Unpredictable environments,nuptial gifts and the evolution of sexual size dimorphism in insects: an experiment

Many insects have a mating system where males transfer nutrients to females at mating, which are often referred to as ''nuptial gifts''. Among butterflies, some of the characteristic features of these species are polyandry (females mate multiple times), and relatively large male ejaculates. When males produce part of the resources used for offspring, the value of body size might then increase for males and decrease for females. The male/female size ratio is also observed to increase when the degree of polyandry and gift size increase. Butterfly species where gift-giving occurs are generally more variable in body size, suggesting that food quality/quantity fluctuates during juvenile stages. This will cause some males to have much to provide and some females to be in great need, and could be conducive to the evolution of a gift-giving mating system. In such a system, growing male and female juveniles should react differently to food shortage. Females should react by maturing at a smaller size since their own lack of reproductive resources can partly be compensated for by male contributions. Males have to pay the full cost of decreased reproduction if they mature at a small size, making it more important for males to keep on growing, even when growth is costly. An earlier experiment with the polyandrous and gift-giving butterfly, Pieris napi, supported this prediction. The pattern is expected to be absent or reversed for species with small nuptial gifts, where females do not benefit from mating repeatedly, and will thus be dependent on acquiring resources for reproduction on their own. To test this prediction, we report here on an experiment with the speckled wood butterfly, Pararge aegeria. We find that growth response correlates with mating system in the two above species, and we conclude that differences in environmental conditions between species may act as an important factor in the evolution of the mating system and sexual size dimorphism.     

Anecdotal,Historical and Critical Commentaries on Genetics: Darwin and Darwinism: The (Alleged) Social Implications of The Origin of Species

Most scientific theories, even revolutionary ones, change the practice of a particular science but have few consequences for culture or society at large. But Darwinism, it has often been said, is different in this respect. Since the publication of The Origin of Species, many have claimed that Darwinism has a number of profound social implications. Here, I briefly consider three of these: the economic, the political, and the religious. I suggest that, for the most part, these supposed implications have been misconstrued or exaggerated. Indeed, it is reasonably clear that the chain of implication sometimes primarily ran in the opposite direction—from, for instance, economics and political theory to Darwinism.THE appearance of The Origin of Species launched one of the greatest, and most justly celebrated, revolutions in the history of science. But in the 150 years since the appearance of Darwin''s book, many scholars, scientists, and pundits have claimed that Darwinism did more than revolutionize biology. Darwinism, they claim, also had a number of social and cultural consequences: economic and political, medical, eugenic, educational, and religious. Some of these consequences are to be applauded and others regretted, but all, it is said, can be traced to important strands of thought in The Origin of Species. One of the ironies of modern history would thus seem to be that the close scientific study of pigeons, mockingbirds, and barnacles could have such consequences.But while the case for the scientific importance of Darwinism is incontestable, the case for its presumed social and cultural consequences is far more complex and, in places, dubious. Here I consider three of these supposed consequences: the economic, the political, and the religious. Because the economic and religious cases have been widely discussed, I focus on the political one. I should note that I am not an expert on economics, political theory, or religion, but a biologist. Perhaps fortunately, then, little that I have to say is new but reflects the efforts of many social scientists and historians. Because their ideas seem little known among biologists, they may be worth recounting here.     

Will You Accept the Government's Friend Request? Social Networks and Privacy Concerns

Participating in social network websites entails voluntarily sharing private information, and the explosive growth of social network websites over the last decade suggests shifting views on privacy. Concurrently, new anti-terrorism laws, such as the USA Patriot Act, ask citizens to surrender substantial claim to privacy in the name of greater security. I address two important questions regarding individuals'' views on privacy raised by these trends. First, how does prompting individuals to consider security concerns affect their views on government actions that jeopardize privacy? Second, does the use of social network websites alter the effect of prompted security concerns? I posit that prompting individuals to consider security concerns does lead to an increased willingness to accept government actions that jeopardize privacy, but that frequent users of websites like Facebook are less likely to be swayed by prompted security concerns. An embedded survey experiment provides support for both parts of my claim.     

