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Acquiring greater financial resources before having children seems like an intuitive strategy for people to enhance their well-being during parenthood. However, research suggests that affluence may activate an agentic orientation, propelling people to pursue personal goals and independence from others, creating a conflict with the communal nature of parenting. Coherence between one's goals and actions has been theorized to be essential for the experience of meaning in life. Thus, we hypothesized that affluence would be associated with a diminished sense of meaning during childcare. In Study 1, using the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), we found that socioeconomic status (SES) was negatively related to the average sense of meaning parents reported across episodes of the day when they were taking care of their children. In Study 2, a reminder of wealth produced a parallel effect; when parents were exposed to a photograph of money, they reported a lower sense of meaning in life while spending time with their kids at a children's festival. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between wealth and well-being by showing that affluence can compromise a central subjective benefit of parenting—a sense of meaning in life.
Keywords: Parenting | Meaning | DRM | Money | Socioeconomic status (SES) | Well-being
After a generation of denial, research leaders are finally treating scientific fraud with the seriousness it deserves, says Colin Macilwain.
And that was in the United States – the world's dominant scientific power and the one that had done the most to address misconduct. Countermeasures elsewhere have been even feebler. In Germany, for example, no university had an integrity officer until 2011, and it is still difficult for institutions there to sanction proven fraudsters.
Background: Using alcohol at an early age is a well-documented risk factor for heavy drinking and the experience of a range of negative social and health consequences. However, it remains unclear if early consumption of any alcohol or early drinking to intoxication confers the greatest risk.
Methods: Age of onset (AO) and delay to first intoxication (delay) were examined as independent predictors of heavy drinking and the experience of alcohol-related problems (problems) in a sample of incoming college freshmen (n = 1,160) who completed biannual assessments from the summer following senior year of high school through senior year of college. The sample included more women (66 %) than men and a majority were Caucasian (59 %). We employed latent growth curve modeling to examine self-reported AO and delay to self-defined first intoxication as predictors of the frequency of heavy drinking and problems during year 4 of college, as well as changes in these alcohol-related outcomes from high school through college.
Results: An earlier AO and/or a shorter delay was associated with increased frequency of heavy drinking and problems during senior year of college. Although individuals with a later AO and/or a longer delay were at lower risk overall, they showed larger increases in heavy drinking and problems over time.
Conclusions: The findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between AO and delay to first intoxication. Delay accounted for unique variance in drinking outcomes relative to AO, and the effects of AO were stronger when delay was included as a predictor variable. Results are discussed with regard to potential mechanisms through which an early age of intoxication may confer unique risk relative to AO. The implications for cross-cultural differences in risk for problems attributable to early drinking are also discussed.
Key Words: Age of Onset, Emerging Adulthood, Adolescent Alcohol Use, First Intoxication, Alcohol-Related Problems.
How can we localize the source of diffusion in a complex network? Because of the tremendous size of many real networks-such as the internet or the human social graph-it is usually unfeasible to observe the state of all nodes in a network.We show that it is fundamentally possible to estimate the location of the source from measurements collected by sparsely placed observers. We present a strategy that is optimal for arbitrary trees, achieving maximum probability of correct localization. We describe efficient implementations with complexity $O(N^α), where α = 1 for arbitrary trees and α = 3 for arbitrary graphs. In the context of several case studies, we determine how localization accuracy is affected by various system parameters, including the structure of the network, the density of observers, and the number of observed cascades.
Advocates of `cliodynamics' say that they can use scientific methods to illuminate the past. But historians are not so sure.
The first, which they call the secular cycle, extends over two to three centuries. It starts with a relatively egalitarian society, in which supply and demand for labour roughly balance out. In time, the population grows, labour supply outstrips demand, elites form and the living standards of the poorest fall. At a certain point, the society becomes top-heavy with elites, who start fighting for power. Political instability ensues and leads to collapse, and the cycle begins again.
Superimposed on that secular trend, the researchers observe a shorter cycle that spans 50 years – roughly two generations. Turchin calls this the fathers-and-sons cycle: the father responds violently to a perceived social injustice; the son lives with the miserable legacy of the resulting conflict and abstains; the third generation begins again. Turchin likens this cycle to a forest fire that ignites and burns out, until a sufficient amount of underbrush accumulates and the cycle recommences.
They explain the timing of last year's Egyptian uprising, which took the regime of then-president Hosni Mubarak by surprise. At the time, the Egyptian economy was growing and poverty levels were among the lowest in the developing world, so the regime could reasonably have expected stability. In the decade leading up to the revolution, however, the country saw a quadrupling of graduates with no prospects – a marker of elite overproduction and hence, Turchin argues, trouble.
The anatomy of three new fossils, including a face, lends support to the hypothesis that there were at least two parallel lineages early in the evolutionary history of our own genus, Homo.
