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 have observed the G23 field of the Galaxy AndMass Assembly (GAMA) survey using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) in its commissioning phase to validate the performance of the telescope and to characterise the detected galaxy populations. This observation covers ~48 deg2 with synthesised beam of 32.7 arcsec by 17.8 arcsec at 936MHz, and ~39 deg2 with synthesised beam of 15.8 arcsec by 12.0 arcsec at 1320MHz. At both frequencies, the root-mean-square (r.m.s.) noise is ~0.1 mJy/beam. We combine these radio observations with the GAMA galaxy data, which includes spectroscopy of galaxies that are i-band selected with a magnitude limit of 19.2. Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) infrared (IR) photometry is used to determine which galaxies host an active galactic nucleus (AGN). In properties including source counts, mass distributions, and IR versus radio luminosity relation, the ASKAP-detected radio sources behave as expected. Radio galaxies have higher stellar mass and luminosity in IR, optical, and UV than other galaxies. We apply optical and IR AGN diagnostics and find that they disagree for ~30% of the galaxies in our sample. We suggest possible causes for the disagreement. Some cases can be explained by optical extinction of the AGN, but for more than half of the cases we do not find a clear explanation. Radio sources aremore likely (~6%) to have an AGN than radio quiet galaxies (~1%), but the majority of AGN are not detected in radio at this sensitivity.

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.

This study examined the qualitative differences between the types of strengths identified by satisfied versus distressed couples seeking a Marriage Checkup. We hypothesised that distressed couples would nominate less intimate strengths, while satisfied couples would nominate more intimate strengths. We found that distressed partners were significantly more likely to nominate items from a Parallel Support category, whereas satisfied women, but not men, were significantly more likely to nominate items from an Intimate/Affectionate category. These findings suggest that an indicator of developing couple distress is the point where couples begin to focus their attention on less emotionally vulnerable relationship aspects.

A description is given of a radar facility operating in New Zealand which measures the atmospheric trajectories and hence heliocentric orbits of earth-impacting meteoroids having radiants with declinations +5° < δ < −30° down to a limiting radar meteor magnitude of +13 (corresponding to particle sizes of ~100 μm, masses ~10−6 g). The data handling capacity of the facility permits recording, orbit reduction and efficient presentation of orbital data using graphical packages to be carried out on a routine basis. The daily yield is ~1500 individual orbits with >3×105 secured to date; this is greater than the number determined in all previous meteoroid orbit surveys combined and forms a major southern hemisphere database for dynamical studies of the solar system meteoroid population.

The nematode Angiostrongylus vasorum is becoming more widely recorded globally, and is of increasing concern as a cause of disease in dogs. Apparent geographic spread is difficult to confirm due to a lack of standardized disease recording systems, increasing awareness among veterinary clinicians, and recent improvements in diagnostic technologies. This study examines the hypothesis that A. vasorum has spread in recent years by repeating the methods of a previous survey of the fox population. The hearts and lungs of 442 foxes from across Great Britain were collected and examined by dissection and flushing of the pulmonary circulation and microscopic inspection of tracheal scrapes. Sampling and parasite extraction methods were identical to an earlier survey in 2005 to ensure comparability. Prevalence of A. vasorum was 18·3% (exact binomial confidence bounds 14·9–22·3), compared with 7·3% previously (5·3–9·9, n = 546), and had increased significantly in most regions, e.g. 7·4% in the Northern UK (previously zero) and 50·8% in the south-east (previously 23·2%). Other nematodes identified were Crenosoma vulpis (prevalence 10·8%, CI 8·1–14·2) and Eucoleus aerophilus (31·6%, CI 27·3–36·2). These data support the proposal that A. vasorum has increased in prevalence and has spread geographically in Great Britain.

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.