Liquidity-Driven Risks to Large Valued Payments

During particularly stressed financial or macroeconomic circumstances, banks’ access to liquidity can become severely restricted. The recent financial crisis demonstrated this phenomenon all too plainly, when, in a climate of fear and uncertainty, both the interbank and international money markets ceased to function in a meaningful manner. Liquidity shortages can potentially create problems for a bank’s ability to meet its outward intraday payments obligations on the TARGET2 real-time gross settlement system. Such a situation not only has negative implications for the respective bank but could also produce contagion effects for the TARGET2 system as a whole. In order to provide increased clarity regarding liquidity driven risks to large value payment systems, the Central Bank of Ireland has developed a ‘liquidity buffer’ indicator for the domestic credit institutions. The initial focus of this project centred primarily upon the development of an ‘early warning’ system, capable of identifying TARGET2 liquidity issues as they occurred in real time. However, during the development of such a platform, the analysis has also presented a means from which it is possible to derive a proxy for the level of risk banks detect in their environment. The analysis undertaken reveals that the Reserve Requirement (RR) plays an important role in how banks formulate their liquidity management strategies throughout the maintenance period. In times of increased uncertainty banks appear willing to hold excess liquidity, at a greater expense, in order to be guaranteed access to liquidity towards the latter half of the maintenance period. In a similar fashion, during a period of stability or relative certainty, banks do not choose to maintain excess liquidity on the TARGET2 platform, implying a degree of increased confidence in accessing liquidity when they require it later in the maintenance period. In this sense we can, to some degree, infer the degree of risk a bank perceives to be present in its immediate environment, by examining the respective institutions’ liquidity management strategy over the maintenance period. In a broader fashion, the indicator also serves as a tool from which the Central Bank of Ireland can monitor banks’ liquidity position with increased precision.

The Silurian Hypothesis: Would It Be Possible to Detect an Industrial Civilization in the Geological Record?

If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to ourown era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event

A posteriori inclusion of PDFs in NLO QCD final-state calculations

Any NLO calculation of a QCD final-state observable involves Monte Carlo integration over a large number of events. For DIS and hadron colliders this must usually be repeated for each new PDF set, making it impractical to consider many `error' PDF sets, or carry out PDF fits. Here we discuss ``a posteriori'' inclusion of PDFs, whereby the Monte Carlo run calculates a grid (in x and Q) of cross section weights that can subsequently be combined with an arbitrary PDF. The procedure is numerically equivalent to using an interpolated form of the PDF. The main novelty relative to prior work is the use of higher-order interpolation, which substantially improves the tradeoff between accuracy and memory use. An accuracy of about 0.01% has been reached for the single inclusive cross-section in the central rapidity region |y|<0.5 for jet transverse momenta from 100 to 5000 GeV. This method should facilitate the consistent inclusion of final-state data from HERA, Tevatron and LHC in PDF fits, thus helping to increase the sensitivity of LHC to deviations from standard Model predictions.Comment: contribution to the CERN DESY workshop on "HERA and LHC

Grand Unification and Light Color-Octet Scalars at the LHC

We study the properties and production mechanisms of color-octet scalars at the LHC. We focus on the single production of both charged and neutral members of an (8,2)_1/2 doublet through bottom quark initial states. These channels provide a window to the underlying Yukawa structure of the scalar sector. Color-octet scalars naturally appear in grand unified theories based on the SU(5) gauge symmetry. In the context of adjoint SU(5) these fields are expected to be light to satisfy constraints coming from unification and proton decay, and may have TeV-scale masses. One combination of their couplings is defined by the relation between the down-quark and charged-lepton Yukawa couplings. Observation of these states at the LHC gives an upper bound on the proton lifetime if they truly arise from this grand unified theory. We demonstrate that TeV-mass scalars can be observed over background at the LHC using boosted top quark final states, and study how well the scalar Yukawa parameters can be measured.Comment: 22 pages, LaTeX, 5 figures; typos corrected, references adde

New Zealand Agribusiness Success: An Approach to exploring the role of strategy, structure and conduct on firm performance

This paper presents a framework to explore agribusiness success in New Zealand. The framework provides the basis for historical analysis. It draws on existing theory based on the structure-conduct-performance paradigm but expanded to take account of firm strategy and the analysis of value chains.Agribusiness, structure, conduct, performance, history, Agribusiness,

Towards an overheating risk tool for building design

PurposeThe work set out to design and develop an overheating risk tool using the UKCP09 climate projections that is compatible with building performance simulation software. The aim of the tool is to exploit the Weather Generator and give a reasonably accurate assessment of a building's performance in future climates, without adding significant time, cost or complexity to the design team's work.Methodology/approachBecause simulating every possible future climate is impracticable, the approach adopted was to use principal component analysis to give a statistically rigorous simplification of the climate projections. The perceptions and requirements of potential users were assessed through surveys, interviews and focus groups.FindingsIt is possible to convert a single dynamic simulation output into many hundreds of simulation results at hourly resolution for equally probable climates, giving a population of outcomes for the performance of a specific building in a future climate, thus helping the user choose adaptations that might reduce the risk of overheating. The tool outputs can be delivered as a probabilistic overheating curve and feed into a risk management matrix. Professionals recognized the need to quantify overheating risk, particularly for non‐domestic buildings, and were concerned about the ease of incorporating the UKCP09 projections into this process. The new tool has the potential to meet these concerns.Originality/valueThe paper is the first attempt to link UKCP09 climate projections and building performance simulation software in this way and the work offers the potential for design practitioners to use the tool to quickly assess the risk of overheating in their designs and adapt them accordingly.</jats:sec