More than a blog

Blogging is circumventing traditional communication channels and levelling the playing field of science communication. It helps scientists, journalists and interested laypeople to make their voices heard.Last December, astrobiologists reported in the journal Science that they had discovered the first known microorganism on Earth capable of growing and reproducing by using arsenic (Wolfe-Simon et al, 2010). While media coverage went wild, the paper was met with a resounding public silence from the scientific community. That is, until a new breed of critic, science bloggers, weighed in. Leading the pack was Rosie Redfield, who runs a microbiology research lab in the Life Sciences Centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She posted a critique of the research to her blog, RRResearch (rrresearch.fieldofscience.com), which went viral. Redfield said that her site, which is typically a quiet window on activities in her lab got 100,000 hits in a week.Redfield said that her site, which is typically a quiet window on activities in her lab got 100,000 hits in a weekThis incident, like a handful before it and probably more to come, has raised the profile of science blogging and the freedom that the Internet offers to express an opinion and reach a broad audience. Yet it also raises questions about the validity of unfettered opinion and personal bias, and the ability to publish online with little editorial oversight and few checks and balances.Redfield certainly did not hold back in her criticism of the paper. Her post said of the arsenic study: “Lots of flim-flam, but very little reliable information. [...] If this data was presented by a PhD student at their committee meeting, I''d send them back to the bench to do more clean-up and controls.” She also opined on why the article was published: “I don''t know whether the authors are just bad scientists or whether they''re unscrupulously pushing NASA''s ''There''s life in outer space!'' agenda. I hesitate to blame the reviewers, as their objections are likely to have been overruled by Science''s editors in their eagerness to score such a high-impact publication.”Despite the fervor and immediacy of the blogosphere, it took Science and Felisa Wolfe-Simon, the lead author on the paper, nearly six months to respond in print. Eventually, eight letters appeared in Science covering various aspects of the controversy, including one from Redfield, who is now studying the bacteria in her lab. Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science, downplayed the role that blogging played in drumming up interest in the controversial study. “I am sure that the number of letters sent to us via our website reflected a response to the great publicity the article received, some of it misleading [...] This number was also likely expanded by the blogging activity, but it was not directly connected to the blogs in any way that I can detect,” he explained.Bloggers, of course, have a different take on the matter, arguing that it was another example of a growing number of cases of ''refutation by blog''. The blogging community heralds Redfield as a hero to science and science blogging. By now, more traditional science media outlets have also joined the bloggers in their skepticism over the paper''s claims, with many repeating the points Redfield made in her original blog response.Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Chicago in the USA, writes the blog Why Evolution is True (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com), which is a spinoff from his book of the same name. He said that bloggers, both professional scientists and journalists, have been gaining a new legitimacy in recent years as a result of things such as the arsenic bacteria case, as well as from shooting holes in the 2009 claims that the fossil of the extinct primate Darwinius masillae from the Messel Pit in Germany was a ''missing link'' between two primate species (Franzen et al, 2009). “[Blogging has] really affected the pace of how science is done. One of the good things about science blogging, certainly as a professional, is you''re able to pass judgment on papers instantly. You don''t have to write a letter to the editor and have it reviewed. [Redfield] is a good example of the value of science blogging. Claims that are sort of outlandish and strong can be discredited or at least addressed instantaneously instead of waiting weeks and weeks like you''d otherwise have to do,” he said.“... you''re able to pass judgment on papers instantly. You don''t have to write a letter to the editor and have it reviewed”Perhaps because of the increasingly public profile of popular science bloggers, as well as the professional and social value that is becoming attached to their blogs, science blogging is gaining in both popularity and validity. The content in science blogs covers a wide spectrum from genuine science news to simply describing training or running a lab, to opinionated rants about science and its social impact. The authorship is no less diverse than the content with science professionals, science journalists and enthusiastic amateurs all contributing to the melting pot, which also has an impact on the quality.Carl Zimmer is a freelance science journalist, who writes primarily for the New York Times and Discover Magazine, and blogs at The Loom (blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom). “Most scientists have not been trained how to write, so they are working at a disadvantage,” he said. “[Writing for them] would be like me trying to find a dinosaur. I wouldn''t do a very good job because I don''t really know how to do that. There are certainly some scientists who have a real knack for writing and blogs have been a fantastic opportunity for them because they can just start typing away and all of a sudden have thousands of people who want to read what they write every day.”Bora Zivkovic, who is a former online community manager at Public Library of Science, focusing mainly on PLoS ONE, is one of those scientists. A native of Belgrade, he started commenting in the mid-1990s about the Balkan wars on Usenet, an Internet discussion network. He began blogging about science and politics in 2004 and later about his interest in chronobiology, which stems from his degree in the topic from North Carolina State University. He still combines these interests in his latest blog, Blog Around the Clock (blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-blog-around-the-clock). Last year, Scientific American named Zivkovic its blog editor and he set up a blogging network for the publication. “There isn''t really a definition of what is appropriate,” he said. “The number one rule in the blogosphere is you never tell a blogger what to blog about. Those bloggers who started on their own who are scientists treasure their independence more than anything, so networks that give completely free reign and no editorial control are the only ones that can attract interesting bloggers with their own voices.”“The number one rule in the blogosphere is you never tell a blogger what to blog about”Daniel McArthur, an Australian scientist now based in the UK, who blogs about the genetic and evolutionary basis of human variation at Genetic Future (www.wired.com/wiredscience/geneticfuture), and about personal genomics at Genomes Unzipped (www.genomesunzipped.org), said that it is difficult to define a science blog. “I think it''s semantics. There are people like me who spend some time writing about science and some time writing about industry and gossiping about things in the industrial world. Then there are the people who write about the process of doing science. There are many, many blogs where [...] the content is much more about [the blogger''s] personal voyage as a scientist rather than the science that they do. Then there are people who use science blogging as an extra thing that they do and the primary purpose of their blog is to add political advocacy. I think it''s very hard to draw a line between the different categories. My feeling is that science bloggers should write about whatever it is they want to write about .”The ability to distribute your opinion, scientific or otherwise, online and in public is raising difficult questions about standards and the difference between journalism and opinion. Sean Carroll, who writes for the physics group blog Cosmic Variance (blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance), is a senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology in the USA. “Some blogging is indistinguishable from what you would ordinarily call journalism. Some blogging is very easily distinguishable from what you would ordinarily call journalism,” he said. “I think that whether we like it or not, the effect of the Internet is that readers need to be a little bit more aware of the status of what they are looking at. Is this something reputable? Anyone can have a blog and say anything, so that one fact is both good and bad. It''s bad because there is a tremendous amount of rubbish on the Internet [...] and people who have trouble telling the rubbish from the good stuff will get confused. But it''s also good because it used to be the case that only a very small number of voices were represented in major media.”Zimmer contrasts the independence of blogging with traditional journalism. “You really get to set your own rules. You''re not working with any editor and you''re not trying to satisfy them. You''re just trying to satisfy yourself. In terms of the style of what I do, I will tend to write more—I think of [my blog posts] as short essays, as opposed to an article in the New York Times where I''ll be writing about interviewing someone or describing them on a visit I paid to them. One of the great things about a blog is that it''s a way of making a connection with people who are your readers and people who are following you for a long time.”One of the world''s most popular scientist bloggers is Paul Zachary Myers, known as PZ, a biology professor at the University of Minnesota in the USA. He blogs at Pharyngula (scienceblogs.com/pharyngula), a site named for a particular stage in development shared by all vertebrate embryos. “Passion is an important part of this. If you can communicate a love of the science that you''re talking about, then you''re a natural for blogging,” he explained. “[Pharyngula] is a blog where I have chosen just to express myself, so self-expression is the goal and what I write about are things that annoy me or interest me.”“Passion is an important part of this. If you can communicate a love of the science that you''re talking about, then you''re a natural for blogging”Myers'' blog, which is driven by a mix of opinion, colourful science writing, campaigning against creationism and an unflinching approach to topics about which he is passionate, draws about 3 million visitors a month. He said his blog attracts more traffic than other blogs because it is not purely about science. “I do a lot of very diverse things such as controversial religious stuff and politics, and whatever I feel like. So I tap into a lot of interest groups and that builds up my rank quite a bit. I''d say there are quite a few other science blogs out there that are pure science blogs, but pure science blogs—where they just talk about science and nothing but science—cannot get quite as much traffic as a more broadly based blog.”In an example of his sometimes-incendiary posting, Myers recently took on the Journal of Cosmology regarding an article on the discovery of bacteria fossils in a meteorite. He said that the counterattack got personal, but that he usually enjoys “the push back” from readers. “That''s part of the argument. I would say that everyone has an equal right to make their case on the web. That''s sometimes daunting for some people, but I think it''s part of the give and take of free speech. It''s good. It''s actually kind of fun to get into these arguments.”Beyond the circus that can surround blogs such as Pharyngula, scientist bloggers are debating whether their blogging counts as a professional activity. Redfield said that blogging can be taken into account among the outreach some governments now require from researchers who receive public funds. She said that some researchers now list their blogging activity in their efforts to communicate science to the public.Coyne, however, does not share his interest in blogging with other senior faculty at the University of Chicago, because he does not believe they value it as a professional activity. Still, he said that he recognizes the names of famous scientists among his blog readers and argues that scientists should consider blogging to hone their writing skills. “Blogging gives you outreach potential that you really should have if you''re grant funded, and it''s fun. It opens doors for you that wouldn''t have opened if you just were in your laboratory. So I would recommend it. It takes a certain amount of guts to put yourself out there like that, but I find it immensely rewarding,” he said. In fact, Coyne has had lecture and print publishing opportunities arise from his blogs.“It opens doors for you that wouldn''t have opened if you just were in your laboratory [...] It takes a certain amount of guts to put yourself out there like that...”Redfield said she finds blogging—even if no one reads her posts—a valuable way to focus her thoughts. “Writing online is valuable at all levels for people who choose to do it. Certainly, by far the best science writing happening is in the community of writers who are considered bloggers,” she said.In terms of pay, science blogging usually remains in the ''hobby zone'', with pay varying widely from nothing at all to small amounts from advertising and web traffic. ''GrrlScientist'', an American-trained molecular evolutionary biologist based in Germany, who prefers to go by her nom de blog, has been blogging for seven years. She writes the popular Punctuated Equilibrium blog (www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium) for The Guardian newspaper in the UK, as well as Maniraptora (blogs.nature.com/grrlscientist) for the Nature Network, and is co-author of This Scientific Life (scientopia.org/blogs/thisscientificlife) for the science writing community Scientopia. She said she earns a small amount from ad impressions downloaded when her blog is viewed at The Guardian. On the other end of the scale is Myers, who declined to disclose his income from blogging. “It''s a respectable amount. It''s a nice supplement to my income, but I''m not quitting my day job,” he said.Yet bloggers tend not to do it for the money. “I know that when I go to give talks, the fact that I have the blog is one of the first things that people mention, and lots of students in particular say that they really enjoy the blog and that they''re encouraged by it,” Carroll explained. “Part of what we do is not only talk about science, but we act as examples of what it means to be scientist. We are human beings. We care about the world. We have outside interests. We like our jobs. We try to be positive role models for people who are deciding whether or not this is something that they might want to get into themselves one day.”The rise of the science blogosphere has not all been plain sailing. Although the Internet has been hailed as a brave new world of writing where bloggers can express themselves without interference from editors or commercial interests, it has still seen its share of controversy. The blogging portal ScienceBlogs was the launchpad for some of the best and most popular writers of the new generation of science bloggers, including Myers and Zivkovic. But an incident at ScienceBlogs shook up the paradise and raised journalistic ethical quandaries.In July 2010, a new site, Food Frontiers (foodfrontiers.pepsicoblogs.com), appeared on ScienceBlog, sponsored by PepsiCo, the makers of the popular drink. The blog featured posts written by the beverage maker''s representatives and was blended in with the other blog content on the portal. “Pepsi''s blog looked like my blog or PZ''s blog,” Zivkovic explained, “with no warning that this was paid for and written by Pepsi''s R&D or PR people [...] talking about nutrition from a Pepsi perspective, which is a breach in the wall between advertorial and editorial. The moment the Pepsi blog went live, about 10 bloggers immediately left.” He said that the journalist-bloggers in particular pointed to a break of trust that would sully the reputation of ScienceBlogs writers and confuse readers.In his final blog at the site, titled ''A Farewell to Scienceblogs: the Changing Science Blogging Ecosystem'', Zivkovic nailed the danger of the ''Pepsigate'' incident to the validity of the blogosphere. He wrote: “What is relevant is that this event severely undermined the reputation of all of us. Who can trust anything we say in the future? Even if you already know me and trust me, can people arriving here by random searches trust me? Once they look around the site and see that Pepsi has a blog here, why would they believe I am not exactly the same, some kind of shill for some kind of industry?” (scienceblogs.com/clock/2010/07/scienceblogs_and_me_and_the_ch.php). Myers, who at the time was responsible for more than 40% of the traffic at ScienceBlogs, went ''on strike'' to protest. In the aftermath, the Pepsi blog was pulled.Redfield raises another interesting word of caution. “Most scientists are extensively worried about being scooped, so they''re scared to say anything about what''s actually going on in their lab for fear that one of their competitors will steal their ideas,” she said. In this context, social networking sites such as ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net; Sidebar A) might be a more appropriate avenue for securely sharing ideas and exchanging tips and information because it enables users to control who has access to their missives.“... they''re scared to say anything about what''s actually going on in their lab for fear that one of their competitors will steal their ideas”

