Ageing is a complex phenomenon which remains a major challenge to modern biology. Although the evolutionary biology of ageing is well understood, the mechanisms that limit lifespan are unknown. The isolation and analysis of single‐gene mutations which extend lifespan (Age mutations) is likely to reveal processes which influence ageing. Caenorhabditis elegans is the only metazoan in which Age mutations have been identified. The Age mutations not only prolong life, but also confer a complex array of other phenotypes. Some of these (...) phenotypes provide clues to the evolutionary origins of these genes while others allude to mechanisms of lifespan‐extension. Many of the Age genes interact and share a second common phenotype, that of stress resistance. Rather than invertebrate ageing being determined by a ‘clock mechanism’, a picture is emerging of ageing as a non‐adaptive process determined, in part, by resistance to intrinsic stress mediated by stress‐response genes. (shrink)

No crucial experiment demonstrates that four hue categories are needed to describe color appearance. Instead, converging lines of evidence suggest that the terms red, yellow, green, and blue are sufficient and precise enough for deriving color discrimination functions and for a useful model constraining relations between color appearance and neuronal responses. Such a model need not be based on linguistic universals. Until something better is available, this holds.

Using fictionalized case studies this series follows four patients through the medical process, from onset through Diagnosis, Treatment and PrognosisVolume 1: Symptom. Examines the idea of 'symptom' as a route to understanding the structure of clinical practice -- Volume 2: Diagnosis. Explores the meaning of 'diagnosis' as a complex, culturally mediated interaction between individuals, scientific discoveries, social negotiation and historical change. -- Volume 3: Treatment. Considers the concept of treatment as an active process which produces an outcome, be it effective, (...) inappropriate or inadequate. Enlightening reading. -- Volume 4: Prognosis. Contemplates the challenge of the prognosis, attempting to make sense of life and death. Considers, through personal and professional perspectives, the role of the medical profession in guiding patient experience.--. (shrink)

Psychological stress reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are complex and multifaceted. Research provides evidence of a COVID Stress Syndrome, consisting of worry about the dangerousness of getting infected with SARSCoV2 and coming into contact with infected surfaces, worry concerning the personal socioeconomic consequences of COVID-19, xenophobic fears that SARSCOV2 is being spread by foreigners, COVID-19-related traumatic stress symptoms, and compulsive checking and reassurance-seeking about COVID-19. Little is known about how these symptoms are related to vulnerability and protective personality factors. Based (...) on data from 1,976 US and Canadian adults, we conducted a prospective network analysis in which personality factors were initially assessed at Time 1 and then symptoms of the CSS were assessed at Time 2, 2.5 months later. Results indicated that trait optimism and trait resilience were negatively associated with negative emotionality, suggesting a modulatory influence. Negative emotionality was positively linked to the narrower traits of intolerance of uncertainty and health anxiety proneness. These narrower traits, in turn, were prospectively linked to symptoms of the CSS. Results suggest that the effects of broad personality traits on symptoms of the CSS were mediated by narrower traits such as the intolerance of uncertainty. Treatment implications are discussed. (shrink)

On page 1 of his classic text, Millsap states, “Measurement invariance is built on the notion that a measuring device should function the same way across varied conditions, so long as those varied conditions are irrelevant [emphasis added] to the attribute being measured.” By construction, measurement invariance techniques require not only detecting varied conditions but also ruling out that these conditions inform our understanding of measured domains. In fact, measurement invariance techniques possess great utility when theory and research inform their (...) application to specific, varied conditions that, if not detected, introduce measurement biases, and, thus, depress measurement validity. Yet, we see emerging bodies of work where scholars have “put the cart before the horse” when it comes to measurement invariance, and they apply these techniques to varied conditions that, in fact, may reflect domain-relevant information. These bodies of work highlight a larger problem in measurement that likely cuts across many areas of scholarship. In one such area, youth mental health, researchers commonly encounter a set of conditions that nullify the use of measurement invariance, namely discrepancies between survey reports completed by multiple informants, such as parents, teachers, and youth themselves. In this paper, we provide an overview of conceptual, methodological, and measurement factors that should prevent researchers from applying measurement invariance techniques to detect informant discrepancies. Along the way, we cite evidence from the last 15 years indicating that informant discrepancies reflect domain-relevant information. We also apply this evidence to recent uses of measurement invariance techniques in youth mental health. Based on prior evidence, we highlight the implications of applying these techniques to multi-informant data, when the informant discrepancies observed within these data might reflect domain-relevant information. We close by calling for a moratorium on applying measurement invariance techniques to detect informant discrepancies in youth mental health assessments. In doing so, we describe how the state of the science would need to fundamentally “flip” to justify applying these techniques to detect informant discrepancies in this area of work. (shrink)

