Approximate solution to a hybrid model with stochastic volatility: a singular-perturbation strategy

We study a hybrid model of Schobel-Zhu-Hull-White-type from a singular-perturbation-analysis perspective. The merit of the paper is twofold: On one hand, we find boundary conditions for the deterministic non-linear degenerate parabolic partial differential equation for the evolution of the stock price. On the other hand, we combine two-scales regular- and singular-perturbation techniques to find an approximate solution to the pricing PDE. The aim is to produce an expression that can be evaluated numerically very fast

Young Women\u27s Civic Awareness and Public Engagement: A Challenge in a Bahraini Context

In recent years, growing attention to cultivate civic participation among young citizens has been mounting. In Bahrain, young women receive some attention via their participation in civic, political and public engagement initiatives. This paper presents the theoretical and conceptual background for a field study that intends to examine whether young Bahraini women are equipped with the civic knowledge and understanding necessary to participate effectively in community. It also presents their conception of citizenship, their perception of their identity, their political awareness, and their concern about their community issues. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, this paper analyses the ways in which young Bahrainis perceive their identity and citizenship status. In this mixed methods approach, a questionnaire was administered to 245 Bahraini young women at the age of 18, followed by in-depth interviews with a stratified sample of 11 young women who had participated in the questionnaire survey. Although the gender gap is closing or reversing in regard to specific forms of participation, some inequalities remain (Lorenzini and Bassoli, 2016), this study contributes to understanding the gender differences in issues related to civic participation and to find if there are any significant differences among women themselves

Fuzzy Fractional-Order PID Congestion Control Based on African Buffalo Optimization in Computer Networks

Congestion is the primary factor that slows down data transfer in communication networks. Transmission Control Protocol and Active Queue Management (TCP/AQM) collaborated to resolve this issue. The fuzzy-Fractional-Order-PID (FFOPID) controller is developed in this paper to control the linearized TCP/AQM model. The strategy is founded on a combination of fractional-order PID and fuzzy logic controllers. The primary objective of the proposed controller is to maintain the queue length of the router within the appropriate queue threshold for a congestion model. The control parameters are tuned using African Buffalo optimisation (ABO). The suggested controller is compared to other controllers (PID, Fuzzy-PID, and Fractional-order PID) to demonstrate the controller's efficiency, and all of these controllers are optimised using African Buffalo Optimisation (ABO). In MATLAB (R2017b), the simulation of the linearized model is introduced. Comparing the results of the Fuzzy-Fractional-Order-PID controller with those of other controllers in the same network scenarios reveals that the Fuzzy-FOPID is robust for a wide variety of TCP flows

Assessment of Students Performances in Biology: Implication for Measurements and Evaluation of Learning

Scienceeducation is believed to be a vital tool for individual and societal development at large. The persistent low levels of students' achievement in sciences at the various public examinations in Nigeria have continued to draw the attention of major stakeholders in education. This study examined academic achievement of Senior Secondary School students in biology and gender difference in students' achievement was examined. Ex-post facto design of descriptive research was adopted for the study. A proforma was used to collect data from a sample of two hundred (200) students, selected using stratified random sampling procedure from the Science secondary schools in Kano state Nigeria. The data collected were the students' performances in biology achievement tests. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and independent-sample t-test. Overall results showed that the test internal consistency reliability is low and unsatisfactory; the students performed below average (M=47.02, SD=16.493 (47%). Similarly, gender difference exists in biology performance with another significant difference between performance of urban and rural school students. The study concludes that, biology test used in Kano state qualifying examinations to assess students potential ability in biology is not a reliable measurement tool and that, academic performance of students in biology is unsatisfactory and evidence of differential performance between gender and schools locations. The implication for measurements and evaluation of learning as well as recommendations has been discussed

Tied factor analysis for face recognition across large pose differences

Face recognition algorithms perform very unreliably when the pose of the probe face is different from the gallery face: typical feature vectors vary more with pose than with identity. We propose a generative model that creates a one-to-many mapping from an idealized “identity” space to the observed data space. In identity space, the representation for each individual does not vary with pose. We model the measured feature vector as being generated by a pose-contingent linear transformation of the identity variable in the presence of Gaussian noise. We term this model “tied” factor analysis. The choice of linear transformation (factors) depends on the pose, but the loadings are constant (tied) for a given individual. We use the EM algorithm to estimate the linear transformations and the noise parameters from training data. We propose a probabilistic distance metric that allows a full posterior over possible matches to be established. We introduce a novel feature extraction process and investigate recognition performance by using the FERET, XM2VTS, and PIE databases. Recognition performance compares favorably with contemporary approaches

