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Migrant and seasonal workers in the United States, among others in rural agricultural communities, may be at an elevated risk for tick-borne diseases (TBDs). This research included a survey of over 250 such workers, both women and men, in 13 locations across five eco-systems in Texas, which is generally perceived as a non-endemic state. Employing a modified Horowitz Multiple Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome Questionnaire, a range of data was collected regarding living conditions, such as sleeping outside, along with queries about tick exposure, tick bite encounters, illnesses, and prior TBD diagnoses. Findings revealed that 67% of the respondents who scored highest on symptom severity suggestive of a TBD reported sleeping outdoors (compared to 29% of the lowest scoring), with 78% of the likely-to-highly-likely group also recalling tick-bite encounters (compared to 20% of the lowest scoring). Approximately 28% of those who reported severe symptoms also indicated previous Lyme disease diagnoses. This research serves as an initial investigation into the living conditions associated with increased risk of TBDs among vulnerable populations. It underscores the need for further assessments of TBD risk relative to vulnerable populations even in perceived non-endemic regions and highlights the paucity of actionable data as a critical public health issue.

Background Personal recovery should be the cornerstone of mental health nursing practice. Nursing interventions should build on consumers' strengths to provide hope, so consumers are empowered to achieve their own personal goals. Aim The aim of this study was to explore mental health nurses’ lived experience of their practice, understanding and knowledge of personal recovery-oriented care on acute mental health units. Method Van Manen's methodology was utilised in this study. Data was gathered through semistructured conversational interviews with mental health nurses working on an acute unit. Findings Participants found personal recovery was difficult on an acute mental health unit. Factors that participants identified that impeded personal recovery-oriented care on acute mental health units included: the acuity of consumers in a low dependency area, lack of time to engage consumers, and loss of the therapeutic role for mental health nurses on acute units. Discussion Mental health nurses are expected to focus on the personal recovery needs of mental health consumers while managing clinical risks to consumers and others on the acute unit. This has the mental health nurse navigating a course between two worlds, and results in mental health nurses being confused between concepts of personal recovery and clinical recovery. Conclusion If acute mental health nurses cannot define personal recovery, they will not be able to effectively implement interventions that support consumers in their personal recovery journey on acute units and will be drawn into the clinical recovery paradigm.

Supplemental Table 1. Clinical characteristics of non-APL AML patients with MRD data Supplemental Table 2. Flow cytometry panel for MRD Supplemental Table 3. Proportions of AML blasts, CD34+ cells, and CD123+ cells at diagnosis and in remission in 86 patients with AML Supplemental Table 4. Logistic regression models for predictive factors of MRD Supplemental Table 5 A&B. Multivariate Analysis for time to relapse (TTR) Supplemental Table 6. Cytotoxicity of SL-101 in myeloid leukemia cell lines Supplemental Table 7. Demographic and disease characteristics of AML patients for in vitro and in vivo tests Supplemental Figure 1. Gating strategy of CD34+CD123+ blasts in bone marrow samples collected at diagnosis and in remission. Supplemental Figure 2. Expression levels of CD123 and CD131 do not correlate with in vitro response to SL-101 in primary AML samples. Supplemental Figure 3. Phenotypes of primary AML samples post SL-101 treatment. Supplemental Figure 4. SL-101 suppresses AML colony formation but spares normal counterparts. Supplemental Figure 5. SL-101 targets AML leukemia-initiating cells in vivo.

