Public spending and Scottish devolution : crowding out, or crowding in?

There has been a developing debate about the performance of the Scottish economy under devolution and the effect of the expansion of the public sector on Scottish growth. Several commentators have expressed concern that the size of the public sector in Scotland is now a drag on growth, while others take a more sanguine view. This debate is well summarised in Marsh and Zuleeg (2006). However, this is a debate in which the evidence is often not well marshalled and there is often more heat than light generated. There is a suspicion that arguments about the effect and role of the public sector often derive more from the ultimate values and political preferences of proponents than from hard analysis and evidence

Affordability of Housing: Concepts, Measurement and Evidence

There has recently been widespread public debate and media attention around housing affordability. This paper discusses the concept of affordability as it applies to housing, examines the approaches used to measure affordability, and then documents the aggregate evidence for New Zealand over the last twenty years. We largely use the Household Economic Survey conducted by Statistics New Zealand to obtain our data. We conclude that affordability is difficult to define and that there is no consensus as to the best way to measure it. Using a range of measures, we examine the trends over time. Our data reveals no long-term trend in affordability when considering all measures. Different measures show different movements over time. Affordability has appeared to move in cycles over the last twenty years.housing; affordability; New Zealand

Size Estimate of a Local Population of Brychius Hungerfordi (Coleoptera: Haliplidae)

Much of the natural history of the endangered crawling water beetle, Brychius hungerfordi, is unknown. Population estimates have only been surmised. We have measured, using a mark and recapture technique, a localize population of the beetle in a pool on the East Branch of the Maple River, Emmet County, Michigan. The average population during July 2001 was found to be 1052 individuals with a range of 43 (highest estimate – lowest estimate). A three-year study of the relative abundance of the beetle in the same pool suggests that the population has remained relatively constant

Case study : a patient-clinician collaboration that identified and prioritized evidence gaps and stimulated research development

Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPostprin

Assuring production-derived quality in Canadian food markets

Food quality attributes arising from farming methods are important to many Canadians. The credence nature of these quality attributes necessitates some form of quality assurance for accurate signalling to consumers. This thesis examines the appropriate role for private, third party, and government actors in credible quality assurance systems for production-derived attributes. Concurrently, it explores the nature of trust that Canadians put in various organizations for quality assurance. In a nationwide survey, Canadian consumers obtained significant benefits from government verification of pesticide free and environmentally sustainable grains contained in pre-packaged sliced bread. The data was collected using a discrete choice experiment. Farmers, third party, and government organizations were similarly trusted for accurate information about farming methods. The dimensions of this trust varied across organizations. Government standards relating to environmental sustainability were perceived as most effective. Results obtained using a latent class multinomial logit model showed that respondents who most valued production-derived food quality also received the greatest benefit from government verification and significant negative utility from supermarket or third party verification. In relative terms, the difference in utility between third party and government verification represents 141% of the value of the environmentally sustainable attribute and 87% of the pesticide free attribute. The results suggest that significant consumer benefit can be achieved if government were to take a leading role in quality assurance for production-derived quality

Psychopathy, adaptation, and disorder

In a recent study, we found a negative association between psychopathy and violence against genetic relatives. We interpreted this result as a form of nepotism and argued that it failed to support the hypothesis that psychopathy is a mental disorder, suggesting instead that it supports the hypothesis that psychopathy is an evolved life history strategy. This interpretation and subsequent arguments have been challenged in a number of ways. Here, we identify several misunderstandings regarding the harmful dysfunction definition of mental disorder as it applies to psychopathy and regarding the meaning of nepotism. Furthermore, we examine the evidence provided by our critics that psychopathy is associated with other disorders, and we offer a comment on their alternative model of psychopathy. We conclude that there remains little evidence that psychopathy is the product of dysfunctional mechanisms

Nepotistic patterns of violent psychopathy: evidence for adaptation?

Psychopaths routinely disregard social norms by engaging in selfish, antisocial, often violent behavior. Commonly characterized as mentally disordered, recent evidence suggests that psychopaths are executing a well-functioning, if unscrupulous strategy that historically increased reproductive success at the expense of others. Natural selection ought to have favored strategies that spared close kin from harm, however, because actions affecting the fitness of genetic relatives contribute to an individual’s inclusive fitness. Conversely, there is evidence that mental disorders can disrupt psychological mechanisms designed to protect relatives. Thus, mental disorder and adaptation accounts of psychopathy generate opposing hypotheses: psychopathy should be associated with an increase in the victimization of kin in the former account but not in the latter. Contrary to the mental disorder hypothesis, we show here in a sample of 289 violent offenders that variation in psychopathy predicts a decrease in the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders; that is, psychopathy predicts an increased likelihood of harming non-relatives. Because nepotistic inhibition in violence may be caused by dispersal or kin discrimination, we examined the effects of psychopathy on (1) the dispersal of offenders and their kin and (2) sexual assault frequency (as a window on kin discrimination). Although psychopathy was negatively associated with coresidence with kin and positively associated with the commission of sexual assault, it remained negatively associated with the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders after removing cases of offenders who had coresided with kin and cases of sexual assault from the analyses. These results stand in contrast to models positing psychopathy as a pathology, and provide support for the hypothesis that psychopathy reflects an evolutionary strategy largely favoring the exploitation of non-relatives

Sequence-Based Analysis of Thermal Adaptation and Protein Energy Landscapes in an Invasive Blue Mussel (Mytilus galloprovincialis).

Adaptive responses to thermal stress in poikilotherms plays an important role in determining competitive ability and species distributions. Amino acid substitutions that affect protein stability and modify the thermal optima of orthologous proteins may be particularly important in this context. Here, we examine a set of 2,770 protein-coding genes to determine if proteins in a highly invasive heat tolerant blue mussel (Mytilus galloprovincialis) contain signals of adaptive increases in protein stability relative to orthologs in a more cold tolerant M. trossulus. Such thermal adaptations might help to explain, mechanistically, the success with which the invasive marine mussel M. galloprovincialis has displaced native species in contact zones in the eastern (California) and western (Japan) Pacific. We tested for stabilizing amino acid substitutions in warm tolerant M. galloprovincialis relative to cold tolerant M. trossulus with a generalized linear model that compares in silico estimates of recent changes in protein stability among closely related congeners. Fixed substitutions in M. galloprovincialis were 3,180.0 calories per mol per substitution more stabilizing at genes with both elevated dN/dS ratios and transcriptional responses to heat stress, and 705.8 calories per mol per substitution more stabilizing across all 2,770 loci investigated. Amino acid substitutions concentrated in a small number of genes were more stabilizing in M. galloprovincialis compared with cold tolerant M. trossulus. We also tested for, but did not find, enrichment of a priori GO terms in genes with elevated dN/dS ratios in M. galloprovincialis. This might indicate that selection for thermodynamic stability is generic across all lineages, and suggests that the high change in estimated protein stability that we observed in M. galloprovincialis is driven by selection for extra stabilizing substitutions, rather than by higher incidence of selection in a greater number of genes in this lineage. Nonetheless, our finding of more stabilizing amino acid changes in the warm adapted lineage is important because it suggests that adaption for thermal stability has contributed to M. galloprovincialis' superior tolerance to heat stress, and that pairing tests for positive selection and tests for transcriptional response to heat stress can identify candidates of protein stability adaptation