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At least 1,063 records · Page 59Linked to original sources
PubMed1998

The ecology and behavior of burying beetles.

Burying beetles conceal small vertebrate carcasses underground and prepare them for consumption by their young. This review places their complex social behavior in an ecological context that focuses on the evolution of biparental care and communal breeding. Both males and females provide extensive parental care, and the major benefit of male assistance is to help defend the brood and carcass from competitors. As intensity and type of competition vary, so do the effectiveness and duration of male care. In many species, a single brood may be reared on large carcasses by more than one male and/or female. Limited reproductive opportunities, the greater effectiveness of groups in preventing the probability of brood failure (especially that caused by competing flies), and the superabundance of food on large carcasses have contributed to the evolution of this cooperative behavior.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1991

The structure of phobias in panic disorder.

Fear and avoidance of individual phobic situations were measured in 1168 patients with panic disorder suffering current attacks. Correlation and principal-components analyses give components of agoraphobia, illness phobia, and social phobia in panic disorder. Agoraphobia does not stand out so clearly as illness phobia and social phobia as a separate factor; 'fear of open spaces' shows some separation from other agoraphobic situations. Frequency of panic attacks and changes associated with their remission have no special relationship to agoraphobia. Closer attention to social and illness phobia may be fruitful in discerning the evolution of panic disorder.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

The evolution of semantic systems.

Semantic or cultural systems are sets of concepts connected by meaningful relationships, and they exhibit properties similar to those of populations of biological organisms. Drawing upon ideas from evolutionary biology and methods from information technology, this article explores the potential for research and engineering on the evolution of semantic systems. Such work in cultural genetics requires two things: (1) a rigorous but evolving taxonomic system to categorize cultural artifacts, elements, and clusters, and (2) a set of hypotheses about the processes that cause evolutionary change. This article illustrates systematic approaches to cultural taxonomy with data on the popular ideology of the space program, science fiction motion pictures, nanotechnology books, and nanotechnology research grants. It offers hypotheses derived from evolutionary and population biology that might be useful in explaining cultural evolution.

Biological Evolution↗
PubMed2002

Self-organization and natural selection in the evolution of complex despotic societies.

Differences between related species are usually explained as separate adaptations produced by individual selection. I discuss in this paper how related species, which differ in many respects, may evolve by a combination of individual selection, self-organization, and group-selection, requiring an evolutionary adaptation of only a single trait. In line with the supposed evolution of despotic species of macaques, we take as a starting point an ancestral species that is egalitarian and mildly aggressive. We suppose it to live in an environment with abundant food and we put the case that, if food becomes scarce and more clumped, natural selection at the level of the individual will favor individuals with a more intense aggression (implying, for instance, biting and fierce fighting). Using an individual-centered model, called DomWorld, I show what happens when the intensity of aggression increases. In DomWorld, group life is represented by artificial individuals that live in a homogeneous world. Individuals are extremely simple: all they do is flock together and, upon meeting one another, they may perform dominance interactions in which the effects of winning and losing are self-reinforcing. When the intensity of aggression in the model is increased, a complex feedback between the hierarchy and spatial structure results; via self-organization, this feedback causes the egalitarian society to change into a despotic one. The many differences between the two types of artificial society closely correspond to those between despotic and egalitarian macaques in the real world. Given that, in the model, the organization changes as a side effect of the change of one single trait proper to an egalitarian society, in the real world a despotic society may also have arisen as a side effect of the mutation of a single trait of an egalitarian species. If groups with different intensities of aggression evolve in this way, they will also have different gradients of hierarchy. When food is scarce, groups with the steepest hierarchy may have the best chance to survive, because at least a small number of individuals in such a group may succeed in producing offspring, whereas in egalitarian societies every individual is at risk of being insufficiently fed to reproduce. Therefore, intrademic group selection (selection within an interbreeding group) may have contributed to the evolution of despotic societies.

Aggression↗
PubMed1994

The Adolescent with Traumatic Brain Injury: Cognitive, Psychological, and Educational Issues.

Traumatic brain injury kills and disables more adolescents than AIDS or cancer. Far from being an isolated event, these injuries shape the evolution of the adolescent's self-knowledge and social-emotional interactions. The authors focus on the cognitive, psychological, and educational issues facing professionals who care for adolescent survivors of brain injuries.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2000

Health and evolution.

