Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

The Inflation Expectations of Firms: What Do They Look Like, are They Accurate, and Do They Matter?

The purpose of this paper is to answer the three questions in the title. Using a large monthly survey of businesses, we investigate the inflation expectations and uncertainties of firms. We document that, in the aggregate, firm inflation expectations are very similar to the predictions of professional forecasters for national inflation statistics, despite a somewhat greater heterogeneity of expectations that we attribute to the idiosyncratic cost structure firms face. We also show that firm inflation expectations bear little in common with the "prices in general" expectations reported by households. Next we show that, during our three-year sample, firm inflation expectations appear to be unbiased predictors of their year-ahead observed (perceived) inflation. We demonstrate that firms know what they don't know - that the accuracy of firm inflation expectations are significantly and positively related to their uncertainty about future inflation. And lastly, we demonstrate, by way of a cross-sectional Phillips curve, that firm inflation expectations are a useful addition to a policymaker's information set. We show that firms' inflation perceptions depend (importantly) on their expectations for inflation and their perception of firm-level slack

The Phytogeography of Nebraska

From the preface we learn that this work is the result of nearly five years of active study of the floral covering of Nebraska, carried on by the members of the Botanical Seminar in the Botanical Survey of the State of Nebraska. The systematic study of the vegetation of Nebraska was begun by Dr. Bessey in 1884, and has since been carried on by him and his students, all previous collecting having been more or less desultory and unreliable. The Botanical Survey was organized in 1892, and its work has been directed to the collecting of specimens and observations for a series of reports in which the floral covering of the state should be treated from the phytogeographical standpoint and for a series of monographs of the flora of Nebraska. A beginning has been made by the publication of three parts of the flora of the state, and the present work is the first part of the first series. The authors realize that so much yet remains to be done in many directions that a complete phytogeography of the state will be impossible for many years to come, but the work of the survey has progressed far enough to enable them to present the general facts of its phytogeography in an adequate manner and to deal with details in many of the more important subjects

A System of Nomenclature for Phytogeography

By Frederic E. Clement