Belief in a Just World and Children's Test Scores

Parental beliefs, recognised by child psychologists as a causal influence on early development, are incorporated into a two-period model of human capital accumulation. In the first period parents transfer their beliefs, distinct from genes, to their child by signalling their "belief in a just world" or the perceived return to effort. The child responds by choosing effort, irrespective of the real world returns, which combines early with their genes to create their ability. This ability determines the rate of return to second period investment and final attainment. This is an ontological model, in the sense that children's beliefs influence the attainment they achieve. The identifying assumption is that parent beliefs are slow-moving and they are not conditioned on the child. If parents are credit constrained, then both beliefs and income determine attainment. Empirical analysis using the NCDS shows that beliefs are a strong predictor of early attainment and reduces the importance of parental income or wealth. This justifies effective mentoring programmes for children with problem parents.

Creating a monetary union between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK requires preventing capital flight

Angus Armstrong explores the practical difficulties of creating a monetary union between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK. Importantly, a common financial infrastructure is required to convince savers and investors that their money will always be safe in an independent Scotland

‘Plan B’: What are an independent Scotland’s currency options?

Though the three main Westminster parties have each publicly rejected a formal currency union with an independent Scotland, Alex Salmond and the ‘Yes’ campaign have yet to articulate what a ‘plan B’ would entail. In this article, David McCarthy and Angus Armstrong lay out the options in detail, writing that the limited ability of an independent Scotland to provide ‘lender of last resort’ support to its banking system means that both regulatory and market action will lead the two remaining significant Scottish banks to redomicile

An economic analysis of pension tax proposals

The Government has recently issued a consultation document which raises the possibility of a substantial change in the taxation of pensions. In this paper we assess the economic consequences of changing from the existing EET system (where pension savings and returns are exempt from income tax, but pension income is taxed) to a TEE system (pension savings would be from taxed income but with no further taxation thereafter), making use of two complementary approaches. First, we review the economic and empirical literature, and second we construct a general equilibrium overlapping generations (OLG) model parameterised to UK data and the UK tax system

FLow and Benthic ECology 4D – FLOWBEC – an overview

This work is funded by NERC/DEFRA (grants NE/J004332/1, NE/J004308/1, NE/J004200/1, NE/J004359/1, NE/J004316/1, NE/J004219/1, NE/J00426X/1, NE/J004294/1). We also like to acknowledge OpenHydro Ltd and Atlantis Resources Ltd for allowing the placement of the FLOWBEC frame in close proximity to their installations at EMEC, and Marine Scotland Science for their support developing and deploying the FLOWBEC frame.Publisher PD

The discovery of WASP-151b, WASP-153b, WASP-156b: Insights on giant planet migration and the upper boundary of the Neptunian desert

To investigate the origin of the features discovered in the exoplanet population, the knowledge of exoplanets’ mass and radius with a good precision (≲10%) is essential. To achieve this purpose the discovery of transiting exoplanets around bright stars is of prime interest. In this paper, we report the discovery of three transiting exoplanets by the SuperWASP survey and the SOPHIE spectrograph with mass and radius determined with a precision better than 15%. WASP-151b and WASP-153b are two hot Saturns with masses, radii, densities and equilibrium temperatures of 0.31−0.03+0.04 MJ, 1.13−0.03+0.03 RJ, 0.22−0.02+0.03 ρJ and 1290−10+20 K, and 0.39−0.02+0.02 MJ, 1.55−0.08+0.10 RJ, 0.11−0.02+0.02 ρJ and 1700−40+40 K, respectively. Their host stars are early G type stars (with mag V ~ 13) and their orbital periods are 4.53 and 3.33 days, respectively. WASP-156b is a super-Neptune orbiting a K type star (mag V = 11.6). It has a mass of 0.128−0.009+0.010 MJ, a radius of 0.51−0.02+0.02 RJ, a density of 1.0−0.1+0.1 ρJ, an equilibrium temperature of 970−20+30 K and an orbital period of 3.83 days. The radius of WASP-151b appears to be only slightly inflated, while WASP-153b presents a significant radius anomaly compared to a recently published model. WASP-156b, being one of the few well characterized super-Neptunes, will help to constrain the still debated formation of Neptune size planets and the transition between gas and ice giants. The estimates of the age of these three stars confirms an already observed tendency for some stars to have gyrochronological ages significantly lower than their isochronal ages. We propose that high eccentricity migration could partially explain this behavior for stars hosting a short period planet. Finally, these three planets also lie close to (WASP-151b and WASP-153b) or below (WASP-156b) the upper boundary of the Neptunian desert. Their characteristics support that the ultra-violet irradiation plays an important role in this depletion of planets observed in the exoplanet population

