Excavating Culture: Summary of Results

This is a companion paper to the seven articles also published in this special issue of Applied Developmental Science. This paper summarizes and discusses the results from common analyses that were conducted on different datasets. The common analyses were designed to disentangle contextual and ethnic influences on parenting. Initial ethnic group differences were found in many of the datasets with multiple ethnic groups. Although certain ethnic group differences were explained by contextual influences, some ethnic group differences remained after contextual influences were controlled. Follow-up analyses with datasets containing cultural variables revealed within group differences in the degree to which ethnic differences in parenting may be accounted for by contextual factors versus culturally-specific processes. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed and future directions are offered.     

Disentangling Ethnic and Contextual Influences Among Parents Raising Youth in High-Risk Communities

This article reports on analyses examining contextual influences on parenting with an ethnically and geographically diverse sample of parents (predominantly mothers) raising 387 children (49% ethnic minority; 51% male) in high-risk communities. Parents and children were followed longitudinally from first through tenth grades. Contextual influences included geographical location, neighborhood risk, SES, and family stress. The cultural variable was racial socialization. Parenting constructs created through the consensus decision-making of the Parenting Subgroup of the Study Group on Race, Culture, and Ethnicity (see Le et al., 2008) included Monitoring, Communication, Warmth, Behavioral Control and Parenting Efficacy. Hierarchical regressions on each parenting construct were conducted for each grade for which data were available. Analyses tested for initial ethnic differences and then for remaining ethnic differences once contextual influences were controlled. For each construct, some ethnic differences did remain (Monitoring, ninth grade; Warmth, third grade; Communication, kindergarten; Behavioral Control, eighth grade; and Parenting Efficacy, kindergarten through fifth grade). Ethnic differences were explained by contextual differences in the remaining years. Analyses examining the impact of cultural influences revealed a negative relation between racial socialization messages and Communication or Monitoring.     

A review of family and environmental correlates of health behaviors in high-risk youth

Disparities in the prevalence of obesity in youth place minority and low socioeconomic status youth at increased risk for the development of chronic disease, such as metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Contributing factors to the increases in obesity include a decline in positive health behaviors, such as making healthy dietary choices, engaging in physical activity, and limiting sedentary behaviors. Family and physical environmental contextual factors related to health behaviors are increasingly the focus of health behavior interventions in line with the bioecological model that encourages a system-focused perspective on understanding health behavior influences. Physical environmental characteristics, such as home and neighborhood characteristics and resources, provide the tangible means to support health behaviors and are important contextual variables to consider that may increase intervention effectiveness. Therefore, the current review seeks to highlight the importance of investigating influences of behavior beyond individual characteristics in understanding factors related to the risk of developing metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes in youth at high risk for developing chronic disease. The current study reviews the non-intervention literature on family and physical environmental factors related to health behaviors (i.e., diet, physical activity, and sedentary behavior) in youth who are considered to be at-risk for developing metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Results on 38 published articles of diet, physical activity, and sedentary behaviors showed support for the role of parenting and physical environmental factors, particularly parental monitoring and neighborhood context, such as social cohesion, as they relate to health behaviors in high-risk youth. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Neighborhood Context,SES, and Parenting: Including a Focus on Acculturation Among Latina Mothers

This study examines the influence of contextual factors on parenting strategies among a sample of 104 Latina, European American, and African American mother–child pairs. The parenting constructs under investigation were selected as part of a collaborative research project among members of the parenting subgroup of the Study Group on Race, Culture, and Ethnicity (SCGCE). Hierarchical regression analyses, predicting parenting outcomes, were conducted with mothers' ethnicity entered in the first step and contextual variables (mothers' annual income, education, subjective neighborhood rating, and stressful life events) entered second. While there were no significant differences in parenting strategies (parental efficacy, parental monitoring, parental warmth, and psychological control) across the three pan-ethnic groups, a contextual variable— subjective neighborhood quality—was associated with mothers' sense of parental efficacy and use of psychological control. Among our subsample of 54 Latina mothers, level of acculturation was similarly related to parental sense of self-efficacy and psychological control strategies.     

