Martingale Methods in Financial Modelling
This book provides a comprehensive, self-contained and up-to-date treatment of the main topics in the theory of option pricing. The first part of the text starts with discrete-time models of financial markets, including the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein binomial model. The passage from discrete- to continuous-time models, done in the Black-Scholes model setting, assumes familiarity with basic ideas and results from stochastic calculus. However, an Appendix containing all the necessary results is included. This model setting is later generalized to cover standard and exotic options involving several assets and/or currencies. An outline of the general theory of arbitrage pricing is presented. The second part of the text is devoted to the term structure modelling and the pricing of interest-rate derivatives. The main emphasis is on models that can be made consistent with market pricing practice.
Martens and Fishers (Martes) in human-altered environments : An international perspective
Examines the conditions where humans and martens are compatible and incompatible, and promotes land use practices that allow Martes to be representatively distributed and viable. All Martes have been documented to use forested habitats and 6 species (excluding the stone marten) are generally considered to require complex mid- to late-successional forests throughout much of their geographic ranges. All species in the genus require complex horizontal and vertical structure to provide escape cover protection from predators, habitat for their prey, access to food resources, and protection from the elements. Martens and the fisher have high metabolic rates, have large spatial requirements, have high surface area to volume ratios for animals that often inhabit high latitudes, and often require among the largest home range areas per unit body weight of any group of mammals. Resulting from these unique life history characteristics, this genus is particularly sensitive to human influences on their habitats, including habitat loss, stand-scale simplification of forest structure via some forms of logging, and landscape-scale effects of habitat fragmentation. Given their strong associations with structural complexity in forests, martens and the fisher are often considered as useful barometers of forest health and have been used as ecological indicators, flagship, and umbrella species in different parts of the world. Thus, efforts to successfully conserve and manage martens and fishers are associated with the ecological fates of other forest dependent species and can greatly influence ecosystem integrity within forests that are increasingly shared among wildlife and humans.We have made great strides in our fundamental understanding of how animals with these unique life history traits perceive and utilize habitats, respond to habitat change, and how their populations function and perform under different forms of human management and mismanagement.
Maritime Spatial Planning : past, present, future
This book is the first comprehensive overview of maritime spatial planning. Situated at the intersection between theory and practice, the volume draws together several strands of interdisciplinary research, reflecting on the history of MSP as well as examining current practice and looking towards the future. The authors and contributors examine MSP from disciplines as diverse as geography, urban planning, political science, natural science, sociology and education; reflecting the growing critical engagement with MSP in many academic fields. This innovative and pioneering volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of maritime spatial planning, as well as planners and practitioners.
Marine environment protection and biodiversity conservation : The application and future development of the IMOs particularly sensitive sea area concept
Despite the potential benefits that PSSA designation can deliver, recent practice both within the IMO and by individual member States, has considerably undermined confidence in this emerging concept. The focus of this book is on the events within the IMO that have led to this lack of confidence arising. In doing so, this book presents an examination of coastal State practice with the PSSA concept.
Manufacturing Systems : Theory and Practice
The book has six chapters that have been arranged according to the sequence used when creating and operating a manufacturing system. Thus, the subjects emphasised are: the decision framework for manufacturing, the manufacturing processes, the manufacturing equipment and machine tools, the design for manufacturing and the operation of manufacturing systems. The book attempts a compromise between theory and practice in all addressed manufacturing systems issues, covering a long spectrum of issues from traditional manufacturing processes to innovative technologies such as Virtual Reality, Nanotechnology and Rapid Prototyping.
Managing Innovation and Standards : A Case in the European Heating Industry
This book provides an in-depth study of the management of standards and regulation in sustainable and radical innovation development. It considers the case of micro Combined Heat and Power (mCHP) technology. The developers of this radical innovation in the European heating sector encountered major conflicts when attempting to create or adapt standards when bringing the technology to market. Utilising rich research data and interviews with key actors, the author uses this case to derive a grounded theory on the management of standards and regulation during an innovation process. The results also have important implications for innovators, which are reflected in clear advice for practice.
