The impact of rhetoric and reality on community anticipation of risk in the development of multi-purpose services (MPS) : A grounded theory study

better health service.Conclusion:This research provides an insight into the perceptions of the rhetoric and reality of community member involvement in the process of developing multi-purpose services. It revealed a grounded theory in which fear and trust were intrinsic to a process of changing from a traditional hospital service to the acceptance of a new model of health care provided at a multi-purpose service.

Age and gender comparisons of driving while sleepy : behaviours and risk perceptions

To assist road safety professionals in developing effective strategies to combat the risk associated with driving while fatigued, a survey was administered to 1000 Australian drivers. Participants reported their past behaviours in regards to driving while sleepy and their perceptions of risk associated with driving fatigued as compared to speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol. Although participants appeared to be aware of the substantial risk associated with driving while sleepy, many drivers reported that they frequently drive when sleepy. Age and gender comparisons, revealed that risk taking behaviour in regards to driving while sleepy is occurring across all age groups and in both male and female drivers. Overall young to middle age drivers and male drivers reported the highest frequency of driving while sleepy and reported the lowest perceived personal risk in regards to driving while sleepy.

Measuring risk and blameworthiness in the sentencing of criminal defendants : an exploratory study in Western Australia's Higher Courts

The focal concern perspective dominates quantitative explorations of judicial sentencing. A critical argument underlying this perspective is the role of judicial assessments of risk and blameworthiness. Prior research has not generally explored how these two concepts fit together. This study provides an empirical test of the focal concerns perspective by examining the latent structure among the measures traditionally used in sentencing research, and investigates the extent to which focal concerns can be applied in a non-US jurisdiction. Using factor analysis (as suggested by prior research), we find evidence of distinct factors of risk and blameworthiness, with separate and independent effects on sentencing outcomes. We also identify the need for further development of the focal concerns perspective, especially around the role of perceptual shorthand.

Risk of falls, injurious falls, and other injuries resulting from visual impairment among older adults with age-related macular degeneration

Purpose: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible visual impairment among older adults. This study explored the relationship between AMD, falls risk and other injuries and identified visual risk factors for these adverse events. Methods: Participants included 76 community-dwelling individuals with a range of severity of AMD (mean age, 77.0±6.9 years). Baseline assessment included binocular visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and merged visual fields. Participants completed monthly falls and injury diaries for one year following the baseline assessment. Results: Overall, 74% of participants reported having either a fall, injurious fall or other injury. Fifty-four percent of participants reported a fall and 30% reported more than one fall; of the 102 falls reported, 63% resulted in an injury. Most occurred outdoors (52%), between late morning and late afternoon (61%) and when navigating on level ground (62%). The most common non-fall injuries were lacerations (36%) and collisions with an object (35%). Reduced contrast sensitivity and visual acuity were associated with increased fall rate, after controlling for age, gender, cognitive function, cataract severity and self-reported physical function. Reduced contrast sensitivity was the only significant predictor of falls and other injuries. Conclusion: Among older adults with AMD, increased visual impairment was significantly associated with an increased incidence of falls and other injuries. Reduced contrast sensitivity was significantly associated with increased rates of falls, injurious falls and injuries, while reduced visual acuity was only associated with increased falls risk. These findings have important implications for the assessment of visually impaired older adults.

Unlicensed drivers : are they high risk?

- Road safety implications of unlicensed driving - Present results from three studies examining: the crash involvement of unlicensed drivers; the impact of licence disqualification on offending; characteristics of unlicensed driving offenders - Countermeasure implications - Discussion of high-risk groups and innovative countermeasure options

Convexity, Classification, and Risk Bounds

Many of the classification algorithms developed in the machine learning literature, including the support vector machine and boosting, can be viewed as minimum contrast methods that minimize a convex surrogate of the 0–1 loss function. The convexity makes these algorithms computationally efficient. The use of a surrogate, however, has statistical consequences that must be balanced against the computational virtues of convexity. To study these issues, we provide a general quantitative relationship between the risk as assessed using the 0–1 loss and the risk as assessed using any nonnegative surrogate loss function. We show that this relationship gives nontrivial upper bounds on excess risk under the weakest possible condition on the loss function—that it satisfies a pointwise form of Fisher consistency for classification. The relationship is based on a simple variational transformation of the loss function that is easy to compute in many applications. We also present a refined version of this result in the case of low noise, and show that in this case, strictly convex loss functions lead to faster rates of convergence of the risk than would be implied by standard uniform convergence arguments. Finally, we present applications of our results to the estimation of convergence rates in function classes that are scaled convex hulls of a finite-dimensional base class, with a variety of commonly used loss functions.

Rademacher and Gaussian complexities: Risk bounds and structural results

We investigate the use of certain data-dependent estimates of the complexity of a function class, called Rademacher and Gaussian complexities. In a decision theoretic setting, we prove general risk bounds in terms of these complexities. We consider function classes that can be expressed as combinations of functions from basis classes and show how the Rademacher and Gaussian complexities of such a function class can be bounded in terms of the complexity of the basis classes. We give examples of the application of these techniques in finding data-dependent risk bounds for decision trees, neural networks and support vector machines.

