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Home » House Theatre's no-dancing Nutcracker finds light in wartime darkness
Posted inArts & Culture
House Theatre's no-dancing Nutcracker finds light in wartime darkness
The show moves from holiday hijinks to deep sadness with plenty of sweetness throughout.
by Kerry Reid December 19, 2018 August 18, 2021
Credit: Michael Brosilow
Grief is a shadowy guest at many holiday tables. The House Theatre of Chicago's nonballet version of The Nutcracker transforms E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" into a moving imaginative story of loss and rebirth. Created by Phillip Klapperich, Jake Minton, Kevin O'Donnell, and director-choreographer Tommy Rapley, the show moves from high-spirited holiday hijinks to deep sadness, as a family finds out at a Christmas Eve party that their son and brother has died in combat.
How do you keep going when the worst thing imaginable has happened? What holiday traditions can possibly provide a balm for broken hearts? Those questions haunt the heart of this piece. But fear not: it's also goofy, kinetic, tuneful (thanks to O'Donnell's score and a tight five-piece band), and sweet.
There's a fair degree of the "mythic journey nonsense" (as Amanda de la Guardia's grieving mother Martha describes it) that has always been the House's dramaturgical spine. But that journey (inspired by Rom Barkhordar's Uncle Drosselmeyer) proves exhilarating, as Clara (Haley Bolithon) and her toy friends—Rachel Shapiro's talking doll Phoebe, Johnny Arena's Gallic Monkey, and Ben Hertel's robot Hugo—join with Fritz (Desmond Gray), the reincarnation-in-nutcracker-form of Clara's dead brother, to battle rats and restore some semblance of Christmas cheer.
Squint and you'll see hints of the Toy Story franchise, as well as A Christmas Carol. But mostly what you'll find is a soul-stirring affirmation of the need to move toward the light in darkest times. v
R The Nutcracker
Through 12/30: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM. Additional performances Wed Dec. 19, 7 PM and Sun Dec. 23, 6 PM. Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773-769-3832, thehousetheatre.com, $40-$50 ($20 student and industry for all shows, based on availability).
Tagged: Amanda De La Guardia, Chopin Theatre, Christmas, Desmond Gray, E.T.A. Hoffman, Haley Bolithon, Holiday, House Theatre, Jake Minton, Johnny Arena, Kevin O'Donnell, Phillip Klapperich, Rachel Shapiro, Reader Recommended, Rom Barkhordar, The Nutcracker, Tommy Rapley, Toy Story, Vol. 48 No. 12
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Gmina Eden (ang. Eden Township) – gmina w USA, w stanie Iowa, w hrabstwie Clinton. Według danych z 2000 roku gmina miała 856 mieszkańców, a jej powierzchnia wynosi 92,28 km².

Przypisy

Eden

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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The financial crisis has shown that price stability is not sufficient to guarantee financial stability. The financial cycle and the business cycle are not synchronised, implying that risks can emerge especially in the periods of "disconnect" between the two cycles. In the run-up to the financial crisis, imbalances were building-up while inflation was low and stable. At present, the search for yield phenomenon continues against the very low inflation, subdued growth and low interest rate environment.
Monetary policy aims at ensuring price stability in the market for goods and services. It should not be used to address pockets of instability in asset markets. This falls under the remit of macro-prudential policy, aimed at safeguarding stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk. At present, in advance economies, monetary policy needs to stabilise prices and to continue supporting real activity, while macro-prudential policy needs to tame the financial sector in asset market segments showing signs of exuberance or where imbalances could be forming.
Financial stability objectives can only be achieved with an effective macro-prudential policy. This requires policy interventions in a timely and bold manner, significantly affecting the normal behaviour of financial markets or financial institutions. This poses great challenges. First, measures would need to be admittedly intrusive, going well beyond the new capital and liquidity regulatory framework. Secondly, the macro-prudential tool-kit that has been legislated – including the one entrusted to the ECB/SSM – is not complete, it is centred on banks. Instruments would need to address other financial activities and institutions, notably pertaining to the steadily growing "shadow banking" sector. Advanced economies will only be able to ensure financial stability with effective macro-prudential policy interventions.
It is a great pleasure to speak at this special conference and to discuss with young people like you about current and potential challenges which our economies, with their ever evolving financial systems, are facing at present or will likely be facing in the future. In my lecture today, I will talk about policies to safeguard financial stability and in particular about the role of macro-prudential policy in achieving this task.
The financial crisis has changed our understanding of the interactions between the real economy and the financial system, and of the risks which these interactions may bring. In fact, the crisis did not only require a major policy response in order to contain the damage done to our societies. It has also triggered a re-design of our policy framework to safeguard financial stability in the future.
In my remarks today, I will first explain why macro-prudential policy aimed at addressing systemic risk is essential for an economy. Even more so if a country is part of a monetary union. I will discuss the main elements of macro-prudential policy targeting the banking sector. I will then focus on the growing importance of the shadow banking sector, the specific risks that emerge from these unregulated activities and the challenges they pose to macro-prudential policies. In this context, I will conclude with remarks on analytical priorities for academic research in this area.
This sounds perhaps too harsh because good work has been done in adopting measures in the domains of capital, liquidity and resolution of banks in order to increase the resilience of the banking sector, within the financial system. However, much less has been achieved beyond banks, notably in what regards OTC derivatives or non-bank entities, including activities of the shadow banking. Also, no changes were introduced in the international monetary system. The G20 and the Financial Stability Board do not have the full competences to fulfil the role of the "fourth pillar" of international economic governance, contrary to what was initially announced by U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
As remarked by Helleiner, a promising innovation emerging from the crisis is the macro-prudential policy, a policy that uses regulatory measures to deal with system-wide financial risk.
Systemic risk "refers to the risk that financial instability becomes so widespread that it impairs the functioning of a financial system to the point where economic growth and welfare suffer materially ."  Systemic risk may originate from three types of sources: significant macro-economic shocks that can make the financial sector vulnerable; contagion that may stem from default of a few financial institutions as a result of the growing interconnectedness within the system; finally, the development of endogenous financial imbalances associated with credit booms, excessive leverage and risk taking by financial institutions. One of the lessons from the crisis was that a good capital and liquidity situations at the level of individual institutions, as monitored by micro-supervision, does not guarantee the stability of the system as a whole.
In this context, macro-prudential policy has two main objectives: to enhance the resilience of the whole system and to smoothen the financial cycle, i.e. the fluctuation of credit, leverage and asset prices that may lead to boom-bust episodes. The instruments available for macro-prudential policy include most of the micro-supervision instruments related to capital and liquidity, when applied to the system as a whole, but extend to other categories, like limits to loan-to-value ratios in housing credit, counter-cyclical capital buffers, global leverage ratios, or haircuts and margin requirements in securities' transactions or clearing activities.
The financial cycle, which is an updated version of the old concept of the credit cycle, tends to have larger amplitude than the normal business cycle, implying that long periods of "disconnect" between the two cycles can materialise.  The financial cycle refers to the fluctuations of credit, leverage and the more relevant asset prices. The business cycle refers basically to the fluctuations of real economic activity as measured by the GDP. In the past, the separation between the two was not considered likely. In particular, it was thought that price stability in the market of goods and services would be sufficient to guarantee financial stability in the market for assets. The present situation, and the period of the so-called Great Moderation ahead of the crisis, should be sufficient to dispel such traditional concepts. Before the crisis, while inflation was low and stable, significant financial imbalances were building-up as the relatively deregulated financial system engineered a credit boom and a highly risky leverage situation. Likewise, at present, the very low inflation and subdued growth environment is accompanied by some froth in financial asset markets resulting from "search for yield" in an environment of low interest rates.
This "disconnect" between the financial and the business cycle creates a dilemma to traditional macro-economic policy and especially to monetary policy. The main remit of monetary policy refers to the relevant variables of the business cycle: inflation in the market of goods and services and the level of real economic activity. The level of real economic activity is a direct consideration for central banks with a dual mandate, like the U.S. Fed. It is an indirect one in the case of a hierarchical mandate, like the one of the ECB, where the level of economic slack in the economy is one of the drivers of inflationary (or deflationary) pressures. The most common monetary policy framework around the world is l the inflation targeting regime, where there is no role for any target related to asset prices. More generally, no central bank has objectives explicitly referred to asset prices in its mandate. After the crisis, there has been a trend, albeit without legislative expression, to attribute an explicit goal of financial stability to central banks. Nevertheless, in order to be justified, central banks have to be entrusted with a new set of tools of a macro-prudential nature, that can be applied to the financial system as a whole.
Macro-prudential policy is therefore essential in any economy as the business and financial cycles are not synchronised. Even more so in a monetary union where vulnerabilities identified in each country can be addressed with macro-prudential policy, allowing for the appropriate heterogeneity, while countries remain subject to a single monetary policy.
Monetary policy simultaneously affects all sectors of the economy and can therefore be an ineffective tool to cope with specific imbalances in the financial sector. Finally, by independently addressing financial stability concerns, macro-prudential policy provides monetary policy with additional room for manoeuvre to better focus on ensuring price stability.
Take the present moment. The search for yield continues in global financial markets. Flows to high-yield bond and emerging market funds turned positive in January after recording significant outflows in the second half of 2014. Credit spreads have narrowed. At the same time, issuance of European leveraged finance products (high yield bonds and leveraged loans) has surpassed pre-crisis levels. Issuance of leveraged loans has reached a seven-year high in the fourth quarter of 2014. Furthermore, a growing correlation of asset price movements across market segments is reducing the investors' ability to hedge via portfolio diversification. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the situation of froth in asset prices is less marked in the euro area than in other parts of the world. For instance, stocks prices reflect the historical level of price-earnings ratios and model-based valuation of normal corporate bonds does not show indications of over-valuation.
In such a situation, monetary policy needs to stabilise prices and to continue supporting real activity. Macro-prudential policy needs to tame the financial sector in asset market segments showing signs of exuberance or parts of the financial system where imbalances could be forming. Monetary- and macro-prudential policy instruments are thus two different sets of tools, that sometimes have to adopt different stances but whereas in some situations, may share common goals. There are anyhow important synergies and interactions between the two policy functions. This also supports the rationale for placing the macro-prudential policy function under the responsibility of central banks, as reflected in the macro-prudential policy framework adopted for the ECB/SSM.
Monetary policy must prioritise the goal of price stability and not deal with the emergent financial stability issues. The Treaty does not mention stability in asset market prices as being included in the ECB's mandate. The separation principle implies that both fiscal dominance as well as financial stability dominance of monetary policy should be avoided by the central bank.
This conceptual view was behind the recent ECB decision to increase the expansionary stance of monetary policy, thus not yielding to the voices that claimed we should first consider the risks for asset prices and for the risk-taking transmission channel of monetary policy.  In order to tackle the threat to price stability created by a long period of very low inflation, which is contradictory to our mandate, we decided to enlarge the scope of our programme of outright purchase of assets to sovereign bonds. In the present circumstances, the additional stimulus we are providing to aggregate demand will also help to reduce the negative output and unemployment gaps.
The transmission channels of a Large Scale Asset Purchase (LSAP) programme include signalling and influencing inflation expectations, exploring spill-overs resulting from investors using the cash received to buy other assets and finally, the freeing-up of space in banks' balance sheets to increase credit to the real economy. Therefore, the counter-argument that the policy would not be effective on account of already low sovereign yields is not well founded. The transmission goes well beyond the direct effect on the yields of the purchased securities. Even less valid is the argument that sovereign bond purchases would ease the pressure on governments to do structural reforms. It is not the task of a central bank to exert more or less pressure on governments to adopt policies for which they are responsible. They should implement the reforms that are necessary. In order for central banks to deserve their independence they have to fulfil their responsibility of ensuring price stability in the medium-term, an objective that monetary policy has the power to achieve. To be credible, central banks must act in a symmetric way, avoiding either too high or too low inflation.
As mentioned, monetary policy cannot cope with two different objectives and the need for macro-prudential policy has become more acute with the realisation that advanced economies are very likely faced with a prolonged period of low real and nominal growth. In such an environment, monetary policy has to remain accommodative, with low interest rates, which foster search for yield and froth in asset markets, making the use of macro-prudential policy to tame the financial cycle and to pre-empt asset bubbles even more necessary.
The trend for lower GDP and productivity growth and for ever lower real interest rates has continued for quite some time. For instance, the U.S. annual productivity growth was 2.36% from 1890 to 1972. Then it declined to 1.67% from 1972 to 2004 and to 1.33% from 2004 to 2013. I use the U.S. figures because this development cannot be explained by the absence of structural reforms, as often done by economists in relation to other countries. On the contrary, the U.S. is normally used as a benchmark by those economists, since it is a much liberalised and lightly regulated advanced economy. Trying to explain that trend,  Robert Gordon, in two well-known papers, has attributed it to the slowing down and lower economic traction of technological innovation.
On the other hand, we have seen that 10 year sovereign interest rates in real terms came down globally on average from 5% in 1980-1990; to 3.2% in 1991-2000; to 1.8% from 2001-2007 and 0.4% in 2008-2013.  This reflects a worldwide tendency for planned savings to exceed planned investment, which then depend on a host of other factors such as demographics to differential riskiness of equities and bonds or to real investment opportunities.
The extreme view of these two trends corresponds to what has been called the Secular Stagnation Hypothesis that would cloud the future of advanced economies at present, particularly Europe.  This hypothesis has two versions. One is more related to the supply-side, stressing technological and demographic factors behind the growth slowdown; the other, underlines the demand-side related to excess savings and lower investment prospects.  The extreme view of this demand-side version points to the possibility that the real interest rate, that would be the equilibrium rate at full employment, could turn negative during some periods of time. This negative real rate could not be engineered by monetary policy in view of the zero lower bound of nominal rates, leading monetary policy to use large scale asset purchase programmes to try to stimulate the economy.
In any case, even disregarding the extreme situations, it should be acknowledged that the monetary regime of low interest rates and large asset purchases that became necessary, can originate search for yield in asset markets, making it essential to find other instruments, like macro-prudential policy, to safeguard financial stability.
Without the effective use of macro-prudential policy, advanced economies would face instability, asset bubbles and further financial crises. It is more crucial to pre-empt financial cycle booms than to adopt a passive policy of just "mopping-up" with liquidity provision, in the aftermath of crises because we have learned how disastrous they can be.
There is some scepticism about the possible effectiveness of macro-prudential policy. This scepticism may be related to a reluctance to accept that a set of regulatory and administrative measures interfering with the free functioning of financial markets became necessary to tame the excesses of finance. Once again, the crisis convincingly showed that finance cannot be self-regulated and its frequent, endogenous imbalances can be very disruptive to the real economy and the livelihood of millions.
In reality, there is no alternative to making macro-prudential work effectively  and, for that purpose, it needs to be applied in a timely, bold and intrusive manner, affecting the normal behaviour of financial markets or financial institutions. This brings about some big challenges. First, the policy has to be intrusive. This can take the form of imposing caps to loan-to-value or debt-to-income ratios in credit to housing, regulating haircuts and margins in securities transactions, introducing limits to large exposures to specific sectors, prohibiting proprietary trading to commercial banks, or other types of structural measures. One can easily see how this genre of policies would confront doctrinal refusal. However, without them, simple measures related to capital charges may indeed not be effective to contain the boom phase of the financial cycle. Second, the macro-prudential tool-kit that has been legislated is not complete – notably the one entrusted to the ECB/SSM – because it is mostly centred on banks and excludes other activities and institutions, namely the so-called "shadow banking".
Let me briefly recall the set-up of the macro-prudential policy function in the euro area before coming back to these points.
Major steps have been made to enhance financial stability in Europe, notably the establishment of a Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). In 2013, the European Council established a set of regulations, including the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD IV), the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR) and the SSM Regulation, that all form the framework for a harmonised bank micro-prudential and macro-prudential oversight in Europe. Based on these regulations, the ECB conducted a comprehensive assessment that was a health check of 130 banks' balance sheets, including a stress test exercise using, inter alia, its own stress testing modelling framework.  On 4 November 2014, the SSM became operative and now houses bank supervision in a single European institution. An agreement has also been reached among Member States to establish another key element of the Banking Union – the Single Resolution Mechanism.
The SSM Regulation also confers the ECB with macro-prudential powers. The ECB may top-up specific macro-prudential measures if it considers actions by national designated authorities as insufficient to mitigate systemic risks. As in the past, the ECB will also continue to detect and assess systemic risks at the euro area level. However, in view of the new macro-prudential mandate, this task is now also being enhanced by a more granular, country-level approach.
In terms of instrument tool-kit, the ECB may use all macro-prudential instruments laid down in the Union acts. It covers capital instruments, such as the counter-cyclical capital buffer, the systemic risk buffer, capital surcharges of systemically important institutions as well as liquidity instruments, such as the liquidity coverage ratio. In addition, the ECB can also increase risk weights on real estate exposures or set higher limits on large exposures.
In a single currency area, macro-prudential policies are particularly important to deal with sectoral and regional risks that cannot be accounted for by a common monetary policy. Measures such as the caps on loan–to-value (LTV) or debt-to-income (DTI) ratios are suitable instruments to address these developments. In this context, recent research suggests that exposure-based measures, such as LTV and DTI could be more efficient than capital-based measures.  Indeed, the experiences of Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong confirm that LTV and DTI are efficient tools to address local house price misalignments.  On the other hand, they may generate important cross-border spill-overs and leakages, and moreover, are now solely with national authorities. Implementing them will therefore require co-ordination and the ECB will play an active role to facilitate this in the euro area.
With the more regulated banking system, the risks that regulation is circumvented by shifting activity to the unregulated sector are increasing. This is even more important since the size of this new market-based credit system has been growing almost uninterruptedly throughout the crisis - at least partially compensating for the reduction of the credit from traditional banks.
According to the ECB Banking Structures Report published last October , the size of the shadow banking sector more than doubled over the past decade. The total assets of this sector in the euro area amounted to €23 trillion in mid-2014 (from €19 trillion at the end of 2013), against €30 trillion for the banking sector. If the shadow banking sector continues to grow at the same rapid pace as in the past decade and the bank credit remains stagnant, the assets of the unregulated shadow banking sector may then become larger than the regulated banking sector already within five years. This has actually already happened in Luxembourg, in the Netherlands and in Ireland.
Let me now discuss the most important techniques through which shadow banks provide credit to the real economy, the main systemic risks which the unregulated banking sector may pose, and which macro-prudential tools may be used to address these risks.
Supposedly, provision of lending to the real economy via the shadow banking sector is contained. Out of €23 trillion assets of the sector I mentioned, only €2.2 trillion were in loans to the euro area non-financial sector. While direct lending is increasing rapidly and already accounts for 18% of bank credit, this is not the most important technique for providing credit to the real economy. The primary sources of funding of the real economy by the shadow banking are securitisation, repos to finance securities transactions and funding indirectly provided via OTC derivatives. While Financial Vehicle Corporations (FVCs) shrunk by more than one-fifth since the crisis erupted, still more than 12% of all loans extended by monetary and financial institutions (MFIs) granted to euro area households are secured through euro area conduits, which hold €1.9 trillion in assets. Moreover, euro area bond funds hold almost a quarter of all outstanding debt securities issued by euro area non-financial corporates, while equity funds hold almost half a trillion in equities of euro area non-financial corporates. In addition, hedge funds and mixed funds provide additional funding to the real economy via off-balance sheet transactions, such as repos and credit commitments and OTC derivatives.
Let me put a word of caution on the numbers I quoted. They refer only to assets held by money market funds, investment funds, financial vehicles corporations and some special purpose vehicles that are domiciled in the euro area. The figures would be much higher if we also had statistics on non-euro area shadow banking. They would be even higher if off-balance sheet activities, such as securities funding transactions and derivatives were accounted for.
The recent substantial increase in the size of the shadow banking sector in the euro area was fostered by three factors. First, in an environment of globally low interest rates, among other financial institutions, investment funds and hedge funds were instrumental in the general search for yield. Second, the supply of credit has been weak due to impaired banks' balance sheets, which led to the expansion of the unregulated credit market. Third, a more stringent banking regulation in anticipation of the implementation of new capital and liquidity rules under Basel III could have, in itself, induced a shift of lending to the unregulated sector.
From a financial stability perspective, a raise of the shadow banking sector may create systemic risks that need to be better understood and measured. The sector is engaged in maturity transformation the same way as banks are. It was the proneness of banks to deposit runs that led the U.S. regulators, back in 1930s, to introduce deposit insurance to mitigate that risk. What we now witness is the emergence of the shadow banking sector that is also vulnerable to runs. Shadow banks do not hold deposits and are mostly funded via equity. However, they are subject to the short-term redemption risk. If, for any reason, shadow banks experience substantial redemptions, they may be forced to promptly sell assets to fulfil their obligations, which may give rise to fire sales. This is particularly worrisome, since 98% of almost 95 thousand non-money market investment funds operating in the euro area in 2014 are open-ended funds, which means that the investors can redeem their shares in the funds at any time. Moreover, the funds' buffer of liquid assets that can absorb the equivalent of a run on shadow banks has dropped in recent years increasing the illiquidity risks.
The risks stemming from the shadow banking sector are sometimes understated on the ground that potential losses would be suffered by equity holders, who should be aware of the risks they are taking. The systemic risk arising from the shadow banking sector cannot be easily ring-fenced. This is because of the interconnectedness of shadow banks with the regulated part of the financial system. Stress in the shadow banking sector can be transmitted to the banks both through direct and indirect channels: banks' exposures to shadow banks through equity investments, credit claims or liquidity lines. Credit claims are often related to prime brokerage services allowing de facto non-bank financial institutions to increase their leverage. Undrawn liquidity lines can also be activated once the redemption risk materialises. Banks also rely on funding received from shadow banks, which often invest in bank debt securities or provide liquidity through repo transactions or through provision of collateral. More importantly, stress in the shadow banking could be propagated through financial markets via common exposures to assets. The price of those assets would be depressed in the case of a run on shadow banks, in an extreme case leading to a fire sale.
It is important to protect the border between shadow and non-shadow banks, which implies that a macro-prudential regulator could introduce large exposures limits on exposures of regulated institutions to shadow banks. Similarly, we could introduce margin requirements for repo transaction with shadow banks. These are non-direct instruments and may not be efficient in addressing the risks emerging in the shadow banking sector.
The U.S. Fed has gained the competence to transfer non-bank financial institutions to the supervised perimeter. We do not have this powerful tool implemented in Europe. Certainly, some shadow banks grew too-big-to-fail and hence, they should be subject to the same surveillance as Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs). In fact, the Financial Stability Board is preparing a methodology for identifying Global Systemically Important Non-bank Financial Institutions (G-SINFIs).
Another possible macro-prudential tool to address excessive leverage in conducting securities funding transactions and not-centrally-cleared OTC transactions could be to introduce margin requirements for these transactions. Shadow banks could in principle be subject to direct regulations. In this context, cash buffer requirements and redemption fees or gates have already been discussed by expert groups and cannot be excluded.
Finally, in order to mitigate the risk of regulatory linkages, any macro-prudential instrument operating via the demand for loans, such as the LTV or DTI ratios should be imposed at the borrower level, possibly by introducing restrictions in the consumer protection legislation and not via the bank regulations. This would allow for the extension of the perimeter of these macro-prudential instruments to beyond the regulated banking sector.
I have argued that central banks should be given a strong macro-prudential policy mandate and an adequate set of tools to address the build-up of financial risks, in particular in situations when monetary policy is accommodative. CRD IV and CRR provide the necessary framework for regulating the banking sector. Nonetheless, as I mentioned, risks may develop outside the banking system. Macro-prudential policy is a new field for research that should attract young economists.
Addressing those risks is challenging. Firstly, because shadow banking is an elusive concept that is hard to quantify with available statistics. Secondly, as I have argued, the tools needed to prevent the building-up of excessive risks in that sector are currently not in the set of instruments available to the ECB or to macro-prudential authorities at large – and some need yet to be devised.
The Macro-prudential Research Network was concluded in 2014 but efforts to improve the foundations of macro-prudential policy and to provide empirical evidence on its effectiveness continue at the ECB, in other central banks but also in the wider profession.
Let me mention three main areas where progress would be particularly welcome: interconnectedness of shadow banking with the banking sector: implications for macro-prudential policy; cross-country spillovers of macro-prudential policy and their interaction with financial cycles; identification of specific risks in the shadow banking sector and respective statistical challenges.
The first area relates to the interconnectedness of shadow banking with the banking sector and the implications for macro-prudential policy.
I have argued above that financial cycles and business cycles are generally de-synchronised. Recent research has shown that business cycle recessions do not always correspond to troughs in the financial cycle and are typically much shorter than financial contraction phases.  This supports the idea that central banks should use monetary policy to stabilise the general price level over the business cycle and macro-prudential policy to prevent the build-up of risk over the financial cycle.
However, the macro-prudential instruments currently available to the ECB mainly operate through their effect on banks. The extent to which those instruments can smooth the financial cycle crucially hinges on the importance of the banking sector relative to shadow banking in driving financial fluctuations, notably credit and asset price developments. A limited role of shadow banking would reinforce the motivation for the use of banking regulation as a dedicated policy tool to address financial instability. Conversely, evidence that the financial cycle is to a large extent driven by non-bank activities would forcefully suggest the need to enlarge the perimeter of financial institutions subject to regulatory action. More empirical research on the main drivers of the "disconnect" between business and financial cycles would be useful.
Another aspect that deserves further research relates to the implications of shadow banking for the effectiveness of banking regulation. On the one hand, a rise in the size of shadow banking can hinder the desirability of capital regulation, even if the latter would be optimal in the absence of non-bank financial activities. A tightening of capital requirements can induce banks to exploit regulatory arbitrage opportunities and migrate some activities outside the regulated sphere, resulting in a higher aggregate risk exposure of the financial sector.  On the other hand, increased competition from shadow institutions can generate non-monotonic welfare effects of capital requirements on banks.  At relatively low levels of those requirements, competition from shadow banking institutions in the financing of profitable projects may induce banks to "search for yields" and to take up risky investments, with adverse implications for social welfare. At sufficiently high levels, however, banks' increased "skin in the game" may reduce the profitability of risk-shifting strategies, restoring the positive effect of capital regulation on financial stability and welfare.
A second area which is particularly relevant in the euro area context and where research is also needed, relates to the cross-country spillovers of macro-prudential policy and their interaction with financial cycles. This is also because cross-country spillovers tend to be stronger the more integrated financial systems are. They might thus gain in importance with the launch of the banking union.
Macro-prudential policies could be weakened or strengthened because of cross-border spillovers. Spillovers depend on the behaviour of both borrowers and lenders following a macro-prudential policy action. Positive spillovers reduce risks to financial stability, while negative spillovers raise these risks. Let me give you an example. If a country (say, country A) raises capital requirements in response to excessive domestic credit growth, a neighbouring country that also experiences excessive credit growth (say, country B) might benefit from this measure. If financial markets are integrated, banks in country A will reduce their lending in country B, thus contributing to a slowdown in financial exuberance. However, if financial markets are segmented, or if financial cycles are not synchronised and country B is experiencing weak credit growth, the sign of the spillovers from the same macro-prudential measure may turn from positive to negative.
Negative spillovers clearly pose a threat to the effectiveness of macro-prudential policy. For policy-makers, it is therefore crucial to be aware of the possibility of such spillovers and their respective propagation channels, co-ordinate policies to the best extent possible and apply mitigating measures to minimise leakages.
Moreover, macro-prudential policy may leak due to regulatory arbitrage. Credit could be provided to the economy via less capital-intensive channels, for instance via securitisation.  Macro-prudential measures can also encourage the so-called "race to the bottom", whereby capital and liquidity is moved around within the group to the country with the lowest requirements. In both cases, the shadow banking sector may play an important role in facilitating such a regulatory arbitrage Measures can and should be envisaged to prevent "regulatory leakages" of macro-prudential policies. For instance, CRD IV introduces automatic reciprocity for countercyclical capital buffer up to 2.5%. This means that if any of the EU countries introduces a countercyclical capital buffer to smoothen the financial cycle in its economy, all other EU countries are bound by law to impose the same capital surcharge on banks' cross-border exposures to the country introducing the measure. This prevents the so-called negative in-ward spillovers, whereby branches of foreign banks increase lending to circumvent the restrictions set by the macro-prudential authority on local banks. Without reciprocity, macro-prudential policy is prone to leakages.
A third area where substantial progress needs to be made is the statistical treatment of the shadow banking sector. The ability of macro-prudential policy to address the risks materialising in the financial system is hindered by the opaqueness of that sector. A key priority for the ECB and the European System of Central Banks is to enhance its transparency and to develop a statistical system able to quantify its size, composition and risk exposure.
However, measures of the size of the shadow banking sector based on these data, face several drawbacks. First, a large share of the total assets intermediated by shadow banking entities belongs to a residual category that refers to all non-bank financial intermediaries except money market funds and financial vehicles corporations, for which no further information is available. Second, the relevance of shadow banking entities is measured through the size of their balance sheets, so their exposure to risk is likely to be underestimated. This is because shadow banks tend to increase leverage and risks typically through derivatives and off-balance sheet vehicles.  Third, the approach misses significant non-core banking activities performed by the banks themselves, thus providing an incomplete picture of shadow banking and of its potential vulnerabilities.  Finally, the data only capture financial institutions domiciled in the euro area, thus understating the overall relevance of shadow banking.
Enhancing the transparency of the shadow banking sector in the euro area requires more granular information on particularly important activities, such as securitisation, repo transactions and derivatives trading. In this respect, some progress has been made through recent initiatives. One among them - the European Market Infrastructure Regulation - introduces an obligation in the EU to report the details of all derivatives to authorised trade repositories, which in turn have to provide this information to regulatory authorities (including the ECB).
Understanding the relevance of shadow banking also requires improving the available statistical information on repo markets. To this purpose, in 2014 the EU Commission published a proposal for a regulation on reporting and transparency of securities financing transactions. The initiative aims at facilitating the monitoring of the build-up of systemic risks related to those transactions, and the disclosure of this information to the relevant investors.
Finally, since 2014, the European System of Central Banks collects new statistics on securities holdings. The data provide granular information on securities held by the sector "other financial institutions" (e.g., financial vehicle corporations and investment funds including money market funds), and on securities issued by this and other sectors of the economy.
Let me conclude. Macro-prudential policies are key to cope with systemic risk and endogenous cycles in the financial sector. They are particularly important in the euro area at the current juncture, as the global environment of low interest rates and the rise in shadow banking activities exposes the financial sector to increased risks.
Macro-prudential policy and monetary policy rely on separate tools and aim to achieve different objectives. Yet, they need to be co-ordinated, which is a non-trivial task given that financial and business cycles could be de-synchronised. For these reasons, as I have already highlighted, macro-prudential policy should also be under the responsibility of central banks.
Finally, let me repeat the warning that without an effective macro-prudential policy, advanced economies will not be able to ensure financial stability. It is therefore an important endeavour to keep fighting for the appropriate policies to smoothen the financial cycle and to sufficiently tame finance in order to avoid crises that threaten the future of our economies.
Ari, A., C. Kok, M. Paries and D. Żochowski (2015), "Shadow banking in general equilibrium", mimeo, European Central Bank.
Brunnermeier, M. K, G. Gorton, and A. Krishnamurthy (2012), "Risk Topography", NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2011 26: 149-176.
Clerc, L., C. Mendicino, S. Moyen, A. Derviz, K. Nikolov, L. Stracca, J. Suarez and A. Vardoulakis (2014), "Assessing Capital Regulation in a Macroeconomic Model with Three Layers of Defaults", mimeo, European Central Bank.
De Fiore, F. and H. Uhlig (2015), "Corporate Debt Structure and the Financial Crisis", Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, forthcoming.
Drehmann, M., C. Borio, and K. Tsatsaronis (2012), "Characterising the financial cycle: don't lose sight of the medium term!", BIS Working Paper No. 380.
ECB (2009), "The concept of systemic risk", Special feature in the ECB Financial Stability Review, December 2009.
Farhi, E., Tirole, J. (2012), "Collective Moral Hazard, Maturity Mismatch and Systemic Bailouts", American Economic Review 102, No. 1: 60-93.
Harutyunyan A., A. Massara, G. Ugazio, G. Amidzic, and R. Walton (2015), "Shedding Light on Shadow Banking", IMF Working Paper 15/1.
Harris, M., C. Opp, and M., Opp (2014), "Macroprudential Bank Capital Regulation in a Competitive Financial System", mimeo.
Henry, J. and C. Kok [editors] (2013), "A macro stress testing framework for assessing systemic risks in the banking sector", ECB Occasional Paper No. 152, October 2013.
Igan, D., and Kang, H., (2011), "Do Loan-to-Value and Debt-to-Income Limits Work? Evidence from Korea", IMF Working Paper No. 11/297.
Kuttner, K., and I. Shim (2013), "Can Non-Interest Rate Policies Stabilize Housing Markets? Evidence from a Panel of 57 Economies", BIS Working Paper No. 433, Bank for International Settlements.
Ongena, S., A. Popov and G. Udell (2013), " When the Cat's Away the Mice Will Play: Does Regulation At Home Affect Bank Risk Taking Abroad? ", Journal of Financial Economics, 108(3), 727-750.
Plantin, G. (2015), "Shadow Banking and Bank Capital Regulation", Review of Financial Studies, 28 (1): 146-175.
Schüler, Y., P. Hiebert and T. Peltonen (2015), "Characterising Financial Cycles across Europe: One Size does not fit All", mimeo, ECB.
Żochowski, D. (2014), "Macroprudential policy in a monetary union", mimeo, European Central Bank.
Summers, L., Speech at the IMF Economic Forum on 8 November 2013.
Eichengreen, B. (2015), "Hall of mirrors: The great depression, the great recession and the misuses of history", Oxford University Press USA; Helleiner, Eric (2014) "The status quo crisis: Global financial governance after the 2008 meltdown" Oxford University Press USA.
ECB (2009),"The concept of systemic risk", Special feature in the ECB Financial Stability Review, December.
See Drehmann M., C. Borio and K. Tsatsaronis (2012), "Characterising the financial cycle: don't lose sight of the medium term!" BIS Working Paper No. 380.
Borio, C. and H. Zhu (2008), "Capital regulation, risk-taking and monetary policy: a missing link in the transmission mechanism", BIS Working Paper No. 268.
Krugman, P., September 2013, "Bubbles, Regulation and Secular Stagnation" in http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/bubbles-regulation-and-secular-stagnation; Summers, L., Speech at the IMF Economic Forum on 8 November 2013.
See Henry and Kok (2013).
See Igan and Kang (2011) and Kuttner and Shim (2013).
De Fiore and Uhlig (2015) reach a similar conclusion in a general equilibrium model where firms optimally chose among bank and non-bank sources of finance.
See, among others, Aoki and Nikolov (2014) for an analysis of the implications of a growing shadow banking sector on financial stability.
See Drehmann et al (2012) and Schüler et al. (2015).
See Ari, Kok, Paries and Żochowski (2015).
Ongena, Popov and Udell (2013).
One possible approach is to exclude financial intermediaries whose liabilities are largely based on equity rather than debt, such as insurance corporations, pension funds and most investment funds, while including money market funds. A proxy for the size of the shadow banking sector can then be calculated by adding money market funds to the sector "non-monetary financial intermediaries other than insurance corporations and pension funds", and by subtracting other investment funds. See the article "Enhancing the Monitoring of Shadow Banking". ECB Monthly Bulletin, February 2013.
A similar point is made by Brunnermeier et al (2011).
An alternative statistical approach addresses this concern by providing a measure of shadow banking that encompasses all non-core liabilities of both banks and non-bank financial institutions (see e.g. Harutyunyan et al., 2015).


text:
The Talodi–Heiban languages are a proposed branch of the hypothetical Niger–Congo family, spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. The Talodi and Heiban languages are thought to be distantly related by Dimmendaal, though Glottolog 4.4 does not accept the unity of Talodi–Heiban pending further evidence.

Classification
Roger Blench (2016) notes that the Talodi and Heiban branches share many typological similarities, but few lexical similarities. Blench (2016) considers Talodi and Heiban to each be separate, independent Niger-Congo branches that had later converged due to mutual contact.

Talodi and Heiban had each constituted a group of the Kordofanian branch of Niger–Congo that was posited by Joseph Greenberg (1963); Talodi has also been called Talodi–Masakin, and Heiban has also been called Koalib or Koalib–Moro. Roger Blench notes that the Talodi and Heiban families have the noun-class systems characteristic of the Atlantic–Congo core of Niger–Congo, but that the Katla languages (another putative branch of Kordofanian) have no trace of ever having had such a system, whereas the Kadu languages and some of the Rashad languages appear to have acquired noun classes as part of a Sprachbund, rather than having inherited them. He concludes that the Kordofanian languages do not form a genealogical group, but that Talodi–Heiban is core Niger–Congo, whereas Katla and Rashad form a peripheral branch (or perhaps branches) along the lines of Mande. The Kadu languages may be Nilo-Saharan.

 † = extinct
Lafofa (Tegem), sometimes classified as a divergent Talodi language, has a different set of cognates with other Niger–Congo and has been placed in its own branch of Niger–Congo.

Norton & Alaki (2015)
Norton & Alaki (2015: 76, 126) classify the Talodi languages as follows. Proto-Talodi, Proto-Lumun-Torona, and Proto-Narrow Talodi have also been reconstructed by Norton & Alaki (2015).

Relationship
Lexical correspondences between Proto-Heiban and Proto-Talodi according to Blench (2016):

Noun class prefix comparison between Proto-Heiban and Proto-Talodi according to Blench (2016):

See also
Heiban Nuba people
Talodi people
List of Proto-Talodi reconstructions (Wiktionary)
List of Proto-Heiban reconstructions (Wiktionary)

Notes

 Roger Blench. Unpublished. Kordofanian and Niger–Congo: new and revised lexical evidence.
 Roger Blench, 2011, Should Kordofanian be split up?, Nuba Hills Conference, Leiden
 Blench, Roger. 2016. Do Heiban and Talodi form a genetic group and how are they related to Niger-Congo?.

Kordofanian languages
South Kordofan
Proposed language families


text:
NSA Tool Likely Unconstitutional
Judge Rules
Alex Wong/Getty
A federal judge ruled the National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone and Internet data is likely unconstitutional. Richard Leon wrote the program clashes with the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure. "I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion'" than the metadata program, Leon wrote. The ruling from the judge appointed by George W. Bush is the first legal setback for the NSA's surveillance program since Edward Snowden revealed it in June. In a statement sent to journalist Glenn Greenwald Monday, Snowden applauded the court's ruling. "Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights," wrote Snowden. "It is the first of many."
Read it at The New York Times

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
You are here: Music + Artists // Artist to Watch // 2007 // Lyle Lovett & His Large Band - It's Not Big It's Large - Lost Highway
Lyle Lovett & His Large Band - It's Not Big It's Large - Lost Highway
For his first album for Lost Highway, Lyle Lovett has refueled his Large Band (36 different members contributed to this album) with some pretty satisfying results. It's Not Big It's Large sounds like classic early Lovett: country, pop, gospel, jazz, rock all fused together with the help of some crafty tunes.
Lovett's certainly pulled out some great names to help this go 'round: Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Guy Clark, Matt Rollings, Bela Fleck, Stuart Duncan, Sweet Pea Atkinson, and Francine Reed, just to name a few. The songs roll along and flow together meticulously - much like the man who put it all together. Lovett's strength has always been his ability to "everyman" up the tunes; from the lyrics to the melodies, there's nothing too tricky going on, but it's supreme song craftmanship at work. A couple of these tunes - most notably "All Downhill" and "Up In Indiana" stack up to anything he's done, and the rest of them are very well done, too.
Lyle Lovett & His Large Band
It's Not Big It's Large
Valerie June - Pushin Against A Stone
The Fleeting Ends - Our Eyes Are Peeled
Jason Isbell - Southeastern
More in this category: « Scott Matthews - Passing Stranger - Universal Republic	Ben Harper - Lifeline - Virgin »


Arrhythmia Alliance relies on donations to enable us to maintain our helpline, resources and support services to patients and carers. Please support us, so we can continue to support you.
Have you ever thought about helping to raise money for Arrhythmia Alliance? There are so many different ways in which you can fundraise and it doesn't need to be a lot of hard work either - fundraising can be good fun!
As the old saying goes, every little helps; and we need your help!


I actually wanted to be a brain scientist. My mother says that when I was 4-years-old, I found some "Time Life" book about reflexes and started asking questions like, "Is the brain that you think with the same as the brain that made you take your hand back from the stove when it was hot?" I've been interested in art and other things and taking care of people as a physician, but the interest in the brain has been there all along.
I've been interested in the potential incentives and motivations for learning and how those do or do not guide our acquisition of information from the environment. Sometimes it's really puzzling why people don't manage to learn when it looks like they ought to—we talk about them "learning lessons the hard way" or not at all. That puzzle about when we adapt and when we don't adapt and including our ideas, not just our habits and behaviors, is really the driving question underneath a lot of what we do.
Have you had any interesting experiences with interdisciplinary collaborations?
[The Center for Cognitive Neuroscience] is right next to the Nicholas School for the Environment, and the dean of the environmental school was interested in art and how it could communicate to people, so he installed an art gallery that had pieces that were commentary on a humans' relationship to the environment. [In a collaboration with Katherine Heller], we set up cameras that could track people's behavior in the gallery and sent participants to the gallery with one of two motivational statements at the beginning of the exhibit. Half of the participants read a statement that was very optimistic and forward-looking (promotion-framing), and the other statement was more dire and grim and about preventing bad things from happening (prevention-framing).
Even though the behavior was roughly similar—people spent the same amount of time in the gallery and in front of the items—the memory for the gallery was really different. After promotion-framing, we saw a relationship between the time that people spent observing things and how much they remembered later. In the prevention-framing, that relationship was disrupted. We didn't see correspondence. We know that motivation changes people's behavior and interaction with space, but it also changes the brain state. Using this art gallery, we were able to demonstrate that the impact on the behavior was not enough to explain the differences.
What has most surprised you about the field?
What wasn't obvious to me before becoming a scientist was how working with other people becomes a big part, that your interactions with other brains produces things that you would not get to on your own. You could talk about it as a teamwork, but I think that that doesn't capture this "greater than the sum of its parts" nature of interacting with other people and getting their take on the same set of environmental events. Watching and supervising my students and trainees make progress is hard and rewarding in equal measures, and one of the best unexpected delights for me in the work.
What has been the best advice you've received or discovered as you've gone through your career?
I think in clinical training, there's a real emphasis on attending to your own internal, affective state as information about the world around you. As scientists, we're so interested in the objective and agreeing on an objective truth, and that leads us to really disregard the affective information that we get in clinical interactions. Affect is really important information about the state of another person, especially if the affect that you're experiencing is unusual for you. But similarly, we have emotional, affective, motivational responses to our progress on scientific problems. And I think bringing that sense of "this is an emotional process as much as it is a cognitive information process" has really been helpful in thinking not just about my own work, but how to help the people that I'm trying to train and support.
To learn more about Dr. R. Alison Adcock's lab and research, click here.


text:
cache_path = Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]

arch = node['kernel']['machine']

agent_path = node['uc4agent']['path']

# set the agent name to the hostname
node.default['uc4agent']['agentname'] = node['hostname']

if (arch =~ /i(.{1})86/)
  file_suffix = 'i3'
elsif (arch =~ /x(.*)64/)
  file_suffix = 'x6'
elsif (arch =~ /ia(.*)64/)
  file_suffix = 'i6'
else
  # log message: No support for this architecture
  #return
  Chef::Application.fatal!("No support for this architecture: #{arch}")
end

if ['debian', 'rhel', 'fedora', 'freebsd', 'arch', 'suse'].include?(node['platform_family'])

  # copy agent archive to temp location
  cookbook_file "#{cache_path}/uc4agent.tar.gz" do
    source "ucagentl#{file_suffix}.tar.gz"
    mode 00755
    action :create_if_missing
  end

  directory node['uc4agent']['path'] do
    owner 'root'
    group 'root'
    mode 00755
    recursive true
    action :create
  end

  execute "extract" do
    cwd cache_path
    command "tar xzvf uc4agent.tar.gz -C #{agent_path}"
    action :run
    not_if { ::File.exists?("#{agent_path}/bin/ucx.msl") }
  end

  execute "change-owner" do
    command "chown -R root:root #{agent_path}"
    action :run
  end

  template "#{agent_path}/bin/ucxjl#{file_suffix}.ini" do
    source "ucxjlxx.ini.erb"
    mode 0644
    variables(
      :file_suffix => file_suffix
    )
  end

  # copy ARATools.jar to agent bin
  cookbook_file "#{agent_path}/bin/ARATools.jar" do
    source "ARATools.jar"
    action :create_if_missing
  end
end

# For Windows node
if platform?("windows")
  cookbook_file "#{cache_path}\\uc4agent.zip" do
    source "ucagentw#{file_suffix}.zip"
    action :create_if_missing
  end

  directory node['uc4agent']['path'] do
    recursive true
    action :create
  end

  # Extract service manager to destination
  windows_zipfile node['uc4agent']['path'] do
    source "#{cache_path}\\uc4agent.zip"
    action :unzip
    not_if {::File.exists?("#{agent_path}\\bin\\uc.msl")}
  end

  template "#{agent_path}\\bin\\ucxjw#{file_suffix}.ini" do
    source "ucxjw#{file_suffix}.ini.erb"
  end

  # copy ARATools.jar to agent bin
  cookbook_file "#{agent_path}\\bin\\ARATools.jar" do
    source "ARATools.jar"
    action :create_if_missing
  end

end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
EDP Sciences and the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences conclude a significant agreement on article processing charges in support of open access
Paris, France, 4 June 2020: EDP Sciences and the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NSLC) are pleased to announce the successful conclusion of an agreement on article processing charges (APCs) which enables all corresponding authors affiliated with eligible Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) academic institutes to publish open access, at a discounted rate, in a range of EDP Sciences journals.
The agreement applies to all fully open access or hybrid journals published by EDP Sciences. Upon submission, corresponding authors of eligible CAS academic institutes will be identified automatically and a 20% discount applied to their APC. Once published, their articles will be freely available in open access. APCs will also include the 'Liberty APC' which allows the corresponding author to decide the level of the charge (from 0 to 900 Euros) to which the 20% discount will then be applied.
CAS authors represent a growing number of EDP Sciences corresponding authors and they will now be able to publish under a CC-BY licence. In so doing, their research and expertise will become available to a wider, international audience. The agreement is for one year initially and can be extended by mutual agreement.
"I think this cooperation will play an active role in the further improvement of EDP Sciences' influence in CAS and in attracting CAS authors and readers," commented Mrs Zhao Yan, Assistant to the Director, NSLC.
"It is hugely exciting working closely with such a prestigious research institution as CAS to facilitate the work of its academics and researchers in a cost effective way," observed Liping Liu, China Regional Director at EDP Sciences. "In turn, this enables us to better serve the global academic community by supporting the timely exchange of research."
About the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NSLC)
The National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NSLC) is the research library service system of CAS as well as the National Library of Sciences in Chinese National Science and Technology Libraries (NSTL) system. Its collection of about 11.5 million items is accessible from 125 CAS institutes in 30 cities across China. It coordinates the resource development and service provision of all institutional libraries in CAS and collaborates with major domestic and foreign libraries for resource sharing and research in library and information services. NSLC is represented within IFLA, EIFL and COAR and cooperates closely with partners like MPG Libraries and TIB in Germany, Stanford University Library in USA, JST in Japan and KISTI in Korea. It also offers masters and doctoral degree programs in library and information sciences.
More information about the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NSLC).
List of eligible CAS institutes.
EDP Sciences is an international academic publisher which was founded by learned societies in 1920. EDP Sciences publishes high-quality scientific journals, conference proceedings, books and magazines, many of which are open access.
Several journals are published in partnership with learned societies and the journal 4open is expressly built on the four pillars of open science. EDP Sciences also offers EDP Open Books - a comprehensive open access publishing solution.
EDP Sciences was founded by eminent scientists including Marie Curie and Paul Langevin. Since November 2019, it is owned by Science Press which is itself majority-owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). CAS is the world's largest research organisation and a prestigious learned society. EDP Sciences has therefore always been, and continues to be, the publishing partner of scientific communities.
More information about EDP Sciences.
More information about open access publishing conditions, Liberty APCs and participating journals.
Charlotte Van Rooyen
Head of Marketing Communications
www.edpsciences.org


text:
A group of St Benedict's cadets and NCOs visited the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham, Kent, to spend a day exploring our parent Corps' history and achievements. There was something for everyone, from viewing artefacts and weapons to a Bailey Bridge construction task.
Part of the Berlin Wall
Cpl James Cuss reports:
At 0900 on an overcast Sunday morning (following the 90th anniversary celebration dinner at St Benedict's!) a group of ten Teeling Troop recruits, Wilding Troop cadets and NCOs departed for the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham, Kent, to spend a day exploring our parent Corps' history and achievements. We had a greatly enjoyable and educational time learning about what makes the Corps so special.
With a busy schedule, moving around the museum seeing every part of our heritage, there was something for everyone, from viewing the plethora of artefacts and weapons to a miniature Bailey Bridge construction task.
The Corps is reaching out to its cadet units and we were delighted to receive the first RE Certificate of Affiliation at the end of our visit.
Cpl James Cuss (Lower 6th/Year 12)
Receiving the Royal Engineers Certificate of Affiliation
Cadet comments:
"It was fascinating and more interesting than we'd expected. I really liked learning about the Royal Engineers' participation in the Zulu War."
Rct Fitzgerald (CW)
"Looking at the history of the Sappers was really good because we don't usually get to learn about them in so much detail."
(Dmr Ahmad)
"I liked seeing all of the cool armoured vehicles, and enjoyed the bridge-building."
(Dmr Dovey)
Bailey Bridge construction task
However, the most interesting part of the day may have been the talk from Royal Engineers Corps Sergeant Major Paul Clarke - 26 years a Sapper - on the application of core values and standards throughout the British Army, and the Army Leadership Code. Overall it was a truly fascinating and insightful day for us to develop our knowledge of the Royal Engineers and to consider our approach to leadership.
"I really enjoyed the day out; seeing the development of Sapper technology, finding out about the history of our parent Corps, and learning the values and standards needed to be a good cadet and leader really made for a great experience."
(Sqn Sgt Major McFadzean)
Rct Ekpong: it was really great to be able to see and learn about lots of new things.
Rct Fitzgerald: it was fascinating and more interesting than you'd think, I really liked learning about the royal engineers participation in the Zulu war.
Rct Thornton: it was really fun and I liked the bridge-building activity.


Next week marks the beginning of our Conversation to Conversion webinar series, free events featuring prominent content marketing thought leaders who will discuss the industry issues that matter most to you. We're getting very excited! To help to hold us over until the series actually kicks off, we sat down with these featured thought leaders to ask them for insight into content marketing's success--specifically, how video translates into sales conversion. First up is Trip Kucera, senior research analyst for marketing effectiveness and strategy at the Aberdeen Group.
Q: In your view, what has caused content marketing to soar in importance as a brand-building tactic over the last several years?
A: Content marketing is a response to the "hidden sales cycle," which is the impact of friction-free access to content and community that shapes buyers' tastes, preferences, perceptions and priorities. Customers have an increasing number of channels through which to reach a rich and diverse source of information, and all of this generally happens well before brands have an opportunity to engage the buyer directly. The response is to become part of the mix, a source of information and entertainment.
Q: As a content marketing medium, why is video more effective than static text?
A: I wouldn't assert that video is more effective versus other media types, static or otherwise; however, our research shows that video is both the most-used media type for ungated and social content, and more likely to be used by top-performing companies, leaders in Aberdeen's lexicon, in both cases. As to why? There's probably some great non-linguistic research that can speak to the way video stimulates various regions of the brain, etc. Personally, I think video feels a little bit like a high-information or high-entertainment break.
Q: How does video viewing translate into sales? Can we prove that video drives prospective customers down the funnel?
A: Our research shows, and keep in mind this is correlation, not causation, that companies using video in their content marketing mix show 45 percent higher marketing conversion rates, and nearly twice the website conversion rate compared with non-users.
Q: Who should join this webinar, and why can't they miss it?
A: First, there are some great speakers across the whole series--it's like a one-stop shop for some of the best thinking about content marketing and the role of video. As for my participation, I think Aberdeen's crowdsourced model of performance-based benchmarking offers a unique perspective. It allows us to look at what top-performing companies are doing differently. I liken it to getting to look over the shoulder of the smartest kid in class to see how they organize their Trapper Keeper.
You can register for one, or all, of the Conversation to Conversion webinars here.


Atchafalaya National Heritage Area embarked on a branding campaign last year that includes media applications, new graphics, a tagline and a brand statement. The brand statement was used as the script for a video we produced and can be viewed at http://vimeo.com/10718228 . The video will be used for promotional and educational purposes.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 8:00 PM and is filed under General Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.


Description: If you're looking to maximize your vehicle's performance potential and drivability with a simple download, the aFe SCORCHER PRO Performance Programmer is for you. The SCORCHER PRO Performance Programmer is an all-in-one, performance programmer that provides specially calibrated tunes for vehicles equipped with aFe POWER products* delivering more horsepower and torque when you need it. With cloud based tune delivery and built in Wi-Fi capability, you can download aFe's custom tunes whenever or wherever you want it. With its data logging monitoring capabilities, you can display critical vehicle data using full color on-screen, customizable gauges. It's the ultimate in performance enhancements in that it is tailored to fit your vehicles specific modifications and ECU to perform perfectly and produce maximum power gains. The SCORCHER PRO Performance Programmer does not support any changes to your vehicle's emission system.
All-in-one, performance programmer that provides specially calibrated tunes for vehicles equipped with aFe POWER products* to maximize your vehicles performance potential and drivability with a simple download.
It's the ultimate in performance enhancements. Customized tunes to reprogram your vehicles ECU to perform perfectly and produce maximum horsepower with aFe POWER products. The customer needs to register online (www.afepower.com/scorcherpro/register) and enter vehicle information to receive his custom tunes.
Connects to the vehicle's OBDII port and has Wi-Fi capability so you can download aFe POWER's custom tunes whenever or wherever you want. Can also be connected to a PC to download aFe POWER custom tunes.
Monitor and display critical vehicle data using on-screen, full color customizable gauges. View, capture or download your vehicle's data on one device.
The SCORCHER PRO Performance Programmer offers the capability to reads and clear DTC's (diagnostic trouble codes).
A custom CAD designed roto-molded housing made from heat soak resistant material eliminates the use of multiple components and ensures the coolest air intake charge available. A large clear sight window allows for filter inspection without removal of the airbox. The roto-molded housing is made out of black cross-linked polyethylene. A urethane plug is also included if you wish to completely seal the airbox.
This SCORCHER PRO Plus Package is not CARB exempt at this time and is not legal for sale in California or use on vehicles registered with the California Department of Motor Vehicles.


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If you are new to clean eating or new to our Clean Cuisine blog you may be feeling a wee bit overwhelmed with all of the clean eating rules out there. Trust me, I get it.
If you know my story, you know I have been following a clean food diet for over 19 years now. Thanks to my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1998, I radically overhauled my diet at the age of 22—–this was way before clean eating was the "in" thing to do. I didn't have a lot of resources when I started and I vividly remember feeling VERY overwhelmed with it all.
I also needed to see big improvement in a hurry, not only because my health was in serious jeopardy, but also because I needed to start feeling better in order to maintain my motivation.
Let's face it: it's not easy to change your whole diet. It's even less easy if you are not getting the results you want within a reasonable amount of time.
Today, there is no shortage of information on clean eating. The problem is, in some ways there is too much information. Where should you even start? And of course when it comes to adopting a unified set of clean eating rules, no such thing exists. In fact, a lot of the information on how to eat clean is conflicting. Is Paleo clean eating? Does adopting a clean food diet mean going grain free? Is a clean food diet vegan?
I'm writing this blog post for those of you who are feeling overwhelmed with where to start. Regardless of the reason as to why you are starting, if you follow two very simple clean eating rules you will undoubtedly start to see (and feel!!) results in a rather short amount of time.
Why Do Most People Start a Clean Food Diet?
Now that I have been eating clean for almost twenty years, I know a lot more at 41 years old than I did at 22 years old.
After writing five books on the subject ("Clean Cuisine: An 8-Week Anti-Inflammatory Diet that Will Change the Way You Age, Look & Feel" is the most comprehensive of them all), I feel pretty confident in saying that if you want to see rapid results but you can't commit to a total diet overhaul just yet then your best bet is to adopt two simple clean eating rules….
I have said it many times before, but the number one biggest diet mistake people make is not eating anywhere near the amount of fruits and vegetables they should. Most people focus on all of the foods they shouldn't eat rather than concentrating on eating more the foods their body needs.
Without a doubt, one of the food groups your body needs most for nutrition, energy, satiety, longevity and reduced risk of numerous diseases is good old fruits and vegetables.
It might not sound all that exciting, but if you did NOTHING else but drastically increase your consumption of fruits and vegetables you would see some pretty amazing benefits.
Studies show just 12% of Americans eat the minimum daily fruit recommendation of one and a half to two cups per day, and only 9% consume the minimum daily vegetable recommendation of two to three cups per day. And that's not even close to eating the amount I am suggesting, 7 to 13 servings of fruits and vegetables daily.
One of the most consistent findings in the epidemiological and nutritional literature is that as fruit and vegetable consumption increase in the diet, chronic disease and premature deaths decline. The CDC, the National Cancer Institute, the American Heart Association, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture all recommend adults eat the amount I am suggesting, 7 to 13 servings of fruits and vegetables every day.
One of the reasons fruits and vegetables are so important to eat in abundance is because they offer such incredible vitamin, mineral, fiber, antioxidant and phytonutrient bang for such a teeny-tiny calorie buck. It's pretty much impossible to overeat foods like apples, broccoli, cauliflower and blackberries.
And the more super low-calorie/ high nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables you eat, the less room you have leftover for unhealthy foods. If weight loss is your goal, then this is a huge benefit. Fruits and vegetables work mechanically to take up bulk and space in your stomach—if you fill your stomach with 7 to 13 servings of fruits and vegetables a day your appetite for other foods will decrease. A lot.
By eating more low-calorie/ high-nutrient fruits and vegetables you will eat less of other higher calorie foods. That alone will help with weight loss.
It's a bit too complex to dive into in this short blog post, but basically the calories in fruits and vegetables are not metabolized by your body the same as say the calories in steak or milk.
These are words you never thought you'd hear from the president of a $2.7 billion weight-loss empire. "Calorie counting has become unhelpful," David Kirchhoff stated on the Weight Watchers International website. "When we have a 100-calorie apple in one hand and a 100-calorie pack of cookies in the other, and we view them as being 'the same' because the calories are the same, it says everything that needs to be said about the limitations of just using calories in guiding food choices." I couldn't have said it better myself.
We talk more about how not all calories are created equal HERE and in our book, but all you really need to know is that if Person A eats 2,000 calories worth of fruits and vegetables and Person B eats 2,000 calories of steak, butter and cheese, Person A will weigh less.
Not only are fruits and vegetables highly anti-inflammatory, but the weight loss associated with their consumption further reduces inflammation. Body fat is highly inflammatory and losing body fat will reduce whole body inflammation.
Fruit and vegetable consumption further helps with both weight loss and inflammation because they contain special substances called "phytonutrients".
Did you know that food cravings are often the result of a nutrient deficiency? Calorie for calorie, fruits and vegetables are the most nutrient dense foods on the planet and eating more of them will do wonders for curbing food cravings.
Ok, so hopefully after all of that you are now convinced to eat more fruits and vegetables! Because in all seriousness, if you told me your goal was to lose weight and reduce inflammation but you also said you were willing to follow just one clean eating rule, then I would have to say my suggestion would be to eat way more fruits and vegetables. It's that important. And it really does make the world of difference in your health.
Of course knowing that you should eat more fruits and vegetables and actually doing it and making it work in real life can be two different things.
Click HERE for 5 easy tips to increase fruit and vegetable consumption.
Second, I can't think of a single day in my life where I have ever gone a full day without eating. I am definitely not someone who fasts in the conventional way you might think of dietary fasting. So don't worry, clean eating rule #2 is nothing extreme.
However, I didn't realize until recently that something I have naturally been doing for years is considered a mini-fast.
So here's the thing, I never eaten when I am not hungry. I learned from a very early age from both my grandfather (who was thin as a rail and never worked out a day in his life) and my dad (who was also very lean but muscular too because he did workout) that I didn't need to eat if I wasn't hungry. I also learned that if I was hungry I should listen to my body and eat—regardless of whether it was mealtime. I remember my grandfather eating a huge breakfast and then going the whole day without eating a single bite until it was time for dinner, which was also very big and not exactly "clean cuisine" lol. When I asked him why he didn't eat lunch he said he simply wasn't hungry and he didn't think you should eat when you aren't hungry. That always made a lot of sense to me.
If you have read any of our books, you know I have always emphasized the importance listening to your body and not eating if you are not hungry.
I have never been a fan of eating all throughout the day 5 or 6 "mini meals" as a way to stoke the metabolism. And now it turns out that going for longer stretches of time without food can actually benefit your metabolism and metabolic health (1, 2, 3, 4) Studies have even shown that when it comes to weight loss, intermittent fasting can be just as effective as traditional calorie restriction, if not more (5, 6, 7, 8)..
In fact, when I look back on my eating habits growing up I realize that even though I most certainly did not eat squeaky clean, I think one of the reasons I didn't have a weight problem was because I never ate when I wasn't hungry.
Chances are if you listen closely to your body you will find you can go a lot longer with food than you might be used to doing.
For me, this means doing a "mini fast" from the time I eat dinner until the time I eat again, at breakfast. Granted, for the majority of my "fast" I am sleeping, but when it comes to intermittent fasting sleeping still counts as part of the "fast"!
I usually eat dinner around 8:00 in the evening and I typically don't eat breakfast until around 10:00 or sometimes even 11:00 the following morning.
Of course fasting is nothing new!
Weight Loss. In general it takes between 6 to 8 hours for the body to burn through its glycogen supply. When glycogen is depleted the body will then turn to the energy stored in fat cells. Eating throughout the day makes it much harder for the body to burn fat. Extending the time between eating with 12 hour intermittent fasting will force your body to tap into stored fat reserves.
People get very nervous when they hear the word "fasting". But just remember, you are fasting for 7 to 9 hours when you sleep each night naturally.
What If You Are Starving the Moment You Wake Up?
If you are new to clean eating, you may need to ramp up your nutrient and fiber intake before you can comfortably incorporate intermittent fasting into your daily routine. That's because if your body is not getting enough nutrients and fiber, you will undoubtedly experience food cravings and hunger pains.
However, once you adopt the first of the clean eating rules (which is to start eating more fruits and vegetables!) you will automatically fill nutrient and fiber gaps. Once this happens, you will be able to go longer stretches without food.
Click HERE for more information on 12-hour intermittent fasting.
What Clean Eating Rules Work for YOU?
Ok, so those are my two best clean eating rules, but I would LOVE to know what works for YOU? Please leave a comment below and tell me all about it!
Looking for More Information on Clean Eating?
If you are new to clean eating or new to Clean Cuisine START HERE!
Want to Adopt a Clean Food Diet? Where to Start!


Call for Black Pagans, want to be in an anthology?
One of my readers Crystal B. has been calling for submissions of the minority Pagan experience to create an anthology! Here are the details!
These drafts will be edited in a back-and-forth process with the editor. Essays should be 1500-4000 words, although if your work falls outside those limits, do submit it – we can discuss this during the editing process. Drop us an email if you are unsure whether your idea fits into the content. The sooner you start the communication process the better, as after the deadline we won't be considering additional ideas.
The anthology will be edited by Crystal Blanton. She is the author of an upcoming pagan/occult nonfiction book called Bridging the Gap; Working Within the Dynamics of Pagan Groups and Society. She may be found online at http://crystalblanton.com/ and her email address for this anthology is crystal@crystalblanton.com .


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How CUPP used digital ordering to bust queues and drive customer loyalty
CUPP began in 2009 when the founders lived in Taiwan after falling in love with the country, food, people and the national drink: bubble tea. After launching CUPP in 2012 in a converted van called Pearl, they now have multiple stores in Bristol and Cardiff with ambitious growth plans for the rest of the UK in the coming months, including several franchised sites.
With the growing popularity of CUPP's bubble tea, the brand found its customers would have to queue during peak times such as the morning or lunchtime rush. The brand also has a young, digitally savvy customer base, typically between the ages of 13-30 years old and it believed digital ordering would be a perfect solution to serve its young customer demographic as well as bust queues during peak times. CUPP's stores are set-up for a 'grab and go' style operation with little or no in-store seating so enabling customers to order ahead for pick-up would help to streamline guests through the store. CUPP was also keen to explore ways of using digital ordering to help drive customer loyalty.
In May 2020, CUPP launched both app and web ordering across its stores. Lee Peacock, founder of CUPP explains, "It was really important for us as a brand to choose the right digital ordering solution. We had clear goals we wanted to achieve such as minimising queues for our customers, encouraging return visits and making the digital ordering journey as slick as possible, in line with our modern, fuss-free brand experience.
"We did our research and even considered an integrated solution from our POS provider, but QikServe stood out because the look, feel and usability of the app is incredible. Both the app and web experience look great, gives us plenty of branding opportunity, the ordering flow is slick and simple. It's everything we needed, set-up was quick and support were fantastic. We had much more control with QikServe than we would have done by going with an aggregator and we get to keep and analyse our customer data which really is invaluable as a growing business."
CUPP's customers can now choose a store and order their bubble tea in advance for collection at a specific time. The flexibility of the solution has allowed CUPP to offer an extensive bubble tea menu complete with imagery, a wide range of modifiers including toppings, bubbles, ice amount and sugar levels as well as upsell features such as upgrading to a larger sizes and cross selling merchandise such as stainless steel straws, tote bags and bubble tea pins.
Encouraging repeat visits by guests was an important goal for CUPP and they achieved this by offering QikServe's loyalty stamp card on the app. Customers receive £4 off their order for every 10 bubble teas they buy. CUPP staff promoted the app-only loyalty card when customers visited the store and through QR codes printed on their in-store menus. This encouraged significant app adoption almost 90% of customers signing up through mobile vs. web.
Since launch, CUPP has grown its digital ordering revenue by 227%, its digital orders by 243% and is taking 93% of its digital revenue through the app. In the 12 months since June 2020, CUPP grew its loyalty 483% (6% returning customers vs. 35%).
Lee Peacock adds, "By only having the digital stamp card on the app, customers are really encouraged to download it and that's how we've managed to achieve such high adoption. Our customers are rewarded for their loyalty, service for our staff is much easier and more productive as they don't have to deal with physical stamp cards, discounting on the till and cashing up at the end of the day. In fact, we're completely cashless on our non-franchised sites which means our staff can concentrate on making orders quickly for our customers. Service speed has improved so customers have a much better, faster experience.
"Our new stores that are currently in development are actually being designed around the digital ordering journey. There'll be a dedicated collection point for online orders which will speed up the wait time for any walk-in customers. All new franchised stores will also use QikServe's online and app ordering so there's seamless experience for guests across the brand."
The next step for CUPP is to integrate its digital ordering and point of sale system. Through this integration, any orders will come to one screen making operations and fulfillment simpler. With their ambitious nationwide growth plans, CUPP intends to continue driving app and web ordering adoption with every new store they open. Lee explains, "We're really happy with the way app ordering is going at the moment, we want to concentrate on replicating its success across the new sites that we have planned to open in the coming months. It has been such a game changer in so many ways, from allowing our team to concentrate on fulfilling orders and serving walk-in customers, to speeding up queue times and encouraging loyalty, QikServe has really delivered for us."
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The British Royal Navy's first Queen Elizabeth (QE) Class aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth has set sail for the first time, in order to begin six weeks of sea trials in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland.
HMS Queen Elizabeth sailed from Rosyth, where the vessel had been under construction since 2014, into the Forth estuary.
The new 65,000t ship is set to test its engines and propulsion systems with a crew of more than 700 sailors and 200 industry contractors.
Its capability of producing fresh water, handling sewage, feeding the crew, and supplying electricity onboard will also be assessed during the trials.
Royal Navy first sea lord admiral Philip Jones said: "This is a hugely significant moment for the Royal Navy, for all our armed forces, and for our island nation.
"This floating fortress is by far the most powerful ship ever built in Britain that will enable us to tackle multiple and changing threats across the globe."
The 280m-long HMS Queen Elizabeth weighs roughly 65,000t and features a flight deck spanning around 4.5 acres, which will be used to carry the F-35B Lightning II joint strike fighter aircraft and Crowsnest helicopters.
HMS Queen Elizabeth's sister carrier HMS Prince of Wales is currently in the outfitting phase.
The two QEC aircraft carriers are being delivered by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, which is a partnership between BAE Systems, Thales UK, Babcock, and the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Image: The British Royal Navy's future flagship, HMS Queen Elizabeth. Photo: courtesy of Royal Navy / Crown Copyright.


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Adventure of the Week: Valley of the Lilies event
Western Carolina University hosts the fifth annual Valley of the Lilies Half Marathon and 5K on Saturday, open to students and the public.
Adventure of the Week: Valley of the Lilies event Western Carolina University hosts the fifth annual Valley of the Lilies Half Marathon and 5K on Saturday, open to students and the public. Check out this story on citizen-times.com: http://avlne.ws/1CaFoaW
Karen Chávez, kchavez@citizen-times.com Published 11:34 a.m. ET March 25, 2015
Hundreds of runners are expected at the Western Carolina University's Valley of the Lilies Half Marathon and 5K race Saturday at the college's scenic campus in Cullowhee and follows the Tuckasegee River.(Photo: Special to the Citizen-Times)
What: The fifth annual Western Carolina University Valley of the Lilies Half Marathon and 5K, sponsored by Duke LifePoint.
When: The half marathon starts at 8 a.m. Saturday and the 5K starts at 8:15 a.m.
Where: Western Carolina University campus in Cullowhee, Jackson County.
Entry fees/registration: Packet pickup will be at the Campus Recreation Center 4-8 p.m. Thursday, and Friday. Race day packet pickup will be 6:30-7:30 a.m. at the recreation center. Race-day registration is $80 for the half marathon and $30 for the 5K.
Details: Registration is already ahead of last year for the half marathon, which drew 341 runners, said Shauna Sleight, co-race director.
It might be that word is spreading of the picturesque races, which start at the arch in front of Balsam Hall. The 13.1-mile half-marathon winds through campus but then follows along the Tuckasegee River for most of the course. The 5K (3.1-mile) race and walk will start at 8:15 a.m.
The race began a few years ago as a way to promote health and fitness among students and staff, as well as the public. Each year, staff hold trainings to help students get ready to run the half-marathon, whether it's their first or their fifth.
The race is hosted by WCU's School of Health Sciences and Department of Campus Recreation and Wellness. Proceeds will be used to assist WCU students with expenses associated with professional presentations and travel to conferences.
New for this year's races are customized lily-shaped medals for top finishers and customized race bibs. All runners receive a short-sleeve technical shirt.
The race has gained a reputation as being relatively flat for a mountain run and for being easy on the eyes (it is said that Valley of the Lilies is the Cherokee translation for Cullowhee) and on the knees.
Last year, the overall winner of the half-marathon was Brian Ulrich in 1 hour, 15 minutes, 13 seconds. The female winner was Ginna Reid in 1:32:55. In the 5K race, Danielle Metz was the overall winner in 20:36, and Weston Pearson was the first male finisher in 21:35.
Information: Visit http://halfmarathon.wcu.edu or email valleyofthelilies@wcu.edu.
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