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Newswire Tone-Overlay Commodity Portfolios
No full textThis paper introduces the tone-overlay framework for adjusting traditional commodity signals based on the level of salient optimism or pessimism in commodity newswires. By implementing the novel tone-overlay allocation strategy on 26 commodities using traditional allocation signals, we demonstrate that the resulting long-short portfolios yield substantial performance gains compared to the corresponding plain-vanilla traditional portfolios. Our findings suggest that newswire tone provides short-term predictive power for commodity futures returns, beyond well-known commodity characteristics. The tone-overlay portfolios harness a temporary mispricing that reflects an overreaction of commodity futures prices to commodity-specific newswire tone. The outperformance of the tone overlay strengthens with the salience of the newswire tone, consistent with theories of limited investor attention
Decomposing the barriers to equal pay: examining differential predictors of the gender pay gap by socio-economic group
Get PDFOur article examines different predictors of the gender pay gap at the mean and for different income groups. Using the United Kingdom Household Panel Survey (UKHLS), we provide a detailed analysis of the effects of individual work histories, with up to 40 years of retrospective data examined alongside other key indicators. Work histories provide a powerful means of measuring the long-term effects of reduced labour force attachment on pay for women and for men. We find that gendered differentials in work-history account for 29% of the gender pay gap at the mean and that the effects of women’s reduced attachment vary by income group. We find men to earn a higher wage penalty to part-time work-histories than women, and find no evidence of a penalty to part-time work more generally in poor households. We conclude that gender equalisation policies need to reflect divergent needs by income group
‘I felt like a broken person’: the experiences of women navigating a late ADHD diagnosis in the UK
Get PDFAim
To explore the experiences of women diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood, in the UK.
Methods
Eight women, aged between 28 and 53, were interviewed about their experiences of having an ADHD diagnosis in adulthood. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, and the resulting data was analysed using a reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were developed around women’s experiences.
Findings
‘A childhood of undiagnosed ADHD’ revealed that participants experienced distress from a young age and reported low self-esteem. The shared narrative of being misunderstood and dismissed by professionals from a young age, with some reporting that the ADHD diagnosis was overshadowed by another diagnosis. ‘ADHD as a possibility and seeking out a diagnosis’ captured the series of events that led to participants seeking out a diagnosis, with a running theme of self-advocacy being present. ‘Receiving an ADHD diagnosis’ highlights the mixed emotions following diagnosis, the process of re-framing past experiences through the lens of ADHD, and the support offered post-diagnosis. ‘Life with an ADHD diagnosis’ highlights the impact that the diagnosis had on participants’ sense of self and identity and the interplay between the diagnosis and other identities. Participants’ accounts also revealed the impact that stigma had on their experience of ADHD.
Conclusions
The findings illuminated the experience of participants navigating mental health, identity and multiple systemic barriers in the context of ADHD diagnosis in adulthood
Docile Bodies? Reflections on a recruitment photograph from India during the Second World War
Get PDFDiya Gupta presents a photograph from British military recruitment in India during the Second World War. Her commentary demonstrates that colonial archival material can be mobilized for postcolonial analysis by careful reading of its absences and silences, in this case the corporeal and colonial hierarchies in evidence in the photograph
Robust Optimisation of Performance-based Seismic Design of Reinforced Concrete Bridge Piers
No full textA significant challenge in performance-based seismic design (PBSD) is to manage uncertainties in a cost-efficient manner. This highlights the necessity of integrating PBSD with a robust design optimisation (RDO) methodology. The objective is to find optimal solutions that are not only safe and cost-effective but also minimally sensitive to variations in input noise parameters such as record-to-record variability (RTRV) of ground motions and uncertainties related to structural properties. In this study, for the first time, an RDO formulation is tailored to the PBSD of reinforced concrete (RC) bridge piers. The developed optimisation framework is applied to the PBSD of RC piers following the specifications of fib Model Code 2010. The obtained results provide valuable insights into the trade-offs between economic costs and robustness of RC pier design solutions. They also underscore the importance of the proposed RDO method in decision-making processes, highlighting solutions that may be slightly more expensive but significantly more robust compared to the most economical options
Investigating a structured diagnostic approach for chronic breathlessness in primary care: a mixed-methods feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial
Get PDFBackground: There is a need to reduce delays to diagnosis for chronic breathlessness to improve patient outcomes.
Objective: To conduct a mixed-methods feasibility study of a larger cluster randomised controlled trial (cRCT) investigating a structured symptom-based diagnostic approach versus usual care for chronic breathlessness in primary care.