‘I can’t get no satisfaction’...or can I? A study of satisfaction with financial planning and client wellbeing

This paper reports findings from an ongoing collaborative research project with the Financial Services Council (FSC), which contributed funding and facilitated the survey of financial planners’ clients through FSC member organisations. The article draws on the report to the FSC that was prepared by the QUT researchers, reporting findings on the initial exploratory stage of the project.1 The lyric in the title of this paper has become a catchcry for consumers dissatisfied with a range of financial services and products, and, as recent Federal Government inquiries have revealed, there is some truth to the claim. But as financial planning undergoes a series of reforms, including increased professionalism (FPA 2009) and improved quality of advice (Australian Government 2011), there are good reasons to explore the conditions under which clients report satisfaction with their financial planners; not least because the provision of effective financial planning and advice, delivered in accordance with, or transcending, the rules and norms of industry best-practice has the potential to benefit clients, not just financially, but across a number of life domains. In this paper, we report findings from an exploratory study investigating whether financial planning and advice contribute to client well-being, beyond effects on financial well-being. While anecdotal evidence supports psychological benefits such as a sense of security, little research has explored these links in any systematic or theoretically driven way. However, theory and research from cognate disciplines, such as psychology, indicate clear links between planning, goal setting and well-being that are likely to arise in the financial planning domain. Surveyed clients were asked to indicate their satisfaction with their financial advisers, the planning process and the advice they received. Clients responded to items designed to reflect key areas for financial planners in the shift towards increased professionalism, improved disclosure and greater client focus (e.g. FPA 2009). Clients also reflected on their financial situations before and after seeing their advisers, and considered the impact of their financial situations on a number of life areas including family relationships, mental health and well-being, and overall life satisfaction.

Common variation in the fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 gene is not associated with endometriosis risk

BACKGROUND Endometriosis is a polygenic disease with a complex and multifactorial aetiology that affects 8-10% of women of reproductive age. Epidemiological data support a link between endometriosis and cancers of the reproductive tract. Fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2) has recently been implicated in both endometrial and breast cancer. Our previous studies on endometriosis identified significant linkage to a novel susceptibility locus on chromosome 10q26 and the FGFR2 gene maps within this linkage region. We therefore hypothesized that variation in FGFR2 may contribute to the risk of endometriosis. METHODS We genotyped 13 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) densely covering a 27 kb region within intron 2 of FGFR2 including two SNPs (rs2981582 and rs1219648) significantly associated with breast cancer and a total 40 tagSNPs across 150 kb of the FGFR2 gene. SNPs were genotyped in 958 endometriosis cases and 959 unrelated controls. RESULTS We found no evidence for association between endometriosis and FGFR2 intron 2 SNPs or SNP haplotypes and no evidence for association between endometriosis and variation across the FGFR2 gene. CONCLUSIONS Common variation in the breast-cancer implicated intron 2 and other highly plausible causative candidate regions of FGFR2 do not appear to be a major contributor to endometriosis susceptibility in our large Australian sample.

A note on trader Sharpe Ratios

Traders in the financial world are assessed by the amount of money they make and, increasingly, by the amount of money they make per unit of risk taken, a measure known as the Sharpe Ratio. Little is known about the average Sharpe Ratio among traders, but the Efficient Market Hypothesis suggests that traders, like asset managers, should not outperform the broad market. Here we report the findings of a study conducted in the City of London which shows that a population of experienced traders attain Sharpe Ratios significantly higher than the broad market. To explain this anomaly we examine a surrogate marker of prenatal androgen exposure, the second-to-fourth finger length ratio (2D:4D), which has previously been identified as predicting a trader's long term profitability. We find that it predicts the amount of risk taken by traders but not their Sharpe Ratios. We do, however, find that the traders' Sharpe Ratios increase markedly with the number of years they have traded, a result suggesting that learning plays a role in increasing the returns of traders. Our findings present anomalous data for the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.

Comparing different explanations of the volatility trend

We analyze the puzzling behavior of the volatility of individual stock returns over the past few decades. The literature has provided many different explanations to the trend in volatility and this paper tests the viability of the different explanations. Virtually all current theoretical arguments that are provided for the trend in the average level of volatility over time lend themselves to explanations about the difference in volatility levels between firms in the cross-section. We therefore focus separately on the cross-sectional and time-series explanatory power of the different proxies. We fail to find a proxy that is able to explain both dimensions well. In particular, we find that Cao et al. [Cao, C., Simin, T.T., Zhao, J., 2008. Can growth options explain the trend in idiosyncratic risk? Review of Financial Studies 21, 2599–2633] market-to-book ratio tracks average volatility levels well, but has no cross-sectional explanatory power. On the other hand, the low-price proxy suggested by Brandt et al. [Brandt, M.W., Brav, A., Graham, J.R., Kumar, A., 2010. The idiosyncratic volatility puzzle: time trend or speculative episodes. Review of Financial Studies 23, 863–899] has much cross-sectional explanatory power, but has virtually no time-series explanatory power. We also find that the different proxies do not explain the trend in volatility in the period prior to 1995 (R-squared of virtually zero), but explain rather well the trend in volatility at the turn of the Millennium (1995–2005).