Molecular phylogenies,morphological homologies and the evolution of moth ‘ears’

The recent suggestion that complex hearing organs (‘ears’) may have been evolved just once in the stem lineage of a clade of ditrysian moths including the pyraloids and ‘Macroheterocera’ is discussed. It is argued that homology between ears situated in different segments and in different morphological territories (dorsal or ventral) of the same segment must be ruled out, and that therefore the number of independent origins of ears in the said clade is three at the very least. Mechanical protection of the ventral abdominal base by the backwards slanting metacoxae permits an attenuation of the body wall which would facilitate multiple independent origins of ears exactly in this region.     

The Uncertainty of Prosperity: Dependence and the Politics of Middle-Class Privilege in Maputo

In this essay, I examine the moral basis of a ‘middle class’ in Maputo, Mozambique, the narratives, forms of dependence and types of hegemony that the social hierarchy rests upon. I argue that the political and economic processes that have given rise to ‘new’ middle classes in the global south also create conditions of precariousness. In recent years, it has been argued that these ‘emerging middle classes’ are central for economic growth and the safeguarding of a stable, liberal order. The case of Mozambique complicates this assertion and demonstrates an occurrence now taking place across the globe. When the relationships of dependence and obligation and the narratives that justify them erode, the structures of power that may have once been mutually constitutive between an emerging middle class and the state can become damaging as the system they once upheld loses its legitimacy.     

Determining the ‘health’ of estuaries: Priorities for ecological research

‘Ecosystem health’ is a relatively new concept for environmental science and management. Although at least two international journals use the term in their titles, there have been few applications of it for estuaries and soft-sediment habitats around the world. In this paper I: (i) introduce the ideas behind ecosystem health, and assess their relation with other usage such as ‘integrity’ or ‘quality’; (ii) sketch the sorts of multidisciplinary studies that could contribute to an assessment of health of an estuary and how these must be approached in developing useful indicators; and (iii) make a case for including measurements of the rates of ecological processes in such an assessment. These rate measurements, termed ‘ecoassays’, focus on important processes such as decomposition, recruitment, predator–prey interactions, and the like. A case study is introduced wherein these processes were assessed in mangrove stands of estuaries around Sydney, New South Wales, by explicitly comparing the rates of herbivory and decomposition of mangrove leaves, attack of fallen wood by shipworms, and colonization of pneumatophores by algae, as well as with more traditional estimates of ‘standing stocks’. Not surprisingly, the different measures retrieved various patterns and the challenge now is to integrate these into a scheme that indicates something of value. The potential utility of such measures is discussed in relation to the various scientific and managerial requirements of environmental monitoring.     

The Disenchanted Self: Anthropological Notes on Existential Distress and Ontological Insecurity Among ex-Mormons in Utah

This paper describes a pervasive form of psychological distress occurring among people undergoing a sudden and acute collapse of faith in the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka LDS, or Mormon Church). Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork in Utah, I trace the cultural–historical etiology of this unique form of psycho-existential trauma, focusing on ex-Mormons’ narratives of ‘world collapse’—in which the all-encompassing symbolic-existential framework of reality once provided by religion disintegrated once they lost faith in the Mormon Church. Although marked by symptoms resembling depression, anxiety, dissociation and paranoia, this condition is however unlike mental health disorders described in psychiatric diagnostic manuals, and has thus been largely overlooked within the mental health professions. I thereby discuss the extent to which the distress of religious disenchantment constitutes a unique form of ‘cultural syndrome’ (Hinton and Lewis-Fernandez in Cult Med Psychiatry 34(2):209–218, 2010), reflective of complex historical, cultural, and religious transformations occurring within contemporary Utah Mormonism.

