Three Melodies for Solo Vibraphone Recital performed by Cory Bracken, Percussionist Brooklyn College Studio 312 in Roosevelt Hall, Bedford Ave. Brooklyn, NY Authors: Lyon, E. Publication date: 27 Oct 2011

Thursday, October 27 · 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Location
Brooklyn College
Studio 312 in Roosevelt Hall, Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY
Created By
Cory Bracken

Urban housing and the role of 'underclass' processes: the case of Ireland

Rising levels of urban deprivation and a perception that poverty has become more concentrated in such areas and has taken on a qualitatively different character have provoked a variety of popular and academic responses. The potentially most fruitful set of hypotheses focuses on the unintended of weak labour force attachment and social isolation is perceived to lead to behaviour and orientations that contribute to a vicious circle of deprivation. In examining the value of this conceptual framework in the Irish case we proceed by measuring directly the social-psychological factors which ave hypothesized to mediate the 'underclass' process.

A significantly higher level of poverty is found in urban public-sector tenant households. This finding cannot be accounted for entirely by socio-demographic differences. It is the assessment of this net or residual effect that is crucial to an evaluation of vicious circle explanations. Controlling for the critical social-psychological factors we found that net effect was reduced by less than a quarter and concluded that the remaining effect is more plausibly attributed to the role of selection than to underclass processes. Analysis of the changing relationship between urban public-sector tenancy and poverty provides support for this interpretation.

For the main part the distinctiveness of social housing tenants is a consequence of the disadvantages they stiffer in relation to employment opportunities and living standards. Ultimately it is these problems that policy interventions, whatever the level at which they take place, must address.

Molecular pedigree reconstruction and estimation of evolutionary parameters in a wild Atlantic salmon river system with incomplete sampling: a power analysis

Background: Pedigree reconstruction using genetic analysis provides a useful means to estimate fundamental population biology parameters relating to population demography, trait heritability and individual fitness when combined with other sources of data. However, there remain limitations to pedigree reconstruction in wild populations, particularly in systems where parent-offspring relationships cannot be directly observed, there is incomplete sampling of individuals, or molecular parentage inference relies on low quality DNA from archived material. While much can still be inferred from incomplete or sparse pedigrees, it is crucial to evaluate the quality and power of available genetic information a priori to testing specific biological hypotheses. Here, we used microsatellite markers to reconstruct a multi-generation pedigree of wild Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) using archived scale samples collected with a total trapping system within a river over a 10 year period. Using a simulation-based approach, we determined the optimal microsatellite marker number for accurate parentage assignment, and evaluated the power of the resulting partial pedigree to investigate important evolutionary and quantitative genetic characteristics of salmon in the system.

Results: We show that at least 20 microsatellites (ave. 12 alleles/locus) are required to maximise parentage assignment and to improve the power to estimate reproductive success and heritability in this study system. We also show that 1.5 fold differences can be detected between groups simulated to have differing reproductive success, and that it is possible to detect moderate heritability values for continuous traits (h(2) similar to 0.40) with more than 80% power when using 28 moderately to highly polymorphic markers.

Conclusion: The methodologies and work flow described provide a robust approach for evaluating archived samples for pedigree-based research, even where only a proportion of the total population is sampled. The results demonstrate the feasibility of pedigree-based studies to address challenging ecological and evolutionary questions in free-living populations, where genealogies can be traced only using molecular tools, and that significant increases in pedigree assignment power can be achieved by using higher numbers of markers.