Sidebar A | ResearchGate—social media goes pro

Whenever she is looking for ideas for a research project, biologist Anne-Laure Prunier, who works in the Department of Cellular Biology and Infection at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, has recently turned to ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net), the scientists'' version of the social networking site Facebook. “Every time I have used ResearchGate, I found it really useful,” she commented.ResearchGate, based in Berlin, Germany and Cambridge, USA, is a free service that launched in January 2009. It was co-founded by Ijad Madisch, who earned his MD and PhD from the University of Hannover''s medical school in Germany and is a former research fellow at Harvard Medical School. He explained that his goal in starting the network was to make research more efficient. “During my research in Boston, I noticed that science is very inefficient, especially if you''re doing an experiment and trying to get feedback from people working on the same problem. You don''t have any platforms, online networks where you can go and ask questions or if you''re trying to find someone with a specific skill set. So I decided to do that on my own.”As a result, the site offers researchers functionality similar to Facebook—the modern template for social networking. Through ResearchGate, members can follow colleagues, be followed by those interested in their research, share their conference attendance and recent papers—their own or those that interest them—and most importantly, perhaps, ask and answer questions about science and scientific techniques.“You can get in touch with a lot of different people with a lot of different backgrounds,” Prunier explained. “When I have a very precise technical question for which I don''t find an answer in my institute, I turn to ResearchGate and I ask this question to the community. I have done it three times and every time I have gotten a lot of answers and comments, and I was able to exchange information with a lot of different people which I found really useful.”By May 2011, ResearchGate had reached one million members across 192 countries. The largest numbers of registrations come from the USA, the UK, Germany and India. Biologists, who are second only to medical doctors on the site, make up more than 20% of members. In addition to blogging, ResearchGate is just one example of how the Internet—originally invented to allow physicists to share data with one another—is changing the way that scientists communicate and share information with each other and the public.Carroll, on the other hand, who has been blogging since 2004, said that physicists are very comfortable about publicly sharing research papers with colleagues online. “The whole discussion gets very heated and very deep in some places about open access publishing. Physicists look on uncomprehendingly in fact because they put everything for free on line. That''s what we''ve been doing for years. It works.” But he said they are more cautious about blogging for a general audience. By contrast, he believes biology is especially well-suited to being blogged. “[Biologists are] actually more comfortable with talking to a wider audience because biology, whether it is through medicine or through debates about creationism or life on other planets or whatever, gets involved with public debate quite often.”Zivkovic agrees: “PZ [Myers] and me and a number of others are interested in reaching a broad lay audience, showing how science is fun and cool and interesting and important in various ways. Connecting science to other areas of life, from art to politics and showing the lay audience how relevant science is to everyday life”. Even so, he pointed out that although blogging is popularizing science with the public, there is a less-mainstream sphere serving professional scientists as a forum for surviving the cut and thrust of modern science. “There is a strong subset of the science blogosphere that discusses a life in science, career choices, how to succeed in academia [...] A lot of these are written by people who [...] believe that if their real names were out there it could jeopardize their jobs. They''re not interested in talking to lay audiences. They are discussing survival techniques in today''s science with each other and providing a forum for other young people coming into science.”Ultimately, whether you read popular science blogs, trawl deeper for survival tips, or write your own, the science blogosphere is expanding rapidly and is likely to do so for years to come.     

FROM SUGAR CANE TO 'SWORDS': HOPE AND THE EXTENSIBILITY OF THE GIFT IN FIJI

Hope has recently emerged as an important subject of inquiry in anthropology and social theory. This article examines the hope entailed in efforts to extend aspects of gift-giving to various other social and theoretical projects. I identify and contrast two different kinds of hope found in these efforts, which I will call 'hope in an end' and 'hope in the means'. The discussion focuses on two extensions of indigenous Fijian gift-giving: John D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan's recent analysis of Indo-Fijian sugar cane farmers'gift' of cane to an indigenous Fijian high chief in 1944; and the Fiji government Ministry of Tourism's efforts in the mid-1990s to train indigenous Fijian souvenir traders in a properly 'Fijian' manner of engagement with tourists. With this contrast, I argue that 'hope in an end' occludes 'hope in the means'.     

Information flow,opinion polling and collective intelligence in house-hunting social insects

The sharing and collective processing of information by certain insect societies is one of the reasons that they warrant the superlative epithet ''super-organisms'' (Franks 1989, Am. Sci. 77, 138-145). We describe a detailed experimental and mathematical analysis of information exchange and decision-making in, arguably, the most difficult collective choices that social insects face: namely, house hunting by complete societies. The key issue is how can a complete colony select the single best nest-site among several alternatives? Individual scouts respond to the diverse information they have personally obtained about the quality of a potential nest-site by producing a recruitment signal. The colony then deliberates over (i.e. integrates) different incoming recruitment signals associated with different potential nest-sites to achieve a well-informed collective decision. We compare this process in honeybees and in the ant Leptothorax albipennis. Notwithstanding many differences - for example, honeybee colonies have 100 times more individuals than L. albipennis colonies - there are certain similarities in the fundamental algorithms these societies appear to employ when they are house hunting. Scout honeybees use the full power of the waggle dance to inform their nest-mates about the distance and direction of a potential nest-site (and they indicate the quality of a nest-site indirectly through the vigour of their dance), and yet individual bees perhaps only rarely make direct comparisons of such sites. By contrast, scouts from L. albipennis colonies often compare nest-sites, but they cannot directly inform one another of their estimation of the quality of a potential site. Instead, they discriminate between sites by initiating recruitment sooner to better ones. Nevertheless, both species do make use of forms of opinion polling. For example, scout bees that have formerly danced for a certain site cease such advertising and monitor the dances of others at random. That is, they act without prejudice. They neither favour nor disdain dancers that advocate the site they had formerly advertised or the alternatives. Thus, in general the bees are less well informed than they would be if they systematically monitored dances for alternative sites rather than spending their time reprocessing information they already have. However, as a result of their lack of prejudice, less time overall will be wasted in endless debate among stubborn and potentially biased bees. Among the ants, the opinions of nest-mates are also pooled effectively when scouts use a threshold population of their nest-mates present in a new nest-site as a cue to switch to more rapid recruitment. Furthermore, the ants'' reluctance to begin recruiting to poor nest-sites means that more time is available for the discovery and direct comparison of alternatives. Likewise, the retirement of honeybee scouts from dancing for a given site allows more time for other scouts to find potentially better sites. Thus, both the ants and the bees have time-lags built into their decision-making systems that should facilitate a compromise between thorough surveys for good nest-sites and relatively rapid decisions. We have also been able to show that classical mathematical models can illuminate the processes by which colonies are able to achieve decisions that are relatively swift and very well informed.     

Just the Place is Different: Comparisons of Place and Settlement Practices of some Hong Kong Migrants in Sydney

Interviews with HK migrants in Sydney yield a diverse array of perceptions about their sense of space and position. These 'spatial stories' (following de Certeau) can be read as different ways of inhabiting the everyday, as narratives which may cut across the 'proper' spatial order. All the senses are brought into play in accounts of densities and absences in people's everyday world. Banal discourses about 'here' and 'there' provide migrant subjects with a means to evaluate their social and spatial trajectories by comparing the 'feel' of very different places and scales. I also point to the limits of such strategies, and the kind of memories which lie outside of discursive exchanges.     

Joan Heath interviews Suzanne Cory and Joan Steitz: a female perspective of science in the swinging ‘60s

Prompted by the occasion of International Women''s Day, Joan Heath and DMM reunited Professors Suzanne Cory and Joan Steitz via Zoom to discuss their extraordinary careers and joint experiences in science. They also delve into past and present challenges for women in science, and discuss the role of scientists in a post-pandemic world.

