Social Class and the Fertility Transition: A Critical Comment on the Statistical Results Reported in Simon Szreter's Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940

Simon Szreter’s book Fertility, Class, and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940 argues that social and economic class fails to explain the cross-sectional differences in marital fertility as reported in the 1911 census of England and Wales. Szreter’s conclusion made the book immediately influential, and it remains so. This finding matters a great deal for debates about the causes of the European fertility decline of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For decades scholars have argued whether the main forces at work were ideational or social and economic. This note reports a simple re-analysis of Szreter’s own data, which suggests that social class does explain cross-sectional differences in English marital fertility in 1911.fertility transition, 1911 Census of England and Wales

Youth identity formation and contemporary alcohol marketing

This paper considers linkages between contemporary marketing theory and practice, and emerging conceptualizations of identity, to discuss implications for public health concerns over alcohol use among young people. Particular attention is paid to the theorizing of consumption as a component of youth identities and the ways in which developments of marketing praxis orients to such schemata. The authors’ analyses of exemplars of marketing materials in use in Aotearoa New Zealand, drawn from their research archive, emphasize the sophistication and power of such forms of marketing.They argue that public health policy and practice must respond to the interweaving of marketing and the self-making practices of young people to counter this complex threat to the health and well-being of young people

Knockout of lysosomal enzyme-targeting gene causes abnormalities in mouse pup isolation calls

Humans lacking a working copy of the GNPTAB gene suffer from the metabolic disease Mucolipidosis type II (MLII). MLII symptoms include mental retardation, skeletal deformities and cartilage defects as well as a speech delay with most subjects unable to utter single words (Otomo et al., 2009; Cathey et al., 2010; Leroy et al., 2012). Here we asked whether mice lacking a copy of Gnptab gene exhibited vocal abnormities. We recorded ultrasonic vocalizations from 5 to 8 day old mice separated from their mother and littermates. Although Gnptab(−/−) pups emitted a similar number of calls, several features of the calls were different from their wild type littermates. Gnptab(−/−) mice showed a decrease in the length of calls, an increase in the intra-bout pause duration, significantly fewer pitch jumps with smaller mean size, and an increase in the number of isolated calls. In addition, Gnptab(−/−) mice vocalizations had less power, particularly in the higher frequencies. Gnptab(+/−) mouse vocalizations did not appear to be affected. We then attempted to classify these recordings using these features to determine the genotype of the animal. We were able to correctly identify 87% of the recordings as either Gnptab(−/−) or Gnptab(+/+) pup, significantly better than chance, demonstrating that genotype is a strong predictor of vocalization phenotype. These data show that deletion of genes in the lysosomal enzyme targeting pathway affect mouse pup isolation calls

An Accounting Liability Heuristic

This article traces the thought processes involved in understanding and managing accountants’ legal liability which is sometimes broadly called “professional malpractice.” The cumulative nature of potential liability is demonstrated.  The various legal theories of liability are discussed along with the most prominent potential affirmative defenses against liability. Unique to this paper is the decision heuristic providing a framework for assessing potential accountants’ legal liability.  This discussion is useful for both student and practitioner

The connection between mass, environment and slow rotation in simulated galaxies

Recent observations from integral field spectroscopy (IFS) indicate that the fraction of galaxies that are slow rotators, $F_{\rm SR}$, depends primarily on stellar mass, with no significant dependence on environment. We investigate these trends and the formation paths of slow rotators (SRs) using the EAGLE and Hydrangea hydro-dynamical simulations. EAGLE consists of several cosmological boxes of volumes up to $(100\,\rm Mpc)^3$, while Hydrangea consists of $24$ cosmological simulations of galaxy clusters and their environment. Together they provide a statistically significant sample in the stellar mass range $10^{9.5}\,\rm M_{\odot}-10^{12.3}\,\rm M_{\odot}$, of $16,358$ galaxies. We construct IFS-like cubes and measure stellar spin parameters, $\lambda_{\rm R}$, and ellipticities, allowing us to classify galaxies into slow/fast rotators as in observations. The simulations display a primary dependence of $F_{\rm SR}$ on stellar mass, with a weak dependence on environment. At fixed stellar mass, satellite galaxies are more likely to be SRs than centrals. $F_{\rm SR}$ shows a dependence on halo mass at fixed stellar mass for central galaxies, while no such trend is seen for satellites. We find that $\approx 70$% of SRs at $z=0$ have experienced at least one merger with mass ratio $\ge 0.1$, with dry mergers being at least twice more common than wet mergers. Individual dry mergers tend to decrease $\lambda_{\rm R}$, while wet mergers mostly increase it. However, $30$% of SRs at $z=0$ have not experienced mergers, and those inhabit halos with median spins twice smaller than the halos hosting the rest of the SRs. Thus, although the formation paths of SRs can be varied, dry mergers and/or halos with small spins dominate.Comment: Accepted for publications in MNRAS (20 pages, 17 main body, 1.5 appendix). Changes include analysis of the orbital angular momentum effect on lambdaR and slightly different ellipticity calculatio