Complexities of the U. s financial system Assignment

Complexities of the U. s financial system - Assignment Example Efficiently operating financial markets play a part in the health of the economy (Fabozzi, Modigliani & Ferri, 1994). Economic growth is underpinned by financial market development. Financial markets guide the flow of individual and business savings and investments, within the economy to improve the buildup of capital and enhance effective production of products and services. The price of returns on investments and credit plays a part in signaling financial market participants such as consumers and producers to channel funds, particularly from businesses and households to investors, governments, consumers and businesses. Financial markets link those who need the funds with willing lenders (Demirguc-Kunt & Ross, 2001). Strong financial markets and institutions and a wide array of financial instruments and products, meets the needs of both lenders and borrowers, therefore, the entire economy. Moreover, strong financial markets enhance the flow of funds among countries, thereby enhancin g the economies. Additionally, financial markets also reduce transaction and search costs within the economy. Through the provision of a wide array of financial products with differing pricing and risk structures and maturities, financial systems provide products to participants, which offer borrowers and lenders with close matches for their needs. Persons, businesses, as well as governments that need funds can effortlessly discover which financial markets or institutions offer funding and the costs imposed on the borrower (Pryor, 1996). This enables investors to compare financing costs to their anticipated returns on investment hence making the most effective investment choices suited to their needs. Therefore, financial markets influence the allocation of credit within the economy, facilitating production of products and services. The key rationale for creating the Federal Reserve was to deal with banking panics. Other roles are provided in the Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Res erve furnishes an elastic currency, allowing for the rediscounting of commercial paper and establishes an effective supervision system of banking in the US. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve serves as the head of the country’s central banking system and is the executive officer of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors (Demirguc-Kunt & Ross, 2001). Conversely, the Federal Reserve Board, conducts the country’s monetary policy, supervises and standardizes banking institutions and protects consumers’ credit rights. The Board also ensures the financial system’s stability and offers financial services to the government, official foreign institutions and the public. Today, the Federal Reserve serves as the country’s central bank, striking a balance between the government’s role as a centralized institution and banks’ private interests. It also monitors and regulates banking institutions and protects consumers’ rights. Thro ugh a monetary policy, the Federal Reserve manages the country’s money supply in order to attain stable prices by deterring deflation and inflation, maximum employment and minimal long-term interest rates. Moreover, the Federal Reserve maintains the US financial system’s stability and acts as a banker and lender of last resort to commercial banks and the US government (Pryor, 1996). The reserve

MGT302 - Org. Behavior and Teamwork SLP Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

MGT302 - Org. Behavior and Teamwork SLP - Essay Example The strategic processing styles combines to give four Strategic Patterns that are Changers, Performers, Perfectors and Conservators. Affect of Strategic Processing Styles and Strategic Pattern on Communication and Decision-making at Work The four strategic processing styles are of equal value but the two strategic styles that will give the optimal results are relational innovators and hypothetical analyzer. The relational innovator is capable of producing ideas and enjoys using unconventional methods. Hypothetical analyzer is able to resolve such problems which cannot be solved easily. The combination of these two strategic processing styles generates strategic pattern perfectors. Perfectors strategic pattern is the combination of planning and action. In perfectors strategic pattern the relational innovator has the capacity to produce new and innovative ideas and hypothetical analyzer is capacitive of analyze the idea, make changes to it or amend it and give rise to a idea that will certainly result in a profitable condition. The whole process of this pattern generates a circle of ideas and their examination which always produces new and innovative ideas and new businesses comprising these ideas.

