1,721,078 research outputs found
The evolution of social systems in human and non-human primates
Full text linkFrom a Darwinian perspective, both history and environment are causal factors for change in animal social behaviour. Because behaviour leaves no fossil evidence researchers have focused on how social systems help animals and humans adapt to their current environments and have only been able to make tentative suggestions about how such systems may have evolved. However, a new theoretical framework, based on Darwin’s insights, allows phylogenetic relatedness to be incorporated into comparative analyses to discover the ancestral states of social behaviour and the ultimate drivers of change in human and primate societies. This thesis uses these new methods to investigate the history and drivers of change in human and primate sociality and proposes a new model of primate social evolution. Analyses of mating systems suggest that social monogamy in humans and other primates is the result of infanticide risk brought about by life history changes. These methods were also able to reveal how changes in inheritance rules to matriliny among Bantu-speaking societies, contributed to a switch to matrilocal residence, which in turn contributed to a change from polygynous marriage to monogamy. Cultural history effects change in both descent and residence patterns, while geographical proximity also affects descent, but residence and environmental factors drive changes in marriage. This approach may provide a way for the various schools for the study of human and primate social behaviour to collaborate more closely and provide ultimate answers to the drivers of change in human society
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Social complexity: Patterns, processes, and evolution
No full textAnimal and human societies exhibit extreme diversity in the size, composition and cohesion of their social units, in the patterning of sex-specific reproductive skew, in the nature of parental care, in the form and frequency of cooperation and in their competitive regime, creating a diversity of socially complex societies. However, there is an ongoing debate about whether social complexity is a real, emergent property of a society or whether it only provides a conceptual framework for studying the diversity and evolution of societies. In this introduction to our topical collection, we identify three areas of current research addressing relevant challenges in the study of social complexity. First, previous studies have suffered from a lack of a common conceptual framework, including shared definitions, and existing measures of social complexity do not acknowledge its multiple components and dimensions. Second, most previous studies have ignored intraspecific variation, and the proximate and ultimate determinants of variation in social complexity, as well as their interactions, remain poorly known. Third, comparative studies of social complexity offer opportunities to explore its biological causes and correlates and but it is frequently difficult to identify the causal relationships involved and the development of general insights has been hampered by conceptual and methodological difficulties. In this paper, we briefly characterize these three challenges and offer guidance to the other contributions to this topical collection on social complexity by placing their key results in the context of these three topics
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
An anthropological assessment of Neanderthal behavioural energetics
No full textThe debate on Neanderthal social and symbolic capabilities is one of the fundamental issues of Palaeolithic archaeology, with the archaeological record suggesting that Neanderthals did not display the same range and variability of behaviours as anatomically modern humans (AMH). This lack of evidence has often been attributed to the cognitive superiority of AMH over Neanderthals. The reliance on the material record alone, however, neglects a range of non-material behaviours that are arguably of equal importance to understanding the cognitive abilities of this species, but which leave no archaeological traces.
This thesis presents an alternative approach to the interpretation of Neanderthal social behaviour that is based on ethnographic modelling drawn from contemporary hunter-gatherers and applied to the archaeological records of Neanderthals and AMH living in Europe during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (60-30ka). The aim of this thesis is to highlight Neanderthal behavioural responses to fluctuations in environmental productivity and to compare these to the behaviours of AMH in the earlier Upper Palaeolithic to determine if any significant differences existed between the two species.
The thesis employs a range of ethnographic and archaeological data which relate to a range of material and non-material social and symbolic behavioural expressions, such a rites of passage, cooperative hunting, care for the elderly, and prestige hierarchies that are not typically inferred from the archaeological record. The ethnographic record allows for the quantification of such behaviours so that correlations can be made between social expressions (cohesion, control etc) that can then be inferred from the material record. Statistical tests, including General Linear Modelling, were employed to determine the robustness of these correlations. The ethnographic model was applied to the archaeological record of the Upper Palaeolithic prior to its being applied to the Neanderthal record of OIS-3 to determine the suitability of applying it to prehistoric contexts.
Results show that both Neanderthals and AMH employed similar behavioural mechanisms for coping with resource stress in relation to social cohesion, though individual expressions varied between the two species depending on their environmental contexts. Analysis suggests that the Neanderthal capacity for spiritual and material expression was hindered by demographic and physiological constraints rather than any differences in cognitive capacity. Finally, analysis shows that Neanderthals employed optimal behavioural capacities throughout the Middle Palaeolithic and were a much more behaviourally variable hominid than previous interpretations of the archaeological record have suggested
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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