Irresponsible Lending?: A Case Study of a U.K. Credit Industry Reform Initiative

There are major concerns about the level of personal borrowing, particularly sourced from credit cards. This paper charts the progress of an initiative to create a Responsible Lending Index (RLI) for the credit industry. The RLI proposed to voluntarily benchmark lending standards and promote best practice within the credit industry by involving suppliers of credit, customer representatives and regulators. However, despite initial support from some banks, consumer bodies and the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, it failed to gain sufficient support from financial institutions in its original format. The primary reasons for this were related to the complexity of building such a robust index and the banks trade body’s fear of exposing its members to public scrutiny. A revised alternative, the Responsible Lending Initiative, was proposed which took into account these concerns. However, the Association of Payment Clearing Service (APACS), the trade body of the credit industry, then effectively destroyed the proposal. This article describes an attempt to address the challenges in the credit card industry with the initiation of the RLI, reflected in stakeholder discourse and in the context of a wider concern expressed by the involved stakeholders in terms of the need for greater responsibility in the banking industry’s lending practices.

Papers in Italian Archaeology IV. Vol. 3. Patterns in Protohistory.:The Cambridge Conference

Malone, C.A.T. and S.K.F. Stoddart. (eds.). S245 1985. Cambridge: British Archaeological Reports, Oxford.

Seasonal patterns of body temperature daily rhythms in group-living cape ground squirrels Xerus inauris

Organisms respond to cyclical environmental conditions by entraining their endogenous biological rhythms. Such physiological responses are expected to be substantial for species inhabiting arid environments which incur large variations in daily and seasonal ambient temperature (T). We measured core body temperature (T) daily rhythms of Cape ground squirrels Xerus inauris inhabiting an area of Kalahari grassland for six months from the Austral winter through to the summer. Squirrels inhabited two different areas: an exposed flood plain and a nearby wooded, shady area, and occurred in different social group sizes, defined by the number of individuals that shared a sleeping burrow. Of a suite of environmental variables measured, maximal daily T provided the greatest explanatory power for mean T whereas sunrise had greatest power for T acrophase. There were significant changes in mean T and T acrophase over time with mean T increasing and T acrophase becoming earlier as the season progressed. Squirrels also emerged from their burrows earlier and returned to them later over the measurement period. Greater increases in T, sometimes in excess of 5°C, were noted during the first hour post emergence, after which T remained relatively constant. This is consistent with observations that squirrels entered their burrows during the day to 'offload' heat. In addition, greater T amplitude values were noted in individuals inhabiting the flood plain compared with the woodland suggesting that squirrels dealt with increased environmental variability by attempting to reduce their T-T gradient. Finally, there were significant effects of age and group size on T with a lower and less variable T in younger individuals and those from larger group sizes. These data indicate that Cape ground squirrels have a labile T which is sensitive to a number of abiotic and biotic factors and which enables them to be active in a harsh and variable environment.

The ParaPhrase Project:Parallel patterns for adaptive heterogeneous multicore systems

This paper describes the ParaPhrase project, a new 3-year targeted research project funded under EU Framework 7 Objective 3.4 (Computer Systems), starting in October 2011. ParaPhrase aims to follow a new approach to introducing parallelism using advanced refactoring techniques coupled with high-level parallel design patterns. The refactoring approach will use these design patterns to restructure programs defined as networks of software components into other forms that are more suited to parallel execution. The programmer will be aided by high-level cost information that will be integrated into the refactoring tools. The implementation of these patterns will then use a well-understood algorithmic skeleton approach to achieve good parallelism. A key ParaPhrase design goal is that parallel components are intended to match heterogeneous architectures, defined in terms of CPU/GPU combinations, for example. In order to achieve this, the ParaPhrase approach will map components at link time to the available hardware, and will then re-map them during program execution, taking account of multiple applications, changes in hardware resource availability, the desire to reduce communication costs etc. In this way, we aim to develop a new approach to programming that will be able to produce software that can adapt to dynamic changes in the system environment. Moreover, by using a strong component basis for parallelism, we can achieve potentially significant gains in terms of reducing sharing at a high level of abstraction, and so in reducing or even eliminating the costs that are usually associated with cache management, locking, and synchronisation. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

The lateritic profile of Balkouin, Burkina Faso: geochemistry, mineralogy and genesis

This study reports on the geochemical and mineralogical characterization of a lateritic profile cropping out in the Balkouin area, Central Burkina Faso, aimed at obtaining a better understanding of the processes responsible for the formation of the laterite itself and the constraints to its development. The lateritic profile rests on a Paleoproterozoic basement mostly composed of granodioritic rocks related to the Eburnean magmatic cycle passing upwards to saprolite and consists of four main composite horizons (bottom to top): kaolinite and clay-rich horizons, mottled laterite and iron-rich duricrust. In order to achieve such a goal, a multi-disciplinary analytical approach was adopted, which includes inductively coupled plasma (ICP) atomic emission and mass spectrometries (ICP-AES and ICP-MS respectively), X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS) and micro-Raman spectroscopy.

The geochemical data, and particularly the immobile elements distribution and REE patterns, show that the Balkouin laterite is the product of an in situ lateritization process that involved a strong depletion of the more soluble elements (K, Mg, Ca, Na, Rb, Sr and Ba) and an enrichment in Fe; Si was also removed, particularly in the uppermost horizons. All along the profile the change in composition is coupled with important changes in mineralogy. In particular, the saprolite is characterized by occurrence of abundant albitic plagioclase, quartz and nontronite; kaolinite is apparently absent. The transition to the overlying lateritic profile marks the breakdown of plagioclase and nontronite, thus allowing kaolinite to become one of the major components upwards, together with goethite and quartz. The upper part of the profile is strongly enriched in hematite (+ kaolinite). Ti oxides (at least in part as anatase) and apatite are typical accessory phases, while free aluminum hydroxides are notably absent. Mass change calculations emphasize the extent of the mass loss, which exceeds 50 wt% (and often 70 wt%) for almost all horizons; only Fe was significantly concentrated in the residual system.