Inclusive education Essay Example for Free

Inclusive education Essay The concept of inclusion has been adopted as a response to the mandate of Public Law 94-142 or the Education of the Handicapped Act of 1975 which aims to place disabled and mentally-challenged students in non-restricted environments where they have access to equal opportunities in education. Inclusive education is an academic program where children of varying abilities are placed in one class or group and allowed to interact together to facilitate learning. It aims to provide all types of students with equality and exposure to the same learning stimulus that is bound to create various learning experiences to different types of children. And although many educators recognize that this is a breakthrough scheme for integration and intellectual freedom (Porter, 2001), in some cultures, this is the traditional way of teaching preschool children since special classes for attending to disabled children have not yet been developed at that time (Duncan, 2001). The scheme may involve only partial inclusion where special or disabled students can be pulled out anytime from class as the need for it arises. Oftentimes, for this category, another teacher who caters to the specific needs of the disabled students is also present. Full inclusion, on the other hand, is usually applied for disabled or special cases of students with high levels of learning capacities. Similarly, George and Alexander (2003) noted that in cases where tracking or ability grouping could not be totally excluded, partial de-tracking is also a good alternative. Inclusive education is a form of recognition (Friendly and Lero, 2002) and value that goes beyond human rights and equality and is a contributing step to eliminating social exclusion in the community. It promotes active and meaningful participation to all members of a group or class and offer different prospects for the students who experience the different class activities in their own light. They are able to socially interact, treated equally despite cognitive, physical or financial levels and, most importantly, achieve happiness and security. These are the essential elements and goals of inclusive education (Sen, 1999). As the Laidlaw Foundation puts its, it requires an active change in current policies and programs and build community-based foundations that will benefit and develop equal opportunities for both children and families (Friendly and Lero, 2002). On the other hand, early descriptions of inclusive education provide less drastic measures for improvement. Kamps et al.(1994) note that the strategies employed in inclusive learning are cheap measures designed to center on techniques that are less invasive but improves both the academic and social learning of the children (Kamps et al. , 1994). They also add that despite an inclusive program, change will not be truly instituted if the techniques cannot be adapted to current educational classroom systems that are at in place (Kamps Carta, 1989). The members of the Inclusion InterAmericana (2000) also agree that Inclusive education is a cheaper alternative to provide disabled students access to education as evidence by their limited resources and provision. Cooperative learning is one aspect of inclusive education, where students are classified into smaller learning groups created for the purpose of maximizing learning and development (Johnson et al. , 1990). This type of grouping, also referred to as a heterogeneous classification has aimed to ensure that each student receives the same high class standards of instruction and education. The access of all types of students to these educational practices will allow them to benefit in the same way that others students do (Daniel, 2007). This type of scheme not only follows a mandate to provide children with the equal opportunities in education but also aims to improve the skills of the students relative to the learning levels each child possesses (Yonezawa and Jones, 2006). The children in an inclusive class who, in an ideal situation, are helping each other learn also do not need to be in the same age levels as other students as in the case of a learning strategy in an inclusive set up called cross age tutoring (Barbetta et al., 1991). In contrast to inclusive education, a scheme called homogeneous grouping, or ability grouping or tracking, is a case where students are grouped according to similar cognitive levels. The grouping is done by determining abilities of students through studies on their previous test and activity scores and those with similar abilities are group accordingly (Daniel, 2007). Gamoran and Weinstein (1998), George (1988) and Slavin (1993) all note a lack of evidence that ability grouping is effective. In addition, Vang (2005) discusses the disadvantages of this scheme to students with poor learning abilities, those from the minority and even financially challenged children. As Friendly and Lero (2002) note, exclusion in any form results in not only vulnerability and inability to voice out to the proper forum but also reduces quality and limited capabilities of life experiences. They also stress that a changed path from exclusion will enable social cohesion and improve life prospects. This also applies not only to communities but also to students in classrooms as well.

