Category: Featured Database

Author: Taijfel, H. Description: Can discrimination be traced to some such origin as social conflict or a history of hostility? Not necessarily. Apparently the mere fact of division into groups is enough to trigger discriminatory behavior. Subject headings: Discrimination, Psychological; Group Processes; Hostility; Humans; Psychology, Social; Social Conformity Publication year: 1970 Journal or book title: Scientific American Volume: 223 Issue: 5 Pages: 96-102 Find the full text : https://www.jstor.org/stable/24927662 Find more like this one (cited by): https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=11389731858616378859&as_sdt=1000005&sciodt=0,16&hl=en Type: Journal Article Serial number: 3002

Author: Dunham, Y. Description: Human social groups are central to social organization and pervasively impact interpersonal interactions. Although immensely varied, all social groups can be considered specific instantiations of a common and abstract ingroup-outgroup structure. How much of the power of human social groups stems from learned variation versus abstract commonality? I review evidence demonstrating that from early in development a wide range of intergroup phenomena, most prominently many ingroup biases, follow solely from simple membership in an abstract social collective. Such effects cannot be attributed to rich social learning,…

Author: Vazquez, J.M.; Sulak, M.; Chigurupati, S.; Lynch, V.J. Description: Large-bodied organisms have more cells that can potentially turn cancerous than small-bodied organisms, imposing an increased risk of developing cancer. This expectation predicts a positive correlation between body size and cancer risk; however, there is no correlation between body size and cancer risk across species (“Peto’s paradox”). Here, we show that elephants and their extinct relatives (proboscideans) may have resolved Peto’s paradox in part through refunctionalizing a leukemia inhibitory factor pseudogene (LIF6) with pro-apoptotic functions. LIF6 is transcriptionally upregulated by…

Author: Caulin, A.F.; Maley, C.C. Description: The evolution of multicellularity required the suppression of cancer. If every cell has some chance of becoming cancerous, large, long-lived organisms should have an increased risk of developing cancer compared with small, short-lived organisms. The lack of correlation between body size and cancer risk is known as Peto’s paradox. Animals with 1000 times more cells than humans do not exhibit an increased cancer risk, suggesting that natural mechanisms can suppress cancer 1000 times more effectively than is done in human cells. Because cancer has…

Author: Williams, A.P.; Abatzoglou, J.T.; Gershunov, A.; Guzman-Morales, J.; Bishop, D.A.; Balch, J.K.; Lettenmaier, D.P. Description: Recent fire seasons have fueled intense speculation regarding the effect of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire in western North America and especially in California. During 1972-2018, California experienced a fivefold increase in annual burned area, mainly due to more than an eightfold increase in summer forest-fire extent. Increased summer forest-fire area very likely occurred due to increased atmospheric aridity caused by warming. Since the early 1970s, warm-season days warmed by approximately 1.4 °C as…

Author: Stanton, R.L.; Morrissey, C.A.; Clark, R.G. Description: Globally, agriculture has intensified during the past 50 years due to increased mechanization, changes in the timing of farming operations, grassland conversion to cropland, and increased agrochemical inputs. Birds associated with farmlands and grasslands in North America have experienced severe declines over the last several decades, prompting the need for a comprehensive review of the drivers, mechanisms and magnitude of effects on bird populations. Here we evaluated changes in North American farmland bird populations over time and conducted a systematic review and…

Author: Rosenberg, K.V.; Dokter, A.M.; Blancher, P.J.; Sauer, J.R.; Smith, A.C.; Smith, P.A.; Stanton, J.C.; Panjabi, A.; Helft, L.; Parr, M.; Marra, P.P. Description: Species extinctions have defined the global biodiversity crisis, but extinction begins with loss in abundance of individuals that can result in compositional and functional changes of ecosystems. Using multiple and independent monitoring networks, we report population losses across much of the North American avifauna over 48 years, including once-common species and from most biomes. Integration of range-wide population trajectories and size estimates indicates a net loss…