Seminar Series

Relationships between genes and social behavior have historically been viewed as a one-way street, with genes in control. Research in social genomics has begun to challenge this view by discovering broad alterations in the expression of genes across differing socio-environmental conditions. UCLA's Steve Cole summarizes the emerging field of social genomics and its efforts to identify the types of genes subject to social regulation, the psychological and biological signaling pathways mediating such effects, and the genetic polymorphisms that modify their impact across individuals.

UCLA'S Rodrigo Pinto examines a range of questions regarding social experiments concerning young adults: inference under compromised randomization, cost-benefit analysis, external validity and impact evaluation. He also discusses the economics of human capital accumulation of early childhood interventions, policy evaluation, and causality.

Cornell University's Chris Wildeman discusses maltreatment, racial inequality and geographic variation in the foster care system.

Using individually linked data for all RI children born between 1991 and 2005 that includes early childhood blood lead levels, in-school disciplinary infractions and juvenile detention, Anna Aizer examines the impact of early lead exposure on future delinquency. She discusses how exposure to lead is associated with a significantly greater likelihood of in-school disciplinary infractions and juvenile detention.

Oxford University's Melinda Mills discusses her projects, which combine demographic, sociological, biological and molecular genetic research to study the life course.

In recent years, polygenic scores have become the favored tool for summarizing the influence of genetic predispositions on phenotypic characteristics and behavior when the genetic effect arises from the accumulation of small effects from a potentially very large number of genetic markers. Columbia University's Thomas DiPrete discusses the potential use of polygenic scores as proxies for unobservables in the context of a returns to schooling estimation.

Research computing has changed dramatically in the last few years, and those changes are reshaping how Duke provides research computing support to Duke researchers. The scope and characteristics of computing for research has long come in "large packages" that have unyielding rules and restrictions -- to which researchers conformed their research projects. Increasingly, the emphasis has shifted, so that researchers now have the opportunity to tailor computing resources to fit their particular needs. Duke's Mark DeLong explores this transformation in research computing and presents offerings that Duke Research Computing has developed.

In the past few years, the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC) has been conducting large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analyses of behavioral phenotypes, including educational attainment, subjective well-being (i.e., happiness), and fertility. Dan Benjamin reviews the results of these studies and also provides some background on the SSGAC and discusses ongoing work-in-progress.

Social status is one of the strongest predictors of disease risk and mortality in humans, and may influence Darwinian fitness in social mammals more generally. Duke's Noah Snyder-Mackler discusses how his study combined genomics with a social status manipulation in female rhesus macaques to investigate how status alters immune function. He also reviews how his findings provide insight into the direct biological effects of social inequality on immune function, thus contributing to an improved understanding of social gradients in health and the evolution of social hierarchies.