Hypotheses on the benefits of the practice of partible paternity are tested using demographic data for Ache foragers of Paraguay. Partible paternity refers to the institution of multiple males considered to contribute to the conception of a single offspring. Analyses focus on patterns of primary and secondary co-fatherhood among men, genealogical relationships between co-fathers, and relation between band co-residence and co-fatherhood. Results indicate that men who had more secondary fatherhood also had more primary fatherhood; co-fathers are more closely related, on average, than men who are not co-fathers; and co-fathers were also more likely to reside together than men who were not co-fathers, even after controlling for relatedness. Results are most consistent with women choosing co-fathers of offspring in ways that maximize likelihood and amount of investment (multiple investors hypothesis) and men competing for more mates with at least partially affiliative outcomes (mate competition and male alliance hypotheses).

The interaction induced chiral asymmetry is calculated in cold QED plasma beyond the weak-field approximation. By making use of the recently developed Landau-level representation for the fermion self-energy, the chiral shift and the parity-even chiral chemical potential function are obtained with the help of numerical methods. The results are used to quantify the chiral asymmetry of the Fermi surface in dense QED matter. Because of the weakness of the QED interactions, the value of the asymmetry appears to be rather small even in the strongest magnetic fields and at the highest stellar densities. However, the analogous asymmetry can be substantial in the case of dense quark matter.

The transition to three-dimensional and unsteady flow in an annulus with a discrete heat source on the inner cylinder is studied numerically. For large applied heat flux through the heater (large Grashof number Gr), there is a strong wall plume originating at the heater that reaches the top and forms a large scale axisymmetric wavy structure along the top. For Gr ≈ 6 × 10⁹, this wavy structure becomes unstable to three-dimensional instabilities with high azimuthal wavenumbers m ∼ 30, influenced by mode competition within an Eckhaus band of wavenumbers. Coexisting with some of these steady three-dimensional states, solution branches with localized defects break parity and result in spatio-temporal dynamics. We have identified two such time dependent states. One is a limit cycle that while breaking spatial parity, retains spatio-temporal parity. The other branch corresponds to quasi-periodic states that have globally broken parity.

We revisit the evidence for the contribution of the long-lived radioactive nuclides ⁴⁴Ti, ⁵⁵Fe, ⁵⁶Co, ⁵⁷Co, and ⁶⁰Co to the UVOIR light curve of SN 1987A. We show that the V-band luminosity constitutes a roughly constant fraction of the bolometric luminosity between 900 and 1900 days, and we obtain an approximate bolometric light curve out to 4334 days by scaling the late time V-band data by a constant factor where no bolometric light curve data is available. Considering the five most relevant decay chains starting at ⁴⁴Ti, ⁵⁵Co, ⁵⁶Ni, ⁵⁷Ni, and ⁶⁰Co, we perform a least squares fit to the constructed composite bolometric light curve. For the nickel isotopes, we obtain best fit values of M(⁵⁶Ni) = (7.1 ± 0.3) × 10^-2 M ☉ and M(⁵⁷Ni) = (4.1 ± 1.8) × 10^-3 M ☉. Our best fit ⁴⁴Ti mass is M(⁴⁴Ti) = (0.55 ± 0.17) × 10^-4 M ☉, which is in disagreement with the much higher (3.1 ± 0.8) × 10^-4 M ☉ recently derived from INTEGRAL observations. The associated uncertainties far exceed the best fit values for ⁵⁵Co and ⁶⁰Co and, as a result, we only give upper limits on the production masses of M(⁵⁵Co) < 7.2 × 10^-3 M ☉ and M(⁶⁰Co) < 1.7 × 10^-4 M ☉. Furthermore, we find that the leptonic channels in the decay of [superscript 57]Co (internal conversion and Auger electrons) are a significant contribution and constitute up to 15.5% of the total luminosity. Consideration of the kinetic energy of these electrons is essential in lowering our best fit nickel isotope production ratio to [⁵⁷Ni/⁵⁶Ni] = 2.5 ± 1.1, which is still somewhat high but is in agreement with gamma-ray observations and model predictions.

Deposits of dark material appear on Vesta’s surface as features of relatively low-albedo in the visible wavelength range of Dawn’s camera and spectrometer. Mixed with the regolith and partially excavated by younger impacts, the material is exposed as individual layered outcrops in crater walls or ejecta patches, having been uncovered and broken up by the impact. Dark fans on crater walls and dark deposits on crater floors are the result of gravity-driven mass wasting triggered by steep slopes and impact seismicity. The fact that dark material is mixed with impact ejecta indicates that it has been processed together with the ejected material. Some small craters display continuous dark ejecta similar to lunar dark-halo impact craters, indicating that the impact excavated the material from beneath a higher-albedo surface. The asymmetric distribution of dark material in impact craters and ejecta suggests non-continuous distribution in the local subsurface. Some positive-relief dark edifices appear to be impact-sculpted hills with dark material distributed over the hill slopes.

Dark features inside and outside of craters are in some places arranged as linear outcrops along scarps or as dark streaks perpendicular to the local topography. The spectral characteristics of the dark material resemble that of Vesta’s regolith. Dark material is distributed unevenly across Vesta’s surface with clusters of all types of dark material exposures. On a local scale, some craters expose or are associated with dark material, while others in the immediate vicinity do not show evidence for dark material. While the variety of surface exposures of dark material and their different geological correlations with surface features, as well as their uneven distribution, indicate a globally inhomogeneous distribution in the subsurface, the dark material seems to be correlated with the rim and ejecta of the older Veneneia south polar basin structure. The origin of the dark material is still being debated, however, the geological analysis suggests that it is exogenic, from carbon-rich low-velocity impactors, rather than endogenic, from freshly exposed mafic material or melt, exposed or created by impacts.