Suzanne Cory, Joan Steitz and Joan Heath (from left to right) As one of Australia''s most eminent molecular biologists, with a school in Melbourne bearing her name, Professor Suzanne Cory has been both Director of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia (WEHI) and President of the Australian Academy of Science. She earned her PhD at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK, with postdoctoral training at the University of Geneva. She continues her research at WEHI as an honorary distinguished research fellow, investigating the genetics of the immune system in the development of blood cancers and the effects of chemotherapeutic drugs on cancer cells.Joan Steitz – currently Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, and for 35 years the recipient of a Howard Hughes fellowship – is best known for her seminal work in RNA biology. She was the first female graduate student to join the laboratory of James Watson at Harvard University and proceeded with her postdoctoral training at the MRC LMB in Cambridge. Her pioneering research delved into the fundamental mechanisms of ribosome and messenger RNA interactions, as well as RNA splicing, heralding the phenomenon of alternative RNA splicing. A recipient of many awards and honours, she is also involved in international projects aimed at supporting women in science.Host Joan Heath heads a laboratory at WEHI in Australia. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge, followed by her PhD at the Strangeways Research Laboratory also in Cambridge, then just across the road from the MRC LMB. After postdoctoral positions in bone biology and osteoporosis research, Joan joined the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research where she became a laboratory head, and changed her focus to cancer research using zebrafish to identify genes that are indispensable for the rapid growth and proliferation of cells during development. She joined the WEHI in 2012. There she showed that the same developmental genes are also required by highly proliferative, difficult-to-treat cancers, including lung, liver and stomach cancer, paving the way for translational research targeting these genes in novel cancer therapies. Joan H: How long have you two known each other? Suzanne: I was calculating that this morning and I was astonished because it seems like only yesterday, but it has been 55 years since we met in Cambridge. It has been a voyage in science and a voyage in the world because we have always made a point to meet up in beautiful places and go hiking. That is how we''ve been able to renew our friendship over all these years. Joan H: Where were you when you first met? Joan S: We both were working at the MRC LMB in Cambridge, England. Suzanne was doing her PhD and I arrived slightly later for a postdoc.Suzanne: We had a pre-meeting in the sense that Joan, Jerry Adams (my future husband) and Tom Steitz (Joan''s husband), were all graduate students together in Harvard. So, when Joan and Tom came to Cambridge, it was natural that we would all start doing things together. And Joan and I ended up sharing a lab bench.Joan S: The reason that I did a postdoc in the mecca of X-ray crystallography was that I had married a crystallographer – and there was no other place that he could possibly go. They very much wanted to have my husband at the Cambridge MRC lab, but there wasn''t a clear plan for me. Francis Crick suggested that I do a literature project in the library, but I knew that theory was not my forte in comparison to experiments. I started talking to the many people working in the lab and found a project that no one wanted, because it was so challenging. But it was a very interesting problem, so I decided to take it on – and it turned out to be a great project.Joan H: That''s amazing. You were obviously determined to overturn other people''s expectations of you.Suzanne, even now, it''s extremely unusual for a young person to leave their home country to do their PhD. It''s still a brave thing to do but all those years ago it was really courageous. You told me that you ended up there because you wrote a simple letter, which was a complete shot in the dark.Suzanne: It certainly was. During my master''s degree at the University of Melbourne, I became more and more interested in doing science and decided I would do a PhD. But I had a counteracting desire to travel and see Europe. So I decided that I would do my PhD overseas to give myself the opportunity of travelling. I had fallen in love with DNA during my undergraduate studies. So, I wrote a letter to Francis Crick in Cambridge, and asked if he would take me on as a PhD student. Much to my amazement, I eventually got a letter back saying yes. I think that my professor of biochemistry might have also visited Cambridge while he was travelling and spoken up for me. However, I was still extraordinarily fortunate that Francis had agreed because there weren''t many PhD students in the LMB at that time. It made such a difference to my entire life. I look back on that letter and think, “How did you have the audacity to write that letter and aim to go to that laboratory?”. I think it was partly naivety.Joan H: That''s a lesson for everyone, to go for your dreams, and don''t assume people won''t take notice of you. It is more difficult now, when scientists receive hundreds of e-mail applications from prospective PhD students in their inbox. You would have written a letter with a stamp on it that probably took three weeks to arrive, but it just shows you that you should be audacious. Did you have a different experience to Joan when you arrived? Was there a proper project already lined up for you?Suzanne: I was interviewed by Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner, who were the joint directors of the department. They decided that I would work on the structure of the methionyl-tRNA that puts methionine into internal positions in polypeptides. After they described the project – which involved doing counter-current distribution fractionation of bulk tRNAs, in which I had no experience whatsoever – Sydney in his very characteristic monotone said, “Do you think you''re up to it?”. I sort of gulped to myself and said, “Yes, I think I could do that”. I then went to Brian Clark''s laboratory, who was going to be my PhD supervisor, and started the project. Like always in life, if you learn from people and just go from one day to the next, you actually get there in the end.Joan H: So, persistence was key. Were there many other women at the LMB at the time?Suzanne: I don''t remember any female scientists who had official senior positions. There were certainly some strong female scientists there, but I don''t think they were given the recognition or the status that they actually deserved.Joan S: Later, some were given more recognition, crystallographers in particular, but not so much the molecular biologists.Suzanne: I think, as women, we both pioneered in that department.Joan H: Given the fact that you both agreed to take on projects you had very little previous experience with and that the male supervisors thought you weren''t going to have the mettle to carry it through, once you were there, did you feel that you had to work the whole time? Or did you still manage to have lots of fun and partake in opportunities that Cambridge had to offer at the time?Joan S: We certainly partook in a lot of those things. My husband and I got interested in antique furniture, antique paintings, and used to scour the countryside for little antique shops. We saw lots of England, then a little bit of Scotland and Wales. It was wonderful. A real adventure.Suzanne: I worked really hard most of the time that I was in Cambridge, as the work was very exciting. But I would take holiday periods, camping and youth hostelling all over Europe with a girlfriend from Melbourne and later, travelling with Jerry. We also would go to London for the opera and looking for amazing clothes on Carnaby Street and Chelsea Road (this was the Beatles era, late 60s). Jerry once came back with a purple velvet suit, which was his prized possession for many years. There was lots of fun but also lots of work.Open in a separate windowJoan Steitz, Tom Steitz, Jerry Adams and Suzanne Cory (from left to right) in the Swiss Alps, 1970. Image courtesy of Mark Bretscher. This image in not reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. For permission to reproduce, contact the DMM Editorial office. Joan H: Can you remember the first moment in that part of your career that gave you the most pleasure? Joan S: I worked on a project for about a year, and it turned out that I was doing the wrong fractionation method to get the material that I needed to analyse. Then I had a conversation with Sydney Brenner telling him that I was going to give this one more try with a new method, and then I was going to give up. I remember Sydney saying, “Sometimes, like with a bad marriage, you have to give experiments one last try before you give them up.” Then I tried again, and it worked. This is often the case in science, that you try something new, that''s a little bit different, and it makes all the difference. Then you''re running.Suzanne: The same thing happened to me. I was labouring away on the counter current distribution machines fractionating methionine tRNA, with the goal of sequencing it by the laborious procedure recently published by Robert Holley. However, Fred Sanger, in the department upstairs, had invented a totally new method for sequencing using ³²P-labelled RNA. I desperately wanted to try this, so I managed to persuade my supervisor that we should change techniques. That change was key to my future because the approach was successful. I still remember to this day exactly where I was in Cambridge, walking on a Sunday afternoon, when the last piece of the puzzle dropped into place in my mind, and I had the entire sequence. In that moment, I was extremely joyful, because I knew I had my PhD and that I had succeeded. So that was my eureka moment.Joan H: Obviously, these were extremely productive years, and you''ve mentioned several Nobel Prize winners in your midst. It must have been the most inspiring environment, which I''m sure had a big impact on what you did next. By this stage in your career, were you already feeling ambitious or was it still your scientific curiosity that was driving your path?

“I expected that I would go back to the United States and be a research associate in some man''s lab […]. Then it turned out that people were more impressed than I thought and started offering me junior faculty jobs.”

