The Partner Pay Gap – Associations between Spouses’ Relative Earnings and Life Satisfaction among Couples in the UK. ESRI WP642, November 2019

Despite women’s recent gains in education and employment, husbands still tend to out-earn their wives. This article examines the relationship between the partner pay gap, i.e. the difference in earned income between married, co-resident partners, and life satisfaction. Contrary to previous studies, we investigate the effects of recent changes in relative earnings within couples as well as labour market transitions. Using several waves of the UK Household Longitudinal Study, we reveal that men exhibit an increase in life satisfaction in response to a recent increase in their proportional earnings. For women their proportional earnings had no effect on life satisfaction in one model, and in a model that accounted for their recent employment changes, women exhibited decreased life satisfaction. We also find secondary-earning husbands report lower average life satisfaction than primary-earning men, while such differences were not found for women. The analysis offers compelling evidence of the role of gendered norms in the sustenance of the partner pay gap

Applying Biomedical Ontologies on Semantic Query Expansion

*1- Introduction*

The interpretation of a question (or information need) depends, among other things, of a series of lexicalsemantic relations that complement and help the cognitive process of answering that information need. Despite this fact, currently used information retrieval mechanisms take few advantages of the semantic interpretation of users’ information needs (usually specified through keywords). In most of the cases, those mechanisms are based on keyword matching, and thus are excessively dependant on the query and document terms.

There are several past results showing that, in general, information retrieval based on domain knowledge decreases the accuracy of keyword based search engines. We believe this approach deserves further discussion and experimentation, looking for more strong evidences that these negative results can really be generalized. Moreover, there are some questions left unanswered by previous work that our experiment is addressing:

(_i_) Using a scientific ontology, with formal construction and maintenance processes, such as the OBO ontologies, would produce better results? 

(_ii_) Are there more efficient query expansion techniques using available domain knowledge?

(_iii_) Is a scientific ontology complete enough to fulfill the information retrieval researchers’ needs, in general?

*2- Semantic Query Expansion*

To try to answer some of these questions, we run a query expansion experiment using the Gene Ontology (GO) as domain knowledge. As the document repository, we used an extraction of 10 years of PubMed publications (from 1994 to 2004), which contains approximately 4.6 Million documents. This dataset is a test collection used by the information retrieval community, called Genomic TREC.

*3- Results*
To evaluate our ontology-based semantic query expansion technique, we measured the effectiveness of the information retrieval mechanism with and without expansion. In a nutshell, the average result showed an increase of 28% on synonyms relations and a small decrease on other relations.

Our results show a lot of consistence with past related work. In fact, if the expansion strategy does not selectively choose when and how to expand, only synonym relations are worth to be used. However, looking further, it is possible to find several opportunities to try other expansion strategies. For example, the problem with query expansion using generalization/specialization relationships is that, if it is always applied, the bad results are more frequent than the good ones. But, if the strategy is to be selective on when to use these relations for expansion, the increasing on accuracy can be outstanding. As shown by our experiment, there was a query with 98% increment on effectiveness. 

*4- Conclusion*
We strongly believe that it is premature to assume that semantics-based query expansion is, in general, a recall-enhancing, precision-degrading technique. Our experiments suggest that by using scientific based ontologies (like OBO ontologies) with formal relations, it is possible to increase both recall and precision. Our group is currently revising this first experiment towards a better semantic query expansion strategy.

*5- Acknowledgements*
This work was partially funded by CAPES and CNPq research grants 311454/2006-2, 306889/2007-2 and 484713/2007-8.

*References*
_Fox E. Lexical relations enhancing effectiveness of information retrieval systems. SIGIR Forum, New York, v.15, n.3, p.5-3._

_Voorhees E. Query expansion using lexicalsemantic relations. In: ACM SIGIR conference on research and development in information retrieval, Proceedings, Dublin:17, p.61–69, 1994

Ciglitazone-a human PPARγ agonist-disrupts dorsoventral patterning in zebrafish.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) is a ligand-activated transcription factor that regulates lipid/glucose homeostasis and adipocyte differentiation. While the role of PPARγ in adipogenesis and diabetes has been extensively studied, little is known about PPARγ function during early embryonic development. Within zebrafish, maternally-loaded pparγ transcripts are present within the first 6 h post-fertilization (hpf), and de novo transcription of zygotic pparγ commences at ~48 hpf. Since maternal pparγ transcripts are elevated during a critical window of cell fate specification, the objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that PPARγ regulates gastrulation and dorsoventral patterning during zebrafish embryogenesis. To accomplish this objective, we relied on (1) ciglitazone as a potent PPARγ agonist and (2) a splice-blocking, pparγ-specific morpholino to knockdown pparγ. We found that initiation of ciglitazone-a potent human PPARγ agonist-exposure by 4 hpf resulted in concentration-dependent effects on dorsoventral patterning in the absence of epiboly defects during gastrulation, leading to ventralized embryos by 24 hpf. Interestingly, ciglitazone-induced ventralization was reversed by co-exposure with dorsomorphin, a bone morphogenetic protein signaling inhibitor that induces strong dorsalization within zebrafish embryos. Moreover, mRNA-sequencing revealed that lipid- and cholesterol-related processes were affected by exposure to ciglitazone. However, pparγ knockdown did not block ciglitazone-induced ventralization, suggesting that PPARγ is not required for dorsoventral patterning nor involved in ciglitazone-induced toxicity within zebrafish embryos. Our findings point to a novel, PPARγ-independent mechanism of action and phenotype following ciglitazone exposure during early embryonic development

Food Security Status and Barriers to Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in Two Economically Deprived Communities of Oakland, California, 2013-2014.