     

From connection to contagion

This essay proposes that we ‘think data’ with a complex legacy of work, once disavowed and now resurgent in social theory, on crowd formations. I propose this move because social media platforms’ mobilization of data – the extractions, ever-shifting reaggregations, and micro-targeting, on the one hand, and our engagements, re-tweets, acts of sharing, and production of virality, on the other – has fuelled such anxious concern about the very things that animated much crowd theory in the first place. Key among these concerns are the force of emotional contagion and the threat of social dissolution; the composition of ‘the social’ by elements that well exceed the human; and pressing questions about the media through which energetic forces travel, often with lightning speed. What questions might be enabled by attending to the resonance between crowd theory's ‘anti-liberal’ preoccupations and contemporary concerns over how social media platforms crowd us?     

Valuing Lives and Allocating Resources: A Defense of the Modified Youngest First Principle of Scarce Resource Distribution

In this paper, I argue that the ‘modified youngest first’ principle provides a morally appropriate criterion for making decisions regarding the distribution of scarce medical resources, and that it is morally preferable to the simple ‘youngest first’ principle. Based on the complete lives system's goal of maximizing complete lives rather than individual life episodes, I argue that essential to the value we see in complete lives is the first person value attributed by the experiencer of that life. For a life to be ‘complete’ or ‘incomplete,’ the subject of that life must be able to understand the concept of a complete life, to have started goals and projects, and to know what it would be for that life to be complete. As the very young are not able to do this, it can reasonably be said that their characteristically human lives have not yet begun, giving those accepting a complete lives approach good reason to accept the modified youngest first principle over a simple ‘youngest first’ approach.     

The Nuffield Council’s green light for genome editing human embryos defies fundamental human rights law

In July 2018, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics released the report Genome editing and human reproduction: Social and ethical issues, concluding that human germline modification of human embryos for implantation is not ‘morally unacceptable in itself’ and could be ethically permissible in certain circumstances once the risks of adverse outcomes have been assessed and the procedure appears ‘reasonably safe’. The Nuffield Council set forth two main principles governing anticipated uses and envisions applications that may include health enhancements as a public health measure. This essay provides a critique of three aspects in the Nuffield Council’s Report: its presumption of therapeutic efficacy, its inflation of parental rights to create a certain type of child, and its reliance on a specially commissioned report that appears to distort key definitions in international law.     

Eugenic Selection Benefits Embryos

The primary question to be addressed here is whether pre‐implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), used for both negative and positive trait selection, benefits potential supernumerary embryos. The phrase ‘potential supernumerary embryos’ is used to indicate that PGD is typically performed on a set of embryos, only some of which will be implanted. Prior to any testing, each embryo in the set is potentially supernumerary in the sense that it may not be selected for implantation. Those embryos that are not selected, and hence destroyed or frozen, are ‘actually supernumerary’. The argument to be advanced is hypothetical: If embryos may be said to benefit or be harmed by our actions, then PGD used to select for an embryo or embryos with the highest expected Wellbeing benefits potential supernumerary embryos. The argument shows that the ‘non‐identity’ problem is not sufficient to show that eugenic selection does not benefit supernumerary embryos.     

Mustering Fortune: Attraction and Multiplication in the Echoes of the Boom

Since the end of the socialist period, Mongolia has experienced economic instabilities, growing inequalities, and increasing urbanisation. Prosperity (dallaga) rituals, once predominantly carried out by nomadic herders at specific times of the year, are now also held regularly within Ulaanbaatar’s Buddhist temples. In these ceremonies, Buddhist lamas and lay participants attempt to ‘call’ or ‘pull’ wealth to the household. In this urban context, prosperity rituals are overtly about money, combining nomadic notions of wealth, sedentary ideas of growth and multiplication, and contemporary anxieties regarding growing corruption and inequality. Following from nomadic ideas that link prosperity with movement, dallaga rituals attempt to influence the ways that money travels around the economy. As money has seed like qualities, one must be careful to ensure that the right kind of money is attracted to the household so that it does not multiply the misfortunes that are thought to characterise money made through ill-gotten means.     

