Financial diversification before modern portfolio theory: UK financial advice documents in the late nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century

The paper offers textual evidence from a series of financial advice documents in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century of how UK investors perceived of and managed risk. In the world’s largest financial centre of the time, UK investors were familiar with the concept of correlation and financial advisers’ suggestions were consistent with the recommendations of modern portfolio theory in relation to portfolio selection strategies. From the 1870s, there was an increased awareness of the benefits of financial diversification - primarily putting equal amounts into a number of different securities - with much of the emphasis being on geographical rather than sectoral diversification and some discussion of avoiding highly correlated investments. Investors in the past were not so naïve as mainstream financial discussions suggest today

Climate change drives poleward increases and equatorward declines in marine species

Marine environments have increased in temperature by an average of 1°C since preindustrial (1850) times [1]. Given that species ranges are closely allied to physiological thermal tolerances in marine organisms [2], it may therefore be expected that ocean warming would lead to abundance increases at poleward range edges, and abundance declines towards the equator [3]. Here we report a global analysis of abundance tends of 304 widely distributed marine species over the last century, across a range of taxonomic groups from phytoplankton to fish and marine mammals. Specifically, using a literature database we investigate the extent that the direction and strength of longterm species abundance changes depend on the sampled location within the latitudinal range of species. Our results show that abundance increases have been most prominent where sampling has taken place at the poleward edges of species ranges, while abundance declines have been most prominent where sampling has taken place at the equatorward edge of species ranges. These data provide evidence of omnipresent large-scale changes in abundance of marine species consistent with warming over the last century, and suggest that adaptation has not provided a buffer against the negative effects of warmer conditions at the equatorward extent of species ranges. On the basis of these results we suggest that projected sea temperature increases of up to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels by 2050 [4] will continue to drive latitudinal abundance shifts in marine species, including those of importance for coastal livelihoods

Study Protocol for a randomized controlled trial of mentalization based therapy against specialist supportive clinical management in patients with both eating disorders and symptoms of borderline personality disorder

The NOURISHED study: Nice OUtcomes for Referrals with Impulsivity, Self Harm and Eating Disorders.Eating Disorders (ED) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are both difficult to treat and the combination presents particular challenges. Both are associated with vulnerability to loss of mentalization (awareness of one's own and others' emotional state) In BPD, Mentalization Based therapy (MBT) has been found effective in reducing symptoms. In this trial we investigate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of MBT adapted for Eating disorders (Mentalization Based Therapy for Eating Disorders (MBT-ED))compared to a standard comparison treatment, Specialist Supportive Clinical Management SSCM-ED) in patients with a combination of an Eating Disorder and either a diagnosis of BPD or a history of self-harm and impulsivity in the previous 12 months

Barley Hv CIRCADIAN CLOCK ASSOCIATED 1 and Hv PHOTOPERIOD H1 Are Circadian Regulators That Can Affect Circadian Rhythms in Arabidopsis.

Circadian clocks regulate many aspects of plant physiology and development that contribute to essential agronomic traits. Circadian clocks contain transcriptional feedback loops that are thought to generate circadian timing. There is considerable similarity in the genes that comprise the transcriptional and translational feedback loops of the circadian clock in the plant Kingdom. Functional characterisation of circadian clock genes has been restricted to a few model species. Here we provide a functional characterisation of the Hordeum vulgare (barley) circadian clock genes Hv circadian clock associated 1 (HvCCA1) and Hv photoperiodh1, which are respectively most similar to Arabidopsis thaliana circadian clock associated 1 (AtCCA1) and pseudo response regulator 7 (AtPRR7). This provides insight into the circadian regulation of one of the major crop species of Northern Europe. Through a combination of physiological assays of circadian rhythms in barley and heterologous expression in wild type and mutant strains of A. thaliana we demonstrate that HvCCA1 has a conserved function to AtCCA1. We find that Hv photoperiod H1 has AtPRR7-like functionality in A. thaliana and that the effects of the Hv photoperiod h1 mutation on photoperiodism and circadian rhythms are genetically separable.ZR is grateful to the National Institute of Agricultural Botany for the Award of Scholarship. We acknowledge funding from a Marie Curie Early Stage Training project MEST-CT-2005-020526 for JK and the BBSRC-DTP for funding SC. AARW and MCM are grateful to the BBSRC for the award of BBSRC Grant BB/M006212/1, which supported aspects of the study.This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.012744

