The COllaborative project of Development of Anthropometrical measures in Twins (CODATwins) project is a large international collaborative effort to analyze individual-level phenotype data from twins in multiple cohorts from different environments. The main objective is to study factors that modify genetic and environmental variation of height, body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) and size at birth, and additionally to address other research questions such as long-term consequences of birth size. The project started in 2013 and is open to all twin projects in the world having height and weight measures on twins with information on zygosity. Thus far, 54 twin projects from 24 countries have provided individual-level data. The CODATwins database includes 489,981 twin individuals (228,635 complete twin pairs). Since many twin cohorts have collected longitudinal data, there is a total of 1,049,785 height and weight observations. For many cohorts, we also have information on birth weight and length, own smoking behavior and own or parental education. We found that the heritability estimates of height and BMI systematically changed from infancy to old age. Remarkably, only minor differences in the heritability estimates were found across cultural–geographic regions, measurement time and birth cohort for height and BMI. In addition to genetic epidemiological studies, we looked at associations of height and BMI with education, birth weight and smoking status. Within-family analyses examined differences within same-sex and opposite-sex dizygotic twins in birth size and later development. The CODATwins project demonstrates the feasibility and value of international collaboration to address gene-by-exposure interactions that require large sample sizes and address the effects of different exposures across time, geographical regions and socioeconomic status.

We assessed whether paternal demographic, anthropometric and clinical factors influence the risk of an infant being born large-for-gestational-age (LGA). We examined the data on 3659 fathers of term offspring (including 662 LGA infants) born to primiparous women from Screening for Pregnancy Endpoints (SCOPE). LGA was defined as birth weight >90th centile as per INTERGROWTH 21st standards, with reference group being infants ⩽90th centile. Associations between paternal factors and likelihood of an LGA infant were examined using univariable and multivariable models. Men who fathered LGA babies were 180 g heavier at birth (P<0.001) and were more likely to have been born macrosomic (P<0.001) than those whose infants were not LGA. Fathers of LGA infants were 2.1 cm taller (P<0.001), 2.8 kg heavier (P<0.001) and had similar body mass index (BMI). In multivariable models, increasing paternal birth weight and height were independently associated with greater odds of having an LGA infant, irrespective of maternal factors. One unit increase in paternal BMI was associated with 2.9% greater odds of having an LGA boy but not girl; however, this association disappeared after adjustment for maternal BMI. There were no associations between paternal demographic factors or clinical history and infant LGA. In conclusion, fathers who were heavier at birth and were taller were more likely to have an LGA infant, but maternal BMI had a dominant influence on LGA.

Theory suggests that early experiences may calibrate the “threshold activity” of the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis in childhood. Particularly challenging or particularly supportive environments are posited to manifest in heightened physiological sensitivity to context. Using longitudinal data from the Family Life Project (N = 1,292), we tested whether links between maternal sensitivity and hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis activity aligned with these predictions. Specifically, we tested whether the magnitude of the within-person relation between maternal sensitivity and children's cortisol levels, a proxy for physiological sensitivity to context, was especially pronounced for children who typically experienced particularly low or high levels of maternal sensitivity over time. Our results were consistent with these hypotheses. Between children, lower levels of mean maternal sensitivity (7–24 months) were associated with higher mean cortisol levels across this period (measured as a basal sample collected at each visit). However, the magnitude and direction of the within-person relation was contingent on children's average levels of maternal sensitivity over time. Increases in maternal sensitivity were associated with contemporaneous cortisol decreases for children with typically low-sensitive mothers, whereas sensitivity increases were associated with cortisol increases for children with typically high-sensitive mothers. No within-child effects were evident at moderate levels of maternal sensitivity.

Euclid is the next ESA mission devoted to cosmology. It aims at observing most of the extragalactic sky, studying both gravitational lensing and clustering over ~15,000 square degrees. The mission is expected to be launched in year 2020 and to last six years. The sheer amount of data of different kinds, the variety of (un)known systematic effects and the complexity of measures require efforts both in sophisticated simulations and techniques of data analysis. We review the mission main characteristics, some aspects of the the survey and highlight some of the areas of interest to this meeting.

The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) is carrying out a survey as part of an international collaboration to image the northe, at a common resolution, in emission from all major constituents of the interstellar medium; the neutral atomic gas, the molecular gas, the ionised gas, dust and relativistic plasma. For many of these constituents the angular resolution of the images (1 arcmin) will be more than a factor of 10 better than any previous studies. The aim is to produce a publicly-available database of high resolution, high-dynamic range images of the Galaxy for multi-phase studies of the physical states and processes in the interstellar medium. We will sketch the main scientific motivations as well as describe some preliminary results from the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey/Releve Canadien du Plan Galactique (CGPS/RCPG).

