The economics of Theocracy

This paper models theocracy as a regime where the clergy in power retains knowledge of the cost of political production but which is potentially incompetent or corrupt. This is contrasted with a secular regime where government is contracted out to a secular ruler, and hence the church loses the possibility to observe costs and creates for itself a hidden-information agency problem. The church is free to choose between regimes – a make-or-buy choice – and we look for the range of environmental parameters that are most conducive to the superiority of theocracy and therefore to its occurrence and persistence, despite its disabilities. Numerical solution of the model indicates that the optimal environment for a theocracy is likely to be one in which the “bad” (high-cost) state is disastrously bad but the probability of its occurrence is not very high. A broad review of the historical evidence yields some suggestive support to the predictions of the model. Finally, the model is shown to be applicable to the make-or-buy-government choices of other groups, such as organized labor and the military

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Partial altitudinal migration of a Himalayan forest pheasant

BACKGROUND: Altitudinal migration systems are poorly understood. Recent advances in animal telemetry which enables tracking of migrants across their annual cycles will help illustrate unknown migration patterns and test existing hypotheses. Using telemetry, we show the existence of a complex partial altitudinal migration system in the Himalayas and discuss our findings to help better understand partial and altitudinal migration. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We used GPS/accelerometer tags to monitor the migration of Satyr tragopan (Tragopan satyra) in the Bhutan Himalayas. We tagged 38 birds from 2009 - 2011 and found that tragopans are partially migratory. Fall migration lasted from the 3(rd) week of September till the 3(rd) week of November with migrants traveling distances ranging from 1.25 km to 13.5 km over 1 to 32 days. Snowfall did not influence the onset of migration. Return migration started by the 1(st) week of March and lasted until the 1(st) week of April. Individuals returned within 4 to 10 days and displayed site fidelity. One bird switched from being a migrant to a non-migrant. Tragopans displayed three main migration patterns: 1) crossing multiple mountains; 2) descending/ascending longitudinally; 3) moving higher up in winter and lower down in summer. More females migrated than males; but, within males, body size was not a factor for predicting migrants. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our observations of migrants traversing over multiple mountain ridges and even of others climbing to higher elevations is novel. We support the need for existing hypotheses to consider how best to explain inter- as well as intra-sexual differences. Most importantly, having shown that the patterns of an altitudinal migration system are complex and not a simple up and down slope movement, we hope our findings will influence the way altitudinal migrations are perceived and thereby contribute to a better understanding of how species may respond to climate change

Indirect remote sensing of a cryptic forest understorey invasive species

Remote sensing has successfully been applied to map the distribution of canopy dominating invasive species. Many invaders however, do not dominate the canopy, and remote sensing has so far not been applied to map such species. In this study, an indirect method was used to map the seed production of Chromolaena odorata , one of the world's 100 worst invasive species. The study was executed in lowland Shorea robusta forest in Nepal, where Chromolaena invaded the understorey of a degraded forest. A Landsat ETM+ image processed through a neural network predicted 89 and 81% of forest canopy density and light intensity reaching the understorey, respectively. We inverted these models to predict Chromolaena seed productivity. Light intensity determined 93% of the variation in log10 seed production per plant. Chromolaena failed to produce seed below a light intensity of 6.5 mJ m- 2 day-1. Further analysis revealed that Chromolaena was absent above this light intensity in case of a high biomass of other shrub and herb species, a situation occurring in the absence of grazing. We therefore suggest that other species control Chromolaena through competitive exclusion in the absence of grazing, whereas grazing breaks the dominance of these other species thus creating the conditions for Chromolaena attain canopy dominance. The presence of grazing was related to distance from the forest edge, a variable that together with light intensity allowed us to map 64% of variation in Chromolaena cover. Predicted Chromolaena cover and seed production per plant were combined into a map displaying the total seed production per unit area. Such map displaying seed producing sites could be used to significantly reduce the costs of controlling Chromolaena infestation by providing information on the spatial segregation of source and sink populations, which will support efficient habitat ranking to restore invaded areas and protect non-invaded ecosystems. This may prove particularly valuable when implementing control measures under circumstances of limited capital and manpower