BEING A JUDGE IN THE MODERN WORLD

It is something of a modern cliché to cite the Daily Mail as an example of the more hysterical fringe of the mainstream press, but even by its own standards the newspaper reached new heights in the wake of the High Court’s decision in R (on the application of Miller and Dos Santos) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Despite the rather dry constitutional point that was actually in issue (whether the executive possessed a prerogative power to leave a treaty without Parliamentary approval) the Mail left no doubt as to its view of the case: ‘Enemies of the people’ screamed the headline, with the article going on to suggest that the claimants “had formed an 'unholy alliance' with the judiciary.” Clearly the position of even the most senior members of the judiciary is far from the distinguished isolation of previous centuries.

The effect of habitat degradation on parasitism of coral reef fishes

Katie Motson studied the change in fish parasite communities between healthy and degraded coral reef habitats. She found that fish in degraded coral reef habitats faced higher levels of external parasite infection. Increases in parasitism add to the sub-lethal stressors of habitat degradation faced by coral reef organisms

Developing a Dance/Movement Therapy Based Method for Cultivating Mind-Body Connection in Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative condition, which affects the lives of 1% of all older adults in the Americas, Europe and Australia and .6% of older adults in Asian countries such as Japan, China, and India (Bega and Zadikoff, 2014). This condition largely impacts both physical and psychological wellbeing, often times also impacting self-perception. The connection between the physical and psychological, or mind-body connection, within individual with PD should be continually enriched and explored in order to maintain both motor and non-motor symptoms related to this progressive condition. The current body of research related to the treatment of PD is limited in the area of developing and implementing mind-body movement-based interventions. Further research using movement-based methods, such as adapted Dance/Movement Therapy (D/MT) practices, is needed to prove that these approaches are appropriate and beneficial interventions for cultivating the mind-body connection and improving symptom management for this population. This thesis outlines a mind-body movement-based intervention using adapted and modified D/MT approaches for individuals with Parkinson’s Disease. This method uses ‘facilitated mirroring’, a refined adaption of the D/MT methods of attunement and mirroring, within the movement and verbal dialogue of a collaborative individual therapeutic relationship with two female individuals diagnosed with PD over the course of six months. The results of the methods as facilitated with two individuals from the Parkinson’s population are discussed

How Many Alternative Eggs Should You Put in Your Investment Basket?

There is some debate about how many stocks can effectively eliminate most of the unsystematic risk in an equity portfolio. Estimates range from ten to 40. Given the growing proliferation of pooled investment vehicles aimed at the UK's pension fund industry, where these pools consist of various combinations of alternative asset classes and alternative investment strategies, in this paper we investigate the limits of diversification amongst these less conventional investments. Our results indicate that 40per cent of the time series risk can be eliminated by combining eight strategies, but only a further four per cent from combining 12. We also find that an investor could reduce 60per cent of the dispersion in terminal wealth of an alternative investment basket - which is arguably what investors should really be concerned with - by combining six of these less conventional asset approaches to investment, but only a further 20 per cent by combining 15

The rationale for transanal total mesorectal excision

There is no abstract in this 'for debate' article. The paper discusses the reasons why the trans-anal approach to mobilise the lower rectum from below may make resection of low rectal cancers easier than a purely laparoscopic approach from above

An Evaluation of Alternative Equity Indices - Part 1: Heuristic and Optimised Weighting Schemes

There is now a dazzling array of alternatives to the market-cap approach to choosing constituent weights for equity indices. Using data on the 1,000 largest US stocks every year from 1968 to the end of 2011 we compare and contrast the performance of a set of alternative indexing approaches. The alternatives that we explore can be loosely categorised into two groups. First, a set of weighting techniques that Chow et al (2011) describe as “heuristic.” The second set are based upon “optimisation techniques,” since they all require the maximisation or minimisation of some mathematical function subject to a set of constraints to derive the constituent weights. We find that all of the alternative indices considered here would have produced a better risk-adjusted performance than could have been achieved by having a passive exposure to a market capitalisation-weighted index. However, the most important result of our work stems from our ten million Monte Carlo simulations. We find that choosing constituent weights randomly, that is, applying weights that could have been chosen by monkeys, would also have produced a far better risk-adjusted performance than that produced by a cap-weighted scheme

An Evaluation of Alternative Equity Indices - Part 2: Fundamental Weighting Schemes

