11 results
How should we measure Americans’ perceptions of socio-economic mobility?
- Lawton K. Swan, John R. Chambers, Martin Heesacker, Sondre S. Nero
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- Journal:
- Judgment and Decision Making / Volume 12 / Issue 5 / September 2017
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 January 2023, pp. 507-515
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Several scholars have suggested that Americans’ (distorted) beliefs about the rate of upward social mobility in the United States may affect political judgment and decision-making outcomes. In this article, we consider the psychometric properties of two different questionnaire items that researchers have used to measure these subjective perceptions. Namely, we report the results of a new set of experiments (N = 2,167 U.S. MTurkers) in which we compared the question wording employed by Chambers, Swan and Heesacker (2015) with the question wording employed by Davidai and Gilovich (2015). Each (independent) research team had prompted similar groups of respondents to estimate the percentage of Americans born into the bottom of the income distribution who improved their socio-economic standing by adulthood, yet the two teams reached ostensibly irreconcilable conclusions: that Americans tend to underestimate (Chambers et al.) and overestimate (Davidai & Gilovich) the true rate of upward social mobility in the U.S. First, we successfully reproduced both contradictory results. Next, we isolated and experimentally manipulated one salient difference between the two questions’ response-option formats: asking participants to divide the population into either (a) “thirds” (tertiles) or (b) “20%” segments (quintiles). Inverting this tertile-quintile factor significantly altered both teams’ findings, suggesting that these measures are inappropriate (too vulnerable to question-wording and item-formulation artifacts) for use in studies of perceptual (in)accuracy. Finally, we piloted a new question for measuring subjective perceptions of social mobility. We conclude with tentative recommendations for researchers who wish to model the causes and consequences of Americans’ mobility-related beliefs.
Still no compelling evidence that Americans overestimate upward socio-economic mobility rates: Reply to Davidai & Gilovich (2018)
- Sondre S. Nero, Lawton K. Swan, John R. Chambers, Martin Heesacker
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- Journal:
- Judgment and Decision Making / Volume 13 / Issue 3 / May 2018
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 January 2023, pp. 305-308
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Davidai and Gilovich (2018) contend that (a) Americans tend to think about their nation’s income distribution in terms of quintiles (fifths), and (b) when Americans’ perceptions of socio-economic mobility rates are measured properly (e.g., by asking online survey respondents to guess upward-mobility rates across quintiles), a trend of overestimation (too much optimism concerning the number of people who manage to transcend poverty) will emerge. In this reply, we hail Davidai and Gilovich’s new data as novel, important, and relevant to the former (a), but we doubt that they can support the latter (b) claim about population-level (in)accuracy. Namely, we note that even if mobility-rate perceptions could be measured perfectly, inferences about the accuracy of those perceptions still depend on a particular comparator—a point-estimate of the "true" rate of upward social mobility in the U.S. against which survey respondents’ guesses are evaluated—that is itself an error-prone estimate. Applying different established comparators to survey respondents’ guesses changes both the direction and magnitude of previously observed overestimation effects. We conclude with a challenge: researchers who wish to compute the average distance between socio-economic perceptions and socio-economic reality must first select and justify a fair comparator.
