Don't blame it on the sunshine, don't blame it on the moonlight, don't blame it on good times, blame it on the sociocultural factors

In this issue of Hepatology, Ventura‐Cots and colleagues present their study arguing that colder weather and fewer sunlight hours increase alcohol consumption and thus cause alcoholic cirrhosis (1). “Causality” is a key concept for this study. A recent review on the topic highlighted two nicely articulated definitions provided by Lilienfeld (‘a factor may be defined as a cause of a disease, if the incidence of the disease is diminished when exposure to this factor is likewise diminished’) and Pearl (‘X is a cause of Y if Y listens to X and decides its value in response to what it hears

Experimental observation of plasmons in a graphene monolayer resting on a two-dimensional subwavelength silicon grating

We experimentally demonstrate graphene-plasmon polariton excitation in a continuous graphene monolayer resting on a two-dimensional subwavelength silicon grating. The subwavelength silicon grating is fabricated by a nanosphere lithography technique with a self-assembled nanosphere array as a template. Measured transmission spectra illustrate the excitation of graphene-plasmon polaritons, which is further supported by numerical simulations and theoretical prediction of plasmonband diagrams. Our grating-assisted coupling to graphene-plasmon polaritons forms an important platform for graphene-based opto-electronics applications.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, revised version accepted by AP

Genetic ancestry of participants in the National Children's Study.

BackgroundThe National Children's Study (NCS) is a prospective epidemiological study in the USA tasked with identifying a nationally representative sample of 100,000 children, and following them from their gestation until they are 21 years of age. The objective of the study is to measure environmental and genetic influences on growth, development, and health. Determination of the ancestry of these NCS participants is important for assessing the diversity of study participants and for examining the effect of ancestry on various health outcomes.ResultsWe estimated the genetic ancestry of a convenience sample of 641 parents enrolled at the 7 original NCS Vanguard sites, by analyzing 30,000 markers on exome arrays, using the 1000 Genomes Project superpopulations as reference populations, and compared this with the measures of self-reported ethnicity and race. For 99% of the individuals, self-reported ethnicity and race agreed with the predicted superpopulation. NCS individuals self-reporting as Asian had genetic ancestry of either South Asian or East Asian groups, while those reporting as either Hispanic White or Hispanic Other had similar genetic ancestry. Of the 33 individuals who self-reported as Multiracial or Non-Hispanic Other, 33% matched the South Asian or East Asian groups, while these groups represented only 4.4% of the other reported categories.ConclusionsOur data suggest that self-reported ethnicity and race have some limitations in accurately capturing Hispanic and South Asian populations. Overall, however, our data indicate that despite the complexity of the US population, individuals know their ancestral origins, and that self-reported ethnicity and race is a reliable indicator of genetic ancestry