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Cells evolved some 4 billion years ago, and since then the integrity of the structural and functional continuity of cellular life has been maintained via highly conserved and ancient processes of cell reproduction and division. The plasma membrane as well as all the cytoplasmic structures are reproduced and inherited uninterruptedly by each of the two daughter cells resulting from every cell division. Although our understanding of the evolutionary emergence of the very first cells is obscured by the extremely long timeline since that revolutionary event, the generally accepted position is that the de novo formation of cells is not possible; all present cells are products of other prior cells. This essential biological principle was first discovered by Robert Remak and then effectively coined as Omnis Cellula e Cellula (every cell of the cell) by Rudolf Virchow: all currently living cells have direct structural and functional connections to the very first cells. Based on our previous theoretical analysis, all cells are endowed with individual sentient cognition that guides their individual agency, behaviour and evolution. There is a vital consequence of this new sentient and cognitive view of cells: when cells assemble as functional tissue ecologies and organs within multicellular organisms, including plants, animals and humans, these cellular aggregates display derivative versions of aggregate tissue‐ and organ‐specific sentience and consciousness. This innovative view of the evolution and physiology of all currently living organisms supports a singular principle: all organismal physiology is based on cellular physiology that extends from unicellular roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally defined as the science of the living, or as the field that beyond anatomical structure and bodily form studies functional organization and behaviour, physiology has long been excluded from evolutionary research. The main reason for this exclusion is that physiology has a presential and futuristic outlook on life, while evolutionary theory is traditionally defined as the study of natural history. In this paper, I re‐evaluate these classic science divisions and situate physiology within the history of the evolutionary sciences, as well as within debates on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and the need for a Third Way of Evolution. I then briefly point out how evolutionary physiology in particular contributes to research on function, causation, teleonomy, agency and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among biologists and philosophers, there is an ongoing debate over the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Some argue that our current evolutionary biology is in need of (at least) some substantial revision or nontrivial extension, while others maintain that the Modern Synthesis remains the foundational framework for evolutionary biology. It has been widely debated whether the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis provides a more promising framework than the Modern Synthesis. The nature and methodological implications of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis were also examined. This paper offers an integrated historical and philosophical examination of the debate over the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. It reviews the development of evolutionary biology of the twentieth century. It argues that there are substantial conceptual and theoretical differences between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, but they are not incommensurable paradigms in the Kuhnian sense. It also argues for a functional approach to the debate over these two frameworks of evolutionary theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advocates for a deeper engagement with the organizational structures that shape the governance of research ethics in anthropology. The authors argue that anthropological critiques of bureaucracy often sidestep the kinds of knowledge needed to pursue meaningful institutional change. They show how different regulatory dynamics and organizational arrangements across jurisdictions produce more or less responsive bureaucracies, comparing Institutional Review Boards in the United States with a case study of a European university's Ethics Review Committee. The authors suggest that such organizational understandings of bureaucratic processes can more meaningfully inform their redesign and contribute to developing more appropriately scaled ethics governance. In so doing, ethics review promises greater responsiveness to the particular demands of ethnographic research while remaining legible to regulatory stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on world news briefs. Topics include new discovery showing a well-known image in anthropology circles, the March of Progress depicting evolution as a linear path from apes to humans; and Philip Jagessar's examination of the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI), led by George Grierson from 1896 to 1928, critically analyzes this vast project's effort to classify India's languages.

This article discusses the methodological and ethical challenges posed by the bureaucratization of research ethics in Eastern Europe, particularly as this impacts the practice of anthropology and fieldwork. It reflects on the authors' extensive fieldwork among Czech‐speaking Protestants in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, highlighting the discrepancy between Western and Eastern European academic norms regarding ethnography. The authors argue that increased formalization and ethical regulation favour more easily bureaucratically managed methodologies, to the detriment of traditional anthropological fieldwork, which is critical for deep cultural understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critiques the expanding influence of research ethics committees (RECs) on social research, emphasizing their adverse effects on ethnographic methodologies. It argues that the bureaucratization of ethics, emphasizing compliance over contextual understanding, fundamentally misunderstands and impedes the nuanced nature of ethnographic work. Drawing on personal experiences and broader critiques, the article proposes the need for an alternative system that better accommodates the ethical complexities of social research, advocating for a more tailored approach that respects disciplinary methodologies and fosters genuine ethical engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (1866), Ernst Haeckel systematised the biological study of morphology along evolutionary lines and proposed that the 'Anthropozoic Age' should be considered the most recent paleontological time period. This article first examines Haeckelʼs early concept of the Anthropozoic Age in relation to his ambiguous use of the words 'Nature' and 'Culture' in his life's work. It then illustrates how his later travel narrative, Indische Reisebriefe (1882), projects notions of the Anthropozoic Age