Imputation of moderate-density genotypes from low-density panels is of increasing interest in genomic selection, because it can dramatically reduce genotyping costs. Several imputation software packages have been developed, but they vary in imputation accuracy, and imputed genotypes may be inconsistent among methods. An AdaBoost-like approach is proposed to combine imputation results from several independent software packages, i.e. Beagle(v3.3), IMPUTE(v2.0), fastPHASE(v1.4), AlphaImpute, findhap(v2) and Fimpute(v2), with each package serving as a basic classifier in an ensemble-based system. The ensemble-based method computes weights sequentially for all classifiers, and combines results from component methods via weighted majority ‘voting’ to determine unknown genotypes. The data included 3078 registered Angus cattle, each genotyped with the Illumina BovineSNP50 BeadChip. SNP genotypes on three chromosomes (BTA1, BTA16 and BTA28) were used to compare imputation accuracy among methods, and the application involved the imputation of 50K genotypes covering 29 chromosomes based on a set of 5K genotypes. Beagle and Fimpute had the greatest accuracy among the six imputation packages, which ranged from 0·8677 to 0·9858. The proposed ensemble method was better than any of these packages, but the sequence of independent classifiers in the voting scheme affected imputation accuracy. The ensemble systems yielding the best imputation accuracies were those that had Beagle as first classifier, followed by one or two methods that utilized pedigree information. A salient feature of the proposed ensemble method is that it can solve imputation inconsistencies among different imputation methods, hence leading to a more reliable system for imputing genotypes relative to independent methods.

Staphylococcus aureus is routinely recovered from air and surface samples taken aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and poses a health threat to crew. As bacteria respond to the low shear forces engendered by continuous rotation conditions in a Rotating Wall Vessel (RWV) and the reduced gravitational field of near-Earth flight by altering gene expression, we examined the effect of low-shear RWV growth on protein secretion and gene expression by three S. aureus isolates. When cultured under 1 g, the total amount of protein secreted by these strains varied up to fourfold; under continuous rotation conditions, protein secretion by all three strains was significantly reduced. Concentrations of individual proteins were differentially reduced and no evidence was found for increased lysis. These data suggest that growth under continuous rotation conditions reduces synthesis or secretion of proteins. A limited number of changes in gene expression under continuous rotation conditions were noted: in all isolates vraX, a gene encoding a polypeptide associated with cell wall stress, was down-regulated. A vraX deletion mutant of S. aureus SH1000 was constructed: no differences were found between SH1000 and ΔvraX with respect to colony phenotype, viability, protein export, antibiotic susceptibility, vancomycin kill kinetics, susceptibility to cold or heat and gene modulation. An ab initio protein–ligand docking simulation suggests a major binding site for β-lactam drugs such as imipenem. If such changes to the bacterial phenotype occur during spaceflight, they will compromise the capacity of staphylococci to cause systemic infection and to circumvent antibacterial chemotherapy.

Present and past gas-fuelling of galaxies is expected to depend upon both the properties of the galaxies themselves, as well as their larger-scale environments. In the case of galaxies in groups the environment, i.e the group mass, can be probed by measuring the velocity dispersion of the group members, as done with the GAMA Galaxy Group catalogue (Robotham et al. 2011), probing the halo mass function all the way to small groups. The gas-fuelling rate of normal late-type galaxies can be traced by the SFR under the assumption of a steady state between gas-fuelling and gas-consumption by SF. We present a method to estimate disk opacities from UV/optical photometric characteristics, calibrated using the radiative transfer model of Popescu et al. (2011), applied to UV-Opt-FIR GAMA/H-ATLAS photometry for a subset of GAMA galaxies. We use the method to extract attenuation corrected SFRs for a large sample of late-type GAMA galaxies, which we use in an initial application to constrain the dependency of star formation/gas-fuelling in late-type galaxies on mass of parent DMH, and compactness of galaxy group.

Exposure of fetuses to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), such as the estrogenic drug diethylstilbestrol (DES), disrupts development of the reproductive system and affects other aspects of adult phenotype including diseases, consistent with the developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis. To determine whether diet could influence the effects of DES, we compared mice fed a commonly used combination of soy-based Purina 5008 (breeding and lactation) and 5001 (post-weaning) with mice fed soy-based Purina 5002 throughout life. We exposed fetal CD-1 mice (F1) in utero on different feeds to a 0 (controls), low (0.1 μg/kg/day) or high (50 μg/kg/day) dose of DES via feeding the dam (F0) on gestation days 11–17. Compared to 5008, 5002 feed significantly increased serum estradiol in control fetuses. On 5008 (but not 5002) feed, DES significantly increased fetal serum estradiol at a low dose and reduced it at a high dose. Diet influenced the effects of in utero DES on F1 female onset of puberty and the uterine response to estradiol (an inverted-U dose–response relationship seen for DES on uterine weight with 5008/5001 feed was not observed with 5002). Both low- and high-dose DES reduced daily sperm production (DSP) in adult F1 males on 5008/5001 feed, whereas males fed 5002 showed no DES-induced reduction in DSP. Thus, we observed a number of low-dose effects of in utero DES exposure on Purina 5008/5001 feed that were not observed using Purina 5002, a feed commonly used in industry-funded toxicological studies conducted for regulatory purposes.

The business meeting of Division X in the IAU 2009GA took place in three sessions during the day of August 6, 2009. The meeting, being well attended, started with the approval for the meeting agenda. Then the triennium reports were made in the first session by the president of Division X, Ren-Dong Nan, and by the chairs of three working groups: “Historic Radio Astronomy WG” by Wayne Orchiston, “Astrophysically Important Lines WG” by Masatoshi Ohishi, and “Global VLBI WG” by Tasso Tzioumis (proxy chair appointed by Steven Tingay). Afterwards, a dozen reports from observatories and worldwide significant projects have been presented in the second session. Business meeting of “Interference Mitigation WG” was located in the third session.