Modelling the Longitudinal Properties of Financial Ratios of European Firms

The use of financial ratios by analysts to compare the performance of firms from one accounting period to the next is of growing importance with continued European economic integration. Recent studies suggest that the individual component series of financial ratios exhibit nonstationarity which is not eliminated by the ratio transformation. In this paper, w e derive a generalised model that incorporates stochastic and deterministic trends and allows for restricted and unrestricted proportionate growth in the ratio numerator and denominator. When the individual firm series are included in a panel structure with large N and small T, we are unable to reject convincingly a joint hypothesis of nonstationarity, whilst in about one third of the individual firm panels there is no evidence of a unit root. Although the components of financial ratios are correlated variables, our estimates show that any cointegrating effects decay rapidly.financial ratios, nonstationarity, proportionate growth, cointegration, panel methods

Evaluating an online support package delivered within a disability unemployment service: study protocol for a randomised controlled feasibility study

Background Mental health problems such as anxiety and depression are known to be higher in those who are unemployed. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a recognised support for people with such problems and can improve the ability of people to get back to work.<p></p> Methods/design Participants with symptoms of low mood will be recruited from the disability employment service, Remploy. Participants will receive either immediate or delayed access to an online CBT-based life skills intervention, the “Living Life” package. The primary end point will be at 3 months when the delayed group will be offered the intervention. This feasibility study will test the trial design and assess recruitment, retention, acceptability and adherence, as well as providing efficacy data.<p></p> Discussion The study will inform the design and sample size for a future full randomised controlled trial (RCT) which will be carried out to determine the effectiveness of the online package in improving mood and employment status.<p></p&gt

'Thy Native Muse Regard!': The poetics of the sublime in late eighteenth-century Scotland

The aim of this thesis is to uncover the transmission and development of the sublime throughout the work of the late eighteenth-century Scottish poets, James Macpherson, James Beattie, and Robert Burns. By first offering a modern definition of the sublime based on the meeting of the world, the mind, and the word, this thesis shall look to the sublime's idealisation within eighteenth-century British aesthetic thought, noting its contested, and abstract conceptualisation as 'the true sublime'. Chapter One shall be dedicated to acknowledging Scotland's role in shaping this aesthetic before addressing the problematic nature of the aesthetic ideal of a 'true sublime'. The argument shall then be made that following Edmund Burke's landmark treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which successfully offered the late eighteenth-century a clear taxonomy of the sublime with poetry as its highest expression, the subsequent poetry of Macpherson, Beattie, and Burns actualised this philosophical ideal of a 'true sublime' into a working, and examinable practice, a poetics of the sublime. Chapter Two shall discuss the rise of the 'Ossian phenomenon' of the 1760s, with constructive analysis of Macpherson's three sets of Ossian poems: Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760), Fingal: An Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books (1761), and Temora: An Epic Poem in Eight Books. By discussing the development of the poetics of the sublime throughout each set of poems, this thesis shall contend that Ossian marks a pivotal moment in literary history for successfully realising the eighteenth-century's theory of the sublime through its poetic coordination of the classical models of the fragment and the epic paired with its decisively Scottish aspect in imagery and character. Chapter Three shall turn to the proceeding decade and the philosophy and poetry of James Beattie. The chapter shall acknowledge Beattie's position within the philosophical discourses of Marischal college during the Aberdonian Enlightenment before suggesting that his influential poem, The Minstrel (1771, 1774) presents a more substantial model of the sublime than found in such abstract discourses. The chapter shall note the progression in form from Macpherson whilst noting a similar engagement with the Scottish landscapes that inspire the texts. Central to this discussion of Beattie's Minstrel, will be his induction of the 'sublime moment', a crucial development for the poetics of the sublime centred on the subjective and creative experience of the poet. Chapter Four shall examine the work of Scotland's national bard, Robert Burns. In light of such developments from Macpherson and Beattie, this chapter shall note Burns’s position as inheritor of a poetics of the sublime that had been familiarised through its allegiance to the sublimity of Scotland and Scottish poesy. This chapter shall then examine Burns's role as innovator, with his characteristic use of form, language, and a pervading spirit of localism from which he achieves a distinct new 'Vision' of the sublime. The final chapter shall offer a summary of the progression of the poetics of the sublime throughout the work of Macpherson, Beattie, and Burns, whilst looking ahead to the Romantic period and the influential stature of each of these late eighteenth-century Scottish poets and their respective legacies

Transnational student engagement : the invisible students?

