Now that you have evaluated the marketing environment and established some marketing goals for MM, it is time to get started with the new product plan. The first step is to research the mobile phone market. Without knowing who is buying phones in certain market segments, Michelle won’t know how to market MM’s new product. She needs your help to determine who the market is for the new product.

Michelle knows that MM needs to determine who the target customer is for the new product. She knows that marketing research needs to be done as part of this market segmentation and product development processes, but she is not well-acquainted with some of the details that are involved in the processes. She has stopped by your office to ask some questions.

“Thanks for canceling your other meeting this afternoon,” she says.“No problem,” you say. “I rescheduled my meeting with multimedia; it actually works out better for them, too.”
“I’ve heard about quantitative and qualitative research, but I’m not sure I really understand the difference between the two,” she begins. “I’m sure there are advantages and disadvantages to each of them, but without knowing, I’m not sure which type of research we need to conduct. What do you think?”
Before you can respond, Michelle’s cell phone vibrates.
“Excuse me, I have to take this,” she says.
Michelle takes her call and then stands up.
“Well, I’m sorry to do this, but I have an emergency that I have to deal with right now,” she says. “Would you do me a favor? Send me a memo that explains the two types of research and include brief explanations about the advantages and disadvantages of each as related to how they could be used by MM. I’d like to be able to speak intelligibly to this at the next board meeting.”
“Sure,” you respond, thinking that this will make for a pretty lengthy e-mail. “I’ll also include how each method can help us define our target market. Will that help?”
“Yes, great idea,” she replies.
“Ok! I’ll get that to you by close of business tomorrow,” you say

Q.1.   Compare the relative liquidity characteristics of direct versus indirect investment in real estate. Discuss three factors that affect the liquidity of both forms of investment.

Q.2. Ian Parkinson, as chief pension officer of a large defined-benefit plan, is considering presenting a recommendation that the pension plan make its first investments in three different types of hedge funds: 1) market neutral, 2) convertible arbitrage, and 3) global macro.

An analyst who works for Parkinson comes by with the table given below and makes the following comment: “The returns for global macro are very impressive. In fact, there are other strategies that have significantly outperformed the S&P 500, equity market-neutral, and convertible arbitrage over the past 15 years. I think that, based on their returns, we should focus specifically on the other strategies.”

A. Describe the three alternative strategies that Parkinson is considering, and evaluate  each with respect to their level of market risk and credit risk. Interpret their correlations with the S&P 500 and the Lehman Government/Corporate Bond indices as presented in the table above.

1. Critique the analyst’s statement.

Q.3. Discuss the construction and interpretation of benchmarks, including biases, in alternative investment groups.

Q.4. Roger Guidry, CIO of a university endowment fund, is reviewing investment data related to the endowment’s investment in energy commodities.

1. Calculate the roll yield for Year 1.
   B. Calculate the collateral yield for Year 2.

Guidry notes that the collateral yield is positive in both scenarios, although the GSCI total annual return for Year 2 is -30.5 percent. He asks for an explanation with regard to the positive collateral yield.

1. Justify the positive collateral yield by discussing the concepts of margin and implied yield.

A consultant tells Guidry: “Commodities exhibit positive event risk.”

1. Justify the consultant’s statement by discussing the relationship between commodity prices and event risk.

• Prepare one Word document for all questions

Essay part (10 points)

Develop a flow chart for the following steps.  In other words, link the following steps logically based on business processes, assuming the company does not have any inventory right now. You may use the same words several times. Also, you may connect one concept to several concepts.

Availability Check, Completion Confirmation, Demand Management, Goods Issue,

Goods Receipt, History of sales, Invoice Receipt, Invoice, MRP, Order Settlement,

Outbound Delivery, Packing, Payment Receipt, Payment, Picking, Planned Order,

Production Order, Purchase Order, Purchase Requisition, Sales Order, SOP, Transportation

Hands-on part (40 points)

