Preparing for retirement: the pension arrangements andretirement expectations of those approaching state pension age in England

This paper provides a detailed analysis of individuals inhouseholds in England aged between 50 and the State PensionAge in terms of their private pension arrangements and currentnon-pension assets alongside their expectations of futureeconomic circumstances. Our descriptive findings include thatmembers of defined benefit pensions have higher average levelsof current earnings than members of defined contributionpensions and that median expected private pension income inretirement is highest for current members of defined benefitschemes. We find that on average those who have, or have had,a private pension have greater non-pension wealth than thosewho have never had a private pension. In terms of expectationsof the future we find that it is those who have the fewest assetswho have the least attachment to the labour market and are farless likely to expect any inheritance. Hence we conclude thatinequalities in different dimensions of retirement resources tendto reinforce themselves as opposed to offset each other

State pensions and the well-being of the elderly in the UK

This paper presents the trends seen over the last quarter of the 20thCentury in various indicators of the well-being of the elderlyalongside those seen for the young. Specifically we look at measuresof both the level and distribution of income and expenditure, andself-reported measures of life satisfaction and health. We thenexploit the substantial reforms to the UK pension system over thisperiod to examine the impact of reforms to state pensions on theseoutcomes. We find that increases in the generosity of state pensionshave led to increased incomes of the elderly and reductions inmeasures of both relative and absolute income poverty. We also findthat increased state pensions have led to increased expenditure bythe elderly. It is perhaps not surprising that in the UK the reformsto the generosity of state pensions have affected outcomes amongthe elderly (instead of being fully offset by individuals when theywere younger) given that often very little (pre-retirement) notice wasgiven, and that some of the reforms were of a substantial magnitude. This paper presents the trends seen over the last quarter of the 20thCentury in various indicators of the well-being of the elderlyalongside those seen for the young. Specifically we look at measuresof both the level and distribution of income and expenditure, andself-reported measures of life satisfaction and health. We thenexploit the substantial reforms to the UK pension system over thisperiod to examine the impact of reforms to state pensions on theseoutcomes. We find that increases in the generosity of state pensionshave led to increased incomes of the elderly and reductions inmeasures of both relative and absolute income poverty. We also findthat increased state pensions have led to increased expenditure bythe elderly. It is perhaps not surprising that in the UK the reformsto the generosity of state pensions have affected outcomes amongthe elderly (instead of being fully offset by individuals when theywere younger) given that often very little (pre-retirement) notice wasgiven, and that some of the reforms were of a substantial magnitude

A study of the agonistic behaviour of the long-tailed field mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) and the bank vole (Clethrionomys glareolus)

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Bilinear Models of Parts and Appearances in Generative Adversarial Networks.

Recent advances in the understanding of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have led to remarkable progress in visual editing and synthesis tasks, capitalizing on the rich semantics that are embedded in the latent spaces of pre-trained GANs. However, existing methods are often tailored to specific GAN architectures and are limited to either discovering global semantic directions that do not facilitate localized control, or require some form of supervision through manually provided regions or segmentation masks. In this light, we present an architecture-agnostic approach that jointly discovers factors representing spatial parts and their appearances in an entirely unsupervised fashion. These factors are obtained by applying a semi-nonnegative tensor factorization on the feature maps, which in turn enables context-aware local image editing with pixel-level control. In addition, we show that the discovered appearance factors correspond to saliency maps that localize concepts of interest, without using any labels. Experiments on a wide range of GAN architectures and datasets show that, in comparison to the state of the art, our method is far more efficient in terms of training time and, most importantly, provides much more accurate localized control

Professional learning among specialist staff in resourced mainstream schools for pupils with ASD and SLI