Joan S: I had gotten a lot of recognition for having sequenced a piece of mRNA, using the same methods that Suzanne used to sequence tRNA. However, I had no expectations, because I had never seen a woman as a science professor, or head of a lab. I expected that I would go back to the United States and be a research associate in some man''s lab, and maybe they''d let me guide a graduate student. Then it turned out that people were more impressed than I thought and started offering me junior faculty jobs.My husband had already secured a junior faculty job in Berkeley before we even went to England, so we went back there after two years. My husband went to the chair of the department in Berkeley and put down letters on his desk of job offers that both of us had received for independent, junior faculty positions from several universities. The Chairman then said to Tom, “But all of our wives are research associates in our labs, and they love it”. This tore at my pride, as there had been a couple of universities that offered us both faculty jobs, and Berkeley was only offering one. So, we didn''t stay at Berkeley, and we came to Yale, which was wonderful.Suzanne: It''s really amazing to think that they gave you up. How foolish they were.Joan H: They''ve lived to regret it a million times over. Suzanne, at that point were you ready to climb this very difficult ladder?Suzanne: Like Joan, I didn''t have any expectations. For me, it was a matter of being able to continue discovering things in science. Jerry had already arranged to start a postdoc in Geneva. So, I applied for a postdoctoral fellowship, and obtained one. We went off together to Geneva to start our married life, and that was the beginning of us doing science together, which we''ve done ever since. I think without Jerry guiding me at that stage in my life, I would have probably drifted out of science. I don''t think I had the scientific confidence to ever think that I would be running a lab. For me, it was just continuing a voyage of discovery; and being lucky to end up in a wonderful scientific partnership and, through that partnership, my confidence grew over the years. Joan H: How many years after your postdoctoral training was it before you looked around your environment and had the confidence to think that you could be a lab or department head or could run an Institute? Joan S: I would say that confidence just grew. Tom and I were part of a departmental overhaul that involved hiring about six new people at Yale. We all stuck together, supported each other and were very collegial even though we worked in different areas. I think the collegial nature of the department in Yale helped me gain confidence. It was very scary at first because I didn''t know if I could write grants or direct people.Suzanne: Cambridge had an incredible influence, certainly over me, and I''m sure over Joan, Tom and Jerry, too. We looked around and saw all these amazing Nobel laureates, but also all these very ambitious, talented postdocs from around the world. I don''t think anyone thought about being the head of a department at that stage. We were simply striving to make discoveries and we gave each other mutual confidence, and stiff competition, too.The other thing that Cambridge gave us, was a new technology. For Joan and me, it was RNA sequencing. Being able to do that technology opened doors all around the world. I now always advise young people to go to the best place in the world to train in your chosen subject and acquire a new technology, because that will open the door to many opportunities in the future.Jerry and I made some excellent discoveries in Geneva, which were published in front-rank journals. Then it was time to move to full independence. I really wanted to go back to Australia but, as Jerry is an American, it was not at all obvious that he should take the big leap of moving to the bottom of the world and starting a lab there. I owe him a tremendous debt because he decided that he would take that risk.Earlier, whilst on our honeymoon, we had visited various labs in Australia. Although WEHI was an institute for immunology, a field we knew little about at that stage, it had the same atmosphere as the LMB in the sense that everyone was striving at the frontiers of science and competing with the rest of the world. We decided this was the only place in Australia that we would work at and that we would attempt to persuade the new director Gus Nossal that he needed molecular biologists. We had an interview with him in Switzerland and he offered us jobs as postdocs. Again, we were probably very naive and audacious but we told him we didn''t want to be postdocs – we wanted to run our own lab. And he agreed and we launched our fledgling lab together in 1971. What drove us was always discovery, rather than career ambitions.Joan H: You''ve both described these amazing sets of circumstances that were challenging but, nevertheless, very satisfying. However, a lot of things have since changed. What do you think are the main remaining barriers to women in science?Joan S: There is an important phenomenon called social identity threat, or stereotype threat, that I think still impedes women in proceeding in their careers. The phenomenon is described by cognitive psychologists as a reaction that all people experience if they feel that they are part of an undervalued minority. And so, by definition, since there are fewer women in science than there are men, women are being subjected to stereotype threat. Cognitive psychologists have studied the physiological manifestations of this, including increased heart rate and perspiration but, psychologically, they''ve also documented that cognitive learning and memory are impaired when one has these feelings.I first learned about this in 2007 and I looked back and realized why, for 30 years, when I''d been on committees as the only woman amongst ten men, I wouldn''t dare say anything – because I was frightened stiff. Men undergo this response, too, if they''re put into the situation of being undervalued. If you understand why you''re reacting the way you''re reacting and know that this is a normal human response, I think it helps you to overcome your own feelings of insecurity and allows you to go ahead. I always tell young women who I''m rooting for in science about this, because I want them to know that they will very likely end up feeling this way, and it''s a normal human response.

“One thing I sometimes get frustrated about is that we often need men to change things […] but what we really need are women in those high-level positions, so that they can be the champions of change.”

Joan H: There are other terms describing other relevant phenomena, such as unconscious bias, imposter syndrome and champions of change. One thing I really relate to is imposter syndrome. I''ve listened to webinars on this topic and they all reach a similar conclusion that we all feel the same. On the one hand, at the end of the webinar, you do feel somewhat elated to know that it''s not just you, and that it''s normal. But, on the other hand, it doesn''t really change things. It''s a recognition of what we feel, and we all get some help from that, but you really need opportunities to change things at a higher level. One thing I sometimes get frustrated about is that we often need men to change things, leading to this concept of male champions of change. I admire those men; but what we really need are women in those high-level positions, so that they can be the champions of change. Not having 50% of university departments and medical research institutes run by women still limits our full potential.Joan S: I certainly agree with you, Joan. It''s very important to have realistic role models. Suzanne being head of the WEHI for all those years has engendered all sorts of admiration.Joan H: During that period, Suzanne not only did fantastic science but our Institute doubled in size.It''s transformative when you have women making up 50% of people around the table. It''s no help just having a token female because that poor person''s not going to be able to change everything on her own. In American scientific institutions, are there any firm quotas for female scientists and other people that are underrepresented in science?Joan S: In recent years there has been a push in that direction. Sometimes it''s successful and sometimes it''s not. It is very different now compared to when there was no consciousness that this was unfair or that things could be better if we had real representation.Suzanne: I agree with both of you in everything that''s been said. While reflecting at this moment, what it says to me is that what''s really needed is societal change, and that we need to give courage to girls from the very earliest age. It should come naturally, they shouldn''t feel inferior, and others should not look at them as inferior. They should expect to have careers as well as families, be able to manage both and have somebody alongside them who helps them manage both.I think that affirmative action for women in science is necessary because the pace of change has been so slow. However, I also think quotas can be detrimental to the cause of women, in the sense that it''s then possible for people to say you only made it because there was a quota – which is very destructive. If I look back on our careers in science, it is clear that things have changed tremendously. Today there are more opportunities for women because many universities and institutes are bending over backwards to equalise things. The downside of this is that talented men may miss out on positions because of this policy and the pendulum could swing back.Joan H: The evidence shows that when more women are involved in things, those things go better. For instance, boards that have more women on them are more productive. Obviously, what you alluded to is there are lots of fantastic male scientists as well. The real issue here is there''s not enough funding to go round to support all the great men and women. But there are clearly enough good women around to be represented at the 50% level, without disproportionately disadvantaging male scientists.Joan S: Men and women are now operating on a more even playing field, which doesn''t mean that the men are missing out. They''re just in a more-competitive situation – as they should be. Joan H: Suzanne previously covered the specific advice she would give to young female researchers. Joan, do you have any other suggestions? Joan S: I encourage them to try lots of different things in science, and when they find something that really grabs them, then go for it and be persistent. We all know that science is very up and down. But if you keep pushing when you''re in a trough, it will always go back up again and you will succeed. That''s harder for a young person, who hasn''t experienced these troughs, to understand.Joan H: Yes, and the period when women scientists start having children is the hardest part. It''s still a choice that some women make, to take some years off and come back with a less ambitious plan for their career. Obviously, things like maternity leave payments and so on are improving but there''s no question that, in most circumstances, the research will slow down during that period.Suzanne: What I say to young women at that stage of their careers is that you have to be very focused, you must spend the time that you do have in a very focused manner, so that you can be the most productive you can be. But you have to be supported at home by your partner. If you''re both scientists it''s easier because you can appreciate why the other person is rushing into the lab late at night, for example, but for most people, that''s not true. So, what is really important is equal sharing of responsibilities from both partners when young families are around. And I think employers need to give both of those partners a longer time to achieve the kind of papers that they need to progress in their careers. That''s a period when it is much harder to be productive, and we need to continue to support people during that difficult phase of their careers because we''ve invested so much in them. They have so much to offer to science and to society, so to let them slip out at that stage is a great waste.Joan H: Let''s change tack a little bit and think about some of the broader challenges in science. What do you think the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us about the importance of clear scientific communication and real engagement with the community?Joan S: Whenever I talk to people about this, I very clearly make the point that it was decades of fundamental research that led to the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. If it hadn''t been for those fundamental discoveries in how cells and mRNA work, it would never have only taken 63 days from sequencing the virus to phase one clinical trials at Moderna. I try to point out to people that all the different discoveries coming in from different angles made that possible. I personally find it absolutely remarkable that all that knowledge could be harnessed, so very quickly. I''ve been doing fundamental research my entire life and I never expected to see it materialise in the way it has. It''s a wonderful reward. Joan H: Do you think this has resulted in the community appreciating scientists more? Joan S: I don''t think we''re far enough downstream to know that. In the US, there has been a congressional vote to abandon our maintenance of vigilance and preparedness for future pandemics – which seems ridiculous. Now we have all these procedures set up, all we have to do is maintain them for the next one. Whereas, if we just let go of these procedures, we''ll have to start over again for future pandemics. I guess we''re not good enough at communicating some of these things at this point.Joan H: Millions of people died from the virus and yet, if we hadn''t had the vaccines, the scale would have been even more horrific. If we were able to convey this information effectively to the public, then, hopefully, people would recognise that – as well as spending a fixed percentage of the gross domestic product on defence, for example – we should spend at least the same amount on science. Not only for pandemics but for tackling climate change and other pressing issues. I like to think this is an auspicious time but I don''t know whether we are really taking advantage of it.Suzanne: The pandemic has brought science and scientists to the forefront, and there has been a period of great respect for scientists having developed the vaccine. It''s an absolute miracle that it was done so fast and effectively. We''re very fortunate but, as Joan said, that was not luck. It was through investment in basic science for decades. We have to keep conveying this message, to our politicians in particular, so that they will keep supporting all kinds of scientists, because we never know what''s around the corner.Joan H: Certainly, people like Anthony Fauci in the US and Catherine Bennett in Melbourne, spoke eloquently and had a real talent for communicating things clearly and in a nutshell. That''s not something we''re all good at and it''s not something that is easy to train into people either. I think we all need to try to capture the attention of the community at large, by speaking plainly. I don''t think people understand that scientists are underfunded and could do so much more if funding was more generous.