Managing Forest Ecosystems : The Challenge of Climate Change
With climate change now charging up the political agenda, there are three issues commonly making the headlines: carbon budgets, renewable energy, and the anticipated impacts of climate change. Equally important, though currently less well covered, is the issue how these effects might be mitigated. Given the significant role that forests play in the climate system – as sources, sinks, and through carbon trading – this book discusses the current scientific evidence on the relationships between climate, forest resources and forest management practices around the world. Drawing on expertise from forest scientists from several continents, the book presents both in depth analysis of the current knowledge, and a series of case studies which assess the biological and the economic impacts of climate change. It includes sections on forest responses to climate change, monitoring and modeling changes, economic and management implications, and carbon sequestration under specific management systems.
Low-Cost Approaches to Promote Physical and Mental Health : Theory, Research, and Practice
Most physical and mental health professionals will agree that their time, space, and funds are generally in short supply, even under optimal conditions. Their participants (clients or patients), too, will admit to similar deficits of time and patience, even with optimal motivation. Overburdened mental health facilities are trying to cope with limited budgets and overworked and underpaid personnel. Low-Cost Approaches to Promote Physical and Mental Health addresses both sides of this shortfall by offering either self-administered or easily administered verbal and non-verbal interventions designed to promote positive health behaviors while requiring little or no outside funding.
Lines of Inquiry in Mathematical Modelling Research in Education
The book addresses the “balancing act” between developing students’ modelling skills on the one hand, and using modelling to help them learn mathematics on the other, which arises from the integration of modelling into classrooms. In addition the book highlights professional learning and development for in-service teachers, particularly in systems where the introduction of modelling into curricula means reassessing how mathematics is taught.
Linear Models for Optimal Test Design
Begins with a reflection on the history of test design--the core activity of all educational and psychological testing. It then presents a standard language for modeling test design problems as instances of multi-objective constrained optimization. The main portion of the book discusses test design models for a large variety of problems from the daily practice of testing, and illustrates their use with the help of numerous empirical examples. The presentation includes models for the assembly of tests to an absolute or relative target for their information functions, classical test assembly, test equating problems, item matching, test splitting, simultaneous assembly of multiple tests, tests with item sets, multidimensional tests, and adaptive test assembly. Two separate chapters are devoted to the questions of how to design item banks for optimal support of programs with fixed and adaptive tests. Linear Models for Optimal Test Design, which does not require any specific mathematical background, has been written to be a helpful resource on the desk of any test specialist.
Lifelong Learning - Signs, Discourses, Practices
This text explores the different ways in which the various social practices in which people participate becomes signed as learning, how and why that occurs and with what consequences. It takes seriously the linguistic turn in social theory to draw upon semiotics and poststructuralism through which to explore the significance of lifelong learning as an emerging discourse in education. The text explores the different ways in which learning conveys meaning and is given meaning. Given this, lifelong learning therefore is a way, and a significant way, in which learning is fashioned. The text then explores the notion that, if learning is lifelong and lifewide, what precisely is learning as distinct from other social practices and how those practices are given meaning as learning.
Life Skills Education for Youth : Critical Perspectives
This book critically reviews a diverse body of scholarship and practice that informs the conceptualization, curriculum, teaching and measurement of life skills in education settings around the world. It discusses life skills as they are implemented in schools and non-formal education, providing both qualitative and quantitative evidence of when, with whom, and how life skills do or do not impact young women’s and men’s lives in various contexts. Specifically, it examines the nature and importance of life skills, and how they are taught.
Lie Algebras and Applications
This book, designed for advanced graduate students and post-graduate researchers, provides an introduction to Lie algebras and some of their applications to the spectroscopy of molecules, atoms, nuclei and hadrons. In the first part, a concise exposition is given of the basic concepts of Lie algebras, their representations and their invariants. The second part contains a description of how Lie algebras are used in practice in the treatment of bosonic and fermionic systems. Physical applications considered include rotations and vibrations of molecules (vibron model), collective modes in nuclei (interacting boson model), the atomic shell model, the nuclear shell model, and the quark model of hadrons. One of the key concepts in the application of Lie algebraic methods in physics, that of spectrum generating algebras and their associated dynamic symmetries, is also discussed. The book contains many examples that help to elucidate the abstract algebraic definitions. It provides a summary of many formulas of practical interest, such as the eigenvalues of Casimir operators and the dimensions of the representations of all classical Lie algebras.
