Can sexual selection drive female life histories? A comparative study on Galliform birds

Sexual selection is an important driver of many of the most spectacular morphological traits that we find in the animal kingdom (for example see Andersson, 1994). As such, sexual selection is most often emphasized as

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies common susceptibility polymorphisms for colorectal and endometrial cancer near SH2B3 and TSHZ1

High-risk mutations in several genes predispose to both colorectal cancer (CRC) and endometrial cancer (EC). We therefore hypothesised that some lower-risk genetic variants might also predispose to both CRC and EC. Using CRC and EC genome-wide association series, totalling 13,265 cancer cases and 40,245 controls, we found that the protective allele [G] at one previously-identified CRC polymorphism, rs2736100 near TERT, was associated with EC risk (odds ratio (OR) = 1.08, P = 0.000167); this polymorphism influences the risk of several other cancers. A further CRC polymorphism near TERC also showed evidence of association with EC (OR = 0.92; P = 0.03). Overall, however, there was no good evidence that the set of CRC polymorphisms was associated with EC risk, and neither of two previously-reported EC polymorphisms was associated with CRC risk. A combined analysis revealed one genome-wide significant polymorphism, rs3184504, on chromosome 12q24 (OR = 1.10, P = 7.23 × 10−9) with shared effects on CRC and EC risk. This polymorphism, a missense variant in the gene SH2B3, is also associated with haematological and autoimmune disorders, suggesting that it influences cancer risk through the immune response. Another polymorphism, rs12970291 near gene TSHZ1, was associated with both CRC and EC (OR = 1.26, P = 4.82 × 10−8), with the alleles showing opposite effects on the risks of the two cancers

Identification of nine new susceptibility loci for endometrial cancer

Endometrial cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer of the female reproductive tract in developed countries. Through genome-wide association studies (GWAS), we have previously identified eight risk loci for endometrial cancer. Here, we present an expanded meta-analysis of 12,906 endometrial cancer cases and 108,979 controls (including new genotype data for 5624 cases) and identify nine novel genome-wide significant loci, including a locus on 12q24.12 previously identified by meta-GWAS of endometrial and colorectal cancer. At five loci, expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) analyses identify candidate causal genes; risk alleles at two of these loci associate with decreased expression of genes, which encode negative regulators of oncogenic signal transduction proteins (SH2B3 (12q24.12) and NF1 (17q11.2)). In summary, this study has doubled the number of known endometrial cancer risk loci and revealed candidate causal genes for future study

Not Available

Not AvailableAlthough India has progressed significantly on several health outcomes but the state of food and nutrition security in the country still requires sustained efforts to accelerate achievement. Existing data based on socio-economic surveys conducted by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) produce precise measures of food and nutrition security status at state and national level. However, these surveys cannot be used directly to produce reliable district or further smaller domain level estimates because of small sample sizes which lead to high level of sampling variability. Decentralized administrative planning system in India demands the availability of disaggregate (e.g. district) level statistics for target oriented effective policy planning and monitoring, as food and nutrition security is often unevenly distributed among the subsets of relatively small areas. But, due to lack of district level estimates, the mapping and analyse related to food and nutrition security measures are restricted to state and national level. As a result, disaggregate level dissimilarity and variability existing in food and nutrition security are often masked. This article delineates multivariate small area estimation (SAE) technique to obtain reliable and representative estimates of food consumption and nutrition status at district level for the rural areas of state of Uttar Pradesh in India by combining latest round of available Household Consumer Expenditure Survey 2011–2012 data of NSSO and the Indian Population Census 2011. The empirical evidence indicate that the estimates generated by SAE approach are reliable and representative. Spatial maps showing district level inequality in distribution of food and nutrition security in Uttar Pradesh is also produced. The disaggregate level estimates and spatial maps of food and nutrition security are directly relevant to sustainable development goal indicator 2.1.2—severity of food insecurity. The estimates and maps of food insecurity indictors are anticipated to offer irreplaceable information to administrative decisionmakers and policy experts for identifying the regions requiring more attention. Government of India has recently launched number of schemes for the benefit of rural population in the country and these estimates will be useful for fund allocation as well as in the monitoring of these schemesNot Availabl

Discrete Component Analysis

This article presents a unified theory for analysis of components in discrete data, and compares the methods with techniques such as independent component analysis, non-negative matrix factorisation and latent Dirichlet allocation. The main families of algorithms discussed are a variational approximation, Gibbs sampling, and Rao-Blackwellised Gibbs sampling. Applications are presented for voting records from the United States Senate for 2003, and for the Reuters-21578 newswire collection