This paper describes general Bermudan options by interexercise time and time to final maturity; a surface with European, American and Infinite Bermudam options as limits, allowing Geske Johnson (1984) two point pricing to be extended to consider time to maturity. A solution is presented for Infinite Bermudans and two point pricing schemes are developed which converge to the Merton solution for long maturity American options and short interexercise Infinite Bermudans. The Geske Johnson extrapolation assumptions are examined and another class of series sum approximations is developed using many two point prices. Comparisons to benchmark methods are made.


-The optimum design of reinforced concrete (RC) members is subjected to several limitations resulting from safety measures and construction opportunities. In this study, the cost optimization of RC retaining walls was investigated for considering the restrictions on construction sites. Generally, the footing dimensions may not be applied if the distance were blocked with other structures. In that case, the optimum design may be different than the most economical results. In order to investigate this factor, the upper limit of the solution range is reduced under the optimum values of a problem case. The investigation was done for different cases with different limitations of the heel and toe of the retaining wall. In the optimum design, teaching-learning based optimization (TLBO) was employed and the retaining wall is both subjected to static and dynamic loads resulting from earthquakes. As a conclusion, the proposed method is effective to find the restricted optimum design of RC retaining walls. Key-Words: Restricted optimum design, teaching-learning based optimization, structural optimization, reinforced concrete, retaining walls.


This interview was conducted amidst a national debate over the role of the U.S. government's overseas broadcasting services, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America (VOA). Noting the absence of the Cold War environment in which the Radios were originally developed, opponents of the services argued that they were no longer necessary, particularly in Europe. The discussion became especially acute in Spring 1993 after the February release of a Clinton administration proposal to cut $644 million in broadcasting services from the federal budget. This step -- in line with an overall effort to streamline the budget -- would have included phasing out RFE/RL, as well as cutting the potential Radio Free Asia Service, which the Clinton administration previously had supported. Furthermore, the debate was not only about the existence of the Radios, but also about who should control them, as RFE/RL was financed through the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB), and VOA received its funding through the United States Information Agency (USIA). BIB was created in 1973 to finance RFE/RL Inc., which is privately incorporated. Until that time, those radio stations had received funding from the CIA. After 1973, they received their funds from BIB, to which Congress appropriates money on an annual basis. In June, President Clinton unveiled a compromise, in which he proposed to continue the "home-service" broadcasting of RFE/RL, VOA and Radio Marti[broadcast to Cuba], but to implement some changes in their structures and budgets. According to the plan, BIB would be abolished, and a new independent, bipartisan Board of Governors would oversee all U.S. international radio broadcasting. Members would be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. The board would be part of the USIA, and would oversee VOA, RFE/RL, Radio Marti and the proposed Radio Free Asia service. Further, Congress would appropriate funds for each radio-broadcasting program separately. The board members, however, would set the policy and control the budgets of the services. Engineering and technical functions would be consolidated under VOA, but the programming of each of the services would remain separate and distinct. Phasing out several language services from both VOA and RFE/RL is also part of the plan. The compromise, which is pending congressional approval, is designed to achieve savings of more than $250 million over the next four years. On 7 April 1993, the Journal of International Affairs conducted an interview with Malcom S. Forbes, Jr. It focused chiefly on his eight-year tenure as chairman of the Board of International Broadcasting in the context of this debate. Forbes was appointed to this position in 1985 by former President Ronald Reagan and reappointed to the post in 1990 by former President George Bush. With the entrance of the Clinton administration, Daniel Mica, former Democratic congressman from Florida, was appointed the chairman of BIB in April 1993. Journal: The rise in new technology has changed the face of the media industry. Information is accessed with more ease and in greater quantities than ever before. How has this new technology affected the way in which the mainstream media disseminate information to the public? Forbes: People have more sources of hard news. Organizations from Bloomberg [Business News] to CNN are providing information instantly and electronically. The growth of these services is causing newspapers and magazines to ask themselves: "What do we cover? We can't just report events, because everyone already has that information." Journalists have to take it one step further, do what any business does and figure out what the value-added is. That's why newspapers such as the New York Times no longer just report the news. They assume people already know it. That's why they're running more stories on social trends and more news analyses on the front page. …


related to the use of Fractional-order (FO)
differential equations in modeling and control. FO differential
equations are found to provide a more realistic, faithful, and
compact representations of many real world, natural and manmade
systems. FO controllers, on the other hand, have been able
to achieve a better closed-loop performance and robustness, than
their integer-order counterparts. In this paper, we provide a
systematic and rigorous time and frequency domain analysis of
linear FO systems. Various concepts like stability, step response,
frequency response are discussed in detail for a variety of linear FO systems. We also give the state space representations for these systems and comment on the controllability and observability. The exercise presented here conveys the fact that the time and frequency domain analysis of FO linear systems are very similar to that of the integer-order linear systems.


The last decade has seen the scope of digital library usage extend from data warehousing and other common library services to building quality collections of electronic resources and providing web-based information retrieval mechanisms for distributed learning. This is clear from the number of ongoing research initiatives aiming to provide dynamic learning environments. A major task in providing learning environments is to define a resource model (learning object). The flexibility of the learning object model determines the quality of the learning environment. Further, dynamic environments can be realized by changing the contents and structure of the learning object, i.e. make it mutable. Most existing models are immutable after creation and require the library to support operations that help in creating these environments. This leaves the learning object at the mercy of the parent library's functionality. This thesis work is an extension of an existing model and allows a learning object to function independent of the operational constraints of a digital library by equipping learning objects with software components called methods that influence their operation and structure even after being deployed. It provides a reference implementation of an aggregate, intelligent, self-sufficient, object-oriented, platformindependent learning object model, which is conformant to popular digital library standards. It also presents a Java-based development tool for creating and modifying smart objects. It is capable of performing content aggregation, metadata harvesting and user repository maintenance operations, in addition to supporting the addition/removal of methods to a smart object. The current smart object implementation and the development tool have been deployed successfully on two platforms (Windows and Linux) where their operation was found to be satisfactory.