The GLEAM 4-Jy (G4Jy) Sample: I. Definition and the catalogue
- Part of
- Sarah V. White, Thomas M. O Franzen, Chris J. Riseley, O. Ivy Wong, Anna D. Kapińska, Natasha Hurley-Walker, Joseph R. Callingham, Kshitij Thorat, Chen Wu, Paul Hancock, Richard W. Hunstead, Nick Seymour, Jesse Swan, Randall Wayth, John Morgan, Rajan Chhetri, Carole Jackson, Stuart Weston, Martin Bell, Bi-Qing For, B. M. Gaensler, Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, André Offringa, Lister Staveley-Smith
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- Journal:
- Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia / Volume 37 / 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 June 2020, e018
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The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) has observed the entire southern sky (Declination, $\delta< 30^{\circ}$ ) at low radio frequencies, over the range 72–231MHz. These observations constitute the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA (GLEAM) Survey, and we use the extragalactic catalogue (EGC) (Galactic latitude, $|b| >10^{\circ}$ ) to define the GLEAM 4-Jy (G4Jy) Sample. This is a complete sample of the ‘brightest’ radio sources ( $S_{\textrm{151\,MHz}}>4\,\text{Jy}$ ), the majority of which are active galactic nuclei with powerful radio jets. Crucially, low-frequency observations allow the selection of such sources in an orientation-independent way (i.e. minimising the bias caused by Doppler boosting, inherent in high-frequency surveys). We then use higher-resolution radio images, and information at other wavelengths, to morphologically classify the brightest components in GLEAM. We also conduct cross-checks against the literature and perform internal matching, in order to improve sample completeness (which is estimated to be $>95.5$ %). This results in a catalogue of 1863 sources, making the G4Jy Sample over 10 times larger than that of the revised Third Cambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources (3CRR; $S_{\textrm{178\,MHz}}>10.9\,\text{Jy}$ ). Of these G4Jy sources, 78 are resolved by the MWA (Phase-I) synthesised beam ( $\sim2$ arcmin at 200MHz), and we label 67% of the sample as ‘single’, 26% as ‘double’, 4% as ‘triple’, and 3% as having ‘complex’ morphology at $\sim1\,\text{GHz}$ (45 arcsec resolution). We characterise the spectral behaviour of these objects in the radio and find that the median spectral index is $\alpha=-0.740 \pm 0.012$ between 151 and 843MHz, and $\alpha=-0.786 \pm 0.006$ between 151MHz and 1400MHz (assuming a power-law description, $S_{\nu} \propto \nu^{\alpha}$ ), compared to $\alpha=-0.829 \pm 0.006$ within the GLEAM band. Alongside this, our value-added catalogue provides mid-infrared source associations (subject to 6” resolution at 3.4 $\mu$ m) for the radio emission, as identified through visual inspection and thorough checks against the literature. As such, the G4Jy Sample can be used as a reliable training set for cross-identification via machine-learning algorithms. We also estimate the angular size of the sources, based on their associated components at $\sim1\,\text{GHz}$ , and perform a flux density comparison for 67 G4Jy sources that overlap with 3CRR. Analysis of multi-wavelength data, and spectral curvature between 72MHz and 20GHz, will be presented in subsequent papers, and details for accessing all G4Jy overlays are provided at https://github.com/svw26/G4Jy.
The GLEAM 4-Jy (G4Jy) Sample: II. Host galaxy identification for individual sources
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- Sarah V. White, Thomas M. O. Franzen, Chris J. Riseley, O. Ivy Wong, Anna D. Kapińska, Natasha Hurley-Walker, Joseph R. Callingham, Kshitij Thorat, Chen Wu, Paul Hancock, Richard W. Hunstead, Nick Seymour, Jesse Swan, Randall Wayth, John Morgan, Rajan Chhetri, Carole Jackson, Stuart Weston, Martin Bell, B. M. Gaensler, Melanie Johnston–Hollitt, André Offringa, Lister Staveley–Smith
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- Journal:
- Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia / Volume 37 / 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 June 2020, e017
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The entire southern sky (Declination, $\delta< 30^{\circ}$ ) has been observed using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), which provides radio imaging of $\sim$ 2 arcmin resolution at low frequencies (72–231 MHz). This is the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA (GLEAM) Survey, and we have previously used a combination of visual inspection, cross-checks against the literature, and internal matching to identify the ‘brightest’ radio-sources ( $S_{\mathrm{151\,MHz}}>4$ Jy) in the extragalactic catalogue (Galactic latitude, $|b| >10^{\circ}$ ). We refer to these 1 863 sources as the GLEAM 4-Jy (G4Jy) Sample, and use radio images (of ${\leq}45$ arcsec resolution), and multi-wavelength information, to assess their morphology and identify the galaxy that is hosting the radio emission (where appropriate). Details of how to access all of the overlays used for this work are available at https://github.com/svw26/G4Jy. Alongside this we conduct further checks against the literature, which we document here for individual sources. Whilst the vast majority of the G4Jy Sample are active galactic nuclei with powerful radio-jets, we highlight that it also contains a nebula, two nearby, star-forming galaxies, a cluster relic, and a cluster halo. There are also three extended sources for which we are unable to infer the mechanism that gives rise to the low-frequency emission. In the G4Jy catalogue we provide mid-infrared identifications for 86% of the sources, and flag the remainder as: having an uncertain identification (129 sources), having a faint/uncharacterised mid-infrared host (126 sources), or it being inappropriate to specify a host (2 sources). For the subset of 129 sources, there is ambiguity concerning candidate host-galaxies, and this includes four sources (B0424–728, B0703–451, 3C 198, and 3C 403.1) where we question the existing identification.
