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

Genotoxic effect induced by hydrogen peroxide in human hepatoma cells using comet assay

Background: Hydrogen peroxide is a common reactive oxygen intermediate generated by variousforms of oxidative stress. Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate the DNA damage capacity ofH2O2 in HepG2 cells. Methods: Cells were treated with H2O2 at concentrations of 25 μM or 50 μM for5 min, 30 min, 40 min, 1 h or 24 h in parallel. The extent of DNA damage was assessed by the cometassay. Results: Compared to the control, DNA damage by 25 μM and 50 μM H2O2 increasedsignificantly with increasing incubation time up to 1 h, but it was not increased at 24 h. Conclusions:Our Findings confirm that H2O2 is a typical DNA damage inducing agent and thus is a good modelsystem to study the effects of oxidative stress. DNA damage in HepG2 cells increased significantlywith H2O2 concentration and time of incubation but later decreased likely due to DNA repairmechanisms and antioxidant enzyme

A new blind cavernicolous lygromma (araneae, gnaphosidae) from the galápagos islands

Lygromma anops sp. nov. (Gnaphosidae, Araneae) is described from lava tubes on Isla Santa Cruz, Galápagos, Ecuador. The species appears to have no known close relatives in the Galápagos Islands or on the South American mainland

Cave-Obligate Biodiversity on the Campus of Sewanee: The University of the South, Franklin County, Tennessee

The southern Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee and Alabama has the greatest diversity of cave-obligate animals in the United States. The University of the South in Franklin County, TN is one of the largest private landholders on the southern Cumberland Plateau. Its 13,000-acre campus has more than 30 caves and is underlain by more than 14 km of horizontal passageways. We examined the biodiversity of cave animals on the campus at the species level and at the genetic level. Through a survey of seven caves on the campus, we identified 24 cave-obligate species, including two new county records. This total accounts for half of the cave-obligate species reported for Franklin County. For our genetic analysis, we selected six diverse taxa (two millipedes, a beetle, a fly, an aquatic isopod, and a spider) that were collected from multiple caves, and compared their mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene sequences. Across the six taxa we found: (1) low genetic diversity within caves (mean nucleotide diversity within caves across all taxa: 0.25%), (2) high genetic divergence between caves (divergence between caves within taxa ranged from 2.5%–10.9%, with two exceptions), and (3) little evidence for gene flow between caves (FST between caves within taxa \u3e 0.57, with one exception). Thus, the campus supports tremendous species diversity, and even more remarkable genetic diversity within those species on a small geographic scale (no studied caves were \u3e7 km apart). The divergence between cave populations and lack of gene flow between them that we observed across a range of taxa highlight the importance of cave conservation on a regional scale