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A preliminary investigation of the use of racial/ethnic categories in emergency telephone calls in the United States
Get PDFThis paper uses conversation analysis to investigate how participants in emergency telephone calls in the United States use racial/ethnic categories to describe persons of interest such as suspects, victims, or persons needing assistance. It problematizes the use of racial/ethnic categories in these calls by first analyzing an instance of a caller’s racial profiling (in which racial categories are used to justify the call). This instance of racial profiling is then compared with 15 routine emergency service calls to reveal how callers and call takers routinely introduced racial/ethnic categories. I describe how both deviant and routine uses of these categories could lead to racial profiling and/or displace information that might be more effective in creating useful descriptions of persons of interest. The conclusion addresses ideas for further research and practical implications for emergency telephone call takers and those working to transform the way race is tied to policing in the United States
Will Reducing Drug Prices Slow Innovation?
Get PDFThe pharmaceutical industry has long argued that high drug prices reflect the high cost of innovation and that reducing drug prices would necessarily slow the pipeline of new drugs. These arguments have been bolstered by studies of large pharmaceutical companies showing statistical associations between the projected market size or revenue for pharmaceutical products and research & development (R&D) activity. Our analysis recognizes the increasingly important role of small biopharmaceuticals in drug development , companies that typically have little revenue and negative earnings, but are now responsible for more than 40% of new drug approvals. We examine the relationship between changes in revenue and R&D for companies of different size from 2000-2018.While changes in R&D expense correlate with changes in revenue for the largest biopharmaceutical companies (\u3e$7B market cap), no such relationship is found for smaller companies. Modeling the impact of different al cost reductions on the pipeline of new products, we find that any negative impact of drug price reductions may be mitigated through strategic allocation of cost reductions by large companies to different stages of clinical development.This analysis suggests that any negative impact of drug price reductions on the pipeline of pharmaceutical innovation may be mitigated through strategic allocation of spending reductions in large pharmaceutical companies. Policy makers do not need to make a false choice between reducing prices to ensure the affordability of pharmaceutical products currently on the market and the innovation required to bring new products to market in the future
Synergistically Employing User Stories and Use Cases in the Practice and Teaching of Systems Analysis and Design
Get PDFOver the past three decades, user stories and use cases have become increasingly dominant requirements techniques. Both support articulating functional requirements for software projects, although they evolved within different software development approaches—user stories from agile development and use cases from traditional software engineering—and differ significantly in the level of requirements detail they can capture. As such, user stories and use cases are neither synonyms nor mutually exclusive alternatives. Rather, they can and should be complementary in the systems requirements process. Unfortunately, this mix of similarities and differences—coupled with a lack of formal standards for either—make understanding and synergistically employing user stories with use cases confusing and challenging for practitioners and students alike. To address this, this paper first provides a descriptive overview of the evolution of user stories, use cases, and their interrelationship. Second, it fills a gap in the literature by providing a prescriptive, detailed approach to employing user stories and use cases together. This prescriptive approach is illustrated via a comprehensive tutorial example, providing practitioners with actionable skills and SA&D teachers and students with a new pedagogical tool
Optimizing Pension Outcomes Using Target Volatility Investment Concept
Get PDFThe target volatility strategy is a very popular investment concept in financial marketplace. For my dissertation, I focus on studying the target volatility investment concept in application to pension accumulation as well as decumulation stages. Additionally, I extend a basic target volatility strategy by introducing trading boundaries to its asset allocation mechanism. My dissertation study follows a three-paper format.
In paper one, we propose a new pension strategy that aims at improving the protection of a long-term pension plan in volatile market conditions. Over a hypothetical twenty-year pension scheme, we show that our newly proposed strategy, which attaches a target volatility mechanism to a lifecycle strategy, could provide more effective capital protection and risk control for pension investment vehicles. In addition, we show that our proposed strategy has an improved portfolio diversification effect and market timing skills compared to a benchmark pension strategy. Our results are robust with a consideration of transaction costs.
In paper two, we enhance the retirement coverage of several conventional retirement plans by using a target volatility strategy with interest rate dependent target volatility levels. Using the Monte Carlo simulation approach, we find that the retirement portfolio enhanced by the target volatility mechanism shows a significantly higher level of confidence to achieve required income levels compared to the conventional retirement portfolio. Therefore, the target volatility investment strategy could be a suitable alternative for investors who look for a higher level of stability in retirement coverage.
In paper three, we attempt to reduce the transaction costs of a target volatility portfolio by adding market risk calibrated rebalancing boundaries to its asset allocation mechanism. A constraint optimization problem based on investor-relevant optimization criteria is formulated. A numerical optimization algorithm to find an optimal rebalancing boundary level is presented. Illustrative numerical results within the Black-Scholes environment, as well as using real market data are reported. The comparative analysis on different market scenarios suggests that the target volatility portfolio with rebalancing boundaries can effectively reduce portfolio transaction costs and improve portfolio returns. Our findings have important applications given the popularity of the target volatility investment strategies among financial practitioners
Will Reducing Drug Prices Slow Innovation?