Kinetically driven helix formation during the homopolymer collapse process

Using Langevin simulations, we find that simple 'generic' bead-and-spring homopolymer chains in a sufficiently bad solvent spontaneously develop helical order during the process of collapsing from an initially stretched conformation. The helix formation is initiated by the unstable modes of the straight chain, which drive the system towards a long-lived metastable transient state. The effect is most pronounced if hydrodynamic interactions are screened.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Creating Fair Models of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Risk

Guidelines for the management of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) recommend the use of risk stratification models to identify patients most likely to benefit from cholesterol-lowering and other therapies. These models have differential performance across race and gender groups with inconsistent behavior across studies, potentially resulting in an inequitable distribution of beneficial therapy. In this work, we leverage adversarial learning and a large observational cohort extracted from electronic health records (EHRs) to develop a "fair" ASCVD risk prediction model with reduced variability in error rates across groups. We empirically demonstrate that our approach is capable of aligning the distribution of risk predictions conditioned on the outcome across several groups simultaneously for models built from high-dimensional EHR data. We also discuss the relevance of these results in the context of the empirical trade-off between fairness and model performance

An Investigation of the Effects of Categorization and Discrimination Training on Auditory Perceptual Space

Psychophysical phenomena such as categorical perception and the perceptual magnet effect indicate that our auditory perceptual spaces are warped for some stimuli. This paper investigates the effects of two different kinds of training on auditory perceptual space. It is first shown that categorization training, in which subjects learn to identify stimuli within a particular frequency range as members of the same category, can lead to a decrease in sensitivity to stimuli in that category. This phenomenon is an example of acquired similarity and apparently has not been previously demonstrated for a category-relevant dimension. Discrimination training with the same set of stimuli was shown to have the opposite effect: subjects became more sensitive to differences in the stimuli presented during training. Further experiments investigated some of the conditions that are necessary to generate the acquired similarity found in the first experiment. The results of these experiments are used to evaluate two neural network models of the perceptual magnet effect. These models, in combination with our experimental results, are used to generate an experimentally testable hypothesis concerning changes in the brain's auditory maps under different training conditions.Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National institutes of Deafness and other Communication Disorders (R29 02852); Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-98-1-0108

Evaluation of the resistance of few citrus rootstocks to alkalinity by applying a faste test of secreening

Alkalinity of Moroccan soils is the major abiotic constraint on citrus production area. The best choice of citrus rootstocks adequate and resistant is a better solution to avoid this problem. The aim of this study is to develop a fast test of citrus rootstocks screening towards alkalinity. The alkaline stress was applied on ten citrus rootstocks two month old, using irrigation with a Hoagland and Arnon solution added with 1 g CaCO(3)/L and adjusted at various pH levels 6, 7 and 9. Observations concerned symptoms incidence and severity of iron chlorosis after two months of rearing. Results permitted to classify Poncirus trifoliata and Flying dragon as the most sensitive to alkalinity stresses, whereas, Citrus volkameriana and Citrus macrophylla were resistant. These conclusions are equivalent with those obtained with old citrus rootstocks in field trials

