The decline of son preference and rise of gender indifference in Taiwan since 1990

This study explores the change of married women’s sex preference for children in Taiwan since 1990, finding that there was a substantial decline of son preference and rise of “gender indifferenceâ€, defined as feeling indifferent about children’s sex (as opposed to desiring an equal number of boys and girls, in which the sex of children is still a primary consideration). Results show that at the individual level female education was the strongest predictor for the preference; education was negatively associated with son preference and positively with gender indifference. Cohort difference was noticeable as well. Younger cohorts were better educated than older ones hence they were more neutral about the sex and less adherent to the traditional male preference. In addition from 1992 to 2002 there was a universal intra cohort movement toward gender neutrality and away from son preference. When the younger cohorts gradually replaced the older ones as the main child bearers in Taiwanese society, at the aggregate level son preference declined and gender indifference rose.education, gender indifference, son preference, Taiwan

Horizontal And Vertical Integration Of Bio-Molecular Data

Modern biomedical research lies at the crossroads of data gathering, interpretation, and hypothesis testing. Due to noise, study bias, or too small changes in biological signals between disease and healthy, individual studies often fail to identify the true phenomenon. Data integration is the key to obtaining the power needed to pinpoint the biological mechanisms of disease states. Given this, we tried to make important contributions in both horizontal and vertical integration of high-throughput data; the former is meta-analysis of independent studies, while the latter is the integration of multi-omics data. For horizontal meta-analysis, we developed two frameworks: DANUBE and the bi-level meta-analysis. In DANUBE, we pointed out that most pathway analysis approaches make wrong assumptions of bio-molecular data which leads to non-uniformity of p-values under the null hypothesis. DANUBE proposed a way to correct the biased p-values before combining them using the Central Limit Theorem. In the bi-level meta-analysis, we added another level of meta-analysis to make better use of the available number of samples within individual studies. Both techniques were validated using thousands of real samples obtained from independent studies related to three human diseases, Alzheimer\u27s disease, acute myeloid leukemia, and type II diabetes mellitus. These frameworks outperformed classical approaches to consistently identify pathways that are relevant to the given phenotypes. Via extensive simulation studies, we also demonstrate that the proposed techniques are sufficiently general to be applied outside the scope of biomedical research. For vertical integrative analysis, we integrated transcriptomics, epigenomics, and non-coding RNA data to identify disease subtypes. Successful subtyping of complex diseases can lead to identifying biomarkers and targets of new drugs. We developed a perturbation clustering to accurately subtype patients using high-dimensional gene expression data. The framework was also extended to combine complementary information available in multi-omics data, by adapting techniques in network partitioning and cluster ensembles. The algorithm was validated on thousands of real cancer samples, using mRNA, methylation, and microRNA data available on Gene Expression Omnibus, the Broad Institute, and the Cancer Genome Atlas. This simultaneous subtyping approach accurately identifies known cancer subtypes and predicts the survival of novel subgroups of patients. We also developed a meta-analysis framework that combines two orthogonal types of data integration: horizontal and vertical meta-analysis. Integrative analyses of omics data often require all data types to be available for each individual patient. This reduces their practical availability since sample-matched data is relatively rare and difficult or expensive to obtain. We proposed an orthogonal meta-analysis framework that is able to overcome the sample-matched data bottleneck, by successfully integrating datasets of different types generated in independent laboratories from different sets of patients. The proposed framework was validated using 1,471 samples from 15 mRNA and 14 miRNA expression datasets related to two human cancers, colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer. The orthogonal approach reliably identifies signaling pathways that are impacted by the two cancer diseases. While validated in the context of pathway analysis, the framework can be modified to adapt to other domains or applications

Reproductive Altruism, Social Diversity and Host Association in Sponge-Dwelling Snapping Shrimps, Synalpheus

