Age and lifecycle patterns driving U.S. migration shifts

Migration—people moving between locations—is now driving much of the demographic change occurring in the United States. In this brief, authors Kenneth Johnson, Richelle Winkler, and Luke Rogers share new research on age-related migration patterns to provide a fuller understanding of the complex patterns of demographic change in the United States. Examining four migration age groups, including emerging adults, young adults, family age, and older adults, their analysis of trends over time shows evidence that certain age groups migrate in similar ways. For example, young adult migrants are flowing to large metropolitan areas, while family age migrants are leaving large urban cores for the suburbs. Major metro areas in the Northeast and Midwest are losing older migrants, and rural farm counties continue to lose young adults. The authors explore how these migration patterns have important implications for people, institutions, and communities of both rural and urban America, as well as for the design of policies and practices that foster the development of sustainable communities

An evaluation, in light of Brexit, of the extent that the EU has been responsible for improving the habitat conservation regime in England and Wales

Conservation efforts in Britain originated in the nineteenth century; when Wordsworth described the Lake District as “a national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy.” Since, an abundance of national and international legislation has been passed intending to protect the natural environment and the species inside it. This essay will explore the current habitat conservation regime of England and Wales, evaluating the extent to which the European Union has enhanced the current system. In doing so, this paper shall first outline the international framework before analysing the evolution of the current regime of Sites of Special Scientific Interest. I will then evaluate the Natura 2000 network in order to assess the effect that the EU has had on the domestic habitat conservation system. This discussion will ultimately conclude that whilst the EU has had a positive impact, the system is not doomed to fail following Brexit if the UK government avoid the disparagement of conservational measures

Article Use in ESL Compositions: Strategies for Instructors

The following is a study of definite article use in ESL instruction. Articles are some of the most common words in the English language and the most frequently misused by ESL students. Nonetheless, articles have not received their due coverage in ESL instruction as they are difficult to teach, often overlooked by textbooks, and considered unnecessary to fluency by some instructors and linguists. The focus of this study will be the definite article as it is the most common and, perhaps, the most challenging for ESL leaners. This study will assert the importance of teaching the correct usage of the definite article in college level classes as well as effective strategies for improving student success

Relationships between estimated autozygosity and complex traits in the UK Biobank

<div><p>Inbreeding increases the risk of certain Mendelian disorders in humans but may also reduce fitness through its effects on complex traits and diseases. Such inbreeding depression is thought to occur due to increased homozygosity at causal variants that are recessive with respect to fitness. Until recently it has been difficult to amass large enough sample sizes to investigate the effects of inbreeding depression on complex traits using genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data in population-based samples. Further, it is difficult to infer causation in analyses that relate degree of inbreeding to complex traits because confounding variables (e.g., education) may influence both the likelihood for parents to outbreed and offspring trait values. The present study used runs of homozygosity in genome-wide SNP data in up to 400,000 individuals in the UK Biobank to estimate the proportion of the autosome that exists in autozygous tracts—stretches of the genome which are identical due to a shared common ancestor. After multiple testing corrections and controlling for possible sociodemographic confounders, we found significant relationships in the predicted direction between estimated autozygosity and three of the 26 traits we investigated: age at first sexual intercourse, fluid intelligence, and forced expiratory volume in 1 second. Our findings corroborate those of several published studies. These results may imply that these traits have been associated with Darwinian fitness over evolutionary time. However, some of the autozygosity-trait relationships were attenuated after controlling for background sociodemographic characteristics, suggesting that alternative explanations for these associations have not been eliminated. Care needs to be taken in the design and interpretation of ROH studies in order to glean reliable information about the genetic architecture and evolutionary history of complex traits.</p></div