The Dynamic Relationship Between Policy and Citizens Attitude and Engagement

학위논문(석사)--서울대학교 대학원 :행정대학원 글로벌행정전공,2019. 8. Kwon, Huck-ju.Using the case of the Philippines anti-illegal drugs policy and peoples opinion about it, this study explores the dynamic relationship between public policy and citizens attitude and engagement with it. Drawing from Attitudinal Policy Feedback framework developed by Pacheco (2013), this aims to examine the mutually transforming relationship between public policy and citizens attitude and engagement. The paper looks into the characteristics of Philippine President Rodrigo R. Dutertes anti-illegal drugs policy in terms of tangibility, visibility, and length of implementation and how these become crucial factors in generating feedback in the form of public opinion. Analysis of data from Facebook shows the types of social media content related to the policy that spawn strong public reaction and how peoples attitude and engagement with the policy result to some changes in its implementation. Finally, the prospect of this kind of dynamics between policy and citizen engagement to the continuation of the anti-illegal drugs policy and other related policies are also discussed. In the end, the study confirms the mutually transforming relationship between public policy and citizens attitude and engagement.본 논문은 필리핀의 마약과의 전쟁과 이에 대한 국민 여론 사례를 통해 정책과 시민의 태도 및 참여와의 역동적 관계에 대해 고찰한다. Pacheco(2015)가 개발한 태도 정책 피드백 분석틀(Attitudinal Policy Feedback framework)을 사용하여 정책과 시민의 태도 및 참여의 관계가 어떻게 상호의존적으로 변화하는지를 분석한다. 본 연구는 로드리고 두테르테 필리핀 대통령의 불법 마약 근절 정책의 특징을 실재성, 가시성, 도입 기간의 측면에서 살펴보고, 어떻게 정책이 이 세 가지 중요한 요인을 통해 국민 여론이라는 형태로 피드백 되는지를 설명한다. 페이스북 게시물에 대한 분석 결과, 정책을 내용으로 하는 게시물 중 시민의 반응을 강하게 이끌어내는 특정 유형이 있음을 발견하고, 어떻게 정책에 대한 시민의 태도와 참여가 정책 시행에 변화를 이끌어낼 수 있는지를 알 수 있었다. 마지막으로 정책과 시민 참여의 역학적 관계를 통해 향후 마약 근절 정책 기조 유지에 대해 전망하였다. 요컨대 본 연구는 정책과 시민의 태도 및 참여의 관계가 상호의존적으로 변화한다는 것을 확인해준다는 의의가 있다.Abstract i Table of Contents iii List of Figures and Tables v Chapter 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Statement of the Problem 4 1.2 Significance of the Study 4 1.3 Ethical Consideration 5 Chapter 2. Review of Related Literature 6 2.1 Theoretical Framework 6 Attitudinal Policy Feedback 8 2.2 Setting the Agenda of the Philippines War Against Drugs Under the Duterte Administration 12 Chapter 3. Methodology 21 3.1. Methodological Framework 21 3.2 Methodology 24 Chapter 4. Presentation and Analysis of Data 29 4.1 How Policy Affects Peoples Attitude and Engagement 31 4.1.1 Direct Experience and Tangibility 31 4.1.2 Indirect Experience and Visibility 37 4.2 How Peoples Attitude and Engagement Affect Policy 42 4.2.1 Tokhang-for-Ransom and the Killing of Jee Ick-joo 42 4.2.2 The Death of Kian Loyd Delos Santos Caught on CCTV 44 4.2.3 Peoples Reactions to Jee and Delos Santos Deaths and Their Implication on the Anti-Illegal Drugs Policy 48 4.3 The Future of the Policy 51 Chapter 6. Conclusion 57 Bibliography 59 Appendices 66 Appendix A. #RealNumbersPH Data Since the Implementation of the Anti-Illegal Drugs Policy on July 01, 2016 up to September 20, 2018 66 Appendix B. Database of Policy-Related Contents Posted by Rappler, Inquirer.net, GMA News, ABS-CBN News, and News 5 on their Facebook Pages in July 2016 69 Appendix C. Database of Policy-Related Contents Posted by Rappler, Inquirer.net, GMA News, ABS-CBN News, and News 5 on their Facebook Pages in August 2016 95 Abstract in Korean 130 List of Figures and Tables FIGURES Figure 1. Illustration of the Relationship Between the Duterte Administrations Anti-Illegal Drugs Policy and Peoples Attitude and Engagement Based on Pachecos (2013) Model 12 Figure 2. TOKHANG RELOADED: PNPs New Guidelines for Tokhangers in Implementing Oplan Tokhang 47 TABLES Table 1. Published #RealNumbersPH Data until September 30, 2018 33 Table 2. Philippine Center for Investigative Journalisms Comparison of Data from #RealNumbersPH, PNP Directorate for Operations, and PNP Double Barrel Secretariat as of May 23, 2017 35 Table 3. Number of Policy-Related Contents Posted in the Facebook Pages of Rappler, Inquirer.net, GMA News, ABS- CBN News, and News5 in July and August 2017 and the Number of Shares Generated by those Contents 38 Table 4. Policy-Related Content Topics of Top Media Organizations Facebook Pages 39 Table 5. Comparison of Interactions with Facebook Contents of Top Media Organizations on Jee Ick-joo and Kian Loyd Delos Santos 49Maste