Overconfidence, alcohol and the environment: evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment

Alcohol has long been known as the demon drink; an epithet owed to numerous social ills associated with it. Our lab-in-the-field experiment assesses the extent to which intoxication leads to changes in overconfidence or cognitive ability that are often linked to problematic behaviours. Results suggest that it is the joint effect of being intoxicated in a bar that matters. Subjects systematically underestimated their magnitude, suggesting that they cannot be held fully accountable for their actions

Policy divergence and devolution : the impact of actors and institutions

The creation of the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament in 1999 was accompanied with an aspiration that these new institutions would allow Scotland and Wales to develop their own policies, better suited to local needs than those designed in Westminster or Whitehall. This thesis explores policy-making in the first terms of the devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales, focusing on where the policies developed by these institutions diverged from those pursued at Westminster. Policy divergence is examined by studying the development of the financing long-term care for the elderly policies. The aim of this thesis is to identify why policy divergence occurred in the long-term care case, considering the impact of actors (or agents) and the institutional setting in which they operate, as suggested by Scharpf's model of actor-centred institutionalism. As actor-centred institutionalism suggested, both actors and institutions played a major role in shaping policy responses. In the Scottish case a range of actors cooperated and lobbied together for the introduction of free personal care, spurred on by the First Minister, who created an opportunity for those in favour of free personal care to pressurise his government to introduce the policy. In contrast, in Wales, actors were divided and never built up the same momentum to ensure the introduction of a more generous long-term care package. The institutional setting in which these actors operated was a major factor in shaping their policy preferences and the strategies they adopted to achieve them. This thesis considers the impact on policy-making of the devolved institution's electoral system, financial and legislative powers, design of the institutions, and the place of these institutions in a UK setting. The different institutional structures in Scotland and Wales provided different incentives and resources for actors, encouraged different styles of policy-making from Westminster and affected the way in which issues were framed. Examining the roles of actors and institutions in the formation of distinctive policies highlighted that in the real world these two elements are mutually dependent and cannot be separated. As a result it is impossible, and pointless, to determine whether actors or institutions were most influential on the development of distinctive policies. Instead this thesis explores how the difference between the configurations of actors and institutions in Scotland and Wales contributed to the creation of policies which were distinctive both from each other and the UK Government

Visual Attention-Related Processing: Perspectives from Ageing, Cognitive Decline and Dementia

Visual attention is essential for environmental interactions, but our ability to respond to stimuli gradually declines across the lifespan, and such deficits are even more pronounced in various states of cognitive impairment. Examining the integrity of related components, from elements of attention capture to executive control, will improve our understanding of related declines by helping to explain behavioural and neural effects, which will ultimately contribute towards our knowledge of the extent of dysfunctional attention processes and their impact upon everyday life. Accordingly, this Special Issue represents a body of literature that fundamentally advances insights into visual attention processing, featuring studies spanning healthy ageing, mild cognitive impairment, and dementi

Activation of the pro-resolving receptor Fpr2 attenuates inflammatory microglial activation

