Liquidity-Driven Risks to Large Valued Payments

During particularly stressed financial or macroeconomic circumstances, banks’ access to liquidity can become severely restricted. The recent financial crisis demonstrated this phenomenon all too plainly, when, in a climate of fear and uncertainty, both the interbank and international money markets ceased to function in a meaningful manner. Liquidity shortages can potentially create problems for a bank’s ability to meet its outward intraday payments obligations on the TARGET2 real-time gross settlement system. Such a situation not only has negative implications for the respective bank but could also produce contagion effects for the TARGET2 system as a whole. In order to provide increased clarity regarding liquidity driven risks to large value payment systems, the Central Bank of Ireland has developed a ‘liquidity buffer’ indicator for the domestic credit institutions. The initial focus of this project centred primarily upon the development of an ‘early warning’ system, capable of identifying TARGET2 liquidity issues as they occurred in real time. However, during the development of such a platform, the analysis has also presented a means from which it is possible to derive a proxy for the level of risk banks detect in their environment. The analysis undertaken reveals that the Reserve Requirement (RR) plays an important role in how banks formulate their liquidity management strategies throughout the maintenance period. In times of increased uncertainty banks appear willing to hold excess liquidity, at a greater expense, in order to be guaranteed access to liquidity towards the latter half of the maintenance period. In a similar fashion, during a period of stability or relative certainty, banks do not choose to maintain excess liquidity on the TARGET2 platform, implying a degree of increased confidence in accessing liquidity when they require it later in the maintenance period. In this sense we can, to some degree, infer the degree of risk a bank perceives to be present in its immediate environment, by examining the respective institutions’ liquidity management strategy over the maintenance period. In a broader fashion, the indicator also serves as a tool from which the Central Bank of Ireland can monitor banks’ liquidity position with increased precision.

Investigation into the Local Nature of Change of Frequency in Electrical Power Systems

Over the coming years it is expected that considerably more wind power will be connected to the Irish power system. This will result in a power system that at times of high wind power penetration will operate with very low inertia, making the system susceptible to large rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) events due to disturbances. These high RoCoF events could result in the cascade tripping of generators connected to the grid resulting in complete shutdown of the system. This paper investigates the differences between local RoCoFs seen at individual buses and system wide RoCoFs seen across the entire power system. A model of the IEEE 39 bus power system was implemented and simulated with Power Systems Simulation for Engineers (PSS/E). Matlab was then used to process and analyse the results. The simulations and results show that after a disturbance on a power system, local RoCoFs close to the disturbance could occur that are significantly larger than the system RoCoF and predicted RoCoF

Pharmacological and electrophysiological study of antiepileptic drugs in a chronic and acute model of epilepsy

