The Effect of Natural Resources on Civil War Reconsidered

This paper reconsiders the role of natural resources in civil war in light of the continuing debate over whether resource scarcity/abundance fuels conflict. We argue the role of resources in civil war is due to their life-preserving and income-generating attributes, not their scarcity or abundance per se; and the effect may differ across resources and depending upon whether we examine the onset versus the presence of civil war. We highlight the need to consider comprehensive sets of life-preserving and income-generating resources in tandem, as any given resource may affect others by way of belonging to the same economy and physical environment. The empirical investigation employs a large N statistical analysis of civil wars. The independent variables include broad sets of life-preserving resources, including key environmental conditions pertaining to hospitable climate, and income-generating resources. The results indicate that the role of resources in civil war vary by resource. The size of effect varies depending on whether we examine civil war onset or presence, but the sign of the effect essentially does not

Tradeoffs in Trade Data: Do Our Assumptions Affect Our Results?

Researchers investigating the link between trade and peace often face a severe problem of list-wise deletion from missing trade data. Attempts to mitigate this problem include assuming that most observations are zero or imputing the values of such flows. We compare two frequently used trade data sets (the Gleditsch data set and the Correlates of War Project data set). We classify individual observations as observed, constructed or missing. We demonstrate that state attributes are systematically related to different categories of trade data. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we also find that replacing some missing data with estimated values tends to inflate the effects of trade in conflict models, although the effects differ by data set

Stellar Spin-Orbit Misalignment in a Multiplanet System

Stars hosting hot Jupiters are often observed to have high obliquities, whereas stars with multiple co-planar planets have been seen to have low obliquities. This has been interpreted as evidence that hot-Jupiter formation is linked to dynamical disruption, as opposed to planet migration through a protoplanetary disk. We used asteroseismology to measure a large obliquity for Kepler-56, a red giant star hosting two transiting co-planar planets. These observations show that spin-orbit misalignments are not confined to hot-Jupiter systems. Misalignments in a broader class of systems had been predicted as a consequence of torques from wide-orbiting companions, and indeed radial-velocity measurements revealed a third companion in a wide orbit in the Kepler-56 system.Comment: Accepted for publication in Science, published online on October 17 2013; PDF includes main article and supplementary materials (65 pages, 27 figures, 7 tables); v2: small correction to author lis

Association between canine leishmaniosis and Ehrlichia canis co-infection: a prospective case-control study

Abstract Background In the Mediterranean basin, Leishmania infantum is a major cause of disease in dogs, which are frequently co-infected with other vector-borne pathogens (VBP). However, the associations between dogs with clinical leishmaniosis (ClinL) and VBP co-infections have not been studied. We assessed the risk of VBP infections in dogs with ClinL and healthy controls. Methods We conducted a prospective case-control study of dogs with ClinL (positive qPCR and ELISA antibody for L. infantum on peripheral blood) and clinically healthy, ideally breed-, sex- and age-matched, control dogs (negative qPCR and ELISA antibody for L. infantum on peripheral blood) from Paphos, Cyprus. We obtained demographic data and all dogs underwent PCR on EDTA-blood extracted DNA for haemoplasma species, Ehrlichia/Anaplasma spp., Babesia spp., and Hepatozoon spp., with DNA sequencing to identify infecting species. We used logistic regression analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM) to evaluate the risk of VBP infections between ClinL cases and controls. Results From the 50 enrolled dogs with ClinL, DNA was detected in 24 (48%) for Hepatozoon spp., 14 (28%) for Mycoplasma haemocanis, 6 (12%) for Ehrlichia canis and 2 (4%) for Anaplasma platys. In the 92 enrolled control dogs, DNA was detected in 41 (45%) for Hepatozoon spp., 18 (20%) for M. haemocanis, 1 (1%) for E. canis and 3 (3%) for A. platys. No Babesia spp. or “Candidatus Mycoplasma haematoparvum” DNA was detected in any dog. No statistical differences were found between the ClinL and controls regarding age, sex, breed, lifestyle and use of ectoparasitic prevention. A significant association between ClinL and E. canis infection (OR = 12.4, 95% CI: 1.5–106.0, P = 0.022) was found compared to controls by multivariate logistic regression. This association was confirmed using SEM, which further identified that younger dogs were more likely to be infected with each of Hepatozoon spp. and M. haemocanis, and dogs with Hepatozoon spp. were more likely to be co-infected with M. haemocanis. Conclusions Dogs with ClinL are at a higher risk of co-infection with E. canis than clinically healthy dogs. We recommend that dogs diagnosed with ClinL should be tested for E. canis co-infection using PCR

