A model for geographical variation in health and total life expectancy

This paper develops a joint approach to life and health expectancy based on 2001 UK Census data for limiting long term illness and general health status, and on registered death occurrences in 2001. The model takes account of the interdependence of different outcomes (e.g. ill health and mortality) as well as spatial correlation in their patterns. A particular focus is on the proportionality assumption or ‘multiplicative model’ whereby separate age and area effects multiply to produce age-area mortality rates. Alternative non-proportional models are developed and shown to be more parsimonious as well as more appropriate to actual area-age interdependence. The application involves mortality and health status in the 33 London Boroughs.disease burden, healthy life expectancy, life tables, proportionality assumption, spatial effects

The insignificant evolution of the richness-mass relation of galaxy clusters

We analysed the richness--mass scaling of 23 very massive clusters at $0.15<z<0.55$ with homogenously measured weak-lensing masses and richnesses within a fixed aperture of $0.5$ Mpc radius. We found that the richness--mass scaling is very tight (the scatter is $<0.09$ dex with 90 \% probability) and independent of cluster evolutionary status and morphology. This implies a close association between infall and evolution of dark matter and galaxies in the central region of clusters. We also found that the evolution of the richness-mass intercept is minor at most, and, given the minor mass evolution across the studied redshift range, the richness evolution of individual massive clusters also turns out to be very small. Finally, it was paramount to account for the cluster mass function and the selection function. Ignoring them would led to biases larger than the (otherwise quoted) errors. Our study benefits from: a) weak-lensing masses instead of proxy-based masses thereby removing the ambiguity between a real trend and one induced by an accounted evolution of the used mass proxy; b) the use of projected masses that simplify the statistical analysis thereby not requiring consideration of the unknown covariance induced by the cluster orientation/triaxiality; c) the use of aperture masses as they are free of the pseudo-evolution of mass definitions anchored to the evolving density of the Universe; d) a proper accounting of the sample selection function and of the Malmquist-like effect induced by the cluster mass function; e) cosmological simulations for the computation of the cluster mass function, its evolution, and the mass growth of each individual cluster.Comment: A&A, in press. Fixed pdf generation proble

Love, Toil, and Health Insurance: Why American Husbands Retire When They Do

The provision of health insurance has previously been shown to be an important determinant of retirement timing among older Americans, but the existing literature has largely ignored some aspects of the inter-spousal dependence of health insurance benefits. Specifically, the literature examines only how retirement may affect the health insurance available to the potential retiree but not how it might affect a spouse's options. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, I find that the impact a husband's retirement might have on a wife's health insurance options has a statistically significant impact on a husband's rate of retirement that is independent of considerations of his own health insurance options. In households where the wife is the only one at risk of losing affordable health insurance if the husband retires, the husband is 30 percent less likely to retire than if neither spouse is at risk (a five percentage point decrease in the retirement rate). Based on these findings, prior research is missing one avenue that changes to the Medicare eligibility age and health insurance policy changes through the Affordable Care Act might impact the labor supply of older workers.Retirement, health insurance, household decision-making

The Lasting Effects of Crime: The Relationship of Discovered Methamphetamine Laboratories and Home Values

This study estimates a household’s willingness to pay to avoid the stigma of crime while minimizing concerns of omitted variable bias. By assuming methamphetamine producers locate approximately at random within a narrowly defined neighborhood, this study is able to use hedonic estimation methods to estimate the impact of the discovery of a methamphetamine laboratory on the home values near that location. Specifically, the analysis designates those closest to the site as the treated, while those slightly farther away act as the comparison group. The discovery of a methamphetamine laboratory has a significant effect on the property values of those homes close to the location that peaks from six to 12 months after each lab’s discovery. The estimates found in this study range from a decrease in sale prices of ten to nineteen percent in the year following a laboratory’s discovery compared to the prices for homes that are farther away but still in the same neighborhood. Surprisingly, the impact does not appear to depend on intensity as both the discovery of a second lab and being very close to the discovered lab do not adversely impact home values.Location choice, crime valuation, methamphetamine, housing prices

Introduction(s) to Men in Feminism

In the Spring of 1988 I received a note from Doug Blandy asking if I wanted to co-ordinate a panel on Men in Feminism with him. The idea of men working with feminist ideas was not new to our discussions. When we worked together at Bowling Green State University, we often wondered (and indeed frequently laughed) at how gender related the reactions of our faculty and students probably were to our successes and failures. Shortly after I agreed to coordinate this panel with Doug, I attended a conference in the Pennsylvanian mountains in Women, Art and Society. This was my first major conference exclusively designed for women dealing with women\u27s issues