onto landscapes from his journey to British‐governed Ceylon. Haeckel presents two diverging paleontological timescales: a deep and interconnected past of the island's organisms and the currently escalating consequences of human cultivation of the land. Lending different scientific and aesthetic attention to the depiction of the two environmental developments, discrepant images are fused in his hopes and visions of a new and better 'Age of Culture'. The travel report is thus a very early literary response to the scientific concept of living during a time in which humanity dominates the world's environments. From today's perspective, the text raises familiar questions regarding how humans should conceive their own agency in the Anthropocene. At the same time, it highlights the concept's entanglement with contemporary philosophical and socio‐political discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benatar argues that the absence of cosmic meaning is part of the reason why our lives are so bad that we had better not procreate. The goal of this paper is to argue against this claim from a Kantian point of view. For this goal, I argue first that the fact that human life is a product of blind evolution is not a reason for justifying that our lives are overall bad, mainly on the grounds that the concepts of good and bad make sense only within the logical space of reasons. I also argue that the fact that we can hardly make a significant difference to the universe is not a reason for justifying that our lives are overall bad, either, mainly on the grounds that whether one's life is good or bad can be evaluated primarily in terms of whether one's permissible ends are achieved to a satisfactory extent, and so one's good life does not depend on making a significant difference to the universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NPR runs a program about entrepreneurs called, "How I Built This." By contrast, the song "Solidarity Forever" says, "It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade/Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid." In this article, I examine two ways to conceptualize the production of goods and services: individualistically or holistically. At issue is whose activity has significant social value. Following a thought from Elizabeth Anderson, I develop and defend a holist view of productivity. I argue that the central issue is normative: how is it best to regard the social phenomenon of extensive joint production and provision of goods and services? I begin by distinguishing different cases of joint productivity in order to focus on large scale activities. I then argue that the concept of marginal contribution does not provide a basis for viewing productivity individualistically. Overall, non‐normative arguments underdetermine the best way to regard our productive activities. I go on to present normative arguments in favor of regarding our joint productive activities holistically. I end by distinguishing four species of productivity holism and by noting issues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the mid-twentieth century adoption of genetic explanations for three biological phenomena: nutritional adaptation, antibiotic resistance, and antibody production. This occurred at the same time as the hardening of the neo-Darwinian Synthesis in evolutionary theory. I argue that these concurrent changes reflect an ascendant narrative of genetic selfhood, which prioritized random hereditary variation and selection through competition, and marginalized physiological or environmental adaptation. This narrative was further reinforced by the Central Dogma of molecular biology and fit well with liberal political thought, with its focus on the autonomous individual. However, bringing biological findings into line with this narrative required modifying the notion of the gene to account for various kinds of non-Mendelian inheritance. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's reflections on narrative and experiment are valuable in thinking about the friction between the postwar ideal of genetic selfhood and actual observations of how organisms adapt in response to the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When we survey the current theoretical landscape, we find two distinct approaches to the analysis of worldviews. The systemic approach centers on responses to fundamental worldview questions (aka "big questions"); the cognitive‐behavioral approach focuses on the processes that give rise to behaviors that express worldviews. If we think of worldviews as subjective representations of the environment, that is, subjective "worlds," we can think of the first approach as a means of eliciting, documenting, and comparing "worlds‐made" and the second as a framework for understanding the nonconscious processes of "world‐making." It is not clear, however, how the two approaches are related. If human answers to the fundamental worldview questions are simply reflective additions to underlying cognitive processes, we would anticipate that worldview conflicts could be resolved relatively easily. If the implicit answers are embedded in nonconscious processes that are presupposed by various ways of life, we would expect that the process of resolving conflicts would be much more complex. An evolutionary approach, which views world‐making as an evolved capacity, not only suggests that the latter is the case, but also offers a way to integrate the two approaches. If, as an evolutionary approach would suggest, all mobile organisms must implicitly answer basic, species‐appropriate versions of the big questions in order to survive, then we can integrate the two approaches by defining worldviews in terms of simplified big questions that allow for both proximate and ultimate answers. This allows us to embed the systemic framework in an agent‐based cognitive‐behavioral process grounded in the everyday life and behavior of humans and other animals. The article is divided into three parts. The first demonstrates how we can use simplified versions of the big questions to integrate the systemic and cognitive‐behavioral approaches, ground the big questions in ways of life, and shift between systemic and agent‐based perspectives. The second offers more refined analytic concepts—modes, scale, and scope—for characterizing this dynamic, multilevel approach to worldviews. The third offers several comparisons to illustrate the benefits of this more‐nuanced approach in the context of conflict resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directed panspermia is the deliberate seeding of lifeless planets with microbes, in the hopes that, over evolutionary timescales, they will give rise to a complex self‐sustaining biosphere on the target planet. Due to the immense distances and timescales involved, human beings are unlikely ever to see the fruits of their labours. Such missions must therefore be justified by appeal to values independent of human wellbeing. In this article, I investigate the values that a directed panspermia mission might