Is housing overvalued?

This paper examines whether it is more expensive to own a house or to rent. The paper assesses houses as ‘overvalued’ if home buyers pay too much, in the sense that they would be better off renting than buying. This involves comparing the financial cost of renting a home with the cost of owning a similar dwelling, where the latter depends on the purchase price, interest rates, repairs, council rates and so on. The paper also briefly examines non-financial costs but find these are small, on average. This paper finds if real house prices grow at their historical average pace, then owning a home is about as expensive as renting. If prices grow more slowly, as some forecasters predict, the framework used in this paper suggests that the average home buyer would be financially better off renting. House prices are decomposed into contributions from rents, interest rates and expected capital gains, which may help policymakers in the detection of housing bubbles. Recent data do not show signs of a bubble

Mechanisms to Ensure Pro-Poor Water Service Delivery in Peri-Urban and Urban areas

This report presents an overview of mechanisms for ensuring access to safe and affordable water services for the urban poor, as found in global literature. After presenting the main issues related to access to water services for the (peri-) urban poor in section 2, the report presents a number of options for improving utility-related water services to the poor in section 3, and options going beyond the utility in section 4. Finally, the conclusions of this report are presented in section 5

Decay Phase Cooling and Inferred Heating of M- and X-class Solar Flares

In this paper, the cooling of 72 M- and X-class flares is examined using GOES/XRS and SDO/EVE. The observed cooling rates are quantified and the observed total cooling times are compared to the predictions of an analytical 0-D hydrodynamic model. It is found that the model does not fit the observations well, but does provide a well defined lower limit on a flare's total cooling time. The discrepancy between observations and the model is then assumed to be primarily due to heating during the decay phase. The decay phase heating necessary to account for the discrepancy is quantified and found be ~50% of the total thermally radiated energy as calculated with GOES. This decay phase heating is found to scale with the observed peak thermal energy. It is predicted that approximating the total thermal energy from the peak is minimally affected by the decay phase heating in small flares. However, in the most energetic flares the decay phase heating inferred from the model can be several times greater than the peak thermal energy.Comment: Published in the Astrophysical Journal, 201

Equality of P-partition generating functions

To every labeled poset (P,\omega), one can associate a quasisymmetric generating function for its (P,\omega)-partitions. We ask: when do two labeled posets have the same generating function? Since the special case corresponding to skew Schur function equality is still open, a complete classification of equality among (P,\omega) generating functions is likely too much to expect. Instead, we determine necessary conditions and separate sufficient conditions for two labeled posets to have equal generating functions. We conclude with a classification of all equalities for labeled posets with small numbers of linear extensions.Comment: 24 pages, 19 figures. Incorporates minor changes suggested by the referees. To appear in Annals of Combinatoric

The Changing Fractions of Type Ia Supernova NUV-Optical Subclasses with Redshift

UV and optical photometry of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) at low redshift have revealed the existence of two distinct color groups, NUV-red and NUV-blue events. The color curves differ primarily by an offset, with the NUV-blue u- color curves bluer than the NUV-red curves by 0.4 mag. For a sample of 23 low-z SNe~Ia observed with Swift, the NUV-red group dominates by a ratio of 2:1. We compare rest-frame UV/optical spectrophotometry of intermediate and high-z SNe Ia with UVOT photometry and HST spectrophotometry of low-z SNe Ia, finding that the same two color groups exist at higher-z, but with the NUV-blue events as the dominant group. Within each red/blue group, we do not detect any offset in color for different redshifts, providing insight into how SN~Ia UV emission evolves with redshift. Through spectral comparisons of SNe~Ia with similar peak widths and phase, we explore the wavelength range that produces the UV/OPT color differences. We show that the ejecta velocity of NUV-red SNe is larger than that of NUV-blue objects by roughly 12% on average. This velocity difference can explain some of the UV/optical color difference, but differences in the strengths of spectral features seen in meanspectra require additional explanation. Because of the different b-v colors for these groups, NUV-red SNe will have their extinction underestimated using common techniques. This, in turn, leads to under-estimation of the optical luminosity of the NUV-blue SNe~Ia, in particular, for the high-redshift cosmological sample. Not accounting for this effect should thus produce a distance bias that increases with redshift and could significantly bias measurements of cosmological parameters.Comment: submitted to Ap

Electron Transfer-oxy Radical Mechanism for Anti-cancer Agents: 9-anilinoacridines

A possible mode of action involving electron transfer is advanced for the 9- anilinoacridines. The mechanism entails formation of toxic oxy radicals which destroy the neoplasm. Cyclic voltammetry was performed on iminium type ions derived by protonation of the acridines. Reductions were generally reversible with potentials of about - 0.60 V. Involvement of quinoidal metabolites is also a possibility. The relationship of electrochemical behavior to structure and physiological activity is addressed

The contribution of rural community businesses to integrated rural development: “Local services for local people”

Policy responses to the problems facing rural areas across Europe have involved the replacement of “productivist” measures that subsidise agriculture to strategies promoting “integrated rural development”, emphasising the interconnections between various facets of the rural economy. Thus farm modernisation and product processing and marketing are linked with the promotion of a more diversified economic base centred on tourism and recreation and the maintenance of services for local residents. An essential element of this model is its reliance on collaborative actions involving a range of community or civil society actors. This paper examines the extent to which the operation of community-owned businesses in rural parts of the Yorkshire and Humber region in the UK corresponds to these ideals of integrated rural development. Evidence is presented on their geographical footprint with respect to both direct economic impacts and linkages with social and institutional networks. This allows an assessment to be made of the contribution that such enterprises make to rural economic development as a whole. The conclusion is that they do have the potential to assist integrated rural development, but only as a small part of a much wider series of economic, social and environmental actions.integrated rural development, rural community businesses, economic impacts, geographical footprint, volunteering