The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion pictures. The Academy's corporate management and general policies are overseen by a board of governors, which includes representatives from each of the craft branches; the roster of the Academy's membership is a "closely guarded secret", though as of December 2017, the organization was estimated to consist of around 7,258 motion picture professionals. While the great majority of its members are based in the United States, membership is open to qualified filmmakers around the world; the Academy is known around the world for its annual Academy Awards and popularly known as "The Oscars". In addition, the Academy holds the Governors Awards annually for lifetime achievement in film; the Academy plans to open the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles in 2020. The notion of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences began with Louis B.

Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He said he wanted to create an organization that would mediate labor disputes without unions and improve the industry's image, he met with actor Conrad Nagel, director Fred Niblo, the head of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, Fred Beetson to discuss these matters. The idea of this elite club having an annual banquet was discussed, but no mention of awards at that time, they established that membership into the organization would only be open to people involved in one of the five branches of the industry: actors, writers and producers. After their brief meeting, Mayer gathered up a group of thirty-six people involved in the film industry and invited them to a formal banquet at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on January 11, 1927; that evening Mayer presented to those guests what he called the International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Everyone in the room that evening became a founder of the Academy. Between that evening and when the official Articles of Incorporation for the organization were filed on May 4, 1927, the "International" was dropped from the name, becoming the "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences".

Several organizational meetings were held prior to the first official meeting held on May 6, 1927. Their first organizational meeting was held on May 11 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. At that meeting Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was elected as the first president of the Academy, while Fred Niblo was the first vice-president, their first roster, composed of 230 members, was printed. That night, the Academy bestowed its first honorary membership, to Thomas Edison; the Academy was broken down into five main groups, or branches, although this number of branches has grown over the years. The original five were: Producers, Directors and Technicians; the initial concerns of the group had to do with labor." However, as time went on, the organization moved "further away from involvement in labor-management arbitrations and negotiations." One of several committees formed in those initial days was for "Awards of Merit," but it was not until May 1928 that the committee began to have serious discussions about the structure of the awards and the presentation ceremony.

By July 1928 the board of directors had approved a list of 12 awards to be presented. During July the voting system for the Awards was established, the nomination and selection process began; this "award of merit for distinctive achievement" is. The initial location of the organization was 6912 Hollywood Boulevard. In November 1927, the Academy moved to the Roosevelt Hotel at 7010 Hollywood Boulevard, the month the Academy's library began compiling a complete collection of books and periodicals dealing with the industry from around the world. In May 1928, the Academy authorized the construction of a state of the art screening room, to be located in the Club lounge of the hotel; the screening room was not completed until April 1929. With the publication of Report on Incandescent Illumination in 1928, the Academy began a long history of publishing books to assist its members. Another early initiative concerned training Army Signal Corps officers. In 1929, Academy members in a joint venture with the University of Southern California created America's first film school to further the art and science of moving pictures.

The school's founding faculty included Fairbanks, D. W. Griffith, William C. deMille, Ernst Lubitsch, Irving Thalberg, Darryl F. Zanuck.1930 saw another move, to 7046 Hollywood Boulevard, in order to accommodate the enlarging staff, by December of that year the library was acknowledged as "having one of the most complete collections of information on the motion picture industry anywhere in existence." They would remain at that location until 1935, when further growth would cause them to move once again. This time, the administrative offices would move to one location, to the Taft Building at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, while the library would move to 1455 North Gordon Street. In 1934, the Academy began publication of the Screen Achievement Records Bulletin, which today is known as the Motion Picture Credits Database; this is a list of film credits up for an Academy Award, as well

A variance swap is an over-the-counter financial derivative that allows one to speculate on or hedge risks associated with the magnitude of movement, i.e. volatility, of some underlying product, like an exchange rate, interest rate, or stock index. One leg of the swap will pay an amount based upon the realized variance of the price changes of the underlying product. Conventionally, these price changes will be daily log returns, based upon the most used closing price; the other leg of the swap will pay a fixed amount, the strike, quoted at the deal's inception. Thus the net payoff to the counterparties will be the difference between these two and will be settled in cash at the expiration of the deal, though some cash payments will be made along the way by one or the other counterparty to maintain agreed upon margin; the features of a variance swap include: the variance strike the realized variance the vega notional: Like other swaps, the payoff is determined based on a notional amount, never exchanged.

However, in the case of a variance swap, the notional amount is specified in terms of vega, to convert the payoff into dollar terms. The payoff of a variance swap is given as follows: N var where: N var = variance notional, σ realised 2 = annualised realised variance, σ strike 2 = variance strike; the annualised realised variance is calculated based on a prespecified set of sampling points over the period. It does not always coincide with the classic statistical definition of variance as the contract terms may not subtract the mean. For example, suppose that there are n+1 sample points S 0, S 1... S n. Define, for i=1 to n, R i = ln ⁡, the natural log returns. Σ realised 2 = A n ∑ i=1 n R i 2 where A is an annualisation factor chosen to be the number of sampling points in a year. It can be seen. If this is done, it is common to use n − 1 as the divisor rather than n, corresponding to an unbiased estimate of the sample variance, it is market practice to determine the number of contract units as follows: N var = N vol 2 σ strike where N vol is the corresponding vega notional for a volatility swap.

This makes the payoff of a variance swap comparable to that of a volatility swap, another less popular instrument used to trade volatility. The variance swap may be hedged and hence priced using a portfolio of European call and put options with weights inversely proportional to the square of strike. Any volatility smile model which prices vanilla options can therefore be used to price the variance swap. For example, using the Heston model, a closed-form solution can be derived for the fair variance swap rate. Care must be taken with the behaviour of the smile model in the wings as this can have a disproportionate effect on the price. We can derive the payoff of a variance swap using Ito's Lemma. We first assume that the underlying stock is described as follows: d S t S t = μ d t + σ d Z t Applying Ito's formula, we get: d = d t + σ d Z t d S t S t − d = σ 2 2 d t Taking integrals, the total variance is: Variance = 1 T ∫ 0 T σ 2 d t = 2 T ( ∫ 0 T d S t S t − ln

Cocuq Mərcanlı is a village in the Jabrayil District of Azerbaijan. In 1993, in the course of the Nagorno-Karabakh War, the Armenian army pushed Azerbaijani forces out of the village after gaining control of the nearby hills, it remained under Armenian control for four months during which it was razed. Having failed to maintain control of the village, the Armenians retreated to the nearby hills. Cocuq Mərcanlı turned into a no man's land and its population never returned out of fear of shelling, with the exception of one family. However, during the 2016 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes, Azerbaijani troops regained control over the strategic Lalatapa hill located 2.9 kilometres north-west of the village, which shifted Cocuq Mərcanlı away from the immediate front line and allowed safe access to the village. On 7 April 2016, internally displaced persons from Cocuq Mərcanlı visited the site of the village for the first time in 23 years. In January 2017, Azerbaijan decided to invest 2 million euros into rebuilding the village.

By June 2017, when the village was visited by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev 50 houses and a school had been built, the access road was paved and a gas supply re-established. Reports in September 2017 suggest that villagers have continued to return to the village since with a further 100 houses under construction. Cocuq Mərcanlı is the only village of the Jabrayil District controlled by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces. Çocuq Mərcanlı at GEOnet Names Server