Purpose: The persistence of leukemia stem cells (LSC)-containing cells after induction therapy may contribute to minimal residual disease (MRD) and relapse in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). We investigated the clinical relevance of CD34+CD123+ LSC-containing cells and antileukemia potency of a novel antibody conjugate SL-101 in targeting CD123+ LSCs.Experimental Methods and Results: In a retrospective study on 86 newly diagnosed AML patients, we demonstrated that a higher proportion of CD34+CD123+ LSC-containing cells in remission was associated with persistent MRD and predicted shorter relapse-free survival in patients with poor-risk cytogenetics. Using flow cytometry, we explored the potential benefit of therapeutic targeting of CD34+CD38−CD123+ cells by SL-101, a novel antibody conjugate comprising an anti-CD123 single-chain Fv fused to Pseudomonas exotoxin A. The antileukemia potency of SL-101 was determined by the expression levels of CD123 antigen in a panel of AML cell lines. Colony-forming assay established that SL-101 strongly and selectively suppressed the function of leukemic progenitors while sparing normal counterparts. The internalization, protein synthesis inhibition, and flow cytometry assays revealed the mechanisms underlying the cytotoxic activities of SL-101 involved rapid and efficient internalization of antibody, sustained inhibition of protein synthesis, induction of apoptosis, and blockade of IL3-induced p-STAT5 and p-AKT signaling pathways. In a patient-derived xenograft model using NSG mice, the repopulating capacity of LSCs pretreated with SL-101 in vitro was significantly impaired.Conclusions: Our data define the mechanisms by which SL-101 targets AML and warrant further investigation of the clinical application of SL-101 and other CD123-targeting strategies in AML. Clin Cancer Res; 23(13); 3385–95. ©2017 AACR.

Aromatase is the key enzyme for estrogen biosynthesis. A distal promoter, PI.4, maintains baseline levels of aromatase in normal breast adipose tissue. In contrast, malignant breast epithelial cells secrete prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), which stimulates aromatase expression via proximal promoters PI.3/PII in a cyclic AMP (cAMP)– and protein kinase C (PKC)–dependent manner in adjacent breast adipose fibroblasts (BAF), leading to increased local concentrations of estrogen. Although an effective treatment for breast cancer, aromatase inhibitors indiscriminately abolish estrogen synthesis in all tissues, causing major side effects. To identify drug targets to selectively block aromatase and estrogen production in breast cancer, we investigated PGE2-stimulated signaling pathways essential for aromatase induction downstream of cAMP and PKC in human BAFs. Here, we show that PGE2 or its surrogate hormonal mixture dibutyryl cAMP (Bt2cAMP) + phorbol diacetate (PDA) stimulated the p38, c-jun NH2-terminal kinase (JNK)-1, and extracellular signal–regulated kinase (ERK) mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways. Inhibition or small interfering RNA–mediated knockdown of p38 or JNK1, but not ERK, inhibited PGE2- or Bt2cAMP + PDA–induced aromatase activity and expression via PI.3/PII. Conversely, overexpression of wild-type p38α or JNK1 enhanced PGE2-stimulated aromatase expression via PII. PGE2 or Bt2cAMP + PDA stimulated c-Jun and activating transcription factor-2 (ATF2) phosphorylation and binding to the PI.3/PII region. Specific activation of protein kinase A (PKA) or EPAC with cAMP analogues stimulated p38 and JNK1; however, only PKA-activating cAMP analogues induced aromatase expression. The PKC activator PDA effectively stimulated p38 and JNK1 phosphorylation but not aromatase expression. Taken together, PGE2 activation of p38 and JNK1 via PKA and PKC is necessary for aromatase induction in BAFs, and p38 and JNK1 are potential new drug targets for tissue-specific ablation of aromatase expression in breast cancer. [Cancer Res 2007;67(18):8914–22]

Supplementary Figure 1 from Prostaglandin E2 Induces Breast Cancer–Related Aromatase Promoters via Activation of p38 and c-Jun NH2-Terminal Kinase in Adipose Fibroblasts

Supplementary Figure 1 Legend from Prostaglandin E2 Induces Breast Cancer–Related Aromatase Promoters via Activation of p38 and c-Jun NH2-Terminal Kinase in Adipose Fibroblasts

This paper tests for speculative bubbles in the medieval English property market based on a unique hand-collected dataset from the feet of fines spanning the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. We focus on asset types where there are sufficiently large numbers of transactions each year to make a long and reliable run of information, and we transform this into annual time-series of prices. We employ a regime switching model that allows for boom and crash episodes to characterise and test for bubble dynamics. The results are consistent with the presence of periodic, partially collapsing speculative bubbles in the market for agricultural land, but there is no such evidence in the context of messuages. Our findings demonstrate that the medieval English property market shares important features with its contemporary counterpart, for instance with the recent so-called ‘barn bubble’.

