The Contribution of Irish Immigrants to the Quebec (Canada) Gene Pool: An Estimation Using Data from Deep-Rooted Genealogies

European settlement in Quebec (Canada) began in the early 17th century, with the arrival of French pioneers. After the British Conquest in 1760, immigrants from the British Isles began to settle in some parts of Quebec. Many of these immigrants were Irish Catholics. Historians and genealogists have identified several names of Irish origin in the French Canadian population, and many scholars have wondered about the importance of the integration of Irish migrants and their descendants within this population. The purposes of this study are to identify and characterize the founders of Irish origin to estimate the importance of their genetic contribution to the contemporary Quebec population, and to measure the variability of this contribution according to the founders’ period of arrival and county of origin in Ireland. Data was obtained from a set of 2,223 ascending genealogies going back as far as the early 17th century. The average genealogical depth is a little more than 9 generations, with many branches reaching 16 or 17 generations. Although Irish founders explain less than 1% of the total Quebec gene pool, results show that nearly 21% of the genealogies contain at least one Irish founder. These founders contributed to the peopling of all regions of Quebec, but there are some important variations from one region to another. A majority of the Irish founders immigrated during the 19th century, and most of them came from the counties of Southern Ireland.     

A comparison of dependence function estimators in multivariate extremes

Various nonparametric and parametric estimators of extremal dependence have been proposed in the literature. Nonparametric methods commonly suffer from the curse of dimensionality and have been mostly implemented in extreme-value studies up to three dimensions, whereas parametric models can tackle higher-dimensional settings. In this paper, we assess, through a vast and systematic simulation study, the performance of classical and recently proposed estimators in multivariate settings. In particular, we first investigate the performance of nonparametric methods and then compare them with classical parametric approaches under symmetric and asymmetric dependence structures within the commonly used logistic family. We also explore two different ways to make nonparametric estimators satisfy the necessary dependence function shape constraints, finding a general improvement in estimator performance either (i) by substituting the estimator with its greatest convex minorant, developing a computational tool to implement this method for dimensions \(D\ge 2\) or (ii) by projecting the estimator onto a subspace of dependence functions satisfying such constraints and taking advantage of Bernstein–Bézier polynomials. Implementing the convex minorant method leads to better estimator performance as the dimensionality increases.     

Ethics in Operations Research and Management Sciences: A never-ending effort to combine rigor and passion

From practice to theory, we introduce a state-of-the-art stream of papers that promotes an inclusive and complementary consideration of both analytical methods and ethical values in Operations Research and Management Sciences (OR/MS). We suggest a perspective according to which the consideration of ethics in OR/MS constitutes an enrichment of our discipline as well as a contribution to a more sustainable future in general.     

Loss of Life Caused by the Flooding of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina: Analysis of the Relationship Between Flood Characteristics and Mortality

In this article a preliminary analysis of the loss of life caused by Hurricane Katrina in the New Orleans metropolitan area is presented. The hurricane caused more than 1,100 fatalities in the state of Louisiana. A preliminary data set that gives information on the recovery locations and individual characteristics for 771 fatalities has been analyzed. One-third of the analyzed fatalities occurred outside the flooded areas or in hospitals and shelters in the flooded area. These fatalities were due to the adverse public health situation that developed after the floods. Two-thirds of the analyzed fatalities were most likely associated with the direct physical impacts of the flood and mostly caused by drowning. The majority of victims were elderly: nearly 60% of fatalities were over 65 years old. Similar to historical flood events, mortality rates were highest in areas near severe breaches and in areas with large water depths. An empirical relationship has been derived between the water depth and mortality and this has been compared with similar mortality functions proposed based on data for other flood events. The overall mortality among the exposed population for this event was approximately 1%, which is similar to findings for historical flood events. Despite the fact that the presented results are preliminary they give important insights into the determinants of loss of life and the relationship between mortality and flood characteristics.     