Supporting pupils with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in mainstream schools is a challenging task. This paper proposes a professional development framework for EPs to consider when supporting the development of specialist ASD staff. The framework focuses on training content, educator characteristics and organisational elements. Nine mainstream schools developing additional provision to support children with ASD and Specific Language Impairment (SLI) participated in the research. Specialist staff were provided with training and took part in follow up interviews about their developing practice. A pre-post questionnaire of participants (N = 30) attending the specialist training is supplemented with longitudinal interview data from specialist staff (N = 20). A paired sample t-test of questionnaire data showed that staff self-efficacy significantly increased pre to post training with a large effect size(0.61) and thematic analysis of interviews provided evidence of sustained professional development over time underpinned by supportive organisational factors

Preparing for retirement: the pension arrangements and retirement expectations of those approaching state pension age in England

This paper provides a detailed analysis of individuals inhouseholds in England aged between 50 and the State PensionAge in terms of their private pension arrangements and currentnon-pension assets alongside their expectations of futureeconomic circumstances. Our descriptive findings include thatmembers of defined benefit pensions have higher average levelsof current earnings than members of defined contributionpensions and that median expected private pension income inretirement is highest for current members of defined benefitschemes. We find that on average those who have, or have had,a private pension have greater non-pension wealth than thosewho have never had a private pension. In terms of expectationsof the future we find that it is those who have the fewest assetswho have the least attachment to the labour market and are farless likely to expect any inheritance. Hence we conclude thatinequalities in different dimensions of retirement resources tendto reinforce themselves as opposed to offset each other

Modelling ambitious climate mitigation pathways for Australia's built environment

Achieving net zero operational and embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the built environment is recognised in Australia and globally as a key strategy to address climate change and achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, gaps in knowledge remain regarding potential national pathways to achieve this outcome in Australia. This study further extends and applies a national-scale integrated macroeconomic simulation model to explore coherent pathways to net zero emissions in the built environment sector by 2050. The scope of the study includes residential and commercial buildings and both operational and embodied emissions. It applies scenario analysis incorporating different levels of climate ambition, including a shift to renewable energy, electrifying buildings, improving energy efficiency and replacing carbon-intensive materials. We find that a high ambition scenario (Scenario 2) delivers a 94% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050 when compared against business-as-usual, placing a net-zero target within reach. Improvements on Australia's SDGs performance are also attained. Through subsequent pathways analysis we find that achieving net zero or even net negative operational and embodied emissions is feasible with more ambitious action in key areas, including increasing the share of mass-timber buildings and reducing end-of-life losses in sequestered carbon

Disease-Associated Mutations Disrupt Functionally Important Regions of Intrinsic Protein Disorder

The effects of disease mutations on protein structure and function have been extensively investigated, and many predictors of the functional impact of single amino acid substitutions are publicly available. The majority of these predictors are based on protein structure and evolutionary conservation, following the assumption that disease mutations predominantly affect folded and conserved protein regions. However, the prevalence of the intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and regions (IDRs) in the human proteome together with their lack of fixed structure and low sequence conservation raise a question about the impact of disease mutations in IDRs. Here, we investigate annotated missense disease mutations and show that 21.7% of them are located within such intrinsically disordered regions. We further demonstrate that 20% of disease mutations in IDRs cause local disorder-to-order transitions, which represents a 1.7–2.7 fold increase compared to annotated polymorphisms and neutral evolutionary substitutions, respectively. Secondary structure predictions show elevated rates of transition from helices and strands into loops and vice versa in the disease mutations dataset. Disease disorder-to-order mutations also influence predicted molecular recognition features (MoRFs) more often than the control mutations. The repertoire of disorder-to-order transition mutations is limited, with five most frequent mutations (R→W, R→C, E→K, R→H, R→Q) collectively accounting for 44% of all deleterious disorder-to-order transitions. As a proof of concept, we performed accelerated molecular dynamics simulations on a deleterious disorder-to-order transition mutation of tumor protein p63 and, in agreement with our predictions, observed an increased α-helical propensity of the region harboring the mutation. Our findings highlight the importance of mutations in IDRs and refine the traditional structure-centric view of disease mutations. The results of this study offer a new perspective on the role of mutations in disease, with implications for improving predictors of the functional impact of missense mutations