Reactive point processes: A new approach to predicting power failures in underground electrical systems

Reactive point processes (RPPs) are a new statistical model designed for predicting discrete events in time based on past history. RPPs were developed to handle an important problem within the domain of electrical grid reliability: short-term prediction of electrical grid failures ("manhole events"), including outages, fires, explosions and smoking manholes, which can cause threats to public safety and reliability of electrical service in cities. RPPs incorporate self-exciting, self-regulating and saturating components. The self-excitement occurs as a result of a past event, which causes a temporary rise in vulner ability to future events. The self-regulation occurs as a result of an external inspection which temporarily lowers vulnerability to future events. RPPs can saturate when too many events or inspections occur close together, which ensures that the probability of an event stays within a realistic range. Two of the operational challenges for power companies are (i) making continuous-time failure predictions, and (ii) cost/benefit analysis for decision making and proactive maintenance. RPPs are naturally suited for handling both of these challenges. We use the model to predict power-grid failures in Manhattan over a short-term horizon, and to provide a cost/benefit analysis of different proactive maintenance programs.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOAS789 in the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Support during birth interacts with prior trauma and birth intervention to predict postnatal post-traumatic stress symptoms

Background: Many women experience childbirth as traumatic and 2% develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study examined the role of health practitioner support and personal control during birth as predictors of PTS symptoms, adjusting for vulnerability factors of prior trauma, depression, control beliefs and birth intervention. It also investigated interactions between support, prior trauma and birth intervention and their association with PTS symptoms. Methods: A prospective longitudinal survey of 138 women recruited from UK NHS maternity clinics. Measures were taken in pregnancy, three-weeks and three-months after the birth. Results: Support and control during birth were not predictive of postnatal PTS symptoms. However, support was predictive of PTS symptoms in a subset of women with prior trauma (beta = -.41, R2 = 16%) at both three-weeks and three-months postpartum. The interaction of birth intervention and support was associated with PTS symptoms three-months after birth, the relationship between support and PTS symptoms was stronger in women experiencing more intervention. Conclusions: Low support from health practitioners is predictive of postnatal PTS symptoms in women who have a history of trauma. Longer-term effects of low support on postnatal PTS symptoms are also found in women who had more intervention during birth

'The risks of playing it safe': a prospective longitudinal study of response to reward in the adolescent offspring of depressed parents

BACKGROUND Alterations in reward processing may represent an early vulnerability factor for the development of depressive disorder. Depression in adults is associated with reward hyposensitivity and diminished reward seeking may also be a feature of depression in children and adolescents. We examined the role of reward responding in predicting depressive symptoms, functional impairment and new-onset depressive disorder over time in the adolescent offspring of depressed parents. In addition, we examined group differences in reward responding between currently depressed adolescents, psychiatric and healthy controls, and also cross-sectional associations between reward responding and measures of positive social/environmental functioning. Method We conducted a 1-year longitudinal study of adolescents at familial risk for depression (n = 197; age range 10-18 years). Reward responding and self-reported social/environmental functioning were assessed at baseline. Clinical interviews determined diagnostic status at baseline and at follow-up. Reports of depressive symptoms and functional impairment were also obtained. RESULTS Low reward seeking predicted depressive symptoms and new-onset depressive disorder at the 1-year follow-up in individuals free from depressive disorder at baseline, independently of baseline depressive symptoms. Reduced reward seeking also predicted functional impairment. Adolescents with current depressive disorder were less reward seeking (i.e. bet less at favourable odds) than adolescents free from psychopathology and those with externalizing disorders. Reward seeking showed positive associations with social and environmental functioning (extra-curricular activities, humour, friendships) and was negatively associated with anhedonia. There were no group differences in impulsivity, decision making or psychomotor slowing. CONCLUSIONS Reward seeking predicts depression severity and onset in adolescents at elevated risk of depression. Adaptive reward responses may be amenable to change through modification of existing preventive psychological interventions