Probing EWSB Naturalness in Unified SUSY Models with Dark Matter

We have studied Electroweak Symmetry Breaking (EWSB) fine-tuning in the context of two unified Supersymmetry scenarios: the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Model (CMSSM) and models with Non-Universal Higgs Masses (NUHM), in light of current and upcoming direct detection dark matter experiments. We consider both those models that satisfy a one-sided bound on the relic density of neutralinos, $\Omega_{\chi} h^2 < 0.12$, and also the subset that satisfy the two-sided bound in which the relic density is within the 2 sigma best fit of WMAP7 + BAO + H0 data. We find that current direct detection searches for dark matter probe the least fine-tuned regions of parameter-space, or equivalently those of lowest Higgs mass parameter $\mu$, and will tend to probe progressively more and more fine-tuned models, though the trend is more pronounced in the CMSSM than in the NUHM. Additionally, we examine several subsets of model points, categorized by common mass hierarchies; M_{\chi_0} \sim M_{\chi^\pm}, M_{\chi_0} \sim M_{\stau}, M_{\chi_0} \sim M_{\stop_1}, the light and heavy Higgs poles, and any additional models classified as "other"; the relevance of these mass hierarchies is their connection to the preferred neutralino annihilation channel that determines the relic abundance. For each of these subsets of models we investigated the degree of fine-tuning and discoverability in current and next generation direct detection experiments.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures. v2: references added. v3: matches published versio

Attributes of climate resilience in fisheries: from theory to practice

In a changing climate, there is an imperative to build coupled social-ecological systems—including fisheries—that can withstand or adapt to climate stressors. Although resilience theory identifies system attributes that supposedly confer resilience, these attributes have rarely been clearly defined, mechanistically explained, nor tested and applied to inform fisheries governance. Here, we develop and apply a comprehensive resilience framework to examine fishery systems across (a) ecological, (b) socio-economic and (c) governance dimensions using five resilience domains: assets, flexibility, organization, learning and agency. We distil and define 38 attributes that confer climate resilience from a coupled literature- and expert-driven approach, describe how they apply to fisheries and provide illustrative examples of resilience attributes in action. Our synthesis highlights that the directionality and mechanism of these attributes depend on the specific context, capacities, and scale of the focal fishery system and associated stressors, and we find evidence of interdependencies among attributes. Overall, however, we find few studies that test resilience attributes in fisheries across all parts of the system, with most examples focussing on the ecological dimension. As such, meaningful quantification of the attributes’ contributions to resilience remains a challenge. Our synthesis and holistic framework represent a starting point for critical application of resilience concepts to fisheries social-ecological systems

Rare coding variants and X-linked loci associated with age at menarche.

