Mechanisms of urban change: Regeneration companies or development corporations?

This article is an early assessment of the role and performance of URCs, benchmarked against the UDC model. It identified weaknesses and vulnerability of URCs in relation to control over land

Worship Through Creation

Understanding the purpose of worship through the lens of creation. The creation story tells the story of God\u27s design of worship and His heart for relationship with mankind. Sin broke the original design and set the Biblical storyline of the coming redeemer in motion. Jesus opened the door for all mankind to find new life in and only through Him. Now mankind can worship in that intended form of relationship as designed in the beginning

On the brink of a second financial system: modelling and mitigating risk in decentralised finance

This thesis focuses on risk and fragility within Decentralised Finance (DeFi). This thesis presents new evidence on the interconnected and fragile nature of DeFi protocols and develops an approach to mitigate risk in DeFi that relies upon redundancy. Within this context, our contributions are threefold. Firstly, we focus on a subset of DeFi protocols: Protocols for Loanable Funds (PLFs). PLFs use smart contract code to facilitate the intermediation of loanable funds and, in doing so, allow agents to borrow and save programmatically. Within these protocols, interest rate mechanisms seek to equilibrate the supply and demand for funds. After reviewing methodologies used to set interest rates in PLFs and examining how these interest rate rules have changed in response to changes in liquidity, our main contribution is to model the market efficiency and inter-connectedness between protocols. Second, we make two contributions by focusing on one particular DeFi protocol, MakerDAO’s DAI. The first is to examine how governance system design weaknesses could enable an attacker to take complete control of the protocol. We present a novel strategy utilising flash loans that enables the execution of a governance attack in just two transactions without locking any assets. Second, we develop a stress-testing framework for a stylised DeFi lending protocol, focusing on the impact of a drying-up of liquidity on protocol solvency. Our third contribution is to develop an approach to minimising the frequency and severity of exploits in DeFi attacks. The idea is to implement a program logic more than once, ideally using different programming languages. Then, for each implementation, the results should match before allowing the state of the blockchain to change. We provide a novel algorithm for implementing dissimilar redundancy for smart contracts. Taking these contributions together, this thesis presents new methods for modelling and mea- suring financial risk in DeFi, and — focussing on smart contract risk alone — develops an approach to mitigating it.Open Acces

Looking towards the future: the changing nature of intrusive surveillance and technical attacks against high-profile targets

In this thesis a novel Bayesian model is developed that is capable of predicting the probability of a range of eavesdropping techniques deployed, given an attacker's capability, opportunity and intent. Whilst limited attention by academia has focused on the cold war activities of Soviet bloc and Western allies' bugging of embassies, even less attention has been paid to the changing nature of the technology used for these eavesdropping events. This thesis makes four contributions: through the analysis of technical eavesdropping events over the last century, technological innovation is shown to have enriched the eavesdropping opportunities for a range of capabilities. The entry barrier for effective eavesdropping is lowered, while for the well resourced eavesdropper, the requirement for close access has been replaced by remote access opportunities. A new way to consider eavesdropping methods is presented through the expert elicitation of capability and opportunity requirements for a range of present-day eavesdropping techniques. Eavesdropping technology is shown to have life-cycle stages with the technology exploited by different capabilities at different times. Three case studies illustrate that yesterday’s secretive government method becomes today’s commodity. The significance of the egress transmission path is considered too. Finally, by using the expert elicitation information derived for capability, opportunity and life-cycle position, for a range of eavesdropping techniques, it is shown that it is possible to predict the probability of particular eavesdropping techniques being deployed. This novel Bayesian inferencing model enables scenarios with incomplete, uncertain or missing detail to be considered. The model is validated against the previously collated historic eavesdropping events. The development of this concept may be scaled with additional eavesdropping techniques to form the basis of a tool for security professionals or risk managers wishing to define eavesdropping threat advice or create eavesdropping policies based on the rigour of this technological study.Open Acces

Three essays in public economics

This dissertation consists of three essays exploring how individuals, groups, and firms respond to public policy changes. The first two chapters focus on labor supply and demand responses to tax and unemployment insurance reforms, while the third explores the effects of reconfiguring political boundaries on ethnic identity and social stability. The first essay (with Simon Trenkle) studies the speed with which workers increase their earnings following a tax break. We do so in Germany, where a large discontinuity in the tax schedule induces sharp bunching in the earnings distribution at the expected cutoff. We analyze earnings responses following two separate reforms that increase this cutoff. While some workers adjust instantly post-reform, others take several years to increase their earnings. Adjustment behavior is strongly correlated within firms. We posit that idiosyncratic differences in labor demand across firms drive cross-firm heterogeneity in adjustment rates, and find support for this channel in the data. The second essay (with Johannes Schmieder, Simon Trenkle, and Han Ye) studies older workers' responses to unemployment insurance (UI) extensions in Germany. Extending UI benefits can affect labor supply along two margins: it can lengthen the unemployment duration of an individual on UI - the intensive margin - and it can alter the inflows into UI - the extensive margin. We document extensive margin responses in the form of bunching in UI entries at precisely the age that ensures workers can transition into retirement immediately following UI expiration. Consequently, we show that standard, intensive margin estimates of the non-employment effect of UI are downward biased. The third essay (with Samuel Bazzi) analyzes the effects of political boundaries on ethnic divisions and conflict. In the early 2000s, Indonesia created hundreds of new local governments, thereby redrawing subnational boundaries and altering each districts' ethnic composition. We argue that such changes in political boundaries can fundamentally reshape ethnic divisions. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in the timing of redistricting, we show that redistricting along group lines increases social stability, but that these gains are undone and even reversed in newly polarized districts. Our findings show that ethnic divisions are not fixed and instead depend on political boundaries

