Accelerating innovation in the built environment by research and education

Awareness of climate change and adaptations of building stock play a key role in the UK government’s environmental agenda. While some European countries and countries like Japan move forward by bringing their sustainability agenda to the public sector, the UK seems to be slow in embracing these ideas and long term sustainability in improved products and processes for better performance, efficiency and innovative application of renewable technology is yet to come. While funding remains a major constraint research show that a number of detrimental issues including; organisation, risk, mind sets of the stakeholders, planning constraints, reluctance to accept change and the unexploited markets are major contributing factors. Most of these barriers can be overcome with research, development and information and knowledge transfer techniques. Educating all stakeholders can act as an accelerator for innovation. This paper examines innovation in the built environment and how research and education can stimulate this process. It explores drivers and barriers for innovation and how research and education in construction, design, engineering and project management can enhance this process. It presents and discusses lessons learnt from two action research projects in relation to innovation.

[BSHM meetings] Topics in the history of financial mathematics: early commerce to chaos in modern stock markets

This account provides an overview of the study day, entitled 'Topics in the History of Financial Mathematics: Early commerce to chaos in modern stock markets,' held by the British Society for the History of Mathematics jointly with Gresham College, at Gresham College, London on 25th April 2008. The series of talks explored the development of mathematics and mathematical techniques in a commercial and financial context.

The performance and persistence of exchange-traded funds: evidence for iShares MSCI country-specific ETFs

The aim of this paper is to investigate the performance and persistence of 20 iShares MSCI country-specific exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in comparison with S&P 500 index over the period July 2001 to June 2006. There are several studies analysing mutual funds performance in past years, but very little is known about ETFs. In our analysis the Sharpe, Treynor and Sortino ratios are used as risk-adjusted performance measures. To evaluate performance persistence and therefore if there is any relationship among past performance and future performance, we apply to the Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient and the Winner-loser Contingency Table. The main findings are at two levels. First, ETFs can beat the U.S. market index based on risk-adjusted performance measures. Second, there is evidence of ETFs performance persistence based on annual return.