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In a defense landscape driven by increasing automation, larger operation scale, higher op-tempo, and tighter integrations across multiple domains, how do emerging advances in computing technology empower future defense concepts and operations? The paper overviews the notion of a multi-domain operations (MDO) effect loop as an organizing principle for military operations and information-driven decision processes. It then highlights recent advances in artificial intelligence, information theory, distributed sensing, and network optimization that significantly enhance the capabilities of different loop components, as illustrated by notional defense scenarios.

Mobilization of the full intellectual potential of employees is very important for achieving high economic performance of the company. At the micro level, high-quality labor resources can guarantee employers effective implementation of the company's current activities and innovative technologies. The authors’ hypothesis: human capital, the employee’s knowledge without physical form involved in production, is able to bring economic benefits. Human capital is an object of private property, has evidence of existence, may arise or cease to exist in the organization at an identifiable point in time. The purpose of this research is developing a methodological approach for the valuation of human capital and recommendations for the presentation of information on human capital in the financial statements. The study revealed the contribution of society and the company in the accumulation of human capital, established the role of the human capital in the company’s means of production. The authors consider methodological, empirical, practical aspects of personnel assessment and the availability of information in financial statements of the company. The authors use an approach based on calculated investments and current costs applied by the method of the standard cost of component stages of basic, professional, and additional education. Human capital is put on the account when signing an employment contract stands as an independent accounting unit. Human capital is evaluated by notional value. The method is based on the calculation of costs for each stage of education and then the costs are summed up.

Armed conflict in Afghanistan has continued for close to 40 years and has devastated its health infrastructure. The lack of a cancer care infrastructure has meant that many Afghans seek cancer care in neighbouring countries, like Pakistan. There remains a significant lack of empirical data on the new therapeutic geographies of cancer in contemporary conflicts. This retrospective single centre study explores the therapeutic and clinical geographies of Afghan cancer patients who were treated at the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (SKMCH&RC) in Lahore, Pakistan over a 22-year-period (1995 to 2017) covering major periods of conflict and relative peace. Data was available for 3,489 Afghan patients who received treatment at SKMCH&RC. The mean age at presentation was 42.7 years, and 60% were men. 30.2% came from Kabul and Nangarhar districts of Afghanistan, which have relatively short travel times to Pakistan, but patients from all parts of Afghanistan migrated to SKMCH&RC for treatment. Overall, 34.1% were diagnosed with upper gastrointestinal malignancies and 55.7% presented with late stage III/IV cancer. A wide range of treatments were provided, with 25.4% of patients receiving a combination of chemotherapy and radiation treatment. 52.7% of all patients were lost to follow-up. Outcomes were more favourable for children with cancer, 42% of whom had a complete response to therapy. Complex migration patterns, mixed political economies (refugees, forced and unforced migrants) and models of care that must be adapted to the realities of the patients rather than notional international standards all reflect the new therapeutic geographies that long-term conflict creates. This requires significant new domestic and international (e.g., United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) policy and practises for providing cancer care in today's contemporary conflict ecosystems that frequently cross national borders.

The practice of threat modeling to identify and mitigate, or eliminate, vulnerabilities, has a long history in military operations research. More recently, these practices are applied to the cyber domain to give a defender an increased advantage. Most cybersecurity research, however, is performed in the computer science and network infrastructure fields where the focus is on theory and infrastructure management. Consequently, the work is lacking traditional operations research perspectives in risk analysis, assessment, and decision support that may lead to a greater overall defensive posture. This chapter outlines several operations research techniques used in modeling cybersecurity threats and proposes a value model framework for security metrics and best practices that is supported by data and interviews with subject matter experts. The value model, which includes a framework that can be customized for any organization, is illustrated using notional data. Finally, through a survey of cyber professionals with both military and corporate industry experience, an inventory of valued attributes for a secure cyber system is provided, along with potential differences in values based on an organization’s history of attacks and/or breaches. This model, grounded in the principles of military operations research, will enable organizations to assess the performance of their respective cyber systems, manage risk, and continuously improve their processes.

PurposeStimulating innovation in projects can contribute to achieving policy goals, addressing societal challenges and meeting objectives within programs and projects. Despite their potential, innovations are rarely included in tender assignments and evaluated in the award of civil engineering projects. One explanation for this is the perceived difficulty in triggering and objectively assessing innovations in the awarding of projects. The aim of this paper is to develop, implement and evaluated a method to encourage and assess innovations in the awarding of bridge construction projects to address this problem.Design/methodology/approachA design science research (DSR) approach is used to develop, implement and evaluate a method to trigger and assess innovations in tenders for bridge projects. DSR approaches are used to develop “well-tested, well-understood and well documented innovative generic designs, dealing with authentic field problems or opportunities” (van Akenet al., 2016).FindingsThe findings show that the application of the developed method in a bridge project led to the inclusion of a broad range of innovations in the tender offers. Despite the broad support for the defined criteria, there were some differences in the way the criteria were interpreted by the public procurement team and by the tenderers. Despite these differences, no legal claims were filed in court.Practical implicationsFurther development and wider adoption of the method is likely to have a positive impact on the application of innovations in bridge projects. With some adjustments, the method would also be appropriate for other civil engineering and construction projects.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the discussion on how the terms innovation and innovativeness can be operationalized and used in the literature and practice. The developed method provides definitions for assessing the degree as well as the level of innovations in tenders for bridge projects. Further, it provides a way to rank innovations and determine the additional value of the offered innovations in terms of a notional reduction in tender price. Finally, it provides insights into how to encourage innovations through public procurement in civil engineering projects.