The geochemical and mineralogical features suggest that the lateritic profile is the product of a continuous process that gradually developed from the bedrock upwards, in agreement with the Schellmann classic genetic model. The laterite formation must have occurred at low pH (? 4.5) and high Eh (? 0.4) values, i.e., under acidic and oxidizing environments, which allowed strongly selective leaching conditions. The lack of gibbsite and bohemite is in agreement with the compositional data: the occurrence of quartz (± amorphous silica) all along the profile was an inhibiting factor for the formation of free aluminum hydroxides.

Table-Top Laser-Based Source of Femtosecond, Collimated, Ultrarelativistic Positron Beams

The generation of ultrarelativistic positron beams with short duration (τ_e⁺≃30 fs), small divergence (θ_e⁺≃3 mrad), and high density (n _e⁺≃1014-1015 cm^-3) from a fully optical setup is reported. The detected positron beam propagates with a high-density electron beam and γ rays of similar spectral shape and peak energy, thus closely resembling the structure of an astrophysical leptonic jet. It is envisaged that this experimental evidence, besides the intrinsic relevance to laser-driven particle acceleration, may open the pathway for the small-scale study of astrophysical leptonic jets in the laboratory. 

Tackling Invasive Alien Species in Europe: the Top 20 Issues

Globally, Invasive Alien Species (IAS) are considered to be one of the major threats to native biodiversity, with the World Conservation Union (IUCN) citing their impacts as ?immense, insidious, and usually irreversible?. It is estimated that 11% of the c. 12,000 alien species in Europe are invasive, causing environmental, economic and social damage; and it is reasonable to expect that the rate of biological invasions into Europe will increase in the coming years. In order to assess the current position regarding IAS in Europe and to determine the issues that were deemed to be most important or critical regarding these damaging species, the international Freshwater Invasives - Networking for Strategy (FINS) conference was convened in Ireland in April 2013. Delegates from throughout Europe and invited speakers from around the world were brought together for the conference. These comprised academics, applied scientists, policy makers, politicians, practitioners and representative stakeholder groups. A horizon scanning and issue prioritization approach was used by in excess of 100 expert delegates in a workshop setting to elucidate the Top 20 IAS issues in Europe. These issues do not focus solely on freshwater habitats and taxa but relate also to marine and terrestrial situations. The Top 20 issues that resulted represent a tool for IAS management and should also be used to support policy makers as they prepare European IAS legislation.

The Holocene vegetation cover of Britain and Ireland: overcoming problems of scale and discerning patterns of openness

The vegetation of Europe has undergone substantial changes during the course of the Holocene epoch, resulting from range expansion of plants following climate amelioration, competition between taxa and disturbance through anthropogenic activities. Much of the detail of this pattern is understood from
decades of pollen analytical work across Europe, and this understanding has been used to address questions relating to vegetation-climate feedback, biogeography and human impact. Recent advances in modelling the relationship between pollen and vegetation now make it possible to transform pollen
proportions into estimates of vegetation cover at both regional and local spatial scales, using the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA), i.e. the REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites) and the LOVE (LOcal VEgetation) models. This paper presents the compilation and analysis of 73 pollen stratigraphies from the British Isles, to assess the application of the LRA and describe the pattern of landscape/woodland openness (i.e. the cover of low herb and bushy vegetation) through the Holocene. The results show that multiple small sites can be used as an effective replacement for a single large site for the reconstruction of regional vegetation cover. The REVEALS vegetation estimates imply that the British Isles had a greater degree of landscape/woodland openness at the regional scale than areas on the European mainland. There is considerable spatial bias in the British Isles dataset towards wetland areas and uplands, which may explain higher estimates of landscape openness compared with Europe. Where multiple estimates of regional vegetation are available from within the same region inter-regional differences are greater than intra-regional differences, supporting the use of the REVEALS model to the estimation of regional vegetation from pollen data.

Patterns of Presentation for Attempted Suicide: Analysis of a Cohort of Individuals Who Subsequently Died by Suicide

All suicides and related prior attempts occurring in Northern Ireland over two years were analyzed, focusing on number and timing of attempts, method, and mental health diagnoses. Cases were derived from coroner's records, with 90% subsequently linked to associated general practice records. Of those included, 45% recorded at least one prior attempt (with 59% switching from less to more lethal methods between attempt and suicide). Compared with those recording one attempt, those with 2+ attempts were more likely to have used less lethal methods at the suicide (OR = 2.77: 95% CI = 1.06, 7.23); and those using less lethal methods at the attempts were more likely to persist with these into the suicide (OR = 3.21: 0.79, 13.07). Finally, those with preexisting mental problems were more likely to use less lethal methods in the suicide: severe mental illness (OR = 7.88: 1.58, 39.43); common mental problems (OR = 3.68: 0.83, 16.30); and alcohol/drugs related (OR = 2.02: 0.41, 9.95). This analysis uses readily available data to highlight the persisting use of less lethal methods by visible and vulnerable attempters who eventually complete their suicide. Further analysis of such conditions could allow more effective prevention strategies to be developed.