Stock market investors' use of stop losses and the disposition effect

The disposition effect is an investment bias where investors hold stocks at a loss longer than stocks at a gain. This bias is associated with poorer investment performance and exhibited to a greater extent by investors with less experience and less sophistication. A method of managing susceptibility to the bias is through use of stop losses. Using the trading records of UK stock market individual investors from 2006 to 2009, this paper shows that stop losses used as part of investment decisions are an effective tool for inoculating against the disposition effect. We also show that investors who use stop losses have less experience and that, when not using stop losses, these investors are more reluctant to realise losses than other investors

Financial diversification strategies before World War I: Buy-and-hold versus naïve portfolio selection

This study contributes to a growing volume of scholarship that highlights the importance of financial diversification in business history. It shows that, pre-WWI, financial advice for equal portfolio weighting, the so-called naïve diversification, then called scientific investment or geographical distribution of risk, was a sophisticated strategy for Victorian investors and not suboptimal to Markowitz optimization. Drawing upon a unique dataset of 507 individual portfolios at death, this study shows that, although Victorian investors, in particular wealthy investors, did diversify investment risk across a number of securities, they did not hold equally weighted portfolios. It explores possible reasons for the unbalanced nature of investor portfolios and dismisses socio economic factors, illiquidity, passive ‘buy the market’ and market timing strategies as possible explanatory factors. The results rather point to a strategy of naïve diversification spread over time, a ‘buy as you go and hold strategy’, buying new securities as savings allowed and holding them until death

Dynamical differential expression (DyDE) reveals the period control mechanisms of the Arabidopsis circadian oscillator.

The circadian oscillator, an internal time-keeping device found in most organisms, enables timely regulation of daily biological activities by maintaining synchrony with the external environment. The mechanistic basis underlying the adjustment of circadian rhythms to changing external conditions, however, has yet to be clearly elucidated. We explored the mechanism of action of nicotinamide in Arabidopsis thaliana, a metabolite that lengthens the period of circadian rhythms, to understand the regulation of circadian period. To identify the key mechanisms involved in the circadian response to nicotinamide, we developed a systematic and practical modeling framework based on the identification and comparison of gene regulatory dynamics. Our mathematical predictions, confirmed by experimentation, identified key transcriptional regulatory mechanisms of circadian period and uncovered the role of blue light in the response of the circadian oscillator to nicotinamide. We suggest that our methodology could be adapted to predict mechanisms of drug action in complex biological systems

High-dose vitamin D(3) during intensive-phase antimicrobial treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis: a double-blind randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Vitamin D was used to treat tuberculosis in the pre-antibiotic era, and its metabolites induce antimycobacterial immunity in vitro. Clinical trials investigating the effect of adjunctive vitamin D on sputum culture conversion are absent. METHODS: We undertook a multicentre randomised controlled trial of adjunctive vitamin D in adults with sputum smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis in London, UK. 146 patients were allocated to receive 2·5 mg vitamin D(3) or placebo at baseline and 14, 28, and 42 days after starting standard tuberculosis treatment. The primary endpoint was time from initiation of antimicrobial treatment to sputum culture conversion. Patients were genotyped for TaqI and FokI polymorphisms of the vitamin D receptor, and interaction analyses were done to assess the influence of the vitamin D receptor genotype on response to vitamin D(3). This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT00419068. FINDINGS: 126 patients were included in the primary efficacy analysis (62 assigned to intervention, 64 assigned to placebo). Median time to sputum culture conversion was 36·0 days in the intervention group and 43·5 days in the placebo group (adjusted hazard ratio 1·39, 95% CI 0·90-2·16; p=0.14). TaqI genotype modified the effect of vitamin D supplementation on time to sputum culture conversion (p(interaction)=0·03), with enhanced response seen only in patients with the tt genotype (8·09, 95% CI 1·36-48·01; p=0·02). FokI genotype did not modify the effect of vitamin D supplementation (p(interaction)=0·85). Mean serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration at 56 days was 101·4 nmol/L in the intervention group and 22·8 nmol/L in the placebo group (95% CI for difference 68·6-88·2; p<0·0001). INTERPRETATION: Administration of four doses of 2·5 mg vitamin D(3) increased serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations in patients receiving intensive-phase treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis. Vitamin D did not significantly affect time to sputum culture conversion in the whole study population, but it did significantly hasten sputum culture conversion in participants with the tt genotype of the TaqI vitamin D receptor polymorphism. FUNDING: British Lung Foundation

Effectiveness of structured patient-clinician communication with a solution focused approach (DIALOG+) in community treatment of patients with psychosis - a cluster randomised controlled trial

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited