IQ and Family Background: Are Associations Strong or Weak?

For the purpose of understanding the underlying mechanisms behind intergenerational associations in income and education, recent studies have explored the intergenerational transmission of abilities. We use a large representative sample of Swedish men to examine both intergenerational and sibling correlations in IQ. Since siblings share both parental factors and neighbourhood influences, the sibling correlation is a broader measure of the importance of family background than the intergenerational correlation. We use IQ data from the Swedish military enlistment tests. The correlation in IQ between fathers (born 1951-1956) and sons (born 1966-1980) is estimated to 0.347. The corresponding estimate for brothers (born 1951-1968) is 0.473, suggesting that family background explains approximately 50% of a person's IQ. Estimating sibling correlations in IQ we thus find that family background has a substantially larger impact on IQ than has been indicated by previous studies examining only intergenerational correlations in IQ.ability, intergenerational mobility, family background

Novel Efficient Routes to Indoxyl Glycosides for Monitoring Glycosidase Activities

A new efficient synthesis for broad access to indoxyl glycosides was developed. Indoxylic acid allyl ester linked to a sugar structure served as the key intermediate in this route. Selective ester cleavage and mild decarboxylation led to the corresponding indoxyl glycosides in good yields. This synthesis was applied for preparation of indoxyl glycosides of fucose, sialic acid, and 6′-sialyl lactose