Can Investing Diaries be Hazardous to Your Financial Health?

Business writers and academics have suggested keeping an investing diary to avoid hindsight bias. In the diary, investors justify their predictions of future events, e.g., “This stock will go up because…” Eliminating hindsight bias should improve future returns. However, psychological research on the “explanation effect” suggests that justifying one’s predictions in writing induces overconfidence and, by consequence, reduces current returns. We test these propositions in a set of prediction markets populated by two types of traders: forecasters who completed a required investing diary task and non-forecasters who did not. The portfolios of forecasters were significantly over-invested in securities associated with the forecaster’s prediction. This is consistent with prior psychological research and a clear sign of investor over-confidence. We further find that forecasters with accurate predictions have higher returns than those with inaccurate predictions. However, the returns for forecasters with inaccurate predictions were generally no worse than the returns of the non-forecasters. Our results suggest that while keeping an investing diary may lead to biased portfolios, it does not have an overall negative effect on current returns. Therefore, contrary to expectations, there is not a trade-off between the long-term and short-term effects of an investing diary

LDHB contributes to the regulation of lactate levels and basal insulin secretion in human pancreatic β cells

Using 13C6 glucose labeling coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and 2D 1H-13C heteronuclear single quantum coherence NMR spectroscopy, we have obtained a comparative high-resolution map of glucose fate underpinning β cell function. In both mouse and human islets, the contribution of glucose to the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle is similar. Pyruvate fueling of the TCA cycle is primarily mediated by the activity of pyruvate dehydrogenase, with lower flux through pyruvate carboxylase. While the conversion of pyruvate to lactate by lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) can be detected in islets of both species, lactate accumulation is 6-fold higher in human islets. Human islets express LDH, with low-moderate LDHA expression and β cell-specific LDHB expression. LDHB inhibition amplifies LDHA-dependent lactate generation in mouse and human β cells and increases basal insulin release. Lastly, cis-instrument Mendelian randomization shows that low LDHB expression levels correlate with elevated fasting insulin in humans. Thus, LDHB limits lactate generation in β cells to maintain appropriate insulin release.</p

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Developing research skills and capability in higher education: Combining collaborative research with mentoring

Mentoring provides an effective way of assisting emerging researchers to understand more fully how academics engage in research activities, enhance their research skills and gain confidence in pursuing their own research interests. Although mentoring can be constructed in diverse ways, the most valuable mentoring is that tailored appropriately to meet the developmental needs of the mentee (Brown & Daly, 2009). In this paper we examine mentoring as a form of researcher development and our own approach which emphasises mentoring with, and alongside, other researchers. Two academics assembled a research team for a collaborative project and, while they oversaw the project, roles were assigned to individuals through discussion and consensus. This paper identifies the parameters for the collaborative venture, identifies the focus for mentoring and provides the reflections of the two mentees who look back on their experiences of being part of a research team. We affirm our contention that mentoring can be an evolving process as well as an active relationship in which assistance and reflection go hand in hand. The narratives provided by the mentees indicate that mentoring as part of a collaborative research project is not an occurrence, but an ongoing developmental process and an opportunity to learn and contribute simultaneously