Crossing the threshold : an analysis of IBRD graduation policy

According to World Bank policy, countries remain eligible to borrow from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development until they are able to sustain long-term development without further recourse to Bank financing. Graduation from the Bank is not an automatic consequence of reaching a particular income level, but rather is supposed to be based on a determination of whether the country has reached a level of institutional development and capital-market access that enables it to sustain its own development process without recourse to Bank funding. This paper assesses how International Bank for Reconstruction and Development graduation policy operates in practice, investigating what income and non-income factors appear to have influenced graduation decisions in recent decades, based on panel data for 1982 through 2008. Explanatory variables include the per-capita income of the country, as well as measures of institutional development and market access that are cited as criteria by the graduation policy, and other plausible explanatory variables that capture the levels of economic development and vulnerability of the country. The authors find that the observed correlates of Bank graduation are generally consistent with the stated policy. Countries that are wealthier, more creditworthy, more institutionally developed, and less vulnerable to shocks are more likely to have graduated. Predicted probabilities generated by the model correspond closely to the actual graduation and de-graduation experiences of most countries (such as Korea and Trinidad and Tobago), and suggest that Hungary and Latvia may have graduated prematurely -- a prediction consistent with their subsequent return to borrowing from the Bank in the wake of the global financial crisis.Economic Theory&Research,Emerging Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Labor Policies,Debt Markets

Deliver security awareness training, then repeat:{deliver; measure efficacy}

Organisational information security policy contents are disseminated by awareness and training drives. Its success is usually judged based on immediate post-training self-reports which are usually subject to social desirability bias. Such self-reports are generally positive, but they cannot act as a proxy for actual subsequent behaviours.This study aims to formulate and test a more comprehensive way of measuring the efficacy of these awareness and training drives, called ASTUTE. We commenced by delivering security training. We then assessed security awareness (post-training), and followed up by measuring actual behaviours. When we measured actual behaviours after a single delivery of security awareness training, the conversion from intention to behaviour was half of the desired 100%. We then proceeded to deliver the training again, another two times.The repeated training significantly reduced the gap between self-reported intention and actual secure behaviours

Mapping the State of Financial Stability

The paper uses the Self-Organizing Map for mapping the state of financial stability and visualizing the sources of systemic risks on a two-dimensional plane as well as for predicting systemic financial crises. The Self-Organizing Financial Stability Map (SOFSM) enables a two-dimensional representation of a multidimensional financial stability space and thus allows disentangling the individual sources impacting on systemic risks. The SOFSM can be used to monitor macro-financial vulnerabilities by locating a country in the financial stability cycle: being it either in the pre-crisis, crisis, post-crisis or tranquil state. In addition, the SOFSM performs better than or equally well as a logit model in classifying in-sample data and predicting out-of-sample the global financial crisis that started in 2007. Model robustness is tested by varying the thresholds of the models, the policymaker’s preferences, and the forecasting horizon.systemic financial crisis; systemic risk; self-organizing maps; visualisation; prediction; macroprudential supervision

Predictors of social service contact among teenagers in England

Very few UK studies make use of longitudinal general population data to explore social service contact for children and young people. Those that do only look at specific interventions such as care placements. This paper seeks to address this gap by asking to what extent do structural, neighbourhood, familial and individual characteristics predict social service contact. We provide an empirical answer by analysing the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England, which includes data on social service contact in connection with young people's behaviour. Our findings indicate that social class, gender, ethnicity, stepfamily status and special education needs are all significant predictors of social service contact. Difficult parent–child relationships, frequent arguments and parents' lack of engagement with school meetings also matter, as does young people's own risk-taking behaviour. We conclude with a discussion of the limitation of the data for social work research and the implications of the findings

The influence of context on attainment in primary school: Interactions between children, family and school contexts [Wider Benefits of Learning Research Report No. 28]

Growing awareness of the importance of parents and the home environment in shaping children’s achievement, coupled with the recognition of the school as a site for engagement in broader aspects of social and personal development, has raised interest in the interactions between these different influences as a way of addressing issues of educational attainment and inequality. This study explores the nature of these links and considers the relative contribution of different aspects of four different ‘contexts’ or likely spheres of influence on pupil achievement in England at Key Stage 2 (age 10/11), as well as their associations with one another. The results highlight that the quality of each of the different aspects of their lives is important for children’s attainment in primary school: pupils with better contexts – i.e. better individual, school and family background and experience – have higher scores in Key Stage 2 assessments in English, maths and science. However, these contexts do not act in isolation, but are closely related to one another, and their influence on children’s attainment is affected by these interrelationships. Furthermore, these results indicate that the interaction effects are greater for those with poor quality contexts. This suggests not only that there is scope to narrow the gaps in educational opportunity, but also that, where influence is possible, the greatest likely returns are for those whose background and experience are poor