IntroductionFood security status may moderate how people perceive barriers to fruit and vegetable consumption. This study aimed to 1) describe the association between fruit and vegetable consumption and microbarriers and mezzobarriers to consumption, and 2) test whether these associations differ by food security status.MethodsWe surveyed adults (n = 531) living in 2 economically deprived communities in Oakland, California, in 2013 and 2014. Multivariate linear regression assessed associations between microbarriers (taste, cost, busyness) and mezzobarriers (produce selection, quality, and purchase ease) and fruit and vegetable consumption, derived from a 26-item dietary screener. Interactions were tested by food security status.ResultsRespondents consumed a mean 2.4 (standard deviation, 1.5) servings of fruits and vegetables daily; 39% of the sample was food insecure. Being too busy to prepare healthy foods was associated with reduced fruit and vegetable consumption (β(busyness) = -0.40; 95% confidence interval [CI], -0.52 to -0.28) among all respondents. Food security moderated the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and taste, cost, and perceived ease of purchase of healthy foods. Among the food secure, disliking healthy food taste (β(taste) = -0.38; 95% CI, -0.60 to -0.15) and cost (β(cost) = -0.29; 95% CI, -0.44 to -0.15) concerns were associated with lower consumptions of fruits and vegetables. Mezzobarriers were not significantly associated with consumption in either group.ConclusionPerceived time constraints influenced fruit and vegetable consumption. Taste and cost influenced fruit and vegetable consumption among the food secure and may need to be considered when interpreting analyses that describe dietary intake and designing diet-related interventions

First Canadian Record of \u3ci\u3eHexacola Neoscatellae\u3c/i\u3e (Hymenoptera: Figitidae: Eucoilinae), A Parasitoid of the Shore Fly, \u3ci\u3eScatella Stagnalis\u3c/i\u3e

This paper documents the first occurrence of Hexacola neoscatellae, a shore fly parasitoid, in Canada. The discovery of H. neoscatellae is significant because currently there are no suitable biological control agents available for shore fly control to the floriculture industry

Eicosapentaenoic acid and oxypurinol in the treatment of muscle wasting in a mouse model of cancer cachexia

Cancer cachexia is a wasting condition, driven by systemic inflammation and oxidative stress. This study investigated eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) in combination with oxypurinol as a treatment in a mouse model of cancer cachexia. Mice with cancer cachexia were randomized into 4 treatment groups (EPA (0.4 g/kg/day), oxypurinol (1 mmol/L ad-lib), combination, or control), and euthanized after 29 days. Analysis of oxidative damage to DNA, mRNA analysis of pro-oxidant, antioxidant and proteolytic pathway components, along with enzyme activity of pro- and antioxidants were completed on gastrocnemius muscle. The control group displayed earlier onset of tumor compared to EPA and oxypurinol groups (P&lt;0.001). The EPA group maintained body weight for an extended duration (20 days) compared to the oxypurinol (5 days) and combination (8 days) groups (P&lt;0.05). EPA (18.2&plusmn;3.2 pg/ml) and combination (18.4&plusmn;3.7 pg/ml) groups had significantly higher 8-OH-dG levels than the control group (12.9&plusmn;1.4 pg/ml, P&le;0.05) indicating increased oxidative damage to DNA. mRNA levels of GPx1, MURF1 and MAFbx were higher following EPA treatment compared to control (P&le;0.05). Whereas oxypurinol was associated with higher GPx1, MnSOD, CAT, XDH, MURF1, MAFbx and UbB mRNA compared to control (P&le;0.05). Activity of total SOD was higher in the oxypurinol group (32.2&plusmn;1.5 U/ml) compared to control (27.0&plusmn;1.3 U/ml, P&lt;0.01), GPx activity was lower in the EPA group (8.76&plusmn;2.0 U/ml) compared to control (14.0&plusmn;1.9 U/ml, P&lt;0.05), and catalase activity was lower in the combination group (14.4&plusmn;2.8 U/ml) compared to control (20.9&plusmn;2.0 U/ml, P&lt;0.01). There was no change in XO activity. The increased rate of weight decline in mice treated with oxypurinol indicates that XO may play a protective role during the progression of cancer cachexia, and its inhibition is detrimental to outcomes. In combination with EPA, there was little significant improvement from control, indicating oxypurinol is unlikely to be a viable treatment compound in cancer cachexia.<br /