This work presents a new mathematical expression for middle and old age mortality as an alternative to the classic Gompertz-Makeham model. Whereas old age mortality is driven by biological aging, middle mortality is mainly caused by behavior. To test the model, sex differences in life expectancy and mortality in Europe from the mid-nineteenth century until recent periods are investigated. The here presented mortality model shows that the female advantage in life expectancy and its dynamics are mainly caused by male risky life style.
Of all the controversial issues surrounding IQ tests, few have generated more heat and less light than the question whether different groups in our society differ in average IQ. Those who study, and find evidence of, such differences believe that they are addressing a legitimate scientific issue and one whose implications, however unpalatable they may be, society ignores at its peril. Their critics insist that the question has no intrinsic scientific interest whatsoever, and conclude that those who study it are either naive, deceiving themselves or only too happy to find justification for their own comfortable position within an unjust and unequal society. In the case of sex differences in IQ scores, at least, one could argue that both sides have got it largely wrong. With one exception, there is relatively little social or political implication in such differences as there are. More importantly, however, arguments will be presented against the critics' view that such research is of no intrinsic scientific interest. On the contrary, it has already helped to answer some important scientific questions about the nature of IQ, and has the potential to answer more. Unfortunately, those who engage in such research have usually failed to see this.
AbstractThere is some evidence for sex differences in habituation in the human fetus, but it is unknown whether this is due to differences in central processing (habituation) or in more peripheral processes, sensory or motor, involved in the response. This study examined whether the sex of the fetus influenced auditory habituation at 33 weeks of gestation, and whether this was due to differences in habituation or in the sensory or motor components using a set of four experiments. The first experiment found that female fetuses required significantly fewer stimulus presentations to habituate than males. The second experiment revealed no difference in the spontaneous motor behaviour of male and female fetuses. The third experiment examined auditory intensity thresholds for the stimuli used to habituate the fetus. No differences in thresholds were found between males and females, although there was inter‐individual variability in thresholds. A final experiment, using stimuli individualized for that particular fetus' auditory intensity threshold, found that female fetuses habituated faster than males. In combination, the studies reveal that habituation in the human fetus is affected by sex and this is due to a difference in central 'information processing' of the stimuli rather than peripheral aspects of the response. It is argued that male and female fetuses present different neurobehavioural developmental trajectories, with females more advanced at 33 weeks than males. This study suggests that research examining prenatal behaviour should consider the factor of fetal sex. This may be particularly pertinent where there is an intention to use the results diagnostically.
The physical changes which take place at puberty in both sexes may be classified under the following headings:(1)Morphological. The rate of growth increases but this acceleration is greater in some dimensions than others so that the overall shape of the body changes, i.e. the rate of change in both size and shape alters.(2)Body composition. There are changes in the relative amounts of bone, muscle and fat.(3)Physiological. There are changes, particularly in the circulatory and respiratory systems, altering the ability to carry out prolonged muscular work.(4)Sex specific. The secondary sex characters develop and reproductive capacity is attained.(5)Endocrine. The above changes result from alterations in the quantities of various hormones released into the blood stream by the endocrine glands, especially the pituitary, the gonads (ovaries in female and testes in male), and the adrenal cortex. The endocrine changes must precede the morphological or other effects which they produce, but will be more readily understood if we examine their effects first.
We review ten international studies of the attainments of boys and girls in science from 1960 through 2006. In general, boys achieved higher average test scores than girls from the age of 10 years in the earlier studies, but this advantage had disappeared for 10-15 year olds in the years 2003- 2006. All the studies of 18 years found that boys had higher average attainment that girls. The boys' advantage is greatest in physics and smallest in biology. Boys have greater variability than girls. The reasons for the higher scores of boys may lie in greater interest in science and, among older adolescents, in greater mathematical ability. Adapted from the source document.
SummaryAttention is drawn to fresh data available on female sporting performance and the narrowing gap between male and female performance in many sports. The author discusses attempts made to compare athletic potential in males and females and postulates the existence of a factor called athletic predisposition. The differences in performance amongst males and females possessing this factor are much smaller than in the population at large.
Publisher's version (útgefin grein) ; Sex differences have been observed in multiple facets of cancer epidemiology, treatment and biology, and in most cancers outside the sex organs. Efforts to link these clinical differences to specific molecular features have focused on somatic mutations within the coding regions of the genome. Here we report a pan-cancer analysis of sex differences in whole genomes of 1983 tumours of 28 subtypes as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. We both confirm the results of exome studies, and also uncover previously undescribed sex differences. These include sex-biases in coding and non-coding cancer drivers, mutation prevalence and strikingly, in mutational signatures related to underlying mutational processes. These results underline the pervasiveness of molecular sex differences and strengthen the call for increased consideration of sex in molecular cancer research. ; We thank all the members of the Boutros lab for insightful discussions. This study was conducted with the support of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research to P.C.B. through funding provided by the Government of Ontario. This work was supported by the Discovery Frontiers: Advancing Big Data Science in Genomics Research program, which is jointly funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Genome Canada and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). P.C.B. was supported by a Terry Fox Research Institute New Investigator Award and a CIHR New Investigator Award. This work was supported by an NSERC Discovery grant and by Canadian Institutes of Health Research, grant #SVB-145586, to P.C.B. This work was supported by the NIH/NCI under award number P30CA016042 and an operating grant from the National Cancer Institute Early Detection Research Network (1U01CA214194-01). We acknowledge the contributions of the many clinical networks across ICGC and TCGA who provided samples and data to the PCAWG Consortium, and the contributions of the Technical Working Group and the Germline Working Group of the PCAWG Consortium for collation, realignment and harmonised variant calling of the cancer genomes used in this study. We thank the patients and their families for their participation in the individual ICGC and TCGA projects. ; Peer Reviewed
Patterns of divorce behaviour in England are not well documented. Apart from the limited data provided annually by the Registrar General, and secondary commentaries on these, our knowledge comes almost entirely from a single paper which is now becoming historically dated (Rowntree & Carrier, 1958). There has been no social survey of a specifically divorced population, and the paper referred to is the only example of analysis based on court records. The present paper derives from work currently in hand which is utilizing survey interviews, court records, autobiographical materials and other documentary sources, to obtain new kinds of information about divorce. More specifically, what follows is based in part on data from the Registrar General's annual reports and, in part, on a provisional analysis of the court records of 1000 undefended divorce suits occurring in a provincial city during the years 1966–68.