The chapter explores the core elements of qualitative field work and how new technologies have influenced the implementation of these methods. Seminal texts are referenced to guide the reader to build their expertise. The dominant discourse of positivist science in health care research has diminished the valuable place of qualitative data to that of illustration, a quote or notional reference. This runs counter to patient and public involvement in research and giving voice to the vulnerable or under represented. This chapter will explore new ways to build field research methods and offer practical advice on how to implement them. Examples of creative collaborations intended to capture funders attention, have been cited to demonstrate how multiple perspectives on the ‘problem’ that is being researched can be addressed.

Python has become a popular language for the delivery of introductory programming courses. Two reasons for this are Python's convenience and syntactic simplicity, giving a low entry barrier for beginners and the ability to solve complex problems with short snippets of code. However, students exhibit widespread misconceptions about the meaning of basic language constructs, inhibiting their ability to solve problems and damaging their understanding of fundamental concepts. In this paper, we document our observations of level 1 university students over several years, as well as surveys probing the nature of their misconceptions. We analyze the misconceptions in relation to a notional machine model for Python, and show that many students form inadequate and brittle mental models of the language. Our results indicate that one of the major sources of misunderstanding is the heavy use of overloading in Python. Overloading hides the complexity of algorithms and data structures, often leading students to write code that involves mutability, sharing, copying, side effects, coroutines, concurrency, and lazy evaluation -- and none of those topics are accessible to students who haven't yet mastered basic assignments, conditionals, and looping. We suggest that Python, when taught alone, is insufficient as an introductory language: students can gain a firmer grasp of programming fundamentals when Python is presented alongside a complementary low level language that makes a notional machine clear and explicit.

The typical increase of the corporate bond-to-bank ratio during downturns is known to mitigate business cycle recessions. In the three longest and deepest post-war U.S. recessions this ratio didn't increase from their outsets. In this paper we focus on the timing of the corporate bank-to-bond substitution in the Great Recession, simulating counterfactual paths for output growth under plausible notional behaviors of the bond-to-bank ratio. We find that the Great Recession would have been milder and the recovery much stronger if the bank-to-bond substitution had started since the outset of the recession and evolved thereafter as in most U.S. recessions.

High-school students specialising in computing fields need to develop the abstraction skills required to understand and create programs. Novices' difficulties at high-school level, ranging from mastery of the "notional machine" to recognition of a program's purpose, have not been investigated as extensively as at tertiary level.This work explores high-school students' code comprehension by asking to reason about reversing conditional and iteration constructs. A sample of 205 K11--13 students from different institutions were asked to engage in a set of "reversibility tasklets". For each code fragment, they need to identify if its computation is reversible and either provide the code to reverse or an example of a value that cannot be reversed. For 4 such items, after extracting the recurrent patterns in students' answers, we have carried out an analysis within the framework of the SOLO taxonomy. Overall, 74% of answers correctly identified if the code was reversible but only 42% could provide the full explanation/code. The rate of relational answers varies from 51% down to 21%, the poorest performance arising for a small array-processing loop (and although 65% of the subjects had correctly identified the loop as reversible).The instruction level did not have a strong impact on performance, indicating such tasks are suitable for K11, when the basic flow-control constructs are usually introduced. In particular, the reversibility concept could be a useful pedagogical instrument both to assess and to help develop students' program comprehension.

In theory, well designed electricity markets should deliver an efficient mix of technologies at least-cost. But energy market theories and energy market modelling are based upon equilibrium analysis and in practice electricity markets can be off-equilibrium for extended periods. Near-term spot and forward contract prices can and do fall well below, or substantially exceed, relevant entry cost benchmarks and associated long run equilibrium prices. However, given sufficient time higher prices, on average or during certain periods, create incentives for new entrant plant which in turn has the effect of capping longer-dated average spot price expectations at the estimated cost of the relevant new entrant technologies. In this article, we trace generalised new entrant benchmarks and their relationship to spot price outcomes in Australia’s National Electricity Market over the 20-year period to 2018; from coal, to gas and more recently to variable renewables plus firming, notionally provided by—or shadow priced at—the carrying cost of an Open Cycle Gas Turbine. This latest entry benchmark relies implicitly, but critically, on the gains from exchange in organised spot markets, using existing spare capacity. As aging coal plant exit, gains from exchange may gradually diminish with ‘notional firming’ increasingly and necessarily being met by physical firming. At this point, the benchmark must once again move to a new technology set…

Risk decomposition is a standard tool for analyzing investment portfolio risk. The portfolio is divided into notional parts—e.g., individual securities, holdings by sector or region, factor exposures—whose contributions to net risk are estimated and reported. Convention regards the inputs—portfolio weights and covariance—as fixed and known, but portfolio composition changes with price movement and estimates have errors. Since behavior only in the direction of net risk is counted, hedged effects are invisible regardless of size. What if numbers aren’t exact? Hedge instability manifests in proportion to underlying gross (not net) exposure, akin to leverage. For example, in a market-neutral portfolio, market is the largest risk in each side, conventionally uncounted since hedged, and extremely consequential under small deviations. To solve the problem, this paper models weights and parameters as uncertain. Evaluating a portfolio across the range of possibility measures risks better and surfaces latent fragility. No longer point-estimated, contributions are reported with a center and spread.

