The False Start: British Electrification, 1880-1888

Using abundant London stock Exchange data, we examine in detail the amounts of capital for electrical projects raised in the period 1880-1888, when electricity was first becoming commercialized. We find that initially British investors committed through IPOs unprecedented amounts of capital to electrical ventures, some eight times the amount Thomas Edison was able to raise in New York. This lavish initial funding was egregiously squandered through managerial incompetence and greed, resulting in electrical projects finding a once welcoming market closed, affecting most directly putative electrical engineering enterprises

Intensive case supervision during child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy training: An IPA study of supervisors’ and supervisees’ accounts of their experience

This study explores the experiences both of supervisors and supervisees in the intensive psychoanalytic supervision of their psychotherapeutic work with children and young people, and how both groups of participants understand its role and function as part of the child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy training. Using the qualitative research method of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the study explores through the data gathered from four participants’ communications during semi-structured interviews, in the context of the existing literature, how intensive case supervision supports and develops clinical confidence and a sense of growing clinical capacity in trainees during the child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy training. Findings are concerned with six experiential themes: ‘Understanding an unconscious emotional experience’; ‘Using another person for help and support’; ‘Working with negative feelings’; ‘Growing up and finding one’s own way’; ‘The learning experience as an attitude towards difference’; and, ‘Feelings about the centrality and legacy of the experience’. Implications and recommendations for the provision and enhancement of intensive case supervision during child and adolescent psychotherapy training that facilitates authentic growth and development in a trainee, in parallel with the patients they work with, are considered. Areas of further research, including the need to understand better the experiences of trainees and supervisors from minority backgrounds and of different genders as well as how issues such as negative feelings towards trainees are managed in supervision, are identified

The impact of social mood on financial markets

This thesis presents three empirical papers that explore the extent of UK social mood on UK stock indexes. The first paper utilises mobile, broadband, landline and pay TV complaints as an extra factor in an augmented-CAPM setting. Using time series OLS, this study finds empirical evidence that people who complain about actual or perceived mobile or broadband service failure experience catharsis, as increased mobile and broadband complaints lead to increased excess returns for smaller indexes and reduced excess returns for larger indexes. By contrast, results show that people who complain about landline and pay TV experience frustration, as increased landline and broadband complaints lead to increased excess returns for larger indexes and lowered excess returns for smaller indexes. In the second paper, wine, beer, spirits and cider receipts are used in Granger causality tests, VARs, and then impulse response tests. Using time series, this paper finds empirical evidence of mood enhancement through alcohol consumption – this is because an increase in wine, beer, spirits or cider consumption precedes a lowering of FTSE trading volume, which is consistent with the Mood Maintenance Hypothesis. Furthermore, an increase in beer consumption leads to an increase in smaller company index returns, which is consistent with the sentiment literature. Contrary to the existing literature, impulse response test results indicate that FTSE returns, or changes in trading volumes, have an insignificant impact on UK social mood measured by alcohol. The final paper makes use of Google searches for music genre to develop a novel Music Search Index (Music Index). Using The Music Index level and its rate of change on daily and monthly data, this paper finds evidence of mood affecting the FTSE through mood management. Mood management works by impacting peoples’ search for music (cognitivism) in order to find music that will extend or modify their current mood (emotivism)

Aggression and anxiety in the development of destructive drives to self-harm

High rates of self-harm and its prevalence amongst adolescents are an on-going cause for concern. Where many studies were found to link self-harm with suicide, the participants in this study enable self-harm to be viewed in isolation of suicide. Self-harm is commonly associated with trauma or as a consequence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) whereas this study explores both the impact of psychical trauma outside of ACEs and trauma from sexual abuse. This study adapted Braun and Clarke’s (2006) method of Thematic Analysis for analysis of case-study data. A psychoanalytical, object-relations perspective investigated self-harm as a phenomenon occurring in three adolescents who had previously undergone Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy treatment in an outpatient Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. The study addressed the lack of research on self-harm being comorbid with other mental health conditions, specifically exploring connections of self-harm with OCD, Tics, anxiety and depression. Aggression was found to be a driver of self-harm and associated with the mental health conditions of the participants. As a result of one participant belonging to an ethnic minority community, the issues relating to culture and cultural conflicts contributing to self-harm came into focus. The study supports the concepts of trauma from abuse as relevant to self-harm in acts of cutting, burning and overdosing. However, the study found that early experiences of object loss in the absence of overt neglect or abuse can have a traumatic effect on the psyche as psychical trauma. The study finds psychical trauma leads to enactments of aggression in the form of self-harm

