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Statistical genetics has become a core course in many graduate programs in public health and medicine. This book presents fundamental concepts and principles in this emerging field at a level that is accessible to students and researchers with a first course in biostatistics. Extensive examples are provided using publicly available data and the open source, statistical computing environment, R.

Customer Reviews (2)

A Well-Written and Very Useful Book
This book is the first I know that is exclusively devoted to population association studies, and as such is very well-written. Dr Foulkes takes care to describe key association concepts very carefully and in details. Plus the approach is very pragmatic and application-oriented. This is very useful since the author shows how to inplement key ideas through R-code.

The field of assopciation studies started some time ago and is still expanding, and there is a real lack of good textbooks in the field. This book fills a very important gap. It covers all the latest developments in the field and looks beyond with important multivariate topics such as CART and principal components. I recommend it very highly!

A solid text with interest beyond statistical genetics
Applied Statistical Genetics with R For Population-based Association Studies is by Andrea S. Foulkes
of the University of Massachusetts and is meant for an audience with some understanding of both genetics and statistics, though the level of understanding in both areas need not be extensive. The statistical knowledge required would be covered in one or two undergraduate courses and an introductory genetics course would be helpful.Lacking this background, the first three chapters provide a well written review of the required knowledge and also provide extensive references for further reading.Indeed, the entire book provides plenty of references for further study of all of the topics covered.

For genetic studies, this book covers several basic topics, including linkage disequilibrium, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, and haplotypic phase as well as methods for identifying associations between single genetic polymorphisms and a trait.Subjects that are not covered include family studies, population genetics or gene expression analysis.

One of the great strengths of this book is the presentation of topics that while relevant to genetics studies are also relevant to the general statistical reader.There are very good chapters and sections on missing data, multiple comparisons, cross-validation, the EM algorithm, classification and regression trees [CART] and random forests as well as several Bayesian techniques.While some statistical notation and formulas are used throughout, each topic is presented in clear fashion that is understandable to the less mathematically inclined.Algorithms are laid out in a step-by-step fashion that makes topics such as the EM algorithm and Gibbs sampling understandable.Indeed, this is one of the few statistical texts, beyond the most basic introductory texts, that can be read cover-to-cover.If not for the extensive use of examples with a genetics focus, I would recommend this as a general text on advanced statistics.

This book makes extensive use of the freely available R programming language and publicly available data sets, with many worked-out examples throughout the text.A web site provides download-able data sets and code.While there is an appendix that introduces the R language, some working familiarity with R beyond this text will be necessary for most readers.

In all, I found this to be a very readable introduction to the use of statistics in genetics.It would make a very good text for an introductory course on statistical genetics.I also recommend this book to the general statistics reader because of its very readable presentation of some complex statistical topics. ... Read more

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The central aim of many studies in population research and demography is to explain cause-effect relationships among variables or events. For decades, population scientists have concentrated their efforts on estimating the ‘causes of effects’ by applying standard cross-sectional and dynamic regression techniques, with regression coefficients routinely being understood as estimates of causal effects. The standard approach to infer the ‘effects of causes’ in natural sciences and in psychology is to conduct randomized experiments. In population studies, experimental designs are generally infeasible.

In population studies, most research is based on non-experimental designs (observational or survey designs) and rarely on quasi experiments or natural experiments. Using non-experimental designs to infer causal relationships—i.e. relationships that can ultimately inform policies or interventions—is a complex undertaking. Specifically, treatment effects can be inferred from non-experimental data with a counterfactual approach. In this counterfactual perspective, causal effects are defined as the difference between the potential outcome irrespective of whether or not an individual had received a certain treatment (or experienced a certain cause). The counterfactual approach to estimate effects of causes from quasi-experimental data or from observational studies was first proposed by Rubin in 1974 and further developed by James Heckman and others.

This book presents both theoretical contributions and empirical applications of the counterfactual approach to causal inference.

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In recent years, demography has expanded the reach of problems it confronts, constantly developing the range of methodological tools it employs and illuminating the latest demographic issues. The third edition of Demography features up-to-date information on the study of the causes of changes in size and composition and the effects of these population trends. Like its highly regarded predecessor, this expanded third edition is written in a reader-friendly style, featuring a wealth of newly enhanced graphics, examples, exercises, and data. Its international focus offers updated, substantive discussion of long-term trends and projections, along with newly emerging topics of interest to demographers. End-of-chapter exercises and propositions for debate bring demography alive for readers and emphasize demography's relevance and importance in the twenty-first century. ... Read more

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This study redresses the North and South imbalance of much of the work in British economic and social history by focusing on the impact of the building trade.The period 1450-1750 witnessed substantial changes in England, including the size of national population, the range of industry, agricultural techniques, and the proportion of population tied to the soil.Using sources from local archives, the author addresses conditions of work in the building trades, levels of remuneration, gender differences in work, and relationships with employers. ... Read more