“All I can say to young people is, if you really love science and have a passion for it, keep trying – because you will succeed if you put your whole heart and soul into this career path.”

Suzanne: I think the general public has no appreciation of how tenuous the life of a scientist can be, and how we are losing so many great minds entering the field because young people just finishing their PhDs look with dismay at how hard it is to support a career in science and get enough funding. There''s a tremendous waste of talent. All I can say to young people is, if you really love science and have a passion for it, keep trying – because you will succeed if you put your whole heart and soul into this career path.Joan H: This has been an absolutely fantastic discussion and it''s such a delight to talk to women who, after all these years, are still as passionate as ever and are pursuing their scientific subjects with the same vigour as they have all along.Suzanne: It''s been wonderful to talk with you, Joan, and I hope that we see each other soon, no matter what continent. And thank you, Joan Heath for getting us together and giving us this opportunity.     

Simulating the Evolution of the Human Family: Cooperative Breeding Increases in Harsh Environments

Verbal and mathematical models that consider the costs and benefits of behavioral strategies have been useful in explaining animal behavior and are often used as the basis of evolutionary explanations of human behavior. In most cases, however, these models do not account for the effects that group structure and cultural traditions within a human population have on the costs and benefits of its members'' decisions. Nor do they consider the likelihood that cultural as well as genetic traits will be subject to natural selection. In this paper, we present an agent-based model that incorporates some key aspects of human social structure and life history. We investigate the evolution of a population under conditions of different environmental harshness and in which selection can occur at the level of the group as well as the level of the individual. We focus on the evolution of a socially learned characteristic related to individuals'' willingness to contribute to raising the offspring of others within their family group. We find that environmental harshness increases the frequency of individuals who make such contributions. However, under the conditions we stipulate, we also find that environmental variability can allow groups to survive with lower frequencies of helpers. The model presented here is inevitably a simplified representation of a human population, but it provides a basis for future modeling work toward evolutionary explanations of human behavior that consider the influence of both genetic and cultural transmission of behavior.     

A novel 'sit and wait' reproductive strategy in social wasps

I present evidence indicating that a subset of spring females in the social wasp Polistes dominulus do not initiate colonies but rather ''sit and wait'' to adopt colonies initiated and abandoned by other conspecifics. These results are, to my knowledge, the first to demonstrate conclusively this alternative reproductive strategy in social wasps. Individuals engaging in the sit-and-wait strategy behave selfishly by adopting the most mature nests available; such nests will produce workers sooner than less mature nests and, consequently, are more likely to survive. The sit-and-wait reproductive strategy may safeguard an individual from early-season, foraging-related mortality as well as reduce early-season energy expenditure.     

Task Design Influences Prosociality in Captive Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Chimpanzees confer benefits on group members, both in the wild and in captive populations. Experimental studies of how animals allocate resources can provide useful insights about the motivations underlying prosocial behavior, and understanding the relationship between task design and prosocial behavior provides an important foundation for future research exploring these animals'' social preferences. A number of studies have been designed to assess chimpanzees'' preferences for outcomes that benefit others (prosocial preferences), but these studies vary greatly in both the results obtained and the methods used, and in most cases employ procedures that reduce critical features of naturalistic social interactions, such as partner choice. The focus of the current study is on understanding the link between experimental methodology and prosocial behavior in captive chimpanzees, rather than on describing these animals'' social motivations themselves. We introduce a task design that avoids isolating subjects and allows them to freely decide whether to participate in the experiment. We explore key elements of the methods utilized in previous experiments in an effort to evaluate two possibilities that have been offered to explain why different experimental designs produce different results: (a) chimpanzees are less likely to deliver food to others when they obtain food for themselves, and (b) evidence of prosociality may be obscured by more “complex” experimental apparatuses (e.g., those including more components or alternative choices). Our results suggest that the complexity of laboratory tasks may generate observed variation in prosocial behavior in laboratory experiments, and highlights the need for more naturalistic research designs while also providing one example of such a paradigm.     

Health inequalities: new concerns about the children of single mothers.

OBJECTIVES--To show that the exclusion from conventional class based analyses of child mortality of children whose parents are classified as "unoccupied" produces a misleading picture of health inequalities. DESIGN--Reanalysis of data published in the childhood supplement of the registrar general''s decennial supplement on occupational mortality in England and Wales, which compares numerator data for registrations of deaths in children over the age of 1 but below their 16th birthday in 1979, 1980, 1982, and 1983 with data about children aged 1-15 who were enumerated at the 1981 census. RESULTS--Parents who are classified as "unoccupied" largely consist of economically inactive single mothers. Their children are estimated to represent 89% of the 614,000 aged 1-15 classified as "unoccupied" in the childhood supplement. They have the worst mortality record of all social groups--an age specific death rate of 68.8/100,000 a year, 42% worse than in social class V (48.4/100,000) and worse than that of social class I (22.8) by a factor of 3. At older ages (10-15 years) these children have a relative risk of death of 4.14 relative to classes I and II; the risk is 2.58 in children 0-4 and 2.56 in those 5-9. Relative risks of child mortality in social classes I and II in comparison to classes IV and V suggests a progressive shallowing from 2.08 at ages 1-4 to 1.37 at ages 10-15. When unoccupied parents were combined with classes IV and V and compared with classes I and II, however, inequalities seemed to be pervasive throughout childhood; the relative risks were 2.21 for those aged 1-4 and 1.98 for those aged 10-15. CONCLUSION--Children classified as unoccupied are almost certainly living in poverty as well as experiencing relatively high risks of mortality. Class based analyses which exclude them therefore produce a misleading picture of inequalities in child health. The implications for health policy are profound. Strategies to promote the nation''s health should acknowledge the importance of material and social deprivation more explicitly.     

The Taste of Nationalism: Food Politics in Postsocialist Moscow

In this article I consider how Muscovites cultivate and express nationalist sentiments through their food choices. During the last ten years of the post-socialist transition, Russian consumers have encountered an expanding and increasingly transnational commodity market. Locally produced elements of Russian cuisine both compete with and imitate foreign food products. In response to perceptions that foreign cultures are displacing or subsuming local cultural forms, Russian officials have launched a 'Buy Russian' campaign. Domestic food producers, store clerks, and customers collaborate to classify foods and other products as either 'Ours'(Nash) or 'Not Ours' (Ne nash) and describe local goods as superior to foreign goods in terms of taste, quality, and healthfulness. In their own narratives about consumption choices, Muscovites echo these nationalist themes by explicitly linking their personal food experiences with broader political issues. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork on foodpractices in Moscow(1995-2001), I suggest that consumption strategies mediate Muscovites' experiences with growing nationalist sentiments in the context of a globalizing Russia.     

Wild justice and fair play: cooperation,forgiveness, and morality in animals

In this paper I argue that we can learn much about ‘wild justice’ and the evolutionary origins of social morality – behaving fairly – by studying social play behavior in group-living animals, and that interdisciplinary cooperation will help immensely. In our efforts to learn more about the evolution of morality we need to broaden our comparative research to include animals other than non-human primates. If one is a good Darwinian, it is premature to claim that only humans can be empathic and moral beings. By asking the question ‘What is it like to be another animal?’ we can discover rules of engagement that guide animals in their social encounters. When I study dogs, for example, I try to be a ‘dogocentrist’ and practice ‘dogomorphism.’ My major arguments center on the following ‘big’ questions: Can animals be moral beings or do they merely act as if they are? What are the evolutionary roots of cooperation, fairness, trust, forgiveness, and morality? What do animals do when they engage in social play? How do animals negotiate agreements to cooperate, to forgive, to behave fairly, to develop trust? Can animals forgive? Why cooperate and play fairly? Why did play evolve as it has? Does ‘being fair’ mean being more fit – do individual variations in play influence an individual's reproductive fitness, are more virtuous individuals more fit than less virtuous individuals? What is the taxonomic distribution of cognitive skills and emotional capacities necessary for individuals to be able to behave fairly, to empathize, to behave morally? Can we use information about moral behavior in animals to help us understand ourselves? I conclude that there is strong selection for cooperative fair play in which individuals establish and maintain a social contract to play because there are mutual benefits when individuals adopt this strategy and group stability may be also be fostered. Numerous mechanisms have evolved to facilitate the initiation and maintenance of social play to keep others engaged, so that agreeing to play fairly and the resulting benefits of doing so can be readily achieved. I also claim that the ability to make accurate predictions about what an individual is likely to do in a given social situation is a useful litmus test for explaining what might be happening in an individual's brain during social encounters, and that intentional or representational explanations are often important for making these predictions.     

