With introduction of social niche effects into a model of cultural change, the frequency of a practice cannot predict the frequency of its underlying belief. The combination of a general model with empirical data from a specific case illustrates the importance of collaboration between modellers and field researchers, and identifies the type of quantitative data necessary for analysing case stud...

OBJECTIVE To conduct the cross-cultural adaptation for Brazilian Portuguese of the Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO), a new resource for observing neonatal behavior and sharing information with parents. METHODS Methodological study of translation and cultural adaptation of the NBO system, which includes the Recording Form, with 18 items, the Recording Guidelines, with instructions to scor...

BACKGROUND Smoking, depression, and anxiety increase the risk of death in patients with COPD, but the combined effect of these factors is unknown. We assessed the interactive effects of smoking, depression, and anxiety on mortality in patients with COPD. METHODS We collected and analyzed data from 7,787 subjects with COPD, in 14 rural communities, from May 2008 to May 2012, and used logistic ...

Cross-cultural anthropologists have increasingly used phylogenetic methods to study cultural variation. Because cultural behaviours can be transmitted horizontally among socially defined groups, however, it is important to assess whether phylogeny-based methods--which were developed to study vertically transmitted traits among biological taxa--are appropriate for studying group-level cultural v...

A general linear model of combined polygenic-cultural inheritance is described. The model allows for phenotypic assortative mating, common environment, maternal and paternal effects, and genic-cultural correlation. General formulae for phenotypic correlation between family members in extended pedigrees are given for both primary and secondary assortative mating. A FORTRAN program BETA, availabl...

We develop a three-step fuzzy logic-based algorithm for clustering categorical attributes, and we apply it to analyze cultural data. In the first step the algorithm employs an entropy-based clustering scheme, which initializes the cluster centers. In the second step we apply the fuzzy c-modes algorithm to obtain a fuzzy partition of the data set, and the third step introduces a novel cluster va...

The heavy reliance on incarceration in the United States is unusual relative to U.S. history and relative to the use of incarceration in other nations. By now, the facts are common knowledge. We incarcerate our citizens at a rate that exceeds every other nation and that is multiple times (on the order of five to seven) the rates of other high-income countries. Moreover, since the mid-1970s, our...