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The Roman father has traditionally provided the pattern of patriarchy in European thought. This book shows how the social realities and cultural representations diverged from this paradigm. Demographic analysis and computer simulation demonstrate that before adulthood most Romans lost their fathers by death. Close reading of Latin texts reveals Roman fathers as devoted and loving, and not harsh, exploitative masters of slaves. The demographic and cultural contexts deepen our understanding of how the patrimony was transmitted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Faulty Axiom
Beginning in 1984 in a series of articles, Richard P. Saller, joined a bit later by his ally Brent D. Shaw, mistakenly contended that the ancient Romans married late - males on average at age twenty-eight, females at nineteen.They cited hundreds of Latin epitaphs from the late Republic into the Christian empire which proved beyond reasonable doubt that fathers normally commemorated their sons who died before age twenty-eight and their daughters who died before age nineteen; after those ages spouses became the predominant commemorators of each other.From this solid base they erroneously concluded that those were the average ages of marriage.Although otherwise erudite, much of Saller's Patriarchy, Property and Death is based on these miscalculations. His corollary about marriage ages, upon which most all of his other conclusions were based, was deduced from a faulty axiom. That is, he claimed that the patria potestas was really rather insignificant because most Romans married for the first time after the deaths of their fathers.In fact very, very few of the specific references collected to date corroborate such a late age for first marriage.Regardless, the text has been praised to the skies in numerous reviews and gained a seemingly widespread acceptance, most notably in Debating Roman Demography (Brill, 2001), authored in part and edited by Walter Scheidel, the dean of Roman demography, and containing a long article by Shaw.No one has yet seriously criticized this gross mistake.

a good attempt
Saller sometimes seems more a sociologist than ahistorian and this book is no exception.These articles exam a wide range of subjects which may interest historians and laypeople studying the family, law, or evensexuality in the ancient world.Very worth reading but not for theuninformed reader I'm afraid. ... Read more

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Residents of Haiti—one of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world—face a grim reality of starvation, violence, lack of economic opportunity, and minimal health care. For years, aid organizations have sought to alleviate the problems by creating health and family planning clinics, including one modern (and, by local standards, luxurious) center in the heart of Cité Soleil. During its height of service in the 1980s and 1990s, the clinic boasted nineteen staff members, an array of modern contraceptives, an accessible location, and convenient hours—but very few clients.

Why did this initiative fail so spectacularly despite surveys finding that residents would like to have fewer children? Why don’t poor women heed the message of family planning, when smaller families seem to be in their best interest?In Reproducing Inequalities, M. Catherine Maternowska argues that we too easily overlook the political dynamics that shape choices about family planning. Through a detailed study of the attempt to provide modern contraception in the community of Cité Soleil, Maternowska demonstrates the complex interplay between local and global politics that so often thwarts well-intended policy initiatives.

Medical anthropologists, she argues, have an important role to play in developing new action plans for better policy implementation. Ethnographic studies in desperate, dangerous locations provide essential data that can point the way to solutions for the dilemmas of contraception in poor communities worldwide. ... Read more

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This volume reviews our current understanding of avian population dynamics and explores ways in which population studies can contribute to effective conservation and management. Estimation of demographic parameters, the role of mathematical modelling, and the special problems of island populations and seabird populations are discussed. The emphasis throughout is on how bird populations are regulated under various constraints and conditions, including the impact of environmental changes.This book will be useful and interesting to ornithologists, ecologists, wildlife managers, and population biologists. ... Read more

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What is the influence of family and kinship networks on fertility, marriage, migration and mortality? Population scientists have studied the relationship between families, both immediate and extended, and demographic behavior for many years. This volume highlights the convergence of research by a group of demographers, economic historians, historians, anthropologists, sociologists and geneticists. The contributors use longitudinal databases from different cultures to study families that existed in the past and focus on the role that families and kin groups played in both early and later life events.

This book examines the role of kinship and the family’s influence on the health outcomes of their children, their children’s selection of marriage partners, couples having higher order births or reduced fertility, individual migration and origins of populations. Mortality patterns are examined to determine the influence of fertility patterns on parents’ mortality, the contribution of parents’ longevity to their children’s lifespan, and whether a family history of disease affects the risk of dying from that same disease.

This volume emphasizes the importance of studies that include and compare other factors related to social organization with information on multi-generational families. The authors elucidate previous explanations and provide provocative new results. Such intergenerational research is crucial in understanding long term demographic trends and processes.