Engineering bacterial theranostics: from logic gates to in vivo applications

Over the past 2 decades, rapid advances in synthetic biology have enabled the design of increasingly intricate and biologically relevant systems with broad applications in healthcare. A growing area of interest is in designing bacteria that sense and respond to endogenous disease-associated signals, creating engineered theranostics that function as disease surveyors for human health. In particular, engineered cells hold potential in facilitating greatly enhanced temporal and spatial control over the release of a range of therapeutics. Such systems are particularly useful for targeting challenging, under-drugged disease targets in a more nuanced manner than is currently possible. This review provides an overview of the recent advances in the design, delivery, and dynamics of bacterial theranostics to enable safe, robust, and genetically tractable therapies to treat disease. It outlines the primary challenges in theranostic clinical translation, proposes strategies to overcome these issues, and explores promising future avenues for the field

Nano-scale behavior of irradiated nano-structured alloys

Future fast neutron fusion and fission nuclear systems will be subjected to levels of radiation damage from fast neutrons which is significantly higher than the current generation of nuclear power stations. This will require innovative materials solutions to allow long term mechanical stability of reactors. One proposed class of materials are nanostructured alloys where the large number of interfaces allow for recombination defects and reduce the degree of radiation hardening seen. However their response under irradiation has not thoroughly been studied. In this work, two irradiated nanostructured alloys have been studied W-5%Re in both a nanostructured and annealed variant and a novel Hf-Ti-Ta-V-Zr high entropy alloy. I will outline the benefits nanostructured materials offer under irradiation and some of the problems and challenges in measuring their mechanical properties after irradiation and relating this to the nano-structure using XRD, TEM, HR-EBSD and atom probe tomography. Rolled tungsten 5 wt% rhenium sheet was studied in two microstructural variants: (a) as received with a high dislocation density (mean value of 1.4×1014lines/m2), measured using HR-EBSD, and pancake shaped grains with a thickness of≈200nm and (b) annealed at 1400oC for 24 hours to produce equiaxed grains with average grain size of ≈90 µm and low dislocation density (with a mean value of 4.8×1013 lines/m2). Both materials were ion implanted with 2MeV W+ ions at 300oC to damage levels from 0.07, to 33 displacements per atom (dpa). Nanoindentation was used to measure the change in hardness after implantations. Irradiation induced hardening saturated in the as-received material at an increase of 0.4dpa from the unimplanted hardness of 8GPa at 0.4dpa. In the annealed material saturation does not occur by 13dpa and the hardness change of 1.3GPa from the unimplanted hardness of 6.2GPa was over four times higher. At 33dpa both material types showed a further increase in hardening. In these samples Atom probe tomography showed clustering of Re in ≈4nm precipitates with a rhenium concentration of ≈11%. In both cases the number density and volume fraction are similar at ≈3100 x1000/µm3 and volume fraction of ≈13%. These differences in radiation response are likely to be due to the high damage sink density in the as-received microstructure in the form of dislocation networks, as even in the as-received material the average grain size is too large to provide sufficient sinks. Initially this provides a large sink network for radiation damage resulting in less hardening in the rolled material. However at 33dpa the formation of rhenium clusters occurs at similar levels in both material conditions. These dominate the hardening mechanisms and result in secondary hardening at high damage levels. The difficulties in extracting hardness values from 200nm deep ion implanted layers will be discussed, with reference to minimizing the influence of the substrate material and how changes in pile up effects in irradiated materials can change mechanical responses, and proposed methods to minimize these. High entropy alloys have been proposed as potential nuclear materials as high configurational entropy may provide resistance to radiation damage. We have produced a novel high entropy alloy (Hf-Ti-Ta-V-Zr) in which is single phase on casting but two high entropy phases (one bcc and one hcp) are produced during heat treatment. This material then has a nano-lamella structure with an average lamella thickness of 200nm. Samples of the as cast single phase material, the dual phase high entropy alloy and single crystal vanadium were ion irradiated with V+ ions at 300oC to a dose of 5e14 ions/cm2. In the vanadium control samples the hardness as measured using CSM-nanoindentation was seen to increase from 2GPa in the unimplanted condition to 3.5GPa in the ion irradiated condition. The high entropy alloy in both the as cast and heat treated condition showed no increase in hardness after irradiation, demonstrating the intrinsic resistance to radiation damage of HEA’s. These studies show the ability of nanostructured alloys to have improved irradiation hardening resistance over conventional alloys. However challenges still remain in the production of large scale engineering components in such materials