Stock Market Participation, Portfolio Choice and Pensions over the Life-cycle

In this paper we present a calibrated life-cycle model is able to simultaneously match asset allocations and stock market participation profiles over the life-cycle. The inclusion of per period fixed costs and a public pension scheme eradicates the need to assume heterogeneity in preferences, or implausible parameter values, in order to explain observed patterns. We find a per period fixed cost of less than two percent of the permanent component of annual labour income can explain the limited stock marker participation. More generous public pensions are seen to crowd out private savings and significantly reduce the estimates of these fixed costs. This is the first time that concurrent matching of participation and shares has been achieved within the standard preference framework

Development of an Unmanned Aerial System for Radiation Mapping in Nuclear Facilities

Efficiently planning a decontamination and decommissioning (D&D) operation at a nuclear facility requires detailed information on the conditions present. In the wake of a disaster, or just years of abandonment, a facility’s layout may have dramatically changed, making previous facility drawings unreliable, and radioactive particles may have been spread over the site, contaminating equipment and structures. Rather than tasking workers with mapping and characterizing the contamination, which can take days or weeks and poses a health and safety risk to the workers, mapping the site and locating contamination can be done remotely by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which would reduce the time it takes to gather this essential information and mitigate risks posed by hazards of uncertainty. We have developed a system to generate a 3-D map of a facility, highlight the locations of all contamination and identify the radioisotopes present, using a compact, semiconductor gamma-ray detector, a laser-based range scanner, and a versatile hex-rotor UAV to host the system. Testing showed that this setup was able to generate a map of a large room and locate the positions of test sources that were placed within it. Using the same computer code and base equipment, a larger detector and longer range laser sensor would greatly increase the speed at which the radiological map is generated, allowing larger rooms or facilities to be mapped as well

Real estate stock selection and attribute preferences

The majority of studies that explore property portfolio construction and management strategies utilise highly aggregated ex-post data, but stock selection is known to be a significant determinant of portfolio performance. Thus, here we look at stock selection, focusing on the choices faced by investors, necessitating the collection and analysis of primary data, carried out utilising conjoint analysis. This represents a new step in property research, with the data collection undertaken using a simulation exercise. This enables fund managers to make hypothetical purchase decisions, viewing properties comprising a realistic bundle of attributes and making complex contemporaneous trade-offs between attributes, subject to their stated market and economic forecasts and sector specialism. In total 51 fund managers were surveyed, producing 918 purchase decisions for analysis, with additional data collected regarding fund and personal characteristics. The results reveal that ‘fixed’ property characteristics (location and obsolescence) are dominant in the decision-making process, over and above ‘manageable’ tenant and lease characteristics which can be explicitly included within models of probabilities of income variation. This reveals investors are making ex-ante risk judgements and are considering post acquisition risk management strategies. The study also reveals that behavioural factors affect acquisition decisions

Sleep quality and the treatment of intestinal microbiota imbalance in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A pilot study

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a multisystem illness, which may be associated with imbalances in gut microbiota. This study builds on recent evidence that sleep may be influenced by gut microbiota, by assessing whether changes to microbiota in a clinical population known to have both poor sleep and high rates of colonization with gram-positive faecal Streptococcus, can improve sleep. Twenty-one CFS participants completed a 22- day open label trial. Faecal microbiota analysis was performed at baseline and at the end of the trial. Participants were administered erythromycin 400 mg b.d. for 6 days. Actigraphy and questionnaires were used to monitor sleep, symptoms and mood. Changes in patients who showed a clinically significant change in faecal Streptococcus after treatment (responders; defined as post-therapy distribution<6%) were compared to participants who did not respond to treatment. In the seven responders, there was a significant increase in actigraphic total sleep time (p=0.028) from baseline to follow up, compared with non-responders. Improved vigour scores were associated with a lower Streptococcus count (ρ=-0.90, p=0.037). For both the responders and the whole group, poorer mood was associated with higher Lactobacillus. Short term antibiotic treatment appears to be insufficient to effect sustainable changes in the gut ecosystem in most CFS participants. Some improvement in objective sleep parameters and mood were found in participants with reduced levels of gram-positive gut microbiota after antibiotic treatment, which is encouraging. Further study of possible links between gut microorganisms and sleep and mood disturbances is warranted

