Weather as a proximate explanation for fission–fusion dynamics in female northern long-eared bats

2016 ◽  
Vol 122 ◽  
pp. 47-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista J. Patriquin ◽  
Marty L. Leonard ◽  
Hugh G. Broders ◽  
W. Mark Ford ◽  
Eric R. Britzke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Proximate Explanation

scholarly journals Dark Triad personality traits vary across countries and predict antisocial behavior

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nichola Raihani ◽  
Paul Deutchman
Keyword(s):  
Aggressive Behavior ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Antisocial Behavior ◽  
Dark Triad ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Proximate Explanation

Humans commonly punish exploitative group members but punishment is also frequently targeted at cooperative individuals. The proclivity for ‘antisocial punishment’ varies widely across societies, although the reasons for this variation remain unclear. Here, we identify personality factors associated with antisocial punishment, using a joy-of-destruction game with participants from India and the USA. This game allows players to harm one another, by destroying the partner’s earnings, without any strategic incentive for doing so. High Dark Triad scores, implying the presence of personality traits underlying selfish and aggressive behavior, predicted destruction in this game. Participants from India scored higher on the Dark Triad scale than players from the USA, and were more likely than US-based participants to destroy the partner’s endowment. These data suggest that Dark Triad personality traits could be a proximate explanation for antisocial behavior.

Existential neuroscience: a proximate explanation of religion as flexible meaning and palliative

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Inzlicht ◽  
Alexa M. Tullett ◽  
Marie Good
Keyword(s):  
Proximate Explanation

The Lewis Model: A 60-Year Retrospective

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Gollin
Keyword(s):  
Development Economics ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Development Strategies ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
Proximate Explanation

The Lewis model has remained, for more than half a century, one of the dominant theories of development economics. This paper argues that the power of the model lies in the simplicity of its central insight: that poor countries contain enclaves of economic activity just as rich countries contain enclaves of poverty; and that a proximate explanation for the difference in income per capita across countries is that there are large differences in the relative sizes of their “modern” and “traditional” sectors. But while the Lewis model contains a powerful and compelling macro narrative, its details have proved somewhat elusive to scholars and students who have followed, and its policy implications are unclear. This paper identifies several key insights of the Lewis model, discusses several different interpretations of the model, and then reviews modern evidence for the central propositions of the model. In closing, we consider the relevance of Lewis for current thinking about development strategies and policies.

scholarly journals Nature Controls Nurture in the Development of Sexual Orientation, and Voice is Nature’s Agent

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yehuda Salu
Keyword(s):  
Role Models ◽  
Stria Terminalis ◽  
Conditioned Stimuli ◽  
Sexual Conditioning ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
Medial Geniculate ◽  
Biological Substrates ◽  
Brain Parts ◽  
Proximate Explanation

A testable theoretical model is presented, proposing which brain parts and mechanisms are responsible for the nature and the nurture components of all human sexual orientations. The model integrates observations from humans and a wide range of animals. If validated, the model would provide a proximate explanation of the biological substrates of all sexual orientations. The basic assumptions of the model are: (1) Children learn automatically and subconsciously in non-sexual conditioning experiences cues for recognizing sexual mates. That skill emerges at puberty. (2) Adults in the child’s surroundings act as innocuous, unaware role-models that provide the learned cues for recognizing mates. (3) Voices of men and women serve as the innate, primary unconditioned stimuli (US) in that learning process. (4) The hypothalamus is the main area that elicits the signals of the unconditioned responses (UR). Those signals trigger the learning of the associated conditioned stimuli (CS) broadcasted by the role-models. (5) The amygdala, base nuclei of the Stria Terminalis (bnST) and hypothalamus play in humans similar roles to those they play in the other species. (6) The human medial geniculate nucleus (MGN) plays the roles played by the olfactory bulbs in rodents. (7) Detectors of innate primary US and activators of the unconditioned sexual responses (UR) are located in the MGN, Amygdala, bnST and Hypothalamus Axis (MASHA). The learned conditioned stimuli (CS) are recorded in the MASHA and in cortical areas. (8) The innate US-UR connections vary across three groups of children. In the first group, only men’s voices trigger the UR. In the second group, only women’s voices trigger the UR, and in a third group each voice can trigger the UR. That determines the learned cues. The first group will be attracted at puberty only to men, the second only to women, and the third group to both.

scholarly journals Childhood Cerebellar Tumors Mirror Conserved Fetal Transcriptional Programs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria C Vladoiu ◽  
Ibrahim El-Hamamy ◽  
Laura K Donovan ◽  
Hamza Farooq ◽  
Borja L Holgado ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Single Cell ◽  
Brush Cells ◽  
Group 4 ◽  
Divergent Differentiation ◽  
Unipolar Brush Cells ◽  
Early Brain Development ◽  
Group 3 ◽  
Cerebellar Tumours ◽  
Proximate Explanation ◽  
Cerebellar Cells

