Social construction of capabilities and intersectional complexities in a Tamil village

India is an ethnographic museum, well-known for its national motto of “unity in diversity”. It is a country of diverse hierarchies where the social reality is intersected by the varied grades of caste and class, among others. Against this backdrop, this article conceptualises the intersections of primordial identities. The concept of intersection underscores how diverse social positions interact in a Tamil village in India. As intersectionality is “the mutually constitutive relations among social identities” (Shields 2008), the interactions of caste, class, and gender in education are conceptualised to understand the formation of capabilities.     

Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization

When defined in terms of social identity and affect toward copartisans and opposing partisans, the polarization of the American electorate has dramatically increased. We document the scope and consequences of affective polarization of partisans using implicit, explicit, and behavioral indicators. Our evidence demonstrates that hostile feelings for the opposing party are ingrained or automatic in voters' minds, and that affective polarization based on party is just as strong as polarization based on race. We further show that party cues exert powerful effects on nonpolitical judgments and behaviors. Partisans discriminate against opposing partisans, doing so to a degree that exceeds discrimination based on race. We note that the willingness of partisans to display open animus for opposing partisans can be attributed to the absence of norms governing the expression of negative sentiment and that increased partisan affect provides an incentive for elites to engage in confrontation rather than cooperation.     

Phylogenetic Evidence for a Case of Misleading Rather than Mislabeling in Caviar in the United Kingdom

Sturgeons and paddlefish are freshwater fish which are highly valued for their caviar. Despite the fact that every single species of sturgeon and paddlefish is listed under CITES, there are reports of illegal trade in caviar where products are deliberately mislabeled. Three samples of caviar purchased in the United Kingdom were investigated for accurate CITES labeling using COI and cyt b sequencing. Initial species identification was carried out using BLAST followed by phylogenetic analyses using both maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood methods. Results showed no evidence for mislabeling with respect to CITES labels in any of the three samples, but we observed clear evidence for a case of misleading the customer in one sample.     

Partisan Gaps in Political Information and Information‐Seeking Behavior: Motivated Reasoning or Cheerleading?

Do partisan disagreements over politically relevant facts, and preferences for the information sources from which to obtain them, represent genuine differences of opinion or insincere cheerleading? The answer to this question is crucial for understanding the scope of partisan polarization. We test between these alternatives with experiments that offer incentives for correct survey responses and allow respondents to search for information before answering each question. We find that partisan cheerleading inflates divides in factual information, but only modestly. Incentives have no impact on partisan divides in information search; these divides are no different from those that occur outside the survey context when we examine web‐browsing data from the same respondents. Overall, our findings support the motivated reasoning interpretation of misinformation; partisans seek out information with congenial slant and sincerely adopt inaccurate beliefs that cast their party in a favorable light.     

Unconventional monetary policy spillovers: Evidence from India

Many of the studies on the unconventional monetary policy spillover effects concentrated primarily on the policy announcements of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Using a time series approach, with dummies in the event study framework, this study estimates the monetary policy spillover effects of the unconventional monetary policy announcements of the central banks of four major economic regions: the United States, the United Kingdom, European Central bank, and Japan on the asset prices in India. In addition to that, this study estimates the asymmetry in the responses to positive and negative surprise announcements. The study reveals that unconventional monetary surprises do not have any significant impact on the asset prices in India in a narrow time window.     

Reliable and Robust Molecular Sexing of the Hen Harrier (Circus cyaneus) Using PCR‐RFLP Analysis of the CHD 1 Gene

The hen harrier (Circus cyaneus) is a bird of prey that is persecuted in the United Kingdom, and there is a need for a DNA‐based individual identification and sexing system for the use in forensic investigations. This study reports a new set of PCR primers for the chromo‐helicase‐DNA‐binding protein 1 gene, which allows sexing using PCR‐RFLP. Instead of exonic primers that amplify across a large intron, this set consists of a primer within the intron, enabling reduction in amplicon sizes from 356 to 212 bp and 565 to 219 bp in W and Z chromosomes. DNA degradation and dilution experiments demonstrate that this set is significantly more robust than one that amplifies across the intron, and sequencing of the intronic primer‐binding region across several individuals shows that it is highly conserved. While our objective is to incorporate this primer set into an STR‐based individualization kit, it may in the meantime prove useful in forensic or conservation studies.