Comparative genetic architectures of schizophrenia in East Asian and European populations

Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder with approximately 1% lifetime risk globally. Large-scale schizophrenia genetic studies have reported primarily on European ancestry samples, potentially missing important biological insights. Here, we report the largest study to date of East Asian participants (22,778 schizophrenia cases and 35,362 controls), identifying 21 genome-wide-significant associations in 19 genetic loci. Common genetic variants that confer risk for schizophrenia have highly similar effects between East Asian and European ancestries (genetic correlation = 0.98 ± 0.03), indicating that the genetic basis of schizophrenia and its biology are broadly shared across populations. A fixed-effect meta-analysis including individuals from East Asian and European ancestries identified 208 significant associations in 176 genetic loci (53 novel). Trans-ancestry fine-mapping reduced the sets of candidate causal variants in 44 loci. Polygenic risk scores had reduced performance when transferred across ancestries, highlighting the importance of including sufficient samples of major ancestral groups to ensure their generalizability across populations

Making Sense of the Front Lines: Environmental Inspectors in Ohio and Wisconsin

Although about 90% of environmental policy is delegated to the states for implementation, the individuals responsible for implementing a majority of that policy are largely understudied. Existing acknowledgment of these regulators typically extends only to the regulatory enforcement strategy their agency employs. Missing in these conversations is a focused study on the regulators themselves and their perceptions of the regulated community that they interact with daily. Understanding these perceptions will provide insights into how regulators approach their interactions and how they ensure regulatory compliance. This paper uses an exploratory case study approach to focus on front-line regulators with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources via agency-wide surveys. Findings from the surveys reveal generally positive perceptions of the regulated community in both states and experiences with them. The findings call attention to a neglected population and emphasize the importance of regulators’ perceptions in their regulatory approach

The (un)heavenly chorus in British politics: Bringing the what, the when and the how questions into the analysis of interest group influence

Increasing attention has been paid to interest group influence in the last decades. Nonetheless, the literature has hitherto theoretically and analytically focused on who exerts influence overlooking on what, when and how influence is exerted. By replicating the analysis in Bernhagen (2009) this works aims to bring the what, when and how questions back into the analysis of interest group influence. In doing so, I provide a more nuanced discussion on politics as being ‘about who gets what, when and how’ (Lasswell, 1936). Aloof from any pretence of conclusiveness, preliminary findings show that not only are those questions worth of investigation per se but also that they potentially have a strong impact on the who question

The Iron Law of Unintended Effects, Again? Outcome Measures and Blame-Avoidance

The shift from output to outcome measures is a recurrent doctrine in public administration studies and practice. However, as with many popular doctrines before, more empirical analysis is still needed. This chapter focuses on the unintended effects of outcome-based performance management and explores how the use of outcome measures influences blame-avoidance strategies by officials and service providers. In looking for answers and using the concept of social mechanism as the analytical lens, this contribution explores a pilot case in the Italian public sector, where a performance ranking composed of outcome measures was introduced as the pivotal performance management tool. Results allow to conceptualize a link between the type of blame-avoidance response and the features of the potential blamers