Today, your customer, Windy City Bikes in Chicago, made an order to purchase 10 Deluxe Touring Bikes (Silver) (DXTR2078). It should be delivered within 2 weeks. After getting the sales order, you realized that there is no stock for the Deluxe Touring Bike (Silver). (Q1. Capture the screen in Figure 1) So, you contacted the vendor, Dallas Bikes Basics, and ordered only the materials (Qty: 500) that you have less than 50 stocks. If you have more than 50 stocks, you should not order the materials.  (Q2. Which materials did you order? Q3. Show the inventory level of the materials that you ordered. Capture the screen in Figure 2) As soon as they are delivered, you paid to the vendor. (Q4. Capture the screen in Figure 3). Now you produce 20 Deluxe Touring Bikes (Silver) (DXTR2078). (Q5. Capture the screen in Figure 4) Among 20 bikes, you delivered 10 to the customers. (Q6. Capture the screen in Figure 5) Now, you need to capture the screen to show how much you got revenue from the customer. (Q7. Capture the screen in Figure 6). Lastly, capture the document flow from Sales and Distribution (Q8. Figure 7)

Use the following information

• Use your last 3-digit of your user ID for 078. (I used 070 in the example)
• Company Code: US00
• Plant: DL00
• Purchasing Organization: US00
• Purchasing Group: N00
• Shipping point: DL00
• Planned Order Profile: LA
• Sales Order Type: OR
• Sales Organization: UE00
• Distribution Channel: WH
• Division: BI
• Reference: 2078
• Required delivery date: 2 weeks from today
• PO Number: 2078
• If you need further information, you may use the information in the assignment hands-out.

Deliverables.  Each question has 5 points.  Please replace my figures with your figures when you answer.

Q1. Figure 1.

Q2. List of materials you ordered.

Q3 – Figure 2.

Q4 – Figure 3.

Q5 – Figure 4.

Q6 – Figure 5.

Q7 – Figure 6.

Q8 – Figure 7.

Instructions – PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY

• This assignment is an individual
• The Assignment must be submitted only in WORD format via allocated folder on Blackboard.
• Assignments submitted through email will not be accepted.
• Students are advised to make their work clear and well presented. This also includes filling your information on the cover page.
• Students must mention question number clearly in their answer.
• Late submitted assignments will NOT be entertained.
• Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.
• All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) No pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism).

Submissions without this cover page will NOT be accepted.

Assignment Questions

Q1:  Why do most investors prefer to hold a diversified portfolio of securities as opposed to placing all of their wealth in a single asset?

1. Why do most investors hold diversified portfolios?

Investors hold diversified portfolios in order to reduce risk, to lower the variance of the

Portfolio. Variance is considered a measure of risk of the portfolio and is one of the many

financial tools used. A diversified portfolio should accomplish this because the returns for the

alternative  assets  should  not   be  correlated   so  the   variance   of   the   total  portfolio   will  be

generally reduced.

2. W
3. Why do most investors hold diversified portfolios?

Investors hold diversified portfolios in order to reduce risk, to lower the variance of the

Portfolio. Variance is considered a measure of risk of the portfolio and is one of the many

financial tools used. A diversified portfolio should accomplish this because the returns for the

alternative  assets  should  not   be  correlated   so  the   variance   of   the   total  portfolio   will  be

generally reduced.

Q2: Given the following financial data, compute:

1. Return on equity.
2. Quick ratio.
3. Long-term debt to equity.
4. Fixed-charge coverage.

Q3: Explain the benefits derived from investing in deep discount bonds.

Q4: Explain how to manage bond portfolios and what are the portfolio management strategies.

. Pythagoreans, what is their dogma, and how does it relate to Zeno’s paradox; what is the Pythagorean Theorem, and what are its implications

2. Plato, what is the Simile of the divided line, how to show Plato’s theory of knowledge, ontology, ethics, psychology, and then in relation to other Platonic dialogues, and then what is the trichotomy of the soul that Plato talks about, and what is the relationship with the three classes of people in the city-state, and then finally what Plato says about whether this requirement of reaching the highest state excludes The third part is the pluralists.

3. pluralists, the question is about Anaxagoras, asking what his main dogma is, what the Mind is, and what Plato’s response to it is.

Change involves making something different. When change is an intentional, goal-oriented activity it is called planned change. There are two goals of planned change: a) Improve the ability of the organization to adapt to changes in its environment, and b) Change employee behavior.

For this paper, find a recent news story in which you believe change (as describe above) is needed in an organization. Be sure to include:

1. A brief introductory paragraph or two that explains the situation, and what will follow in your paper.
2. How you would define the culture of the organization in question.
3. An explanation of a change theory you would employ to prompt change, as well as the desired change you are seeking.
4. A critique of the theory you selected.
5. How the change theory can be applied to a situation.
6. A brief concluding paragraph that summarizes the key points.

