Civic Agency: an Invisible Health Determinant

This paper extends a cross-country analysis of health determinants with a civil society variable. The reason is that next to government and households and the level of economic development, civil society agency is likely to play a role in health care as well. This role refers to community care, political pressure, and demands for accountability of health care providers. We use the ISD index of civic activism to measure the agency of civil society. The panel regression results for developing counties indicate that civic activism contributes to the reduction of child mortality and maternal mortality. The size effect is larger than that of almost all other variables, except those for health expenditures. This implies that in times of severe financial constraints, civic activism may be the relatively most feasible factor stimulating better health outcomes

Gender Beliefs and Cooperation in a Public Goods game Experiment

We study the role of gender beliefs for cooperation in a public goods game experiment. Controlling for risk preferences and for subjects’ unconditional willingness to cooperate, we find that gender beliefs affect behavior in homogenous groups where the group composition was announced

Adaptation to toposequence land types in West Africa of different sorghum genotypes in comparison with local cultivars of sorghum, millet, and maize

Gently undulating landscapes are typical for large parts of the Sudanian and Sahelian zones of the West African semiarid tropics. Within this landscape a pattern of land types and soils, which is closely linked to the topography, can be distinguished. Thus low fertility drought sensitive soils (Alfisols) are found on uplands, whereas the more fertile soils of the lower slopes and lowlands (mainly Inceptisols) will be moist to wet. In response to these variations in land types and the unpredictable rainfall, which can cause both droughts and floods during the rainy season, the subsistence farmers have adopted distinct cropping patterns in order to minimize the risk of crop failure under the conditions of a low input agriculture. Consequently, cropping patterns which closely follow the toposequence have evolved, with millets grown on dry uplands and slopes, maize on moist lower slopes, sorghum on lower slopes, and rice on lowlands. The present study was conducted mainly in Upper Volta and provides a scientific basis for these cropping patterns by analysing the responses of three major cereal crops to land types and to sowing dates. Next, several high yielding, introduced, sorghum cultivars were tested to determine their adaptation to the local conditions and to formulate plant characteristics useful to plant breeders in selecting improved cultivars which would best meet the requirements of the local agriculture. It was concluded that to meet the large diversity in land types and rainfall conditions typical for the West African semiarid tropics, even an advanced type agriculture would require a range of technological options, in terms of improved varieties and cultural practices. Consequently, the likelihood that a single improved cultivar could replace the local cultivars is remote, as is the possibility of introducing a standard technological package

Identifying Age Penalty in Women's Wages: New Method and Evidence from Germany 1984-2014

Given theoretical premises, gender wage gap adjusted for individual characteristics is likely to vary over age. We extend DiNardo, Fortin and Lemieux (1996) semi-parametric technique to disentangle year, cohort and age effects in adjusted gender wage gaps. We rely on a long panel of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel covering the 1984-2015 period. Our results indicate that the gender wage gap increases over the lifetime, for some birth cohorts also in the post-reproductive age

Molecular profiles of BRCA1-mutated and matched sporadic breast tumours: relation with clinico-pathological features

About 5–10% of breast cancers are hereditary; a genetically and clinically heterogeneous disease in which several susceptibility genes, including BRCA1, have been identified. While distinct tumour features can be used to estimate the likelihood that a breast tumour is caused by a BRCA1 germline mutation it is not yet possible to categorize a BRCA1 mutated tumour. The aim of the present study is to molecularly classify BRCA1 mutated breast cancers by resolving gene expression patterns of BRCA1 and matched sporadic surgical breast tumour specimens. The expression profiles of 6 frozen breast tumour tissues with a proven BRCA1 gene mutation were weighed against those from 12 patients without a known family history but who had similar clinico-pathological characteristics. In addition two fibroblast cultures, the breast cancer cell-line HCC1937 and its corresponding B-lymphoblastoid cell line (heterozygous for mutation BRCA1 5382insC) and an epithelial ovarian cancer cell line (A2780) were studied. Using a high density membrane based array for screening of RNA isolated from these samples and standard algorithms and software, we were able to distinguish subgroups of sporadic cases and a group consisting mainly of BRCA1-mutated breast tumours. Furthermore this pilot analysis revealed a gene cluster that differentially expressed genes related to cell substrate formation, adhesion, migration and cell organization in BRCA1-mutated tumours compared to sporadic breast tumours. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co