and the participants of the Stanford GSB Joint Accounting/Finance student seminar for their helpful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are my own.

When a dataset involves multiple classes, there is often a need to express the key contrasting features among these classes in humanly understandable terms, that is, to pro"le the classes. Commonly, one class is contrasted from the rest by aggregating the latter into a pseudo-class; alternatively, classes are treated separately without coordinating their pro"les with those of the other classes....

Integrated circuits (ICs) are at the heart of modern electronics, which rely heavily on the state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing technology. The key to pushing forward semiconductor technology is IC feature-size miniaturization. However, this brings ever-increasing design complexities and manufacturing challenges to the $350 billion semiconductor industry. The manufacturing of two-dimen...

The x-ray emission with the single crystal of lithium niobate (LiNbO3) or lithium tantalite (LiTaO3) by thermal changes in a vacuum system is closely concerned with the electronic state of each crystal. Therefore, lithium Kedge x-ray absorption near edge structures (XANES) spectra of these materials were measured in the region from 50 eV to 90 eV by means of total electron yield method (T.E.Y.)...

Microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) provide a high-yield method for producing hydrogen from renewable biomass. One challenge for commercialization of the technology is a lowcost and highly efficient cathode. Stainless steel (SS) is very inexpensive, and cathodes made of this material with high specific surface areas can achieve performance similar to carbon cathodes containing a platinum cataly...

A distinct feature of an adaptive e-learning hypermedia system (AEHS) is the learner model it employs, that is, a representation of information about an individual learner. Learner modeling and adaptation are strongly correlated, in the sense that the amount and nature of the information represented in the learner model depend largely on the kind of adaptation effect that the system has to deli...

This article outlines a hybrid method, incorporating multiple techniques into an evaluation process, in order to select competitive suppliers in a supply chain. It enables a purchaser to do single sourcing and multiple sourcing by calculating a combined supplier score (CSS), which accounts for both qualitative and quantitative factors that impact on supply chain performance. By performing a clu...

A distinguishing feature of the period preceding the 2007/08 financial crisis was the sizeable increase in private sector debt observed across many countries. A key component of household liabilities is mortgage debt and with many countries experiencing persistent increases in house prices from the mid-1990s onwards, a marked increase in this aspect of household leverage was observed. While agg...

In this paper we address the problem of motivating students to improve their programming practices through the development of a specific tool that allows them to compare the efficiency and structure of the codes they generate against those of other students or the references provided by the teacher. This tool has been created in order to serve as a competitive incentive or game that forces the ...