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Previous literature has shown that family structure affects language development. Here, factors relating to older siblings (their presence in the house, sex, and age gap), mothers (maternal stress), and household size and residential crowding were assessed to systematically examine the different roles of these factors. Data from mother-child dyads in a Singaporean birth cohort, (677-855 dyads; 52% males; 58% to 61% Chinese, 20% to 24% Malay, 17% to 19% Indian) collected when children were 24, 48, and 54 months old, were analyzed. There was a negative effect of having an older sibling, moderated by the siblings' age gap, but not by the older sibling's sex, nor household size or residential crowding. Maternal stress affected language outcomes in some analyses but not others. Implications for understanding the possible effects of family structure on language development are discussed.

The development of biological markers of aging has primarily focused on adult samples. Epigenetic clocks are a promising tool for measuring biological age that show impressive accuracy across most tissues and age ranges. In adults, deviations from the DNA methylation (DNAm) age prediction are correlated with several age-related phenotypes, such as mortality and frailty. In children, however, fewer such associations have been made, possibly because DNAm changes are more dynamic in pediatric populations as compared to adults. To address this gap, we aimed to develop a highly accurate, noninvasive, biological measure of age specific to pediatric samples using buccal epithelial cell DNAm. We gathered 1,721 genome-wide DNAm profiles from 11 different cohorts of typically developing individuals aged 0 to 20 y old. Elastic net penalized regression was used to select 94 CpG sites from a training dataset (n = 1,032), with performance assessed in a separate test dataset (n = 689). DNAm at these 94 CpG sites was highly predictive of age in the test cohort (median absolute error = 0.35 y). The Pediatric-Buccal-Epigenetic (PedBE) clock was characterized in additional cohorts, showcasing the accuracy in longitudinal data, the performance in nonbuccal tissues and adult age ranges, and the association with obstetric outcomes. The PedBE tool for measuring biological age in children might help in understanding the environmental and contextual factors that shape the DNA methylome during child development, and how it, in turn, might relate to child health and disease.

Maternal depression and anxiety through pregnancy have lasting societal impacts. It is thus crucial to understand the trajectories of its progression from preconception to postnatal period, and the risk factors associated with it. Within the Bayesian framework, we propose to jointly model seven outcomes, of which two are physiological and five non-physiological indicators of maternal depression and anxiety over time. We model the former two by a Gaussian process and the latter by an autoregressive model, while imposing a multidimensional Dirichlet process prior on the subject-specific random effects to account for subject heterogeneity and induce clustering. The model allows for the inclusion of covariates through a regression term. Our findings reveal four distinct clusters of trajectories of the seven health outcomes, characterising women's mental health progression from before to after pregnancy. Importantly, our results caution against the loose use of hair corticosteroids as a biomarker, or even a causal factor, for pregnancy mental health progression. Additionally, the regression analysis reveals a range of preconception determinants and risk factors for depressive and anxiety symptoms during pregnancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many applications in medical statistics and other fields can be described by transitions between multiple states (e.g. from health to disease) experienced by individuals over time. In this context, multi-state models are a popular statistical technique, in particular when the exact transition times are not observed. The key quantities of interest are the transition rates, capturing the instantaneous risk of moving from one state to another. The main contribution of this work is to propose a joint semiparametric model for several possibly related multi-state processes (Seemingly Unrelated Multi-State, SUMS, processes), assuming a Markov structure for the transitions over time. The dependence between different processes is captured by specifying a joint prior distribution on the transition rates of each process. In this case, we assume a flexible distribution, which allows for clustering of the individuals, overdispersion and outliers. Moreover, we employ a graph structure to describe the dependence among processes, exploiting tools from the Gaussian Graphical model literature. It is also possible to include covariate effects. We use our approach to model disease progression in mental health. Posterior inference is performed through a specially devised MCMC algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary global spice trade is a multi-million dollar industry that frequently relies on Global North consumers' romantic visions of spices and their cultivators in the Global South. From fieldwork with ethnic minority farmers in upland northern Vietnam growing star anise, Cinnamomum cassia (often marketed as cinnamon), and black cardamom, and from a content analysis of digital marketing websites, it becomes clear that astute practices of commodification and de-commodification are invoked at different nodes along these spice global commodity chains. In this paper we investigate the strategies deployed by Vietnamese state officials, Vietnam-based exporting companies, and overseas importing and retail companies to promote and market these three spices. We find major disjunctures between the "geographical indications" approach advanced by the Vietnamese state to link products to particular places and peoples, and the "placeless" strategies mobilized by private Vietnamese and Chinese exporters. Global North importers further complicate the story, often attempting to de-commodify or de-fetishize the spices on digital-marketing platforms. By focusing on the final nodes along these commodity chains – yet to be studied or critiqued – our findings raise important questions regarding the implications of such divergent marketing strategies for farmers at the initial nodes of these spice chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graffiti has become an omnipresent feature of urban landscapes, with sprawling words and images on public and private surfaces triggering heated debates on the meaning, implications, and legality of these urban inscriptions. Yet, to date, there has been little academic research conducted on graffiti and street art in the Asian context, and none that we could find on the burgeoning scene in Vietnam. In the context of a socialist state, with little tolerance for public dissent, we investigate how, and by whom, graffiti is created, and to what degree it transgresses public space norms in the country's capital city, Hanoi. We analyse how young graffiti writers negotiate the social, physical, and cultural boundaries which serve as either deterrents or catalysts for graffiti creation, and consider whether strategies of compliance or everyday resistance are employed in order to create their work. With the effects that globalisation and urbanisation have had on the Asian region, and the tactics citizens employ to negotiate state‐imposed censorship and restraints having been studied closely, we position our work within these broader debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of prenatal maternal mental health, from psychological stress and depressive symptoms to anxiety and other nonpsychotic mental disorders, profoundly affects fetal neurodevelopment. Despite the evidence for the influence of positive mental well-being on health, there is, to our knowledge, no research examining the possible effects of positive antenatal mental health on the development of the offspring. Using exploratory bifactor analysis, this prospective study (n = 1,066) demonstrated the feasibility of using common psychiatric screening tools to examine the effect of positive maternal mental health. Antenatal mental health was assessed during 26th week of pregnancy. The effects on offspring were assessed when the child was 12,18, and 24 months old. Results showed that positive antenatal mental health was uniquely associated with the offspring's cognitive, language and parentally rated competences. This study shows that the effects of positive maternal mental health are likely to be specific and distinct from the sheer absence of symptoms of depression or anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]