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2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Joseph

In 1990, Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr. and colleagues published the widely cited 1990 “Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart” (MISTRA) Science IQ study. To arrive at the conclusion that “IQ is strongly affected by genetic factors,” Bouchard and colleagues omitted their control group reared-apart dizygotic twin (“DZA”) IQ-score correlations. Near-full-sample correlations published after the study’s 2000 endpoint show that the reared-apart monozygotic twin (“MZA”) and DZA group IQ correlations did not differ at a statistically significant level, suggesting that the study failed the first step in determining that IQ scores are influenced by heredity. After bypassing the model-fitting technique they used in most non-IQ MISTRA studies, the researchers assumed that the MZA group IQ-score correlation alone “directly estimates heritability.” This method was based on unsupported assumptions by the researchers, and they largely overlooked the confounding influence of cohort effects. Bouchard and colleagues then decided to count most environmental influences they did recognize as genetic influences. I conclude that the MISTRA IQ study failed to discover genetic influences on IQ scores and cognitive ability across the studied population, and that the study should be evaluated in the context of psychology’s replication problem.


2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shabeer Khan ◽  
Mohd Ziaur Rehman

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between macroeconomic fundamentals, intuitional quality and shadow economy.Design/methodology/approachBy utilizing data setspanning from 2004 to 2015 of 141 countries, the study has employed advanced panel technique, i.e. Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method. In order to check consistency of the results, the study also used fixed effect and random effect for robustness.FindingsThe study finds that for the full sample, institutional quality has negative effect on shadow economy while macroeconomic fundaments effect shadow economy differently. After splitting the sample into Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and non-OIC countries subsamples, it observes same influence of macroeconomic fundaments and institutional quality on shadow economy, but the effect of macroeconomic fundaments and institutional quality on shadow economy is less observed for OIC countries. The results are found consistence by using different estimation methods.Originality/valueThe current literature has focused on estimating the size of shadow economy and literature linking the macroeconomic fundaments, institutional quality and shadow economy is scarce. Additionally, this study provides the evidence for cross comparison between OIC economies and non-OIC economies.


2022 ◽  
pp. 178-203
Author(s):  
Joana Pena ◽  
Maria Céu Cortez

This chapter investigates the relationship between the performance and the screening strategies of US and European socially responsible funds. For the full sample and, in particular, for US funds, the results show a curvilinear relationship between screening intensity and fund performance. Continental European funds exhibit a positive relationship between the number of screens and performance. Furthermore, for the full sample and US funds, screening on governance impacts performance positively. In turn, environment and products screens have a negative impact on US fund performance. Finally, funds certified with social labels tend to yield higher performance. Overall, the geographical differences in the impact of the screening process on SRI fund performance are consistent with the contextual nature of socially responsible investments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Lijun Chen ◽  
Shangjing Jiang

Cycling rhythm performance is the result of a complex interplay between active travel demand and cycling network supply. Most studies focused on bicycle flow, but little attention has been paid to cycling rhythm changes for public bicycles. Full sample data of origin–destination enables an efficient description of network-wide cycling mobility efficiency in urban public bicycle systems. In this paper, we show how the spatiotemporal characteristics of cycling speed reveal the performance of cycling rhythms. The inference method of riding speed estimation is proposed with an unknown cycling path. The significant inconsistency of docking stations in cycling rhythm was unraveled by the source–sink relationship comparison. The asymmetry of the cycling rhythm on the path is manifested as the rhythm difference among paths and bidirectional inconsistency. We found that cycling rhythm has a temporal multilayer and spatial mismatch, which shows the inflection points of the cycling rhythm where the travel behavioral preference changes and the exact road segments with different rhythms. This finding suggests that a well-designed cycling environment and occupation-residential function should be considered in active transport demand management and urban planning to help induce active travel behavior decisions.


PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e12324
Author(s):  
Akanksha A. Marphatia ◽  
Naomi M. Saville ◽  
Dharma S. Manandhar ◽  
Mario Cortina-Borja ◽  
Jonathan C. K. Wells ◽  
...  

Background Women’s early marriage (<18 years) is a critical global health issue affecting 650 million women worldwide. It is associated with a range of adverse maternal physical and mental health outcomes, including early childbearing, child undernutrition and morbidity. Poverty is widely asserted to be the key risk factor driving early marriage. However, most studies do not measure wealth in the natal household, but instead, use marital household wealth as a proxy for natal wealth. Further research is required to understand the key drivers of early marriage. Methods We investigated whether natal household poverty was associated with marrying early, independently of women’s lower educational attainment and broader markers of household disadvantage. Data on natal household wealth (material asset score) for 2,432 women aged 18–39 years was used from the cluster-randomized Low Birth Weight South Asia Trial in lowland rural Nepal. Different early marriage definitions (<15, <16, <17 and <18 years) were used because most of our population marries below the conventional 18-year cut-off. Logistic mixed-effects models were fitted to estimate the probabilities, derived from adjusted Odds Ratios, of (a) marrying at different early ages for the full sample and for the uneducated women, and (b) being uneducated in the first place. Results Women married at median age 15 years (interquartile range 3), and only 18% married ≥18 years. Two-thirds of the women were entirely uneducated. We found that, rather than poverty, women’s lower education was the primary factor associated with early marriage, regardless of how ‘early’ is defined. Neither poverty nor other markers of household disadvantage were associated with early marriage at any age in the uneducated women. However, poverty was associated with women being uneducated. Conclusion When assets are measured in the natal household in this population, there is no support for the conventional hypothesis that household poverty is associated with daughters’ early marriage, but it is associated with not going to school. We propose that improving access to free education would both reduce early marriage and have broader benefits for maternal and child health and gender equality.


Aviation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 241-251
Author(s):  
Serhii Borsuk ◽  
Oleksii Reva

Mental workload is a well-known concept with a long development history. It can be used to examine students’ attitudes at the end of the educational process and compare them in groups or separately. However, building a continuous workload profile across the range of task complexity increase is still an urgent issue. All four groups of methods used to define mental workload have such flaws for the workload profile construction process as significant time requirements, single value processing and post-processing of the received results. Only one of them can be used without modifications to construct the operator’s attitude chart (profile) regarding the workload range and it doesn’t operate with more reliable absolute values. To resolve this problem, a special workload assessment grid was developed, considering the advantages of a subjective group of methods and seven core characteristics. The reasoning for grid axes choice, threshold values, and question formulation were provided. Statistics were calculated for the full sample, different grades, and educational institutions. Comparison of the received responses with referential values, cross-comparison between institutions and different grades were performed. The results contribute to such important aspects of workload, as redlines, workload profiling, and operator’s comparison.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freida A Blostein ◽  
Jonah Fisher ◽  
John Dou ◽  
Lisa Schenper ◽  
Erin B Ware ◽  
...  