Disentangling Ethnicity and Context as Predictors of Parenting Within Rural African American Families

This study will address the initial question: Are there ethnic differences in parenting that remain when contextual variables are controlled and are related to culture, focusing on two samples of rural African American families. This study is part of a series of coordinated studies presented in this special issue (Le et al., 2008). Specific attention was given to ascertaining whether these differences were explained by contextual factors, such as socioeconomic factors (i.e., parents' educational level, homeownership, family structure, and number of children in the household). Finally, this study examined whether any differences in parenting (warmth, monitoring, communication) were attributed to cultural factors, after controlling for the contributions of contextual factors. Results indicate that parental education, family size, negative life events, racial discrimination, neighborhood characteristics, and religiosity were significantly associated with various domains of parenting among rural African Americans.     

Functional Morphology as a Tool in General Education

SYNOPSIS. This paper explores the proposition that in morphology,or any other scientific subject, every statement is based onmultiple assumptions already in our minds before we begin toteach or do research in the field. Progress in morphology isintimately related to its philosophical and historical foundations.Personalities, social pressures and cultural traditions alsoplay major roles in the often complex and circuitous routesof scientific discovery. General education provides a foundationfor understanding these many interactions. Morphology, itself,is a metaphor for inter-relatedness, and this metaphor can beused to explore general education in the broadest sense. Morphologyis not only a body of knowledge and processes for producingthat knowledge but also groups of people deciding on directions,collaborating on methods, and consulting on concepts. A morphologistis a member of a community of understanding in a culture composedof diverse and often conflicting influences. I suggest thatexploring these issues is an important pedagogic tool for discoveringand understanding the foundations of morphology as a scientificendeavor. This paper is appropriately dedicated to ProfessorMilton Hildebrand who understands well the interdisciplinarynature of scientific discovery.     

Preface: The phylogeny, fossil record and ecological diversity of ostracod crustaceans

After more than two centuries of research, more than 65,000 living and fossil ostracod species have been described and studied, yet much remains to be learned about this ancient, widespread and diverse group of bivalved arthropods. Their higher classification and phylogeny are subjects of vigorous debate, as is their position in the broader picture of crustacean phylogeny. At the same time, major advances in our understanding of ostracod lineages and their relationships are resulting from the application of innovative approaches and techniques. This preface provides a contextual overview of the 15 contributions to this volume, which resulted from the 14th International Symposium on Ostracoda (ISO2001) held in 2001at Shizuoka, Japan. As such it provides a cross-section of topics at the forefront of research on the evolution and diversity of Ostracoda, and indicates directions for future work.     

Neonatal handling enhances contextual fear conditioning and alters corticosterone stress responses in young rats

Previous studies have indicated that neonatal handling influences development of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) control of corticosterone. In addition, corticosterone influences memory consolidation processes in contextual fear conditioning. Therefore, neonatal handling may affect hippocampal-dependent memory processes present in contextual fear conditioning by influencing the development of HPA control of corticosterone. To investigate the effects of neonatal handling on early learning, rat pups were either handled (15-min removal from home cage) on the first 15 days after birth or left undisturbed in their home cage. Handled rats and nonhandled rats were fear conditioned at 18, 21, or 30 days of age and then tested at two time points--24 h following conditioning and at postnatal day 45. Subsequently, at approximately postnatal day 60, rats were exposed to restraint stress and corticosterone levels were assessed during restraint and recovery. Handled and nonhandled rats did not differ significantly in their freezing response immediately following footshock on the conditioning day. However, when tested for contextual fear conditioning at 24 h following conditioning and at postnatal day 45, handled rats showed more freezing behavior than nonhandled rats. When exposed to restraint stress, handled rats had a more rapid return of corticosterone to basal levels than nonhandled rats. These results indicate that neonatal handling enhances developmentally early memory processes involved in contextual fear conditioning and confirms previously reported effects of neonatal handling on HPA control of corticosterone.     

