Fluctuating fortunes and Hawaiian house prices

Real estate prices in a local market can be driven by an identifiable group of purchasers. In Hawaii, residents of both the U.S. mainland and Japan have been significant purchasers of homes. An analysis suggests that house prices in Hawaii were driven primarily by purchasers from the U.S. mainland for most of the 1975–2008 period. But, during Japan’s “bubble economy” in the late 1980s and immediately thereafter, house prices in Hawaii were driven primarily by demand from Japan.Housing - Prices - Hawaii

Regime shifts in real estate markets: Time-varying effects of the U.S. and Japanese economies on house prices in Hawaii

We show that house prices may be driven entirely by the demands of one identifiable group for several years and then by demands of another group at other times. We present evidence that house prices in Hawaii were subject to such regime shifts. Prices responded to demands associated with American income and wealth for most years from 1975 through 2008. From the middle of the 1980s through the early 1990s, however, house prices responded to Japanese income and wealth. Statistical tests indicate that the regime-shifting model outperformed the constant-coefficient model. The regime shifting model helps explain why and by how much elasticities with respect to income and wealth and volatilities of house prices in Hawaii varied over time.Housing - Prices - Hawaii

A New Species and New Genus of Galerucinae (Chrysomelidae: Coleoptera)

Author Institution: Department of Zoology and Entomology, The Ohio State University, Columbus 1

Reconstructing Paleo Lake Levels from Relict Shorelines along the Upper Great Lakes

Shorelines of the upper Great Lakes include many embayments that contain strandplains of beach ridges. These former shoreline positions of the lakes can be used to determine changes in the elevation of the lakes through time, and they also provide information on the warping of the ground surface that is occurring in the Great Lakes after the weight of glacial ice was removed. Relative lake-level hydrographs can be created by coring the beach ridges to determine the elevation of basal foreshore (swash zone) deposits in each ridge and by obtaining radiocarbon dates of basal wetland sediments between ridges to generate an age model for the ridges. Because the relative-level hydrographs are the combination of lake-level change and vertical ground movement (isostatic rebound), the rebound must be removed to produce a graph that shows only the physical limits and timing of past lake-level fluctuations referenced to a common outlet. More than 500 vibracores of beach-ridge sediments were collected at five sites along Lake Michigan and four sites along Lake Superior. The cores showed a sequence of dune deposits overlying foreshore deposits that, in turn, overlie upper shoreface deposits. The base of the foreshore deposits is coarser and more poorly sorted than an overlying and underlying sediment and represents the plunge-point sediments at the base of the swash zone. The plunge-point deposits are a close approximation of the elevation of the lake when the beach ridge formed. More than 150 radiocarbon ages of basal wetland sediments were collected to produce age models for the sites. Currently, age models exist for all Lake Michigan sites and one Lake Superior site. By combining the elevation data with the age models, six relative lake-level hydrographs were created for the upper Great Lakes. An iterative approach was used to remove rebound from the five Lake Michigan relative hydrographs and merge the graphs into a single hydrograph. The resultant hydrograph shows long-term patterns of lake-level change for lakes Michigan and Huron and is referenced to the Port Huron outlet. When the age models are completed for the Lake Superior sites, a hydrograph will be created for the entire lake

The environment power system analysis tool development program

The Environment Power System Analysis Tool (EPSAT) is being developed to provide space power system design engineers with an analysis tool for determining system performance of power systems in both naturally occurring and self-induced environments. The program is producing an easy to use computer aided engineering (CAE) tool general enough to provide a vehicle for technology transfer from space scientists and engineers to power system design engineers. The results of the project after two years of a three year development program are given. The EPSAT approach separates the CAE tool into three distinct functional units: a modern user interface to present information, a data dictionary interpreter to coordinate analysis; and a data base for storing system designs and results of analysis

Does ecosystem sensitivity to precipitation at the site-level conform to regional-scale predictions?

