Cross-country relationships between life expectancy, intertemporal choice and age at first birth

Humans, like other animals, typically discount the value of delayed rewards relative to those available in the present. From an evolutionary perspective, prioritising immediate rewards is a predictable response to high local mortality rates, as is an acceleration of reproductive scheduling. In a sample of 46 countries, we explored the cross-country relationships between average life expectancy, intertemporal choice, and women's age at first birth. We find that, across countries, lower life expectancy is associated with both a smaller percentage of people willing to wait for a larger but delayed reward, as well as a younger age at first birth. These results, which hold when controlling for region and economic pressure (GDP-per capita), dovetail with findings at the individual level to suggest that life expectancy is an important ecological predictor of both intertemporal and reproductive decision-making

Cost Effectiveness of a Potential Vaccine for Human papillomavirus

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, usually a sexually transmitted disease, is a risk factor for cervical cancer. Given the substantial disease and death associated with HPV and cervical cancer, development of a prophylactic HPV vaccine is a public health priority. We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of vaccinating adolescent girls for high-risk HPV infections relative to current practice. A vaccine with a 75% probability of immunity against high-risk HPV infection resulted in a life-expectancy gain of 2.8 days or 4.0 quality-adjusted life days at a cost of $246 relative to current practice (incremental cost effectiveness of$22,755/quality-adjusted life year [QALY]). If all 12-year-old girls currently living in the United States were vaccinated, >1,300 deaths from cervical cancer would be averted during their lifetimes. Vaccination of girls against high-risk HPV is relatively cost effective even when vaccine efficacy is low. If the vaccine efficacy rate is 35%, the cost effectiveness increases to $52,398/QALY. Although gains in life expectancy may be modest at the individual level, population benefits are substantial

Smoking does not accelerate leucocyte telomere attrition:A meta-analysis of 18 longitudinal cohorts

Smoking is associated with shorter leucocyte telomere length (LTL), a biomarker of increased morbidity and reduced longevity. This association is widely interpreted as evidence that smoking causes accelerated LTL attrition in adulthood, but the evidence for this is inconsistent. We analysed the association between smoking and LTL dynamics in 18 longitudinal cohorts. The dataset included data from 12 579 adults (4678 current smokers and 7901 non-smokers) over a mean follow-up interval of 8.6 years. Meta-analysis confirmed a cross-sectional difference in LTL between smokers and non-smokers, with mean LTL 84.61 bp shorter in smokers (95% CI: 22.62 to 146.61). However, LTL attrition was only 0.51 bp yr−1 faster in smokers than in non-smokers (95% CI: −2.09 to 1.08), a difference that equates to only 1.32% of the estimated age-related loss of 38.33 bp yr−1. Assuming a linear effect of smoking, 167 years of smoking would be required to generate the observed cross-sectional difference in LTL. Therefore, the difference in LTL between smokers and non-smokers is extremely unlikely to be explained by a linear, causal effect of smoking. Selective adoption, whereby individuals with short telomeres are more likely to start smoking, needs to be considered as a more plausible explanation for the observed pattern of telomere dynamics

The Eleventh and Twelfth Data Releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Final Data from SDSS-III

The third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) took data from 2008 to 2014 using the original SDSS wide-field imager, the original and an upgraded multi-object fiber-fed optical spectrograph, a new near-infrared high-resolution spectrograph, and a novel optical interferometer. All of the data from SDSS-III are now made public. In particular, this paper describes Data Release 11 (DR11) including all data acquired through 2013 July, and Data Release 12 (DR12) adding data acquired through 2014 July (including all data included in previous data releases), marking the end of SDSS-III observing. Relative to our previous public release (DR10), DR12 adds one million new spectra of galaxies and quasars from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) over an additional 3000 deg2 of sky, more than triples the number of H-band spectra of stars as part of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), and includes repeated accurate radial velocity measurements of 5500 stars from the Multi-object APO Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey (MARVELS). The APOGEE outputs now include the measured abundances of 15 different elements for each star. In total, SDSS-III added 5200 deg2 of ugriz imaging; 155,520 spectra of 138,099 stars as part of the Sloan Exploration of Galactic Understanding and Evolution 2 (SEGUE-2) survey; 2,497,484 BOSS spectra of 1,372,737 galaxies, 294,512 quasars, and 247,216 stars over 9376 deg2; 618,080 APOGEE spectra of 156,593 stars; and 197,040 MARVELS spectra of 5513 stars. Since its first light in 1998, SDSS has imaged over 1/3 of the Celestial sphere in five bands and obtained over five million astronomical spectra. \ua9 2015. The American Astronomical Society

Perceived extrinsic mortality risk and reported health effort 1 Title: Perceived extrinsic mortality risk and reported effort in looking after health: Testing a behavioural ecological prediction PrePrints