Common crystal nucleation mechanism in shell formation of two morphologically distinct calcite brachiopods

Closely related mineral-producing organisms share common biomineralisation processes. We demonstrate that, in cases of disparate mineral structures where crystal growth mechanisms are necessarily diverse, nucleation processes are the common underlying mechanism during shell formation. Detailed crystallography in the context of shell microstructure in two morphologically distinct calcite brachiopods indicates that, despite differences in shell growth and fabric, at the centre of growth, calcite crystals nucleate with the c-axis 0001 parallel to the shell surface. Such detailed contextual crystallography of biomineralisation using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) will have significant applications for future research in biological and medical sciences.     

What Are Fair Study Benefits in International Health Research? Consulting Community Members in Kenya

Background

Planning study benefits and payments for participants in international health research in low- income settings can be a difficult and controversial process, with particular challenges in balancing risks of undue inducement and exploitation and understanding how researchers should take account of background inequities. At an international health research programme in Kenya, this study aimed to map local residents'' informed and reasoned views on the effects of different levels of study benefits and payments to inform local policy and wider debates in international research.

Methods and Findings

Using a relatively novel two-stage process community consultation approach, five participatory workshops involving 90 local residents from diverse constituencies were followed by 15 small group discussions, with components of information-sharing, deliberation and reflection to situate normative reasoning within debates. Framework Analysis drew inductively and deductively on voice- recorded discussions and field notes supported by Nvivo 10 software, and the international research ethics literature. Community members'' views on study benefits and payments were diverse, with complex contextual influences and interplay between risks of giving ‘too many’ and ‘too few’ benefits, including the role of cash. While recognising important risks for free choice, research relationships and community values in giving ‘too many’, the greatest concerns were risks of unfairness in giving ‘too few’ benefits, given difficulties in assessing indirect costs of participation and the serious consequences for families of underestimation, related to perceptions of researchers'' responsibilities.

Conclusions

Providing benefits and payments to participants in international research in low-income settings is an essential means by which researchers meet individual-level and structural forms of ethical responsibilities, but understanding how this can be achieved requires a careful account of social realities and local judgment. Concerns about undue inducement in low-income communities may often be misplaced; we argue that greater attention should be placed on avoiding unfairness, particularly for the most-poor.     

Impact of Father Involvement: A Closer Look at Indirect Effects Models Involving Marriage and Child Adjustment

In this article we present a framework for understanding the indirect effects of fathering on child development in the context of the marriage. We discuss three central pathways of influence: through relations between marital quality and fathering, through children's exposure to father expressions of marital discord, and through relations between marital quality and father psychological functioning. We provide corresponding hypotheses and review recent research to support or refute each. A common theme is that fathers, as well as mothers, have important influences in marital contexts, with some evidence for different or even greater impact of fathers in terms of the relations between the marital relationship and parenting, the impact of child exposure to marital conflict expressions, and as a function of parental symptomatology, although these effects are often complex. We discuss the value of including fathers in research on families and child development, and point out some promising directions for future study.     

Parent–offspring transaction: Mechanisms and the value of within family designs

This article is part of a Special Issue “Parental Care”. Parenting is best understood as a transactional process between parents and their offspring. Each responds to cues in the other, adapting their own behavior to that of their partner. One of the goals of parenting research in the past twenty years has been to untangle reciprocal processes between parents and children in order to specify what comes from the child (child effects) and what comes from the parent (parent effects). Child effects have been found to relate to genetic, pre and perinatal, family-wide, and child-specific environmental influences. Parent effects relate to stresses in the current context (e.g. financial strain, marital conflict), personality and ethnicity but also to adverse childhood experiences (e.g. parental mental health and substance abuse, poverty, divorce). Rodent models have allowed for the specification of biological mechanisms in parent and child effects, including neurobiological and genomic mechanisms, and of the causal role of environmental experience on outcomes for offspring through random assignment of offspring–mother groupings. One of the methods that have been developed in the human and animal models to differentiate between parent and child effects has been to study multiple offspring in the family. By holding the parent steady, and studying different offspring, we can examine the similarities and differences in how parents parent multiple offspring. Studies have distinguished between family average parenting, child-specific parenting and family-wide dispersion (the within family standard deviation). These different aspects of parenting have been differentially linked to offspring behavioral phenotypes.     