Get PDFThe pharmaceutical industry has long argued that high drug prices reflect the high cost of innovation and that reducing drug prices would necessarily slow the pipeline of new drugs. These arguments have been bolstered by studies of large pharmaceutical companies showing statistical associations between the projected market size or revenue for pharmaceutical products and research & development (R&D) activity. Our analysis recognizes the increasingly important role of small biopharmaceuticals in drug development , companies that typically have little revenue and negative earnings, but are now responsible for more than 40% of new drug approvals. We examine the relationship between changes in revenue and R&D for companies of different size from 2000-2018.While changes in R&D expense correlate with changes in revenue for the largest biopharmaceutical companies (\u3e$7B market cap), no such relationship is found for smaller companies. Modeling the impact of different al cost reductions on the pipeline of new products, we find that any negative impact of drug price reductions may be mitigated through strategic allocation of cost reductions by large companies to different stages of clinical development.This analysis suggests that any negative impact of drug price reductions on the pipeline of pharmaceutical innovation may be mitigated through strategic allocation of spending reductions in large pharmaceutical companies. Policy makers do not need to make a false choice between reducing prices to ensure the affordability of pharmaceutical products currently on the market and the innovation required to bring new products to market in the future
CLIC Newsletter - Spring 2022
Get PDFCover Page
PAGE 1: Interview with director of CLIC, Dr. Alessia Dalsant
PAGE 4: Event Throwback: International Trivia Night
PAGE 5: Restaurant Recommendations
PAGE 9: LP at Sea: Updates on Coti’s Study Abroad
PAGE 12: Event Throwback: UEFA Champions League @ CLIC
PAGE 13: Sports Across the World
PAGE 15: Recipes To Try From Our LPs’ Countries
PAGE 20: Interview with Students Who Studied Abroad
PAGE 24: Event Throwback: Foreign Language Karaoke Night
PAGE 25: Interview with Exchange Students at Bentley
PAGE 27: Cultural and Identity Student Organizations at Bentley University
PAGE 30: Interview with Mariana Varela – Fall LP of the Semester
PAGE 32: Ode to Cake
PAGE 33: A Review of Language Learning Software
PAGE 35: An Interview with Ezgi Kurt – Economics Professor
PAGE 37: Event Throwback: Spanish Movie Night
PAGE 38: Interview with Student Entrepreneurs
PAGE 44: Language Student Work
PAGE 55: Course Listings
PAGE 57: Contact
Dark Mode Vogue: Do light-on-dark displays have measurable benefits to users?
Get PDFIn recent years, dark mode displays have become a popular user interface design trend. Major software providers have promised several benefits to using dark mode (negative polarity) displays. However, most of the prior research showed that light more (positive polarity) is more beneficial to human performance. In this work, we investigated the effect of display polarity (negative and positive) on cognitive load, subjective mental effort, subjective task difficulty, and emotion to assess whether the popularity of these displays is related to aesthetic qualities or true physiological benefits. As the dark mode trend has been observed mostly in younger populations, two age groups (younger adults and older adults) tested both displays under bright and dim environments through writing and search tasks. Eye-tracking was used to collect search time, pupil diameter, and fixation count. Results showed that there was an increase in cognitive load elicited by negative polarity displays, as reflected by an increase in search time and pupil diameter for older adults in a bright environment and younger adults in a dim environment. Mental effort scores corroborated these results, where scores were higher for older adults using negative polarity while performing the search task in a bright environment. This group also reported more positive emotions using positive polarity, while younger adults expressed more interest in negative polarity. These results suggest that older adults use positive polarity to avoid mental fatigue, while younger adults prefer using negative polarity in a dim environment for aesthetic reasons
Doing “Care Work” in Emergency Service Calls
Get PDFSending help when needed is a central role for emergency service call takers, but providing help during the call is also an important part of the job. The “care work” call takers do may assist callers with physical and emotional safety and enhance their resilience as they deal with ongoing emergencies prior to the arrival of the police. This conversational analytic study of a collection of 24 emergency telephone calls reveals the interactional techniques the call takers use to accomplish care work and shows how they integrate care work into their communication within the call
Bentley University Library Collection Management Policy
Get PDFThe purpose of Bentley Library\u27s Collection Management Policy is to provide a planning document to organize and guide the process of acquiring and providing access to print and electronic information resources and to manage their growth, maintenance, preservation, withdrawal and cancellation.
The library’s information resources are purchased or licensed in order to support and strengthen learning and teaching, support faculty research, and as funding permits, provide for the recreational and extracurricular reading and viewing needs of staff, faculty, and students
An Exploration in Health Analytics: Pediatric Burns, Care Policy Assessment and Interrupted Time Series
Get PDFHealthcare systems globally face multiple challenges in the face of population growth and changes in disease pathology. With regard to the rising demand of the healthcare and the global threats of the pandemic, the medical datasets can be trained further to develop preventive methods. Meanwhile, policy reforms of health systems could be a critical aspect to deal with the public crisis and concerns. However, two basic problems must be addressed first: identification of key factors on a priority basis and evaluation of changes.
Thus, the paper presents a series of trials on the application of data analytics to health-related problems, including an investigation into the significance of associations of factors in relation to certain symptoms, a demonstration of evaluating health policy interventions via a series of strategic models, and an innovation designed exploration to improve existing models into AI applicability. These perspectives are addressed in three distinct projects.
For the first project, we apply the Random Forest method to study a number of factors pertinent to children’s sleep quality based on data from the Children’s Burns Outcome Questionnaire (CBOQ). For this study, we focus on babies and children from birth to 4 years old, and rank the importance of the leading factors in relations to the quality of the sleep during the recovery period.
In the second project, the impacts of the California 1115 Social Security Waiver of 2005 on uncompensated care and Medi-Cal costs from the designated public hospitals (DPHs) that participated in the waiver, are reconsidered. Through difference-in-difference models, we assess the vii impact of this state law on the inpatient care utilization. Based on the project results, our findings can provide suggestive information for a future path of instituting health reforms.
In the third project, we focus on improving existing methods based on Bayesian theory. Following Lee’s work in 1977, we discuss the practical application of the method, which we explore with both normal prior and exponential prior. Specifically, we extend the previous research idea and develop a new Bayesian method for real-time data applications, thereby contributing to a movement towards effective use of artificial intelligence