Objective: Although the adverse effects of chronic pain on work productivity and daily life pursuits are clear, the within-person dynamics of pain, goal cognition, and engagement in work-related and lifestyle goals remain uncharted. This study investigated the impact of pain intensity (assessed on 3 occasions each day) and goal-related schematic thinking (ratings of importance, planning, and goal pursuit opportunities, assessed only in the morning) on afternoon and evening work and lifestyle goal pursuit.

Methods: A community sample of working adults with chronic pain (N = 131) were screened and interviewed about their work and lifestyle goals and completed a 21-day telephonic diary. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to estimate within-person and between-person effects.

Results: At the within-person level, morning pain intensity was inversely related to schematic cognition concerning work and lifestyle goals, whereas, at the between-person level, morning pain intensity varied positively with schematic thinking about work goals as well with afternoon lifestyle goal pursuit. At both the between- and within- analytic levels, morning goal schemas were positively associated with the pursuit of each type of goal in the afternoon and again in the evening. Moreover, positive carry-over effects of morning goal schemas on next day afternoon goal pursuit were observed.

Conclusions: Whereas morning pain intensity exhibited inconsistent effects across analytic levels, morning goal-related schematic thinking consistently predicted goal pursuit across analytic levels, type of goal, and time of day. These findings have implications for treatment and prevention of pain’s potentially deleterious effects on workplace and lifestyle goals.

We introduce and solve a ‘null model’ of stochastic metastatic colonization. The model is described by a single parameter θ: the ratio of the rate of cell division to the rate of cell death for a disseminated tumour cell in a given secondary tissue environment. We are primarily interested in the case in which colonizing cells are poorly adapted for proliferation in the local tissue environment, so that cell death is more likely than cell division, i.e. θ < 1. We quantify the rare event statistics for the successful establishment of a metastatic colony of size N. For N ≫ 1, we find that the probability of establishment is exponentially rare, as expected, and yet the mean time for such rare events is of the form ∼ log (N)/(1 − θ) while the standard deviation of colonization times is ∼1/(1 − θ). Thus, counter to naive expectation, for θ < 1, the average time for establishment of successful metastatic colonies decreases with decreasing cell fitness, and colonies seeded from lower fitness cells show less stochastic variation in their growth. These results indicate that metastatic growth from poorly adapted cells is rare, exponentially explosive and essentially deterministic. These statements are brought into sharper focus by the finding that the temporal statistics of the early stages of metastatic colonization from low-fitness cells (θ < 1) are statistically indistinguishable from those initiated from high-fitness cells (θ > 1), i.e. the statistics show a duality mapping (1 − θ) → (θ − 1). We conclude our analysis with a study of heterogeneity in the fitness of colonising cells, and describe a phase diagram delineating parameter regions in which metastatic colonization is dominated either by low or high fitness cells, showing that both are plausible given our current knowledge of physiological conditions in human cancer.

Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education outlined five core concepts intended to guide undergraduate biology education: 1) evolution; 2) structure and function; 3) information flow, exchange, and storage; 4) pathways and transformations of energy and matter; and 5) systems. We have taken these general recommendations and created a Vision and Change BioCore Guide—a set of general principles and specific statements that expand upon the core concepts, creating a framework that biology departments can use to align with the goals of Vision and Change. We used a grassroots approach to generate the BioCore Guide, beginning with faculty ideas as the basis for an iterative process that incorporated feedback from more than 240 biologists and biology educators at a diverse range of academic institutions throughout the United States. The final validation step in this process demonstrated strong national consensus, with more than 90% of respondents agreeing with the importance and scientific accuracy of the statements. It is our hope that the BioCore Guide will serve as an agent of change for biology departments as we move toward transforming undergraduate biology education.

The best-response dynamics is an example of an evolutionary game where players update their strategy in order to maximize their payoff. The main objective of this paper is to study a stochastic spatial version of this game based on the framework of interacting particle systems in which players are located on an infinite square lattice. In the presence of two strategies, and calling a strategy selfish or altruistic depending on a certain ordering of the coefficients of the underlying payoff matrix, a simple analysis of the nonspatial mean-field approximation of the spatial model shows that a strategy is evolutionary stable if and only if it is selfish, making the system bistable when both strategies are selfish. The spatial and nonspatial models agree when at least one strategy is altruistic. In contrast, we prove that in the presence of two selfish strategies and in any spatial dimension, only the most selfish strategy remains evolutionary stable. The main ingredients of the proof are monotonicity results and a coupling between the best-response dynamics properly rescaled in space with bootstrap percolation to compare the infinite time limits of both systems.

Although gender gaps have been a major concern in male-dominated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines such as physics and engineering, the numerical dominance of female students in biology has supported the assumption that gender disparities do not exist at the undergraduate level in life sciences. Using data from 23 large introductory biology classes for majors, we examine two measures of gender disparity in biology: academic achievement and participation in whole-class discussions. We found that females consistently underperform on exams compared with males with similar overall college grade point averages. In addition, although females on average represent 60% of the students in these courses, their voices make up less than 40% of those heard responding to instructor-posed questions to the class, one of the most common ways of engaging students in large lectures. Based on these data, we propose that, despite numerical dominance of females, gender disparities remain an issue in introductory biology classrooms. For student retention and achievement in biology to be truly merit based, we need to develop strategies to equalize the opportunities for students of different genders to practice the skills they need to excel.