Changing Museum Visitors’ Conceptions of Evolution

We examined whether a single visit to an evolution exhibition contributed to conceptual change in adult (n?=?30), youth, and child (n?=?34) museum visitors?? reasoning about evolution. The exhibition included seven current research projects in evolutionary science, each focused on a different organism. To frame this study, we integrated a developmental model of visitors?? understanding of evolution, which incorporates visitors?? intuitive beliefs, with a model of free-choice learning that includes personal, sociocultural, and contextual variables. Using pre- and post-measures, we assessed how visitors?? causal explanations about biological change, drawn from three reasoning patterns (evolutionary, intuitive, and creationist), were modified as a result of visiting the exhibition. Whatever their age, background beliefs, or prior intuitive reasoning patterns, visitors significantly increased their use of explanations from the evolutionary reasoning pattern across all measures and extended this reasoning across diverse organisms. Visitors also increased their use of one intuitive reasoning pattern, need-based (goal-directed) explanations, which, we argue, may be a step toward evolutionary reasoning. Nonetheless, visitors continued to use mixed reasoning (endorsing all three reasoning patterns) in explaining biological change. The personal, socio-cultural, and contextual variables were found to be related to these reasoning patterns in predictable ways. These findings are used to examine the structure of visitors?? reasoning patterns and those aspects of the exhibition that may have contributed to the gains in museum visitors?? understanding of evolution.     

Two stochastic processes shape diverse senescence patterns in a single‐cell organism

Despite advances in aging research, a multitude of aging models, and empirical evidence for diverse senescence patterns, understanding of the biological processes that shape senescence is lacking. We show that senescence of an isogenic Escherichia coli bacterial population results from two stochastic processes. The first process is a random deterioration process within the cell, such as generated by random accumulation of damage. This primary process leads to an exponential increase in mortality early in life followed by a late age mortality plateau. The second process relates to the stochastic asymmetric transmission at cell fission of an unknown factor that influences mortality. This secondary process explains the difference between the classical mortality plateaus detected for young mothers’ offspring and the near nonsenescence of old mothers’ offspring as well as the lack of a mother–offspring correlation in age at death. We observed that lifespan is predominantly determined by underlying stochastic stage dynamics. Surprisingly, our findings support models developed for metazoans that base their arguments on stage‐specific actions of alleles to understand the evolution of senescence. We call for exploration of similar stochastic influences that shape aging patterns beyond simple organisms.     

A matter of life and death: Molecular,physiological, and environmental regulation of seed longevity

Both seed germination and early seedling establishment are important biological processes in a plant's lifecycle. Seed longevity is a key trait in agriculture, which directly influences seed germination and ultimately determines crop productivity and hence food security. Numerous studies have demonstrated that seed deterioration is regulated by complex interactions between diverse endogenous genetically controlled factors and exogenous environmental cues, including temperature, relative humidity, and oxygen partial pressure during seed storage. The endogenous factors, including the chlorophyll concentration, the structure of the seed coat, the balance of phytohormones, the concentration of reactive oxygen species, the integrity of nucleic acids and proteins and their associated repair systems, are also involved in the control of seed longevity. A precise understanding of the regulatory mechanisms underlying seed longevity is becoming a hot topic in plant molecular biology. In this review, we describe recent research into the regulation of seed longevity and the interactions between the various environmental and genetic factors. Based on this, the current state-of-play regarding seed longevity regulatory networks will be presented, particularly with respect to agricultural seed storage, and the research challenges to be faced in the future will be discussed.     

