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Using Relative Valuation and Earnings Momentum to Measure the Returns to Stocks within Industry Groups
Christopher R. Cole, Samuel W. Orman
Several academic studies indicate that measures relative valuation (e.g. price to book, price to earnings, etc.) are useful predictors of stock returns. The working hypothesis is that stocks with lower price to book and price to earnings ratios are considered undervalued and have greater prospects for outperformance in the near term. Unfortunately, strongly undervalued stocks may be undervalued for a reason ' their earnings prospects are bleak! In this study are combine relative valuation measures with earnings momentum measures to determine stock performance. Using stocks within four industry groups, two each from consumer staples and consumer discretionary sectors, we use cross sectional regression analysis to test our hypothesis. The period of analysis is 2011-2012. The database finviz provides the data for the study.
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Using the SLOSH model to predict flood hazard areas along the New Jersey coast: both present and future risks as sea levels rise
Ellen L. Comes
The ability to predict where flooding will occur during different intensity hurricanes is an essential tool that could save many lives; such information would allow populations in the most critical areas to be evacuated first. During Hurricane Sandy, New Jersey was one of the hardest hit states as it was right in the storm's path as it made landfall. Should New Jersey find itself in the path of another hurricane in the future, the state would benefit to be aware of which coastal areas will flood and thus should evacuate first. Furthermore, as climate change affects the sea levels, an interesting predictor can be used to determine how the flooding of coastal New Jersey will change during hurricanes as sea levels rise. This information from analysis could be used for determining suitable locations for future development project sites and how many more people will be affected my flooding caused by hurricanes. The Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model was developed by the National Weather Service to estimate storm surge heights. The Delaware Bay SLOSH model basin will be overlaid over three coastal counties of southern New Jersey, including Cape May County. The flood risk areas are the areas that have an elevation below the theoretical surge height provided by the model. A variety of hurricane intensities will be used to highlight high-risk areas within the county. Once these high-risk areas are established, recent US census data will be used to analyze the socio-economic impacts of the flood areas to answer the question: how many people will be affected? Furthermore, by taking into consideration the rise in sea level that is likely to occur, how will these high-risk flood areas change and who will be affected?
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Veterans Voices: Veteran Success in Higher Education
Brittany Arthur
Veteran students' experiences within higher education are different compared to their nonveteran peers. Veterans enter institutions with experiences that are unique to their military background. The purpose of this study is to understand what veterans attribute to their success, or what they believe would help them in being successful. Findings provide insight into the experiences of veteran students at a Midwest religiously affiliated campus. The research question examined is what resources assist veterans to be successful in higher education. In regards to veteran's experiences, data analysis identified their interpretations of their experiences in college, their needs within higher education, and their suggestions for institutional change. The results of this research may help institutional administrators, specifically veteran affairs offices, in planning programs and services to help their veteran students be more successful.
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Visual Cues used for Relative Distance Judgements in 2D Displays
Laura A. Janosko
Our experiment will investigate distance judgments in computer generated 2D displays. Distance judgments in 2D images are made all the time in fields such as architecture and design, the medical field and satellite images. Our experiment will investigate the role of the depth cues shadows and texture. A 2D display of a desktop with between 5 to 8 objects will be presented to participants. Each scene will have two conditions: high quality (simulations of objects with correct texture and shadow information) and low quality (objects have incorrect texture information and no shadows). Unit-less relative distance judgments will be made between objects to determine if the visual cues texture and shadow information aid in spatial perception. An eye tracker will be used to determine on which visual cues participants rely. Results will provide information about how shadow and texture information in 2D displays are used in spatial perception. Our hypothesis is that participants will be more accurate in high quality conditions. We also expect participants to focus on shadow and texture information in the high quality condition. In contrast, participants will use object geometry to judge distances in the low quality conditions.
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Warm-Ups to Business Suits: Identity development of female student-athletes at the University of Dayton
Ann T. Burkhardt
This study strived to determine the impact of being an intercollegiate female student-athlete had on females' ability to develop an identity and internal voice. In order to determine how females integrated their athletic experiences with their sense of self, intercollegiate female student-athletes were asked a series of questions about how their college experiences in general as well as how their academic experiences had affected them. The proposition was that female student-athletes have a challenging time moving to a place where they can listen to their internal voices because the college athletic system is designed in a way where this group is consistently responding to a variety of external authoritative voices during their college experiences such as coaches, advisors, and trainers. Furthermore, previous research suggested that student-athletes who had a stronger manifestation of their student-athlete identity had a more challenging time determining a future path if it is not connected to athletics. Results suggested that the majority of female student athletes experienced a substantive influence on their identity from external authorities and the regimented lifestyle. The choices each student makes in how to handle this pressure determine how the athlete facilitates growth or continues to listen to authority rather than an internal sense of self. Many professionals in the field of higher education would be interested in learning the results of this study including, but not limited to: athletic academic advisors, learning specialists, coaches, career advisors and others. This information may assists higher education professionals to recognize the need to emphasize greater self-reliance in student decision making processes in terms of developing personal identity.
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Water Body Segmentation in Aerial Imagery
Fatema A. Albalooshi, Alex Mathew
Image segmentation is a very mature field that is used in several applications such as medical imaging, machine vision, object detection, object recognition, traffic control systems, and many more. Several general-purpose algorithms and techniques have been developed for image segmentation and fast implementations and libraries are available. Water body segmentation in aerial imagery is a harder problem as the properties of water, such as reflectivity varies with several environmental factors. For instance, surface brightness changes with incident light according to time of the day, haze and cloud, angle of capture, and specular reflectivity dictated by Fresnel equations. In addition, the color of water can vary depending on the presence of micro-organisms and size of water body area. Over the past decade, a significant amount of research has been conducted to extract the water body information from various satellite images. The objective of this research is to segment out water bodies to narrow down the search regions for oil leak detection. Color, texture and gradient features are used to extract water body region. The histogram of hue, saturation, and value,( H , S and V) are concatenated together to form a 'color feature vector'. These features are used to train a Support Vector Machine(SVM) classifier. Each pixel is then classified as water or non-water based on the histogram of pixels in a 3 x 3 neighborhood around it. The location of camera, time of capture, presence or absence of sunlight, and depth of water body are challenges that have been analyzed and discussed. We have also given a comparison with other well known segmentation methods such as K means clustering, mean shift clustering, and graph cut. Important factors to be taken into consideration for future research work are also identified and discussed.
The Brother Joseph W. Stander Symposium recognizes and celebrates academic excellence in undergraduate and graduate education. This annual event provides an opportunity for students from all disciplines to showcase their intellectual and artistic accomplishments. The Stander Symposium represents the Marianist tradition of education through community and is the principal campus-wide event in which faculty and students actualize our mission to be a "community of learners." This collection contains a sampling of the posters presented during the symposium in 2013.
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