Reputation,a universal currency for human social interactions

Decision rules of reciprocity include ‘I help those who helped me’ (direct reciprocity) and ‘I help those who have helped others’ (indirect reciprocity), i.e. I help those who have a reputation to care for others. A person''s reputation is a score that members of a social group update whenever they see the person interacting or hear at best multiple gossip about the person''s social interactions. Reputation is the current standing the person has gained from previous investments or refusal of investments in helping others. Is he a good guy, can I trust him or should I better avoid him as a social partner? A good reputation pays off by attracting help from others, even from strangers or members from another group, if the recipient''s reputation is known. Any costly investment in others, i.e. direct help, donations to charity, investment in averting climate change, etc. increases a person''s reputation. I shall argue and illustrate with examples that a person''s known reputation functions like money that can be used whenever the person needs help. Whenever possible I will present tests of predictions of evolutionary theory, i.e. fitness maximizing strategies, mostly by economic experiments with humans.     

Decoding the genetics of rare disease: an interview with Monkol Lek

Monkol Lek, Assistant Professor at Yale University School of Medicine, and Associate Editor at Disease Models & Mechanisms, dedicates his research to finding a genetic diagnosis and improving treatments for rare disease patients. As he originally studied computer engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, he now utilises computational methods to optimise large-scale genetic studies, provide globally accessible resources for genetic research communities and, importantly, resolve diagnostic odysseys for rare disease patients. Monkol completed his PhD in Prof. Kathryn North''s lab at the University of Sydney, studying the genetics of muscle strength and performance, and then continued his investigation of muscle disease in Prof. Daniel MacArthur''s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute. During his postdoc, he led several large-scale studies aimed at distinguishing pathogenic from benign variants, including the Exome Aggregation Consortium (ExAC) project ( Lek et al., 2016). Monkol established his own lab at Yale University School of Medicine, which continues to improve the diagnosis and treatment of rare muscle disease, and also focuses on underserved populations, whose genetic mutations are not as well characterised as those of European ancestry. In this interview, Monkol discusses how his own diagnosis with limb girdle muscular dystrophy has shaped his career and what he envisions for the future of genetic research in rare disease.

You have a very unique career path – could you tell us a little bit about that? My first degree was in computer engineering. When I first went to university, I studied the hardware and software of computers. I really liked the software aspect of the degree, and so I worked for IBM as a software developer when I finished university. However, during the last few years of university, I noticed that my muscles were getting weaker. My university was on a big hill, with classes at the bottom and top of the hill, and I had to stand up for about 3 h a day while commuting on public transport. It started becoming obvious that I had something wrong with my muscles because I felt totally exhausted at the end of the day. It was frustrating, because I felt that my performance at university was impacted by something that had nothing to do with my ability to think. So, I went from doctor to doctor to try to find out what was wrong with me. As a lot of doctors are not trained in rare diseases, they didn''t consider a rare disease diagnosis. Then one doctor did a blood test for creatine kinase (CK), which is leaked into the bloodstream when muscle is damaged. In healthy people, high levels of CK are detected in the bloodstream after they''ve done intensive exercise, like a marathon. If someone hasn''t done something like that, but they have high levels of circulating CK, it could be an indication that there''s something wrong with their muscles. As I had high levels of CK in my bloodstream, I then went to a neurologist, which was when I got a clinical diagnosis. At that point, they didn’t know the root cause of the problem, but they knew that I have a muscle disease based on several tests, including a nerve conduction test.I received this clinical diagnosis during my time in IBM, and that''s when I became dissatisfied with my job, because I felt that I was using all my talents to make a very big, international company richer. I was also becoming frustrated when visiting the neurologist every 6 months, as all they would tell me was that my muscles were getting weaker, which I already knew. I began to think that not much was happening in the neuromuscular disease field if that''s the best they could offer me. I wanted to know what the root cause of my disease was and if there were any treatment options. I came to the conclusion that no one would care about my disease more than I would, because I''m the one that has lived with it every day of my life.That''s when I decided to leave IBM and pursue a career in researching muscle disease. It didn''t go down well with my parents and friends, because I was leaving a well-paid job to go back to university to get paid nothing for an unknown number of years. If I had known my chances of success – completing a meaningful PhD, doing a meaningful postdoc and landing a faculty position – I wouldn''t have gone on this journey. I have been very fortunate, but I wasn''t always in the right place at the right time.When I finished my undergraduate degree in bioinformatics and physiology at the University of New South Wales, I started a PhD in Melbourne, but it didn''t work out, because not all supervisors are perfect. My wife and I then returned to Sydney, where my wife bumped into one of the professors from our undergraduate degree. She explained that we''d had a bad experience in Melbourne with our PhDs, but our passion was still to do muscle research. The professor''s daughter was researching muscle disease in Kathryn North''s lab at the University of Sydney, and she invited us to visit the lab. I was offered an opportunity to do my PhD in Kathryn''s lab, but I was initially reluctant as it was a diagnostic lab, and I was more interested in developing therapies for people with muscle disease. However, I thought I could still learn a lot about muscle physiology and, in the long term, I''m glad that I received training and mentorship from Kathy''s lab. Also, if I hadn''t done my PhD there, I wouldn''t have met Daniel MacArthur, my future boss. He was a very talented student in Kathy''s lab, who taught me a lot about scientific communication among other things, and I taught him some coding skills. He left to work on the 1000 Genomes Project in Cambridge, UK, but I kept in contact with him to get his advice on my project.When I was finishing my PhD, Daniel asked if I wanted to join the lab he was setting up in Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute. His lab was going to study common loss-of-function mutations in human populations using large datasets from the 1000 Genomes Project, but he offered me a project investigating neuromuscular diseases. As soon as I submitted my PhD thesis, I started working in his lab. This was perfect timing, because it was 2012, when exome sequencing had recently been published in the context of rare diseases (Ng et al., 2010) and, more importantly, it was becoming affordable, in terms of research. I waited over 10 years for a genetic diagnosis, so my goal was that no one should have to wait that long in the future.Through collaboration with our former PhD lab, Daniel and I used samples from undiagnosed patients to find answers for Australian families. The first family had two affected girls with undiagnosed nemaline myopathy, who had been on a diagnostic odyssey for about 9 years. It was amazing how quickly we progressed from receiving the samples to identifying the novel gene, LMOD3, associated with their disease (Yuen et al., 2014). This was part of my main project during my postdoc – working on gene discovery in neuromuscular diseases and finding answers for patients that have been waiting years and years to get a genetic diagnosis (Ghaoui et al., 2015; O''Grady et al., 2016).The project that most people know me for is the ExAC project, which was initially my ‘side’ project during my postdoc. The idea was to create a big database of all rare variants that we see in the general population, so we can better interpret the rare variants that we see in rare disease patients. When we were creating it, we thought that it may be useful to other researchers around the world. Therefore, we tried to ensure, through data-use agreements and consent processes, that we could share as many of our findings as possible. I''m happy to say my side project was quite successful. After that, I led other projects, including an analysis group in the Centre for Mendelian Genomics, to expand that framework and idea across all rare diseases, not just neuromuscular diseases (Baxter et al., 2022).I was having a lot of fun at the Broad Institute, and I was co-author on a lot of high-impact papers. However, the reason I left the Broad Institute was that I wanted to be involved in the full journey for the patients. Sometimes scientists don''t understand that getting a genetic diagnosis is not the end of the journey for a patient. After the diagnosis they want to know what treatment options are available. Yale gave me the opportunity to continue doing the gene discovery and analytical work that I was doing at the Broad Institute, plus the capability of doing experiments with mouse models to investigate gene replacement therapies and other therapeutic approaches.

“I waited over 10 years for a genetic diagnosis, so my goal was that no one should have to wait that long in the future.”

How has being both a researcher and a patient affected your career? When I was first diagnosed, there was a neurologist who discouraged me from researching my own disease and this became the basis of my TEDx talk, because I thought it was very condescending. I thought, “Just because I have this disease, it doesn''t mean that I have a low IQ”. However, this experience motivated me more. I discussed it with Kathy before starting my PhD, and her encouragement and enthusiasm was refreshing. At the time, in the early 2000s, people hadn''t accepted the idea of patients researching their own disease. Things have changed since then, mainly because there are more examples of it now (Branca, 2019), but at the time, it was really hard for me to progress in science. I always thought that people were looking at me with sympathy, and I felt like I had to achieve twice as much to get the same respect as someone else who wasn''t as talented or didn''t work as hard as me. It was frustrating, but in everyday life people still correlate physical disability with intellectual disability. For example, if my wife is pushing me in the wheelchair in public, no one ever directs a question to me because they assume that the physical disability comes with mental disabilities. There are well-known examples of scientists with physical disabilities, like Stephen Hawking, but it is still challenging in academia when you have a physical disability and people make certain assumptions about you.On the other hand, just before starting at Yale, my collaborators at the University of Massachusetts took a skin biopsy from me. With this skin biopsy, they created induced pluripotent stem cells, and, using CRISPR, they corrected my disease-associated gene variant in the cultured cells. They then published this in a Nature article, in which fig. 1 is the experiment in which they corrected my mutation (Iyer et al., 2019). Are there specific skills or knowledge you learned while working in computer engineering that have helped shape and develop your research today? When I started my PhD, there was an increase in how much genetics research, and biological research in general, relied upon big data. It can be very challenging to work with big data if you''re a biologist without a background in computer science. You can go online to teach yourself to an extent, but it gives you an advantage to learn the theory behind a lot of algorithms and other aspects of software engineering, in a formal setting. It makes the difference between building tools that take a week to analyse a set of data and building tools that take a few minutes to analyse the same data. If you can analyse the data more quickly, you can explore different possibilities and ideas much more quickly. You can''t learn everything online, and having a firm foundation of knowledge can enable you to work with big data in an efficient way.The other thing that you learn from computer science is a certain mindset when approaching problem solving. This is because you have to debug code frequently and, due to this fast pace, you learn quickly. This helped me to troubleshoot problems in biological research quickly.