The subject of ‘money illusion’ in behavioral economics has gained attraction lately as a factor that is responsible for one of the many incongruities in our decision making, resulting in inadequate socio-economic choices. This study aims to ascertain that the existence of the phenomenon of ‘money illusion’ is an empirical subject having a real impact and consequences in everyday decision making rather than a notional question or one of pure logic. Primary data was collected for this research employing a questionnaire to a sample of 104 individuals. The findings of this research determine the empirical truth of the role of ‘money illusion’ and how individuals fail to differentiate between real variables (variables like price, income, wages adjusted to inflation) and nominal variables. The results from this study indicate that money illusion is a concept which still exists in the society as people find it easier to make decision with respect to the nominal variables which the society provides them with against the real variables and the complexity to convert nominal variables to real variables poses a barrier to an individual in his or her decision making. Also, economies with low inflation rates fuel the presence of money illusion. There is further scope to expand the research to determine the relationship between the comprehensions of ‘money illusion’ amongst investor’s viz-a-viz households.

In this short note we develop a model for discounting. A focus of the model is the discounting, when discount factors cannot be derived from market products. That is, a risk-neutralizing trading strategy cannot be performed. This is the case, when one is in need of a risk-free (default-free) discounting, but default protection on funding providers is not traded. For this case, we introduce a default compensation factor (exp(+~λT)) that describes the present value of a strategy to compensate for default (like buying default protection would do). In a second part, we introduce a model, where the survival probability depends on the required notional. This model is different from the classical modelling of a time-dependent survival probability (exp(-λT)). The model especially allows that large liquidity requirements are instantly more likely do default than small ones. Combined the two approaches build a framework in which discounting (valuation) is non-linear. The non-linear discounting presented here has several effects, which are relevant in various applications: *If we consider the question of default-free valuation, i.e., factoring in the cost of default protection, the framework can will lead to over-proportional higher values (or cost) for large projects (or damages). The framework can lead to the effect that discount-factors for very large liquidity requirements or projects are an increasing function of time. It may even lead to discount factors larger than one. This may have relevance in the assessment of event like climate change. * For the valuation of defaultable products, e.g., like a defaultable swap, the framework leads to the generation of a continuum of (defaultable) par rate curves (interest rate curve) and the valuation of a payer and a receiver swap differs by more than just a sign.

In this chapter, we analyse the effects of PAYG and funded pension systems on welfare. The debate on the choice between alternative systems focuses on their effects on savings, capital accumulation, labour supply, economic growth and inequality and the potential benefits of mixed systems in which a PAYG system with notional accounts is complemented by a funded pensions system. The main findings are as follows. Firstly, the redistribution of income among individuals makes the PAYG system an important part of any mixed system. Secondly, the design of the pension system should efficiently balance incentives and distortions with equality and insurance against individual idiosyncratic risks. Thirdly, funded systems generate positive effects on the savings rate, capital accumulation, productivity and the labour supply. These effects must be taken into account when PAYG systems are improved with notional accounts. Fourthly, in practice, income distribution among older people does not clearly depend on the relative importance of PAYG over funded pensions systems, suggesting that other factors are even more important. Fifthly, there are significant differences between advanced economies in their social preferences regarding the combination of replacement rates in PAYG systems and contributions to funded systems. Lastly, there is no guarantee that, regardless of social preferences, imposing a target of pension expenditure on GDP maximises social welfare.

Firms with credit-default swaps (CDS) traded on their debt may face "empty creditors" as hedged creditors have less incentive to participate in firm restructuring. We test for the existence of empty creditors by employing an exogenous change to the bankruptcy code in Germany that effectively removes their potential impact on CDS firms. Using a unique dataset on bank-firm CDS net notional and credit exposures we find that the probability of default for CDS firms drops when the effect of empty creditors is removed. The intensity of this empty creditor effect varies with firm, bank-firm, and creditor hedging characteristics.

Analysis of Russian military capabilities reveals stark limitations in Russia's ability to safely and effectively deploy and sustain ground forces around the world. Notional deployment scenarios highlight a lack of readily deployable forces and transportation assets and limited freedom of movement. Collectively, these challenges suggest a modern Russian force that is far less deployable than the Soviet military it replaced.