Serum and blood based biomarkers for lung cancer screening : a systematic review

Background Lung cancer is the second most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women. Although low-dose CT (LDCT) is recommended for lung cancer screening in high-risk populations and may decrease lung cancer mortality, there is a need to improve the accuracy of lung cancer screening to decrease over-diagnosis and morbidity. Blood and serum-based biomarkers, including EarlyCDT-lung and microRNA based biomarkers, are promising adjuncts to LDCT in lung cancer screening. We evaluated the diagnostic performance of EarlyCDT-lung, micro-RNA signature classifier (MSC), and miR-test, and their impact on lung cancer-related mortality and all-cause mortality. Methods References were identified using searches of PubMed, EMBASE, and Ovid Medline® from January 2000 to November 2015. Phase three or greater studies in the English language evaluating the diagnostic performance of EarlyCDT-lung, MSC, and miR-test were selected for inclusion. Results Three phase 3 studies were identified, one evaluating EarlyCDT-lung, one evaluating miR-Test, and one evaluating MSC respectively. No phase 4 or 5 studies were identified. All three biomarker assays show promise for the detection of lung cancer. MSC shows promise when used in conjunction with LDCT for lung cancer detection, achieving a positive likelihood ratio of 18.6 if both LDCT and MSC are positive, and a negative likelihood ratio of 0.03 if both LDCT and MSC are negative. However, there is a paucity of high-quality studies that can guide clinical implementation. Conclusion There is currently no high quality evidence to support or guide the implementation of these biomarkers in clinical practice. Reports of further research at stages four and five for these, and other promising methods, is required.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Focus on Research: A podiatry intervention to reduce falls in care home residents: development, feasibility and acceptability study with exploratory randomised controlled trial

Aims1. To assess the feasibility and acceptability of a podiatry intervention to reduce falls in care home (CH) residents.2. To develop the intervention for use in an exploratory randomised controlled trial to establish its potential effectiveness in terms of falls reduction and other falls-related outcomes.Project Outline/MethodologyPart 1: We wanted to examine how easy or difficult it was for CH residents to participate in the podiatry intervention (foot/ankle exercises, and the use of special insoles and footwear). We ran a 12 week feasibility study with 8 CH residents and associated CH staff. We then conducted interviews to gain partipants’ views on their experiences of the intervention, and what improvements would be helpful. We also wanted to look at some of the methods we might employ in our subsequent exploratory randomised controlled trial, for example, the feasibility of recruiting CH residents and the selection of the best measures to use to assess the impact of the intervention. Part 2: We conducted the exploratory randomised controlled trial (RCT) with 43 CH residents randomised to receive either the podiatry intervention or usual care. The RCT was designed to assess potentially beneficial effects on falls rates and frequencies. We followed CH residents for 6 months after the end of the intervention period.Key ResultsPart 1. CH residents and their carers found the podiatry intervention straightforward to particpate in. CH staff delivered the exercise component of the intervention, which meant they received training from members of the research team. Varying shift patterns and high CH staff turnover meant it was difficult to access all relevent members of CH staff so we developed an online training resource that could be accessed by CH staff at a time which suited them. It was difficult to recruit CH residents who met our inclusion criteria for the first part of our study, so we amended the criteria for the RCT part of our study. Recruitment was also difficult because there were more CH residents with profound cognitive impairment than we anticipated; this meant we had to visit more CHs than originally planned in order to recruit sufficient numbers of residents to the RCT. Part 2. The RCT showed fewer average falls for the podiatry intervention group (2.3) compared to the control group (2.7) Maximum benefit was seen at the end of the intervention, but this was not sustained 6 months later. The time taken to experience a fall was also longer in the intervention group compared to the control group. There were minimal changes in balance, mobilty and quality of life between to the two groups, and so the mechanism by which intervention makes an impact remains unclear. Logbooks of exercise completion were not well completed so the proportion of participants fully adhering to the intervention exercise programme was unclear. ConclusionsA podiatry intervention to reduce CH falls as part of an RCT is feasible. Our results suggest a benefical effect on the number of falls, which may be more substantial if adherence to the exercises was improved, and if we recruited larger numbers of CH residents.What does this study add to the field?A trial of a podiatry intervention to reduce CH falls will recruit well and may confer benefits to its recipients. Implications for Practice or PolicyWe cannot make a definite statement as to the effectiveness of the intervention, since this study was not desiged to tell us that, but the results are enough to judge a large trial to definitively test effectivess to be worthwhile.Where to next? We will apply for funding to conduct a large multicentre RCT. This will be designed to include CH residents with significant cognitive imparment.Further details from: Gavin Wylie [email protected]<br/