Household mortgage demand: a study of the UK, Australia and Japan

Households combine their personal savings and mortgage debt to finance their home purchases. In developed countries, mortgage debt is the largest debt on a household’s balance sheet and in these countries, the mortgage penetration rates are high. For the stability of the mortgage market and thereby the money market in an economy, it is important to understand households' mortgage demand decisions and riskiness of these borrowers. There are differences in mortgage systems among countries, which play an important role in determining the mortgage decisions that households make. These differences arise from the availability of types of mortgage instrument (adjustable versus fixed rate mortgages), length of fixed period for a fixed rate mortgage contracts, conditions of prepayment, tax treatment, lenders’ constraints related to repayment, loan to value ratio, foreclosure and personal bankruptcy laws etc. These differences impact borrowers' choice of mortgage contract and mortgage demand. This paper analyses the mortgage demand behaviour of households in the UK, Australia and Japan. Specific questions that have been asked relate to the factors that determine household mortgage demand, housing demand and loan to value ratio. Though the homeownership is a preferred tenure and the mortgages are 'recourse' loans, housing markets in these three countries operate in different mortgage market institutional structure. Results indicate that income elasticity of mortgage demand differ despite income elasticity of housing demand being similar. Mortgage institutions that pose constraints for borrowers also determine the extent of mortgage demand. Other factors such as demography, economic conditions have also played an important role in determining mortgage and housing demand

Evaluating methane inventories by isotopic analysis in the London region

A thorough understanding of methane sources is necessary to accomplish methane reduction targets. Urban environments, where a large variety of methane sources coexist, are one of the most complex areas to investigate. Methane sources are characterised by specific δ13C-CH4 signatures, so high precision stable isotope analysis of atmospheric methane can be used to give a better understanding of urban sources and their partition in a source mix. Diurnal measurements of methane and carbon dioxide mole fraction, and isotopic values at King’s College London, enabled assessment of the isotopic signal of the source mix in central London. Surveys with a mobile measurement system in the London region were also carried out for detection of methane plumes at near ground level, in order to evaluate the spatial allocation of sources suggested by the inventories. The measured isotopic signal in central London (−45.7 ±0.5‰) was more than 2‰ higher than the isotopic value calculated using emission inventories and updated δ13C-CH4 signatures. Besides, during the mobile surveys, many gas leaks were identified that are not included in the inventories. This suggests that a revision of the source distribution given by the emission inventories is needed

Enzymes immobilized in Langmuir-Blodgett films: Why determining the surface properties in Langmuir monolayer is important?

ABSTRACT In this review we discuss about the immobilization of enzymes in Langmuir-Blodgett films in order to determine the catalytic properties of these biomacromolecules when adsorbed on solid supports. Usually, the conformation of enzymes depends on the environmental conditions imposed to them, including the chemical composition of the matrix, and the morphology and thickness of the film. In this review, we show an outline of manuscripts that report the immobilization of enzymes as LB films since the 1980’s, and also some examples of how the surface properties of the floating monolayer prepared previously to the transfer to the solid support are important to determine the efficiency of the resulting device

Seasonal behavior of radon decay products in indoor air and resulting radiation dose to human respiratory tract

Most of radiation hazard of indoor radon is largely due to the radon progenies, which are inhaled and deposited in the human respiratory tract. It is essential to evaluate aerodynamic characteristics of the radon progenies, which are either attached or unattached to aerosol particles, because the dose is strongly dependent on the location of deposition in respiratory tract and hence on the aerodynamic characteristics of the aerosol particles. This paper presents the seasonal behavior of radon decay products in indoor air under domestic conditions at Nagoya University, Japan. A low pressure cascade impactor as an instrument for classifying aerosol sizes and imaging plate as a radiation detector have been employed to characterize the activity size distribution of short-lived radon decay products. In parallel, radon and its progenies concentrations were measured. Taking into account the progeny characteristics, the inhalation dose in the different seasons was also estimated based on a lung dose model with the structure that is related to the ICRP66 respiratory tract model. The result evident that, the highest dose 0.22 mSvy−1 was observed during the winter where the highest value of equilibrium equivalent concentration of radon (EEC) and lowest value of the activity median aerodynamic diameter (AMAD) were found in this season; whereas, the dose in spring appeared to be lowest 0.02 mSvy−1