We perform an empirical analysis of systematic trading strategies on options. Namely, we focus on strategies which sell out of the money (OTM) call options to harvest the premium, and buy downside protection through OTM puts. We compare the risk adjusted performance across different choices of strike, maturity and option notional. In this paper we mostly focus on the S&P 500 index over the period 2007–2018. There is also a brief look of the performances of the best strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

Domestic abuse is an internationally recognised form of criminal behaviour but one that goes by many different labels and has more than one notional definition. This book seeks to identify what facts might be unearthed from data mining but as with any form of serious analytical work, it is firstly important to define the topic with some precision. We do this in this chapter in multiple segments. Firstly, we cover how ‘domestic abuse’ as it is known in England and Wales, is defined by government agencies. This definition sets important context for the analysis that follows in later chapters and we would recommend anyone seeking to replicate these analyses considers these elements before embarking on the task.

To assess the life-cycle welfare effects of pension reforms, we provide a dynamic stochastic model of saving, portfolio choice and retirement with a pension system that operates according to the notional defined contribution principle. Relying on the exogenous variation from a sequence of Italian pension reforms, we identify and estimate the model, which is then used to draw implications of alternative pension policies. The validated model predicts substantial social security wealth effects on retirement, with retirement decisions shaping the degree of substitution between public pension wealth and private savings. We further find important life-cycle effects of pension reforms, with households' welfare decreasing more the later in the working life they face the reform, for a given variation in pension rules. Our findings have implications for the design of future pension policies and their political sustainability.

Based on examination of top grossing films it is clear there exists racial underrepresentation in Hollywood movies. I propose a socioeconomic approach to examine the Hollywood labor system as a network using an agent based model (ABM) within a notional movie labor market based on preferential attachment and compare the findings with 50 co-production ego networks during the 2015 movie cycle. Using an ABM, I test the hypothesis that slight individual preference for racial and ethnic similarity within one’s own network at the microlevel sufficiently explains the phenomena of Hollywood underrepresentation at the macrolevel. Using regression analysis of the real world 2015 co-actor networks I test the hypothesis that race/ethnic minority status affects ones position within the network of successful actors. In both cases, the hypotheses are not sufficient to explain the phenomena and I propose further exploration into causes of opportunity loss in accessing the labor market.

In the present political moment, “border walls” between the U.S. and Mexico have become a flashpoint, representing binaries like governed / ungoverned spaces, security / insecurity, morality / immorality, respect / disrespect for human rights, human unity / disunity, North / South, haves / have-nots, citizens / non-citizens, Republicans / Democrats, conservatives / liberals, patriots / traitors, nationalists / internationalists (or globalists), and others. This work explores some of the thematic Global North – Global South implications of a notional “border wall” based on social imagery (in a multi-loop image analysis approach). This work questions how the “other” may be viewed through the limiting slats of a fence or windows in a wall. In addition to the image analyses, topic-related textual data will also be studied from various sources: academia, journalism, and social media (including mass search correlations, big data word search, related tags networks, and #hashtag network analysis).

Early modern English probate documents are oral histories of debt. Wills show people of all stations struggling to make good deaths by clearing their accounts and repaying their creditors. Testators explain their debt priorities, lay out directions for how to meet debts and acknowledge when they leave their heirs irresolvable debt problems. As inventories show, wills were notional documents; when the goods that people owned were insufficient to their debts, bequests were nullified. Some heirs declined executorships accordingly. This essay includes two case studies: the Greville family, where a £35,000 estate was dissipated by debt, and the Shakespeare family, where debt may help explain why Shakespeare abandoned his father’s trade, why he had a private wedding and why none of his books and manuscripts survive.

Recently, a number of structured funds have emerged as public-private partnerships with the intent of promoting investment in renewable energy in emerging markets. These funds seek to attract institutional investors by tranching the asset pool and issuing senior notes with a high credit quality. Financing of renewable energy (RE) projects is achieved via two channels: small RE projects are financed indirectly through local banks that draw loans from the fund’s assets, whereas large RE projects are directly financed from the fund. In a bottom-up Gaussian copula framework, we examine the diversification properties and RE exposure of the senior tranche. To this end, we introduce the LH++ model, which combines a homogeneous infinitely granular loan portfolio with a finite number of large loans. Using expected tranche percentage notional (which takes a similar role as the default probability of a loan), tranche prices and tranche sensitivities in RE loans, we analyse the risk profile of the senior tranche. We show how the mix of indirect and direct RE investments in the asset pool affects the sensitivity of the senior tranche to RE investments and how to balance a desired sensitivity with a target credit quality and target tranche size.

The Chinese language is changing, and like other languages, has been becoming more like English. This article focuses on the Englishization (Europeanization) of certain Chinese passive constructions. Previous research indicates that written Chinese has seen an increase in the use of the 被 bèi passive construction (BEIC) and a concomitant decrease in use of the notional passive construction (NPC) over time. This assertion is supported by a corpus-based analysis. An apparent-time research study shows that, in general, younger, more educated participants (those hypothesized to have more exposure to English) are more likely to use BEIC than are older, less educated participants in the sentence continuation task. However, this difference between groups is not captured in the binary forced choice task due to the increased use of BEIC under a conscious condition by the older, less educated participants. This finding sheds light on the psychological mechanism of internalization involved with Englishization.

