Given that sustainable investing constitutes a major force across global financial markets, in 2016 Morningstar began reporting Morningstar Sustainability scores. We used the 2016, 2017 and 2018 scores to study the effects of socially responsible investments (SRI) on European equity fund performance. Sustainability scores impacted positively on performance, which was consistent with the idea that the mutual funds invested in companies with better scores generate better risk-adjusted and not-risk adjusted performance. We also tested the relation on mutual fund flows and risk. The sustainability score in the previous year is significant on the flows, so higher-rated funds receive a larger volume of funds. In terms of risk, the level of sustainability is negatively related to the value at risk (VaR) of the fund, supporting that higher scored mutual funds offer better protection against extreme losses.

Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs), including exosomes, are enriched in multiomics information mirroring their parental cells. They have been investigated in health and disease and utilised in several applications from drug discovery to diagnostics. In disease diagnostics, sEVs can be sampled via a blood draw, enabling the convenient liquid biopsy of the tissue they originate from. However, few applications with sEVs have been translated into clinical practice. We developed a Nanoparticle EXOsome Sensing (NEXOS) technology, for the ultrasensitive and multi-dimensional detection of sEVs. NEXOS comprises two methods: a novel nanoelectronics method, E-NEXOS, and a high-throughput optical detection method, O-NEXOS. Both methods share the same steps for the immunocapture and antibody-labelling of sEVs and can be combined to derive differentiated detection parameters. As a proof of concept, we show the analytical detection and sensitivity of these methods in detecting pre-prepared cancer cell-derived CD9+CD81+ and CD9+HER2+ sEVs. Both sEV populations were diluted in PBS and spiked in processed plasma. We also provide a novel approach for the determination of target sEVs (TEVs), target epitopes in sEVs (TEPs), and epitopes per target sEV, as yet unseen from current and emerging technologies. Further, we demonstrate the higher sensitivity of O-NEXOS compared to the gold standard techniques, as well as demonstrating that E-NEXOS possesses commensurate sensitivity whilst only being powered by 36 nanogap-based sensors per nanochip. Finally, this manuscript lays the groundwork for a scalable electronics miniaturization of E-NEXOS nanochip with millions of nanogap-based sensors for the translation of NEXOS into standard clinical practice.

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We studied the relationship between the mutual fund’s expenses and their profitability, as well as their ability to predict future performance. We used regressions in panel data with a sample of equity mutual funds of the eurozone area from 2003 to 2014. We concluded that expenses are an important determinant of performance in the eurozone and we show evidence that there is, in the short-term, a negative relationship between the profitability of the year and the level of expenses of the fund. Furthermore, there is also a relationship between the profitability of mutual funds with their level of expenses after one and three years. On the other hand, by applying the quantile regression, it seems clear that the funds with the highest returns have a positive relationship with the level of expenses.

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