BACKGROUND The extent of tick-borne disease (TBD) risk in the United States is generally unknown. Active surveillance using entomological measures, such as presence and density of infected nymphal I. scapularis ticks, have served as indicators for assessing human risk, but results have been inconsistent. Passive surveillance via the public health system suggests TBDs are underreported. OBJECTIVE The aim of our study was to geographically overlay electronic patient survey data of human tick bite encounters (TBEs) and concomitant reports of tick-borne disease with multimodal data sources, such as canine serological reports, to assess the use of various human TBD- risk proxies. METHODS This study employs a mixed-method research strategy, drawing on multiple data sources to provide insights into various aspects of human disease risk from tick-bite encounters (TBEs) and tick-borne diseases (TBDs) in the United States. TBEs among patients diagnosed with Lyme disease (LD) were analyzed at the county level and compared to Ixodes scapularis and Ixodes pacificus tick presence, human cases identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and canine serological data. Engaging a One Health spatial approach, analyses employed multi-layer thematic mapping. RESULTS Results revealed spatial matching at the county level among patient survey reports of TBEs and disease risk indicators from official sources. The results included one-for-one county-level matching of reported TBEs with at least one official source of human disease risk (i.e., positive canine serological tests, CDC-reported LD, or known tick presence) as demonstrated by thematic mapping. CONCLUSIONS Use of triangulation methods that integrate electronic patient data on tick bite encounter recall with established canine serological reports, tick presence, and official human disease information offers clinicians and public health officials with more granular, county-level information regarding tick-borne disease risk. Data other than official public health sources may serve as robust proxies for tick-borne disease risk among humans. CLINICALTRIAL Not applicable

Media reports of a financial apocalypse facing some UK universities were rife around the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, with much of the blame for their apparently perilous monetary situation levelled at excessive borrowing. This study examines the extent to which higher education institutions in the UK have become more indebted over the past decade and determines the factors that explain why some universities have borrowed more than others. We find that universities with vice chancellors who are older, higher paid, and who have been in their roles for a shorter time, on average have greater levels of indebtedness. We do not observe significant relationships with institutional borrowing for the gender of the vice chancellor, or their previous experience as a deputy vice chancellor or having previously held the top role elsewhere. Among university characteristics, only the level of total assets has any explanatory power for indebtedness, and not its overall institutional ratings score, whether it is a member of the Russell Group, or its total number of students.

Determining interventions to combat disease often requires complex analyses of spatial-temporal data to improve health outcomes. For some vulnerable populations, obtaining sufficient data for related analyses is especially difficult, thus exacerbating related healthcare, research, and public health efforts. In the United States (U.S.), migrant and seasonal workers are especially affected in this regard, with data on health interventions and outcomes largely absent from official sources. In response, this study offers a multi-modal approach that involves triangulating geographically specified health data that incorporate reports on canine tick species, Lyme disease (LD) incidence, and patient symptom severity indicating potential subsequent disease burden. Spatial alignment of data at the U.S. county level was used to reveal and better understand tick-borne disease (TBD) incidence and risk among the identified populations. Survey data from migrant and seasonal workers in Texas were employed to determine TBD risk based on symptoms, occupations, and locations. Respondents who were found to have a higher likelihood of a TBD were also considerably more likely to report the most common symptoms of LD and other TBDs on the Horowitz Multiple Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome Questionnaire. Those in the highly likely scoring group also reported more poor health and mental health days. Overall, a notable number of respondents (22%) were likely or highly likely to have a TBD, with particular relevance attributed to county of residence and living conditions. Also of note, almost a third of those reporting severe symptoms had received a previous Lyme disease diagnosis. These findings underscore the need for further surveillance among vulnerable populations at risk for TBDs.

