1854 research outputs found
Sort by
Rethinking Risk Parity: Is it the Optimal Portfolio?
Get PDFRisk parity offers a sophisticated portfolio management technique that proponents claim delivers higher risk-adjusted returns compared to traditional portfolio strategies. The goal of this thesis is to determine if risk parity outperforms the traditional 60/40 portfolio strategy on a risk-adjusted basis. If risk parity outperforms the traditional 60/40 strategy on a risk-adjusted basis, investors should reconsider their portfolio strategy and benefit from the higher risk-adjusted performance of risk parity. The economic implications of this paradigm shift could be material. If a superior portfolio strategy is adopted, investors, both institutional and retail, benefit from achieving their diverse investment objectives quicker with less risk. Using price return data, risk parity failed to outperform the traditional 60/40 strategy on an annualized quarterly risk-adjusted return basis over the period 1999-2021. These findings fail to reject the notion the traditional strategy is inferior to risk parity, therefore the traditional strategy may be a simple heuristic for investors to easily achieve optimal risk-adjusted returns. In addition, lower correlations of U.S. nominal bonds and real estate and commodities and emerging market USD nominal bonds, respectively, appear to be associated with better risk parity performance. Risk parity strategies are widely thought to be more sensitive to correlations between asset classes since they are typically invested in a more diverse set of asset classes
The Trial of Memory Fairchild
No full text“The Trial of Memory Fairchild” is an original audio drama podcast about an anxious medical student in a modern-magical world who discovers she can do necromancy when she accidentally kills a patient and brings them back to life. There\u27s just one problem: necromancy is illegal
Creating Instructional Video to Aid in Infusing Fitness and Wellness Programming into the First Year Seminar Program
No full textThis project explores the most effective way to create a series of videos aimed at helping first-year students at Elizabethtown College engage in physical fitness and healthy eating practices during their first semester at the College. The videos will be integrated into the College’s first-year seminar program as part of a pilot program this fall. The series will consist of four videos: one that highlights healthy dining options, a tour of the wellness center, a tour of the gym and highlight of program offerings, and an introduction to nutrition and wellness programs. The impact of the videos on overall health and wellbeing, self-efficacy, happiness, GPA, and intent to return to the College the following spring will all be measured
Predicting the 2020 US Presidential Election
Get PDFThe 2020 US Presidential Election was unique in many ways, and held a number of surprising results. Although the 2020 presidential election is over, there is insight to be gained by analyzing the factors that may influence a voter’s choice and building a model that could predict future presidential elections. Using the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group’s Nationscape public opinion survey, we’ve constructed a model using multiple logistic regression with L2 regularization for predicting which candidate a given respondent will vote for, taking into account how various factors such as age, ethnicity, education level, and orientation influence voter decisions. Our model correctly predicts Biden winning the popular vote as well as the electoral vote, which is consistent with the observed 2020 presidential election results
eTherapy: The Next Generation of Physical and Occupational Therapy
No full textThe purpose of the research is to create software capable of revolutionizing the way physical and occupational therapy is done by utilizing wireless inertia sensors. The inertia sensors themselves can accurately identify their exact position in space. Hence, when they are attached correctly to a patient requiring therapy, they can provide precise data on the patient’s real-time motions. It is the goal of the software to leverage the power of the sensors to provide real-time feedback to the patient and to the therapist to ensure patients are performing prescribed exercises correctly and are restoring their range(s) of motion. For ease of access, this software comes in the form of a mobile application that one will be able to download from the Google Play Store and eventually the App Store. Although efficacy and practicality will be determined later in the clinics, the software appears to be very promising
Characterization and utility of immobilized metal affinity-functionalized cellulose membranes for point-of-care malaria diagnostics
No full textImmobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) is a well-established technique for protein separation and purification. IMAC has been previously utilized to capture the malaria biomarker histidine-rich protein 2 (HRP2) from blood, enhancing the sensitivity of field-appropriate diagnostic tools such as lateral flow assays. However, little work has been done to translate this technique to a truly field-usable design. In this study, IMAC-functionalized cellulose membranes are created and characterized fully for future use in applied malaria diagnostics. IMAC-functionalized cellulose membranes were investigated across a range of cellulose substrates, IMAC ligands, and divalent transition metals before use in a capture and elution flowthrough workflow. Following characterization and optimization, it was found that iminodiacetic acid bound to Zn(II) was the most promising ligand–metal pair, with three available coordination sites and a molar loading capacity of 57.7 μmol of metal/cm3 of cellulose. Using these parameters, more than 99% of HRP2 was captured from a large-volume lysed blood sample in a simple flow-through assay and 89% of the captured protein was eluted from the membrane using the chelating compound ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. Use of this enhancement protocol on an in-house HRP2 lateral flow assay (LFA) yielded a limit of detection of 7 parasites/μL, a 15.8x enhancement factor compared to traditional LFA methods
Comparing taste preference for menthol stereoisomers in adolescent Sprague–Dawley rats.