Responses to FTO genetic test feedback for obesity in a sample of overweight adults: a qualitative analysis

Current evidence indicates that genetic testing for obesity risk has limited affective or behavioral impact, but few studies have explored the effects among individuals who self-identify as having weight problems. Here, we report findings from in-depth telephone interviews with seven overweight or obese volunteers who were genotyped for one weight-related gene (FTO), which may offer interesting insights into motivations to seek out genetic testing and immediate reactions to it. All participants had a BMI > 25. The gene test identified one participant as homozygous for the ‘higher-risk’ variant (AA), three heterozygous (AT), and three homozygous for the ‘lower-risk’ variant (TT) of FTO. All participants said they took part to find an explanation for their personal struggle with weight control. Those with one or two higher-risk variants experienced relief and saw the result as confirming their private assumption that they were susceptible to weight gain for reasons perceived as ‘external’ to them. However, at the same time, they described themselves as more motivated to overcome their genetic predisposition. Those with lower-risk variants reported brief disappointment, but then focused on alternative explanations, reinforcing the multifactorial nature of obesity. Despite objectively low ‘information value,’ all individuals derived some ‘personal’ benefit from FTO genetic test feedback. However, improving education about the multifactorial nature of complex conditions is important to decrease polarized thinking and associated genetic determinism and stigma to derive the greatest benefits of novel genetic technologies for individuals and their health.     

The weighted groundwater health index: Improving the monitoring and management of groundwater resources

Increased global demand for groundwater has resulted in the need to measure and monitor this resource. Rather than monitoring groundwater simply though water chemistry and levels, which provides a ‘snapshot’ of the conditions at any given time, a more holistic approach to managing groundwater resources and their changes over time is needed. Korbel & Hose (2011) introduced the first structured framework for measuring groundwater health – the Groundwater Health Index (GHI). This multimetric, two-tiered framework uses biotic and abiotic components of the groundwater ecosystem to measure and identify ecosystem health. The framework can be used to classify impacted from non-impacted groundwaters, however it has certain limitations. With increased research and associated knowledge of groundwater ecosystems in recent times, it is now timely to attempt to build on the GHI framework.This paper refines and improves the GHI by incorporating a weighting system to account for natural factors contributing to variations in biotic distribution and is tested on data within four geologically similar alluvial aquifers in intensively irrigated agricultural areas of New South Wales and Queensland, Australia. Using a combination of microbial, stygofaunal, water chemistry and environmental indicators, the ‘weighted GHI’ framework was able to discriminate three distinct ecosystem health classifications; that of ‘similar to reference’(displaying reference-like condition) ‘mild deviation from reference’ (sites failing to meet between 2 and 3 benchmarks) and ‘major deviation from reference’ (sites with more than four benchmarks exceeded). The framework indicated that groundwater health deviated from reference condition in all four catchments studied, with irrigated sites consistently displaying deviations from reference ecosystem health. Tier 2 benchmarks were set using results from the Gwydir River, and were tested on the adjacent Namoi River catchment, the Condamine and Lower Macquarie catchments. Results indicated that ecosystem health benchmarks may be associate with aquifer typology, rather than being applicable only for local areas.     

Disaster as Opportunity? Cyclone Pam and the Transmission of Cultural Heritage

ABSTRACT

Culture, by its very nature, is always at risk of change – whether through transformation, destruction or redefinition. So how might culture be said to be particularly at risk in the context of ‘natural’ disasters, and how are disasters ‘naturalised’ or incorporated under the terms of different cultural regimes? An earlier focus on the impacts to built or tangible heritage is increasingly being balanced by a concern for the transformations wrought by disasters in the intangible heritage of communities. Through the recent event of Cyclone Pam in 2015, and a case study of the World Heritage site of Chief Roi Mata’s Domain (CRMD), we explore the ways in which repetitive natural hazards have shaped culture and tangible and intangible forms of heritage in Vanuatu. We focus in particular on the issue of cultural transmission at CRMD and its relationship to natural hazards through the device of a ‘disaster biography’. Risk can also carry with it the prospect of opportunity, and our paper seeks to understand how opportunity might be present in post-disaster reworkings of culture and heritage.     

