Subjective Mortality Hazard Shocks and the Adjustment of Consumption Expenditures

30 Halama

The geography of recent genetic ancestry across Europe

The recent genealogical history of human populations is a complex mosaic formed by individual migration, large-scale population movements, and other demographic events. Population genomics datasets can provide a window into this recent history, as rare traces of recent shared genetic ancestry are detectable due to long segments of shared genomic material. We make use of genomic data for 2,257 Europeans (the POPRES dataset) to conduct one of the first surveys of recent genealogical ancestry over the past three thousand years at a continental scale. We detected 1.9 million shared genomic segments, and used the lengths of these to infer the distribution of shared ancestors across time and geography. We find that a pair of modern Europeans living in neighboring populations share around 10-50 genetic common ancestors from the last 1500 years, and upwards of 500 genetic ancestors from the previous 1000 years. These numbers drop off exponentially with geographic distance, but since genetic ancestry is rare, individuals from opposite ends of Europe are still expected to share millions of common genealogical ancestors over the last 1000 years. There is substantial regional variation in the number of shared genetic ancestors: especially high numbers of common ancestors between many eastern populations likely date to the Slavic and/or Hunnic expansions, while much lower levels of common ancestry in the Italian and Iberian peninsulas may indicate weaker demographic effects of Germanic expansions into these areas and/or more stably structured populations. Recent shared ancestry in modern Europeans is ubiquitous, and clearly shows the impact of both small-scale migration and large historical events. Population genomic datasets have considerable power to uncover recent demographic history, and will allow a much fuller picture of the close genealogical kinship of individuals across the world.Comment: Full size figures available from http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/~plralph/research.html; or html version at http://ralphlab.usc.edu/ibd/ibd-paper/ibd-writeup.xhtm

Reconstructing Druze population history

The Druze are an aggregate of communities in the Levant and Near East living almost exclusively in the mountains of Syria, Lebanon and Israel whose ~1000 year old religion formally opposes mixed marriages and conversions. Despite increasing interest in genetics of the population structure of the Druze, their population history remains unknown. We investigated the genetic relationships between Israeli Druze and both modern and ancient populations. We evaluated our findings in light of three hypotheses purporting to explain Druze history that posit Arabian, Persian or mixed Near Eastern-Levantine roots. The biogeographical analysis localised proto-Druze to the mountainous regions of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq and southeast Syria and their descendants clustered along a trajectory between these two regions. The mixed Near Eastern-Middle Eastern localisation of the Druze, shown using both modern and ancient DNA data, is distinct from that of neighbouring Syrians, Palestinians and most of the Lebanese, who exhibit a high affinity to the Levant. Druze biogeographic affinity, migration patterns, time of emergence and genetic similarity to Near Eastern populations are highly suggestive of Armenian-Turkish ancestries for the proto-Druze

The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Genome-wide analyses for personality traits identify six genomic loci and show correlations with psychiatric disorders

Personality is influenced by genetic and environmental factors1 and associated with mental health. However, the underlying genetic determinants are largely unknown. We identified six genetic loci, including five novel loci2,3, significantly associated with personality traits in a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (N = 123,132–260,861). Of these genomewide significant loci, extraversion was associated with variants in WSCD2 and near PCDH15, and neuroticism with variants on chromosome 8p23.1 and in L3MBTL2. We performed a principal component analysis to extract major dimensions underlying genetic variations among five personality traits and six psychiatric disorders (N = 5,422–18,759). The first genetic dimension separated personality traits and psychiatric disorders, except that neuroticism and openness to experience were clustered with the disorders. High genetic correlations were found between extraversion and attention-deficit– hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and between openness and schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The second genetic dimension was closely aligned with extraversion–introversion and grouped neuroticism with internalizing psychopathology (e.g., depression or anxiety)

Extensive Copy-Number Variation of Young Genes across Stickleback Populations

MM received funding from the Max Planck innovation funds for this project. PGDF was supported by a Marie Curie European Reintegration Grant (proposal nr 270891). CE was supported by German Science Foundation grants (DFG, EI 841/4-1 and EI 841/6-1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Lakota Times Indian Country Today Cumulative Index: January 1991 - December 1995

This index provides subject access to the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today cumulating the annual indexes covering 1991 through 1995. The Lakota Times changed its title to Indian Country Today in October, 1992. In 1995, Indian Country Today began publishing a separate Southwest edition. This index covers the Northern Plains edition only

It’s not the size, it’s the relationship: from ‘small states’ to asymmetry

Debate about the definition of “small state” has produced more fragmentation than consensus, even as the literature has demonstrated its subjects’ roles in joining international organizations propagating norms, executing creative diplomacy, influencing allies, avoiding and joining conflicts, and building peace. However, work on small states has struggled to identify commonalities in these states’ international relations, to cumulate knowledge, or to impact broader IR theory. This paper advocates a changed conceptual and definitional framework. Analysis of “small states” should pivot to examine the dynamics of the asymmetrical relationships in which these states are engaged. Instead of seeking an overall metric for size as the relevant variable—falling victim in a different way Dahl’s “lump-of-power fallacy,” we can recognize the multifaceted, variegated nature of power, whether in war or peacetime

A simple measure with complex determinants: investigation of the correlates of self-rated health in older men and women from three continents

Self-rated health is commonly employed in research studies that seek to assess the health status of older individuals. Perceptions of health are, however, influenced by individual and societal level factors that may differ within and between countries. This study investigates levels of self-rated health (SRH) and correlates of SRH among older adults in Australia, United States of America (USA), Japan and South Korea. We conclude that when examining correlates of SRH, the similarities are greater than the differences between countries. There are however differences in levels of SRH which are not fully accounted for by the health correlates. Broad generalizations about styles of responding are not helpful for understanding these differences, which appear to be country- and possibly cohort-specific. When using SRH to characterize the health status of older people, it is important to consider earlier life experiences of cohorts as well as national and individual factors in later life. Further research is required to understand the complex societal influences on perceptions of health.The Australian data on which this research is based were drawn from several Australian longitudinal studies including: the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ALSA), the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health (ALSWH) and the Personality And Total Health Through Life Study (PATH). These studies were pooled and harmonized for the Dynamic Analyses to Optimize Ageing (DYNOPTA) project. DYNOPTA was funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant (# 410215)

Functional impact and evolution of a novel human polymorphic inversion that disrupts a gene and creates a fusion transcript

Since the discovery of chromosomal inversions almost 100 years ago, how they are maintained in natural populations has been a highly debated issue. One of the hypotheses is that inversion breakpoints could affect genes and modify gene expression levels, although evidence of this came only from laboratory mutants. In humans, a few inversions have been shown to associate with expression differences, but in all cases the molecular causes have remained elusive. Here, we have carried out a complete characterization of a new human polymorphic inversion and determined that it is specific to East Asian populations. In addition, we demonstrate that it disrupts the ZNF257 gene and, through the translocation of the first exon and regulatory sequences, creates a previously nonexistent fusion transcript, which together are associated to expression changes in several other genes. Finally, we investigate the potential evolutionary and phenotypic consequences of the inversion, and suggest that it is probably deleterious. This is therefore the first example of a natural polymorphic inversion that has position effects and creates a new chimeric gene, contributing to answer an old question in evolutionary biology