A model for geographical variation in health and total life expectancy

This paper develops a joint approach to life and health expectancy based on 2001 UK Census data for limiting long term illness and general health status, and on registered death occurrences in 2001. The model takes account of the interdependence of different outcomes (e.g. ill health and mortality) as well as spatial correlation in their patterns. A particular focus is on the proportionality assumption or ‘multiplicative model’ whereby separate age and area effects multiply to produce age-area mortality rates. Alternative non-proportional models are developed and shown to be more parsimonious as well as more appropriate to actual area-age interdependence. The application involves mortality and health status in the 33 London Boroughs.disease burden, healthy life expectancy, life tables, proportionality assumption, spatial effects

The insignificant evolution of the richness-mass relation of galaxy clusters

We analysed the richness--mass scaling of 23 very massive clusters at $0.15<z<0.55$ with homogenously measured weak-lensing masses and richnesses within a fixed aperture of $0.5$ Mpc radius. We found that the richness--mass scaling is very tight (the scatter is $<0.09$ dex with 90 \% probability) and independent of cluster evolutionary status and morphology. This implies a close association between infall and evolution of dark matter and galaxies in the central region of clusters. We also found that the evolution of the richness-mass intercept is minor at most, and, given the minor mass evolution across the studied redshift range, the richness evolution of individual massive clusters also turns out to be very small. Finally, it was paramount to account for the cluster mass function and the selection function. Ignoring them would led to biases larger than the (otherwise quoted) errors. Our study benefits from: a) weak-lensing masses instead of proxy-based masses thereby removing the ambiguity between a real trend and one induced by an accounted evolution of the used mass proxy; b) the use of projected masses that simplify the statistical analysis thereby not requiring consideration of the unknown covariance induced by the cluster orientation/triaxiality; c) the use of aperture masses as they are free of the pseudo-evolution of mass definitions anchored to the evolving density of the Universe; d) a proper accounting of the sample selection function and of the Malmquist-like effect induced by the cluster mass function; e) cosmological simulations for the computation of the cluster mass function, its evolution, and the mass growth of each individual cluster.Comment: A&A, in press. Fixed pdf generation proble

Love, Toil, and Health Insurance: Why American Husbands Retire When They Do

The provision of health insurance has previously been shown to be an important determinant of retirement timing among older Americans, but the existing literature has largely ignored some aspects of the inter-spousal dependence of health insurance benefits. Specifically, the literature examines only how retirement may affect the health insurance available to the potential retiree but not how it might affect a spouse's options. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, I find that the impact a husband's retirement might have on a wife's health insurance options has a statistically significant impact on a husband's rate of retirement that is independent of considerations of his own health insurance options. In households where the wife is the only one at risk of losing affordable health insurance if the husband retires, the husband is 30 percent less likely to retire than if neither spouse is at risk (a five percentage point decrease in the retirement rate). Based on these findings, prior research is missing one avenue that changes to the Medicare eligibility age and health insurance policy changes through the Affordable Care Act might impact the labor supply of older workers.Retirement, health insurance, household decision-making

The Lasting Effects of Crime: The Relationship of Discovered Methamphetamine Laboratories and Home Values

This study estimates a household’s willingness to pay to avoid the stigma of crime while minimizing concerns of omitted variable bias. By assuming methamphetamine producers locate approximately at random within a narrowly defined neighborhood, this study is able to use hedonic estimation methods to estimate the impact of the discovery of a methamphetamine laboratory on the home values near that location. Specifically, the analysis designates those closest to the site as the treated, while those slightly farther away act as the comparison group. The discovery of a methamphetamine laboratory has a significant effect on the property values of those homes close to the location that peaks from six to 12 months after each lab’s discovery. The estimates found in this study range from a decrease in sale prices of ten to nineteen percent in the year following a laboratory’s discovery compared to the prices for homes that are farther away but still in the same neighborhood. Surprisingly, the impact does not appear to depend on intensity as both the discovery of a second lab and being very close to the discovered lab do not adversely impact home values.Location choice, crime valuation, methamphetamine, housing prices

Hypothesis exploration with visualization of variance.

BackgroundThe Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics (CNP) at UCLA was an investigation into the biological bases of traits such as memory and response inhibition phenotypes-to explore whether they are linked to syndromes including ADHD, Bipolar disorder, and Schizophrenia. An aim of the consortium was in moving from traditional categorical approaches for psychiatric syndromes towards more quantitative approaches based on large-scale analysis of the space of human variation. It represented an application of phenomics-wide-scale, systematic study of phenotypes-to neuropsychiatry research.ResultsThis paper reports on a system for exploration of hypotheses in data obtained from the LA2K, LA3C, and LA5C studies in CNP. ViVA is a system for exploratory data analysis using novel mathematical models and methods for visualization of variance. An example of these methods is called VISOVA, a combination of visualization and analysis of variance, with the flavor of exploration associated with ANOVA in biomedical hypothesis generation. It permits visual identification of phenotype profiles-patterns of values across phenotypes-that characterize groups. Visualization enables screening and refinement of hypotheses about variance structure of sets of phenotypes.ConclusionsThe ViVA system was designed for exploration of neuropsychiatric hypotheses by interdisciplinary teams. Automated visualization in ViVA supports 'natural selection' on a pool of hypotheses, and permits deeper understanding of the statistical architecture of the data. Large-scale perspective of this kind could lead to better neuropsychiatric diagnostics

Adding content reporting to DSpace

This poster presents a content reporting add-on to DSpace, developed for AgResearch Ltd by the IRR support team at the University of Waikato's Information Technology Services Division. We outline the motivation for developing this add-on, give a high-level description of its implementation and report initial insights on its reception and uptake

The Nature of the Church in Theological Interpretation: Culture, Volk, and Mission

In a 2012 article on Bultmann and Augustine, R. W. L. Moberly argued that the church should be understood as a “plausibility structure” for faith and thus a presupposition for the interpretation of Scripture. My response to him in 2014 addressed misinterpretations of Bultmann but did not speak to the central issue of the church as a presupposition. The present article rectifies this omission by interrogating the meaning of the church in the present discussion of “theological interpretation of Scripture” (TIS), which largely views the church as a distinct culture. The church-as-culture model bears an important resemblance to the church-as-Volk model that was dominant during the period of the church struggle in Germany in the 1930s. Bultmann developed his concept of the church as an eschatological community in direct contrast to the church-as-Volk idea. If the church is in some sense a presupposition for theological interpretation, then we first have to ask what we mean by “church,” and some answers to that question may be theologically problematic

The General Geology of the Cardwell Mining District

The Cardwell Mining District is part of the greater Whitehall Mining District. The district is situated about four miles to the east and northeast of Whitehall in the southern end of the Bull Mountains which are near the Continental Divide. The first reported production was in 1896 after the dis­covery of the Mayflower Mine. Mining has been carried on in­termittently and on a small scale since that time