Pattern Recognition and Classification Theory

Pattern Recognition and Classification Theory Assignment 2 of Pattern recognition should contain the  classification theory. The topics should cover: Introduction to Pattern Recognition, including; a) The concept of pattern recognition and its applications. b) Basic steps of a typical pattern recognition task. c) Popular techniques used in these steps. d) Various application areas of pattern recognition research. Bayesian classification rule, prior, posterior, loss function, risk, and minimum error rate classification. Discriminant functions, Normal densities and application of Bayesian rule to normal densities with 3 different cases of variances and covariance matrices discussed in book. As the name indicates, the pattern recognition is the classification of a pattern to one of the pre-specified classes. The process of understanding or recognizing the patterns by taking the raw data from a sensor, convert that raw data into some meta data by pre-processing that raw data, producing segments of the data through some sort of segmentation process and the pass those segment through some feature extractor which lead the purification of the raw data to be understood by the Classifier. Based on the feature extracted will classify it to a certain class which is already defined by the decision boundary. The decision boundary is obtained from a series of training data and the cost related to it. In short, the process of identifying object or pattern into some sort of classes based on some features which are been described by the decision rule. A simple example for it the identification of the seabass and salmon fish passing through a conveyer belt. Certain features like the height, width and lightness can be used to develop a decision boundary and put any fish into its respected class (sea bass or salmon). It is the analysis of in what way the machines observe the environment, come to know about the different patterns and make a rational decision about the class of the patterns. A typical pattern recognition system consists of the following components: Physical Environment Data Acquisition/Sensing Pre-Processing Feature Extraction Features Classification Post-Processing Decision Making The above mentioned components are given in the Figure 1. Figure 1 Components of a Pattern Recognition System. How to overcome the insufficiency of vector space? Numerous amount of training data. Anonymous distributions of classes. Unidentified problem complexity. Generalization problems. Evaluation problems. Given below are few of the pattern recognition potential research areas: Adaptive signal processing Machine learning Artificial neural networks Robotics and vision Cognitive sciences Mathematical statistics Nonlinear optimization Exploratory data analysis Fuzzy and genetic systems Detection and estimation theory Formal languages Structural modeling Biological cybernetics Computational neuroscience Pattern recognition has outnumbered amount of applications, some of which are as follows: Image processing Computer vision Speech recognition Multimodal interfaces Automated target recognition Optical character recognition Seismic analysis Man and machine diagnostics Fingerprint identification Industrial inspection Financial forecast Medical diagnosis ECG signal analysis Given below are the fundamental steps involved in pattern recognition: Sensing: The pattern recognition systems require a sensor at the input in order to take raw data from the environment into the system. Segmentation: It is done after the pre-processing step. In some systems this is the pre-processing step used for converting the raw data into some sorted data for the feature extraction. Feature Extraction: Some specific parameters of the pattern are measured in this step like length in the fish example. Classification: The patterns are then classified through some sort of classifiers like Bayesian Classifier. Classification is done for putting the pattern into a specific class or category e.g. sea bass or salmon. Post Processing: This step is done for further improvement of the performance. Figure 2 Steps involved in Pattern Recognition. Classification techniques: Bayes classifier, HMM, Kth Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Support Vector Machines (SVM), Training (parameter finding) testing (decoding) etc. Data representation techniques: The compacting technique is used for improving the characteristics features of data using various transformation methods like the Fourier Transform method, WT etc. Dimensionality reduction: Reduce the data dimensions by removing the mutually correlated features which results in the reduction of the common information to produce a set of nearly real informative parameters. e.g. Principle Component Analysis, Linear Discriminant Analysis etc. Transformations: Various transformation techniques are also used like Fourier Transforms, Fast Fourier Transform etc. The following are the potential research areas in the field of pattern recognition: Adaptive signal processing Machine learning Artificial neural networks Robotics and vision Cognitive sciences Mathematical statistics Nonlinear optimization Exploratory data analysis Fuzzy and genetic systems Detection and estimation theory Formal languages Structural modeling Biological cybernetics Computational neuroscience The probability of a state of nature that show how likely is that, that particular state of nature would occur. For example, in the fish example it is given that the prior of the salmon is 0.85. This mean that salmon is 85% more likely to appear than the sea bass. If number of classes are c, then: It is the probability of a specific state of nature given that observables have occurred. Mathematically, Notice that, It shows the cost related to each wrong action or decision we take. Mathematically, The zero-one is the most commonly used loss function. It assigns zero on no loss in case of correct decision while in case of incorrect decision, it takes a uniform unit loss. Mathematically, The expected loss is also called as conditional risk. It is defined as the summation of the product of loss occurred from each decision to its posterior probability. Mathematically: Overall risk is given by: From above equation we come to know that by selecting only those action ÃŽÂ ± (.) that minimize the for all values of x will minimize the overall risk which is directly associated with the error thus minimize the error rate.