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Forty years ago, the age-old battle against infectious diseases as a major threat to human health was believed close to being won. However, by the late twentieth century, the increase of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases was evident in both low and high income countries. About 30 new infectious diseases have been identified in the last 20 years. Among the "new" diseases, and most importantly, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) epidemic, with 40 million persons infected and 25 million deaths since its first description, presents one of the most significant health, societal and security challenges facing the global community. The interaction of HIV/AIDS with tuberculosis, malaria and bacterial infections have increased HIV-related morbidity and mortality, and in turn, the HIV pandemic has brought about devastating increases in tuberculosis.

Understanding the population impact and the dynamics of infection diseases in the most affected region is critical to efforts to reduce the morbidity and mortality of such infections, and for decisions on where to use limited resources in the fight against infections.

This book aims to contribute to these efforts by offering a demographic and epidemiological perspective on emerging and reemerging infections in sub-Saharan Africa.

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The traditional demographic regime of ancient Greece and Rome is almost entirely unknown; but our best chance for understanding its characteristics is provided by the three hundred census returns that survive on papyri from Roman Egypt. These returns, which date from the first three centuries AD, list the members of ordinary households living in the Nile valley: not only family members, but lodgers and slaves. The Demography of Roman Egypt has a complete and accurate catalogue of all demographically relevant information contained in the returns. On the basis of this catalogue, the authors use modern demographic methods and models to reconstruct the patterns of mortality, marriage, fertility and migration that are likely to have prevailed in Roman Egypt. They recreate a more or less typical Mediterranean population as it survived and prospered nearly two millennia ago. ... Read more

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From the time of Malthus, the insufficient supply of food resources has been considered the main constraint of population growth and the main factor in the high mortality prevailing in pre-industrial times.In this essay, the mechanisms of biological, social and cultural nature linking subsistence, mortality and population and determining its short and long term cycles are discussed. The author's analysis examines the existing evidence from the century of the Great Plague to the industrial revolution, interpreting the scanty quantitative information concerning caloric budgets and food supply, prices and wages, changes in body height and epidemiological history, demographic behaviours of the rich and of the poor. The emerging picture sheds doubts on the existence of a long term interrelation between subsistence of nutritional levels and mortality, showing that the level of the latter was determined more by the epidemiological cycles than by the nutritional level of the population. The permanent potential conflict between food supply and population growth was also mediated by the biological adaptability of the human species to nutritional stress. In the short term, the synergy between famine and epidemic infections in determining recurrent mortality crises is evident, but their impact starts declining in frequency and intensity in the eighteenth century. ... Read more

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Dental anthropologists focus on the variation around a commonly shared pattern, a variation expressed by differences in tooth size and morphology. This book centers on the morphological characteristics of tooth crowns and roots that are either present or absent in any given individual and that vary in frequency among populations. These nonmetric dental traits are controlled largely by genetic factors and provide a direct link between extinct and extant populations.The book illustrates more than thirty tooth crown and root traits and reviews their biological and genetic underpinnings.From a database of more than 30,000 individuals, the geographic variation of twenty-two crown and root traits is graphically portrayed.A global analysis of tooth morphology shows both points of agreement and disagreement with comparable analyses of genetic and craniometric data.These findings are relevant to the hotly contested issue of timing and geographic context of modern human origins. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Here's an excellent reference book for those interested in teeth!
As a pre-dental student, I found that reading and reviewing this book was very beneficial to me.It clearly explained essential terminology and anatomical structures of each tooth in the human jaw.From this, one could understand almost every intricacy included in this book.Such fascinating information ranged from tooth and crown morphology to trait relationships and geographic variation.It also provided great background information on the inception of this valuable discipline, illustrating the research conducted by many individuals around the world along with important dates and facts.The other point I'd like to make about this book is that it identifies many new facets of research that has not yet been started, but could provide a sundry of new knowledge and practical application. ... Read more

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The International Handbook of Population Aging is the first comprehensive volume to examine research on a wide array of the profound implications of population aging. Global population aging is one of the most important issues facing human societies in the early twenty-first century. Population projections show that the proportion of the world’s population over age 60 will double between 2000 and 2050, and that about one-third of the people living in developed countries will be over age 60 in 2050. Already there are countries in Europe and Asia where the number of people over age 60 exceed the number of children, and by 2050 some of these countries will have twice as many old people as children. As noted by the 2002 UN World Assembly on Ageing Report, this global trend in population aging is unprecedented in human history, is pervasive across societies, is enduring (there is no going back to younger populations), and has profound implications for human beings.