Public health reports contain limited information regarding the psychological and neurological symptoms of tick-borne diseases (TBDs). Employing a mixed-method approach, this analysis triangulates three sources of symptomology and provides a comparison of official public health information, case reports, medical literature, and the self-reported symptoms of patients with Lyme disease and other TBDs. Out of the fifteen neuropsychiatric symptoms reported in the medical literature for common TBDs, headaches and fatigue and/or malaise are the only two symptoms fully recognized by public health officials. Of TBDs, Lyme disease is the least recognized by public health officials for presenting with neuropsychiatric symptoms; only headaches and fatigue are recognized as overlapping symptoms of Lyme disease. Comparisons from a patient symptoms survey indicate that self-reports of TBDs and the associated symptoms align with medical and case reports. Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, hallucinations, delusions, and pain—ranging from headaches to neck stiffness and arthritis—are common among patients who report a TBD diagnosis. Given the multitude of non-specific patient symptoms, and the number and range of neuropsychiatric presentations that do not align with public health guidance, this study indicates the need for a revised approach to TBD diagnosis and for improved communication from official public health sources regarding the wide range of associated symptoms.

The link between news and investor decision making is widely discussed in the litera- ture. Utilising unique U.S. firm-level news data between 1979 and 2016, we document a cross-sectional difference in the speed of the diffusion of information contained in news. We distinguish news articles as being either slowly or quickly incorporated into contemporaneous stock prices. The return spread between stocks classified according to these two types of news yields a statistically significant profit of 139 basis points per month. This abnormal return cannot be explained by other well-known risk factors and is robust when allowing for trading costs. Overall, our research refines the role of news regarding information dissemination in the financial markets.

A well-known asset pricing anomaly, the “MAX” effect, measured by the maximum daily return in the past month, depicts stocks’ lottery-like features and investor gambling behaviour. Using the comprehensive stock-level Dow Jones (DJNS) news database between 1979 and 2016, we consider in a empirical setting how the presence of news reports affects these lottery-type stocks. We find an augmented negative relationship between MAX stocks without news and expected returns, whereby MAX with news coverage generates return momentum. The differing future return relationships between MAX stocks with and without news appears to be best explained by information uncertainty mitigation upon news arrival. Overall, our findings suggest that news plays a role in resolving information uncertainty in the stock market.

In this paper, we examine the impact of emotions towards financial investments and emotions towards life in general on attitudes to financial risk using questionnaire data from 970 UK-based retail investors. We show that risk tolerance monotonically increases with positive emotions towards investments and life, and decreases with negative emotions. We incorporate a broader range of relevant emotions than in comparable existing studies, and we show, perhaps surprisingly, that positive emotions have a more substantial impact on risk tolerance than negative emotions. We find that emotions towards investments have a considerably greater explanatory power for the cross-section of risk aversion than gender, age, income, investment experience and investment knowledge. Our research sheds light on the different impacts that integral and background emotions have on retail investor financial decision-making. We suggest several implications for regulators and financial advisors, and we emphasise the importance for financial educators to support investors in developing emotional resilience.

This paper develops a behavioural asset pricing model in which traders are not fully rational as is commonly assumed in the literature. The model derived is underpinned by the notion that agents’ preferences are affected by their degree of optimism or pessimism regarding future market states. It is characterized by a representation consistent with the Capital Asset Pricing Model, augmented by a behavioural bias that yields a simple and intuitive economic explanation of the abnormal returns typically left unexplained by benchmark models. The results we provide show how the factor introduced is able to absorb the “abnormal” returns that are not captured by the traditional CAPM, thereby reducing the pricing errors in the asset pricing model to statistical insignificance.

While the effects of emotions on attitudes to investment risk are now well documented, the influence of personality factors has been much less researched. This paper examines the role of personality traits in determining financial risk tolerance. Using an extensive survey of UK-based retail investors, we show that personality traits and characteristics are more important than emotions in determining attitude to risk. We also observe that the widely adopted ‘Big Five’ framework is insufficient to characterise this relationship adequately, with significant roles for financial self-efficacy, resilience, and trait anger. Since some of these characteristics can be modified, our findings are suggestive that appropriate training and support for those making financial decisions could lead to better outcomes over the longer term.

While the purpose of academic research is to obtain new knowledge and understanding, there is an increasing concern that many scholars value work based upon where it is published rather than on its intrinsic quality. We argue that the degree to which journal ranking lists affect research has an important field-specific component. Using a large-scale survey of UK business academics and underpinned with a conceptual framework inspired by Bourdieu, we examine the attitudes towards journal ranking lists of individuals working within 22 ‘fields’ operating under the umbrella of business and management in the Academic Journal Guide (AJG). We show that scholars in economics and finance at one end of the spectrum, and in organisational studies at the other, systematically differ from accounting scholars in how they relate to the list. While the empirical evidence suggests that finance and economics are more insular than other fields, members of these two fields are the ones who are significantly less likely to consider that journal lists create a ‘research monoculture’, foster ‘technically well-executed but boring research’, or ‘encourage work that is not of interest to practitioners/policy makers’. On the other hand, scholars in organisational studies show the highest agreement with these concerns about journal ranking lists. Our findings have important implications for the evolution of accounting as a field that spans both a critical, interpretive paradigm with a strong focus on organisational context as well as a positivist, financial and capital markets-based research paradigm. If accounting scholars of these two approaches attach different authority to journal ranking lists and the value of publications in highly ranked journals, these perception differences could lead to tensions within the field and could have distortive effects on resource allocations and the career prospects of accounting scholars working in the respective sub-fields.

In this paper, we compare and contrast financial data science with econometrics and conclude that the former is inevitably interdisciplinary due to the numerous skill-sets needed within a competitive research team. The latter, in contrast, is firmly rooted in economics. Both areas are highly complementary, as they share an equivalent process with the former’s intellectual point of departure being statistical inference and the latter’s being the data sets themselves. Two challenges arise, however, from the age of big data. First, the ever increasing computational power allows researchers to experiment with an extremely large number of generated test subjects and leads to the challenge of p-hacking. Second, the extremely large number of observations available in big data sets provide levels of statistical power at which common statistical significance levels are barely a challenge. We argue that the former challenge can be mitigated through adjustments for multiple hypothesis testing where appropriate. However, it can only truly be addressed via a strong focus on the integrity of the research process and the researchers themselves, with pre-registration and actual out-of-sample periods being the best technical though in themselves potentially insufficient tools. The latter challenge can be addressed in two ways. First, researchers can simply use more stringent statistical significance levels such as 0.1%, 0.5% and 1% instead of 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively. Second, and more importantly, researchers can use additional criteria such as economic significance, economic relevance and statistical relevance to assess the robustness of statistically significant coefficients. Especially statistical relevance seems crucial in the age of big data, as it appears not impossible for an individual coefficient to be considered statistically significant when its actual statistical relevance (i.e. incremental explanatory power) is extremely small.

This paper uses a data set of freehold land and property transactions from medieval England to highlight the growing commercialization of the economy during that time. By drawing on the legal records, we are able to demonstrate that the medieval real estate market provided the opportunity for investors to profit. Careful analysis of the data provides evidence of group purchases, multiple transactions, and investors buying outside their own localities. The identification of these “investors” and their buying behaviors, set within the context of the English medieval economy, contributes to the early commercialization debate.

Introduction The Movement Disorder Society’s Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) is the current gold standard means of assessing disease state in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Objective measures in the form of wearable sensors have the potential to improve our ability to monitor symptomology in PD, but numerous methodological challenges remain, including integration into the MDS-UPDRS. We applied a structured video coding scheme to temporally quantify clinical, scripted, motor tasks in the MDS-UPDRS for the alignment and integration of objective measures collected in parallel. Methods 25 PD subjects completed two video-recorded MDS-UPDRS administrations. Visual cues of task performance reliably identifiable in video recordings were used to construct a structured video coding scheme. Postural transitions were also defined and coded. Videos were independently coded by two trained non-expert coders and a third expert coder to derive indices of inter-rater agreement. Results 50 videos of MDS-UPDRS performance were fully coded. Non-expert coders achieved a high level of agreement (Cohen’s κ > 0.8) on all postural transitions and scripted motor tasks except for Postural Stability (κ = 0.617); this level of agreement was largely maintained even when more stringent thresholds for agreement were applied. Durations coded by non-expert coders and expert coders were significantly different (p Conclusions Non-expert coders consistently and accurately quantified discrete behavioral components of the MDS-UPDRS using a structured video coding scheme; this represents a novel, promising approach for integrating objective and clinical measures into unified, longitudinal datasets.

Circadian rhythms are maintained by a complex "system of systems" that continuously coordinates biological processes with each other and the environment. Although humans predominantly entrain to solar time, individual persons vary in their precise behavioral timing due to endogenous and exogenous factors. Endogenous differences in the timing of individual circadian rhythms relative to a common environmental cue are known as chronotypes, ranging from earlier than average (Morningness) to later than average (Eveningness). Furthermore, individual behavior is often constrained by social constructs such as the 7-day week, and the "sociogenic" impact our social calendar has on our behavioral rhythms is likely modified by chronotype. Our aim in this study was to identify and characterize differences in sleep and rest-activity rhythms (RAR) between weekends and weekdays and between-chronotypes. Male volunteers (n = 24, mean age = 23.46 y) were actigraphically monitored for 4 weeks to derive objective behavioral measures of sleep and RARs. Chronotype was assessed through self-report on the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire. Sleep characteristics were derived using Actiware; daily rest-activity rhythms were modeled using a basic 3-parameter cosinor function. We observed that both Eveningness and Morningness Chronotypes were more active and slept later on the weekends than on weekdays. Significant between-chronotype differences in sleep timing and duration were observed within individual days of the week, especially during transitions between weekends and the workweek. Moreover, chronotypes significantly varied in their weekly rhythms: e.g. Morningness Chronotypes generally shifted their sleep duration, timing and quality across work/rest transitions quicker than Eveningness Chronotypes. Although our results should be interpreted with caution due to the limitations of our cosinor model and a homogenous cohort, they reinforce a growing body of evidence that day of the week, chronotype and their interactions must be accounted for in observational studies of human behavior, especially when circadian rhythms are of interest.

Recent scholarship supports the use of tick bite encounters as a proxy for human disease risk. Extending entomological monitoring, this study was designed to provide geographically salient information on self-reported tick bite encounters by survey respondents who concomitantly reported a Lyme disease (LD) diagnosis in a state perceived as non-endemic to tick-borne illness. Focusing on Texas, a mixed-methods approach was used to compare data on tick bite encounters from self-reported LD patients with county-level confirmed cases of LD from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as serological canine reports. A greater proportion of respondents reported not recalling a tick bite in the study population, but a binomial test indicated that this difference was not statistically significant. A secondary analysis compared neighboring county-level data and ecological regions. Using multi-layer thematic mapping, our findings indicated that tick bite reports accurately overlapped with the geographic patterns of those patients previously known to be CDC-positive for serological LD and with canine-positive tests for Borrelia burgdorferi, anaplasmosis, and ehrlichiosis, as well as within neighboring counties and ecological regions. LD patient-reported tick bite encounters, corrected for population density, also accurately aligned with official CDC county hot-spots. Given the large number of counties in Texas, these findings are notable. Overall, the study demonstrates that direct, clinically diagnosed patient reports with county-level tick bite encounter data offer important public health surveillance measures, particularly as it pertains to difficult-to-diagnose diseases where testing protocols may not be well established. Further integration of geo-ecological and socio-demographic factors with existing national epidemiological data, as well as increasingly accessible self-report methods such as online surveys, will contribute to the contextual information needed to organize and implement a coordinated public health response to LD.

This paper examines the impacts of retail borrowers’ emotions and personality traits on their abilities to engage in appropriate responses when things unexpectedly go wrong and they get into debt repayment difficulties. We establish several scenarios where borrowers are hit with unforeseen circumstances that affect their abilities to make their loan payments and we classify and evaluate the riskiness of the strategies they state that they would adopt in those situations. Via an extensive on-line survey conducted in the UK, we show that borrowers who were most comfortable about taking on debts in the first place, those who show neurotic tendencies, and those who believe that they have control over events rather than being controlled by them, are more likely to undertake high risk strategies when faced with unforeseen issues that affect their ability to meet their debt interest and repayment costs. We also find that respondents who identify as feeling excited, alert or guilty, as well as younger borrowers and those who are single or renters, are more likely to opt for risky approaches. Our findings have potentially important implications for lenders, regulators and debt counselling services regarding the types of people who are most likely to get into debt troubles.