Model selection in regression based on pre-smoothing

In this paper, we investigate the effect of pre-smoothing on model selection. Christóbal et al 6 Christóbal Christóbal, J. A., Faraldo Roca, P. and González Manteiga, W. 1987. A class of linear regression parameter estimators constructed by nonparametric estimation. Ann. Statist.,, 15: 603–609. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] showed the beneficial effect of pre-smoothing on estimating the parameters in a linear regression model. Here, in a regression setting, we show that smoothing the response data prior to model selection by Akaike's information criterion can lead to an improved selection procedure. The bootstrap is used to control the magnitude of the random error structure in the smoothed data. The effect of pre-smoothing on model selection is shown in simulations. The method is illustrated in a variety of settings, including the selection of the best fractional polynomial in a generalized linear model.     

The Whittle Estimator for Strongly Dependent Stationary Gaussian Fields

In this article we generalize results on the asymptotic behaviour of the Whittle estimator for certain stationary Gaussian long range dependent fields. These results have been established in the one-dimensional case under very general conditions. They require controlling the estimation bias and also giving convergence theorems for certain quadratic forms of the observations. In the multidimensional setting, our main interest will be controlling the bias. This can be done for d ≤ 3 using taper functions, and, depending on the shape of the singularity, also introducing certain regularizing functions. In this last case, however, the estimator will no longer be efficient. We also present certain partial results concerning the convergence to a limiting Gaussian distribution of the associated quadratic forms.     

How children tell a (prosocial) lie from an (ironic) joke: The role of shared knowledge

Understanding counterfactual utterances is a major challenge for children, because of the many ways in which they can be interpreted (pretence, errors, figures of speech, lies). In the present study, 7-year-olds and adults determined whether counterfactual utterances were prosocial lies or irony, depending on whether the counterfactuality was known only to the speaker (unshared knowledge) or to both interlocutors (shared knowledge). When the counterfactuality was shared by the interlocutors, both the 7-year-olds and the adults were less likely to interpret the speaker's counterfactual utterance as an attempted lie, and more likely to conclude that the speaker was being ironic. Adults were better than children at distinguishing irony from lies, but both age groups exhibited the same response pattern, namely a bias toward lying. This bias did not prevent the adults from deciding that the speaker was being ironic when the counterfactuality was shared, whereas children responded at chance level. In children, the association between task performance and theory-of-mind skills was nonsignificant, with a very small effect size. We discuss the possibility that, contrary to widespread belief, distinguishing irony from lies does not necessarily involve theory of mind (ToM).     

From Consultation to Participation

Empirical research in the literature on accountability of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) toward their beneficiaries is scarce, and the available studies have a number of limitations. Our study attempts to overcome some of them and focuses on one specific component of accountability toward beneficiaries: beneficiary impact on organizational decision making and output. Data were collected by surveying general managers of 790 Belgian NPOs in fourteen industries. Results show that most NPOs implement some mechanisms to involve beneficiaries and their representatives in organizational policy making, mechanisms that vary between and within industries. Despite the existence of such mechanisms, their perceived association with impact on policy making and associated potential organizational effects is weak, though positive.     

Age cohort differences in the developmental milestones of gay men

As the social context in which gay men live changes due to greater visibility, greater acceptance, and easier access to gay subculture, gay males may self-identify and take part in gay social activities at earlier ages than in the past. This study examined whether developmental milestones associated with sexual orientation for gay men have changed over the past several decades. A large and diverse sample of 2,402 gay men who responded to a 1994 survey published in a national magazine provided retrospective information on the age at which they reached individual psychological, social, and sexual behavior developmental milestones. We found evidence that individual psychological and sexual behavior milestones (e.g., awareness of attraction to males, having an orgasm with other male) are slowly moving toward earlier chronological ages (by 1 year of age every 8-25 years, p < 0.05), whereas social milestones (e.g., coming out) are moving more rapidly in a similar direction (by 1 year of age every 2-5 years, p < 0.001). The authors perform an innovative sensitivity test to demonstrate the persistence of the finding after correcting for the bias attributable to underrepresentation of those who have not yet self-identified as gay in such samples.     

Axioms for Shapley values in games with quarrelling

Four axioms, based on Shapley's original development of the Shapley value, are proposed for values of cooperative games with quarrelling. The collection of all values satisfying these axioms is shown to be the collection of values determined by a construction utilizing the proper choices of several parameters. This facilitates the proof of several common properties of all these values which are analogous to properties of the usual Shapley value. Finally, the parameters corresponding to the two specific values for games with quarrelling proposed in [2], are presented.