Modelling demographic behaviours in the French microsimulation model Destinie: An analysis of future change in completed fertility

Future change in partnerships and fertility are not easy to forecast. However, the fertility of the youngest cohorts will depend on those behaviours. The way young people start a partnership has changed a lot during the past three decades. Many couples are now unmarried, union disruptions and step-families are more frequent, young people leave school later and the age of motherhood has increased. Microsimulation can provide a measure of the change in future completed fertility, which helps to analyse the influence of current behaviours on future change in family structures. If behaviours remain the same as the ones observed from 1995 to 1996, completed fertility may decrease to less than 2 children per woman born around 1970 and remain constant about 1.9 children per woman for women born after 1975. This decrease stems from a postponement in the age of motherhood and an increase in union disruptions. Fertility at older ages as well as the desire to have at least one common biological child in step-family do not offset the negative effects of delaying births and living longer without a partner before the age of 45. Timing in unions and disruptions seems to play an important role in fertility. Women who live only a short time without a partner after a disruption experience have practically the same number of children as those who are still living with their first coresident partner. These simulations remain of course prospective and rely on several assumptions which may not prove adequate in the future. In particular, they assume that future behaviours will remain identical to the ones currently observed. Although estimated behaviours provide results consistent with available empirical work, it does not mean that some household behaviours will not change in the long-run.microsimulation, demographic trends, fertility

Book Review of A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe

Review of A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe edited by Stuart Leibige

Book Review of Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic by Charles N. Edel

Review of Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic by Charles N. Edel

Book Review of Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times by Cynthia A. Kierner

Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times. By Cynthia A. Kierner. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Pp. ix, 281.

Female labor supply and child care

We use household income tax data to estimate a structural model of female labor supply and utilization of paid child care outside the home. We find that child care costs have little impact on the participation decision of mothers of young children. However, they influence hours of work, as well as the decision to utilize paid child care. We use our results to simulate various policy reforms. Suppressing the APE (Parental Education Aid) would cause the participation rate in our sample to rise by 4 points and the proportion of mothers using outside paid care to rise by 2 points. Examining the effects on aggregate female labor supply of other policies that affect child care costs, we generally find that intensive effects caused by changes in working time are of the same order of magnitude as extensive effects due to changes in female participation.Child Care, female labor supply, fiscal policies

Understanding the Essex Junto: Fear, Dissent, and Propaganda in the Early Republic

Historians have never formed a consensus over the Essex Junto. In fact, though often associated with New England Federalists, propagandists evoked the Junto long after the Federalist Party’s demise in 1824. This article chronicles uses of the term Essex Junto and its significance as it evolved from the early republic through the 1840s

Autism as a disorder of neural information processing: directions for research and targets for therapy

The broad variation in phenotypes and severities within autism spectrum disorders suggests the involvement of multiple predisposing factors, interacting in complex ways with normal developmental courses and gradients. Identification of these factors, and the common developmental path into which theyfeed, is hampered bythe large degrees of convergence from causal factors to altered brain development, and divergence from abnormal brain development into altered cognition and behaviour. Genetic, neurochemical, neuroimaging and behavioural findings on autism, as well as studies of normal development and of genetic syndromes that share symptoms with autism, offer hypotheses as to the nature of causal factors and their possible effects on the structure and dynamics of neural systems. Such alterations in neural properties may in turn perturb activity-dependent development, giving rise to a complex behavioural syndrome many steps removed from the root causes. Animal models based on genetic, neurochemical, neurophysiological, and behavioural manipulations offer the possibility of exploring these developmental processes in detail, as do human studies addressing endophenotypes beyond the diagnosis itself

Socioeconomic inequalities in cause specific mortality among older people in France

