Evo-devo of human adolescence: beyond disease models of early puberty

Despite substantial heritability in pubertal development, much variation remains to be explained, leaving room for the influence of environmental factors to adjust its phenotypic trajectory in the service of fitness goals. Utilizing evolutionary development biology (evo-devo), we examine adolescence as an evolutionary life-history stage in its developmental context. We show that the transition from the preceding stage of juvenility entails adaptive plasticity in response to energy resources, other environmental cues, social needs of adolescence and maturation toward youth and adulthood. Using the evolutionary theory of socialization, we show that familial psychosocial stress fosters a fast life history and reproductive strategy rather than early maturation being just a risk factor for aggression and delinquency. Here we explore implications of an evolutionary-developmental-endocrinological-anthropological framework for theory building, while illuminating new directions for research

The discursive construction of childhood and youth in AIDS interventions in Lesotho's education sector: Beyond global-local dichotomies

This is the post-print version of this article. The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Environment and Planning D,Society and Space 28(5) 791 – 810, 2010, available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 Pion.In southern Africa interventions to halt the spread of AIDS and address its social impacts are commonly targeted at young people, in many cases through the education sector. In Lesotho, education-sector responses to AIDS are the product of negotiation between a range of ‘local’ and ‘global’ actors. Although many interventions are put forward as government policy and implemented by teachers in schools, funding is often provided by bilateral and multilateral donors, and the international ‘AIDS industry’—in the form of UN agencies and international NGOs—sets agendas and makes prescriptions. This paper analyses interviews conducted with policy makers and practitioners in Lesotho and a variety of documents, critically examining the discourses of childhood and youth that are mobilised in producing changes in education policy and practice to address AIDS. Focusing on bursary schemes, life-skills education, and rights-based approaches, the paper concludes that, although dominant ‘global’ discourses are readily identified, they are not simply imported wholesale from the West, but rather are transformed through the organisations and personnel involved in designing and implementing interventions. Nonetheless, the connections through which these discourses are made, and children are subjectified, are central to the power dynamics of neoliberal globalisation. Although the representations of childhood and youth produced through the interventions are hybrid products of local and global discourses, the power relations underlying them are such that they, often unintentionally, serve a neoliberal agenda by depicting young people as individuals in need of saving, of developing personal autonomy, or of exercising individual rights.RGS-IB

Does owning a pet protect older people against loneliness?

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Pet ownership is thought to make a positive contribution to health, health behaviours and the general well-being of older people. More specifically pet ownership is often proposed as a solution to the problem of loneliness in later life and specific 'pet based' interventions have been developed to combat loneliness. However the evidence to support this relationship is slim and it is assumed that pet ownership is a protection against loneliness rather than a response to loneliness. The aim of this paper is to examine the association between pet ownership and loneliness by exploring if pet ownership is a response to, or protection against, loneliness using Waves 0-5 from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA)

Domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) do not show signs of secure attachment to their owners

The Ainsworth Strange Situation Test (SST) has been widely used to demonstrate that the bond between both children and dogs to their primary carer typically meets the requirements of a secure attachment (i.e. the carer being perceived as a focus of safety and security in otherwise threatening environments), and has been adapted for cats with a similar claim made. However methodological problems in this latter research make the claim that the cat-owner bond is typically a secure attachment, operationally definable by its behaviour in the SST, questionable. We therefore developed an adapted version of the SST with the necessary methodological controls which include a full counterbalance of the procedure. A cross-over design experiment with 20 cat-owner pairs (10 each undertaking one of the two versions of the SST first) and continuous focal sampling was used to record the duration of a range of behavioural states expressed by the cats that might be useful for assessing secure attachment. Since data were not normally distributed, non-parametric analyses were used on those behaviours shown to be reliable across the two versions of the test (which excluded much cat behaviour). Although cats vocalised more when the owner rather the stranger left the cat with the other individual, there was no other evidence consistent with the interpretation of the bond between a cat and its owner meeting the requirements of a secure attachment. These results are consistent with the view that adult cats are typically quite autonomous, even in their social relationships, and not necessarily dependent on others to provide a sense of security and safety. It is concluded that alternative methods need to be developed to characterise the normal psychological features of the cat-owner bond

A Meta-analysis of Attachment to Parents and Delinquency

To investigate the link between attachment to parents and delinquency, and the potential moderating effects of age and sex, 74 published and unpublished manuscripts (N = 55,537 participants) were subjected to a multilevel meta-analysis. A mean small to moderate effect size was found (r = 0.18). Poor attachment to parents was significantly linked to delinquency in boys and girls. Stronger effect sizes were found for attachment to mothers than attachment to fathers. In addition, stronger effect sizes were found if the child and the parent had the same sex compared to cross-sex pairs of children and parents. Age of the participants moderated the link between attachment and delinquency: larger effect sizes were found in younger than in older participants. It can be concluded that attachment is associated with juvenile delinquency. Attachment could therefore be a target for intervention to reduce or prevent future delinquent behavior in juveniles

Should we welcome robot teachers?

Abstract Current uses of robots in classrooms are reviewed and used to characterise four scenarios: (s1) Robot as Classroom Teacher; (s2) Robot as Companion and Peer; (s3) Robot as Care-eliciting Companion; and (s4) Telepresence Robot Teacher. The main ethical concerns associated with robot teachers are identified as: privacy; attachment, deception, and loss of human contact; and control and accountability. These are discussed in terms of the four identified scenarios. It is argued that classroom robots are likely to impact children’s’ privacy, especially when they masquerade as their friends and companions, when sensors are used to measure children’s responses, and when records are kept. Social robots designed to appear as if they understand and care for humans necessarily involve some deception (itself a complex notion), and could increase the risk of reduced human contact. Children could form attachments to robot companions (s2 and s3), or robot teachers (s1) and this could have a deleterious effect on their social development. There are also concerns about the ability, and use of robots to control or make decisions about children’s behaviour in the classroom. It is concluded that there are good reasons not to welcome fully fledged robot teachers (s1), and that robot companions (s2 and 3) should be given a cautious welcome at best. The limited circumstances in which robots could be used in the classroom to improve the human condition by offering otherwise unavailable educational experiences are discussed

Analysis of in vitro bioactivity data extracted from drug discovery literature and patents: Ranking 1654 human protein targets by assayed compounds and molecular scaffolds

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since the classic Hopkins and Groom druggable genome review in 2002, there have been a number of publications updating both the hypothetical and successful human drug target statistics. However, listings of research targets that define the area between these two extremes are sparse because of the challenges of collating published information at the necessary scale. We have addressed this by interrogating databases, populated by expert curation, of bioactivity data extracted from patents and journal papers over the last 30 years.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>From a subset of just over 27,000 documents we have extracted a set of compound-to-target relationships for biochemical <it>in vitro </it>binding-type assay data for 1,736 human proteins and 1,654 gene identifiers. These are linked to 1,671,951 compound records derived from 823,179 unique chemical structures. The distribution showed a compounds-per-target average of 964 with a maximum of 42,869 (Factor Xa). The list includes non-targets, failed targets and cross-screening targets. The top-278 most actively pursued targets cover 90% of the compounds. We further investigated target ranking by determining the number of molecular frameworks and scaffolds. These were compared to the compound counts as alternative measures of chemical diversity on a per-target basis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The compounds-per-protein listing generated in this work (provided as a supplementary file) represents the major proportion of the human drug target landscape defined by published data. We supplemented the simple ranking by the number of compounds assayed with additional rankings by molecular topology. These showed significant differences and provide complementary assessments of chemical tractability.</p