The diversity of animal social strategies has interested evolutionary biologists since the time of Darwin. Eusociality—the apex of animal sociality—traditionally characterized by cooperative offspring care, overlapping generations and reproductive division of labor, was until recently known only in insects and a few vertebrate species. The independent evolution of eusociality in shrimps in the genus Synalpheus offers a unique opportunity to test the generality of social evolution theories that are based mainly on insects and social vertebrates. The genus Synalpheus is particularly ideal for comparative analysis because their social organizations are highly diverse, yet they share very similar ecology of being sponge dwellers. Further, their close associations with sponges, in which many are considered microbial fermenters, allow one to test the ecological drivers of species diversity in Synalpheus. In this dissertation, I first explored the nature and consequences of reproductive altruism in eusocial species. Chapter 1 showed that workers in eusocial Synalpheus retain reproductive capability, but reproduction of female workers is suppressed by the queen. Chapter 2 showed further that such reproductive inequity among females within a colony leads to potentially strong competition among females for reproductive opportunities, and is associated with reduced sexual dimorphism in eusocial Synalpheus species. Second, I examined the evolutionary trajectories between and ecological advantages associated with different social organizations in Synalpheus. Chapter 3 shows that the two demographically distinct social organizations found in Synalpheus—communality and eusociality—have evolved via separate evolutionary trajectories and represent alternative social strategies. Chapter 4 further shows that these social strategies are associated with different aspects of ecological advantages conferred on Synalpheus living together. Finally, the intimate association with host sponges constrains the lifestyle of Synalpheus and may be one factor that has predisposed their evolution of eusociality. In Chapter 5, I examined the association pattern of Synalpheus with their host sponges and found that the symbiotic microorganisms in sponges, rather than the phylogenetic histories of the host sponges, are a better predictor and potential driver of the host association pattern. This dissertation has sought to test, and ended up challenging, several paradigms in ecology and evolution. My results suggest that 1) polymorphic reproductive soldiers may represent a natural transition towards eusociality, 2) reproductive monopolization can modulate the pattern of sexual dimorphism in social species, 3) communality and eusociality evolved from distinct trajectories and have different ecological advantages, and 4) symbiotic microorganisms may mediate biological interactions between their hosts and other organisms

Interview by Leung Tin Chi Ariel

Hoat Dien (my grandpa) grew up in many localities including Vietnam and Guangzhou. He talks of the situation in the Vietnam during the colonization of France inn 1910s\u27, about the tradional medicine (cockroaches) that makes people psychologically feel better, the racial discrimination in Vietnam and the reason for no sexual discrimination in Guangzhou, the experience he had in Vietnam primary school and in Guangzhou secondary school. In this interview, he tried to compare many aspects in both places (especially the educational system, the lifestyle as well as the entertainment)

Son preference and children's housework: The case of India

Son preference in countries like India results in higher female infant mortality rates and differentially lower access to health care and education for girls than for boys. We use a nationally representative survey of Indian households (NFHS-3) to conduct the first study that analyzes whether son preference is associated with girls bearing a larger burden of housework than boys. Housework is a non-negligible part of child labor in which around 60% of children in our sample are engaged. The preference for male offspring is measured by a mother's ideal proportion of sons among her offspring. We show that when the ideal proportion increases from 0 to 1, the gap in the time spent on weekly housework for an average girl compared to that of boy increases by 2.5 hours. We conduct several robustness analyses. First, we estimate the main model separately by caste, religion and family size. Second, we use a two-stage model to look at participation into housework (as well as other types of work) in addition to hours. Third, we use mother's fertility intentions as an alternative measure of son preference. The analysis confirms that stated differences in male-preference translate in de facto differences in girl's treatment

Business Intelligence Adoption Intention Among Small Start-Up Owners: Examining The Influencing Factors Of Benefits, Sacrifice, Perceived-Value, And Desire

This study aims to examine the influence of benefits variables and sacrifice variables on the perceived value of adopting BI, and investigate the mediating role of perceived value on the relationship between benefits and BI adoption intention; and between sacrifices and BI adoption intention. This study also examines the influence of intangible and tangible rewards on the desire to make a good decision; examine the influence of perceived value and the desire to make a good decision on BI adoption intention, and examine the influence of perceived value on the desire to make a good decision