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The Population Explosion vividly describes how the Earth's population, growing by 95 million people a year, is rapidly depleting the planet's resources, resulting in famine, global warming, acid rain, and other major problems. Paul and Anne Ehrlich also clearly and concisely point to immediate action that will lessen the threat of ruin and begin to build a more peaceful, sane, and secure world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Clock Is Ticking, The Message Is Getting Ever More Urgent!
"Population Explosion" is a follow-up to the Ehrlich's 1968, "Population Bomb" when there were over 3.5 billion humans on the planet- that number was considered by many to be vastly beyond the carrying capacity of our Earth and it's finite resources. By the time this book was published in 1990, the population had increased to 5.3 billion. The current population is well over 6 billion. Because of the now virtually straight-up growth curve, we are breeding ourselves off the planet. Match this curve with the increasing consumption of fossil fuel and resulting carbon dumping, ozone depletion, rain forest destruction, sewage pollution in the land and oceans- all contributing to global warming; toxic chemicals seeping into ground water supplies; accelerated depletion of fish stocks; widespread famine, etc., and we now have a real environmental pan of worms on our hands. What commentary is it on major governments (esp. the supposedly civilized U.S.) and religious groups to resist human population management and education? Is this their idea of love, compassion and wisdom?

The extremeconditions of poverty, pollution, crime and poor health, all resulting in global human/flora/fauna suffering and misery, one would think, should motivateglobal efforts to inform on and correct this mess. Or are we humans just not intelligent enough to heed the loud and compelling warnings ofthe Ehrlich's and others that we need to take seriously our "Population Bomb"? The data and message in this fine book is as timely now as when it was first published- just more urgent!

In 1970 the Ehrlich's published one of the finest textbooks on human ecology: "Population, Resources, Environment". It is still relevant and informative today- just add more people and pollution to the mix and you've brought it up to speed.

As many others have observed, by not taking any constructive action we are letting naturetake it's course. Is this our legacy? Will the cockroaches and fleas, who have managed to flourish in our human mess and who will probably be here long after we're gone, write our epitaph: Those stupid humans sure were fun while they were here. And, as cartoonist Walt Kelley`s "Pogo" so aptly said, "We have met the enemy and he is us".

Timely but oversimplified
The book is a sequel to an earlier, very successful discussion of population pressures. Key to the Erlichs' approach here is the formula I=PAT, which stands for Impact equals Population times Affluence timesTechnology. The larger any one of these factors, the higher the product,i.e. the impact - all other factors remaining equal. By"technology" and "affluence", the authors presumablyintend the environmentally destructive types of each, though howqualitative differences can be expressed qualitatively is left largelyunexplained. Clearly the equation aims at a very generalized and impreciselevel of abstraction, more suitable for detecting trends than settingpolicy. Whether such streamlining conceals more variability than it revealsis not really discussed and clouds the work as a whole.

Central to thebook is the impact of one particular factor, namely P or population. Growthincreases in this category alone, as I=PAT shows, can undo strides in allother categories combined. At bottom, the book represents an assessment of these far-reaching population impacts plus specific projections based oncurrent figures in all categories. In that topical sense the work is notstrictly theoretical and though certain Malthusian themes are sounded, thework is not a gloomy updating of unavoidable doom. Changes in growthpatterns can make a lasting difference, the authors are anxious toinform.

Sheer numbers of people, however, do not tell the whole impactstory, which is why the Erlich's have included the factor of"affluence" in one of their better sections. In the role ofaffluent consumers, not all people count the same. Because of their greaterconsuption level, citizens of richer nations, for example, have muchgreater impact on world resources than people in poorer countries. Thus, astheir equation shows, population reductions among the industrialized have adisproportionately helpful effect on world resources. Promisingly,population growth rates in richer areas such as western Europe and the U.S.have slackened with increasing levels of affluence, which indicates animportant correlation between birth-rate and material well-being. Thuseconomic class emerges as an important factor to gaining a sustainableenvironment and I wish the authors had spent more time emphasizing this.

The book has many good points, but unfortunately lacks impact and realanalytic depth. Probably, as a work aimed at a mass audience, analyticdepth was not intended. Moreover, being a sequel to a widely discussedfirst book creates a tough act to follow. Nevertheless, aside from someuseful statistics, more questions are posed than answered.

It might make you think about what we are doing to the Earth
This book provides an excellent synopsis of the state of our environment. Using more than just apocalyptic rhetoric, Ehrlich presents the subject matter with a keen sense of humanity and provides suggestions as to how wemust change our society to avoid the dire consequences of uninhibitedgrowth.

A great introduction for those who are concerned about thepollution next door or the pesticides on the fruit we eat or in theenvironment in general.

READ...READ...READ..Then pass it on.

A rational explanation of a frightening problem.
The Population Explosion is the follow-up to The Population Bomb (written by the same author twenty years ago). In this book he examines the results of the issues he raised in the first book as well as some of the newdangers of overpopulation created by contemporary reproductive science andecological damage.

Early in the book he explains why overpopulation issuch a pressing, but invisible problem. Occasionally his frustration withthe problems he describes comes through but despite this the book comesacross as an even-handed and rational examination of the facts.

In anage when women are giving birth to seven or eight children at a timebecause they're taking fertility drugs in a mad effort to procreate thereis no better time to learn about the consequences. ... Read more