The incidence and make up of ability grouped sets in the UK primary school

The adoption of setting in the primary school (pupils ability grouped across classes for particular subjects) emerged during the 1990s as a means to raise standards. Recent research based on 8875 children in the Millennium Cohort Study showed that 25.8% of children in Year 2 were set for literacy and mathematics and a further 11.2% of children were set for mathematics or literacy alone. Logistic regression analysis showed that the best predictors of being in the top set for literacy or mathematics were whether the child was born in the Autumn or Winter and cognitive ability scores. Boys were significantly more likely than girls to be in the bottom literacy set. Family circumstances held less importance for setting placement compared with the child’s own characteristics, although they were more important in relation to bottom set placement. Children in bottom sets were significantly more likely to be part of a long-term single parent household, have experienced poverty, and not to have a mother with qualifications at NVQ3 or higher levels. The findings are discussed in relation to earlier research and the implications for schools are set out

On kernel engineering via Paley–Wiener

A radial basis function approximation takes the form $$s(x)=\sum_{k=1}^na_k\phi(x-b_k),\quad x\in {\mathbb{R}}^d,$$ where the coefficients a 1,…,a n are real numbers, the centres b 1,…,b n are distinct points in ℝ d , and the function φ:ℝ d →ℝ is radially symmetric. Such functions are highly useful in practice and enjoy many beautiful theoretical properties. In particular, much work has been devoted to the polyharmonic radial basis functions, for which φ is the fundamental solution of some iterate of the Laplacian. In this note, we consider the construction of a rotation-invariant signed (Borel) measure μ for which the convolution ψ=μ φ is a function of compact support, and when φ is polyharmonic. The novelty of this construction is its use of the Paley–Wiener theorem to identify compact support via analysis of the Fourier transform of the new kernel ψ, so providing a new form of kernel engineering

Gender, foundation degrees and the knowledge economy

This article questions the concept of ‘education for employment’, which constructs a discourse of individual and societal benefit in a knowledge‐driven economy. Recent policy emphasis in the European Union promotes the expansion of higher education and short‐cycle vocational awards such as the intermediate two‐year Foundation Degree recently introduced into England and Wales. Studies of vocational education and training (VET) and the knowledge economy have focused largely on the governance of education and on the development and drift of policy. Many VET programmes have also been considered for their classed, raced and gendered take‐up and subsequent effect on employment. This article builds on both fields of study to engage with the finer cross‐analyses of gender, social class, poverty, race and citizenship. In its analysis of policy texts the article argues that in spite of a discourse of inclusivity, an expanded higher education system has generated new inequalities, deepening social stratification. Drawing on early analyses of national quantitative data sets, it identifies emerging gendered, classed and raced patterns and considers these in relation to occupationally and hierarchically stratified labour markets, both within and without the knowledge economy

Choosing more mathematics : happiness through work?

This paper examines how A-level students construct relationships between work and happiness in their accounts of choosing mathematics and further mathematics A-level. I develop a theoretical framework that positions work and happiness as opposed, managed and working on the self and use this to examine students' dual engagement with individual practices of the self and institutional practices of school mathematics. Interviews with students acknowledge four imperatives that they use as discursive resources to position themselves as successful/unsuccessful students: you have to work, you have to not work, you have to be happy, you have to work at being happy. Tensions in these positions lead students to rework their identities or drop further mathematics. I then identify the practices of mathematics teaching that students use to explain un/happiness in work, and show how dependable mathematics and working together are constructed as 'happy objects' for students, who develop strategies for claiming control over these shapers of happiness. © 2010 British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics

Nitropyrene: DNA binding and adduct formation in respiratory tissues.

Binding of 1-nitro (14C)pyrene (NP) or its metabolites to cellular DNA and protein in cultures of rabbit alveolar macrophages, lung tissue, and tracheal tissue was examined. DNA binding in tracheal tissue (136 +/- 18.3 pmole NP/mg DNA) was four to five times the levels measured in either lung tissue (38 +/- 9.4 pmole NP/mg DNA) or macrophages (26 +/- 7.5 pmole NP/mg DNA). Adduct analysis of DNA isolated from lung tissue incubated with 1-nitro[H3]pyrene in vitro resulted in the identification of 2 to 5% of the NP adducts as C8-deoxyguanosine 1-aminopyrene. NP was also bound to cellular protein in tracheal tissue and lung tissue, and at a lower level in macrophages. Cocultivation of the macrophages with lung and tracheal tissue decreased the DNA binding in tracheal tissue by 45%. Following intratracheal instillation of diesel particles (5 mg) vapor-coated with 14C-NP (380 ppm, 0.085 muCi/mg) particles into rats, 5-8% of the radioactivity remained in the lungs after 20 hr. Most of the diesel particles were also deposited in the lung. Examination of DNA and protein binding in this tissue showed 5 to 12% of the pulmonary 14C bound to protein and no detectable levels of 14C bound to DNA