The objectives of this theses were (i) to determine the kinetics of carbamazepine (CBZ), a well established antiepileptic drug and levetiracetam, a new antiepileptic drug presently undergoing clinical evaluation in a freely behaving rat model, (ii) to test the efficacy of these drugs on electrographic seizures in animals injected with tetanus toxin, and to determine the relationship between their efficacy and their corresponding concentrations in blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and finally (iii) to evaluate the antiepileptic properties of levetiracetam on bicuculline induced epileptiform bursts in the hippocampal slice. The first objective entailed the development of a freely behaving rat model which allowed concurrent blood and CSF sampling and consequently pharmacokinetic characteristics of a drug over a relatively chronic period (7 days). Under anaesthesia a cisterna magna catheter, for CSF sampling, a jugular vein catheter, for blood sampling, and an intraperitoneal osmotic minipump set to deliver CBZ or levetiracetam were implanted. CSF and blood samples were collected on days 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7 post-surgery at timed intervals and analysed for CBZ and carbamazepine epoxide (CBZ-E; the primary pharmacological active metabolite of CBZ) or levetiracetam content by high performance liquid chromatography. The serum and CSF concentration versus time profiles of CBZ and CBZ-E, exhibited biphasic characteristics; the first phase involved rapid appearance of CBZ and CBZ-E in blood and CSF compartments followed by a gradual increase until maximum concentrations were achieved. During the second phase, CBZ exhibited a marked acceleration in its metabolism (autoinduction), as indicated by a dramatic reduction and a subsequent gradual decline in both CBZ and CBZ-E blood and CSF concentrations. However, in contrast to CBZ, chronic levetiracetam administration was not associated with autoinduction. Following its acute and chronic administration, levetiracetam appeared in blood and CSF compartments and thereafter concentrations rose linearly until maximum concentrations were achieved. The second objective related to the efficacy of CBZ and levetiracetam in the in vivo tetanus toxin model of epilepsy. Under anaesthesia, tetanus toxin was injected, and a bipolar electrode placed in the hippocampus. Initial EEG recordings began 1-2 days post-surgery and continued for 5-7 days. A minipump with CBZ/levetiracetam was then implanted intraperitoneally and continuous EEG and video recordings were undertaken for a further 7 days. The animals developed a chronic limbic epilepsy, characterized by the occurrence of spontaneous interictal spikes, polyspikes, nongeneralised and generalised seizures. Both CBZ and levetiracetam exhibited efficacy in this model, involving a reduction in the maximum number of seizures occurring per day and a reduction in the total number of generalised seizures over the period analysed. However, a statistically significant result was only achieved following administration of the highest dose of levetiracetam (16 mg/kg/h; p=0.0004). Furthermore, at all doses studied a significant reduction in the duration of generalised seizures was observed following administration of CBZ (p<0.0001) and levetiracetam (p<0.0001). The final objective related to the efficacy of levetiracetam in an in vitro hippocampal slice model of epileptiform activity. Hippocampal slices were made epileptic via bath application of bicuculline and raised extracellular potassium. This activity took the form of trains of population bursts with a distinctive biphasic pattern lasting several seconds. Levetiracetam (200 and 400 μmol/1) significantly (p<0.0001) reduced the overall duration of these seizure-like events without influencing the biphasic pattern. In conclusion this thesis demonstrates that CBZ and levetiracetam possess different kinetic characteristics. Whilst CBZ exhibited complex and undesirable kinetics, levetiracetams were simple and predictable. Additionally, although CBZ and levetiracetam significantly reduced seizure generalisation in vivo, a statistically significant reduction was only achieved with the highest levetiracetam dose studied. Levetiracetam also appeared to attenuate the prolonged ictalform discharges in the disinhibited in vitro slice. Overall, these findings suggest that whereas levetiracetam does not effect epileptogenesis per se it does reduce seizure severity and, particularly, seizure generalisation in vivo in predominantly disinhibitory models

Welfare and responsibility: a qualitative study of the demise of social morality and the rise of personal ethics in welfare discourses

Thesis submitted to the University of Luton for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyMuch attention has been devoted in the social sciences to the reorganisation of the moral order of society (Smart, 1999). This reorganisation means that responsibility for welfare is now located with the individual. In spite of the salience given to privately held responsibility for welfare in social policy, little work has been carried out on the discourses underpinning this way of distributing responsibility (Finch and Mason, 1993, Duncan and Edwards, 1999, Rowlingson, 2002). Work on this issue is especially timely as New Labour continues the privatisation of responsibility for welfare in a way that, many people believe, neglects a moral dimension. Instead, New Labour favours a more ethical construction that exhorts the individual to do her duty by which they mean she should work for her own betterment and well-being (Levitas, 1998, Giddens, 1998, Jordan, 1998, Lund, 1999). This work begins by situating responsibility as a historically variable and discursive construction, uncovering how the understanding of responsibility changed as the problem focusing the minds of social engineers altered from one of poverty to one of security in the 1970s. While responsibility has only recently been identified as a particular issue for social policy academics (Roche, 1992, Dwyer, 1998, Dean et aI., 2004) philosophers and sociologists have paid close attention to responsibility over the past decade (Bauman, 1993, 1995, Habermas, 1990, 1995, Apel, 1989, 1996, Etzioni, 1995, Schmidtz, 1998, Goodin, 1998). Building on the issues raised by these authors, this work presents a qualitative study of government press releases, interviews with benefits recipients, members of the general public, welfare advisors and welfare benefits administrators to explore the rational structure of the discourses of responsibility for welfare. As a result, I develop the argument that while the reconfigured moral order promotes a private acceptance of responsibility for welfare, people still want a way of interpreting responsibility taking in a more public way

Estrogen Signaling and Endocrine Disruption Potential in the Embryonic Development of the Female Reproductive Tract of the American Alligator, Alligator mississippiensis

