On the number of independent cultural traits carried by individuals and populations.

In species subject to individual and social learning, each individual is likely to express a certain number of different cultural traits acquired during its lifetime. If the process of trait innovation and transmission reaches a steady state in the population, the number of different cultural traits carried by an individual converges to some stationary distribution. We call this the trait-number distribution. In this paper, we derive the trait-number distributions for both individuals and populations when cultural traits are independent of each other. Our results suggest that as the number of cultural traits becomes large, the trait-number distributions approach Poisson distributions so that their means characterize cultural diversity in the population. We then analyse how the mean trait number varies at both the individual and population levels as a function of various demographic features, such as population size and subdivision, and social learning rules, such as conformism and anti-conformism. Diversity at the individual and population levels, as well as at the level of cultural homogeneity within groups, depends critically on the details of population demography and the individual and social learning rules.

Prevalence of obesity and overweight and associated nutritional factors in a population-based Swiss sample: an opportunity to analyze the impact of three different European cultural roots.

PURPOSE: Obesity represents a growing public health concern worldwide. The latest data in Switzerland rely on self-reported body mass index (BMI), leading to underestimation of prevalence. We reassessed the prevalence of obesity and overweight in a sample of the Swiss population using measured BMI and waist circumference (WC) and explored the association with nutritional factors and living in different linguistic-cultural regions. METHODS: Data of 1,505 participants of a cross-sectional population-based survey in the three linguistic regions of Switzerland were analyzed. BMI and WC were measured, and a 24-h urine collection was performed to evaluate dietary sodium, potassium and protein intake. RESULTS: The prevalence of overweight, obesity and abdominal obesity was 32.2, 14.2 and 33.6 %, respectively. Significant differences were observed in the regional distribution, with a lower prevalence in the Italian-speaking population. Low educational level, current smoking, scarce physical activity and being migrant were associated with an higher prevalence of obesity. Sodium, potassium and protein intake increased significantly across BMI categories. CONCLUSIONS: Obesity and overweight affect almost half of the Swiss adolescents and adults, and the prevalence appears to increase. Using BMI and WC to define obesity led to different prevalences. Differences were furthermore observed across Swiss linguistic-cultural regions, despite a common socio-economic and governmental framework. We found a positive association between obesity and salt intake, with a potential deleterious synergistic effect on cardiovascular risk.

Migrating concepts: Immigrant integration and the regulation of religious dress in France and Canada

Religion in general, and Islam in particular, has become one of the main focal points of policy-making and constitutional politics in many Western liberal states. This article proposes to examine the legal and political dynamics behind new regulations targeting individual religious practices of Muslims. Although one could presuppose that church-state relations or the understanding of secularism is the main factor accounting for either accommodation or prohibition of Muslim religious practices, I make the case that the policy frame used to conceptualize the integration of immigrants in each national context is a more significant influence on how a liberal state approaches the legal regulation of individual practices such as veiling. However, this influence must be assessed carefully since it may have different effects on the different institutional actors in charge of regulating religion, such as the Courts and the legislature. To assess these hypotheses I compare two countries, France and Canada, which are solid examples of two contrasting national policy frames for the integration of immigrants.