Background: Prenatal maternal smoking has negative implications for child health. DNA methylation signatures can function as biomarkers of prenatal maternal smoking. However little work has assessed how DNA methylation signatures of prenatal maternal smoking vary across ages, ancestry groups, or tissues. In the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study, we tested whether prenatal maternal smoking was associated with salivary polymethylation scores for smoking in participants. We assessed the consistency of associations at ages 9 and 15, their portability across participants from African, European, and Hispanic genetic ancestries and the accuracy of exposure classification using area under the curve (AUC) from receiver operating curve analyses. Results: We created saliva polymethylation scores using coefficients from a meta-analysis of prenatal maternal smoke exposure and DNA methylation in newborn cord blood. In the full sample at age 9 (n=753), prenatal maternal smoke exposure was associated with a 0.52 (95%CI: 0.36, 0.67) standard deviation higher polymethylation score for prenatal smoke exposure The direction and magnitude of the association was consistent when stratified by genetic ancestries. In the full sample at age 15 (n=746), prenatal maternal smoke exposure was associated with a 0.46 (95%CI: 0.3, 0.62) standard deviation higher polymethylation score for prenatal smoke exposure, and the effect size was attenuated among the European and Hispanic genetic ancestry samples. The polymethylation score was reasonably accurate at classifying prenatal maternal smoke exposure (AUC age 9=0.77, P value<0.001, age 15=0.77, P value<0.001). The polymethylation score showed higher classification accuracy than using a single a priori site in the AHRR gene (cg05575921 AUC=0.74, P value=0.03; age 15=0.73, P value=0.01). Conclusions: Prenatal maternal smoking was associated with DNA methylation signatures in saliva samples, a clinically practical tissue. Polymethylation scores for prenatal maternal smoking were portable across genetic ancestries and more accurate than individual DNA methylation sites. DNA polymethylation scores from saliva samples could serve as robust and practical clinical biomarkers of prenatal maternal smoke exposure.


2021 ◽  
Vol 922 (2) ◽  
pp. 252
Author(s):  
N. Torres-Albà ◽  
S. Marchesi ◽  
X. Zhao ◽  
M. Ajello ◽  
R. Silver ◽  
...  

Abstract We present the analysis of simultaneous Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and XMM-Newton data of eight Compton-thick active galactic nuclei (CT-AGN) candidates selected in the Swift-BAT 100 month catalog. This work is part of an ongoing effort to find and characterize all CT-AGN in the Local (z ≤ 0.05) Universe. We used two physically motivated models, MYTorus and borus02, to characterize the sources in the sample, finding five of them to be confirmed CT-AGN. These results represent an increase of ∼19% over the previous NuSTAR-confirmed, BAT-selected CT-AGN at z ≤ 0.05, bringing the total number to 32. This corresponds to an observed fraction of ∼8% of all AGN within this volume-limited sample, although it increases to 20% ± 5% when limiting the sample to z ≤ 0.01. Out of a sample of 48 CT-AGN candidates, selected using BAT and soft (0.3−10 keV) X-ray data, only 24 are confirmed as CT-AGN with the addition of the NuSTAR data. This highlights the importance of NuSTAR when classifying local obscured AGN. We also note that most of the sources in our full sample of 48 Seyfert 2 galaxies with NuSTAR data have significantly different lines of sight and average torus column densities, favoring a patchy torus scenario.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 775-776
Author(s):  
Kristin Litzelman ◽  
Irene Kizza ◽  
Ashley Berghoff

Abstract Caregivers engage in myriad tasks from household help to complex medical care. However, little information is available on how caregivers experience individual tasks – particularly key end-of-life tasks such as managing breathing problems or patients' sadness and anxiety. The purpose of this study was therefore to assess task difficulty. Using data from the National Health and Aging Trends Survey and the National Survey on Caregivers (2015-2017), we assessed eleven caregiving tasks in 241 primary caregivers of care recipients in their last month of life. A latent cluster analysis revealed three key clusters: 1) pervasive difficulties, in which caregivers reported difficulty across most or all of the tasks; 2) minimal difficulties; and 3) emotional management difficulties, in which caregivers reported difficulty with managing sadness and anxiety and lower levels of difficulty on the other tasks. Weighted frequency analyses revealed that caregivers in the pervasive difficulties cluster were most likely to be filial caregivers (85% versus 63% of the full sample, p&lt;0.05) or co-residing with the care recipient (49% versus 37% of the full sample, p&lt;0.05). Caregivers identified as having pervasive difficulties were also more likely to report providing intensive care, more than 100 hours per week (54% versus 36% of the full sample, p&lt;0.05). Care recipient condition was not associated with cluster membership. The findings highlight the need to consider caregiver coping at the task-level and have implications for understanding unmet needs. Future research will assess predictors of cluster membership and how task difficulties are associated with symptoms and well-being outcomes.


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