Transnational education initiatives are on the rise across the globe as universities seek to further their internationalisation strategies. In Scotland, student engagement is at the heart of the higher education system, be that in the classroom or through quality enhancement practices at the institutional level. The focus of this research is in the area of student engagement and transnational education. In essence, this thesis sets out with the aim to find out how student engage at transnational initiatives of Scottish higher education institutions (HEIs). A conceptual framework is introduced with the most common student ‘identities’: consumers, citizens, co-creators and partners. The research approach adopted in this thesis includes in-depth interviews with eighteen transnational students through phenomenological lenses. The findings from this research provide evidence that transnational student engagement mostly occurs at course-level, and that the majority of the respondents define student engagement as staff-led, as opposed to student-led. The main conclusion drawn from this research is that transnational student engagement is low. Finally, recommendations are offered in the form of an action plan to help improve transnational student engagement

3D heritage visualisation and the negotiation of authenticity: the ACCORD project

This article examines the question of authenticity in relation to 3D visualisation of historic objects and monuments. Much of the literature locates their authenticity in the accuracy of the data and/or the realism of the resulting models. Yet critics argue that 3D visualisations undermine the experience of authenticity, disrupting people’s access to the materiality, biography and aura of their historic counterparts. The ACCORD project takes questions of authenticity and 3D visualisation into a new arena – that of community heritage practice – and uses rapid ethnographic methods to examine whether and how such visualisations acquire authenticity. The results demonstrate that subtle forms of migration and borrowing occur between the original and the digital, creating new forms of authenticity associated with the digital object. Likewise, the creation of digital models mediates the authenticity and status of their original counterparts through the networks of relations in which they are embedded. The current pre-occupation with the binary question of whether 3D digital models are authentic or not obscures the wider work that such objects do in respect to the cultural politics of ownership, attachment, place-making and regeneration. The article both advances theoretical debates and has important implications for heritage visualisation practice

The ACCORD project: Archaeological Community Co-Production of Research Resources

This paper introduces the AHRC funded ACCORD project, a partnership between the Digital Design Studio at the Glasgow School of Art, Archaeology Scotland, the University of Manchester and the RCAHMS. The ACCORD project examines the opportunities and implications of digital visualisation technologies for community engagement and research through the co-creation of 3D models of historic monuments and places. Despite their increasing accessibility, techniques such as laser scanning, 3D modelling and 3D print- ing have remained firmly in the domain of heritage specialists. Expert forms of knowledge and/or professional priorities frame the use of digital visualisation technologies and forms of community-based social value are rarely addressed. Consequently, the resulting digital objects fail to engage communities as a means of researching and representing their heritage. The first part of this paper pres- ents how the ACCORD project seeks to address this gap through the co-design and co-production of an integrated research asset that encompasses social value and engages communities with transformative digital technologies. The second half of this paper (section 4) presents a case study of an ACCORD project based in Argyll which highlights the nature of community relations with expert groups, issues of archaeological authority and the transformative power of co-production using digital recording techniques

3D visualisation, communities and the production of significance

In this paper, we discuss how community co-production of heritage records facilitates the production and negotiation of new forms of value and significance. We draw on case studies from the ACCORD project, which used 3D digital technologies for community engagement through co-creation, to explore how a site’s significance can be affected and challenged through community recording. Whilst multiple modes of recording operate in this way, digital 3D recording, long held as the sole domain of the technical expert, is often deployed by heritage professionals as a means of enhancing authorised historic and scientific values through the sophisticated and precise recording of a site’s physical structure. Here we argue that these recording techniques can also offer a means of exploring and challenging existing authorised regimes of significance and insignificance, giving voice to alternative and richer perspectives through the recording process itself, as much as through the resultant record. This challenges orthodox thinking about both the primary purpose and effects of digital recording and opens up new directions for their use in heritage practice

Assessment in further education and training (FET) life sciences : an analysis of assessment tasks in three selected schools in the Mpumalanga Province.

This study describes the extent to which summative assessment tasks assess the different cognitive levels and learning outcomes with reference to the SAG (2008) for Grade 10 Life Sciences. Essentially, it describes the fit between the intended and implemented assessment, using documentary analysis as a research strategy. In order to determine the fit between intended and implemented assessment the Life Sciences SAG (2008) and question papers on summative assessment tasks were analysed. The question papers were obtained from three schools which were sampled purposively in the Mpumalaga Province. The Life Sciences SAG (2008) was analysed in order to determine the official percentage weightings (marks) of the cognitive levels and learning outcomes which must be assessed in the summative assessment tasks (intended assessment). Using the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy as an analysis tool, question papers on summative assessment tasks were also analysed in order to determine the average percentage weightings (marks) of the cognitive levels and learning outcomes which were assessed (implemented assessment). When the intended and implemented assessments were compared the following results were obtained: For practical tasks and end-of-year examinations there was an incongruity between the intended and implemented assessment in terms of the cognitive levels and learning outcomes. The discrepancy between the intended and the implemented assessment was also found in controlled tests but only in terms of the learning outcomes. In controlled tests the fit between intended and implemented assessment in terms of the cognitive levels could not be determined because the SAG (2008) does not prescribe the cognitive levels which must be assessed. Furthermore, a weak fit between the intended and the implemented assessment in terms of the lower cognitive levels and learning outcomes was found in mid-year examinations. However, there was a strong fit between the intended and implemented assessment in terms of the higher cognitive levels in mid-year examinations. Lastly, for the research projects the fit between the intended and implemented assessment could not be determined because the Life Sciences SAG (2008) does not prescribe the cognitive levels as well as the percentage weightings of the learning outcomes which must be assessed.Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011