Abstract: Socioeconomic gradients in health behaviour are pervasive and well documented. Yet, there is little consensus on their causes. Behavioural ecological theory predicts that, if people of lower socioeconomic position (SEP) perceive greater personal extrinsic mortality risk than those of higher SEP, they should disinvest in their future health. We surveyed North American adults for reported effort in looking after health, perceived extrinsic and intrinsic mortality risks, and measures of SEP. We examined the relationships between these variables and found that lower subjective SEP predicted lower reported health effort. Lower subjective SEP was also associated with higher perceived extrinsic mortality risk, which in turn predicted lower reported health effort. The effect of subjective SEP on reported health effort was completely mediated by perceived extrinsic mortality risk. Our findings indicate that perceived extrinsic mortality risk may be a key factor underlying SEP gradients in motivation to invest in future health. PeerJ PrePrints | https://peerj.com/preprints/29v2/ | v

Rates of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy and dietary characteristics across populations

Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (NVP) is a pervasive and debilitating phenomenon in humans. Several adaptive explanations for NVP occurrence have been recently proposed, the two most prominent of which predict associations with nutritional intake or specific dietary components. Here we extend previous crosscultural analyses by analysing associations between NVP prevalence in 56 studies (21 countries) and quantitative estimates of per capita intake across major dietary categories, measured for the year of study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Rates of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy were correlated with high intake of macronutrients (kilocalories, protein, fat, carbohydrate), as well as sugars, stimulants, meat, milk and eggs, and with low intake of cereals and pulses. Restricting analyses to studies from North America and Europe caused relationships between macronutrient intake and NVP to disappear, suggesting that they might be influenced by non-dietary confounds associated with geographical region of study. However, factor analysis of dietary components revealed one factor significantly associated with NVP rate, which was characterized by low cereal consumption and high intake of sugars, oilcrops, alcohol and meat. The results provide further evidence for an association between diet and NVP prevalence across populations, and support for the idea that NVP serves an adaptive prophylactic function against potentially harmful foodstuffs

No effect of hunger on attentional capture by food cues: Two replication studies

Food cues potently capture human attention, and it has been suggested that hunger increases their propensity to do so. However, the evidence for such hunger-related attentional biases is weak. We focus on one recent study that did show significantly greater attentional capture by food cues when participants were hungry, using an Emotional Blink of Attention (EBA) task [Piech, Pastorino, & Zald, 2010. Appetite, 54, 579-582]. We conducted online (N = 29) and in-person (N = 28) replications of this study with British participants and a Bayesian analytical approach. For the EBA task, participants tried to identify a rotated target image in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). Targets were preceded by "neutral", "romantic", or "food" distractor images. Participants completed the task twice, 6-11 days apart, once hungry (overnight plus 6h fast) and once sated (after a selfselected lunch in the preceding 1h). We predicted that food images would create a greater attentional blink when participants were hungry than when they were sated, but romantic and neutral images would not. We found no evidence that hunger increased attentional capture by food cues, despite our experiments passing manipulation and quality assurance checks. Our sample and stimuli differed from the study we were replicating in several ways, but we were unable to identify any specific factor responsible for the difference in results. The original finding may not be generalisable. The EBA is more sensitive to the physical distinctiveness of distractors from filler and target images than their emotional valence, undermining the sensitivity of the EBA task for picking up subtle changes in motivational state. Moreover, hunger-related attentional bias shifts may not be substantial over the intensities and durations of hunger typically induced in laboratory experiments

Being there versus VR: Investigating the psychological effects of cues to disorder using virtual reality

This study will use a virtual reality (VR) environment to manipulate participants’ experiences of cues to disorder (litter, graffiti and broken windows), testing their effects on self-reported paranoia and social trust

PRISMA diagram from Telomeres as integrative markers of exposure to stress and adversity: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Telomeres have been proposed as a biomarker that integrates the impacts of different kinds of stress and adversity into a common currency. There has as yet been no overall comparison of how different classes of exposure associate with telomeres. We present a meta-analysis of the literature relating telomere measures to stresses and adversities in humans. The analysed dataset contained 543 associations from 138 studies involving 402 116 people. Overall, there was a weak association between telomere variables and exposures (greater adversity, shorter telomeres: <i>r</i> = −0.15, 95% CI −0.18 to −0.11). This was not driven by any one type of exposure, because significant associations were found separately for physical diseases, environmental hazards, nutrition, psychiatric illness, smoking, physical activity, psychosocial and socioeconomic exposures. Methodological features of the studies did not explain any substantial proportion of the heterogeneity in association strength. There was, however, evidence consistent with publication bias, with unexpectedly strong negative associations reported by studies with small samples. Restricting analysis to sample sizes greater than 100 attenuated the overall association substantially (<i>r</i> = −0.09, 95% CI −0.13 to −0.05). Most studies were underpowered to detect the typical association magnitude. The literature is dominated by cross-sectional and correlational studies which makes causal interpretation problematic