Your paper needs to be 12 pages (double-spaced, plus front and back matter), APA style, with at least 8 scholarly sources

Genomic precision medicine is the use of specific human genetic variant data in order to drive patient-centered research, treatment, and wellness.  It is one of the newest fields of medicine, and significant knowledge disparities exist between scientific researchers who conduct genomic research and clinicians who treat patients.  These disparities are typically borne out in the lack of terminology that intersects genomics with the clinic (although that situation is improving).

Introduction to the code sets

• SNOMED CT is a clinical coding system used for research (and in some areas) billing
• ICD-10-CM is a clinical coding system used chiefly for epidemiology and billing
• NCBI MedGen (short for “Medical Genetics”) is a precision medicine-oriented phenotypic meta-terminology that connects to ClinVar (see below)
• NCBI ClinVar (ClinVar – Variant – MPM Full Subset in Symedical®) is a biological terminology that contains over 1 million genetic variants.  Based on assessment of disease correlation, variants are often assigned associated MedGen terms.

Steps

Part A: Clinical Term Search

1. Navigate to Viewpoint: https://edu.symedical.com/SymedicalIUSOICViewpoint
2. Search for “Non-small cell lung cancer” using the code set SNOMED CT US Edition
3. Click the top search result and note the relationships (Relationships pane) and term mappings (Mappings pane – Make sure to view both Inbound and Outbound tabs)
4. Make a screenshot of the relationship/mapping results and paste it in to your answer document (5 points)
5. Create a new browser window, navigate to Viewpoint, and search for “Non-small cell lung cancer” using the code set NCBI – MedGen
6. Click one of the search results and note the relationships (Relationships pane)
7. If you see no relationships, go back and select another MedGen term from the search results, and repeat steps A5-A6.

Part B: Genetic Term Search

1. Create a second new browser window, navigate to Viewpoint, and search for the word “mutation” using the code set SNOMED CT US Edition
2. Click any term that lists the name of a gene (capital letters + sometimes numbers) followed by “mutation”
3. Note the relationships (Relationships pane)
4. Make a screenshot of the relationship results and paste it in to your answer document (5 points)
5. Create a third new browser window, Search the code set ClinVar for a precise variant related to the gene involved in B2 (these always start with “nm”).  For example, if your term for B2 was “FGFBR2 Mutation Negative”, search ClinVar for “nm fgfbr2”.
6. Select a term that appears in the search results
7. Note the relationships (Relationships pane)

Part C: Analysis

1. First, include screenshots from A4 and B4 above (5 + 5 = 10 points)
2. Compare the relationships and mappings in A3 to the relationships found in A6.  Answer the following:
   1. Compare and contrast the types of terms seen in the relations from A3 vs. those from A6. (10 points)
   2. What does the degree of overlap (or lack thereof) mean for a patient with the disorder that you searched for? (10 points)
3. List the code and term (term description) for the SNOMED term you chose in B2
4. Compare the relationships in B3 to the relationships in B6.  Answer the following:
   1. Compare and contrast the types of terms seen in the relations from B3 vs. those from B6. (10 points)
   2. What do the relationships in B6 mean for a person with the involved ClinVar variant?  On the other hand, if there are no relationships noted, comment on what the consequences might be.  (There are multiple appropriate answers for this.) (10 points)
5. For C2A, C2B, C4A, and C4B, feel free to bring in additional references, which must be cited appropriately

B581/481 Rubric

OVERVIEW

You’ve chosen your project, so you’re ready to communicate with those “customer(s)” and stakeholders who care most about the process and outcome of the project. In this activity, imagine you’ve just finished up an Agreement of Work meeting with your customer(s) where you defined the scope of the project and agreed on the project objectives. Now, you need to write a follow-up email to go over what discussed and agreed upon in the meeting. You will write a professional email to the customer(s) of your project, recapping the goals and objectives, tentative timeline, and potential resources necessary to complete the project. Clear, consistent communication is one of the keys to project management success.

INSTRUCTIONS

Before beginning this activity, make sure you have:

• Read the “All Assignments Overview” Preparation section in Week 1.
• Identified a project to manage throughout this course. If you chose option (6), to manage your own project, remember to get approval from your instructor via email.
• Downloaded the Week 3 Activity: Projects Goals and Objectives template [.DOCX].