Little is known to date regarding how the framing of investment communication impacts retail investor propensity to engage with financial products. To explore this lacuna, we apply insights from regulatory focus theory and construal level theory, and we vary investment communications in terms of the motivation (protect versus achieve) and the time-horizon (distant versus near) presented in a 2x2 quasi-experimental design. We also include an analysis of investor characteristics and find that communication of ‘short-term achieve’ investments attract particularly risk-tolerant and sensation-seeking individuals, posing questions of responsibility towards potentially vulnerable groups. We also find that negative attitudes towards finance may be troublesome as they can stop individuals from engaging with ‘long-term’ investment products. Positive attitudes towards finance, on the other hand, lead investors to engage with ‘protect’ products of both ‘short-‘ and ‘long-term’ horizon, highlighting benefits for individuals and society from interventions aimed at financial education and exposure. The study concludes by discussing insights for the literature and practitioners from the application of new theory and new data to the management of investment communications.

Attitude to risk questionnaires are widely used by financial advisors to recommend investments of appropriate risk levels to their clients. Yet the usefulness of this instrument to gauge how investors will react when faced with extreme volatility in the values of their assets remains untested. Using realistic scenarios and based on a large-scale survey in the UK, in this study we examine how the investing public reacts to actual portfolio losses. We find that conventional risk tolerance measures are inadequate for determining whether investors would 'sell out' or hold their portfolios in such circumstances. On the other hand, we find that past experience, emotions and personality characteristics, including measures of financial self-efficacy and extraversion, are significant predictors of investor reactions to market crashes.

In recent decades, the business world – as well as society at large – has increasingly recognised the relevance of environmental factors as essential determinants of economic development and business decisions. Due to these short- and long-term effects of environmental factors on both the corporate and financial sectors, it is clear that business leaders and investors need to measure and manage these environmental risks as well as channel capital flows towards tackling the impact of such risks on business and society. As academic disciplines, accounting and finance play a key role in these efforts and are ideally placed to develop innovative approaches to incorporate environmental factors into accounting and risk management frameworks and to evaluate solutions to mobilise capital flows and finance the transition to a low-carbon and environmentally sustainable economy. This paper provides the editorial for a special issue in the British Accounting Review that aims to contribute to these important debates by offering new insights into three key areas of green finance and accounting research: firms’ environmental disclosure choices, the value impact of climate change and carbon emissions, and the latest research into environmental management control systems.

Little is known in the current literature about the factors affecting retail investor (RI) propensity to engage with financial products other than their attitude towards financial risk (ATFR). This study explores the role of a number of variables, thematically grouped into domain-specific (product information and attitudes towards finance) and general impact factors (life variables). Data from 970 UK-based RIs, collected in 2017 across a variant of products, suggest that when analysed thematically, variables related to product information emerge as the most important group of influence factors. While the relevance of ATFR is also vindicated in the findings of this study, the results bring a dose of life-context to situations of financial decision-making by illustrating that information about the product as well as life variables matter significantly, in particular negative emotions and sensation seeking – thereby highlighting a duty of care towards potentially vulnerable people. The study discusses implications arising from the findings in relation to research, practice and policy.

The quantity of finance research has grown enormously over the past two decades, yet questions remain over its breadth and ability to benefit the economy and society beyond academia. Using multisource data, we argue that individual and institutional incentives have fostered insularity and a consequent homogeneity in the discipline. We examine the characteristics of research that is published and cited in the leading field journals in finance, arguing that the work has become abstract and unrelated to real world issues. The work published in the ‘top’ journals makes increasing use of US data, even where the researchers are drawn from different countries. Using information from impact assessment, publication patterns, and grant capture, we illustrate that this narrow agenda lacks relevance to the financial services sector, the economy or wider society compared to other areas of business and management research. In particular, we highlight the relative absence of research on ethics in academic finance and discuss the likely consequences for the discipline including its relevance to society.

Purpose: Spontaneous eye-blink rate is the number of involuntary blinks performed during a certain period of time. Assessing blink rate in humans provides valuable physiological and behavioral data...