53 research outputs found
The impact of market integration on arranged marriages in Matlab, Bangladesh
Success in marriage markets has lasting impacts on women's wellbeing. By arranging marriages, parents exert financial and social powers to influence spouse characteristics and ensure optimal marriages. While arranging marriages is a major focus of parental investment, marriage decisions are also a source of conflict between parents and daughters in which parents often have more power. The process of market integration may alter parental investment strategies, however, increasing children's bargaining power and reducing parentsβ influence over children's marriage decisions. We use data from a market integrating region of Bangladesh to (1) describe temporal changes in marriage types, (2) identify which women enter arranged marriages, and (3) determine how market integration affects patterns of arranged marriage. Most women's marriages were arranged, with love marriages more recent. We found few predictors of who entered arranged versus love marriages, and family-level market integration did not predict marriage type at the individual-level. However, based on descriptive findings, and findings relating women's and father's education to groom characteristics, we argue that at the society-level market integration has opened a novel path in which daughters use their own status, gained via parental investments, to facilitate good marriages under conditions of reduced parental assistance or control
Socio-Economic Instability and the Scaling of Energy Use with Population Size
The size of the human population is relevant to the development of a sustainable world, yet the forces setting growth or declines in the human population are poorly understood. Generally, population growth rates depend on whether new individuals compete for the same energy (leading to Malthusian or density-dependent growth) or help to generate new energy (leading to exponential and super-exponential growth). It has been hypothesized that exponential and super-exponential growth in humans has resulted from carrying capacity, which is in part determined by energy availability, keeping pace with or exceeding the rate of population growth. We evaluated the relationship between energy use and population size for countries with long records of both and the world as a whole to assess whether energy yields are consistent with the idea of an increasing carrying capacity. We find that on average energy use has indeed kept pace with population size over long time periods. We also show, however, that the energy-population scaling exponent plummets during, and its temporal variability increases preceding, periods of social, political, technological, and environmental change. We suggest that efforts to increase the reliability of future energy yields may be essential for stabilizing both population growth and the global socio-economic system
A spectroscopy approach to the study of virus infection in the endophytic fungus EpichloΓ« festucae
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In this work we propose a rapid method based on visible and near-infrared (Vis-NIR) spectroscopy to determine the occurrence of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) viruses in <it>EpichloΓ« festucae </it>strains isolated from <it>Festuca rubra </it>plants. In addition, we examined the incidence of infections by <it>E. festucae </it>in populations of <it>F. rubra </it>collected in natural grasslands of Western Spain.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Vis-NIR spectra (400-2498 nm) from 124 virus-infected and virus-free <it>E. festucae </it>isolates were recorded directly from ground and freeze-dried mycelium. To estimate how well the spectra for uninfected and infected fungal samples could be differentiated, we used partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS1-DA) and several data pre-treatments to develop calibration models.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Applying the best regression model, obtained with two sampling years and using standard normal variate (SNV) combined with first derivative transformation to a new validating data set (42 samples), we obtained a correct classification for 75% of the uninfected isolates and up to 86% of the infected isolates.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results obtained suggest that Vis-NIR spectroscopy is a promising technology for detection of viral infections in fungal samples when an alternative faster approach is desirable. It provides a tool adequately exact and more time- and cost-saving than the conventional reference analysis.</p
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A practical guide to cross-cultural and multi-sited data collection in the biological and behavioural sciences
Data accessibility:
This article has no additional data. The project materials and data used in specific analyses can be found on the Open Science Framework at: https://osf.io/mztep/.Electronic supplementary material is available online: Spake L et al. 2024 A practical guide to cross-cultural and multi-sited data collection in the biological and behavioural sciences. Figshare. (https://doi:org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.7165766).Declaration of AI use:
We have not used AI-assisted technologies in creating this article.Researchers in the biological and behavioural sciences are increasingly conducting collaborative, multi-sited projects to address how phenomena vary across ecologies. These types of projects, however, pose additional workflow challenges beyond those typically encountered in single-sited projects. Through specific attention to cross-cultural research projects, we highlight four key aspects of multi-sited projects that must be considered during the design phase to ensure success: (1) project and team management; (2) protocol and instrument development; (3) data management and documentation; and (4) equitable and collaborative practices. Our recommendations are supported by examples from our experiences collaborating on the Evolutionary Demography of Religion project, a mixed-methods project collecting data across five countries in collaboration with research partners in each host country. To existing discourse, we contribute new recommendations around team and project management, introduce practical recommendations for exploring the validity of instruments through qualitative techniques during piloting, highlight the importance of good documentation at all steps of the project, and demonstrate how data management workflows can be strengthened through open science practices. While this project was rooted in cross-cultural human behavioural ecology and evolutionary anthropology, lessons learned from this project are applicable to multi-sited research across the biological and behavioural sciences.John Templeton Foundation (grant nos. 61425, 62773); Templeton Religion Trust (grant no. TRT-2022-30378)
Divergent Effects of Human Cytomegalovirus and Herpes Simplex Virus-1 on Cellular Metabolism