The CODATwins Project: The Current Status and Recent Findings of COllaborative Project of Development of Anthropometrical Measures in Twins
- K. Silventoinen, A. Jelenkovic, Y. Yokoyama, R. Sund, M. Sugawara, M. Tanaka, S. Matsumoto, L. H. Bogl, D. L. Freitas, J. A. Maia, J. v. B. Hjelmborg, S. Aaltonen, M. Piirtola, A. Latvala, L. Calais-Ferreira, V. C. Oliveira, P. H. Ferreira, F. Ji, F. Ning, Z. Pang, J. R. Ordoñana, J. F. Sánchez-Romera, L. Colodro-Conde, S. A. Burt, K. L. Klump, N. G. Martin, S. E. Medland, G. W. Montgomery, C. Kandler, T. A. McAdams, T. C. Eley, A. M. Gregory, K. J. Saudino, L. Dubois, M. Boivin, M. Brendgen, G. Dionne, F. Vitaro, A. D. Tarnoki, D. L. Tarnoki, C. M. A. Haworth, R. Plomin, S. Y. Öncel, F. Aliev, E. Medda, L. Nisticò, V. Toccaceli, J. M. Craig, R. Saffery, S. H. Siribaddana, M. Hotopf, A. Sumathipala, F. Rijsdijk, H.-U. Jeong, T. Spector, M. Mangino, G. Lachance, M. Gatz, D. A. Butler, W. Gao, C. Yu, L. Li, G. Bayasgalan, D. Narandalai, K. P. Harden, E. M. Tucker-Drob, K. Christensen, A. Skytthe, K. O. Kyvik, C. A. Derom, R. F. Vlietinck, R. J. F. Loos, W. Cozen, A. E. Hwang, T. M. Mack, M. He, X. Ding, J. L. Silberg, H. H. Maes, T. L. Cutler, J. L. Hopper, P. K. E. Magnusson, N. L. Pedersen, A. K. Dahl Aslan, L. A. Baker, C. Tuvblad, M. Bjerregaard-Andersen, H. Beck-Nielsen, M. Sodemann, V. Ullemar, C. Almqvist, Q. Tan, D. Zhang, G. E. Swan, R. Krasnow, K. L. Jang, A. Knafo-Noam, D. Mankuta, L. Abramson, P. Lichtenstein, R. F. Krueger, M. McGue, S. Pahlen, P. Tynelius, F. Rasmussen, G. E. Duncan, D. Buchwald, R. P. Corley, B. M. Huibregtse, T. L. Nelson, K. E. Whitfield, C. E. Franz, W. S. Kremen, M. J. Lyons, S. Ooki, I. Brandt, T. S. Nilsen, J. R. Harris, J. Sung, H. A. Park, J. Lee, S. J. Lee, G. Willemsen, M. Bartels, C. E. M. van Beijsterveldt, C. H. Llewellyn, A. Fisher, E. Rebato, A. Busjahn, R. Tomizawa, F. Inui, M. Watanabe, C. Honda, N. Sakai, Y.-M. Hur, T. I. A. Sørensen, D. I. Boomsma, J. Kaprio
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- Journal:
- Twin Research and Human Genetics / Volume 22 / Issue 6 / December 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 31 July 2019, pp. 800-808
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The COllaborative project of Development of Anthropometrical measures in Twins (CODATwins) project is a large international collaborative effort to analyze individual-level phenotype data from twins in multiple cohorts from different environments. The main objective is to study factors that modify genetic and environmental variation of height, body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) and size at birth, and additionally to address other research questions such as long-term consequences of birth size. The project started in 2013 and is open to all twin projects in the world having height and weight measures on twins with information on zygosity. Thus far, 54 twin projects from 24 countries have provided individual-level data. The CODATwins database includes 489,981 twin individuals (228,635 complete twin pairs). Since many twin cohorts have collected longitudinal data, there is a total of 1,049,785 height and weight observations. For many cohorts, we also have information on birth weight and length, own smoking behavior and own or parental education. We found that the heritability estimates of height and BMI systematically changed from infancy to old age. Remarkably, only minor differences in the heritability estimates were found across cultural–geographic regions, measurement time and birth cohort for height and BMI. In addition to genetic epidemiological studies, we looked at associations of height and BMI with education, birth weight and smoking status. Within-family analyses examined differences within same-sex and opposite-sex dizygotic twins in birth size and later development. The CODATwins project demonstrates the feasibility and value of international collaboration to address gene-by-exposure interactions that require large sample sizes and address the effects of different exposures across time, geographical regions and socioeconomic status.