In this paper we explore an alternative approach for determining constituent weights for equity indices. This approach makes use of alternative definitions of company size, and is referred to as Fundamental Indexation (Arnott et al (2005)). Based upon a data set that comprises the largest 1,000 US stocks for each year in our sample, our results show that between 1968 and 2011 the fundamental index alternatives that we consider have out-performed a comparable index constructed on the basis of the market capitalisation of the index constituents in risk-adjusted terms. Our Monte Carlo experiments show that this superior risk-adjusted performance cannot be attributed easily to luck. We also find that although the superior performance is achieved with higher constituent turnover than required using the Market-cap approach to index construction, the turnover is lower, and in some cases much lower, than required by some of the heuristic and optimised index construction techniques that we explored in our last paper. Finally, we find that although the application of a simple market-timing rule does not enhance the returns on these fundamentally-weighted indices very significantly, it does reduce the volatility of their returns and their maximum drawdown quite considerably

What impact does a change of fund manager have on mutual fund performance?

Using a unique database of UK fund manager changes over the period from 1997 to 2011, we examine the impact of such changes on fund performance. We find clear evidence to suggest that a manager change does affect the benchmark-adjusted performance of UK mutual funds. In particular we find a significant deterioration in the benchmark-adjusted returns of funds that were top performers before the manager exit and, conversely, a significant improvement in the average benchmark-adjusted returns of funds that were poor performers before the manager exit. Our use of the Carhart's (1997) four-factor model reveals that the improvement in average post manager exit performance is accompanied by a reduction in market risk, a slight reduction in exposure to small cap stocks, and an increase in exposure to value and momentum stocks. Overall, our results suggest that UK fund management companies have been relatively successful in replacing bad managers with better managers, but relatively unsuccessful at finding equivalent replacements for their top performing managers. We believe that regulators should therefore try to ensure that all efforts are made by fund management companies to inform all of their investors about a change in management

Variation in the parasite communities of three co-occurring herbivorous coral reef fishes

Parasites are important, diverse, and abundant components of natural ecosystems and can influence the behaviour and health of their hosts, inter- and intraspecific interactions, and ultimately community structure. Coral reefs are one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems, yet our understanding of the abundance, diversity, and composition of parasite communities of coral reef fishes is limited. Here, the authors aimed to compare the abundance, richness and composition of parasite communities among three co-occurring herbivorous coral reef fishes (the barred rabbitfish Siganus doliatus, Ward's damsel Pomacentrus wardi and the obscure damsel Pomacentrus adelus) from an inshore reef of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). In total, 3978 parasites (3869 endoparasites and 109 ectoparasites) from 17 families were recovered from 30 individuals of each of the three fish species (mean = 44 ± 22 s.e. parasites per fish; range = 0–1947 parasites per fish). The parasite communities of P. wardi and P. adelus were characterised by pennellid copepods, derogenid and lecithasterid digeneans and were distinct from those of S. doliatus that were characterised by a higher abundance of atractotrematid and gyliauchenid digeneans. The abundance and family richness of all parasites were greatest in S. doliatus (abundance: 22.1 ± 5.0 parasites per fish; richness: 3.2 ± 0.3 families per fish), intermediate in P. wardi (abundance: 4.8 ± 1.1 parasites per fish; richness: 2.3 ± 0.3 families per fish) and lowest in P. adelus (abundance: 1.4 ± 0.4 parasites per fish; richness: 0.9 ± 0.2 families per fish). Similarly, the abundance of endoparasites was greatest in S. doliatus (19.7 ± 5.1 endoparasites per fish), intermediate in P. wardi (2.6 ± 0.7 endoparasites per fish) and lowest in P. adelus (1.2 ± 0.4 endoparasites per fish). Ectoparasite abundances were also lowest for P. adelus (0.2 ± 0.1 ectoparasites per fish), and S. doliatus and P. wardi had comparable abundances of ectoparasites (1.3 ± 0.3 and 2.1 ± 0.5 parasites per fish, respectively). Similarities between the parasite assemblages of the two pomacentrids may be related to their similar behaviours and/or diets vs. those of the larger-bodied and more mobile rabbitfish. Investigating the causes and consequences of variation in parasite communities across a broader range of fish species will be critical to understand the potential role of parasites in coral reef ecosystems