Tradition is a central concern for a wide range of academic disciplines interested in problems of transmitting culture across generations. Yet, the concept itself has received remarkably little analysis. A substantial literature has grown up around the notion of 'invented tradition,' but no clear concept of tradition is to be found in these writings; since the very notion of 'invented tradition' presupposes a prior concept of tradition and is empty without one, this debunking usage has done as much to obscure (...) the idea as to clarify it. In the absence of a shared concept, the various disciplines have created their own vocabularies to address the subject. Useful as they are, these specialized vocabularies (of which the best known include hybridity, canonicity, diaspora, paradigm, and contact zones) separate the disciplines and therefore necessarily create only a collection of parochial and disjointed approaches. Until now, there has been no concerted attempt to put the various disciplines in conversation with one another around the problem of tradition. Combining discussions of the idea of tradition by major scholars from a variety of disciplines with synoptic, synthesizing essays, Questions of Tradition will initiate a renewal of interest in this vital subject. (shrink)

For all of the emphasis on quality improvement—as well as the acknowledged overlap between assessment of the quality of healthcare services and clinical ethics—the quality of clinical ethics consultation has received scant attention, especially in terms of empirical measurement. Recognizing this need, the second edition of Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation identified four domains of ethics quality: (1) ethicality, (2) stakeholders’ satisfaction, (3) resolution of the presenting conflict/dilemma, and (4) education that translates into knowledge. This study is the (...) first, to our knowledge, to directly measure all of these domains. Here we describe the quality improvement process undertaken at a tertiary care academic medical center, as well as the tools developed to measure the quality of ethics consultation, which include post-consultation satisfaction surveys and weekly case conferences. The information gained through these tools helps to improve not only the process of ethics consultation, but also the measurement and assurance of quality. (shrink)

An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagement, conventional religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs with performance measures of cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. An analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both religious and paranormal beliefs (...) when controlling for cognitive ability as well as religious engagement, sex, age, political ideology, and education. Participants more willing to engage in analytic reasoning were less likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. Further, an association between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement was mediated by religious beliefs, suggesting that an analytic cognitive style negatively affects religious engagement via lower acceptance of conventional religious beliefs. Results for types of God belief indicate that the association between an analytic cognitive style and God beliefs is more nuanced than mere acceptance and rejection, but also includes adopting less conventional God beliefs, such as Pantheism or Deism. Our data are consistent with the idea that two people who share the same cognitive ability, education, political ideology, sex, age and level of religious engagement can acquire very different sets of beliefs about the world if they differ in their propensity to think analytically. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that people are highly efficient at detecting conflicting outputs produced by competing intuitive and analytic reasoning processes. Specifically, De Neys and Glumicic demonstrated that participants reason longer about problems that are characterized by conflict between stereotypical personality descriptions and base-rate probabilities of group membership. However, this finding comes from problems involving probabilities much more extreme than those used in traditional studies of base-rate neglect. To test the degree to which these findings depend on such extreme probabilities, we (...) varied base-rate probabilities over five experiments and compared participants’ response time for conflict problems with non-conflict problems. Longer response times for stereotypical responses to conflict versus non-conflict problems were found only in the presence of extreme probabilities. Our results suggest that humans may not be consistently efficient at detecting conflicts during reasoning. (shrink)

