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This paper studies the impact of major ECB monetary policy announcements on the portfolio allocation of euro area fund investors, using daily data between 2012 and mid-2016, a period that includes a variety of unconventional measures. We distinguish between active portfolio reallocation, driven by redemptions or injections of investors, and passive portfolio rebalancing, triggered by valuation effects related to changes in asset prices and exchange rates. We find that, for this class of fund investors, policy announcements work mainly through valuation effects (the signalling channel), rather than via active reallocation (the portfolio balance channel). Notably, since the autumn of 2014, monetary policy shocks triggered large asset price and exchange rate effects and prompted a passive shift of euro area investors into riskier assets, in particular European and Emerging Market equity funds and out of bond funds.

The social cognition and object relations scale-global rating method is a clinical rating system assessing 8 domains of self and interpersonal functioning. It can be applied to score numerous forms of narrative data. In this study, we investigate the SCORS-G relationship to measures of alliance and readiness for psychotherapy with an adolescent inpatient sample. Seventy-two psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents were consented and subsequently rated by their individual and group therapist using the SCORS-G. The unit psychiatrist also completed an assessment of patients' readiness for inpatient psychotherapy. The patients completed a self-report of their alliance with the inpatient treatment team as a whole. SCORS-G ratings were positively correlated with assessments of readiness for inpatient psychotherapy and patient-reported alliance. This study further demonstrates the clinical utility of the SCORS-G with adolescents.

This paper investigates the euro area bias—a stronger preference for euro area securities in the cross‐border portfolio of euro area residents with respect to the prediction of an international finance gravity model. Compared with previous studies, we disentangle different partitions of the euro area and, crucially, isolate euro area financial centres, finding some novel results. First, the euro area bias is not always present and remarkably weak for securities issued by euro area high‐rating economies, those that would be expected to provide better insurance during crisis periods. Second, the extent of the euro area bias could be overstated, because euro area financial centres may conceal round‐tripping flows from euro area low‐rating economies. Finally, in the case of equity, the euro area bias did not decline during the crisis period but, in the case of debt issued by euro area low‐rating economies, unsurprisingly, weakened. The decline in exposure towards euro area debt securities was common among all cross‐border investors, not a specific retrenchment of euro area investors. Overall, our results call for a prudent treatment of cross‐border financial statistics in the presence of a financial centre bias.

We investigate the impact of movements in the real exchange rate on economic growth based on five-year average data for a panel of over 150 countries in the post Bretton Woods period. Unlike previous literature, we use external instruments to deal with possible reverse causality from growth to the real exchange rate. Our country-specific instruments are (i) global capital flows interacted with individual countries’ financial openness and (ii) the growth rate of official reserves. We find that a real appreciation (depreciation) reduces (raises) significantly annual real GDP growth, more than in previous estimates in the literature. However, our results confirm this effect only for developing countries and for pegs.

We study what makes government bonds a safe asset. Building on a sample of monthly changes in government bond yields in 40 advanced and emerging countries, we analyse the sensitivity of yields to country specific fundamentals interacted with changes in global risk (VIX). We find that inertia (whether the bond behaved as a safe asset in the past) and good institutions foster a safe asset status, while the size of the debt market is also significant, reflecting the special role of the US. Within advanced and emerging markets, drivers are heterogeneous, with external sustainability in particular being relevant for the latter countries after the global financial crisis. Finally, the safe asset status does not appear to depend on whether the change in global risk is driven by financial shocks rather than by US monetary policy.

In this paper we search for global safe-haven assets by analysing the impact of crisis episodes and risk shocks on the behaviour of foreign investors and selected asset prices and yields. We regress de-trended net purchases by foreign investors of debt instruments issued in safe and liquid financial markets on estimated global risk-aversion shocks and crisis episodes identified by both quantitative and qualitative means. On the price side, we also look at changes in long-term government bond yields and the appreciation of the effective exchange rate conditional on risk shocks. We find that US short-term debt – in particular government debt – is the best, though still imperfect, example of a global safe-haven asset. In the majority of cases we find that foreign investors head for the exit.

The earliest events leading to autoimmune type 1 diabetes (T1D) are not known in any species. A T-cell receptor (TCR)-variable region, TCR-Vβ13, is required for susceptibility to autoimmune diabetes in rats, and selective depletion of Vβ13+ T cells with an allele-specific monoclonal antibody prevents disease in multiple rat strains. To investigate the role of Vβ13 early in diabetes, we examined islet T-cell transcripts in susceptible (LEW.1WR1) and resistant (LEW.1W and Wistar Furth) strains induced with polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid. Vβ13+ T cells displayed antigenic focusing in LEW.1WR1 islets 5 days postinduction and were characterized by a substantial decrease in complementarity determining region 3 diversity. This occurred prior to significant islet T-cell accumulation (day 7) or frank diabetes (days 10–14). Vβ13+ transcripts increased in LEW.1WR1 islets during diabetes progression, but not in resistant rats. We also analyzed transcript clonality of rat TCR-Vα5, an ortholog of the dominant TCR-Vα chain found on insulin B:9-23–reactive T cells in nonobese diabetic rat islets. We observed clonal expansion of Vα5+ transcripts in prediabetic LEW.1WR1 islets, suggesting that rat Vα5 is also an important component of islet autoantigen recognition. These data provide additional evidence that genome-encoded TCR sequences are important determinants of genetic susceptibility to T1D.

