Examines intermarriages patterned by gender (all men from one ethnic background & almost all women from another) that produce significant biethnic communities, drawing on fieldwork, interview, county record, & local historical data on Punjabi Mexican Americans in CA, whose fathers came from India's Punjab province & whose mothers were of predominantly Mexican or Mexican-American heritage. Punjabi Mexican Americans are compared to Filipino European Americans & to Mexican Japanese. Findings indicate that, in all three cases, members of the second biethnic generation evidence considerable ethnic identity flexibility; they also insist on cultural pluralism & claim the dominant national identity, particularly when confronted by new immigrants from their fathers' countries. Adapted from the source document.

'Speaking the Unspeakable: Marital Violence among South Asian Immigrants in the United States' by Margaret Abraham is reviewed.

Cancer is a leading cause of death in domestic dogs. Deaths due to cancer vary widely among breeds, providing an opportunity for testing the multi-stage model of carcinogenesis. This model underpins evolutionary and basic studies of cancer suppression and predicts a linear increase in cancer with breed size, an expectation complicated by bigger breeds having a shorter lifespan (decreasing risk). Using three independent datasets, the weight and lifespan of breeds provided a good fit of lifetime cancer mortality to the multi-stage model, the fit suggesting many canine cancers are initiated by four driver mutations. Of 85 breeds in more than one dataset, only flat-coated retriever showed significantly elevated cancer mortality, with Scottish terrier, Bernese mountain dog and bullmastiff also showing notable risk (greater than 50% over expected). Analysis of breed clades suggested terriers experience elevated cancer mortality. There was no evidence that the lower mass-specific metabolic rate of larger breeds reduced cancer risk. Residuals indicated increased breed inbreeding shortened expected lifespan, but had no overall effect on cancer mortality. The results provide a baseline for identifying increased breed risk for specific cancers and demonstrate that, unless selection promotes increased cancer suppression, the evolution of larger longer-lived animals leads to a predictable increased cancer risk.

The relationship between business and politics in preindustrial societies has seldom been clear from historical records. I have argued elsewhere that the major banking firms of Mughal India were central to the imperial system. These ‘great firms’ were not parasites, passively supportive of the state because it preserved the law and order necessary for trade; they were not self-contained caste communities interacting with the government through the leaders of panchayats or guilds. Their functions were as important to the government as those of its official treasurers, and their desertion of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century helped bring about its collapse.