Researchers studying differences in how individuals respond to stress are finding that genes are malleable and environments can be deterministic.
Researchers studying differences in how individuals respond to stress are finding that genes are malleable and environments can be deterministic.
In an essay entitled "Nurture, Nature, and the Stress That is Life," neurobiologists Darlene Francis and Daniela Kaufer envision a future where science moves past the nature vs. nurture debate in considering differences in human behavioral responses to stress.
| September 1, 2011
In Chapter 13, "Altruism," author Oren Harman discusses how George Price's and John Maynard Smith's 1973 formulation of evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) meshes with examples of altruism in nature.
Exposing the life and work of a visionary and troubled scientist opens a window onto the evolution of altruism.
| August 1, 2011
In Chapter 6, "Research and Teaching at the All-Administrative University," author Benjamin Ginsberg describes the perils of pursuing scholarship and teaching in the industrial environment of today's American institutions of higher learning.
Administrators have taken over US universities, and they’re steering institutions of higher learning away from the goal of serving as beacons of knowledge.
The story of the US government’s efforts to stamp out smallpox in the early 20th century offers insights into the science and practice of mass vaccination.
In Chapter 5, "The Stable and the Laboratory," author Michael Willrich explores the burgeoning vaccine manufacture industry that ramped up to combat smallpox epidemics in turn-of-the-twentieth-century American cities.
In Chapter 9, "We Were Hunted, Which is Why All of Us are Afraid Some of the Time and Some of Us are Afraid All of the Time," author Rob Dunn explains how predators shaped our evolution as we cowered and ran from their ravenous maws.
Whose well-being is threatened by our changing relationship with the myriad organisms that shaped the evolution of our species?