Pensions auto-enrolment:Unintended consequences of regulation and private law remedies

The introduction of auto-enrolment (AE) into workplace pensions in 2012 requires employers to enrol workers into a pension. Employers have significant discretion in this process and rely on the financial services industry to ensure compliance with AE minimum standards. Employers may not always have pension expertise and will engage pension providers for advice on establishing compliant pension arrangements or modifying existing schemes to use for AE. Whilst this policy benefits many, there are a number of negative consequences flowing from the introduction of AE. Examples include employers choosing poorly performing schemes, insufficient protection of free choice and poor default positions replacing active decision making, all of which result in poor value for some employees. The parties' interests may not always be aligned. Despite the minimum criteria, there can be significant variations between fund costs and scheme quality as private sector pensions are frequently used for compliance. Whilst the ability of employees to opt-out provides legitimacy for the regime, the form of implementation and use of defaults erodes the exercise of choice and there are no provisions to encourage engagement and active decision-making by individuals. In addition to this, inadequate advice impacts on the effects of AE for many. For some this means that they pay in less overall than they would have if they had voluntarily chosen to contribute to a plan. This article explores whether further statutory change to the AE regime is required or whether existing private law remedies, with a focus on Scots law, afford sufficient remedies for those suffering loss. If fiduciary, agency, contractual or delictual obligations arise from the AE relationship then this may provide adequate remedies. This article will consider whether fiduciary duties are owed to employees, particularly by the employer (as an agent) to the employee, and the extent of duties owed under the contract of employment

Proton acceleration at tearing coronal null-point current sheets

Context. Non-thermal particle acceleration in the solar corona is thought to constitute a substantial part of the energy budget of explosive events such as solar flares. One well-established mechanism of non-thermal acceleration is directly via fields in current sheets. Aims. In this paper we study proton acceleration during "spine-fan reconnection" at a 3D magnetic null point. This type of reconnection has recently been implicated in some flares known as circular-ribbon flares. It has also recently been discovered that the reconnecting current sheet may undergo a non-linear tearing-type instability. This tearing leads to the formation of flux ropes and quasi-turbulent dynamics. Methods. A predictor-corrector test particle code is used to model the trajectories of protons at different stages of sheet tearing: when the sheet is intact, just after the formation of the first major flux rope, and once the non-linear phase of the instability has become more fully developed. The fields for these proton trajectories were taken from snapshots of a 3D magnetohydrodynamics simulation treated as three static field geometries represented by interpolated grids. Acceleration in the intact current sheet is compared to earlier simulations of infinite static current sheets and then used as a control case with which to compare the later snapshots. Results. Protons are found to be predominantly accelerated along the fan surface, especially in the absence of current sheet tearing. Most of the highest energy protons are accelerated in the main body of the current sheet, along the direction of strongest parallel electric field. A high energy tail is present in the kinetic energy distribution. After tearing commences, this direct acceleration no longer dominates and acceleration in the outflow regions makes a proportionally greater contribution. Sheet tearing appears overall to hinder the acceleration of protons in the fan plane, at least in the absence of time-dependent acceleration mechanisms. Some correlation is found between high energy protons and locations of flux ropes formed by the instability, but the nature of the link remains at present unclear.</p

Generalised models for torsional spine and fan magnetic reconnection

Three-dimensional null points are present in abundance in the solar corona, and the same is likely to be true in other astrophysical environments. Recent studies suggest that reconnection at such 3D nulls may play an important role in the coronal dynamics. In this paper the properties of the torsional spine and torsional fan modes of magnetic reconnection at 3D nulls are investigated. New analytical models are developed, which for the first time include a current layer that is spatially localised around the null, extending along either the spine or the fan of the null. These are complemented with numerical simulations. The principal aim is to investigate the effect of varying the degree of asymmetry of the null point magnetic field on the resulting reconnection process - where previous studies always considered a non-generic radially symmetric null. The geometry of the current layers within which torsional spine and torsional fan reconnection occur is found to be strongly dependent on the symmetry of the magnetic field. Torsional spine reconnection still occurs in a narrow tube around the spine, but with elliptical cross-section when the fan eigenvalues are different, and with the short axis of the ellipse being along the strong field direction. The spatiotemporal peak current, and the peak reconnection rate attained, are found not to depend strongly on the degree of asymmetry. For torsional fan reconnection, the reconnection occurs in a planar disk in the fan surface, which is again elliptical when the symmetry of the magnetic field is broken. The short axis of the ellipse is along the weak field direction, with the current being peaked in these weak field regions. The peak current and peak reconnection rate in this case are clearly dependent on the asymmetry, with the peak current increasing but the reconnection rate decreasing as the degree of asymmetry is increased