Citation: Wilcox, K. R., Blair, J. M., Smith, M. D., & Knapp, A. K. (2016). Does ecosystem sensitivity to precipitation at the site-level conform to regional-scale predictions? Ecology, 97(3), 561-568. doi:10.1890/15-1437.1Central to understanding global C cycle dynamics is the functional relationship between precipitation and net primary production (NPP). At large spatial (regional) scales, the responsiveness of aboveground NPP (ANPP) to interannual variation in annual precipitation (AP; ANPP(sens)) is inversely related to site-level ANPP, coinciding with turnover of plant communities along precipitation gradients. Within ecosystems experiencing chronic alterations in water availability, plant community change will also occur with unknown consequences for ANPP(sens). To examine the role plant community shifts may play in determining alterations in site-level ANPP(sens), we experimentally increased precipitation by similar to 35% for two decades in a native Central U.S. grassland. Consistent with regional models, ANPP(sens) decreased initially as water availability and ANPP increased. However, ANPP(sens) shifted back to ambient levels when mesic species increased in abundance in the plant community. Similarly, in grassland sites with distinct mesic and xeric plant communities and corresponding 50% differences in ANPP, ANPP(sens) did not differ over almost three decades. We conclude that responses in ANPP(sens) to chronic alterations in water availability within an ecosystem may not conform to regional AP-ANPP patterns, despite expected changes in ANPP and plant communities. The result is unanticipated functional resistance to climate change at the site scale

Genome-wide linkage analysis for alcohol dependence: a comparison between single-nucleotide polymorphism and microsatellite marker assays

Both theoretical and applied studies have proven that the utility of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in linkage analysis is more powerful and cost-effective than current microsatellite marker assays. Here we performed a whole-genome scan on 115 White, non-Hispanic families segregating for alcohol dependence, using one 10.3-cM microsatellite marker set and two SNP data sets (0.33-cM, 0.78-cM spacing). Two definitions of alcohol dependence (ALDX1 and ALDX2) were used. Our multipoint nonparametric linkage analysis found alcoholism was nominal linked to 12 genomic regions. The linkage peaks obtained by using the microsatellite marker set and the two SNP sets had a high degree of correspondence in general, but the microsatellite marker set was insufficient to detect some nominal linkage peaks. The presence of linkage disequilibrium between markers did not significantly affect the results. Across the entire genome, SNP datasets had a much higher average linkage information content (0.33 cM: 0.93, 0.78 cM: 0.91) than did microsatellite marker set (0.57). The linkage peaks obtained through two SNP datasets were very similar with some minor differences. We conclude that genome-wide linkage analysis by using approximately 5,000 SNP markers evenly distributed across the human genome is sufficient and might be more powerful than current 10-cM microsatellite marker assays

Multifactor-dimensionality reduction versus family-based association tests in detecting susceptibility loci in discordant sib-pair studies

Complex diseases are generally thought to be under the influence of multiple, and possibly interacting, genes. Many association methods have been developed to identify susceptibility genes assuming a single-gene disease model, referred to as single-locus methods. Multilocus methods consider joint effects of multiple genes and environmental factors. One commonly used method for family-based association analysis is implemented in FBAT. The multifactor-dimensionality reduction method (MDR) is a multilocus method, which identifies multiple genetic loci associated with the occurrence of complex disease. Many studies of late onset complex diseases employ a discordant sib pairs design. We compared the FBAT and MDR in their ability to detect susceptibility loci using a discordant sib-pair dataset generated from the simulated data made available to participants in the Genetic Analysis Workshop 14. Using FBAT, we were able to identify the effect of one susceptibility locus. However, the finding was not statistically significant. We were not able to detect any of the interactions using this method. This is probably because the FBAT test is designed to find loci with major effects, not interactions. Using MDR, the best result we obtained identified two interactions. However, neither of these reached a level of statistical significance. This is mainly due to the heterogeneity of the disease trait and noise in the data

Whole-genome variance components linkage analysis using single-nucleotide polymorphisms versus microsatellites on quantitative traits of derived phenotypes from factor analysis of electroencephalogram waves

Alcohol dependence is a serious public health problem. We studied data from families participating in the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) and made available to participants in the Genetic Analysis Workshop 14 (GAW14) in order to search for genes predisposing to alcohol dependence. Using factor analysis, we identified four factors (F1, F2, F3, F4) related to the electroencephalogram traits. We conducted variance components linkage analysis with each of the factors. Our results using the Affymetrix single-nucleotide polymorphism dataset showed significant evidence for a novel linkage of F3 (factor comprised of the three midline channel EEG measures from the target case of the Visual Oddball experiment ttdt2, 3, 4) to chromosome 18 (LOD = 3.45). This finding was confirmed by analyses of the microsatellite data (LOD = 2.73) and Illumina SNP data (LOD = 3.30). We also demonstrated that, in a sample like the COGA data, a dense single-nucleotide polymorphism map provides better linkage signals than low-resolution microsatellite map with quantitative traits