We are interested in defining the optimal retirement age by socio-economic class, given a Defined Benefit and a Notional Defined Contribution scheme. We firstly implement a utilitarian framework. Depending on the risk aversion coefficients and individual time preference factors, the results differ significantly. Since this approach is individualistic, with no consensus in the existing literature on what values these parameters should take, it is not suitable to be used by policy makers. Therefore, we provide an alternative based on two accounts. We look for the retirement age allowing the accumulated value, at the last age with survivors, of the pensions received under each system, held in one account, to be close in value to the accumulated amount should the actuarially fair pension be paid, representing the second account. Our approach results in setting a lower retirement age for lower socio-economic classes and a higher retirement age for wealthier individuals.

Financial derivatives linked to the median, which is the 50%-th percentile of a distribution, have not been extensively studied in realistic models of financial markets, as such derivatives simply did not exist until recently. The Libor reform that brought a seismic change to the interest rate markets - the largest market in the world - linked derivatives worth hundreds of trillions of notional to a median of interest rate spreads, making the median, arguably, the most important "number" to study and understand in all of the financial markets at the moment. Numerically-efficient algorithms for calculating the fair value of the median that incorporate both the historical observations and the future dynamics of the Libor vs. the risk-free rate spreads in a realistic model have already been developed in our previous work on the subject. In this paper, we go significantly deeper than this important special case. Here, we focus on calculating the expected value of the median in a model of a history-less Brownian motion with a time-dependent shift, a model that provides rich mathematical structure to investigate, while also being very relevant to the current financial markets. We combine a newly-established linearization property under the large-volatility limit of the median, a universal white-noise approximation, and novel Machine Learning techniques to derive a general, numerically efficient algorithm for calculating the expected median. Theoretical advances and practical solutions to currently-topical problems are presented.

The study examines the subcontracting dynamics of informal manufacturing enterprises in Uttar Pradesh using nationally representative NSSO data of non-agricultural enterprises between 2010 and 2016. The results show that the incidence of subcontracting has decreased in rural areas among own-account enterprises and establishment (2–5 worker) category but it has increased in urban areas among these enterprises during the study period. There is negligible evidence to show that workers are much more efficient and productive in firms involved in subcontracting as compared to non-subcontracted enterprises. Rather, the study found that subcontracted enterprises created more jobs than non-subcontracting ones. It also found that the gross value addition (GVA) per worker in more than three-fourth subcontracted enterprises is below notional income, which indicates that a majority of labour-intensive enterprises come into the subcontracting system only as means for survival.

We derive replicating portfolios for some commonly used dynamic trading rules. In particular, we show that two commonly used dynamic rules can be replicated with static option portfolios. These replicating portfolios are more precise than the corresponding dynamic rules in the sense that the exposure is always correct at each price. For a rule that changes notional exposure linearly with price the error is linear in variance.

The cumulative additional interest from LIBOR during the crisis is estimated to be between 1% to 2% of the notional amount of outstanding loans, depending on the tenor and type of SOFR rate used. The amount of LIBOR business loans owned by banks could have been as high as about 2trn, and the overall additional interest income banks received thanks to LIBOR could have been as high as 30bn dollars. The analysis also shows that a compounded SOFR reduces insurance relative to a term SOFR.

Retirement systems across the world are undergoing major reforms to adapt to continuously changing economic and demographic factors. Among these major changes are the so-called notional defined contribution pension schemes (NDCs), first developed about 20 years ago in countries such as Italy, Latvia, Poland and Sweden. These pension schemes attempt to reproduce the logic of a financial defined contribution pension plan within a pay-as-you-go framework. Among the countries with NDCs, Sweden is the only one where an automatic balancing mechanism goes hand in hand with the prior calculation of a financial solvency indicator that emerges from an actuarial balance sheet. This chapter describes the Swedish pension experience over the 2007–2015 period through its accounting method, together with the problems faced by the system and the policy responses.

In this report, the authors assess China's current military theory, strategy, and guiding principles, and they also delineate notional doctrinal or operational concepts that likely underpin People's Liberation Army military planning. This report is intended as a primer for U.S. Department of Defense strategists and planners as they conduct campaign planning and formulate responses to China's evolving military strategy and doctrine.

The main objective of this essay is to analyse the prepositions of the Portuguese Creole of Guinea-Bissau and Casamance (south of Senegal), showing that, as Bernard Pottier used to say as of the second decade of 20th century, prepositions are originally spatial. Temporal relations are derived from spatial relations whereas notional (abstract) relations are derived from both. The theoretical model used in this analysis is the young discipline Ecolinguistics, more specifically, its Brazilian version called Ecosystemic Linguistics. Ecosystemic linguistics includes the ecology of spatial relations, of which spatial prepositions a protypical examples. Using this model it is possible to explain even some uses of prepositions that we, Occidentals, consider strange. This is the case of examples such as lebri sai na si koba (the rabbit came out of its burrough). The model also explains why na (in, on, at) is the prepsition par excellence (protypical), despite the fact that the most frequent is di (of).

