Prudent banks and creative mimics : can we tell the difference?

The recent financial crisis has forced a rethink of banking regulation and supervision and the role of financial innovation. We develop a model where prudent banks may signal their type through high capital ratios. Capital regulation may ensure separation in equilibrium but deposit insurance will tend to increase the level of capital required. If supervision detects risky behaviour ex ante then it is complementary to capital regulation. However, financial innovation may erode supervisors' ability to detect risk and capital levels should then be higher. But regulators may not be aware their capacities have been undermined. We argue for a four-prong policy response with higher bank capital ratios, enhanced supervision, limits to the use of complex financial instruments and Coco's. Our results may support the institutional arrangements proposed recently in the UK

Color in context: psychological context moderates the influence of red on approach- and avoidance-motivated behavior.

A basic premise of the recently proffered color-in-context model is that the influence of color on psychological functioning varies as a function of the psychological context in which color is perceived. Some research has examined the appetitive and aversive implications of viewing the color red in romance- and achievement-relevant contexts, respectively, but in all existing empirical work approach and avoidance behavior has been studied in separate tasks and separate experiments. Research is needed to directly test whether red influences the same behavior differently depending entirely on psychological context. The present experiment was designed to put this premise to direct test in romance- and achievement-relevant contexts within the same experimental paradigm involving walking behavior. Our results revealed that exposure to red (but not blue) indeed has differential implications for walking behavior as a function of the context in which the color is perceived. Red increased the speed with which participants walked to an ostensible interview about dating (a romance-relevant context), but decreased the speed with which they walked to an ostensible interview about intelligence (an achievement-relevant context). These results are the first direct evidence that the influence of red on psychological functioning in humans varies by psychological context. Our findings contribute to both the literature on color psychology and the broader, emerging literature on the influence of context on basic psychological processes

From Bummock to tip : artists' interviews & items from the Lace Archive

This publication is the result of an artists’ research residency that used unseen parts of the Lace Archive in Nottingham as catalysts for the creation of new artworks. Andrew Bracey, Danica Maier and Lucy Renton spent two and half years rummaging, exploring and making. Critical texts by Pennina Barnett, Fiona Curran, Janis Jefferies, Sian Vaughan, alongside interviews with the artists involved, unpack the findings. This is part of a larger research project ‘Bummock: New Artistic Responses to Unseen parts of the Archive’. Like the Bummock – the largest part of the iceberg that remains hidden under water – archives often contain far more than is ever accessed. Bummock gives a platform for these stored and yet to be appreciated parts, and is developing alternative methods for researchers to access archives. This is the first of a series of publications that will collate the findings and artworks from residencies in different archives

Dopant solubility in ceria: alloy thermodynamics combined with the DFT+U calculations

This research was partly funded by the Russian Science Foundation (under the project 14-43-0005) and ERA-NET HarvEnPiez project, with the computer resources provided by Stuttgart Supercomputing Centre (Project DEFTD 12939). A. C. also acknowledges financial support from the University of Latvia Foundation (Arnis Riekstins’s ‘‘MikroTik’’ donation). Authors thank R. Merkle, A. Popov for fruitful discussions.Tb-doped CeO2 (ceria) is a promising mixed conductor for oxygen permeation membranes and reversible oxygen sorbents. To predict solubility of Tb ions in ceria for a wide range of concentrations, density functional theory (DFT+U) calculations with two different values of Hubbard U-parameter on Tb and Ce ions were combined with alloy thermodynamics and the Concentration Wave approach. It is shown that, to predict properties of disordered solid solutions at finite temperatures, the energy parameters in the mixing energies can be extracted from the DFT+U calculations performed at T = 0 K for two ordered configurations of the dopant in the supercells. The unlimited solubility of Tb4+ in CeO2 in the quasi-binary cross-section CeO2-TbO2 is predicted in the temperature range where both stoichiometric TbO2 and CeO2 reveal fluorite structures (above 700 °C).Russian Science Foundation (under the project 14-43-0005); ERA-NET HarvEnPiez project; Stuttgart Supercomputing Centre Project DEFTD 12939; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART

Insights for the partitioning of ecosystem evaporation and transpiration in short‐statured croplands

Reducing water losses in agriculture needs a solid understanding of when evaporation (E) losses occur and how much water is used through crop transpiration (T). Partitioning ecosystem T is however challenging, and even more so when it comes to short-statured crops, where many standard methods lead to inaccurate measurements. In this study, we combined biometeorological measurements with a Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Crop (SPA-Crop) model to estimate T and E at a Swiss cropland over two crop seasons with winter cereals. We compared our results with two data-driven approaches: The Transpiration Estimation Algorithm (TEA) and the underlying Water Use Efficiency (uWUE). Despite large differences in the productivity of both years, the T to evapotranspiration (ET) ratio had relatively similar seasonal and diurnal dynamics, and averaged to 0.72 and 0.73. Our measurements combined with a SPA-Crop model provided T estimates similar to the TEA method, while the uWUE method produced systematically lower T even when the soil and leaves were dry. T was strongly related to the leaf area index, but additionally varied due to climatic conditions. The most important climatic drivers controlling T were found to be the photosynthetic photon flux density (R2 = 0.84 and 0.87), and vapor pressure deficit (R2 = 0.86 and 0.70). Our results suggest that site-specific studies can help establish T/ET ratios, as well as identify dominant climatic drivers, which could then be used to partition T from reliable ET measurements. Moreover, our results suggest that the TEA method is a suitable tool for ET partitioning in short-statured croplands