The Making of Informed Choice in Midwifery: A Feminist Experiment in Care

This paper is about the clinical principle of informed choice—the hallmark feature of the midwifery model of care in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on ethnographic history interviews with midwives, I trace the origins of the idea of informed choice to its roots in the social movement of midwifery in North America in the late 1960s and 1970s. At that time informed choice was not the distinctive feature of midwifery but was deeply embedded what I call midwifery’s feminist experiment in care. But as midwifery in Ontario transitioned from a social movement to a full profession within the formal health care system, informed choice was strategically foregrounded in order to make the midwifery model of care legible and acceptable to a skeptical medical profession, conservative law makers, and a mainstream clientele. As mainstream biomedicine now takes up the rhetoric of patient empowerment and informed choice, this paper is at once a nuanced history of the making of the concept and also a critique of the ascendant ‘regime of choice’ in contemporary health care, inspired by the reflections of the midwives in my study for whom choice is impossible without care.     

Niche construction,adaptive preferences,and the differences between fitness and utility

A number of scholars have recently defended the claim that there is a close connection between the evolutionary biological notion of fitness and the economic notion of utility: both are said to refer to an organism’s success in dealing with its environment, and both are said to play the same theoretical roles in their respective sciences. However, an analysis of two seemingly disparate but in fact structurally related phenomena—‘niche construction’ (the case where organisms change their environment to make it fit to their needs) and ‘adaptive preferences’ (the case where agents change their wants to make them fit to what the world has given them)—shows that one needs to be very careful about the postulation of this sort of fitness–utility connection. Specifically, I here use the analysis of these two phenomena to establish when connecting fitness and utility is and is not possible.     

Evolution: A Function of Will Force

Evolution is a gradual but continuous process. To explain the process of organic evolution different theories have been put forward by various authorities. But, all these theories are significant in respect to explanations of the possible mechanisms of evolution and certainly without acceptable analysis regarding the cause of initiation of evolution and the reason of maintaining the said flow all along. In the present article it is hypothesized that the process of initiation of evolution is initiated due to ‘will force’ and the said flow is being maintained because of ‘will force’.     

Strategic Investment in Sperm Removal Behaviour in a Bushcricket

Multiple mating by females is widespread and generates sperm competition among the ejaculates of rival males over fertilization. One way in which males can avoid or reduce sperm competition is by displacing or removing previous males’ sperm from female sperm stores. An apparent example of this occurs in the bushcricket Metaplastes ornatus. Males perform a specialised sperm removal behaviour (SRB), using their highly-derived subgenital plate, with which they remove sperm from the female’s spermatheca during the early phases of mating before transferring a spermatophore of their own. Here we investigated whether males strategically invest in SRB according to the amount of previously stored sperm present in females. Each male was tested twice, once with a female containing sperm (‘filled’ condition) and once with a female from whom most previously deposited sperm had recently been removed by another male (‘emptied’ condition). For comparison, a separate group of males was paired with virgin females. Males did not discriminate between non-virgin females in the ‘emptied’ or ‘filled’ conditions in terms of their investment in SRB, suggesting they may not able to perceive the amount of sperm present in the female’s spermatheca. By contrast, male investment in SRB was significantly reduced in pairings with virgin females, indicating that males are sensitive to some aspect of a female’s mating status. Our results thus suggest that males modulate SRB in response to female-mediated cues, possibly chemical cues left by previous males, which would not be present on virgin but would be on non-virgin females.     

Volunteering,Dana, and the Cultivation of ‘Good People’ in Thailand

The article explores a popular volunteer movement in Thailand and its connection to Buddhist morality and contemporary Thai politics. The article argues that volunteering in Thailand is often conceived of as a gift in various ways: as a form of dana or selfless giving; a gift from ‘good people’ to those defined as ‘in need’ in society and a gift to the Thai nation as a whole. Indeed, when volunteering is said to be a gift to the Thai nation, it is not necessarily because of its ability to redistribute resources, but because of its perceived ability to cultivate moral values and ‘good people’ for the Thai nation. The paper explores the implications that stem from presenting volunteering as a gift, with a strong emphasis on morality and ‘good people’, and how this popular discourse on volunteering may contribute to the maintenance of political status quo in Thailand, particularly in the context of the ongoing political struggles in recent years.