Poster number: P-T099 Theme: Neurodegenerative disorders & ageing Activation of the pro-resolving receptor Fpr2 reverses inflammatory microglial activation Authors: Edward S Wickstead - Life Science & Technology University of Westminster/Queen Mary University of London Inflammation is a major contributor to many neurodegenerative disease (Heneka et al. 2015). Microglia, as the resident immune cells of the brain and spinal cord, provide the first line of immunological defence, but can become deleterious when chronically activated, triggering extensive neuronal damage (Cunningham, 2013). Dampening or even reversing this activation may provide neuronal protection against chronic inflammatory damage. The aim of this study was to determine whether lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammation could be abrogated through activation of the receptor Fpr2, known to play an important role in peripheral inflammatory resolution. Immortalised murine microglia (BV2 cell line) were stimulated with LPS (50ng/ml) for 1 hour prior to the treatment with one of two Fpr2 ligands, either Cpd43 or Quin-C1 (both 100nM), and production of nitric oxide (NO), tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) and interleukin-10 (IL-10) were monitored after 24h and 48h. Treatment with either Fpr2 ligand significantly suppressed LPS-induced production of NO or TNFα after both 24h and 48h exposure, moreover Fpr2 ligand treatment significantly enhanced production of IL-10 48h post-LPS treatment. As we have previously shown Fpr2 to be coupled to a number of intracellular signaling pathways (Cooray et al. 2013), we investigated potential signaling responses. Western blot analysis revealed no activation of ERK1/2, but identified a rapid and potent activation of p38 MAP kinase in BV2 microglia following stimulation with Fpr2 ligands. Together, these data indicate the possibility of exploiting immunomodulatory strategies for the treatment of neurological diseases, and highlight in particular the important potential of resolution mechanisms as novel therapeutic targets in neuroinflammation. References Cooray SN et al. (2013). Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 110: 18232-7. Cunningham C (2013). Glia 61: 71-90. Heneka MT et al. (2015). Lancet Neurol 14: 388-40

Hydro-environmental modelling and interaction of tidal lagoons around the UK coast

Despite the great advantages of tidal lagoons, such as predictable renewable energy generation and flood risk reduction, tidal lagoons are expected to have an impact on the coastal and riverine environment. The uncertainties regarding the environmental impacts can potentially affect the development and influence the design of tidal lagoons. Therefore, it is desirable to fully assess their environmental impacts to evaluate the potential impacts associated with lagoons, and to mitigate any adverse impacts by improving the construction design and operation methods where necessary. A comprehensive study regarding the environmental impact of lagoons and their operation should be undertaken at the preliminary design stage and beyond. Furthermore, it is important to explore the accumulative impacts and the interaction of the conjunctive operation of the lagoons in different locations around the coast, which is regarded as an integrated potential effective tidal range energy scheme to provide continuous power This research study involves developing a refined two-dimensional hydrodynamic model to provide an accurate assessment of the hydro-environmental impact and the interaction of tidal lagoons. Improvements are made through simulations of island wakes, which provides a similar scenario to the flow patterns around obstacle, such as lagoons, in a macro-tidal environment. Innovative refinements are also made to enhance the modelling accuracy of the hydro-environmental process within and outside of a lagoon, including full momentum conservation between the subdomains and the independent operation of the turbines and sluice gate blocks. Three state-of-the-art tidal lagoon proposals, namely: West Somerset Lagoon (WSL), Swansea Bay Lagoon (SBL) and North Wales Tidal Lagoon (NWTL), are used as case studies in this research to investigate their impacts and hydro-environmental interactions. The results show that the operation of the West Somerset Lagoon slightly reduces the tidal range in the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary. The changes in tidal elevation caused by the WSL and NWTL resulted in a loss of intertidal mudflats of up to 20 km2 in the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary, while the decrease in the peak water elevations reduces the coastal flood risk. The maximum velocity in the inner Bristol Channel increases by about 0.25-0.75 m/s with the operation of WSL, which improves the water renewal capacity and increases the maximum suspended sediment concentration in the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary, and consequently reduces the risk of hypernutrification and eutrophication. In contrast, the current designs for the SBL and NWTL schemes as modelled in thisstudy showed a decrease in the water residence time by 4% and 45.7% in the lagoon area, respectively. The bed shear stress study and the indicative morphological modelling demonstrated potential erosion in the turbine wake region, influencing the general morphodynamics during lagoon operation. Furthermore, the presence of WSL is likely to cause sediment deposition at two sides of the lagoon impoundment, while increasing slightly the risk of scouring the seabed in the inner Bristol Channel. In the study of the conjunctive operation of WSL and NWTL, as well as WSL and SBL, the interactions between the lagoons were investigated, but they were found to be minor. The interactions between the lagoons are associated with the lagoon scale, location, tidal phase, et al., therefore a general conclusion could not be obtained. However, the feasibility of relatively continuous tidal power output is presented for the conjunctive operation of WSL and NWTL