Lidar : Range-Resolved Optical Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere
Written by leading experts in optical radar, or lidar, this book brings all the recent practices up-to-date and covers a multitude of applications, from atmospheric sciences to environmental protection. Its broad cross-disciplinary scope should appeal to both the experienced scientist and the novice in the field. The Foreword is by one of the early pioneers in the area, Herbert Walther.
Lenses and Waves : Christiaan Huygens and the Mathematical Science of Optics in the Seventeenth Century
this book offers the first account of the development of Huygens’ mathematical analysis of lenses and telescopes and its significance for the origin of the wave theory of light. As Huygens applied his mathematical proficiency to practical issues pertaining to telescopes – including trying to design a perfect telescope by means of mathematical theory – his dioptrics is significant for our understanding of seventeenth-century relations between theory and practice. With this full account of Huygens’ optics, this book sheds new light on the history of seventeenth-century optics and the rise of the new mathematical sciences, as well as Huygens’ oeuvre as a whole. Students of the history of optics, of early mathematical physics, and the Scientific Revolution, will find this book enlightening.
Learning through Community : Exploring Participatory Practices
A collection of case studies that explore the learning that people do through community engagement. Developed within a network of Canadian researchers and their community partners, it explores learning that is organized by the learners themselves, collectively, rather than as individuals. Reflecting the contributors’ political priorities, the volume begins with groups that are highly marginalized in our society: immigrant women, sex trade workers, senior citizens, garment workers, women doing community economic development, and people who identify with disability and anti-poverty movements.
Leadership and Business Ethics ; 1st ed.
Seeks to contribute to a more adequate coalescence of ethics and business with innovative models for such coalescence, for the mutual benefit of business ethicists, professors teaching in the undergraduate and MBA classroom, corporate executives, and businesspeople. While each of the contributions in this collection is distinct, each invites us to examine our own mind sets about corporate responsibility and the future of free enterprise as Western multinational corporations expand into a global economy. This collection of essays helps to refocus our conceptual work about commerce and business practices in this new century of global enterprise.
Le raisonnement bayésien : Modélisation et inférence = Bayesian reasoning : Modeling and inference
Describes in detail the practice of the Bayesian statistical approach using many examples chosen for their educational interest. The first part gives the general principles of statistical modeling making it possible to supervise but also to come to the aid of the imagination of the apprentice modeler. By examining examples of increasing difficulty, the reader forges the keys to building their own model. The second part presents the most useful calculation algorithms for estimating the unknowns of the model. Each inference method is presented and illustrated by numerous application cases.
Landscapes Under Pressure : Theory and Practice of Cultural Heritage Research and Preservation
This book investigates the newly emerging scope of interests and project agendas to investigate and preserve cultural landscapes. It presents the historic, archaeological, ethnographic, and environmental traditions of cultural landscape study and the attempts to reconstruct and analyze the complex processes of cultural changes through prehistoric and historic times.The "guiding light" of the book is that the fullest understanding of a cultural landscape will materialize through interdisciplinary cooperation, which should involve an ecological approach with historical ecology as the guiding tool, applied archaeology, and environmental planning.
Knowledge Representation Techniques : A Rough Set Approach
The basis for the material in this book centers around a long term research project with autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle systems. One of the main research topics in the project is knowledge representation and reasoning. The focus of the research has been on the development of tractable combinations of approximate and nonmonotonic reasoning systems. The techniques developed are based on intuitions from rough set theory. Efforts have been made to take theory into practice by instantiating research results in the context of traditional relational database or deductive database systems.



















