Sex-biased lactational duration in a human population and its reproductive costs

Summary We tested the proposition that among humans (1) differences in lactational duration result in differences in costs of reproduction even under rich nutritional conditions; and (2) elimination of factors postulated to favor male-biased parental care will be reflected in elimination or reversal of sex-biased care. To do so, we examined the relationship between lactational duration and fertility among Hutterites, a communal-living human population in which the levels of nutritional resources and fertility are high, breast-feeding is the norm, contraceptive use is limited and the collective social and economic system results in low resource variance among individuals. We demonstrate that even under good nutritional conditions, duration of nursing was a significant predictor of the length of time to next pregnancy and that nursing continued to suppress fertility after the resumption of menses. Moreover, we find that daughters were nursed longer than sons, leading to a longer interval to next pregnancy. We examine this uncommon, but not unique, finding of female-biased human parental care in the light of Hutterite social structure, and we explore the consistency of this finding with the most applicable models of parental investment. Correspondence to: S.W. Margulis     

Cost-effective selection of sampling frequencies for regulatory water quality monitoring

A dynamic programming code was formulated for the purpose of assigning sampling frequencies throughout a regulatory water quality monitoring network in order to optimize the statistical performance of the network while operating within a fixed budgetary constraint. The statistical objective is to achieve the greatest possible station to station uniformity in confidence interval widths about annual geometric means of the measured water quality variables and to keep the average confidence width reasonably small. The objective function is the sum (over several selected variables and all stations) of the normalized positive deviations of the predicted confidence interval widths from preselected design confidence interval widths. The code was designed to account for the effects of deterministic seasonal variation and serial correlation of the water quality observations by incorporating the results of the time series analysis of historical quality data. The economic constraint ensures that the annual operating cost of the system, including direct costs of travel and laboratory analysis, will not exceed the allowable budget. As an example situation, the dynamic programming code was used to assign sampling frequencies to the nine stations in Illinois from which historical quality data had been obtained and analyzed. Using five design quality constituents and representative travel and laboratory costs, an “optimal” design was produced. The optimal design achieved a 10% improvement in uniformity (standard deviation) of confidence interval widths when compared to a more traditional design based on the same budget and using identical sampling frequencies at every station.     

Traceability in low-level radioactivity measurements

Various suggested definitions of the term “traceability” are discussed from the standpoint of proposed adoption and use of the concept by the International Organization of Legal Metrology.