Darwinian medicine may shed new light on the notion of health and many current health problems. In this paper, health, as an ability to realize one's own welfare, is compared with health as an ability--either being developed or actually present--to perform a reproductive function of one's species. It is argued that knowledge about the conditions for health in the latter sense may enhance our efforts to promote health in the former sense.

Biological Evolution↗
PubMed2000

The evolution of happiness.

An evolutionary perspective offers novel insights into some major obstacles to achieving happiness. Impediments include large discrepancies between modern and ancestral environments, the existence of evolved mechanisms "designed" to produce subjective distress, and the fact that evolution by selection has produced competitive mechanisms that function to benefit one person at the expense of others. On the positive side, people also possess evolved mechanisms that produce deep sources of happiness: those for mating bonds, deep friendship, close kinship, and cooperative coalitions. Understanding these psychological mechanisms--the selective processes that designed them, their evolved functions, and the contexts governing their activation--offers the best hope for holding some evolved mechanisms in check and selectively activating others to produce an overall increment in human happiness.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2002

Microsurgical reconstruction of wide simple and compound foot defects.

BACKGROUND: A mutilated foot as a result of traumas or resection for tumours or ulcers, is a serious physical and social handicap for the patient, because it impairs deambulation and affects his selfgovernment. The evolution of microsurgical techniques has allowed us to utilize such methods to reconstruct wide simple and composite losses of substance of the foot, usually treated conservatively or radically with amputation and prosthesization. Functional, cosmetic and social outcome has been evaluated. METHODS: We evaluated 23 patients affected by cutaneous (19) and osteocutaneous (4) losses of substance of the foot (11 of rearfoot, 5 of forefoot, 4 of the sole, 1 of middlefoot, 1 of the dorsum, and 1 of the malleolus). We performed 23 microsurgical reconstructions harvesting 24 free flaps (14 radial flaps, 4 latissimus dorsi, 3 fibula, 1 scapular flap, 1 lateral arm, 1 iliac crest). RESULTS: Cutaneous and muscular flaps healed in 3 weeks, while osteocutaneous flaps healed in 10 to 12 weeks. Deambulation was restored in all patients but 1, within 6 months from surgery, and all patients went back to their work and social life. We observed in the early follow-up 2 cases of partial skin necrosis, which solved spontaneously and 1 case of total necrosis (overall complication = 4.3%). Donor area morbidity was rated as fair. Overall success rate was 95.7% at a mean follow-up of 3 years. CONCLUSIONS: Free microsurgical transfers allowed us to obtain a satisfactory and long-lasting morpho-functional restoration of wide superficial and deep losses of substance of the foot, guaranteeing the patient a fast psycho-physical and social rehabilitation.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

The birth control pill revisited.

The evolution of oral contraceptives is summarized in this chapter. The social context into which the birth control pill was introduced, early and recent formulations of the pill, side effects, and the identification of serious complications of taking the pill are presented. The role of the nurse as a health educator of women and the responsibility of nurses to assist patients to make informed decisions about their reproductive function are emphasized. The outlook for future research and development of alternative forms of contraception is discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

[Decrease in tuberculosis mortality--a credit to medicine or sequela of an improved standard of living].

Tuberculosis was the major cause of death in 19th century Europe. A fall in the incidence of the disease was first observed in England. In Germany this reduced incidence - along with industrialization - did not take place until the time of the Reich. Scientists in the 19th century recognised various factors as being responsible for the decrease in incidence of the disease. Those who believed in the contagiousness of the disease hoped to be able to control it with preventive and hygienic measures resulting from their findings on the bacteriology of the epidemic. Constitutionalists, on the other hand, attached importance to hereditary factors and believed that "evolution by natural selection" would bring the disease under control. Social hygienists, whose findings at the beginning of the 20th century were a subject of wide discussion, found the disease to be chiefly influenced by eating, working, and living conditions. These assumptions were confirmed by a statistical analysis of the relationship between living conditions and the mortality associated with tuberculosis. It follows that better living conditions would help to reduce the number of deaths from tuberculosis better than any medical preventive measure.

Cross-Sectional Studies↗