Differences in Pupil Size During Self-Reported Experiences of Disgust, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Happiness

Previous research has found pupil dilation associated with stimuli pre-assigned as positive and negative in their emotional valence; however, it is not yet clear how self-rated experiences of specific emotions may correlate with differences in pupil size. Using a novel methodology across two studies, 200 participants were presented with emotionally engaging images and sounds and then rated the extent to which they felt happy, sad, angry, fearful, and disgusted in response to these. Data were analyzed using linear mixed effects models to examine whether the participant’s own emotion ratings predict pupil size. In 2 studies using standardized images and sounds, and varied 30-second audio clips, in trials with higher self-reported disgust and sadness there was a consistent relationship with pupil dilation. Disgust was most often the strongest predictor of pupil dilation. This effect emerged ~2 seconds after stimulus onset and remained present throughout stimulus presentation. Happiness had a weaker effect on pupil dilation and fear was associated with a late pupillary response. Anger was associated with pupil constriction, but only in Study 2. The present approach finds the most consistent relationship between pupil dilation and self-rated disgust and sadness, compared to other negative emotions. The findings thus suggest that measures of pupil size warrant further investigation as a potential indicative psychophysiological correlate of self-reported emotions, with implications for distinguishing negative emotions, such as disgust from anger

Revolutionising Vehicular Security: Lightweight Handover Authentication in RIS-Aided VANETs (invited Paper)

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) form the foundational communication framework of intelligent transportation systems, facilitating low-latency, vehicle-to-everything data exchange for enhanced traffic efficiency and safety. Accordingly, ensuring secure, efficient, and scalable authentication is essential to maintain communication trustworthiness, especially in highly dynamic and dense traffic scenarios. While traditional public key cryptography (PKC)-based solutions offer strong security guarantees, they are computationally intensive and struggle to scale under VANET workloads. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel lightweight handover authentication scheme that integrates pairing-based cryptography with symmetric key primitives to ensure message integrity, anonymity, and unlinkability. The proposed solution is deployed within a real-world Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS)-assisted commu- nication environment, enhancing the robustness and feasibility of the authentication process during handover. Furthermore, a comprehensive evaluation is conducted, comparing the computational and communication overhead of the proposed scheme with existing cryptographic protocols. Results demonstrate the superior scalability and efficiency of the proposed approach, making it well-suited for next-generation VANET applications

Spanish labour market, mobility and labour shortages

Abstract We use a simple yet powerful approach to investigate the dynamics of worker flows across sectors in the Spanish economy. The method imposes a minimal amount of structure on the data by assuming sector-specific matching functions, and backs out the direction of workers’ search intensities across sectors using data on realised worker flows and vacancies. We find that aggregate search intensity in Spain has been increasing since the pandemic and has led aggregate labour shortages to be below pre-pandemic levels by 2023. However, this boost of search intensity is directed to industries with low matching efficiencies and job finding rates. As a result, aggregate match formation is near to a 10-years low relative to the number of matches that would result if search intensity was allocated to maximise total matches given the observed vacancy distribution and match efficiencies across sectors.</jats:p

