The Cult of Theoi: Economic Uncertainty and Religion

Sacrifices to deities occur in nearly all known religions. In this paper, we report on our attempts to elicit this type of religious behaviour towards "Theoi" in the laboratory. The theory we test is that, when faced with uncertainty, individuals attempt to engage in a reciprocal contract with the source of uncertainty by sacrificing towards it. In our experiments, we create the situation whereby individuals face an uncertain economic payback due to "Theoi" and we allow participants to sacrifice towards this entity. Aggregate sacrifices amongst participants are over 30% of all takings, increase with the level of humanistic labelling of Theoi and decrease when participants share information or when the level of uncertainty is lower. The findings imply that under circumstances of high uncertainty people are willing to sacrifice large portions of their income even when this has no discernable effect on outcomes.uncertainty, religion, sacrifice, experiment

Do the Obese Really Die Younger or Do Health Expenditures Buy Them Extra Years?

A recent debate in the medical literature has arisen around the mortality effects of obesity. Whereas it has been argued that the obese die younger, the data that have become available do not immediately support this. This potentially undermines the hypothesis that modern life with its physical ease and cheap food would eventually make us die younger, and undermines the notion that economic growth comes with health warnings. We revisit this debate going over the mortality effects of obesity, using the US Health and Retirement Study. Whilst we find that obesity leads to chronic diseases that reduce length of life, we also find that the obese survive strokes and lung disease more often than the non-obese. A possible explanation is that the obese are under greater medical scrutiny, meaning that lung disease is more quickly diagnosed. This result holds when controlling for smoking and the long-term effects of obesity.obesity, longitudinal data, mortality, smoking, reverse-causality

Happiness and the Human Development Index : the paradox of Australia

According to the well-being measure known as the U.N. Human Development Index, Australia now ranks 3rd in the world and higher than all other English-speaking nations. This paper questions that assessment. It reviews work on the economics of happiness, considers implications for policymakers, and explores where Australia lies in international subjective well-being rankings. Using new data on approximately 50,000 randomly sampled individuals from 35 nations, the paper shows that Australians have some of the lowest levels of job satisfaction in the world. Moreover, among the sub-sample of English-speaking nations, where a common language should help subjective measures to be reliable, Australia performs poorly on a range of happiness indicators. The paper discusses this paradox. Our purpose is not to reject HDI methods, but rather to argue that much remains to be understood in this area

Neurocognitive Predictors of Reading Outcomes for Children With Reading Disabilities

This study reports on several specific neurocognitive process predictors of reading outcomes for a sample of 278 children with reading disabilities. Three categories of response (i.e., poor, average, and good) were formed via growth curve models of six reading outcomes. Two nested discriminant function analyses were conducted to evaluate the predictive capability of the following models: (a) an intervention and phonological processing model that included intervention group, phonological awareness, and rapid naming and (b) an additive cognitive neuropsychological model that included measures of memory, visual processes, and cognitive or intellectual functioning. Over and above the substantial explanatory power of the base model, the additive model improved classification of poor and good responders. Several of the cognitive and neuropsychological variables predicted degree of reading outcomes, even after controlling for type of intervention, phonological awareness, and rapid naming

Psychometric Stability of Nationally Normed and Experimental Decoding and Related Measures in Children with Reading Disability

Achievement and cognitive tests are used extensively in the diagnosis and educational placement of children with reading disabilities (RD). Moreover, research on scholastic interventions often requires repeat testing and information on practice effects. Little is known, however, about the test–retest and other psychometric properties of many commonly used measures within the beginning reader population, nor are these nationally normed or experimental measures comparatively evaluated. This study examined the test–retest reliability, practice effects, and relations among a number of nationally normed measures of word identification and spelling and experimental measures of achievement and reading-related cognitive processing tests in young children with significant RD. Reliability was adequate for most tests, although lower than might be ideal on a few measures when there was a lengthy test–retest interval or with the reduced behavioral variability that can be seen in groups of beginning readers. Practice effects were minimal. There were strong relations between nationally normed measures of decoding and spelling and their experimental counterparts and with most measures of reading-related cognitive processes. The implications for the use of such tests in treatment studies that focus on beginning readers are discussed

LB3D: A Parallel Implementation of the Lattice-Boltzmann Method for Simulation of Interacting Amphiphilic Fluids

We introduce the lattice-Boltzmann code LB3D, version 7.1. Building on a parallel program and supporting tools which have enabled research utilising high performance computing resources for nearly two decades, LB3D version 7 provides a subset of the research code functionality as an open source project. Here, we describe the theoretical basis of the algorithm as well as computational aspects of the implementation. The software package is validated against simulations of meso-phases resulting from self-assembly in ternary fluid mixtures comprising immiscible and amphiphilic components such as water–oil–surfactant systems. The impact of the surfactant species on the dynamics of spinodal decomposition are tested and quantitative measurement of the permeability of a body centred cubic (BCC) model porous medium for a simple binary mixture is described. Single-core performance and scaling behaviour of the code are reported for simulations on current supercomputer architectures