Perturbation of endocrine signaling during critical embryonic developmental windows has been implicated in many female reproductive system disorders. Reproductive tract anomalies in women exposed in utero to synthetic estrogen diethylstilbestrol, prescribed as a miscarriage preventative, provided some of the first evidence for this “embryonic origins of adult disease” paradigm and suggested a role for estrogen signaling in female reproductive tract (FRT) differentiation. Developmental studies of FRT in other vertebrates have great value in furthering our understanding of embryonic origins of reproductive disorders. The alligator is a particularly intriguing model as an environmental sentinel species with temperature dependent sex determination, which allows for controlled manipulation of sexual differentiation in laboratory experiments. The signals involved in determining regionally specific cell fates in FRT of alligators and other crocodilians are not yet known, but multiple studies in their closest extant evolutionary relative, birds, underscore the role of estrogen signaling in this process. Here I seek to characterize the role of estrogen signaling in the developing alligator FRT. I treated alligator embryos with estradiol-17β (E2) and pharmaceutical agonists that are selective for their two estrogen receptor isoforms, ERα and ERβ. The ERα agonist, propyl pyrazole triol (PPT), induced significant enlargement of the developing FRT, compared with controls and E2 and ERβ agonist treatments. Histological analysis revealed precocious glandulogenesis and connective tissue differentiation similar to mature FRT in these enlarged tissues. PPT treatment also altered expression of steroid hormone receptors and growth factor IGF1. Further experiments assessing this

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This autoethnographical piece explores how weight stigma and misconceptions about weight status, intentional weight loss, and health, may mask or render invisible serious health issues experienced by people of higher weight to healthcare providers and the medical establishment as a whole

Community, rurality, and older people: critically comparing older people's experiences across different rural communities

Recent years have witnessed renewed academic interest in community as both an organizing concept and empirical case study. While previous work on community was largely limited to descriptive accounts of people's interactions in particular places, recent research has provided broader and more critical understandings of community by making connections between social imaginaries and social actions. This paper contributes to this work by applying a multilayered critical theory approach to the study of community. Starting from a general position that views community as a set of cognitively stabilized ideas and expectations, this approach compares discourses at different social levels of community in terms of how they unfold over time. The paper then applies this approach to experiences of community amongst older people in three rural places in England and Wales. Drawing on materials from interviews with older people and stakeholders, the paper explores the extent to which institutional discourses of community include different points of view and interpersonal discourses draw on reflective discourses. The empirical study highlights how community represents both a social system and a space in which individuals learn to live with others in the context of common practices and rule systems. It is also clear from the study that civil society and state actors need to develop new ideas, resources and practices to transform ageing from a demographic descriptor of rural places to an essential component of a shifting rural community discourse

Impact of Loss of Generation on Bus Voltage Frequency and RoCoF

This study investigates how the loss of a generator impacts bus voltage RoCoF post-disturbance. The results show that the fastest bus voltage RoCoFs will occur close to generators impacted the most by the disturbance but this may not be the closest generator to the disturbance. The study also demonstrates a simple method that can be used to identify the generator that will be impacted most after a disturbance and hence the network location that will experience the fastest RoCoF

Investigation into the local nature of rate of change of frequency in electrical power systems

In recent years power systems world-wide have seen large increases in wind power penetration and this trend is expected to continue. This is having the undesirable consequence of reducing the inertia of electrical power systems, especially at times of high wind generation. Reduced inertia makes a power system more susceptible to a larger rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) following a grid disturbance, such as the sudden disconnection of a load or generator. High RoCoF events could trigger generator protective devices or anti-islanding RoCoF relays, disconnecting generation from the grid, compounding the initial grid disturbance and in extreme cases result in the cascade tripping of generators and grid blackout. The objective of this research was to investigate how RoCoF varies with location in an electrical power system and determine if there is any significant difference between local RoCoF observed at individual buses and the system RoCoF seen across the entire power system. The results show that generators closest to the disturbance are impacted the most after the loss of a generator, and if this generator has relatively low inertia it could see a local RoCoF many times greater than the system RoCoF. It was also observed that when a large portion of the total power system inertia is concentrated at one machine, the mean of the local RoCoFs is significantly larger compared to when the power system inertia is equally distributed across all machines. It was observed that by measuring RoCoF using a rolling average window of 0.5 seconds, the magnitude of the measured RoCoF is significantly reduced and the effect that the distribution of inertia has on the mean of the local RoCoFs is eliminated. However, in some scenarios the local RoCof was still many times greater than the system RoCoF. The results demonstrate that local RoCoF could be an issue that needs to be considered when operating low inertia power systems, particularly as wind power continues to displace conventional generation

Public contracts as accountability mechanisms: assuring quality in public healthcare in England and Wales

Contracting in the public sector is designed to enhance the accountability of service providers to their funders. The idea is that quality is improved by the use of service specifications, monitoring of performance and imposition of contractual sanctions. Socio-legal and economic theories of contract indicate that it will be difficult to make and enforce contracts to achieve this. The results of a study of National Health Services contracting in England and Wales are reported. We conclude that contracts alone are not sufficient to improve accountability – collibration of various regulatory measures (including more hierarchical mechanisms such as performance targets) is required