treatment strategies for breast cancer are wide-ranging and often based on a multi-modality approach, depending on the stage and biology of the tumour and the acceptance and tolerance of the patient. They may include surgery, radiotherapy, and systemic therapy (endocrine therapy, chemotherapy, and targeted therapy). Advances in technologies such as oncoplastic surgery, radiation planning and delivery, and genomics, and the development of novel systemic therapy agents alongside their evaluation in ongoing clinical trials continue to strive for improvements in outcomes. In this Special Issue entitled, ‘Treatment strategies and survival outcomes in breast cancer’, a number of original research articles are included covering a diversity of studies, from pre-clinical and translational biomarker studies to clinical trials and population-based studies. They evaluated survival and other outcomes, including quality of life, in the context of pre-diagnosis (screening), as well as early and advanced stages of breast cancer

Greed, a Forgotten Vice?

There is a surprising lack of discussion on greed in business ethics. Whether in popular textbooks or in the literature, there is hardly any philosophical explication of greed. In this paper, I investigate the popular idea that greedy people desire more and more, the Christian idea of avarice as in the seven deadly sins, and Aristotle’s idea of pleonexia which has incorporated a condition of justice. These three different ideas are respectively psychological, metaphysical and socio-political. I propose the three of them should be integrated to give a concept of greed that is relevant and useful in the contemporary world in which business and capitalism are ubiquitous

Generating eScience Workflows from Statistical Analysis of Prior Data

A number of workflow design tools have been developed specifically to enable easy graphical specification of workflows that ensure systematic scientific data capture and analysis and precise provenance information. We believe that an important component that is missing from these existing workflow specification and enactment systems is integration with tools that enable prior detailed analysis of the existing data - and in particular statistical analysis. By thoroughly analyzing the existing relevant datasets first, it is possible to determine precisely where the existing data is sparse or insufficient and what further experimentation is required. Introducing statistical analysis to experimental design will reduce duplication and costs associated with fruitless experimentation and maximize opportunities for scientific breakthroughs. In this paper we describe a workflow specification system that we have developed for a particular eScience application (fuel cell optimization). Experimental workflow instances are generated as a result of detailed statistical analysis and interactive exploration of the existing datasets. This is carried out through a graphical data exploration interface that integrates the widely-used open source statistical analysis software package, R, as a web service

Provenance Explorer: A Tool for Viewing Provenance Trails and Constructing Scientific Publication Packages

This paper presents Provenance Explorer, a secure provenance visualization tool, designed to dynamically generate customized views of scientific data provenance that depend on the viewer's requirements and/or access privileges. Using RDF and graph visualizations, it enables scientists to view the data, states and events associated with a scientific workflow in order to understand the scientific methodology and validate the results. Initially the Provenance Explorer presents a simple, coarse-grained view of the scientific process or experiment. However the GUI allows permitted users to expand links between nodes (input states, events and output states) to reveal more fine-grained information about particular sub-events and their inputs and outputs. Access control is implemented using Shibboleth to identify and authenticate users and XACML to define access control policies. The system also provides a platform for publishing scientific results. It enables users to select particular nodes within the visualized workflow and drag-and-drop them into an RDF package for publication or e-learning. The direct relationships between the individual components selected for such packages are inferred by the rule inference engine

A quantitative comparison of load balancing approaches in distributed object computing systems

Several load balancing schemes are recently proposed for distributed object computing systems, which are widely envisioned to be the desired distributed software development paradigm due to the higher modularity and the capability of handling machine and operating system heterogeneity. However, while the rationales and mechanisms employed are dramatically different, the relative strengths and weaknesses of these approaches are unknown, making it difficult for a practitioner to choose an appropriate approach for the problem at hand. In this paper, we describe in detail three representative approaches, which are all practicable, and present a quantitative comparison using our experimental distributed object computing platform. Among these three approaches, namely, JavaSpaces based, request redirection based, and fuzzy decision based, we find that the fuzzy decision based algorithm outperforms the other two considerably.published_or_final_versio