Cabbage family affairs: the evolutionary history of Brassicaceae

Life without the mustard family (Brassicaceae) would be a world without many crop species and the model organism Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) that has revolutionized our knowledge in almost every field of modern plant biology. Despite this importance, research breakthroughs in understanding family-wide evolutionary patterns and processes within this flowering plant family were not achieved until the past few years. In this review, we examine recent outcomes from diverse botanical disciplines (taxonomy, systematics, genomics, paleobotany and other fields) to synthesize for the first time a holistic view on the evolutionary history of the mustard family.     

Video‐recording complex health interactions in a diverse setting: Ethical dilemmas,reflections and recommendations

Video‐recording healthcare interactions provides important opportunities for research and service improvement. However, this method brings about tensions, especially when recording sensitive topics. Subsequent reflection may compel the researcher to engage in ethical and moral deliberations. This paper presents experiences from a South African genetic counselling study which made use of video‐recordings to understand communicative processes in routine practice. Video‐recording as a research method, as well as contextual and process considerations are discussed, such as researching one's own field, issues of trust and anonymity, the challenge of providing true informed consent and capturing details which may cause psychological harm. Several recommendations for research practice in diverse healthcare settings are made. This includes the value of reflective pieces, the importance of retrospective consent, disclosure of the limitations to anonymity, as well as the collective responsibility of those involved to produce ethical research. These recommendations have value for genetic counselling and other healthcare fields.     

Nicotinic receptors in the dorsal and ventral hippocampus differentially modulate contextual fear conditioning

Nicotine administration alters various forms of hippocampus-dependent learning and memory. Increasing work has found that the dorsal and ventral hippocampus differentially contribute to multiple behaviors. Thus, the present study examined whether the effects of nicotine in the dorsal and ventral hippocampus have distinct influences on contextual fear learning in male C57BL/6J mice. Direct infusion of nicotine into the dorsal hippocampus resulted in an enhancement of contextual fear learning, whereas nicotine infused into the ventral hippocampus resulted in deficits. Nicotine infusions into the ventral hippocampus did not alter hippocampus-independent cued fear conditioning or time spent in the open arm of the elevated plus maze, a measure of anxiety, suggesting that the effects are due to alterations in contextual learning and not other general processes. Finally, results from using direct infusions of MLA, a low-affinity α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) antagonist, in conjunction with systemic nicotine, provide evidence that α7-nAChRs in the ventral hippocampus mediate the detrimental effect of ventral hippocampal nicotine on contextual fear learning. These results suggest that with systemic nicotine administration, competition exists between the dorsal and ventral hippocampus for behavioral control over contextual learning.     

Using Win-Win Strategies to Implement Health in All Policies: A Cross-Case Analysis

Background

In spite of increasing research into intersections of public policy and health, little evidence shows how policy processes impact the implementation of Health in All Policies (HiAP) initiatives. Our research sought to understand how and why strategies for engaging partners from diverse policy sectors in the implementation of HiAP succeed or fail in order to uncover the underlying social mechanisms contributing to sustainable implementation of HiAP.

Methods

In this explanatory multiple case study, we analyzed grey and peer-review literature and key informant interviews to identify mechanisms leading to implementation successes and failures in relation to different strategies for engagement across three case studies (Sweden, Quebec and South Australia), after accounting for the role of different contextual conditions.

Findings

Our results yielded no support for the use of awareness-raising or directive strategies as standalone approaches for engaging partners to implement HiAP. However, we found strong evidence that mechanisms related to “win-win” strategies facilitated implementation by increasing perceived acceptability (or buy-in) and feasibility of HiAP implementation across sectors. Win-win strategies were facilitated by mechanisms related to several activities, including: the development of a shared language to facilitate communication between actors from different sectors; integrating health into other policy agendas (eg., sustainability) and use of dual outcomes to appeal to the interests of diverse policy sectors; use of scientific evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of HiAP; and using health impact assessment to make policy coordination for public health outcomes more feasible and to give credibility to policies being developed by diverse policy sectors.

Conclusion

Our findings enrich theoretical understanding in an under-unexplored area of intersectoral action. They also provide policy makers with examples of HiAP across wealthy welfare regimes, and improve understanding of successful HiAP implementation practices, including the win-win approach.