House Price-Volume Dynamics: Evidence from 12 Cities in New Zealand

Using a selected New Zealand urban area data set for the period 1994–2004, we examine price and volume dynamics using various house price indexing approaches. Applying the Granger causality test based on a vector error correction model (VECM), where seasonality is considered in the model by using seasonal dummy variables, we find that sale price and trading volume are cointegrated. Causality is caused by a long-run relationship rather than short-run dynamics between price and volume. The direction of causality for large cities is from volume to price. The results support the theory of frictional search models for housing markets in general.

THEMIS observations and riometry: A data comparison with a view to proxy and prediction

A comparison has been made between radio absorption events observed by riometer at selected times of day and bursts of electrons observed in the midnight sector by THEMIS satellites. The correlation is found to be good for absorption in the noon and midnight sectors but poor around dawn and dusk. For noon and midnight the absorption can be estimated from the THEMIS electron flux to better than a factor of 2 in most cases. In the noon sector the absorption follows the THEMIS event by about 30 min on average (though with considerable variation from case to case), but by night the absorption precedes the electron flux by about 8 min on average. Thus, the flux at THEMIS can be predicted from the absorption in the night sector, the accuracy being better than a factor of 3 in most cases. The flux observed also depends on the location of the satellite, reducing with increasing distance down the tail. It is estimated that the source of the tail events observed in this study was at about 6Re, and comparisons are made with the established general pattern of the substorm in auroral absorption

myTrustedCloud: Trusted cloud infrastructure for security-critical computation and data managment

Copyright @ 2012 IEEECloud Computing provides an optimal infrastructure to utilise and share both computational and data resources whilst allowing a pay-per-use model, useful to cost-effectively manage hardware investment or to maximise its utilisation. Cloud Computing also offers transitory access to scalable amounts of computational resources, something that is particularly important due to the time and financial constraints of many user communities. The growing number of communities that are adopting large public cloud resources such as Amazon Web Services [1] or Microsoft Azure [2] proves the success and hence usefulness of the Cloud Computing paradigm. Nonetheless, the typical use cases for public clouds involve non-business critical applications, particularly where issues around security of utilization of applications or deposited data within shared public services are binding requisites. In this paper, a use case is presented illustrating how the integration of Trusted Computing technologies into an available cloud infrastructure - Eucalyptus - allows the security-critical energy industry to exploit the flexibility and potential economical benefits of the Cloud Computing paradigm for their business-critical applications

Performativity, spectrality, hysteria : the performance of masculinity in late 1990s British dance.

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Kira O'Reilly: Untitled (Bodies)

Funding to support the publication was gained from: Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme; Live Art Development Agency; King's College London; Queen Mary University of London.This publication is the first major survey of the interdisciplinary practices of Kira O’Reilly. O’Reilly’s works have been exhibited and presented internationally, across many different formats, frames and contexts since 1998, and the publication encompasses that breadth and diversity. Bringing together newly commissioned and other writings by major thinkers in and beyond visual and performance studies, and extensive documentation of the artist’s work from two decades of practice, it navigates through and between performance, biotechnical practices, image-making, and writing. O’Reilly’s work approaches the uncertain boundaries of bodies as the starting point for enquiry, and is distinctly relevant to social themes in the arts. Specifically, O’Reilly asks what kind of societies become possible in collaborations across species, organisms, and bodies. O’Reilly explores these themes through sustained and experimental engagements with politics, biopolitics, change (social, corporeal, chemical, reactive), and the complex relations between the human and the non-human (including the animal, the human-made, and beyond). Amanda Coogan writes on the body in performance, Shannon Bell considers a feminist political aesthetics in an open body, Tracey Warr explores performances of permeability and messy materialisation, Rob La Frenais discusses the meetings of humans and animals. Other contributors include the artists and writers Marina Abramovic, Franko B, Rebecca French, and Linda Montano. The book includes interviews, archive material, and Kira O’Reilly’s own writings. This publication is the fifth in the Intellect Live book series. Intellect Live is a collaboration between Intellect Books and the Live Art Development Agency. The series is characterized by lavishly illustrated and beautifully designed books that are created through close collaborations between artists and writers, and that are the first substantial publication dedicated to the artists' work

What makes a good induction supporter?

The Teacher Induction Scheme, introduced in 2002, marked the first major change to new teacher induction in Scotland in 37 years. This paper gives an outline of these changes set against developments in mentoring theory in the wider context. It argues that the personal qualities of the induction supporter are crucial to developing an effective mentoring relationship. The views of student teachers are used to describe preferred characteristics of effective mentors and effective induction provision. A person specification is created by the comments of the "Class of 2002" — the first probationer teachers to have taken part in the Scheme

Transcriptomic analysis of the lesser spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula) pancreas, liver and brain reveals molecular level conservation of vertebrate pancreas function

BACKGROUND: Understanding the evolution of the vertebrate pancreas is key to understanding its functions. The chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish such as sharks and rays) have often been suggested to possess the most ancient example of a distinct pancreas with both hormonal (endocrine) and digestive (exocrine) roles. The lack of genetic, genomic and transcriptomic data for cartilaginous fish has hindered a more thorough understanding of the molecular-level functions of the chondrichthyan pancreas, particularly with respect to their “unusual” energy metabolism (where ketone bodies and amino acids are the main oxidative fuel source) and their paradoxical ability to both maintain stable blood glucose levels and tolerate extensive periods of hypoglycemia. In order to shed light on some of these processes, we carried out the first large-scale comparative transcriptomic survey of multiple cartilaginous fish tissues: the pancreas, brain and liver of the lesser spotted catshark, Scyliorhinus canicula. RESULTS: We generated a mutli-tissue assembly comprising 86,006 contigs, of which 44,794 were assigned to a particular tissue or combination of tissues based on mapping of sequencing reads. We have characterised transcripts encoding genes involved in insulin regulation, glucose sensing, transcriptional regulation, signaling and digestion, as well as many peptide hormone precursors and their receptors for the first time. Comparisons to mammalian pancreas transcriptomes reveals that mechanisms of glucose sensing and insulin regulation used to establish and maintain a stable internal environment are conserved across jawed vertebrates and likely pre-date the vertebrate radiation. Conservation of pancreatic hormones and genes encoding digestive proteins support the single, early evolution of a distinct pancreatic gland with endocrine and exocrine functions in jawed vertebrates. In addition, we demonstrate that chondrichthyes lack pancreatic polypeptide (PP) and that reports of PP in the literature are likely due cross-reaction with PYY and/or NPY in the pancreas. A three hormone islet organ is therefore the ancestral jawed vertebrate condition, later elaborated upon only in the tetrapod lineage. CONCLUSIONS: The cartilaginous fish are a great untapped resource for the reconstruction of patterns and processes of vertebrate evolution and new approaches such as those described in this paper will greatly facilitate their incorporation into the rank of “model organism”. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-15-1074) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Observations by incoherent scatter radar of related D- and F-region structuring at very high latitude

Properties and associations of F- and D-region ionospheric structures during weak electron precipitation at very high latitude are investigated using the Longyearbyen incoherent scatter radar. The radio absorption deduced from the electron density observations revealed evidence of a persistent low-altitude absorption layer peaking at 80-85 km. Inversion of the electron density profile to give an estimate of the incoming energetic electron spectrum suggests that its source may be the solar wind. Strong similarities are seen between variations in the F and D regions which suggest that the electron flux reaching the D-region is being modulated in energy by the variations of electron density in the F-region