Viruses rely on the metabolic network of the host cell to provide energy and macromolecular precursors to fuel viral replication. Here we used mass spectrometry to examine the impact of two related herpesviruses, human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) and herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1), on the metabolism of fibroblast and epithelial host cells. Each virus triggered strong metabolic changes that were conserved across different host cell types. The metabolic effects of the two viruses were, however, largely distinct. HCMV but not HSV-1 increased glycolytic flux. HCMV profoundly increased TCA compound levels and flow of two carbon units required for TCA cycle turning and fatty acid synthesis. HSV-1 increased anapleurotic influx to the TCA cycle through pyruvate carboxylase, feeding pyrimidine biosynthesis. Thus, these two related herpesviruses drive diverse host cells to execute distinct, virus-specific metabolic programs. Current drugs target nucleotide metabolism for treatment of both viruses. Although our results confirm that this is a robust target for HSV-1, therapeutic interventions at other points in metabolism might prove more effective for treatment of HCMV
Chronic Viral Infection and Primary Central Nervous System Malignancy
Primary central nervous system (CNS) tumors cause significant morbidity and mortality in both adults and children. While some of the genetic and molecular mechanisms of neuro-oncogenesis are known, much less is known about possible epigenetic contributions to disease pathophysiology. Over the last several decades, chronic viral infections have been associated with a number of human malignancies. In primary CNS malignancies, two families of viruses, namely polyomavirus and herpesvirus, have been detected with varied frequencies in a number of pediatric and adult histological tumor subtypes. However, establishing a link between chronic viral infection and primary CNS malignancy has been an area of considerable controversy, due in part to variations in detection frequencies and methodologies used among researchers. Since a latent viral neurotropism can be seen with a variety of viruses and a widespread seropositivity exists among the population, it has been difficult to establish an association between viral infection and CNS malignancy based on epidemiology alone. While direct evidence of a role of viruses in neuro-oncogenesis in humans is lacking, a more plausible hypothesis of neuro-oncomodulation has been proposed. The overall goals of this review are to summarize the many human investigations that have studied viral infection in primary CNS tumors, discuss potential neuro-oncomodulatory mechanisms of viral-associated CNS disease and propose future research directions to establish a more firm association between chronic viral infections and primary CNS malignancies
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Women's subsistence strategies predict fertility across cultures, but context matters
Data, Materials, and Software Availability. Anonymized CSV file data have been deposited in OSF (https://osf.io/8d9n2/?view_only=9e07c25 e06414f7a8d041e80e8539e5c) (49).Supporting Information is available online at: https://www.pnas.org/doi/suppl/10.1073/pnas.2318181121/suppl_file/pnas.2318181121.sapp.pdf .While it is commonly assumed that farmers have higher, and foragers lower, fertility compared to populations practicing other forms of subsistence, robust supportive evidence is lacking. We tested whether subsistence activitiesβincorporating market integrationβare associated with fertility in 10,250 women from 27 small-scale societies and found considerable variation in fertility. This variation did not align with group-level subsistence typologies. Societies labeled as βfarmersβ did not have higher fertility than others, while βforagersβ did not have lower fertility. However, at the individual level, we found strong evidence that fertility was positively associated with farming and moderate evidence of a negative relationship between foraging and fertility. Markers of market integration were strongly negatively correlated with fertility. Despite strong cross-cultural evidence, these relationships were not consistent in all populations, highlighting the importance of the socioecological context, which likely influences the diverse mechanisms driving the relationship between fertility and subsistence.A.E.P. received funding from the Medical Research Council MRC (grant no. MR/P014216/1). J.S. acknowledges Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR) under the Investments for the Future (Investissements dβAvenir) program, grant ANR-17-EURE-0010. This material is based upon work supported while S.M. served at the National Science Foundation (NSF)
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Nuclearization of maternal support networks in the UK and the US during the COVID-19 pandemic: Impact on women's financial and emotional wellbeing
Data availability statement: Data are available upon request from the authors.Supplementary data are available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291124001293?via%3Dihub#appsec1 .The social isolation resulting from governments' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic likely limited support available to mothers. Evidence suggests tasks like childcare and domestic work fell disproportionately on mothers during the pandemic, with consequences for their wellbeing. We explore how the pandemic affected emotional and practical support available to mothers between March and August 2020 and whether changes in support are associated with changes in their paid work and mental health. Data were collected in August 2020 from 1528 UK and US mothers with at least one child under 5-years using a cross-sectional survey and are analysed using regression models. Women's in-person contact with support networks decreased, while virtual interactions increased. Most mothers experienced a βnuclearizationβ of in-person support: childcare from fathers and siblings increased or remained constant but decreased from the grandparental generation. Women receiving less support during the pandemic had higher odds of reducing participation in paid work. Associations between support and mental health are limited. We also identify women who concurrently experienced reduced support and increased need for help, representing a particularly vulnerable group. The nuclearization of maternal social networks likely increased physical and emotional pressures on the immediate family, risking parental burnout and affecting reductions in female participation in paid labour. There is a need for reliable and affordable childcare options that help reduce women's burden of unpaid care labour, allowing them to re-enter (or remain in) paid labour.This project was supported by the John Templeton Foundation (grant number 61426 and 62773) and the Templeton Religion Trust (grant number TRT-2022-30378)
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