Floristics, structure and site characteristics of "Melaleuca viridiflora" (Myrtaceae) dominated open woodlands of the wet tropics lowlands

Tropical lowland plant communities in north-eastern Queensland remain under pressure from continuing clearing, fragmentation, exotic species invasion, inappropriate fire regimes, and altered hydrological patterns. Comparatively little scientific research has been conducted on the highly diverse and ecologically significant range of remnant vegetation types. Additionally, most plant communities remain very poorly represented in the existing conservation reserve system. Melaleuca viridiflora Sol. ex Gaertn. open woodlands were selected for investigation based on their relatively simple structure, compared to other lowland communities, and the large extent to which they have been affected by past clearing patterns. A detailed analysis of community structure and composition was conducted at 24 sites throughout the wet-tropics coastal region between Townsville and Cooktown. Surprisingly, a high diversity of structural and floristic types was recorded, with a total of 127 species documented across the 24 sites. Classification analyses of species composition data produced seven or eight main groups of sites (dependent on the statistical technique used), essentially related to a gradient of latitude and rainfall. These floristic groups were not well explained by either species richness, past fire frequencies or soil types. Structural classification analyses based upon DBH data identified six or seven main groups, the singularly most striking of which were sites with annual fire histories. Ordinations based on both the DBH and species composition data produced groupings that supported those detected by the classification techniques. On closer examination of sites with similar fire histories, soil moisture and soil type were both found to have significant effects on community structure and composition. Many of the woodland types recorded are not adequately included (some not at all) in the existing conservation reserve system

International Women's Soccer and Gender Inequality: Revisited

A number of authors have identified the determinants of success in international sporting competitions such as the Olympics and soccer’s World Cup. This paper serves to update past work on international women’s soccer performance given the rapid development of the game over the past decade. We compare the determinants of men’s international soccer team performance with that of their female counterparts and find that a different set of variables are important in explaining success for the two genders. While economic and demographic influences hold for both, the impacts of specific political and cultural factors diverge. In particular, Latin heritage predicts men’s success but not women’s, Muslim religious affiliation reduces women’s success but not men’s, and communist political systems tend to improve women’s performance but reduce men’s performance. Several measures of gender equality improve soccer performance for both men’s and women’s soccer suggesting these indicators of gender equality reflect overall levels of development while other measures of equality, particularly those related to women’s access to education, improve women’s soccer performance without enhancing men’s performance.soccer, football, gender inequality, FIFA World Ranking

Adding content reporting to DSpace

This poster presents a content reporting add-on to DSpace, developed for AgResearch Ltd by the IRR support team at the University of Waikato's Information Technology Services Division. We outline the motivation for developing this add-on, give a high-level description of its implementation and report initial insights on its reception and uptake

Hypothesis exploration with visualization of variance.

BackgroundThe Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics (CNP) at UCLA was an investigation into the biological bases of traits such as memory and response inhibition phenotypes-to explore whether they are linked to syndromes including ADHD, Bipolar disorder, and Schizophrenia. An aim of the consortium was in moving from traditional categorical approaches for psychiatric syndromes towards more quantitative approaches based on large-scale analysis of the space of human variation. It represented an application of phenomics-wide-scale, systematic study of phenotypes-to neuropsychiatry research.ResultsThis paper reports on a system for exploration of hypotheses in data obtained from the LA2K, LA3C, and LA5C studies in CNP. ViVA is a system for exploratory data analysis using novel mathematical models and methods for visualization of variance. An example of these methods is called VISOVA, a combination of visualization and analysis of variance, with the flavor of exploration associated with ANOVA in biomedical hypothesis generation. It permits visual identification of phenotype profiles-patterns of values across phenotypes-that characterize groups. Visualization enables screening and refinement of hypotheses about variance structure of sets of phenotypes.ConclusionsThe ViVA system was designed for exploration of neuropsychiatric hypotheses by interdisciplinary teams. Automated visualization in ViVA supports 'natural selection' on a pool of hypotheses, and permits deeper understanding of the statistical architecture of the data. Large-scale perspective of this kind could lead to better neuropsychiatric diagnostics