The special training of a specialist who can successfully solve professional tasks, is ready to perform professional functions in the Ukrainian-language environment as well as in foreign-language environment is important. Foreign language learning has become an integral and important component of professional training. The topicality of the problem of English reading competence formation is determined by the need of its research in the context of the competence approach: it is necessary to determine the structure of English-language reading competence, to specify the objectives of its formation among future religious scholars, to define the stages of formation of English reading competence. The purpuse of the article is to characterize the psycholinguistic peculiarities of English-language professionally oriented reading competence of future religious scholars. Mastering the scientific knowledge about religion is a necessary condition for the growth of culture and education of a specialist of any profile. The growing amount of professionally directed foreign-language information puts future religious scholars in front of the need to work out a large volume of professional information. Reading as a receptive speech process requires students’ active mental activity to obtain the necessary information from the text. Reading texts perform a number of educational functions, among which the function of knowledge enrichment, the function of training, the function of the oral speech development and the function of the notional perception text development. Professionally oriented reading is an effective method of obtaining additional knowledge concerning the chosen profession. One of the main grounds for the effectiveness of the learning process of professionally oriented reading is the implementation of an individual approach to students. Future religious scholars must have competence in the areas of professional and situational communication, and the process of formation of professionally oriented competence of the future religious scholars is defined as the development of activity of foreign language competence not only in everyday, general business, but also in professional situations. A rationally built system of teaching reading a foreign language helps to solve practical, educational and developmental tasks.

Der Beitrag untersucht die von der Europäischen Kommission 2016 im Entwurf für eine neue Richtlinie des Rates über eine gemeinsame Körperschaftsteuer-Bemessungsgrundlage vorgeschlagenen Regeln zum Abzug fiktiver Zinsen auf neu gebildetes Eigenkapital. Geprüft wird, ob hiermit die in den meisten Ländern der EU bestehende steuerliche Diskriminierung der Investitionsfinanzierung mit Eigenkapital beseitigt wird. Nach vereinfachten Investitionsrechnungen werden die Unternehmen dazu veranlasst, mehr eigenfinanzierte Investitionen zu tätigen. Mit einer gegenüber dem Kommissionsvorschlag modifizierten Bestimmung des steuerlich relevanten Eigenkapitals wird es möglich, die für die Harmonisierung der Bemessungsgrundlagen so bedeutsame Neutralität des steuerlichen Bewertungsrechts sowie eine steuerliche Gleichbehandlung unterschiedlicher Zeitverläufe von Investitionserträgen zu gewährleisten.

Recent studies show that volatility-managed equity portfolios realize higher Sharpe ratios than portfolios with a constant notional exposure. The authors show that this result only holds for risk assets, such as equity and credit, and they link this finding to the so-called leverage effect for those assets. In contrast, for bonds, currencies, and commodities, the impact of volatility targeting on the Sharpe ratio is negligible. However, the impact of volatility targeting goes beyond the Sharpe ratio: It reduces the likelihood of extreme returns across all asset classes. Particularly relevant for investors, left-tail events tend to be less severe because they typically occur at times of elevated volatility, when a target-volatility portfolio has a relatively small notional exposure. We also consider the popular 60–40 equity–bond balanced portfolio and an equity–bond–credit–commodity risk parity portfolio. Volatility scaling at both the asset and portfolio level improves Sharpe ratios and reduces the likelihood of tail events.

Drawing upon the frequency effect and the noticing hypothesis in language acquisition, input flood treatment was introduced to second language instruction involving artificially increased incidence of the target items in the audio or visual texts that learners are exposed to, with the expectation that this artificial increase will aid learners in noticing and then acquiring the form. Targeting at Chinese notional passive construction (NPC), the present study employs pre-post testing to assess the effect of input flood, and employs think-aloud protocol (including source attributions) analysis during the posttest to detect participants’ awareness of the linguistic knowledge underlying their choices. Results from experiment 1 show that in comparison with the marked 被bèi construction (BEIC), NPC is extremely difficult to be noticed in incidental exposure, rendering the input flood treatment helpless in participants’ acquisition of NPC. However, it is found in experiment 2 that the effect of input flood can be elicited with a little amount of explicit instruction, which is indicative of an indispensable role of explicit instruction in teaching non-salient language forms. Besides, the linguistic knowledge demonstrated by participants regarding the selectional constraints between NPC and BEIC is primarily unconscious and is inherent among intermediate and advanced Chinese learners.

The article deals with the analysis of the association area structure of the notion of competence based on the results of the free association experiment. It was found out that respondents verbalize both key components of the lexicographical and terminological meaning of the notion (awareness, experience, skills, knowledge, mind) and its axiological component (politeness, correctness, professionalism, responsibility, respect). Some reactions testify to the process of identifying competence with the professional sphere of activity (profession, job). As a result of processing of associative reactions, it has been established that the associative gestalt of the word-stimulus forms 10 zones – the notional components, the subject, the subject’s activity, the field of the subject’s activity, leading features of the subject’s activity, the moral and ethical face of the subject of activity, characteristic features of the subject’s activity, evaluative reactions, individual reactions, emotions. Each zone of the associative gestalt in accordance with the quantitative indicators is assigned a rank from 1 to 9 (in two zones the number of reactions coincides). The core of the associative gestalt (ranks 1 – 2) includes frequency responses that correspond to the zones «Notional components» and «Leading features of the subject’s activity», the remaining zones (ranks 3 – 9) form the periphery. Core reactions indicate a sufficiently high level of respondents’ mastering of key components of the notion as well as realization of the demand for a new generation of specialists by native speakers that can effectively apply the acquired knowledge and skills in a certain field of activity. The article also deals with the analysis of associative reactions in accordance with the model of the epistemological structure of consciousness of native speakers. It was found out that in the linguistic consciousness of respondents a certain balance is maintained between subjective (the value and motivational sphere) and objective (the logical and notional sphere) images; dominant in the cognitive activity of informers is the mental level of consciousness images, since in the emotional and affective sphere there are no frequency responses, and the body-perceptual sphere is not represented verbally.

