Socioeconomic Status and Obesity Gradient over Age:New Evidence from China.

This paper presents a systematic analysis of the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on overweight and obesity in China and investigates how and why the SES-obesity gradient differs with age. Using a longitudinal sample drawn from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), I find that body mass index (BMI) is positively associated with SES during early childhood but becomes inversely related to childhood SES as children age into adulthood. Estimation results show that children from low SES families are less likely to be overweight or obese than their median and high SES peers. The results from subsamples stratified by living area reveal that the SES gaps of obesity are generally larger for urban residents than rural residents. Females are significantly less likely to be overweight than males in China. The SES during childhood has independent effects after controlling for respondents’ contemporaneous SES. The relationship between the contemporaneous SES of a male adult and his chance of being overweight or obese is significantly positive, while the contemporaneous SES of a female adult is negatively related to her chance of being overweight or obese.Overweight and Obesity, Socioeconomic Status, China

Canonical interpretation of Y(10750)Y(10750) and Υ(10860)\Upsilon(10860) in the Υ\Upsilon family

Inspired by the new resonance $Y(10750)$, we calculate the masses and two-body OZI-allowed strong decays of the higher vector bottomonium sates within both screened and linear potential models. We discuss the possibilities of $\Upsilon(10860)$ and $Y(10750)$ as mixed states via the $S-D$ mixing. Our results suggest that $Y(10750)$ and $\Upsilon(10860)$ might be explained as mixed states between $5S$- and $4D$-wave vector $b\bar{b}$ states. The $Y(10750)$ and $\Upsilon(10860)$ resonances may correspond to the mixed states dominated by the $4D$- and $5S$-wave components, respectively. The mass and the strong decay behaviors of the $\Upsilon(11020)$ resonance are consistent with the assignment of the $\Upsilon(6S)$ state in the potential models.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. More discussions are adde

The migration policy of Armenia

The aim of this study is to describe the legal bases of the migration policy of Armenia and its practical implementation in 1995–2013. The author examined the international and national documents that provide the legal bases of Armenia’s migration policy, as well as the balance between departures and arrivals in the period 1995–2013, Armenian citizens’ reasons for emigrating and the occupations of emigrants. The study was based on the following research methods: content, system and quantitative analysis. The results of the analyses performed indicate that the objectives of Armenia’s migration policy were not completely fulfilled. Between 1995 and 2013, the number of emigrants declined, but Armenia’s overall migration balance was negative. The majority of those leaving the country went to Russia, followed by the other states of the CIS

Independent stratum formation on the avian sex chromosomes reveals inter-chromosomal gene conversion and predominance of purifying selection on the w chromosome

We used a comparative approach spanning three species and 90 million years to study the evolutionary history of the avian sex chromosomes. Using whole transcriptomes, we assembled the largest cross-species dataset of W-linked coding content to date. Our results show that recombination suppression in large portions of the avian sex chromosomes has evolved independently, and that long-term sex chromosome divergence is consistent with repeated and independent inversions spreading progressively to restrict recombination. In contrast, over short-term periods we observe heterogeneous and locus-specific divergence. We also uncover four instances of gene conversion between both highly diverged and recently evolved gametologs, suggesting a complex mosaic of recombination suppression across the sex chromosomes. Lastly, evidence from 16 gametologs reveal that the W chromosome is evolving with a significant contribution of purifying selection, consistent with previous findings that W-linked genes play an important role in encoding sex-specific fitness

The Busy Beaver Competition: a historical survey

Tibor Rado defined the Busy Beaver Competition in 1962. He used Turing machines to give explicit definitions for some functions that are not computable and grow faster than any computable function. He put forward the problem of computing the values of these functions on numbers 1, 2, 3, ... More and more powerful computers have made possible the computation of lower bounds for these values. In 1988, Brady extended the definitions to functions on two variables. We give a historical survey of these works. The successive record holders in the Busy Beaver Competition are displayed, with their discoverers, the date they were found, and, for some of them, an analysis of their behavior.Comment: 70 page