The Death Receptor 5 regulates 5-FU-induced apoptosis via the p38 SAPK pathway

Apoptosis is an important process that helps to eliminate damaged or unwanted cells, including cancer cells during chemotherapy treatment. Previous work identified a novel apoptosis-inducing complex and pathway that is triggered by the chemotherapeutic drug 5FU. 5FU causes DNA damage that gives rise to the activation of ATR and subsequent upregulation of caspase-10, which in turn recruits FADD, caspase-8, TRAF2 and RIP1 to a complex termed FADDosome. Within the FADDosome caspase-8 is activated leading to downstream apoptosis signalling via Bid and mitochondria. Interestingly, 5FU induced apoptosis is lower in p53 knock-out cells without affecting the FADDosome-mediated caspase-8 activation. Therefore, this study investigates the role of p53 and the molecular pathways it controls in 5FU-induced apoptosis in colorectal cancer cells. I found that 5-FU regulates FADDosome-induced apoptosis through p53-dependent upregulation of TRAILreceptor 2 (TRAIL-R2) also known as Death Receptor 5 (DR5), leading to a partial activation of the receptor independent of its ligand TRAIL. This activation triggers non-canonical signalling including the p38 MAPK pathway, which is absent or substantially reduced in p53-null and DR5 knock-down cells. Co-treatment of cells with 5-FU and p38 inhibitors diminished apoptosis levels by about 50%. These results demonstrate that the role of p53 in chemotherapy-induced apoptosis is more complex and potentially more multi-facetted than expected. TRAIL-R2 activated p38 MAPK might promote the activation of Bid by active caspase-8 or other molecular mechanisms that lead to mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP). As MOMP is needed for the release of Smac/Diablo from the mitochondria to inhibit the anti-apoptotic protein XIAP, this mechanism is essential for the full execution of apoptosis, and can explain the relative resistance in p53-null cells

Making a virtue out of necessity: the effect of negative interest rates on bank cost efficiency

Do negative interest rates affect banks’ cost efficiency? We exploit the unprecedented intro- duction of negative policy interest rates in the euro area to investigate whether banks make a virtue out of necessity in reacting to negative interest rates by adjusting their cost efficiency. We find that banks most affected by negative interest rates responded by enhancing their cost efficiency. We also show that improvements in cost efficiency are more pronounced for banks that are larger, less profitable, with lower asset quality and that operate in more competitive banking sectors. In addition, we document that enhancements in cost efficiency are statisti- cally significant only when breaching the zero lower bound, indicating that the pass-through of interest rates to cost efficiency is not effective when policy rates are positive. These findings hold important policy implications as they provide evidence on a beneficial second-order effect of negative interest rates on bank efficiency

Capital market listing as a window for ESG disclosure requirements for public companies: Corporate governance lessons for Saudi Arabia

As environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure are dynamic in response to economic and regulatory conditions, “dynamic materiality” plays a crucial role in determining the nature of information that companies need to disclose. Therefore, this study argues that the rule-based corporate governance model of Saudi capital market regulations is incompatible with the dynamic nature of ESG disclosures, where regulations impose rigid obligations in some respects, while leaving ESG disclosures voluntary, resulting in significant differences in application between listed companies. In contrast, the UK governance model has principle-based approach, with ‘comply or explain’ disclosures principle, which gives companies greater flexibility to disclose their sustainability according to economic and regulatory variables. Thus, the absence of a flexible regulatory framework in the Saudi market may hamper companies' ability to adapt to global developments, limiting the effectiveness of ESG disclosure compared to more adapted models. This study answers questions about the extent to which Saudi Arabia's rule-based governance model can support ESG disclosures given the dynamic materiality of ESG matters, and the potential to leverage the UK model in developing the Saudi regulatory framework in line with changing sustainability requirements. The study also proposes to address the current gap in the definition of materiality in Saudi capital market laws by exploring the possibility of adopting the concept of dynamic materiality to enhance the flexibility of disclosures and ensure their responsiveness to economic and regulatory developments. The study also tries to answer to the most important legal, social and economic challenges that the Saudi Capital Market Authority (CMA) may face when determined to impose mandatory ESG disclosures on companies listed in the Saudi Capital Market (Tadawul), in order to achieve the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030 in developing the financial sector and promoting overall ESG rank