Four - Socialising heritage/socialising legacy
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- By Martin Bashforth, Mike Benson, Tim Boon, Lianne Brigham, Richard Brigham, Karen Brookfield, Peter Brown, Danny Callaghan, Jean-Phillipe Calvin, Richard Courtney, Kathy Cremin, Paul Furness, Helen Graham, Alex Hale, Paddy Hodgkiss, John Lawson, Rebecca Madgin, Paul Manners, David Robinson, John Stanley, Martin Swan, Jennifer Timothy, Rachael Turner
- Edited by Keri Facer, University of Bristol, Kate Pahl, Manchester Metropolitan University
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- Book:
- Valuing Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 05 April 2017, pp 85-106
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Summary
Introduction
At some point during our inaugural research team workshop we started to generate many different ideas about how to increase participation in heritage decision-making. We tried to keep track as the questions flowed by writing recurring words on pieces of paper, to be linked, connected and ordered at some later point. The words were in some ways not surprising. Heritage, of course. Stewardship. Custodianship. Expert. Leadership. Institutions. Ownership. Differences/Tensions. Scale. Personal. Values. Voice (‘+ not heard’, was added in another hand in biro). So far, so predictable. These words, after all, index the big conceptual challenges that have been identified to a greater or lesser extent in heritage policy, practice and its research for the last four decades. Yet as we spoke, each of these terms started to change in dimension. As the different people around the table gave examples, and checked they understood each other's contributions, the familiar words were in the process of gathering new uncertainties and ambiguities as well as new colours, textures, shapes and potentials.
We were brought together by a funding scheme that supported not just collaborative research, but also its collaborative design. While we did have a shared interest in our overall question ‘how should heritage decisions be made?’, we – as you will see by how we describe ourselves – came to this question, and our first workshop, from quite different places and different trajectories. To frame it in the language implied by this book, we carried with us different inheritances – legacies – from our disciplines, professional backgrounds, organisations and places. As such, the other crucial thing we had in common was an interest in the potential for rethinking ‘heritage’ offered by drawing on many different perspectives and working across hierarchies and institutional boundaries. We used both these shared commitments and our different perspectives to collaboratively design our project.
In this chapter we tell the story of our project with the aim of showing how our research emerged through dynamic connections between know-how generated through practitioner reflections, dialogue, characterised by conversations between us as a project team and conceptual innovation, in terms of the way this allowed us to think about heritage and decision making differently.
Zygosity Differences in Height and Body Mass Index of Twins From Infancy to Old Age: A Study of the CODATwins Project
