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The role of consumer sentiment in the stock market: a multivariate dynamic mixture model with threshold effects
Full text linkWe consider the relationship between stock prices, volatility and consumer sentiment. The analysis is based on a new multivariate model defined as a time-varying mixture of dynamic models in which contemporaneous relationships among variables are allowed and the mixing weights have a threshold-type structure. We discuss issues related to the stability of the model and the estimation of its parameters. Our empirical results show that consumer sentiment significantly affects the S&P 500 price--dividend ratio and market volatility in at least one of the model's two regimes, which are associated with endogenously determined low and high consumer sentiment
Work in progress: 'Rage Against the Machine: The Politics of Open Access, Large Language Models, and the Reaction Against Open'
No full textThis morning, having been re-reading and thinking extensively about Moore, Samuel, ‘A Genealogy of Open Access: Negotiations between Openness and Access to Research’, Revue Française Des Sciences de l’information et de La Communication, no. 11 (2017), https://doi.org/10.4000/rfsic.3220 but also the awful news in Tim Sherratt, ‘Update on Trove Data Access and My Suspended API Keys’, Tim Sherratt – Sharing Recent Updates and Work-in-Progress, 2025 https://updates.timsherratt.org/2025/04/11/update-on-trove-data-access.html, I completed work on a book chapter submission for Bas Groes that has occupied me for a couple of weeks now. The chapter is about digital social justice and open access
Understanding UK productivity using a macroeconomic lens
Full text linkWe survey UK labour productivity over the long run, comparing it with other advanced
economies, and focus on the sharp slowdown since the global financial crisis. Using a growth
accounting framework, we highlight the primary role of total factor productivity (TFP),
while noting that the contribution of capital shallowing is influenced by methodological
choices. We assess the UK’s productivity performance through standard neoclassical models
and revisit the secular stagnation debate. Long-term trends, including a 30-year decline in
real interest rates and increased labour supply since 2008 ought to have spurred investment,
and yet private and public investment as a share of GDP has declined. The economic
literature points to poor TFP growth, government decisions on public investment, flexible
labour supply, heightened uncertainty and the distortion of investment decisions in an era
of ultra-low interest rates as probable culprits behind the disappointing investment trends
Neural bases of sustained attention during naturalistic parent-infant interactions
Full text linkSustained attention—the ability to maintain focus on a particular location or object for an extended period of time—is a fundamental skill during development. It enables the developing child to acquire information about their environment, facilitating information processing and supporting memory. Despite its critical role in development, little is known about the neural mechanisms that support this ability. Building on insights from the ECG literature on sustained attention, the present study sought to address some of the challenges associated with neuroimaging research in developmental populations. Specifically, we developed and assessed the validity of a novel fNIRS protocol to study visual sustained attention within naturalistic contexts. Results indicated the involvement of left temporo-parietal areas during sustained attention in infancy. Furthermore, validation of the protocol demonstrated that different attentional states can effectively serve as baselines for studying specific components of attention. This new approach holds significant promise for future studies aimed at extending the study of the neural substrates of attention in naturalistic settings
Eating (with) the other: Jewish-Muslim gastronomic encounters
No full textCommensality – eating together – is often understood by anthropologists and others as fundamental to human sociality, binding groups together and also creating bridges between groups. Consequently, sharing food or making food together has been emphasised in many policies to promote intercultural and interreligious contact. However, a more critical literature has emphasised how consuming the cultural produce of the other may also create opportunities for exploitative rather than meaningfully positive relations (at worst, in bell hooks’ evocative phrase, a way of ‘eating the other’). Eating the culture of the other has become a significant element in forms of gentrification that capitalise on exoticised difference, sometimes leading ultimately to the displacement of minoritised communities. More recently, an alternative approach to the role of food in intercultural encounters has emerged within the ‘conviviality’ and ‘super-diversity’ literatures, focusing on the convivial tools and somatic work of food entrepreneurs. This article, drawing on the author’s fieldwork in London and on fieldwork by colleagues in other European cities, builds on this literature to explore how forms of commensality, and the commercial transactions around them, play a unique role in generating Jewish-Muslim encounters in urban Europe, which are ambivalent, marked by power asymmetries, shadowed by securitisation and geopolitical conflict, but nonetheless fragile resources for hope
Situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran
No full textReport of the Special Rapporteur, General Assembly 202
Low melt viscosity enables melt doublets above the 410-km discontinuity
Full text linkSeismic and magnetotelluric studies suggest hydrous silicate melts atop the 410 km discontinuity form 30–100 km thick layers. Importantly, in some regions, two layers are observed. These stagnant layers are related to their comparable density to the surrounding mantle, but their formation mechanisms and detailed structures remain unclear. Here we report a large decrease of silicate melt viscosity at ~14 GPa, from 96(5) to 11.7(6) mPa⋅s, as water content increases from 15.5 to 31.8 mol% H₂O. Such low viscosities facilitate rapid segregation of melt, which would typically prevent thick layer accumulation. Our 1D finite element simulations show that continuous dehydration melting of upwelling mantle material produces a primary melt layer above 410 km and a secondary layer at the depth of equal mantle-melt densities. These layers can merge into a single thick layer under low density contrasts or high upwelling rates, explaining both melt doublets and thick single layers
Against political purity
Full text linkThe authors of Facing antisemitism argue for embracing the shifting ground of the Jewish community
Provenance of Cretaceous-Miocene sediments in Borneo: Implications for paleogeographic patterns and tectonic evolution
Full text linkCretaceous-Miocene sedimentary rocks of northern Borneo contain a record of sediment routing linked to subduction of the paleo-Pacific and closure of the proto-South China Sea. How the sediment routing system responded to these changes continues to be debated, hindered by limited datasets. New Sr isotope data, combined with previous geochemical and chronological data, to determine the provenance of the Cretaceous-Miocene sediments in Borneo. Late Cretaceous-early Paleocene Lubok Antu Mélange, Lupar Formation and Layar Member of the Rajang Group in Sarawak, central Borneo have low 87Sr/86Sr ratios and high ƐNd values and are dominated by Cretaceous detrital zircon grains. The results consistent with sources from the collapsed upper Mesozoic magmatic belt on the Sunda Shelf. In the Paleocene-Eocene Kapit, Pelagus, Metah and Bawang Members of the Rajang Group, there is a decrease in ƐNd values and an accompanying increase in Permian-Triassic and pre-Permian zircon ages. These trends imply that materials eroded from the Eastern Province of Malay Peninsula became progressively more important to the Sarawak region after the early Paleocene. By contrast, to the east, Eocene strata in the Sabah region remain dominated by Cretaceous detrital zircons, sourced mainly from the Schwaner Mountains. Large numbers of Permian-Triassic detrital zircon ages in the Oligocene-middle Miocene strata of Sarawak and Sabah reflect a drainage network extending to older strata along the Malay Peninsula region since the late Eocene. These sources were cut off once South China Sea began to open, leaving the Schwaner Mountains and uplifted central Borneo as the dominant source of sediments in Sabah. The observed changes in sediment provenance between Sarawak in the west and Sabah in the east reflects changes in sediment routing that tracked subduction of the paleo-Pacific plate and the progressive closure of the proto-South China Sea during the late Cretaceous to middle Miocene
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