Compost Rich of Resistance: Wayfinding in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

It is not common to travel to a region searching for what is wrong and askew. But this is precisely how I move through greater Palestine-Israel each time I visit. Explosions and incessant pummeling have forced the sidewalks and retaining walls to heave–Styrofoam slabs serve as an equally hasty and hideous shim. But in this, there is hope. Even where the sidewalk momentarily ends–likely that in just a few months a new road, deeper into the West Bank will be built–it is glaring that these foundations are laid at an unsustainable pace. In a land where the forest often obscures the trees, noticing the nuances of demolition and decay have proven integral to my understanding of body-in-place, body-amongst-conflict. In this piece, I describe the embodied experience of encountering the cracks and fissures in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and how in these visible, yet nuanced, interstices there is radical potential

Financial Expectations, Consumption and Saving: A Microeconomic Analysis

We explore the determinants of individuals´ financial expectations using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) 1991-2001. Our findings suggest that individuals´ financial predictions are influenced by both the life cycle and the business cycle. We also investigate the extent to which the accuracy of past financial expectations affects current financial expectations. Interestingly, only past financial optimism matters, regardless of the accuracy of the prediction. We also explore the relationship between financial realisations and expectations and we find that expectations tend to fall short of financial realisations. Finally, we investigate the relationship between financial expectations, savings and consumption. Our findings suggest that financial optimism is inversely associated with savings and that current financial expectations serve to predict future consumption

Expectations, reservation wages and employment: Evidence from British panel data

In this paper, we explore the relationship between expectations and reservation wages for a sample of unemployed individuals using panel data drawn from the British Household Panel Survey, 1996 to 2005. To be specific, we initially investigate the determinants of expectations relating to the individual´s financial situation and employment prospects over the next 12 months. Our findings suggest that job search and education are positively associated with financial optimism and confidence regarding future employment prospects. Conversely, the length of time out of employment and age are associated with pessimistic expectations. Propensity score matching techniques enable us to adopt a quasi experimental approach to ascertain how an individual´s expectations regarding their future financial situation as well as expectations regarding securing future employment influence the setting of reservation wages at the individual level. Optimism over future finances and future job prospects are associated with a higher reservation wage in both the matched and unmatched estimates. Furthermore, confidence over securing future employment is associated with a higher probability of actually gaining employment in the next period

Are share prices an economic barometer?: on the relationship between share prices and mental health

This paper investigates the relationship between share prices and mental health, exploiting the availability of interview dates in the British Household Panel Survey to match the level and changes in the FTSE All Share price index to respondents over the period 1991-2008. We present evidence that the level, 6 month and yearly changes in the share price index are associated with better mental health while greater uncertainty, as measured by index volatility, is associated with poorer mental well-being. Finally, using several proxies of investor status, we find little evidence that this relationship is confined to holders of equity based assets, suggesting that the observed relationship does not arise via wealth effects. Instead, it appears as though share prices matter to mental health because they perform the role of economic barometer

Social Interaction and Intergenerational Skill Transfer

We explore the relationship between educational attainment and social interaction using individual level data from the British National Child Development Study. To be specific, we analyze whether an intergenerational aspect to this relationship exists by examining the relationship between the educational attainment of children and the degree of formal social activity undertaken by their parents. In accordance with the existing literature, our results support a positive association between education and social interaction. Furthermore, our results suggest that children´s scores in reading, mathematics and vocabulary tests are positively associated with the extent of their parents´ formal social interaction. This relationship is robust to controlling for the degree of intra-family based social interaction and the social activities of the child

Reservation Wages, Expected wages and the duration of Unemployment: evidence from British Panel data

In this paper we analyse the role of wage expectations in an empirical model of incomplete spells of unemployment and reservation wages. To be specific, we model the duration of unemployment, reservation wages and expected wages simultaneously for a sample of individuals who are not in work, where wage expectations are identified via an exogenous policy shock based upon the introduction of Working Family Tax Credits (WFTC) in the UK. The results from the empirical analysis, which is based on the British Household Panel Survey, suggest that WFTC eligibility served to increase expected wages and that expected wages are positively associated with reservation wages. In addition, incorporating wage expectations into the econometric framework was found to influence the magnitude of the key elasticities: namely the elasticity of unemployment duration with respect to the reservation wage and the elasticity of the reservation wage with respect to unemployment duration

A curvilinear snake arm robot with gripper-axis fibre-optic image processor feedback

The official version of this article can be found at the link below.A curvilinear robot constructed from a number of modular flexible sections of fixed length and diameter but independently controlled radius and direction of curvature has been equipped with an optical fibre image guide transmitting images from between the gripper jaws to the remote TV camera of Microvision-100, a microcomputer controlled real-time DMA-based vision System that is easily trained to recognise the shape, position and orientation of components. The gripper position and orientation is controlled by feedback from the vision System, the action taken depending on component recognition and inspection for defects. Redundant degrees of freedom enable the curvilinear robot to avoid obstacles and work in confined spaces.The research programme described in this paper is supported by the U.K. Science and Engineering Research Council

The influence of context on science curricula: Observations, conclusions and some recommendations for curriculum development and implementation

The genesis of this project and book was our experiences of teaching science and science education at various levels in developing countries; in the Pacific and the Caribbean. These experiences along with numerous conversations with other teachers and educators who had worked in Africa and elsewhere left us with something of a sense of despair. We constantly confronted Western or foreign science curricula which were plainly alien to science learners in non-Western contexts. We witnessed numerous curricula reforms and professional development initiatives, many of which seemed doomed to failure. In fact Helu-Thaman (1991) referred to the ‘wreckage’ of aid-funded curricula initiatives all around the Pacific. Probably the most alarming aspect in all of this was the role of the foreign expert. Someone, normally ‘aid-funded’, who turned up for a short period of time to tell the locals what they should be doing! The naiveté of some of these people was truly remarkable (or perhaps they just didn’t care?). Failure of the program or reforms was generally attributed to the locals not ‘seeing it through’ or not quite understanding the new curriculum initiatives. There was little effort made to take into account local conditions or the views of local experts, especially teachers

Social Interaction and Stock Market Participation: Evidence from British Panel Data

This paper uses data from the British National Child Development Study to investigate the relationship between social interaction and participation in the stock market through holding stocks and/or shares at the individual level. In accordance with the existing literature, the results reveal that a positive relationship exists between social interaction and stock market participation, when both are measured concurrently. Furthermore, this relationship prevails across a range of measures of social interaction and social capital. In addition, we make a potentially important contribution to the existing literature by exploiting the panel nature of the data in order to explore the robustness of the cross-sectional findings. We find that the positive relationship between stock market participation and social interaction prevails within a fixed effects logit framework, which controls for time invariant unobserved effects

Reprogramming the hand: bridging the craft skills gap in 3D/digital fashion knitwear design

Designer-makers have integrated a wide range of digital media and tools into their practices, many taking ownership of a specific technology or application and learning how to use it for themselves, often drawing on their experiential knowledge of established practices to do so. To date, there has been little discussion on how digital knitting practice has evolved within this context, possibly due to the complexity of the software, limited access to industrial machinery and the fact that it seems divorced from the idea of 'craft'. Despite the machine manufacturers' efforts to make knitting technology and software more user-friendly, the digital interface remains a significant barrier to knitwear designer-makers, generally only accessed via experienced technicians