No full textObjective: Menthol is an organic compound derived from the plant genus Mentha and is the most commonly added tastant to tobacco products. Users of mentholated tobacco products typically have greater dependence as well as poorer cessation outcomes. These effects are thought to be partially driven by menthol’s pleasing taste as well as menthol’s masking of aversive tastants in tobacco products, thereby increasing their palatability. However, there are two predominant stereoisomers contained in mentholated products in varying proportions: (−)-menthol and (+)-menthol. The palatability of these stereoisomers has not been directly tested. The objective of this study was to measure whether there are differences in oral taste preference among (−)-menthol and (+)-menthol. Method: Using a two-bottle choice assay, we measured taste preference over a range of (−)-menthol and (+)-menthol doses (10 mg/L, 50 mg/L, and 100 mg/L) in Sprague–Dawley adolescent (postnatal day 33–41) male and female rats. Results: Results showed a dose-dependent aversion to menthol at 50 mg/L and 100 mg/L (p \u3c .0001), but not at 10 mg/L. These effects were not dependent on stereoisomer or sex. Conclusion: These findings suggest that (−)-menthol and (+)-menthol are equally potent in producing oral taste aversion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) Public Significance Statement—Menthol is a commonly added tastant that masks bitter, unpleasant flavors in tobacco products which can increase drug dependence. This work shows that different stereoisomers of menthol, (−)-menthol and (+)-menthol, produce similar behavioral oral taste aversion responses in rats. This work suggests that both stereoisomers may play a role in masking unpleasant flavors, and therefore either may exacerbate tobacco dependence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved
GAN-GLS: Generative lyric steganography based on generative adversarial networks
No full textSteganography based on generative adversarial networks (GANs) has become a hot topic among researchers. Due to GANs being unsuitable for text fields with discrete characteristics, researchers have proposed GAN-based steganography methods that are less dependent on text. In this paper, we propose a new method of generative lyrics steganography based on GANs, called GAN-GLS. The proposed method uses the GAN model and the large-scale lyrics corpus to construct and train a lyrics generator. In this method, the GAN uses a previously generated line of a lyric as the input sentence in order to generate the next line of the lyric. Using a strategy based on the penalty mechanism in training, the GAN model generates non-repetitive and diverse lyrics. The secret information is then processed according to the data characteristics of the generated lyrics in order to hide information. Unlike other text generation-based linguistic steganographic methods, our method changes the way that multiple generated candidate items are selected as the candidate groups in order to encode the conditional probability distribution. The experimental results demonstrate that our method can generate high-quality lyrics as stego-texts. Moreover, compared with other similar methods, the proposed method achieves good performance in terms of imperceptibility, embedding rate, effectiveness, extraction success rate and security
Translanguaging as pedagogy: developing learner scientific discursive practices in a bilingual middle school science classroom
No full textThis article investigates translanguaging as pedagogy in an English/Spanish dual language middle school science classroom as teacher and students engage in scientific argumentation about issues of biodiversity. Drawing from literature on bilingual education, bilingualism, linguistically responsive teaching, and scientific argumentation, we consider how the translanguaging practices of a middle school science teacher afforded emergent bilingual students access to the discourse intensive scientific practices being foregrounded in a science education reform-based curriculum intervention. Using ethnographically informed data collection in conjunction with discourse analysis, teacher translanguaging is examined for its potential in framing and supporting student access to the practice of scientific argumentation. Results suggest translanguaging as pedagogy functioned as a linguistically responsive approach that afforded emergent bilinguals access to the scientific practices and content of the curriculum intervention. Implications for bilingual education and science education are discussed