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>European comparative studies documented a clear North-South divide in socioeconomic inequalities with cancer being the most important contributor to inequalities in total mortality among middle aged men in Latin Europe (France, Spain, Portugal, Italy). The aim of this paper is to investigate educational inequalities in mortality by gender, age and causes of death in France, with a special emphasis on people aged 75 years and more.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We used data from a longitudinal population sample that includes 1% of the French population. Risk of death (total and cause specific) in the period 1990-1999 according to education was analysed using Cox regression models by age group (45-59, 60-74, and 75+). Inequalities were quantified using both relative (ratio) and absolute (difference) measures.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Relative inequalities decreased with age but were still observed in the oldest age group. Absolute inequalities increased with age. This increase was particularly pronounced for cardiovascular diseases. The contribution of different causes of death to absolute inequalities in total mortality differed between age groups. In particular, the contribution of cancer deaths decreased substantially between the age groups 60-74 years and 75 years and more, both in men and in women.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study suggests that the large contribution of cancer deaths to the excess mortality among low educated people that was observed among middle aged men in Latin Europe is not observed among French people aged 75 years and more. This should be confirmed among other Latin Europe countries.</p

The Therapeutic effect of Memantine through the Stimulation of Synapse Formation and Dendritic Spine Maturation in Autism and Fragile X Syndrome

Although the pathogenic mechanisms that underlie autism are not well understood, there is evidence showing that metabotropic and ionotropic glutamate receptors are hyper-stimulated and the GABAergic system is hypo-stimulated in autism. Memantine is an uncompetitive antagonist of NMDA receptors and is widely prescribed for treatment of Alzheimer's disease treatment. Recently, it has been shown to improve language function, social behavior, and self-stimulatory behaviors of some autistic subjects. However the mechanism by which memantine exerts its effect remains to be elucidated. In this study, we used cultured cerebellar granule cells (CGCs) from Fmr1 knockout (KO) mice, a mouse model for fragile X syndrome (FXS) and syndromic autism, to examine the effects of memantine on dendritic spine development and synapse formation. Our results show that the maturation of dendritic spines is delayed in Fmr1-KO CGCs. We also detected reduced excitatory synapse formation in Fmr1-KO CGCs. Memantine treatment of Fmr1-KO CGCs promoted cell adhesion properties. Memantine also stimulated the development of mushroom-shaped mature dendritic spines and restored dendritic spine to normal levels in Fmr1-KO CGCs. Furthermore, we demonstrated that memantine treatment promoted synapse formation and restored the excitatory synapses to a normal range in Fmr1-KO CGCs. These findings suggest that memantine may exert its therapeutic capacity through a stimulatory effect on dendritic spine maturation and excitatory synapse formation, as well as promoting adhesion of CGCs

Assessment of regional best‐fit probability density function of annual maximum rainfall using CFSR precipitation data

The upper Cross River basin (UCRB) fits a true description of a data scarce watershed in respect of climatic data. This paper seeks to determine the best‐fit probability density function (PDF) of annual maximum rainfall for the UCRB using the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) precipitation data. Also, to evaluate the performance of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Coupled Model Inter‐comparison Project (CMIP3) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Global Circulation Models (GCMs) in simulating the monthly precipitation in the UCRB considering 1979–2014 data. For the determination of the best‐fit PDF, the models under review included the generalized extreme value (GEV), normal, gamma, Weibull and log‐normal (LN) distributions. Twenty‐four weather station datasets were obtained and subjected to frequency distribution analysis on per station basis, and subsequently fitted to the respective PDFs. Also, simulated monthly precipitation data obtained from 16 AR4 GCMs, for weather station p6191, were subjected to frequency distribution analysis. The results showed the percentages of best‐fit to worst‐fit PDFs, considering the total number of stations, as follows: 54.17%, 45.83%, 37.50%, 45.83%, and 50%/50%. These percentages corresponded to GEV, Weibull, gamma, gamma, and LN/normal, respectively. The comparison of the predicted and observed values using the Chi‐square goodness‐of‐fit test revealed that the GEV PDF is the best‐fit model for the UCRB. The correlation coefficient values further corroborated the correctness of the test. The PDF of the observed data (weather station p6191) and the simulations of the 16 GCMs computed using monthly rainfall datasets were compared using a mean square error (MSE) dependent skill score. The result from this study suggested that the CGCM3.1 (T47) and MRI‐CGCM2.3.2 provide the best representations of precipitation, considering about 36 years trend for station p6191. The results have no influence on how well the models perform in other geographical locations