- Aline Jelenkovic, Yoshie Yokoyama, Reijo Sund, Chika Honda, Leonie H Bogl, Sari Aaltonen, Fuling Ji, Feng Ning, Zengchang Pang, Juan R. Ordoñana, Juan F. Sánchez-Romera, Lucia Colodro-Conde, S. Alexandra Burt, Kelly L. Klump, Sarah E. Medland, Grant W. Montgomery, Christian Kandler, Tom A. McAdams, Thalia C. Eley, Alice M. Gregory, Kimberly J. Saudino, Lise Dubois, Michel Boivin, Adam D. Tarnoki, David L. Tarnoki, Claire M. A. Haworth, Robert Plomin, Sevgi Y. Öncel, Fazil Aliev, Maria A. Stazi, Corrado Fagnani, Cristina D’Ippolito, Jeffrey M. Craig, Richard Saffery, Sisira H. Siribaddana, Matthew Hotopf, Athula Sumathipala, Fruhling Rijsdijk, Timothy Spector, Massimo Mangino, Genevieve Lachance, Margaret Gatz, David A. Butler, Gombojav Bayasgalan, Danshiitsoodol Narandalai, Duarte L Freitas, José Antonio Maia, K. Paige Harden, Elliot M. Tucker-Drob, Bia Kim, Youngsook Chong, Changhee Hong, Hyun Jung Shin, Kaare Christensen, Axel Skytthe, Kirsten O. Kyvik, Catherine A. Derom, Robert F. Vlietinck, Ruth J. F. Loos, Wendy Cozen, Amie E. Hwang, Thomas M. Mack, Mingguang He, Xiaohu Ding, Billy Chang, Judy L. Silberg, Lindon J. Eaves, Hermine H. Maes, Tessa L. Cutler, John L. Hopper, Kelly Aujard, Patrik K. E. Magnusson, Nancy L. Pedersen, Anna K. Dahl Aslan, Yun-Mi Song, Sarah Yang, Kayoung Lee, Laura A. Baker, Catherine Tuvblad, Morten Bjerregaard-Andersen, Henning Beck-Nielsen, Morten Sodemann, Kauko Heikkilä, Qihua Tan, Dongfeng Zhang, Gary E. Swan, Ruth Krasnow, Kerry L. Jang, Ariel Knafo-Noam, David Mankuta, Lior Abramson, Paul Lichtenstein, Robert F. Krueger, Matt McGue, Shandell Pahlen, Per Tynelius, Glen E. Duncan, Dedra Buchwald, Robin P. Corley, Brooke M. Huibregtse, Tracy L. Nelson, Keith E. Whitfield, Carol E. Franz, William S. Kremen, Michael J. Lyons, Syuichi Ooki, Ingunn Brandt, Thomas Sevenius Nilsen, Fujio Inui, Mikio Watanabe, Meike Bartels, Toos C. E. M. van Beijsterveldt, Jane Wardle, Clare H. Llewellyn, Abigail Fisher, Esther Rebato, Nicholas G. Martin, Yoshinori Iwatani, Kazuo Hayakawa, Joohon Sung, Jennifer R. Harris, Gonneke Willemsen, Andreas Busjahn, Jack H. Goldberg, Finn Rasmussen, Yoon-Mi Hur, Dorret I. Boomsma, Thorkild I. A. Sørensen, Jaakko Kaprio, Karri Silventoinen
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- Journal:
- Twin Research and Human Genetics / Volume 18 / Issue 5 / October 2015
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 04 September 2015, pp. 557-570
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A trend toward greater body size in dizygotic (DZ) than in monozygotic (MZ) twins has been suggested by some but not all studies, and this difference may also vary by age. We analyzed zygosity differences in mean values and variances of height and body mass index (BMI) among male and female twins from infancy to old age. Data were derived from an international database of 54 twin cohorts participating in the COllaborative project of Development of Anthropometrical measures in Twins (CODATwins), and included 842,951 height and BMI measurements from twins aged 1 to 102 years. The results showed that DZ twins were consistently taller than MZ twins, with differences of up to 2.0 cm in childhood and adolescence and up to 0.9 cm in adulthood. Similarly, a greater mean BMI of up to 0.3 kg/m2 in childhood and adolescence and up to 0.2 kg/m2 in adulthood was observed in DZ twins, although the pattern was less consistent. DZ twins presented up to 1.7% greater height and 1.9% greater BMI than MZ twins; these percentage differences were largest in middle and late childhood and decreased with age in both sexes. The variance of height was similar in MZ and DZ twins at most ages. In contrast, the variance of BMI was significantly higher in DZ than in MZ twins, particularly in childhood. In conclusion, DZ twins were generally taller and had greater BMI than MZ twins, but the differences decreased with age in both sexes.