Master of Science

thesisThe purpose of this study was to examine relationships among staged appearance, technical dance skill, selected anthropometric measures and body composition in preprofessional, collegiate female ballet dancers. The subjects (n = 45) were all full time ballet majors (16-22 years) attending the University of Utah in the Dance Department. The subjects represented a variety of levels of dance proficiency. Stage appearance (STAGE) was determined by the dance faculty using a 5 point Likert scale. A technical dance skill rating (TOTAL) was derived from the sum of seven elements of dance proficiency as assessed by the faculty utilizing seven separate Likert scales. Body composition was determined by hydrostatic weighing. The following anthropometric measures were assessed: height, weight, wrist, forearm, extended biceps, shoulder, chest, waist, hips, thigh, knee, calf, and ankle girths, biacromial and bitrochanteric diameters, triceps skinfold, and waist to tip of coccyx. The zero order correlations revealed significant relationships between TOTAL and weight, wrist, forearm, extended biceps, and waist girths (r - -0.57, -0.49, -0.56, -0.56, -0.53), respectively; and STAGE and weight, percent fat, extended biceps, and waist girths (r - -0.66, -.050, -0.72, -0.69), respectively. Multiple regression analysis revealed that prediction of STAGE was best accomplished by combining the two girth measures of biceps and hip (R = 0.755). Prediction of TOTAL was best achieved with a combination of weight and % fat (R = 0.620). Factor analysis revealed that girths of the extremities measured essentially the same underlying factor; the same was revealed for girth measures of the trunk (i.e., shoulder, breast, and waist). While these results indicate that physique and body composition are related to successful performance and achievement of appearance standards in female ballet dancers, the anthropometric and body composition variables measured in this study do not account for all of the variability in dance performance capabilities or stage appearance. Further research is needed to identify additional factors which might influence success as a ballerina

Three essays in public economics

This dissertation consists of three essays exploring how individuals, groups, and firms respond to public policy changes. The first two chapters focus on labor supply and demand responses to tax and unemployment insurance reforms, while the third explores the effects of reconfiguring political boundaries on ethnic identity and social stability. The first essay (with Simon Trenkle) studies the speed with which workers increase their earnings following a tax break. We do so in Germany, where a large discontinuity in the tax schedule induces sharp bunching in the earnings distribution at the expected cutoff. We analyze earnings responses following two separate reforms that increase this cutoff. While some workers adjust instantly post-reform, others take several years to increase their earnings. Adjustment behavior is strongly correlated within firms. We posit that idiosyncratic differences in labor demand across firms drive cross-firm heterogeneity in adjustment rates, and find support for this channel in the data. The second essay (with Johannes Schmieder, Simon Trenkle, and Han Ye) studies older workers' responses to unemployment insurance (UI) extensions in Germany. Extending UI benefits can affect labor supply along two margins: it can lengthen the unemployment duration of an individual on UI - the intensive margin - and it can alter the inflows into UI - the extensive margin. We document extensive margin responses in the form of bunching in UI entries at precisely the age that ensures workers can transition into retirement immediately following UI expiration. Consequently, we show that standard, intensive margin estimates of the non-employment effect of UI are downward biased. The third essay (with Samuel Bazzi) analyzes the effects of political boundaries on ethnic divisions and conflict. In the early 2000s, Indonesia created hundreds of new local governments, thereby redrawing subnational boundaries and altering each districts' ethnic composition. We argue that such changes in political boundaries can fundamentally reshape ethnic divisions. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in the timing of redistricting, we show that redistricting along group lines increases social stability, but that these gains are undone and even reversed in newly polarized districts. Our findings show that ethnic divisions are not fixed and instead depend on political boundaries

Should You Do A Doctorate? The Changing Returns To Postgraduate Qualifications

Higher education in the UK has experienced radical change over the last two decades. The change has been driven by a number of factors, not least New Labour’s policy to send 50% of school leavers to university. The increased supply of graduates has weakened a first degree’s ability to function as a signal to employers, resulting in many individuals pursuing postgraduate study to make themselves more competitive. This paper aims to show the changing returns to Bachelor, Master and Doctoral degrees for the period 1997 to 2013 and recognises the increasing importance of Ph.D. graduates in the upcoming years

Mastectomy with axillary clearance versus mastectomy without it

No Abstract

Control of T Cell Metabolism by Cytokines and Hormones

Dynamic, coordinated changes in metabolic pathway activity underpin the protective and inflammatory activity of T cells, through provision of energy and biosynthetic precursors for effector functions, as well as direct effects of metabolic enzymes, intermediates and end-products on signaling pathways and transcriptional mechanisms. Consequently, it has become increasingly clear that the metabolic status of the tissue microenvironment directly influences T cell activity, with changes in nutrient and/or metabolite abundance leading to dysfunctional T cell metabolism and interlinked immune function. Emerging evidence now indicates that additional signals are integrated by T cells to determine their overall metabolic phenotype, including those arising from interaction with cytokines and hormones in their environment. The impact of these on T cell metabolism, the mechanisms involved and the pathological implications are discussed in this review article