Evidence on the relationship between income and poor health: is the government doing enough?

The government’s report, Opportunity for All: Tackling Poverty and Social Exclusion (Department of Social Security, 1999), identified poor health as one of the major problems associated with low income. However, much of the available evidence on the relationship between income and health is of little help in forming policies to reduce health inequalities, as it has tended to be based on cross-section surveys and is therefore unable to shed much light on causal effects. Here, we make use of two British longitudinal datasets to examine the longer-term influences of income on health within a life-course perspective. We then use the results of our analysis to provide a brief critical assessment of the likely success of the government’s anti-poverty strategy in reducing health inequalities. A more detailed assessment of government policy in this respect can be found in Benzeval et al. (forthcoming).

The R2 Puzzle

Previous research has argued that the degree of co-movement of stock returns (the R² of a market regression) at country-level can be explained by the interaction of firmspecific and market-wide information. The R² measure has been used to investigate a number of issues of potentially great importance to accounting, such as whether countries with poor corporate governance regimes and weak legal protection of private property rights are more likely to have poor information environments or to assess the informativeness of prices. To date, only limited research has been carried out to assess the reliability of an information interpretation of the R² measure at a firm-level within a country rather than at an aggregate country level. In this paper we now examine the properties of stock returns co-movement at the firm-level within two countries, UK and USA, thereby being able to filter out certain extraneous factors that could arise in cross-country settings. We analyse the performance of this overall measure by triangulating it with other information-related measures which previous research has suggested capture partial aspects of the information environment. We find some serious flaws in the methodology and our findings suggest that when using it at firm-level, it may be being driven by other factors related to uninformed trading.Information; R²; firm-specific information; market-wide information; volatility; disclosures; comovement

The use of the R2 as a measure of firm-specific information: A cross-country critique

Recent research uses the degree of stock returns co-movement as a measure of the quality of a country’s information environment. It has been argued that stronger property rights, better corporate governance regimes and more efficient enforcement mechanisms lead to prices incorporating more firm-specific information and, therefore, co-moving less with the market. In this paper, we use a much more comprehensive international data set than in prior research, encompassing forty countries over twenty years, to evaluate the reliability of this approach in a crosscountry setting and to analyse the behaviour of the measure used. Our results demonstrate severe limitations in the use of co-movement as measure of information quality. We highlight the instability of the measure and show that it can produce results that are often difficult to reconcile with such an informational explanation.Information; R²; firm-specific information; market-wide information; volatility; disclosures; co-movement; cross-country information environment

15 - Identifying Ancient River Channels and Faces using Ground Penetrating Radar: Brunswick, Georgia, USA

The Princess Anne formation has been previously interpreted as a late-Pleistocene barrier island chain that was deposited ~40 thousand years ago, extending across Brunswick, GA. Historically, this geologic formation has yielded exceptionally well-preserved fossils such as Mammuthus columbi (Columbian mammoth) and Bison latifrons (long-horned bison). Previous studies have hypothesized that these fossils were situated in “cut-and-fill” channel structures (i.e., paleochannels) that later dissected the barrier island deposit ~20 thousand years ago. We performed a high-resolution (200 MHz) ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey to identify any channel-like structures, in addition to subsurface features related to the formation and evolution of the ancient barrier island. In total, 3.2 km of GPR data were collected in both shore-normal (east-west) and shore-parallel (north-south) directions at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Facility (FLETC) in Brunswick, GA. An erosional truncation, likely related to an ancient intense storm, was imaged in a shore-normal profile. The apparent easterly dip of this erosional truncation is significantly steeper (9.85°) than the surrounding accretionary beach strata (2.53°). Additionally, a half-ellipse shaped structure was imaged in the subsurface that was interpreted to be a paleochannel. This interpreted paleochannel is orientated in a north-south direction and is 60 m wide by \u3e4 m deep. The paleochannel appears to have migrated 50 m to the east while it was active. Preliminary data compliments the hypothesis that paleochannels dissected this ancient barrier island. Future work will include sediment coring to confirm the presence of the paleochannel

Analysis of the Headspace Gases Formed from the Fermentation of Barley

Volatile compounds are compounds that can exist in a gaseous state at room temperature. These compounds contribute to the aromas that are associated with mixtures. The analysis of these gases can be completed using a gas chromatograph to provide a sort of fingerprint identification. The analysis of the volatile compounds for barley fermentation samples was completed by collecting the gas above the fermenting solution, the headspace gas, and injecting this gas into the gas chromatograph. These fermentation samples showed predominantly the formation of carbon dioxide for a significant length of time before finally ethanol was detected. A subsequent of the limit of detection for ethanol was made. This analysis method was extended to a variety of household liquids that contained ethanol such as peppermint oil, almond extract, and vanilla extract as well as two alcoholic beverages, Festivus Beer and red wine. Notable volatile compounds of each sample, such as vanillin for vanilla extract, were not detected so various types of sample preparation were completed in hopes of gaining a higher concentration sample of these volatile compounds. Examples of some of these preparation steps include heating the sample, using SPE chromatography, and bubbling the headspace gas into different solvents

It's Just Thought You Know': An Interview with Ken Bolton

Ken Bolton is iconic, as far as Australian poets go, yet he remains a figure somewhat on the outer. For instance, he was not included in the comprehensive Australian Poetry since 1788, yet it was noted in the Australian that he should have been. His books, though shortlisted, have never won a Premier’s prize, yet Monash University held ‘A Ken Bolton Day: a symposium celebrating the writings and influences of poet, art critic and publisher Ken Bolton’. His style of poetry is uniquely his, termed as ‘Boltonian’ , and has been imitated by many a poet. In the late 70s, Ken’s first book, Four Poems, was published by Sea Cruise press, a press which he helped to establish. Back then he was also the editor of the journal Magic Sam, where he regularly published his own work alongside his poet-friends. What Ken was doing with poetry at the time was unconventional; someone had to publish it so why not him? Clearly the lifestyle of writing and publishing writing worked for him because he has since had more than twenty books of poetry published (including a Selected Poems, put out by Penguin in 1992 and another from Shearsman in 2012), started another publishing press (Little Esther Books) and edited another journal (Otis Rush). He also edited the anthology Homage to John Forbes. His art criticism has been collected (as Art Writing, 1990 to the 2000s, published by the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia) and much of it collected and regularly updated on the AEAF website as The Formguide. In this interview, Ken talks about his poetry, other people’s poetry, humour and John Jenkins and how the two often connect, art, the 70s, Sydney and Adelaide, and plagiarising his own words