The delay in childbearing is an important societal change contributing to an increasing incidence of subfertility. The prevailing concept of female reproductive ageing assumes that the decline of both quantity and quality of the oocyte/follicle pool determines an age-dependent loss of female fertility. There is an apparent discrepancy between the ability to maintain a regular ovulatory cycle pattern and the several years earlier cessation of female fertility. This latter is largely explained by an age-related increase of meiotic non-disjunction leading to chromosomal aneuploidy and early pregnancy loss, such that most embryos from women > or =40 years old are chromosomally abnormal and rarely develop further. The final stage of reproductive ageing-the occurrence of menopause-shows a huge variation between women. Age at last birth in natural fertility populations, which marks the end of female fertility, shows an identically wide variation as age at menopause, but occurs on average 10 years earlier. Given the high heritability for age at menopause, the variation in both age of menopause and last birth are probably under genetic control by the same set of genes. Some of those genes must carry heritable variants which modulate the rate of ovarian ageing and give rise to the wide age variations for the various phases of reproductive ageing.

The variability of female reproductive ageing

One of the most notable political developments of the last thirty years has been increasing public and governmental demand for the quantification of social phenomena, yet sociologists generally have paid little attention to the spread of quantification or the significance of new regimes of measurement. Our article addresses this oversight by analyzing quantification – the production and communication of numbers – as a general sociological phenomenon. Drawing on scholarship across the social sciences in Europe and North America as well as humanistic inquiry, we articulate five sociological dimensions of quantification and call for an ethics of numbers.

/pdf/a-sociology-of-quantification-40pbjp2ial.pdf

A Sociology of Quantification

Many champions of environmental accounting suggest that calculating and internalizing ‘externalities’ is the solution to environmental problems. Many critics of neoliberalism counter that the spread of market-like calculations into ‘non-market’ spheres, is, on the contrary, itself at the root of such problems. This article proposes setting aside this debate and instead closely examining the concrete conflicts, contradictions and resistances engendered by environmental accounting techniques and the perpetually incomplete efforts of accountants and their allies to overcome them. In particular, it explores how cost–benefit analysis and the carbon accounting techniques required by the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and other carbon trading mechanisms ‘frame’ new agents, spaces, relations and objects, and what the consequences have been and are likely to be.

Toward a different debate in environmental accounting: The cases of carbon and cost–benefit

The latter half of this century has seen an erosion in the perceived legitimacy of science as an impartial means of finding truth. Many research topics are the subject of highly politicized dispute; indeed, the objectivity of the entire discipline of psychology has been called into question. This essay examines attempts to use science to study science: specifically, bias in the interpretation and use of empirical research findings. I examine theory and research on a range of cognitive and motivational mechanisms for bias. Interestingly, not all biases are normatively proscribed; biased interpretations are defensible under some conditions, so long as those conditions are made explicit. I consider a variety of potentially corrective mechanisms, evaluate prospects for collective rationality, and compare inquisitorial and adversarial models of science.

Biases in the interpretation and use of research results.

QTL mapping in humans and rats has identified hundreds of blood-pressure-related phenotypes and genomic regions; the next daunting task is gene identification and validation. The development of novel rat model systems that mimic many elements of the human disease, coupled with advances in the genomic and informatic infrastructure for rats, promise to revolutionize the hunt for genes that determine susceptibility to hypertension. Furthermore, methods are evolving that should enable the identification of candidate genes in human populations. Together with the computational reconstruction of regulatory networks, these methods provide opportunities to significantly advance our understanding of the underlying aetiology of hypertension.

The genetic dissection of essential hypertension

This study undertaken for the National Committee for Research on the 1980 Census is one in a series of volumes concerned with analyses of the results of the 1980 U.S. census. The present volume differs from others in the series in that it focuses not on the data itself but on the governmental system of data collection and analysis. The focus here is on the social and political significance of decisions concerning data collection measurement interpretation and presentation. Part 1 on the politics of economic measurement contains chapters on the different views of economic statistics held by governmental political and academic professionals; the politics of income measurement; and the development of national income accounting. Part 2 is on the politics of population measurement; chapters are included on the 1980 census in historical perspective politics and the measurement of ethnicity and the social and political context of population forecasting. Part 3 focuses on the relationship between the functions of statistics and the characteristics of democratic politics. Part 4 deals with the connections between statistics and various levels of U.S. government. Part 5 contains chapters on technological developments and their consequences and on the rise of the statistical services industry.

The politics of numbers.

The authors describe the BALSAC population register which includes the population of eastern Quebec from the beginning of French settlement in the seventeenth century up to the present time. They also describe two related systems INGRES which has been used to construct individual biographies genealogical pedigrees and cohorts; and INGRID which has been developed for more specialized purposes. (SUMMARY IN ENG) (ANNOTATION)

[Population files and database management: the BALSAC database and the INGRES/INGRID system].

De la micro a la macro-reconstitution des familles le systeme sorep

"This article outlines a new system for computerized family reconstitution. It has been developed in the last ten years by a multidisciplinary team of Quebec researchers belonging to the inter-university research center on populations (SOREP). Basically, this system is characterized by: a) an attempt to computerize as much as possible every step involved in the process of reconstitution, b) a set of tools devised for identifying and measuring all forms and degrees of similarity between names and surnames, c) a technique to process cases of ambiguous links, d) a set of programs used to assess the quality of the data and the strength of the links created, [and] e) an attempt to maximize the performance of the linkage work in terms of both efficiency and accuracy. The system has been designed to support several kinds of analyses, from social history and demography to population genetics. Our paper contains a brief overview of the current state of research in the field of record linkage, an introduction to the Saguenay [Canada] population register and a description of the system itself which has been utilized successfully in the last year on the 660,000 Saguenay parish records, covering the period 1842-1971." (SUMMARY IN ENG AND ITA)

[From micro- to macro-reconstitution of families: the SOREP system].

This article outlines a new system for computerized family reconstitution. It has been developed in the last 10 years by a multidisciplinary team of Quebec researchers belonging to the Inter-University Research Center on Populations (SOREP). Basically this system is characterized by 1) an attempt to computerize as much as possible every step involved in the process of reconstitution 2) a set of tools devised for identifying and measuring all forms and degrees of similarity between names and surnames 3) a technique to process cases of ambiguous links 4) a set of programs used to assess the quality of the data and the strength of the links created and 5) an attempt to maximize the performance of the linkage work in terms of both efficiency and accuracy. The system has been designed to support several kinds of analyses from social history and demography to population genetics. The paper contains a brief overview of the current state of research in the field record linkage an introduction to the Saguenay population register and a description of the system itself which has utilized sucessfully in the last year on the 660000 Saguenay parish records covering the period 1842-1971. (authors)

Casgrain B

Papers

The politics of numbers.

[Population files and database management: the BALSAC database and the INGRES/INGRID system].

De la micro a la macro-reconstitution des familles le systeme sorep

[From micro- to macro-reconstitution of families: the SOREP system].

[Computerized family reconstitution on a large data-base: the SOREP system].