Cholinergic and perfusion brain networks in Parkinson disease dementia.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate muscarinic M1/M4 cholinergic networks in Parkinson disease dementia (PDD) and their association with changes in Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) after 12 weeks of treatment with donepezil. METHODS: Forty-nine participants (25 PDD and 24 elderly controls) underwent (123)I-QNB and (99m)Tc-exametazime SPECT scanning. We implemented voxel principal components (PC) analysis, producing a series of PC images of patterns of interrelated voxels across individuals. Linear regression analyses derived specific M1/M4 and perfusion spatial covariance patterns (SCPs). RESULTS: We found an M1/M4 SCP of relative decreased binding in basal forebrain, temporal, striatum, insula, and anterior cingulate (F1,47 = 31.9, p < 0.001) in cholinesterase inhibitor-naive patients with PDD, implicating limbic-paralimbic and salience cholinergic networks. The corresponding regional cerebral blood flow SCP showed relative decreased uptake in temporoparietal and prefrontal areas (F1,47 = 177.5, p < 0.001) and nodes of the frontoparietal and default mode networks (DMN). The M1/M4 pattern that correlated with an improvement in MMSE (r = 0.58, p = 0.005) revealed relatively preserved/increased pre/medial/orbitofrontal, parietal, and posterior cingulate areas coinciding with the DMN and frontoparietal networks. CONCLUSION: Dysfunctional limbic-paralimbic and salience cholinergic networks were associated with PDD. Established cholinergic maintenance of the DMN and frontoparietal networks may be prerequisite for cognitive remediation following cholinergic treatment in this condition.Medical Research Council UK [grant number G9817682], and by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research for Public Benefit, Wellcome Trust (WT088441MA Fellowship funding J-P.T). NIHR Dementia Biomedical Research Unit at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Cambridge. The NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre in Ageing and Chronic Disease and Biomedical Research Unit in Lewy Body Dementia based at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle University.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Wolters Kluwer via http://dx.doi.org/10.​1212/​WNL.​000000000000283

Medical Support to Demining in Sudan

With an area of more than one million square miles (2,589,988 square kilometers), Sudan is the largest country on the African continent and has been at the center of decades of conflict since it gained its independence in 1959. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in January 2005 brought to end a vicious civil war and marked the beginning of an era of relative peace. This article outlines the health challenges involved in mine action in Sudan and highlights the actions taken by the United Nations Mine Action Office in Sudan to address issues of medical support to humanitarian-demining operations in a particularly difficult environment

An evaluation of small-area statistical methods for detecting excess risk: with applications in breast and colon cancer mortality in Scotland 1986-1995

The need to report data at small-area level is constantly increasingly. In a society which is both health-conscious and environmentally aware, statistics at small-area level have a high degree of political significance. This type of data is required to plan and implement regional policies and apportion health care in accordance to the differing needs of the population. Recent advances in computer power has brought many advances to this area of study. For all the advances in technology and methodology, the problem of small numbers consistently appears. Is there an excess risk or is it down to chance? This is a question which is paramount in small-area statistics and will be addressed in this thesis. An overview of the thesis is provided below: Chapter 1 introduces the concept of small-area statistics and some of the social and political issues connected with this topic. There is a discussion of the analysis of small-area health data and the principal ideas that need to be considered in a statistical, political and social sense in this area of work. The aims of ISD Scotland are introduced and how they can be linked to this field of study. Chapter 2 describes an overview of the methods used in small-area statistics. The chapter begins by firstly considering the Standardised Incidence Ratio (SIR) which is the technique mainly used in the basic analysis done by ISD Scotland. Other techniques are then considered, however not all of these techniques are directly comparable to each other. The strengths and weaknesses of these techniques in previous research are discussed to give an idea of how the techniques perform in different scenarios. Chapter 3 is a simulation study of three of the techniques discussed in Chapter 2, these being the SIR, Circular Spatial Scan and Flexibly-Shaped Spatial Scan. The reason for this simulation study is to evaluate these techniques on simulated data arising from real scenarios. The strengths and weaknesses of these techniques are then highlighted which will prove helpful when analysing the data in Chapter 4. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of the mortality of breast and colon cancer in Scotland in the ten-year time period from 1986 to 1995. Using data provided by ISD Scotland, the analysis is carried out to identity any potential mortality clusters in both diseases. Chapter 5 provides a conclusion to this research by providing a summary of findings of the thesis and gives recommendations based upon these findings. A discussion is also given for potential further study in this field that could provide some value to ISD Scotland as they look to other ways of analysing their small-area data

Quantifying three dimensional reconnection in fragmented current layers

There is growing evidence that when magnetic reconnection occurs in high Lundquist number plasmas such as in the Solar Corona or the Earth's Magnetosphere it does so within a fragmented, rather than a smooth current layer. Within the extent of these fragmented current regions, the associated magnetic flux transfer and energy release occur simultaneously in many different places. This investigation focusses on how best to quantify the rate at which reconnection occurs in such layers. An analytical theory is developed which describes the manner in which new connections form within fragmented current layers in the absence of magnetic nulls. It is shown that the collective rate at which new connections form can be characterized by two measures; a total rate which measures the true rate at which new connections are formed and a net rate which measures the net change of connection associated with the largest value of the integral of E || E|| through all of the non-ideal regions. Two simple analytical models are presented which demonstrate how each should be applied and what they quantify