The article focuses on research into pelagornithid species of birds and how the species were able to fly while being larger than modern avians. It comments on paleontologist Edouard Lartet's discovery in 1857 of the first pelagornithid, dubbed Pelagornis (P.) micaenus, which had a humerus that measured nearly two feet long. It mentions the discovery of P. sandersi in 2014 with a humerus three feet in length and talks about the bird's aspect ratio, wing load, and wing shape like an albatross.

We investigate the impact of movements in the real exchange rate on economic growth based on five-year average data for a panel of over 150 countries in the post Bretton Woods period. Unlike previous literature, we use external instruments to deal with possible reverse causality from growth to the real exchange rate. Our country-specific instruments are (i) global capital flows interacted with individual countries financial openness and (ii) the growth rate of official reserves. We find that a real appreciation (depreciation) reduces (raises) significantly annual real GDP growth, more than in previous estimates in the literature. However, our results confirm this effect only for developing countries and for pegs.

In this paper we study the impact of shocks to global risk and global risk aversion (such as Lehman) as well as shocks with a more idiosyncratic nature (such as the euro debt crisis) on cross border portfolio flows, taking the perspective of foreign investors. We find robust evidence of systematic portfolio outflows in the wake of both types of shocks. There are no securities which are consistently safe haven assets, namely experiencing portfolio inflows when risk is on the rise or perceived to be high. Nevertheless, especially money market instruments issued by the US, euro area low-yield countries and Japan, as well as securities issued in Switzerland have behaved as safe haven assets in specific episodes or following changes in certain risk measures. We also find that the role of US-based crises and risk shocks is special, with the US not necessarily experiencing portfolio outflows or even attracting inflows for short-term dated securities, as a safe haven country, in those episodes. JEL Classification: G11, G15

Genetic studies of type 1 diabetes (T1D) have been advanced by comparative analysis of multiple susceptible and resistant rat strains with a permissive class II MHC haplotype, RT1(u). LEW.1WR1 (but not resistant LEW.1W or WF) rats are susceptible to T1D induced by a TLR3 agonist polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid followed by infection with parvovirus. We have mapped genetic loci for virus-induced T1D susceptibility, identifying a major susceptibility locus (Iddm37) near the MHC. The Iddm37 homologs on mouse and human chromosomes are also diabetes linked. We report that a major effect gene within Iddm37 is diubiquitin (Ubd). Gene expression profiling of pancreatic lymph nodes in susceptible and resistant rats during disease induction showed differences in Ubd transcript abundance. The LEW.1WR1 Ubd promoter allele leads to higher inducible levels of UBD than that of LEW.1W or WF. Using zinc-finger nucleases , we deleted a segment of the LEW.1WR1 Ubd gene and eliminated its expression. UBD-deficient rats show substantially reduced diabetes after viral infection. Complementary studies show that there may be another diabetes gene in addition to Ubd in the Iddm37 interval. These data prove that Ubd is a diabetes susceptibility gene, providing insight into the interplay of multiple genes and environmental factors in T1D susceptibility.

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a T cell-mediated disease. It is strongly associated with susceptibility haplotypes within the major histocompatibility complex, but this association accounts for an estimated 50% of susceptibility. Other studies have identified as many as 50 additional susceptibility loci, but the effect of most is very modest (odds ratio (OR) β13A, is strongly associated with T1D (OR >5) and that deletion of Vβ13+ T cells prevents diabetes. A role for the TCR is also suspected in NOD mice, but TCR regions have not been associated with human T1D. To investigate this disparity, we tested the hypothesisin silicothat previous studies of human T1D genetics were underpowered to detect MHC-contingent TCR susceptibility. We show that stratifying by MHC markedly increases statistical power to detect potential TCR susceptibility alleles. We suggest that the TCR regions are viable candidates for T1D susceptibility genes, could account for “missing heritability,” and could be targets for prevention.