In this paper, we develop strategies for the problem of space station on-orbit activity re-planning. Considering the effects of emergencies, a preprocessed strategy is firstly proposed to reconstruct conflicting missions. Furthermore, a greedy algorithm with interval-based strategies is used to re-plan the activities of the reconstructed missions by utilizing mission priority and preplanned activity schedule intervals. Taking into account the propagation of complicated constraints, a time backtrack iteration strategy is adopted to solve constraint conflicts. We demonstrate the proposed approach with a notional operation scenario of the Chinese future space station. The results indicate that our method can successfully re-plan space station on-orbit activities when emergencies occur, all constraint conflicts can be solved, and mission accomplishment rate is increased, in comparison with a method that does not include re-planning strategies.

Ecosystem is considered as a notional topic due to lack of material visualization. An effective learning media is needed to help student in learning ecosystem. There are some factors that make some schools are unable to conduct an outdoor learning, that can be overcome through the model of Team Games Tournament (TGT) as a learning method with Biodomino as a supporting learning media. This study was aimed to determine the effectiveness of TGT with Biodomino on student activity and learning outcomes in ecosystem. The method used was quasi experiment with Nonequivalent Control Group Design. Result of this study showed that 100 percent of students participated in the experiment were in active category, with 81.25% of students got score of ≥77. It is concluded that learning the ecosystem unit by using TGT method with the help of Biodomino is an effective way to increase the student activity and learning outcomes.

For a qualitative translation of text it is necessary to preserve its style, style of the original. In translation practice, a whole arsenal of methods and techniques is used to select an adequate verbal equivalent in the target language. But the issues of style in the translation of epic texts in the communicative and activity aspect have not yet been considered. To understand the valuable information and interpretation of the text it is important to be able to distinguish and use existing stylistic structures and forms, in particular, compositional-vocal and architectonical. When analyzing the texts of olonkho, we rely on the linguistic concept of translation developed by prof. M.P. Brandes. Accordingly, genres and style are forms that determine the perception of meaning. This article studies compositional-vocal and architectonical forms of epic texts. The article implements linguistic analysis, including the method of direct observation, relative and comparative methods. The analysis of fragments of the olonkho translation allowed us to draw the following conclusions: 1. The ascertaining messages are prevalent. The secondary information is dominant in them, since the temporal and logical sequences are blurred by the enumerations that give to message an additional picture. Thus, in such messages, notional and semantic structures merge. 2. The nominative descriptions dominate, where the main semantic load carries the names - adjectives and nouns.

After the implementation of the notional defined contribution (NDC) pension scheme in Italy and Sweden in the ‘90s, some authors argued that its design merely replicates the functioning of the poin...

The notional passive construction (NPC, henceforth) is claimed to be the most common form of passive and the earliest mode of passive expression in Chinese. However, under the view of cognitive construction grammar, NPC remains a mystery with its form not clearly defined and its function not particularly discussed. Taking a character-based historical approach, this paper studies the form designated by NPC, the ‘theme + verbal’ structure in corpus data. Results show that the ‘theme + verbal’ structure is extremely stable in the history of the Chinese language, denoting change of state. In conjunction with some cross-linguistic findings, a change-of-state construction can thereby be proposed for the form ‘theme + verbal’. Accordingly, the idea of the so-called “notional passive construction” is challenged in the way that it essentially refers to a special situation of the change-of-state construction when the event expressed by the verbal is not likely to occur spontaneously- it is not a construction itself, yet plausibly passive.

This article presents a sensitivity analysis investigating the impact of using high-resolution site conditions databases in portfolio earthquake loss estimation. This article also estimates the effects of variability in the site condition databases on probabilistic earthquake loss ratios and their geographical pattern with respect to structural characteristics of different building types. To perform the earthquake loss estimation here, the OpenQuake software developed by Global Earthquake Model is implemented in Clemson University’s supercomputer. The probabilistic event-based risk analysis is employed considering several notional portfolios of different building types in the San Francisco area as the inventory exposure. This analysis produces the stochastic event sets worth for 10,000 years including almost 8000 synthetically simulated earthquakes. Then, the ground motion prediction equations are used to calculate the ground motion per event and incorporate the effect of five site conditions, on amplifying or de-amplifying the ground motions on notional building exposure locations. Notional buildings are used to account for various building characteristics in conformance with the building taxonomy represented in HAZUS software. The HAZUS damage functions are applied to model the vulnerability of various structural types of buildings. Finally, the 50-year average mean loss and probabilistic loss for multiple values for probability of exceedance (2, 10, 20, and 40%) in 50 years are calculated, and the impact of different site condition databases on portfolio loss ratios is investigated for different structural types and heights of buildings. The results show the aggregated and geographical variation of loss and loss ratio throughout the region for various site conditions. Comparing the aggregated loss and loss ratio, while considering different databases, represents normalized differences that are limited to 6% for all building taxonomy with various heights and for all PoEs. However, site-specific loss ratio errors are significantly greater and in some cases are more than 20%.