n488-0201-Supplement.pdf
Meave G. Leakey, Fred Spoor, M. Christopher Dean, Craig S. Feibel, Susan C. Antón, Christopher Kiarie & Louise N. Leakey
Since its discovery in 1972 (ref. 1), the cranium KNM-ER 1470 has been at the centre of the debate over the number of species of early Homo present in the early Pleistocene epoch2 of eastern Africa. KNM-ER 1470 stands out among other specimens attributed to early Homo because of its larger size, and its flat and subnasally orthognathic face with anteriorly placed maxillary zygomatic roots3. This singular morphology and the incomplete preservation of the fossil have led to different views as to whether KNM-ER 1470 can be accommodated within a single species of early Homothat is highly variable because of sexual, geographical and temporal factors4-9, or whether it provides evidence of species diversity marked by differences in cranial size and facial or masticatory adaptation3,10-20. Here we report on three newly discovered fossils, aged between 1.78 and 1.95 million years (Myr) old, that clarify the anatomy and taxonomic status of KNM-ER 1470. KNM-ER 62000, a well-preserved face of a late juvenile hominin, closely resembles KNM-ER 1470 but is notably smaller. It preserves previously unknown morphology, including moderately sized, mesiodistally long postcanine teeth. The nearly complete mandible KNM-ER 60000 and mandibular fragment KNM-ER 62003 have a dental arcade that is short anteroposteriorly and flat across the front, with small incisors; these features are consistent with the arcade morphology of KNM-ER 1470 and KNM-ER 62000. The new fossils confirm the presence of two contemporary species of early Homo, in addition to Homo erectus, in the early Pleistocene of eastern Africa.
The prophetic denunciations and Deuteronomistic reforms directed at syncretistic cults—including those devoted to Bacal and Asherah—% are well known. But until recently the thrust of their attack has been blunted by the tendency of later interpreters to gloss over the persistence of Canaanite religion to enhance the notion of “normative Yahwism,” as well as by the lack of direct, historical confirmation of the existence of such fertility cults in ancient Israel. Yet a number of the supposedly enigmatic references to “asherah” in the MT clearly implied all along the recognition of the goddess herself.
Indeed, by the time of the Mishna the original significance of the name “Asherah” had probably been forgotten, not to be recovered until the goddess emerged again in the texts recovered from Ugarit. Yet the very fact of the necessity for reform in ancient Israel reminds us that the worship of Asherah, the “Mother Goddess,” sometimes personified as the consort of Yahweh, was popular until the end of the Monarchy. The archaeological record has preserved for us an alternate version of events as portrayed in the received text-parallel, but not necessarily contradictory. Indeed, \Ayn Ajrûd and el-Qôm enhance our appreciation of the prophetic message, for they provide for the first time a milieu in which we may understand just how crucial a threat the worship of the Canaanite fertility goddesses actually was.
It is the story told in 1 Kings 18:1-46 about the contest between the prophets of Baal and the prophet Elijah at Mount Carmel. In this story, along with the 450 prophets of Baal, there are also 400 prophets of Asherah. All of these are summoned to Mount Carmel where Elijah, the lone prophet of Yahweh, will confront them (see 1 Kings 18:19). In the contest, Elijah is triumphant and immediately orders the arrest of the 450 prophets of Baal, whom he then slaughters at the Wadi Kishon (1 Kings 18:40). But what happened to the prophets of Asherah? Nothing. The worship of a goddess, consort of Yahweh, may have been deeply rooted in both Israel and Judah in preexilic times, despite prophets and reforming kings.
Emendation in the direction of a desired result is too easy and generally wrong. One of my rules is that you should never emend a text to support your own theory; you should always emend in the opposite direction.
EnEnvSci2012-preprint-Comment.pdf, EnEnvSci2012-preprint-Reply.pdf
This study quantifies worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident on 11 March 2011. Effects are quantified with a 3-D global atmospheric model driven by emission estimates and evaluated against daily worldwide Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) measurements and observed deposition rates. Inhalation exposure, ground-level external exposure, and atmospheric external exposure pathways of radioactive iodine-131, cesium-137, and cesium-134 released from Fukushima are accounted for using a linear no-threshold (LNT) model of human exposure. Exposure due to ingestion of contaminated food and water is estimated by extrapolation. We estimate an additional 130 (15-1100) cancer-related mortalities and 180 (24-1800) cancer-related morbidities incorporating uncertainties associated with the exposure-dose and dose-response models used in the study. We also discuss the LNT model's uncertainty at low doses. Sensitivities to emission rates, gas to particulate I-131 partitioning, and the mandatory evacuation radius around the plant are also explored, and may increase upper bound mortalities and morbidities in the ranges above to 1300 and 2500, respectively. Radiation exposure to workers at the plant is projected to result in 2 to 12 morbidities. An additional 600 mortalities have been reported due to non-radiological causes such as mandatory evacuations. Lastly, a hypothetical accident at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, USA with identical emissions to Fukushima was studied to analyze the influence of location and seasonality on the impact of a nuclear accident. This hypothetical accident may cause 25 % more mortalities than Fukushima despite California having one fourth the local population density due to differing meteorological conditions.
The removal of crania from burials, their ritual use and their disposal, generally in cranial caches, are the most particular characteristics of the funerary ritual in the transition to the Neolithic in the Near East. Despite the importance of this ritual, detailed studies of cranial caches are rare. This funerary ritual has traditionally been interpreted as a form of ancestor-veneration. However, this study of the cranial caches found at the site of Tell Qarassa North, South Syria, dated in the second half of the ninth millennium BC, questions this interpretation. The 12 crania, found in two groups arranged in two circles on the floor of a room, belonged to male individuals, apart from one child and one preadolescent. In 10 of the 11 cases, the facial skeletons were deliberately mutilated. In the context of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, when the symbolism of the human face played a vital role in ritual practice, this mutilation of the facial skeleton could be interpreted as an act of hostility. In the absence of indicators of social stratification or signs of violence that might indicate more coercive forms of society, the veneration of ancestors has been explained as a mechanism for social cohesion, which would have been necessary in a context of rapid growth in the population of settlements. However, data on the negative nature of some funerary rites, of punishment or indifference rather than veneration, should make us question an over-idealized view of the first Neolithic societies.
KEY WORDS cranial caches; ritual; Neolithic; Near East
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