For this activity, complete the following:

• In the Week 3 Activity template, follow the detailed instructions on page 1.
• Use the provided sample email on page 2 in the template as a guide to write an email to your customer(s) on page 3, recapping your Agreement of Work meeting and suggesting a summary of:
  • the goals and objectives of the project.
  • a tentative deadline for the project.
  • an initial idea of what resources will be needed to successfully complete the project.
• In your email, include and highlight the seven key terms from the textbook provided on the template, using each term correctly and in a professional context.

Submit your activity by uploading the completed template document to Blackboard in Week 3.

RESOURCES

Cite the textbook as your source on the “Sources” page of the template. Format your citation according to the Strayer Writing Standards (SWS). Please take a moment to review the SWS documentation for details.

Introduction

The memory hierarchy of a given microprocessor typically is composed of at least three levels of cache between the CPU and main memory.  It is possible for a fourth level to be present in the form of eDRAM in some CPUs.  In multicore processors, each core will have its own level 1 and level 2, with level 3 shared among all the cores.  The hierarchy of the memory system is designed to provide seamless transfer of data from main memory to the CPU; it is not usually possible to determine by observation how many levels of cache a system has.

The goal of this assignment is to attempt to expose the memory hierarchy through programming. A program, written in C, is provided that exercises access through all levels of the memory hierarchy to RAM and collects performance information in the form of memory access times.  This information may provide a hint as to the structure of the memory hierarchy of the system being tested.

Background

The basis for this assignment comes from Case Study 2 described on pages 150 – 153 in the text book.  A program is provided that is designed to generate data that will allow timing various accesses to the memory hierarchy.  This program, which can be downloaded from Blackboard, is written in C.  A compiled version in the form of an executable for Windows systems is also provided.  For non-Windows systems, the source program should be compiled using a C compiler for the target system.

Additional documentation about the process is provided as an appendix to this assignment.

Notes About the Program

There are two important components embedded in the program.  The first is the ability to access the system clock to collect timing information of memory accesses.  Most programming languages provide a programming interface for this purpose in the form of a function or method.  The time.h header file provides this function in C and allows the capture of timing values in nanoseconds.

The second component is an appropriate data structure that can be accessed by dynamically varying the stride of the memory access.  The memory access stride is defined as the distance between addresses between two successive memory accesses and is generally a power of 2.  For this assignment, the simplest data structure for our purpose is a two-dimensional array whose size must be declared large enough to encompass the largest potential cache size.  The program declares a 4096 x 4096 maximum cache size which is equivalent to 16 mebibytes.

Program Design

The provided program is written in C because it compiles directly to native executable files and will typically provide more accurate results on most operating systems.  You may entertain the option of adapting the sample program to another language.  Java programs compile to bytecode which are interpreted by the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and this additional overhead of execution may affect the timings that are collected.  Python is similar to Java in that it is an interpreted language but it is possible to produce an executable file using an add-on utility (your option).  If you wish, you may try to rewrite the program in a language that is most convenient for you.

The output of the program is directed to a text file so you have a record of the timing information your program generates.  The output is also printed on the monitor so that you can follow the program’s execution.  The format of the output is the size of the cache, the stride and the time for the read/write of the array on each cache size/stride increment.  The program is set up to output the data into a comma separated text file where each row represents a cache size, each column a stride value.  This format makes it possible to import the data into Excel so that the analysis part of this assignment somewhat easier.

Program Structure

There are two nested loops: the outer loop increments through the cache sizes (from 1K – 16M) and the inner loop increments through the strides for each cache size (1 – cache size/2).  Within the inner loop are two do loops. The first performs repeated read/writes to the matrix.  The second repeats the loop without access to the matrix to capture the overhead of the loop.  The difference between the two times provides the data access times which are averaged over the number of accesses per stride. This is represented by the variable loadtime in the program.

This program takes a long time to run because it constantly loops on each cache size and stride for 20 seconds.  Even on a fast computer, the run time can be more than 1.5 hours.  So, you need to allow enough time for the program to complete execution.

Observations and Analysis (What To Do For This Assignment)

Run the program on a computer system to generate a complete sequence of memory access timings. Once the program has completed, you will need to analyze the results. Using Excel or a comparable spreadsheet, you can import your data and then create graphs to show your data.  A sample graph, as presented in the textbook on page 152, is shown below.  You can use the graph you create using your own results data as a reference for your analysis and conclusions. Review the results and see if you can use the results to answer the following questions:

1. At what cache size and stride level do significant changes in access times occur?
2. Do these timing changes correlate to typical cache sizes or changes in stride?
3. Is it possible to determine the cache sizes of the different levels based on the produced data?
4. What in your data doesn’t make sense? What questions arise from this data?

