Stock loan valuation under a regime-switching model with mean-reverting and finite maturity

<正> Stock loans are business contracts between borrowers and lenders in which the borroweruses shares of stock as collateral for the loan.Since the value of the collateral is subject to wide andfrequent price swings,valuing such a transaction behaves more like an option pricing problem thana debt valuation problem.This paper will list,prove,and analyze formulas for stock loan valuationwith finite horizon under various stock models,including classical geometric Brownian motion,meanreverting,and two-state regime-switching with both mean-reverting and geometric Brownian motionstates.Numerical examples are reported to illustrate the results.     

Birds of a Feather Protest Together: Theorizing Self-Organizing Political Protests with Flock Theory

The current research theorizes decentralized and self-organized political protests via flock theory (Rosen 2002), a theory of emergent self-organization in communicative human interaction. Flock theory draws from a theoretical basis of emergence and self-organizing systems, and is presented as a theory of decentralized communication structures. Focusing on the optimization of decentralized networks and roadmap based coordination of organizationally homopholous foci; the current theory poses a model of human interaction that captures the potentially egalitarian effects of cooperative evolution and collective action. Case studies of two separate decentralized political protests against Korean government and FARC are offered as evidences of such phenomena.     

Convergence rates of Markov chain approximation methods for controlled diffusions with stopping

<正> This work is concerned with rates of convergence of numerical methods using Markov chainapproximation for controlled diffusions with stopping (the first exit time from a bounded region).In lieuof considering the associated finite difference schemes for Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations,a purely probabilistic approach is used.There is an added difficulty due to the boundary condition,which requires the continuity of the first exit time with respect to the discrete parameter.To prove theconvergence of the algorithm by Markov chain approximation method,a tangency problem might arise.A common approach uses certain conditions to avoid the tangency problem.Here,by modifying thevalue function,it is demonstrated that the tangency problem will not arise in the sense of convergencein probability and in L~1.In addition,controlled diffusions with a discount factor is also treated.     

Research and Reflection: Potential Impact on the Professional Development of Undergraduate Occupational Therapy Students

In occupational therapy education in South Africa, community service (CS) focuses learning opportunities during fieldwork placements. CS therefore enabled the researcher to utilise successive small scale research projects to guide learning of students during fieldwork while simultaneously developing the occupational therapy service at a residential care facility. This community setting provided a powerful environment through which research, in combination with opportunities for reflection, contributed to nurturing skills needed by these future health professionals. A technical action research (AR) approach incorporated AR cycles and opportunities for structured reflection. Therefore situations were created for the students to embrace experiential learning. Experiential learning in the form of anticipatory reflection, reflection-in-action, reflection on reflection and retrospective reflection impacted on the quality of the students’ work. Besides encouraging unique leaning opportunities for students when engaging in research during their fieldwork placement, engagement in AR cycles simultaneously improved service delivery to residents in the facility. Key benefits of this investigation were that fieldwork education utilising AR cycles within a CS situation promoted students to identify voids in their theoretical background as well as practice skills; to apply reflective practice that could contribute to their personal and professional development; and to utilize learning opportunities optimally. Despite positive gains showed by this study, the role of power relations between the researcher as fieldwork educator and the students prohibited the AR cycles from being more emancipatory in nature and should be addressed in follow-up studies.     

An equivalency condition of nonsingularity in nonlinear semidefinite programming

<正> In this paper,an equivalency condition of nonsingularity in nonlinear semidefinite programming,which can be viewed as a generalization of the equivalency condition of nonsingularity for linearsemidefinite programming,is established under certain conditions of convexity.     

New design and analysis of finite difference domain decomposition algorithm for the two-dimensional heat equation

<正> It is presented in this paper that the new design and its analysis of finite difference domaindecomposition algorithms for the two-dimensional heat equation,and the numerical results have shownthe stability and accuracy of the algorithms,where Saul'yev asymmetric schemes have been used atthe interface points.The Algorithm Ⅱ in this paper has further extended those developed by Dawsonand the others,Zhang and Shen.     

Integral-type tests for goodness-of-fit

<正> A family of integral-type goodness-of-fit tests is investigated.This family includes someexisting tests,such as the Cramér-von Mises test and Anderson-Darling test,etc.The asymptoticdistributions of the tests in the family under the null and local alternative hypotheses are established.The almost sure convergence under a fixed underlying distribution is obtained.Furthermore,simulationsare conducted to compare the powers of the tests in the family.Simulation results show that fordifferent alternatives,the more powerful tests are different,and the parameter λ has great influence onthe tests in small sample cases.     

Analysis for gene networks based on logic relationships

The reverse construction and analysis of the networks of molecular interactions are essential for understanding their functions within cells. In this paper, a logic network model is constructed to investigate the complicated regulation mechanism of shoot genes of Arabidopsis Thaliana in response to stimuli. The dynamics of the complicated logic network is analyzed, discussed, and simulated. The simulation results show that the logic network of the active genes of shoot eventually evolves into eleven attractors under the stimuli, including five 1-periodic and six 2-periodic attractors. Our work provides valuable reference and guidance for biologists to understand and explain Arabidopsis’ response to external stimuli by experiments.     

A new approach of available transfer capability incorporating wind generation

The approach of available transfer capability (denoted as ATC) incorporating wind generation has been paid very high attention since the development of wind generation. Based on the maximum function, this paper presents an ATC model. The characteristic of the new model is twofold. First, it considers wind turbines connected to power system and static security of power system simultaneously. Second, it is a system of semismooth equations and can be solved easily. By using the smoothing strategy, a smoothing Newton method is adopted for solving the proposed new ATC model. Numerical simulation results of the IEEE 30-bus and 118-bus system show that the new model and algorithm are feasible and effective. The impact of wind turbines connected to power system on ATC is also analyzed.     

DISTRIBUTED FINITE-TIME χ-CONSENSUS ALGORITHMS FOR MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS WITH VARIABLE COUPLING TOPOLOGY

<正> This paper considers finite-time χ-consensus problem for a multi-agent system with firstorderindividual dynamics and switching interaction topologies.Several distributed finite-time consensusrules are constructed for multi-agent dynamics in a unified way with the help of Lyapunovfunction and graph theory as well as homogeneity.Time-invariant non-smooth forms of finite-timeneighbor-based controllers are proposed and a numerical example is shown for illustration.