The labor market behavior of married women with young children in the US: Have differences by religion disappeared?

Using data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth, conducted in the United States, we study the role of religious affiliation and participation in the labor supply behavior of non-Hispanic married women with young children. We estimate ordered probit models with a trichotomous dependent variable indicating full-time employment, part-time employment or non-employment. We find that the labor market decisions of Catholic women are not significantly different from those of their mainline Protestant counterparts, and that women affiliated with conservative Protestant denominations continue to stand out for their low levels of labor market attachment. With regard to religious participation, we find a non-linear association: the probability of non-employment is high both among women who have zero attendance at religious services and among those who attend more than once a week - the latter especially. Reasons for these non-linearities are explored. Our results suggest that future research on relationships between religious participation and various economic and demographic outcomes should be based on models that allow for non-linearities and also for differences in the effects of religious participation by religious affiliation

The Effects of Firm-Initiated Clawback Provisions on Earnings Quality and Auditor Behavior

While firm-initiated compensation recovery (or clawback) provisions are gaining popularity and the recently enacted Dodd-Frank Act seeks to make the clawback of erroneously awarded compensation mandatory for all listed companies, little is known about their effectiveness. We find that the incidence of accounting restatements declines after firms initiate such provisions. In addition, we show that investors and auditors view such provisions as associated with increased accounting quality and lower audit risk. Specifically, we find that firms' earnings response coefficients increase after the adoption of clawback provisions. Further, for firms that adopt clawbacks, auditors are less likely to report material internal control weaknesses, charge lower audit fees, and issue audit reports with a shorter lag

Association of genetic variation in COL11A1 with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis

Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is a common and progressive spinal deformity in children that exhibits striking sexual dimorphism, with girls at more than fivefold greater risk of severe disease compared to boys. Despite its medical impact, the molecular mechanisms that drive AIS are largely unknown. We previously defined a female-specific AIS genetic risk locus in an enhancer near th

ShiBASE: an integrated database for comparative genomics of Shigella

Among the major enteric bacterial pathogens, Shigella is found to display extreme genome diversity and dynamics, which imposes a challenge in comparative genomic studies. To facilitate further studies in this area, we have constructed an integrated online database, ShiBASE (),which contains Shigella genomic sequences of four species and additional comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) data of 43 serotypes. ShiBASE offers online comparative analysis on DNA sequences, gene orders, metabolic pathways and virulence factors. In addition, ShiBASE has a newly developed online comparative visualization service, Shi-align, which enables the alignment of any query sequence with the reference genome sequences

VFDB: a reference database for bacterial virulence factors

Bacterial pathogens continue to impose a major threat to public health worldwide in the 21st century. Intensified studies on bacterial pathogenesis have greatly expanded our knowledge about the mechanisms of the disease processes at the molecular level over the last decades. To facilitate future research, it becomes necessary to form a database collectively presenting the virulence factors (VFs) of various medical significant bacterial pathogens. The aim of virulence factor database (VFDB) (http://www.mgc.ac.cn/VFs/) is to provide such a source for scientists to rapidly access to current knowledge about VFs from various bacterial pathogens. VFDB is comprehensive and user-friendly. One can search VFDB by browsing each genus or by typing keywords. Furthermore, a BLAST search tool against all known VF-related genes is also available. VFDB provides a unified gateway to store, search, retrieve and update information about VFs from various bacterial pathogens

The distribution and mutagenesis of short coding INDELs from 1,128 whole exomes

BACKGROUND: Identifying insertion/deletion polymorphisms (INDELs) with high confidence has been intrinsically challenging in short-read sequencing data. Here we report our approach for improving INDEL calling accuracy by using a machine learning algorithm to combine call sets generated with three independent methods, and by leveraging the strengths of each individual pipeline. Utilizing this approach, we generated a consensus exome INDEL call set from a large dataset generated by the 1000 Genomes Project (1000G), maximizing both the sensitivity and the specificity of the calls. RESULTS: This consensus exome INDEL call set features 7,210 INDELs, from 1,128 individuals across 13 populations included in the 1000 Genomes Phase 1 dataset, with a false discovery rate (FDR) of about 7.0%. CONCLUSIONS: In our study we further characterize the patterns and distributions of these exonic INDELs with respect to density, allele length, and site frequency spectrum, as well as the potential mutagenic mechanisms of coding INDELs in humans. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1333-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Obesity and Bariatric Surgery in Chinese Nurses

Abstract Background Obesity has become a global epidemic. Surgical treatment of obesity and metabolic disorders in China is increasing rapidly, but it is still a new discipline even to health professionals. As an important member of the multidisciplinary team, the knowledge and attitudes of nurses provide crucial health care to the patients and support to surgeons. Objectives To study the Chinese nurses' knowledge of obesity and metabolic disorders, and attitudes towards bariatric surgery and to improve their capability of work in this new discipline. Methods This is a multicenter study, with the questionnaire distributed to cooperative hospitals in the form of an electronic questionnaire by the First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University in April 2018. A questionnaire was designed to investigate nurses' demographic, knowledge, and attitude towards obesity, weight loss, and bariatric surgery. Results A total of 5311 questionnaires were received, with an effective rate of 91.8% (4878 questionnaires); 65.2% of nurses had a normal BMI. Nurses generally had a high knowledge of obesity and related cardiovascular diseases (98.6%) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (90.2%). However, there was a lack of knowledge in other related aspects, for example its relations to carcinoma (49.5%), gastroesophageal reflux disease (40.1%), and psychological disorders (49.1%), which are controversial issues in bariatric surgery. It was found that education (p < 0.05) had an important influence to nurses' knowledge about the comorbidities of obesity. Female nurses had a higher tendency to choose weight loss than males, but male nurses did physical exercise more frequently than females (p < 0.05). Their acceptance of safety (25.1%) and efficacy (22.9%) of bariatric surgery is low, with concerns predominantly about postoperative complications and adverse effects. Surgical nurses had a more optimistic attitude towards surgery (p < 0.05). Conclusions Chinese nurses have poor knowledge of obesity-related metabolic disorders and also have poor acceptance of surgical treatment modalities. Our findings suggest that it is crucial to enhance the continuing education of Chinese nurses for obesity, metabolic disorders, and bariatric surgery