The Stance of Political Magazine, The Nation :: Media

The Stance of Political Magazine, The Nation The Nation magazine has been in operation since 1865 as the independent voice of America’s people. It is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, weekly political magazine in America and is one of the most popular opinion journals. According to The Nation’s original prospectus, The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred.(Original Prospectus) It is easy to seen from the articles in the magazine that it is a voice for liberal opinions. Contributors to the magazine consist of such liberalists as Katha Pollitt, Eric Alterman, Alexander Cockburn, Christopher Hitchens, and Patricia J. Williams. Some past contributors include T. S. Elliot, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, H.L. Mencken, Hannah Arendt, W.E.B. Du Bois and Jean-Paul Sartre. Even though the founders intended the magazine to be non-partisan, it is evident that The Nation is democratic. You can really tell that the magazine is democratic from the cover of their November 13, 2000 issue. On the cover is a picture making fun of recently elected President George W. Bush by picturing him as some kind of idiot who accidentally became president. More evidence of The Nation’s political stance is evident in the article â€Å"Nader and the Politics of Fear† by William Greider. In the article, Greider talks about how Ralph Nader and the Greens could be both harmful and helpful to the Democratic Party. Greider first addresses that Nader received 2.7% of the vote in the last Presidential Election that could have ensured Al Gore a clean victory. This has caused a lot of democrats in the party to despise Nader and the Greens. Portraying Nader in this fashion shows that The Nation is not extremely left winged. Later on in the article, Greider talks about how the Democrat Party has â€Å"fallen† in the House and the Senate. He describes how the Democrat Party is now a minority party for the first time since 1950s, and that the party must get used to this fact in order to survive.

The Relevancy of the Heartland :: essays research papers fc

The Relevancy of the Heartland - Hinterland Distinction in Canada's Economic Geography Until the early 20th century, Canada was primarily an agricultural nation. Since then it has become one of the most highly industrialized countries in the world as a direct result of the development of the ‘heartland'. To a large extent the manufacturing industries present in the heartland are supplied with raw materials produced by the agricultural, mining, forestry, and fishing sectors of the Canadian economy, a region known as the ‘hinterland'. The ‘ heartland-hinterland' concept in Canada describes patterns of economic power, namely, where economic power and control resides within the nation. Thus, the heartland-hinterland concept distinguishes raw-material and staple-producing hinterlands from the capital service industrial heartland and reveals the metropolis or dominating city of the system. At a national scale, the Canadian metropolis is Toronto, and the region with the most influence is the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Lowlands. But while immense influence radiates outward from the metropolis located in the heartland, the relationship between hinterland and heartland is one of intimate mutual dependency. In modern Canadian economics, neither region can exist without each other, and the well-being of one directly affects the other. These two regions show remarkable contrasts, yet they are to a large extent interdependent on each other, clearly suggesting that the heartland-hinterland distinction is quite relevant in terms of Canada's economic geography. Upon discussing the importance of the heartland-hinterland in Canada, it is necessary to discuss what each term refers to. According to McCann the heartland is an area "†¦ which possesses favourable physical qualities and grant food accessibility to markets; they display a diversified profile of secondary, tertiary, and quaternary industries; they are characterized by a highly urbanized and concentrated population which participates in a well-integrated urban system; they are well advanced along the development path and possess the capacity for innovative change." Literally, hinterland means ‘the land behind', the area from which a heartland draws its raw materials and which, in turn, serves as a market for the heartland's manufactured goods. The demographic and economic characteristics of Canada's heartland are that it contains over 50% of the nation's population and 70% of its manufacturing industries in only 14% of the nation's area. Canada's heartland is southern Ontario and Quebec stretching from Quebec City to Windsor. This heartland, occupying the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Lowlands, coincides with several favourable physical characteristics such as fertile Class 1 and 2 soils in addition to humid continental climate for optimal agricultural conditions. However, the "hinterland regions display harsher or more limiting physical characteristics. The Cordillera, Interior Plains, Canadian Shield, and Appalachian regions yield tremendous resource wealth, but their soils,

