This report explores key considerations in relation to adopting a dynamic discount rate funding approach and the impacts of doing so in a range of areas, including funding volatility, investment strategy and end game objectives. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of this approach from the perspective of a range of stakeholders and the challenges that need overcoming in order to fully implement and support the approach, for example data challenges and the new skills required in the industry. The report includes sample modelling to highlight the practical issues that arise when adopting this approach. It describes a step-by-step approach for assessing the risks to be considered when determining an appropriate level of assets to provide funding for a sample set of pension scheme cash flows, as summarised in the table below.

It also considers how a dynamic discount rate approach fits within the proposed future funding regulations. Finally, the report puts forward recommendations for the IFoA, Scheme Actuaries and TPR.

Consequences of schemes adopting a dynamic discount rate approach could include very different investment strategies with investment in a wider pool of assets, less use of leveraged Liability Driven Investment, fewer schemes targeting buy-out as their end game strategy and an increase in technical work for actuaries in advising on the optimisation of asset and liability cash flows.

Tight focusing with very small f-numbers is necessary to achieve the highest at-focus irradiances. However, tight focusing imposes strong demands on precise target positioning in-focus to achieve the highest on-target irradiance. We describe several near-infrared, visible, ultraviolet and soft and hard X-ray diagnostics employed in a ∼1022 W/cm2 laser–plasma experiment. We used nearly 10 J total energy femtosecond laser pulses focused into an approximately 1.3-μm focal spot on 5–20 μm thick stainless-steel targets. We discuss the applicability of these diagnostics to determine the best in-focus target position with approximately 5 μm accuracy (i.e., around half of the short Rayleigh length) and show that several diagnostics (in particular, 3$\omega$ reflection and on-axis hard X-rays) can ensure this accuracy. We demonstrated target positioning within several micrometers from the focus, ensuring over 80% of the ideal peak laser intensity on-target. Our approach is relatively fast (it requires 10–20 laser shots) and does not rely on the coincidence of low-power and high-power focal planes.

Accumulating evidence suggests that deficits of visual selective attention may already occur at early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) like the prodromal phase of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Our study investigated visual selective attention in amnestic MCI and probable AD patients compared to healthy elderly controls. Groups were matched for age, gender and education. In combination with Bundesen's ‘theory of visual attention’, two mathematically independent and quantitative parameter estimates were derived from a partial report of briefly presented letter arrays: top-down control of attentional selection, representing task-related attentional weighting for prioritizing relevant visual objects, and spatial distribution of attentional weights across the left and right hemifield.

Compared to controls, MCI patients showed significantly reduced top-down controlled selection which further deteriorated in AD subjects. Moreover, attentional weighting was significantly unbalanced across hemifields in MCI and tended to be more lateralized in AD. The majority of patients was biased to the left. Across MCI and AD patients, carriers of the apolipoprotein E ɛ4 allele (ApoE4) revealed a leftward spatial bias. The leftward bias was the more pronounced the younger the ApoE4-positive patients and the earlier disease onset. ApoE4-negative subjects showed balanced attentional weighting.

These results indicate that impaired top-down control may be linked to early dysfunction of fronto-parietal cortico-cortical networks. Accompanying, an early interhemispheric asymmetry in temporo-parietal cortical interactions might cause a pathological spatial bias. As the inheritance of ApoE4 is associated with asymmetric parietal metabolism, a pathological spatial bias may function as early cognitive marker for detecting probable AD subjects.

Mental health service delivery in the general health care sector is restricted with regard to understanding the magnitude and impact of mental illness in the medically ill (co-morbidity), as well as the significance of current mental health service delivery. A new model in development in the framework of a Biomed2 grant is presented. It consists of case-finding through complexity of hospital care prediction (COMPRI) followed by an integral health service needs assessment (INTERMED). It might serve to develop a more structural relation with the general health care sector for the management of mentally co-morbid high utilizing patients.

Ammoniation of montmorillonites pillared with polyhydroxo-complexes of Al was performed in flow conditions at 773–1073 K and monitored by IR spectroscopy. Interaction of the clay with ammonia revealed exchange of terminal and bridging -OH groups by NH2-, NH- and N- species depending on the reaction temperature. Amination begins at 773 K while formation of NH groups starts at 873 K. Transformation of NH- into N-species occurs at 973 K. A mechanism for the ammoniation reaction is proposed and the series of the relative reactivity of OH groups was established: Si–OH > Mg–OH–Mg > Al–OH–Mg > Al–OH–Al. This series was rationalized in terms of accessibility of the OH groups.

Deglaciation chronologies for some sectors of former ice sheets are relatively poorly constrained because of the paucity of features or materials traditionally used to constrain the timing of deglaciation. In areas without good deglaciation varve chronologies and/or without widespread occurrence of material that indicates the start of earliest organic radiocarbon accumulations suitable for radiocarbon dating, typically only general patterns and chronologies of deglaciation have been deduced. However, mid-latitude ice sheets that had warm-based conditions close to their margins often produced distinctive deglaciation landform assemblages, including eskers, deltas, meltwater channels and aligned lineation systems. Because these features were formed or significantly altered during the last glaciation, boulder or bedrock samples from them have the potential to yield reliable deglaciation ages using terrestrial cosmogenic nuclides (TCN) for exposure age dating. Here we present the results of a methodological study designed to examine the consistency of TCN-based deglaciation ages from a range of deglaciation landforms at a site in northern Norway. The strong coherence between exposure ages across several landforms indicates great potential for using TCN techniques on features such as eskers, deltas and meltwater channels to enhance the temporal resolution of ice-sheet deglaciation chronologies over a range of spatial scales.

Lateral moraines constructed along west to east sloping outlet glaciers from mountain centred, pre-last glacial maximum (LGM) ice fields of limited extent remain largely preserved in the northern Swedish landscape despite overriding by continental ice sheets, most recently during the last glacial. From field evidence, including geomorphological relationships and a detailed weathering profile including a buried soil, we have identified seven such lateral moraines that were overridden by the expansion and growth of the Fennoscandian ice sheet. Cosmogenic 10Be and 26Al exposure ages of 19 boulders from the crests of these moraines, combined with the field evidence, are correlated to episodes of moraine stabilisation, Pleistocene surface weathering, and glacial overriding. The last deglaciation event dominates the exposure ages, with 10Be and 26Al data derived from 15 moraine boulders indicating regional deglaciation 9600 ± 200 yr ago. This is the most robust numerical age for the final deglaciation of the Fennoscandian ice sheet. The older apparent exposure ages of the remaining boulders (14,600–26,400 yr) can be explained by cosmogenic nuclide inheritance from previous exposure of the moraine crests during the last glacial cycle. Their potential exposure history, based on local glacial chronologies, indicates that the current moraine morphologies formed at the latest during marine oxygen isotope stage 5. Although numerous deglaciation ages were obtained, this study demonstrates that numerical ages need to be treated with caution and assessed in light of the geomorphological evidence indicating moraines are not necessarily formed by the event that dominates the cosmogenic nuclide data.