Do oil shocks matter for exchange rates? This paper addresses this question based on data on real and nominal exchange rates as well as an exchange market pressure index for 44 advanced and emerging countries. We identify three structural shocks (oil supply, global demand, and oil specific demand) which raise the real oil price and analyse their effect on individual exchange rates. Contrary to the predictions of the theoretical literature, we find no evidence that exchange rates of oil exporters systematically appreciate against those of oil importers after shocks raising the real oil price. However, oil exporters experience significant appreciation pressures following an oil demand shock, which they tend to counter by accumulating foreign exchange reserves. Results for general commodity exporters are similar, showing minor differences compared with oil exporters. JEL Classification: F31, Q43

There is already a substantial literature documenting the fact that low yield currencies typically appreciate during times of global financial stress and behave as safe havens. The main objective of this paper is to find out what the fundamentals of safe haven currencies are. We analyse a large panel of 52 currencies in advanced and emerging countries over almost 25 years of data. We find that only a few factors are robustly associated to a safe haven status, most notably the net foreign asset position, an indicator of external vulnerability, and to a lesser extent the absolute size of the stock market, an indicator of market size and development. The interest rate spread against the US is significant only for advanced countries, whose currencies are subject to carry trade. More generally, we find that it is hard to predict what currencies would do when global risk aversion is high, as estimates are imprecise and often not stable or robust. This suggests caution in over-interpreting exchange rate movements during financial crises. JEL Classification: E44, F31, G15

Using count-data techniques, this article studies the determinants of currency choice in the issuance of foreign-currency-denominated bonds. In particular, we investigate whether bond issuers choose their issuance currency in order to exploit the borrowing-cost savings associated with deviations from uncovered and covered interest parity. Our findings show that the choice of issuance currency is sensitive to deviations from uncovered interest parity but insensitive, in general, to deviations from covered interest parity. Furthermore, the influence of deviations from uncovered interest parity is stronger for financial issuers than for nonfinancial issuers. In as much as the issuance of foreign-currency-denominated bonds affects the relative international standing of world currencies, one implication of these findings is that monetary policy, through its influence on nominal interest rates, has a greater impact on the internationalization of currencies than has been previously accounted for.

The main purpose of this study was to characterize the practices of sleep physicians prescribing positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy to patients with sleep-disordered breathing. The main outcome measures were to determine the indications for initiation of PAP therapy, the type of PAP devices prescribed, and the interfaces that were commonly used and to assess the physicians' familiarity with the newer PAP devices.An anonymous web-based survey with 20 questions aimed at determining point-prevalence estimates of physician practices and physician knowledge.None.None.196 physician responses (24% response rate) were analyzed. Sleep physicians reported that obstructive sleep apnea was the most common diagnosis following sleep studies, but none reported central sleep apnea as a primary diagnosis. Physicians' prescription practices for PAP therapy and their perceptions of indications and contraindications of devices varied widely. Thirty percent of sleep physicians did not prescribe auto-PAP devices, and such devices constituted only 4% of all PAP devices prescribed. While many physicians took measures to help improve compliance--such as prescribing heated humidifiers (67%)--many did not insist on compliance monitoring (49%). Physicians who interpreted more than 20 sleep studies per month were more knowledgeable regarding auto-PAP devices and were more likely to prescribe such devices (P.05).Sleep physicians' practices and perceptions in prescribing PAP therapy varied widely, although the indication for prescribing PAP therapy was homogenous.

This paper studies the impact of external factors on daily exchange rates and short-term interest rates in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland during the period August 1997 – May 2001. I find that neither exchange rates nor interest rates are influenced by short-term German interest rates. Nevertheless, I show that shocks to emerging-market risk premia had a significant impact on exchange rates in all three Central and Eastern European count-ries and on interest rates in the Czech Republic. In addition, studying the second moment of the variables, I demonstrate that Czech and Polish exchange rates were affected by ‘vo- latility contagion’ coming from emerging markets. I find also some partial support for the ‘volatility contagion’ hypothesis on Czech interest rates. These findings shed some doubts on the alleged theoretical ability of a floating exchange rate – such as in the Czech Repub-lic – to absorb external shocks and insulate a country's domestic monetary policy comple-tely. However, the spill-over effect on Czech interest rates might be explained by the ‘ma-naged’ nature of the exchange rate regime, thereby re-establishing some credibility of the theory.

Metal plating with chromium and nickel has secured an occupational relation with asthma for which an allergic basis has been postulated but not confirmed. A worker who developed de novo asthma after plating with nickel and chromium but not other metals was subjected to inhalational challenge and immunoserologic tests to evaluate this association. He developed acute asthma to chromium sulfate and a biphasic asthma-like response to nickel sulfate. Radioimmunoassays incorporating the challenge materials revealed specific IgE antibodies to the provocative agents but not to another metal, gold, which he could tolerate. The findings support the postulates that bronchial reactivity can be specifically induced by fumes of metallic salts, even in a previously nonallergic individual, and that an IgE type I immunopathogenic mechanism is involved.