The CODATwins Project: The Cohort Description of Collaborative Project of Development of Anthropometrical Measures in Twins to Study Macro-Environmental Variation in Genetic and Environmental Effects on Anthropometric Traits
- Karri Silventoinen, Aline Jelenkovic, Reijo Sund, Chika Honda, Sari Aaltonen, Yoshie Yokoyama, Adam D. Tarnoki, David L. Tarnoki, Feng Ning, Fuling Ji, Zengchang Pang, Juan R. Ordoñana, Juan F. Sánchez-Romera, Lucia Colodro-Conde, S. Alexandra Burt, Kelly L. Klump, Sarah E. Medland, Grant W. Montgomery, Christian Kandler, Tom A. McAdams, Thalia C. Eley, Alice M. Gregory, Kimberly J. Saudino, Lise Dubois, Michel Boivin, Claire M. A. Haworth, Robert Plomin, Sevgi Y. Öncel, Fazil Aliev, Maria A. Stazi, Corrado Fagnani, Cristina D’Ippolito, Jeffrey M. Craig, Richard Saffery, Sisira H. Siribaddana, Matthew Hotopf, Athula Sumathipala, Timothy Spector, Massimo Mangino, Genevieve Lachance, Margaret Gatz, David A. Butler, Gombojav Bayasgalan, Danshiitsoodol Narandalai, Duarte L. Freitas, José Antonio Maia, K. Paige Harden, Elliot M. Tucker-Drob, Kaare Christensen, Axel Skytthe, Kirsten O. Kyvik, Changhee Hong, Youngsook Chong, Catherine A. Derom, Robert F. Vlietinck, Ruth J. F. Loos, Wendy Cozen, Amie E. Hwang, Thomas M. Mack, Mingguang He, Xiaohu Ding, Billy Chang, Judy L. Silberg, Lindon J. Eaves, Hermine H. Maes, Tessa L. Cutler, John L. Hopper, Kelly Aujard, Patrik K. E. Magnusson, Nancy L. Pedersen, Anna K. Dahl Aslan, Yun-Mi Song, Sarah Yang, Kayoung Lee, Laura A. Baker, Catherine Tuvblad, Morten Bjerregaard-Andersen, Henning Beck-Nielsen, Morten Sodemann, Kauko Heikkilä, Qihua Tan, Dongfeng Zhang, Gary E. Swan, Ruth Krasnow, Kerry L. Jang, Ariel Knafo-Noam, David Mankuta, Lior Abramson, Paul Lichtenstein, Robert F. Krueger, Matt McGue, Shandell Pahlen, Per Tynelius, Glen E. Duncan, Dedra Buchwald, Robin P. Corley, Brooke M. Huibregtse, Tracy L. Nelson, Keith E. Whitfield, Carol E. Franz, William S. Kremen, Michael J. Lyons, Syuichi Ooki, Ingunn Brandt, Thomas Sevenius Nilsen, Fujio Inui, Mikio Watanabe, Meike Bartels, Toos C. E. M. van Beijsterveldt, Jane Wardle, Clare H. Llewellyn, Abigail Fisher, Esther Rebato, Nicholas G. Martin, Yoshinori Iwatani, Kazuo Hayakawa, Finn Rasmussen, Joohon Sung, Jennifer R. Harris, Gonneke Willemsen, Andreas Busjahn, Jack H. Goldberg, Dorret I. Boomsma, Yoon-Mi Hur, Thorkild I. A. Sørensen, Jaakko Kaprio
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- Journal:
- Twin Research and Human Genetics / Volume 18 / Issue 4 / August 2015
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 27 May 2015, pp. 348-360
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For over 100 years, the genetics of human anthropometric traits has attracted scientific interest. In particular, height and body mass index (BMI, calculated as kg/m2) have been under intensive genetic research. However, it is still largely unknown whether and how heritability estimates vary between human populations. Opportunities to address this question have increased recently because of the establishment of many new twin cohorts and the increasing accumulation of data in established twin cohorts. We started a new research project to analyze systematically (1) the variation of heritability estimates of height, BMI and their trajectories over the life course between birth cohorts, ethnicities and countries, and (2) to study the effects of birth-related factors, education and smoking on these anthropometric traits and whether these effects vary between twin cohorts. We identified 67 twin projects, including both monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins, using various sources. We asked for individual level data on height and weight including repeated measurements, birth related traits, background variables, education and smoking. By the end of 2014, 48 projects participated. Together, we have 893,458 height and weight measures (52% females) from 434,723 twin individuals, including 201,192 complete twin pairs (40% monozygotic, 40% same-sex dizygotic and 20% opposite-sex dizygotic) representing 22 countries. This project demonstrates that large-scale international twin studies are feasible and can promote the use of existing data for novel research purposes.