Compare your data against the actual cache information for the system.  For Windows-based systems, there is a freeware product called CPU-Z which will report detailed CPU information including cache.  On Unix & Linux systems, /prod/cpuinfo or lspci will provide similar information. MacCPUID is a tool used for displaying detailed information about the microprocessor in a Mac computer.  Both CPU-Z and MacCPUID are free and can be downloaded from the Internet.  You may also refer to the specifications for the processor which are published online.

If time allows, run the program on a second, different system and compare the results.  Are they similar or different?  How are they different?

What to submit on Blackboard?

1. A spreadsheet file where you consolidated and analyzed your results
2. A summary of your observations (create a separate tab in the spreadsheet)
3. Additional comments about your experience with this assignment (challenges, difficulties, surprises encountered, etc.) on the same page as your summary

Note:  due to many potential factors that could influence the outcome of your work on this assignment, there is no right vs. wrong solution.  Grading will be based on the observed level of effort presented through your analysis and documented results.  Your analysis should not just be a reiteration of the results, but should reflect your interpretation of the results, as well as posing any questions you formed in viewing the results.

Example graph from textbook showing program results:

Assignment Addendum

Cache Access Measurement Process Summary

Most contemporary processors today contain multilevel cache memory as part of the memory hierarchy.  Each level of cache can be characterized by the following parameters:

Size:                                        typically in the Kibibyte or Mebibyte range

Block size (a.k.a. line size):     the number of bytes contained in a block

Associativity:                          the number of sets contained in a cache location

Let D = size, b = block size and a = associativity. The number of sets in a cache is defined as D / ab. So if a cache were 64 KB with a block size of 64 bytes and an associativity of 2, the number of sets would be 64K / (64*2) = 512.

The program that you are using for this assignment is supposed to exercise the memory hierarchy by repeatedly accessing a data structure in memory and measuring the time associated with the access.  We stated that a simple two-dimensional array would suffice as the test data as long as its size was declared larger than the largest cache size in the system.  An appropriate upper limit would be 16 Mbytes as most caches are smaller than this size.  The program logic should vary the array size from some minimum value, e.g. 1 Kbyte, to the maximum and for each array size vary the indexing of the array using a stride value in the range 1 to N/2 where N is the size of the array.  Let s represent the stride.

Depending on the magnitudes of N and s, with respect to the size of the cache (D), the block size (b) and the associativity (a), there are four possible categories of operations.  Each of these categories are characterized by the rate at which misses occur in the cache.  The following table summarizes these categories.

T is access time and M is the miss penalty representing the time that it takes to read the data from the next lower cache or RAM and resume execution.

Discussion

Category 1:  N £ D

The complete array fits into the cache and thus, independently of the stride (s), once the array is loaded for the first time, there are no more misses.  The execution time per iteration (T_no-miss) includes the time to read the element from the cache, compute its new value and store the result back into the cache.

Category 2: N > D and 1 £ s < b

The array is bigger than the cache and there are b/s consecutive accesses to the same cache line.  The first access to the block always generates a miss because every cache line is displaced before it can be reused in subsequent accesses.  This follows from N > D. Therefore, the execution time per iteration is T_no-miss + Ms/b.

Category 3: N > D and b £ s < N/a

The array is bigger than the cache and there is a cache miss every iteration as each element of the array maps to a different line.  Again, every cache line is displaced from the cache before it can be reused.  The execution time per iteration is T_no-miss + M.

Category 4:  N > D and N/a £ s < N/2

The array is bigger than the cache but the number of addresses mapping to a single set is less than the set associativity.  Thus, once the array is loaded, there are no more misses.  Even when the array has N elements, only N/s < a of these are touched by the program and all of them can fit in a single set.  This follows from the fact that N/a £ s.  The execution time per iteration is T_no-miss.

By making a plot of the values of execution time per iteration as a function of N and s, we might be able to identify where the program makes a transition from one category to the next.  And using this information we can estimate the values of the parameters that affect the performance of the cache, namely the cache size, block size and associativity.

Our approach is somewhat flawed in that we are neglecting the effect of virtual memory and the use of a TLB (translation-lookaside buffer).    For our purpose, we can neglect these issues and still gain an understanding of the operation and performance of the caches in a given system.