Methods: 10 general practitioner practices were cluster randomised to a structured diagnostic approach for chronic breathlessness including early parallel investigations (intervention) or usual care. Adults over 40 years old at participating practices were eligible if presenting with chronic breathlessness without an existing explanatory diagnosis. The primary feasibility outcomes were participant recruitment and retention rate at 1 year. Secondary outcomes included number of investigations at 3 months, and investigations, diagnoses and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) at 1 year. Semistructured interviews were completed with patients and clinicians, and analysed using thematic analysis.
Results: Recruitment rate was 32% (48/150): 65% female, mean (SD) age 66 (11) years, body mass index 31.2 kg/m2 (6.5), median (IQR) Medical Research Council dyspnoea 2 (2–3). Retention rate was 85% (41/48). At 3 months, the intervention group had a median (IQR) of 8 (7–9) investigations compared with 5 (3–6) investigations with usual care. 11/25 (44%) patients in the intervention group had coded diagnosis for breathlessness at 12 months compared with 6/23 (26%) with usual care. Potential improvements in symptom burden and quality of life were observed in the intervention group above usual care.
Conclusions: A cRCT investigating a symptom-based diagnostic approach for chronic breathlessness is feasible in primary care showing potential for timely investigations and diagnoses, with PROMs potentially indicating patient-level benefit. A further refined fully powered cRCT with health economic analysis is needed
Written Evidence - Dr Reynolds and Dr Ranta evidence for Foreign Affairs Committee Commons Select Committee, Call for Evidence: Soft power: a strategy for UK success? Submitted 07/03/2025
Get PDFLong-term behavior of stochastic SIQRS epidemic models
No full textIn this paper we analyze and classify the dynamics of SIQRS epidemiological models with susceptible, infected, quarantined, and recovered classes, where the recovered individuals can become reinfected. We are able to treat general incidence functional responses. Our models are more realistic than what has been studied in the literature since they include two important types of random fluctuations. The first type is due to small fluctuations of the various model parameters and leads to white noise terms. The second type of noise is due to significant environment regime shifts in that can happen at random. The environment switches randomly between a finite number of environmental states, each with a possibly different disease dynamic. We prove that the long-term fate of the disease is fully determined by a real-valued threshold λ. When λ 0 the disease will persist indefinitely. We end our analysis by looking at some important examples where λ can be computed explicitly, and by showcasing some simulation results that shed light on real-world situations
The Equality Act 2010: evaluating the evolution and development of organisational strategy and professional practice
Get PDFPurpose
This paper aims to evaluate the evolution, development and endurance of the Equality Act 2010, providing a critical overview of influence and key legal principles, demonstrating how the Act has impacted strategic organisational and human resources policy and practice in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is based on a systematic review of relevant professional and academic literature, alongside an evaluation of the Act itself. The subject focus is seen as timely with the return of a Labour Government in the UK – the architects of the Equality Act – for the first time in 14 years. Due to word limitations, the treatment is condensed to provide a selective overview that will be of interest to practitioners and academics in strategic organisational management and human resources. The author is a socio-legal studies academic and non-practising barrister, with expertise in the corporate organisational field.
Findings
The Equality Act 2010, though now established, owes its historical inception to civil rights activism and a radical turn in legislative drafting and ambition – points frequently missed when discussing its scope and influence. A highly unusual anomaly is that having been created by an outgoing Labour Government its stewardship immediately passed to a Conservative administration. In particular, the principles consolidated and introduced by the Act have greatly impacted the workplace, crucially organisational behaviour and human resources practices, leading to greater responsibility and interpretive power being directed from employment lawyers towards organisational policy and professional practice.
Originality/value
The Equality Act 2010 is usually discussed as an artifact rather than a radical creation and developing entity. This short paper approaches the Act as a “living” object with an eye on future reform
Recent Developments in DSGE Modelling: Beyond FIRE
Get PDFThis survey focuses on the standard assumption in DSGE models: rational expectations (RE) with perfect information (PI) aka full information (FI)—hence FIRE. RE means model consistent expectations—agents be they households, firms, banks or policymakers know your model. PI (or FI) means agents observe or can infer the current and past state variables in your model. RE + PI (or FIRE) is a strong assumption. The purpose of this survey is to examine the literature that relaxes RE or PI or both. This is relevant for DSGE models in general, but particularly so for the efficacy of monetary policy in a New Keynesian environment when the expectation by agents of future policy is of crucial importance.
JEL Classification
: C11, C18, C32, E3
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