“Getting a genetic diagnosis is not the end of the journey for a patient. After the diagnosis they want to know what treatment options are available.”

What do you think are the key challenges for rare disease research and diagnosis moving forward? I now have a greater appreciation of the challenges because I see it from two points of view: one as a researcher in a group and one as a PI, who leads the research. The diagnosis rate for rare disease is about 50%, so there are still 50% of patients with a disease that has an unknown genetic cause. The gold standard requirement for associating a new disease gene with a novel phenotype is that it presents in multiple unrelated families (MacArthur et al., 2014). However, when you work with rare diseases, there is the issue of small sample numbers. One challenge for basic scientists is creating good collaborations with physician scientists across the world to enable you to create a large enough dataset.The other challenge is the cost of research for these diseases with unknown genetic cause. The 50% of cases for which we know the genetic cause are no longer considered an area of research, as clinical genetic services can now diagnose these patients. To diagnose the remaining patients, you have to use more expensive technologies, such as long-read sequencing.The last thing is the interpretation of rare variants. Although the ExAC project helped with this, there is still a challenge. For example, if a patient has a rare genetic variant, this doesn''t necessarily mean it is the cause of their rare disease. This is because even healthy people have rare variants. So, we have a massive interpretation challenge in rare disease genetics, which can be overcome by creating a laboratory model system with that genetic variant to investigate it further. However, if you had 1000 variants to consider, it''s not going to scale as an animal model. So, an important question is how can we interpret these variants in a scalable manner? This is one of the main driving forces behind the new Subject Focus, ‘Genetic variance in human disease: decoding diversity to advance modern medicine’, that we are launching in DMM. You have led and coordinated several studies involving very large cohorts. From your experience what are the key components of a successful study? I think the key to a successful large cohort study with unsolved rare disease patients, is the amount of structured phenotype data you can collect. This requires a good collaborator, who has the time to prepare that data in a meaningful way, which makes it easier to find other families with the same rare disease. The other thing is to have the ability to recontact patients and collect different samples from them, because we''re moving to a more multi-omics world. Therefore, we need the ability to go beyond just collecting DNA samples. Also, we''re in a world where we''re starting to link data to electronic health records, which allows the collection of deeper and richer phenotype data that enable associations to be made between families.In addition, you can''t work in isolation. In order for us to make a meaningful impact, we need to work with groups that have specialties outside of our own. For instance, we collaborate with groups that specialise in the interpretation of non-coding variants. This is important as variants in these regions could hold the answers for some of those unsolved cases.Another key aspect to a successful study is collaboration with statistical geneticists because some of the more complicated questions are best asked by them. Some of these questions go beyond monogenic diseases. We are seeing convergence between genome-wide association studies, looking for many variants, each with very small contributions to a disease, and studies of Mendelian disease that are looking for one gene that causes disease. The field has to start looking at diseases in the middle of this spectrum, which requires statistical geneticists. This is because you need to make sure that your conclusions are correct. For instance, if you''re asking whether a rare disease is caused by a combination of two genes, then you must have a robust statistical model to show that these variants aren''t presenting together by chance. You have to prove that those two variants are acting in concert, instead of independently, to cause this disease. My colleagues at Yale published a great paper that demonstrated this concept (Timberlake et al., 2016).Lastly, it is important to forge meaningful collaborations beyond academia. A lot of my colleagues are being funded by industry collaboration, and a lot of these companies have access to more samples than we do in academia. You can also collaborate with large biobanks, such as the UK Biobank, which has a rich set of phenotype data and also the ability to recontact patients (Glynn and Greenland, 2020). The FinnGen project is a recent public–private collaboration that combines genetic data with electronic health records from Finnish biobank participants to improve disease diagnosis and treatment (Kurki et al., 2022 preprint). So, working with biobanks and industry is another way of increasing sample numbers, which is the biggest challenge in rare disease research.

“We don''t want to create disparity in terms of health, especially in the context of genetics, which will continue to become more prominent in modern medicine.”

You dedicate a lot of your research towards patients in underserved populations, such as East Asian populations, whose genetic mutations are not as well characterised as those of European ancestry. Can you explain the importance of this? One of the reasons that it took over 10 years for me to get a genetic diagnosis was because the gene that causes my disease was first reported as not commonly associated with disease in populations of European ancestry. The problem with biomedical research is that when people read that, they think it applies to everyone, even patients who have non-European ancestry. Although the gene that causes my disease aligned with my muscle disease phenotype, it wasn''t sequenced because of this assumption. They only decided to sequence this gene once they did linkage analysis of my family, and this was the only gene associated with neuromuscular disease in the linkage region they identified. This is the reason why we need to have good data on all populations. The ExAC and gnomAD studies that I worked on acknowledged that we need good allele frequency data for populations of East Asian, South Asian, Latino and African ancestry, because we don''t want to create disparity in terms of health, especially in the context of genetics, which will continue to become more prominent in modern medicine.If you want to deliver the best healthcare, you have to realise that some variants and diseases are more common in certain populations, such as Tay-Sachs disease, which is common amongst the Jewish community, and sickle cell anaemia, which is more prevalent in populations of African ancestry. By understanding these differences, we can actually find a genetic diagnosis a lot quicker. If it''s not a de novo variant, and is instead a variant inherited in the population, and if you''ve made the discovery in East Asians, there is a better chance of identifying more incidences of this variant in the population in which it was first discovered.I think it''s also good for validation of data, because if you had discovered a potential disease-causing variant and you find that this variant has a frequency of 1% or higher in a non-European population, then it''s impossible for it to be the cause of a rare disease, regardless of its frequency in a European population (Lek et al., 2016).     

The Social Bayesian Brain: Does Mentalizing Make a Difference When We Learn?

When it comes to interpreting others'' behaviour, we almost irrepressibly engage in the attribution of mental states (beliefs, emotions…). Such "mentalizing" can become very sophisticated, eventually endowing us with highly adaptive skills such as convincing, teaching or deceiving. Here, sophistication can be captured in terms of the depth of our recursive beliefs, as in "I think that you think that I think…" In this work, we test whether such sophisticated recursive beliefs subtend learning in the context of social interaction. We asked participants to play repeated games against artificial (Bayesian) mentalizing agents, which differ in their sophistication. Critically, we made people believe either that they were playing against each other, or that they were gambling like in a casino. Although both framings are similarly deceiving, participants win against the artificial (sophisticated) mentalizing agents in the social framing of the task, and lose in the non-social framing. Moreover, we find that participants'' choice sequences are best explained by sophisticated mentalizing Bayesian learning models only in the social framing. This study is the first demonstration of the added-value of mentalizing on learning in the context of repeated social interactions. Importantly, our results show that we would not be able to decipher intentional behaviour without a priori attributing mental states to others.     

False friends are worse than bitter enemies: “Altruistic” punishment of in-group members

One of the most critical features of human society is the pervasiveness of cooperation in social and economic exchanges. Moreover, social scientists have found overwhelming evidence that such cooperative behavior is likely to be directed toward in-group members. We propose that the group-based nature of cooperation includes punishment behavior. Punishment behavior is used to maintain cooperation within systems of social exchange and, thus, is directed towards members of an exchange system. Because social exchanges often take place within groups, we predict that punishment behavior is used to maintain cooperation in the punisher's group. Specifically, punishment behavior is directed toward in-group members who are found to be noncooperators. To examine this, we conducted a gift-giving game experiment with third-party punishment. The results of the experiment (N=90) support the following hypothesis: Participants who are cooperative in a gift-giving game punish noncooperative in-group members more severely than they punish noncooperative out-group members.     

Mutualism, parasitism and competition in the evolution of coviruses

Coviruses are viruses with the property that their genetic information is divided up among two or more different viral particles. I model the evolution of coviruses using information on both viral virulence and the interactions between viruses and molecules that parasitize them: satellite viruses, satellite RNAs and defective interfering viruses. The model ultimately, and inevitably contains within it single-species dynamics as well as mutualistic, parasitic, cooperative and competitive relationships. The model shows that coexistence between coviruses and the self-sufficient viruses that spawned them is unlikely, in the sense that the quantitative conditions for coexistence are not easy to satisfy I also describe an abrupt transition from mutualistic two-species to single-species dynamics, showing a new sense in which questions such as ''Is a lichen one species or two?'' can be given a definite answer.