SummaryThe study of the origin and development of cerebellar tumours has been hampered by the complexity and heterogeneity of cerebellar cells that change over the course of development. We used single-cell transcriptomics to study >60,000 cells from the developing murine cerebellum, and show that different molecular subgroups of childhood cerebellar tumors mirror the transcription of cells from distinct, temporally restricted cerebellar lineages. Sonic Hedgehog medulloblastoma transcriptionally mirrors the granule cell hierarchy as expected, whereas Group 3 medulloblastoma resemble Nestin+ve stem cells, Group 4 medulloblastomas resemble unipolar brush cells, and PFA/PFB ependymoma and cerebellar pilocytic astrocytoma resemble the prenatal gliogenic progenitor cells. Furthermore, single-cell transcriptomics of human childhood cerebellar tumors demonstrates that many bulk tumors contain a mixed population of cells with divergent differentiation. Our data highlight cerebellar tumors as a disorder of early brain development, and provide a proximate explanation for the peak incidence of cerebellar tumors in early childhood.

Systemic Politics and the Origins of Great Power Conflict

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEAR F. BRAUMOELLER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Related Activity ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Spiral Model ◽  
Proximate Explanation

Systemic theories of international politics rarely predict conflict short of cataclysmic systemic wars, and dyadic theories of conflict lack systemic perspective. This article attempts to bridge the gap by introducing a two-step theory of conflict among Great Powers. In the first stage, states engage in a dynamic, ongoing process of managing the international system, which inevitably produces tensions among them. In the second stage, relative levels of security-related activity determine how and when those tensions erupt into disputes. A test of the theory on Great Power conflicts from the nineteenth century supports the argument and, moreover, favors the deterrence model over the spiral model as a proximate explanation of conflict in the second stage.

scholarly journals Why do human and non-human species conceal mating? The cooperation maintenance hypothesis

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1932) ◽  
pp. 20201330
Author(s):  
Yitzchak Ben Mocha
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Sexual Intercourse ◽  
Sexual Arousal ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Selective Pressures ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Specific Category ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Proximate Explanation

Despite considerable cultural differences, a striking uniformity is argued to exist in human preferences for concealing sexual intercourse from the sensory perception of conspecifics. However, no systematic accounts support this claim, with only limited attempts to understand the selective pressures acting on the evolution of this preference. Here, I combine cross-cultural and cross-species comparative approaches to investigate these topics. First, an analysis of more than 4572 ethnographies from 249 cultures presents systematic evidence that the preference to conceal mating is widespread across cultures. Second, I argue that current anthropological hypotheses do not sufficiently explain why habitual concealment of mating evolved in humans but is only seldom exhibited by other social species. Third, I introduce the cooperation maintenance hypothesis, which postulates that humans, and a specific category of non-human species, conceal matings to prevent sexual arousal in witnesses (proximate explanation). This allows them to simultaneously maintain mating control over their partner(s) and cooperation with group members who are prevented from mating (ultimate explanations). I conclude by presenting a comparative framework and predictions to be tested across species and human cultures.

scholarly journals Systems biology of stem cells: three useful perspectives to help overcome the paradigm of linear pathways

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1575) ◽  
pp. 2247-2259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sui Huang
Keyword(s):  
Stem Cell ◽  
Systems Biology ◽  
Gene Networks ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Stem Cell Regulation ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
A Genome ◽  
Gene Regulatory ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Proximate Explanation

Stem cell behaviours, such as stabilization of the undecided state of pluripotency or multipotency, the priming towards a prospective fate, binary fate decisions and irreversible commitment, must all somehow emerge from a genome-wide gene-regulatory network. Its unfathomable complexity defies the standard mode of explanation that is deeply rooted in molecular biology thinking: the reduction of observables to linear deterministic molecular pathways that are tacitly taken as chains of causation. Such culture of proximate explanation that uses qualitative arguments, simple arrow–arrow schemes or metaphors persists despite the ceaseless accumulation of ‘omics’ data and the rise of systems biology that now offers precise conceptual tools to explain emergent cell behaviours from gene networks. To facilitate the embrace of the principles of physics and mathematics that underlie such systems and help to bridge the gap between the formal description of theorists and the intuition of experimental biologists, we discuss in qualitative terms three perspectives outside the realm of their familiar linear-deterministic view: (i) state space (ii), high-dimensionality and (iii) heterogeneity. These concepts jointly offer a new vista on stem cell regulation that naturally explains many novel, counterintuitive observations and their inherent inevitability, obviating the need for ad hoc explanations of their existence based on natural selection. Hopefully, this expanded view will stimulate novel experimental designs.

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