Opioid Pharmacogenomics Using a Twin Study Paradigm: Methods and Procedures for Determining Familial Aggregation and Heritability
- Martin S. Angst, Nicholas G. Phillips, David R. Drover, Martha Tingle, Jeffrey L. Galinkin, Uwe Christians, Gary E. Swan, Laura C. Lazzeroni, J. David Clark
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- Journal:
- Twin Research and Human Genetics / Volume 13 / Issue 5 / 01 October 2010
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 February 2012, pp. 412-425
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Opioids are the cornerstone medication for the treatment of moderate to severe pain. However, analgesic opioid requirements and the propensity to suffer from aversive opioid effects, including fatal respiratory depression and addiction, vary widely among patients. The factors underlying the substantial response variance remain largely unknown and need clarification for using opioids more effectively in appropriately selected patients. This ongoing study takes advantage of the twin paradigm to estimate the genetic and environmental contributions to inter-individual differences in opioid responses. Evidence of significant heritability will justify more detailed and extensive genomic studies. The enrollment target is 80 monozygotic and 45 dizygotic twin pairs who undergo a target-controlled infusion of the opioid alfentanil and saline placebo in sequential but randomized order. In a laboratory-type setting, well-defined pharmacodynamic endpoints are measured to quantify pain sensitivity, analgesic opioid effects, and aversive opioid effects including respiratory depression, sedation and reinforcing affective responses. First results obtained in 159 participants provide evidence for the feasibility and utility of this interventional study paradigm to estimate familial aggregation and heritability components of relevant drug effects. Areas highlighted in this report include recruitment strategies, required infrastructure and personnel, selection of relevant outcome measures, drug infusion algorithm minimizing pharmacokinetic variability, and considerations for optimizing data quality and quantity without hampering feasibility. Applying the twin paradigm to complex and potentially harmful studies comprehensively characterizing pharmacological response profiles is without much precedent. Methods and first results including heritability estimates for heat and cold pain sensitivity should be of interest to investigators considering similar studies.
The race to prevent the extinction of South Asian vultures
- Deborah J. Pain, Christopher G. R. Bowden, Andrew A. Cunningham, Richard Cuthbert, Devojit Das, Martin Gilbert, Ram D. Jakati, Yadvendradev Jhala, Aleem A. Khan, Vinny Naidoo, J. Lindsay Oaks, Jemima Parry-Jones, Vibhu Prakash, Asad Rahmani, Sachin P. Ranade, Hem Sagar Baral, Kalu Ram Senacha, S. Saravanan, Nita Shah, Gerry Swan, Devendra Swarup, Mark A. Taggart, Richard T. Watson, Munir Z. Virani, Kerri Wolter, Rhys E. Green
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- Journal:
- Bird Conservation International / Volume 18 / Issue S1 / September 2008
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 07 August 2008, pp. S30-S48
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Gyps vulture populations across the Indian subcontinent collapsed in the 1990s and continue to decline. Repeated population surveys showed that the rate of decline was so rapid that elevated mortality of adult birds must be a key demographic mechanism. Post mortem examination showed that the majority of dead vultures had visceral gout, due to kidney damage. The realisation that diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug potentially nephrotoxic to birds, had become a widely used veterinary medicine led to the identification of diclofenac poisoning as the cause of the decline. Surveys of diclofenac contamination of domestic ungulate carcasses, combined with vulture population modelling, show that the level of contamination is sufficient for it to be the sole cause of the decline. Testing on vultures of meloxicam, an alternative NSAID for livestock treatment, showed that it did not harm them at concentrations likely to be encountered by wild birds and would be a safe replacement for diclofenac. The manufacture of diclofenac for veterinary use has been banned, but its sale has not. Consequently, it may be some years before diclofenac is removed from the vultures' food supply. In the meantime, captive populations of three vulture species have been established to provide sources of birds for future reintroduction programmes.