One of the most difficult measurements to obtain with some level of accuracy is military readiness. While a multitude of factors exist that affect the ability of a unit to achieve success in mission, an accurate assessment of readiness is crucial and drives federal funding, defense policy, and deployment decisions. The current readiness metric for the U.S. Army statically assesses units on personnel, equipment on hand, equipment readiness/serviceability, and unit training proficiency using a weakest-link approach. This leads to reporting challenges and the tendency for commanders to subjectively upgrade their units’ assessments. This research proposes a metric that evaluates units with greater precision, flexibility, and robustness. By taking a decision analysis approach and using desirability functions, we are able to measure readiness based on a set of priorities, adapting for type of mission and unit. We test our metric using notional case studies and discuss extensions to other branches of the U.S. military and beyond.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of financial derivatives use on different exposures by comparing domestic firms, domestic multinational corporations (MNCs) and affiliates of foreign MNCs using a unique hand-collected data set of derivatives activities from 881 non-financial firms in eight East Asian countries over the period of 2003-2013. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors apply a two-stage approach. In the first stage, exposures to country risks, exchange rate and interest rate risks are estimated by using the market model. In the second stage, potential effects of firms’ derivatives use on multifaceted exposures are investigated by carrying out pooled regression model, and panel data regressions with random effect specifications. Findings The authors provide novel evidence that financial hedging of domestic firms and domestic MNCs reduces exposure to home country risks by 10.91 and 14.42 percent per 1 percent increase in notional derivative holdings, respectively, while affiliates of foreign MNCs fail to mitigate exposure to host country risks. The use of foreign currency and interest rate derivatives by domestic firms and domestic MNCs is effective in alleviating such firms’ exposures to varied degrees, while foreign affiliates’ use of derivatives can only lower interest rate exposures. Originality/value The primary theoretical contribution of this study is applying the market model to estimate exposures to home and host country risks. Regarding empirical contributions, the authors provide strong evidence that the use of financial derivatives by domestic firms and domestic MNCs significantly contributes to a decline in exposure to home country risks, and evidence the outperformance of domestic MNCs vis-à-vis domestic firms and foreign affiliates.

The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is one of the most widely used reference rates in the world of finance. Recent information indicates that nearly $200 trillion in contractual exposures reference USD LIBOR, of which roughly 95% is notional amount exposure under derivatives contracts, with approximately $8 trillion in exposure under corporate loans, consumer debt (primarily mortgages), floating-rate notes, and securitized products. As described in this article, the future of LIBOR is uncertain, and it may be phased out altogether in favor of new reference rates based on much more robust market data. This article describes the reasons for LIBOR’s potential demise, its replacement in the United States, and the impact on legacy assets and asset-backed securities (ABS) transactions in the United States.

The article deals with the phenomenon of gaps in legal terminology of the English language from the point of view of its Russian translation. The author analyzes the approaches to understanding lexical gaps. Examples of terminological gaps have been selected from English-English explanatory dictionaries. The selected terminological units have no equivalents in legal terminology of the Russian language. The study reveals the role of the commentary in rendering the meaning of terminological gaps. While considering the factors determining the existence of gaps, the author pays attention to both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. The research revealed a number of lexical gaps among the terms of international law. English-Russian termninological dictionaries in some cases contain the explanations of notional gaps. The use of transliteration is a signal of notional gap. The conclusion is made about the connection between the perception of gaps and the structures of one’s mother tongue. The social and historical character of the gaps under study has been proved to be well-grounded. The author emphasizes the importance of detailed definitions for adequate rendering of the gaps.

The paper discusses the contents of the notional and interpretative layers of the EUROINTEGRATION-concept. The lexicographic analysis backed by discursive interpretation helps to reveal convergences and divergences in the way European integration is conceptualized (understood and evaluated) in the European Union and Ukraine.

The aim of this paper is to analyse whether it would be possible to provide retirement and long-term care benefits using the same unfunded notional defined contribution scheme. We extend the multi-state overlapping generations model developed by Pla-Porcel et al. (2016) to include two new features: a long-term care benefit graded according to the annuitant's degree of disability and a minimum pension benefit for both contingencies. This brings the model closer to the reality of social insurance and enhances its political attractiveness. The paper contains a numerical example to show how the model functions and focuses especially on the mortality rates for dependent persons, the inception rates from a healthy state to (any) disability state, and the probabilities of transition between one health status and another. The numerical example proves that the model works reasonably well and makes it clear that it has practical implications that could be of interest to policy makers. It also provides us with some useful values regarding the impact of introducing a minimum pension on the system's financial equilibrium and reinforces the fact that biometric assumptions need to be estimated accurately before any decision is made to put the model into practice.