An Investigation into the Link between UK Credit Union Characterisitics, Location and their Success

The unique characteristics of credit unions reduces the information asymmetry that is prevalent in credit making decisions, enabling them to provide loans where other financial institutions cannot. This makes them a potential tool in the fight against financial exclusion. Yet, the UK credit union movement is not regarded as being successful, even though there is evidence of much financial exclusion. This study is cross sectional in form, and evaluates characteristics that may contribute to the success of the UK credit union movement at national and regional level, in 2000. The findings are used to consider the impact of recent regulatory changes on the movement. The key findings are that there is a significant relationship between the success of a credit union, its size and the deprivation of the ward from which it sources its members. More specifically, larger credit unions and those located in more affluent wards, are more successful. Affiliation to the Irish League of Credit Unions and having a common bond of occupation, are also found to be contributing factors to credit union success. These results are taken as providing support for the recent changes implemented by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which is likely to result in the emergence of larger credit unions (through mergers), run by appropriately qualified persons, serving a more mixed-income membership base. It is, however, noted that the history of the UK movement is one of missed opportunities and only time will tell whether credit unions have the wherewithal to accept current opportunities.

Is big best? Queen size, usurpation and nest closure in a primitively eusocial sweat bee (Lasioglossum malachurum).

For primitively eusocial insects in which a single foundress establishes a nest at the start of the colony cycle, the solitary provisioning phase before first worker emergence represents a risky period when other, nestless foundresses may attempt to usurp the nest. In the primitively eusocial sweat bee Lasioglossum malachurum (Hymenoptera, Halictidae), spring foundresses compete for nests which are dug into hard soil. Nest-searching foundresses (‘floaters’) frequently inspected nests during this solitary phase and thereby exerted a usurpation pressure on resident queens. Usurpation has been hypothesised to increase across the solitary provisioning phase and favour closure of nests at an aggregation, marking the termination of the solitary provisioning phase by foundresses, before worker emergence. However, our experimental and observational data suggest that usurpation pressure may remain constant or even decrease across the solitary provisioning phase and therefore cannot explain nest closure before first worker emergence. Levels of aggression during encounters between residents and floaters were surprisingly low (9% of encounters across 2 years), and the outcome of confrontations was in favour of residents (resident maintains residency in 94% of encounters across 2 years). Residents were significantly larger than floaters. However, the relationship between queen size and offspring production, though positive, was not statistically significant. Size therefore seems to confer a considerable advantage to a queen during the solitary provisioning phase in terms of nest residency, but its importance in terms of worker production appears marginal. Factors other than intraspecific usurpation need to be invoked to explain the break in provisioning activity of a foundress before first worker emergence.

Latin American migration in the central area of Iquique: New fronts of residential location and unequal forms of access to housing

Historically the central area of the city of Iquique has been established as residential space migrants choosing from different backgrounds , however since the late 2000s migration flows are diversified being mostly Latin American immigrants who live in precarious conditions , accessing tugurizados properties , deteriorated in an increasingly growing informal market. The results presented here are derived from quantitative residential location of migrants , as well as the implementation of 13 in-depth interviews . From these results emerge that Latin American migrants access to the same places where once lived internal migrants, however they inhabit a restrictive market , uneven and inadequate living conditions lease, but allows them to articulate residence and proximity to industrial networks , social and popular trade.

Bimodules over nest algebras and Deddens'

We generalise Dedden's Theorem for nest algebras to nest algebra bimodules. We define an object which extends the Jacobson radical of a nest algebra, and characterose it generalising a theorem of Erdos.