More than 100 loci have been identified for age at menarche by genome-wide association studies; however, collectively these explain only ∼3% of the trait variance. Here we test two overlooked sources of variation in 192,974 European ancestry women: low-frequency protein-coding variants and X-chromosome variants. Five missense/nonsense variants (in ALMS1/LAMB2/TNRC6A/TACR3/PRKAG1) are associated with age at menarche (minor allele frequencies 0.08-4.6%; effect sizes 0.08-1.25 years per allele; P<5 × 10(-8)). In addition, we identify common X-chromosome loci at IGSF1 (rs762080, P=9.4 × 10(-13)) and FAAH2 (rs5914101, P=4.9 × 10(-10)). Highlighted genes implicate cellular energy homeostasis, post-transcriptional gene silencing and fatty-acid amide signalling. A frequently reported mutation in TACR3 for idiopathic hypogonatrophic hypogonadism (p.W275X) is associated with 1.25-year-later menarche (P=2.8 × 10(-11)), illustrating the utility of population studies to estimate the penetrance of reportedly pathogenic mutations. Collectively, these novel variants explain ∼0.5% variance, indicating that these overlooked sources of variation do not substantially explain the 'missing heritability' of this complex trait.UK sponsors (see article for overseas ones): This work made use of data and samples generated by the 1958 Birth Cohort (NCDS). Access to these resources was enabled via the 58READIE Project funded by Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council (grant numbers WT095219MA and G1001799). A full list of the financial, institutional and personal contributions to the development of the 1958 Birth Cohort Biomedical resource is available at http://www2.le.ac.uk/projects/birthcohort. Genotyping was undertaken as part of the Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium (WTCCC) under Wellcome Trust award 076113, and a full list of the investigators who contributed to the generation of the data is available at www.wtccc.org.uk ... The Fenland Study is funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, as well as by the Support for Science Funding programme and CamStrad. ... SIBS - CRUK ref: C1287/A8459 SEARCH - CRUK ref: A490/A10124 EMBRACE is supported by Cancer Research UK Grants C1287/A10118, C1287/A16563 and C1287/A17523. Genotyping was supported by Cancer Research - UK grant C12292/A11174D and C8197/A16565. Gareth Evans and Fiona Lalloo are supported by an NIHR grant to the Biomedical Research Centre, Manchester. The Investigators at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust are supported by an NIHR grant to the Biomedical Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. Ros Eeles and Elizabeth Bancroft are supported by Cancer Research UK Grant C5047/A8385. ... Generation Scotland - Scottish Executive Health Department, Chief Scientist Office, grant number CZD/16/6. Exome array genotyping for GS:SFHS was funded by the Medical Research Council UK. 23andMe - This work was supported in part by NIH Award 2R44HG006981-02 from the National Human Genome Research Institute.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from NPG via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms875

Genomic analyses identify hundreds of variants associated with age at menarche and support a role for puberty timing in cancer risk

The timing of puberty is a highly polygenic childhood trait that is epidemiologically associated with various adult diseases. Using 1000 Genomes Project-imputed genotype data in up to similar to 370,000 women, we identify 389 independent signals (P <5 x 10(-8)) for age at menarche, a milestone in female pubertal development. In Icelandic data, these signals explain similar to 7.4% of the population variance in age at menarche, corresponding to similar to 25% of the estimated heritability. We implicate similar to 250 genes via coding variation or associated expression, demonstrating significant enrichment in neural tissues. Rare variants near the imprinted genes MKRN3 and DLK1 were identified, exhibiting large effects when paternally inherited. Mendelian randomization analyses suggest causal inverse associations, independent of body mass index (BMI), between puberty timing and risks for breast and endometrial cancers in women and prostate cancer in men. In aggregate, our findings highlight the complexity of the genetic regulation of puberty timing and support causal links with cancer susceptibility

Large scale multifactorial likelihood quantitative analysis of BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants: An ENIGMA resource to support clinical variant classification

The multifactorial likelihood analysis method has demonstrated utility for quantitative assessment of variant pathogenicity for multiple cancer syndrome genes. Independent data types currently incorporated in the model for assessing BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants include clinically calibrated prior probability of pathogenicity based on variant location and bioinformatic prediction of variant effect, co-segregation, family cancer history profile, co-occurrence with a pathogenic variant in the same gene, breast tumor pathology, and case-control information. Research and clinical data for multifactorial likelihood analysis were collated for 1,395 BRCA1/2 predominantly intronic and missense variants, enabling classification based on posterior probability of pathogenicity for 734 variants: 447 variants were classified as (likely) benign, and 94 as (likely) pathogenic; and 248 classifications were new or considerably altered relative to ClinVar submissions. Classifications were compared with information not yet included in the likelihood model, and evidence strengths aligned to those recommended for ACMG/AMP classification codes. Altered mRNA splicing or function relative to known nonpathogenic variant controls were moderately to strongly predictive of variant pathogenicity. Variant absence in population datasets provided supporting evidence for variant pathogenicity. These findings have direct relevance for BRCA1 and BRCA2 variant evaluation, and justify the need for gene-specific calibration of evidence types used for variant classification