Validity and reliability of Resource Utilization Groups (RUG-III) in Finnish long-term care facilities

Resource Utilization Groups, Version III (RUG-III) is a case-mix system developed in the USA for classification of long-term care residents. This paper examines the validity and reliability of an adapted 22-group version of RUG-III (RUG-III/22) for use in long-term care facilities in Finland. Finnish cost weights for RUG-III/22 groups are calculated and different methods for their computation are evaluated. The study sample (1,964 residents) was collected in 1995 - 96 from ten long-term care facilities in Finland. RUG-III/22 alone explained 38.2% of the variance of total patient-specific (nursing + auxiliary staff) per diem cost. Resource use within RUG groups was relatively homogeneous. Other predictors of resource use included age, gender and length of stay. RUG-III/22 also met the standard for good reliability (i.e. a kappa value of 0.6 or higher) for crucial classification items, such as activities of daily living and high correlation between assessments based on relative cost.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68924/2/10.1177_14034948990270030201.pd

Berekenen van kwaliteitsindicatoren voor de thuiszorg: voorbeeld uit het ADHOC project, een vergelijking tussen thuiszorgorganisaties uit 11 Europese landen

Doel: Beschrijven en berekenen van thuiszorgkwaliteitsindicatoren aan de hand van gegevens van thuiszorgorganisaties uit elf landen, waaronder Nederland, die deelnamen aan het Europese ‘Aged in Home Care’ (ADHOC) project. Met inachtneming van risicofactoren zijn thuiszorgorganisaties met elkaar vergeleken op kwaliteit van zorg. Methoden: De thuiszorgkwaliteitsindicatoren worden berekend op de wijze zoals die in de Verenigde Staten en Canada is ontwikkeld. De waarden van deze kwaliteitsindicatoren zijn voor elk van de indicatoren op risico gecorrigeerd. Dit is gebaseerd op odds ratios van covariaten die met logistische regressieanalyse op ADHOC worden bepaald. Om de vergelijking van kwaliteitsindicatoren tussen de thuiszorgorganisaties van de landen te vergemakkelijken gebruiken we een methode van percentiel-afkappunten en een aggregaatsom van daaraan gerelateerde scores. Resultaten: Op risicofactoren gecorrigeerde waarden van 22 thuiszorg-kwaliteitsindicatoren lieten grote verschillen zien tussen de elf landen die aan ADHOC deelnamen. De aggregaatsom van kwaliteitsindicatoren liet zien welke landen vermoedelijk de beste of de slechtste thuiszorgkwaliteit hadden. Conclusies: Er zijn kwaliteitsindicatoren beschikbaar voor de thuiszorg waarmee, op basis van gegevens van het RAI voor Thuiszorg, de kwaliteit van zorg tussen thuiszorgorganisaties in en over landen heen kan worden vergeleken. Voorbeelden van dit type indicator zijn: sociaal isolement, ontoereikende pijnbestrijding, beperkter zijn in het zich binnen huis verplaatsen ten opzichte van een eerdere meting

Mortality and immortality : the Nobel Prize as an experiment into the effect of status upon longevity

It has been known for centuries that the rich and famous have longer lives than the poor and ordinary. Causality, however, remains trenchantly debated. The ideal experiment would be one in which extra status could somehow be dropped upon a sub-sample of individuals while those in a control group of comparable individuals received none. This paper attempts to formulate a test in that spirit. It collects 19th-century birth data on science Nobel Prize winners. Correcting for potential biases, we estimate that winning the Prize, compared to merely being nominated, is associated with between 1 and 2 years of extra longevity

Literature Mining for the Discovery of Hidden Connections between Drugs, Genes and Diseases

The scientific literature represents a rich source for retrieval of knowledge on associations between biomedical concepts such as genes, diseases and cellular processes. A commonly used method to establish relationships between biomedical concepts from literature is co-occurrence. Apart from its use in knowledge retrieval, the co-occurrence method is also well-suited to discover new, hidden relationships between biomedical concepts following a simple ABC-principle, in which A and C have no direct relationship, but are connected via shared B-intermediates. In this paper we describe CoPub Discovery, a tool that mines the literature for new relationships between biomedical concepts. Statistical analysis using ROC curves showed that CoPub Discovery performed well over a wide range of settings and keyword thesauri. We subsequently used CoPub Discovery to search for new relationships between genes, drugs, pathways and diseases. Several of the newly found relationships were validated using independent literature sources. In addition, new predicted relationships between compounds and cell proliferation were validated and confirmed experimentally in an in vitro cell proliferation assay. The results show that CoPub Discovery is able to identify novel associations between genes, drugs, pathways and diseases that have a high probability of being biologically valid. This makes CoPub Discovery a useful tool to unravel the mechanisms behind disease, to find novel drug targets, or to find novel applications for existing drugs