Looking Backward, Looking Forward: MLA Members Speak
- April Alliston, Elizabeth Ammons, Jean Arnold, Nina Baym, Sandra L. Beckett, Peter G. Beidler, Roger A. Berger, Sandra Bermann, J.J. Wilson, Troy Boone, Alison Booth, Wayne C. Booth, James Phelan, Marie Borroff, Ihab Hassan, Ulrich Weisstein, Zack Bowen, Jill Campbell, Dan Campion, Jay Caplan, Maurice Charney, Beverly Lyon Clark, Robert A. Colby, Thomas C. Coleman III, Nicole Cooley, Richard Dellamora, Morris Dickstein, Terrell Dixon, Emory Elliott, Caryl Emerson, Ann W. Engar, Lars Engle, Kai Hammermeister, N. N. Feltes, Mary Anne Ferguson, Annie Finch, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Jerry Aline Flieger, Norman Friedman, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Sandra M. Gilbert, Laurie Grobman, George Guida, Liselotte Gumpel, R. K. Gupta, Florence Howe, Cathy L. Jrade, Richard A. Kaye, Calhoun Winton, Murray Krieger, Robert Langbaum, Richard A. Lanham, Marilee Lindemann, Paul Michael Lützeler, Thomas J. Lynn, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Michelle A. Massé, Irving Massey, Georges May, Christian W. Hallstein, Gita May, Lucy McDiarmid, Ellen Messer-Davidow, Koritha Mitchell, Robin Smiles, Kenyatta Albeny, George Monteiro, Joel Myerson, Alan Nadel, Ashton Nichols, Jeffrey Nishimura, Neal Oxenhandler, David Palumbo-Liu, Vincent P. Pecora, David Porter, Nancy Potter, Ronald C. Rosbottom, Elias L. Rivers, Gerhard F. Strasser, J. L. Styan, Marianna De Marco Torgovnick, Gary Totten, David van Leer, Asha Varadharajan, Orrin N. C. Wang, Sharon Willis, Louise E. Wright, Donald A. Yates, Takayuki Yokota-Murakami, Richard E. Zeikowitz, Angelika Bammer, Dale Bauer, Karl Beckson, Betsy A. Bowen, Stacey Donohue, Sheila Emerson, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Jay L. Halio, Karl Kroeber, Terence Hawkes, William B. Hunter, Mary Jambus, Willard F. King, Nancy K. Miller, Jody Norton, Ann Pellegrini, S. P. Rosenbaum, Lorie Roth, Robert Scholes, Joanne Shattock, Rosemary T. VanArsdel, Alfred Bendixen, Alarma Kathleen Brown, Michael J. Kiskis, Debra A. Castillo, Rey Chow, John F. Crossen, Robert F. Fleissner, Regenia Gagnier, Nicholas Howe, M. Thomas Inge, Frank Mehring, Hyungji Park, Jahan Ramazani, Kenneth M. Roemer, Deborah D. Rogers, A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, Regina M. Schwartz, John T. Shawcross, Brenda R. Silver, Andrew von Hendy, Virginia Wright Wexman, Britta Zangen, A. Owen Aldridge, Paula R. Backscheider, Roland Bartel, E. M. Forster, Milton Birnbaum, Jonathan Bishop, Crystal Downing, Frank H. Ellis, Roberto Forns-Broggi, James R. Giles, Mary E. Giles, Susan Blair Green, Madelyn Gutwirth, Constance B. Hieatt, Titi Adepitan, Edgar C. Knowlton, Jr., Emanuel Mussman, Sally Todd Nelson, Robert O. Preyer, David Diego Rodriguez, Guy Stern, James Thorpe, Robert J. Wilson, Rebecca S. Beal, Joyce Simutis, Betsy Bowden, Sara Cooper, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Tarek el Ariss, Richard Jewell, John W. Kronik, Wendy Martin, Stuart Y. McDougal, Hugo Méndez-Ramírez, Ivy Schweitzer, Armand E. Singer, G. Thomas Tanselle, Tom Bishop, Mary Ann Caws, Marcel Gutwirth, Christophe Ippolito, Lawrence D. Kritzman, James Longenbach, Tim McCracken, Wolfe S. Molitor, Diane Quantic, Gregory Rabassa, Ellen M. Tsagaris, Anthony C. Yu, Betty Jean Craige, Wendell V. Harris, J. Hillis Miller, Jesse G. Swan, Helene Zimmer-Loew, Peter Berek, James Chandler, Hanna K. Charney, Philip Cohen, Judith Fetterley, Herbert Lindenberger, Julia Reinhard Lupton, Maximillian E. Novak, Richard Ohmann, Marjorie Perloff, Mark Reynolds, James Sledd, Harriet Turner, Marie Umeh, Flavia Aloya, Regina Barreca, Konrad Bieber, Ellis Hanson, William J. Hyde, Holly A. Laird, David Leverenz, Allen Michie, J. Wesley Miller, Marvin Rosenberg, Daniel R. Schwarz, Elizabeth Welt Trahan, Jean Fagan Yellin
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- Journal:
- PMLA / Publications of the Modern Language Association of America / Volume 115 / Issue 7 / December 2000
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 October 2020, pp. 1986-2078
- Print publication:
- December 2000
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