Pharmaceutical Companies and How Their Health Information is Managed Through Clinical Trials Essay

Clinical Trials are critical to how pharmaceutical companies manage health information. Through the years the Federal Drug Administration saw many problems with the use of clinical trials and worked at fixing them. Regulations and guidance was put into place to ensure that sponsors of clinical trials; medical researchers, ethic committees and pharmaceuticals understand how they can efficiently carry out the trials while complying with federal law. Pharmaceutical companies rely heavily on these trials to determine how the health information gained is used for research and marketing on a variety of levels within the company including their main purpose of drug development. The clinical trial is an investigational product in human volunteers to examine effects from experimental drugs, medical device, or biologic, such as a vaccine, blood product, or gene therapy (Bren, 2007, 23). The main problem of many clinical trials in the past was the possibility of bias. Meaning any factor that distorts the true outcome of a study, that leads to overestimating or even underestimating the effect of a drug that was being investigated. But now with better FDA regulations stricter guidelines help to prevent this type of bias. When a pharmaceutical has a drug to market it must first submit an application to the FDA that shows data from controlled clinical trials. FDA then reviews the application to make a decision on whether the clinical trials are well-control or if they show the effectiveness of the product. It must also show that all available data show that the product is safe enough to allow it on the public market. Before 1938 pharmaceutical companies could market a drug without submitting any information to the FDA or for that fact any agency. â€Å"The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) of 1938 was passed when over 100 children died from taking a sulfa drug that had not been tested in humans† (Bren, 2007, 24). The FDA adopted the standard, after this incident, that the benefits of a product outweigh the risks. In 1962 new law created made pharmaceuticals responsible to prove that their drugs were both effective and safe if they wanted to market them to the public. Making clinical trial more efficient was needed. In an article â€Å"The Advancement of Controlled Clinical trials† Bren discusses the future of clinical trials in which the FDA see a future of improving clinical trials by standardizing and automating trial procedures, conduct and data processing. Another addition to the trials would be to use patient reported outcomes. â€Å"For systematic diseases, what really matters is how you feel, not how the doctor feels about you† (Bren, 2007, 28). Another important advancement in managing pharmaceutical companies is how they manufacture and the distribution of medication. This was called the Critical Path Initiative. This focuses on the path which medical products must travel from development to patients. The Critical Path Initiative is FDA’s effort to stimulate and facilitate a national effort to modernize the sciences through which FDA regulated products are developed, evaluated, and manufactured† (Bons, Aubert & Bonnely, 2000). Pharmaceutical companies had already recognized that there were weaknesses that needed improvement in clinical trials and that some could be easily improved while others would need a different type of organization, but in general that none of them were really difficult to address. Choosing an independent institute for conducting surveys and trial would give them an opportunity for impartial opinions in clinical trials. Human subjects is an important key in clinical development and investigators are the spokesperson for that study so improving investigator participation in clinical trials would help to improve subject participation and the quality of the whole trial. So looking at the clinical trial in itself would be how pharmaceutical manage the health inf