Drivers of fund performance: a panel data analysis

The principle aim of this research is to elucidate the factors driving the total rate of return of non-listed funds using a panel data analytical framework. In line with previous results, we find that core funds exhibit lower yet more stable returns than value-added and, in particular, opportunistic funds, both cross-sectionally and over time. After taking into account overall market exposure, as measured by weighted market returns, the excess returns of value-added and opportunity funds are likely to stem from: high leverage, high exposure to development, active asset management and investment in specialized property sectors. A random effects estimation of the panel data model largely confirms the findings obtained from the fixed effects model. Again, the country and sector property effect shows the strongest significance in explaining total returns. The stock market variable is negative which hints at switching effects between competing asset classes. For opportunity funds, on average, the returns attributable to gearing are three times higher than those for value added funds and over five times higher than for core funds. Overall, there is relatively strong evidence indicating that country and sector allocation, style, gearing and fund size combinations impact on the performance of unlisted real estate funds

Foreseeability in American and English Law

Foreseeability is the ability to see or know in advance, hence, the reasonable anticipation that harm or injury is the likely result of acts or omissions. In order to determine culpable negligence and establish the right to recover for a wrong, there must be a sequence of events like concatenation, or a series of united events like the links of a chain, called proximate cause. The definition of proximate cause is, that cause which in natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces the injury, and without which the result would not have occurred

Stare Decisis in the F.E.L.A.

The general doctrine on stare decisis is that when a court has once laid down a principle of law as applicable to a certain set of facts, it will adhere to that principle and apply it to all future cases, where the facts are substantially the same. Congress on August 11, 1939, amended the Federal Employers Liability Act, and by the sweep of the President\u27s pen the old and archaic defense of assumption of risk was completely eliminated from the Act

Foreseeability in American and English Law

Foreseeability is the ability to see or know in advance, hence, the reasonable anticipation that harm or injury is the likely result of acts or omissions. In order to determine culpable negligence and establish the right to recover for a wrong, there must be a sequence of events like concatenation, or a series of united events like the links of a chain, called proximate cause. The definition of proximate cause is, that cause which in natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces the injury, and without which the result would not have occurred

The nature and origin of Seyfert warm absorbers

We collate the results of recent high resolution X-ray spectroscopic observations of 23 AGN, and use the resulting information to try to provide answers to some of the main open questions about warm absorbers: where do they originate, what effect do they have on their host galaxies, and what is their importance within the energetics and dynamics of the AGN system as a whole? We find that the warm absorbers of nearby Seyferts and certain QSOs are most likely to originate in outflows from the dusty torus, and that the kinetic luminosity of these outflows accounts for well under 1% of the bolometric luminosities of the AGN. Our analysis supports, however, the view that the relativistic outflows recently observed in two PG quasars have their origin in accretion disc winds, although the energetic importance of these outflows is similar to that of the Seyfert warm absorbers. We find that the observed soft X-ray absorbing ionisation phases fill less than 10% of the available volume. Finally, we show that the amount of matter processed through an AGN outflow system, over the lifetime of the AGN, is probably large enough to have a significant influence on the evolution of the host galaxy and of the AGN itself

3-D GRMHD and GRPIC Simulations of Disk-Jet Coupling and Emission

We investigate jet formation in black-hole systems using 3-D General Relativistic Particle-In-Cell (GRPIC) and 3-D GRMHD simulations. GRPIC simulations, which allow charge separations in a collisionless plasma, do not need to invoke the frozen condition as in GRMHD simulations. 3-D GRPIC simulations show that jets are launched from Kerr black holes as in 3-D GRMHD simulations, but jet formation in the two cases may not be identical. Comparative study of black hole systems with GRPIC and GRMHD simulations with the inclusion of radiate transfer will further clarify the mechanisms that drive the evolution of disk-jet systems.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, Proceedings of the Eleventh Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity, edited by H. Kleinert, R.T. Jantzen and R. Ruffini, World Scientific, Singapore, 200

Disentangling the Complex Broadband X-ray Spectrum of IRAS 13197-1627 with NuSTAR, XMM-Newton and Suzaku

We present results from a coordinated $XMM$-$Newton$+$NuSTAR$ observation of the type 1.8 Seyfert galaxy IRAS 13197-1627. This is a highly complex source, with strong contributions from relativistic reflection from the inner accretion disk, neutral absorption and further reprocessing by more distant material, and ionised absorption from an outflow. We undertake a detailed spectral analysis combining the broadband coverage provided by $XMM$-$Newton$+$NuSTAR$ with a multi-epoch approach incorporating archival observations performed by $XMM$-$Newton$ and $Suzaku$. Our focus is on characterising the reflection from the inner accretion disk, which previous works have suggested may dominate the AGN emission, and constraining the black hole spin. Using lamppost disk reflection models, we find that the results for the inner disk are largely insensitive to assumptions regarding the geometry of the distant reprocessor and the precise form of the illuminating X-ray continuum. However, these results do depend on the treatment of the iron abundance of the distant absorber/reprocessor. The multi-epoch data favour a scenario in which the AGN is chemically homogeneous, and we find that a rapidly rotating black hole is preferred, with $a^* \geq 0.7$, but a slowly-rotating black hole is not strongly excluded. In addition to the results for the inner disk, we also find that both the neutral and ionised absorbers vary from epoch to epoch, implying that both have some degree of inhomogeneity in their structure.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

County-level USA: No Robust Relationship between Geoclimatic Variables and Cognitive Ability

Using a sample of ~3,100 U.S. counties, we tested geoclimatic explanations for why cognitive ability varies across geography. These models posit that geoclimatic factors will strongly predict cognitive ability across geography,even when a variety of common controls appear in the regression equations.Our results generally do not support UV radiation (UVR) based or other geoclimatic models. Specifically, although UVR alone predicted cognitive ability at the U.S. county-level (β = -.33), its validity was markedly reduced in the presence of climatic and demographic covariates (β = -.16), and was reduced even further with a spatial lag (β = -.10). For climate models,average temperature remained a significant predictor in the regression equation containing a spatial lag (β = .35). However, the effect was in the wrong direction relative to typical cold weather hypotheses. Moreover,when we ran the analyses separately by race/ethnicity, no consistent pattern appeared in the models containing the spatial lag. Analyses of gap sizes across counties were also generally inconsistent with predictions from the UVR model. Instead, results seemed to provide support for compositional models

DSCAM promotes axon fasciculation and growth in the developing optic pathway

Acknowledgments We thank Drs. Robert Burgess, Carol Mason, and Eloisa Herrera for helpful discussions; Dr. Thomas Theil for his invaluable advice on the slice culture methods; Francesca Lamb and Emma Smith for technical assistance; and the Institute of Medical Sciences Microscopy and Imaging Facility for assistance with confocal microscopy. This work was supported by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) doctoral training award studentship and a BBSRC project grant (BB/J00815X/1). Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.Peer reviewedPublisher PD