The seventeen seminal essays by Robert J. Gordon collected here, including three previously unpublished works, offer sharply etched views on the principal topics of macroeconomics - growth, inflation, and unemployment. The author re-examines their salient points in a uniquely creative, accessible introduction that serves on its own as an introduction to modern macroeconomics. Each of the four parts into which the essays are grouped also offers a new introduction. The papers in Part I explore different key aspects of the (...) history, theory, and measurement of productivity growth. The essays in Part II investigate the sources of business cycles and productivity fluctuations. Those in Part III cover the effects of supply shocks in macroeconomics. The final group presents empirical studies of the dynamics of inflation in the United States. The foreword by Nobel Laureate Robert M. Solow comments on the abiding importance of these essays drawn from 1968 to the present. (shrink)

Arising from a graduate course taught to math and engineering students, this text provides a systematic grounding in the theory of Hamiltonian systems, as well as introducing the theory of integrals and reduction. A number of other topics are covered too.

Individual differences in the mere willingness to think analytically has been shown to predict religious disbelief. Recently, however, it has been argued that analytic thinkers are not actually less religious; rather, the putative association may be a result of religiosity typically being measured after analytic thinking (an order effect). In light of this possibility, we report four studies in which a negative correlation between religious belief and performance on analytic thinking measures is found when religious belief is measured in a (...) separate session. We also performed a meta-analysis on all previously published studies on the topic along with our four new studies (N = 15,078, k = 31), focusing specifically on the association between performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test (the most widely used individual difference measure of analytic thinking) and religious belief. This meta-analysis revealed an overall negative correlation (r) of -.18, 95% CI [-.21, -.16]. Although this correlation is modest, self-identified atheists (N = 133) scored 18.7% higher than religiously affiliated individuals (N = 597) on a composite measure of analytic thinking administered across our four new studies (d = .72). Our results indicate that the association between analytic thinking and religious disbelief is not caused by a simple order effect. There is good evidence that atheists and agnostics are more reflective than religious believers. (shrink)

Despite a growing awareness within American biomedicine and bioethics that the social category “race” is of limited use in describing patients, some fields of medicine continue to use it interchangeably with, or instead of, the term “ethnicity.” Doing so reflects the assumption that social categories have a basis in physiology.

If Savulescu's controversial principle of Procreative Beneficence is correct, then an important implication is that couples should employ genetic tests for non-disease traits in selecting which child to bring into existence. Both defenders as well as some critics of this normative entailment of PB have typically accepted the comparatively less controversial claim about non-disease traits: that there are non-disease traits such that testing and selecting for them would in fact contribute to bringing about the child who is expected to have (...) the best life. We challenge this less controversial claim, not by arguing deductively for its falsity, but by showing that Savulescu's central argument for this presumably less controversial claim fails. Savulescu offers intelligence as the paradigm example of a testable non-disease trait such that testing and selecting for it would increase the likelihood that the child selected would be the one who is expected to have the best life. We provide a series of arguments aimed at demonstrating that Savulescu's argument from intelligence fails. If our arguments are successful, the upshot is not that PB is false, but more modestly, that the burden of proof remains squarely with Savulescu. (shrink)

Should we regard Jennifer Lackey’s ‘Creationist Teacher’ as understanding evolution, even though she does not, given her religious convictions, believe its central claims? We think this question raises a range of important and unexplored questions about the relationship between understanding, factivity and belief. Our aim will be to diagnose this case in a principled way, and in doing so, to make some progress toward appreciating what objectual understanding—i.e., understanding a subject matter or body of information—demands of us. Here is the (...) plan. After some ground clearing in §1, §2 outlines and motivates a plausible working model—moderate factivity—for characterising the sense in which objectual understanding should be regarded as factive. §3 shows how the datum that we can understand false theories can, despite initial suggestions to the contrary, be assimilated straightforwardly within the moderate factivity model. §4 highlights how the inverse kind of case to that explored in §3—viz., a variant of Lackey’s creationist teacher case—poses special problems for moderate factivity. With reference to recent work on moral understanding by Hills, §5 proposes a solution to the problem, and §6 attempts to diagnose why it is that we might originally have been led to draw the wrong conclusion. (shrink)