promote. Paying special attention to the outcome in which sentient animals evolve, I argue that we have strong reasons to believe the value of a mission would be negative. Research on wild animal suffering has shown that there is a huge amount of suffering among wild animals on Earth. I argue that there are structural features of evolution by natural selection which explain the prevalence of suffering on Earth and make it predictable that suffering would prevail on the target planet too. Finally, using insights from procreative ethics I argue on non‐consequentialist grounds that creators have duties to their sentient creations which cannot be met in directed panspermia missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Face swiping is the action of registering facial recognition data with a biometric authentication application. Face swiping‐based medical services (FSMSs) is an emerging measurement technology underpinning modern intelligent medical services in China. In view of convenience in the delivery of medical services and the potential to reduce medical costs, FSMSs have become an important part of China's medical reform. However, modelling its eventual uses has not been fully explored in theory and practice, and this is hindering the take up of FSMSs in China. In this paper, we build an evolutionary game model to explore three stakeholders—policy makers, hospitals, and patients—and their dynamic interdependence of their decision‐making when adopting FSMS. Based on our game theoretic analysis, we develop a novel model to track the behaviour of these three stakeholders and analyse the corresponding payoff matrix to establish the replication dynamic equation (RDE) for the game. Further, we then use RDE to calculate the different stability points of players and determine the game's stable strategy. Finally, we validate the proposed model with a detailed simulation. Our observations may benefit not only FSMS participants but also several other forms of medical services and industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1992, Norm Sauer called for a language shift in which practitioners would move away from the socially loaded term "race" and replace it with the less provocative term "ancestry." While many heeded the call and moved towards ancestry in their research and reports, the actual approach to research and analysis did not change. In response to this change, there was a large growth in ancestry estimation method development in the early decade of the 2000s. However, the practice of ancestry estimation did not adequately incorporate evolutionary theory in interpretation or trait selection and continued with little critical reflection. In the past decade, there has been an increase in ancestry validation methods with little critique of the "race" concept or discussion of modern human variation or reference samples. To advance, forensic anthropologists need to reckon with the practice of ancestry estimation as it is currently practiced. We are calling for another reform in the axiom focusing on evolutionary theory, population history, trait selection, and population‐level reference samples. The practice needs to abandon the terms ancestry and race completely and recalibrate to an analysis of population affinity. Population affinity is a statistical approach based on the underlying population structure that would allow the understanding of how microevolutionary forces act in concert with historical events (e.g., colonization, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, etc.) to shape modern human variation. This is not to be confused with geographic ancestry that all too often can be perceived as interchangeable with social race and as an affirmation of the biological concept of race. It is time to critically evaluate the social and scientific implications of the current practice of ancestry estimation, and re‐frame our approach to studying and analyzing modern human variation through a population structure approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Division of labor occurs when cooperating individuals specialize to perform different tasks. In bacteria and other microorganisms, some species divide labor by random specialization, where an individual's role is determined by random fluctuations in biochemical reactions within the cell. Other species divide labor by coordinating across individuals to determine which cells will perform which task, using mechanisms such as between‐cell signaling. However, previous theory, examining the evolution of mechanisms to divide labor between reproductives and sterile helpers, has only considered clonal populations, where there is no potential for conflict between individuals. We used a mixture of analytical and simulation models to examine nonclonal populations and found that: (a) intermediate levels of coordination can be favored, between the extreme of no coordination (random) and full coordination; (b) as relatedness decreases, coordinated division of labor is less likely to be favored. Our results can help explain why coordinated division of labor is relatively rare in bacteria, where groups may frequently be nonclonal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cecal appendix had been considered as a useless vestige since Darwin's work, but recent research questioned this idea demonstrating that the cecal appendix appeared among the mammals at least 80 million years ago and has made multiple and independent appearances without any obvious correlation with diet, social life, ecology, or size of the cecum. However, functions and probable selective advantage conferred by this anatomical structure still remain enigmatic. We found, through analyses of data on 258 mammalian species, that cecal appendix presence is correlated with increased maximal observed longevity. This is the first demonstration of a correlation between cecal appendix presence and life history. Interestingly, the classical evolutionary theory of aging that predicts an increased longevity when the extrinsic mortality is reduced has been questioned several times, but recent comparative studies asserted its validity in the taxa, which experience age‐dependent and density‐dependent mortality, as in mammals. Thus, the cecal appendix may contribute to the increase in longevity through a reduction of extrinsic mortality. A lower risk of fatal infectious diarrhea is one of the most plausible hypotheses that could explain it. However, several hypotheses coexist about the possible functions of the cecal appendix, and our results provide new insights about this much‐disputed question. In addition, we show that the cecal appendix arose at least 16 times and was lost only once during the evolutionary history of the considered mammals, an asymmetry that supports the existence of a positive selective of this structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maternal effects are ubiquitous. Yet, the pathways through which maternal effects occur in wild mammals remain largely unknown. We hypothesise that maternal immune transfer is a key mechanism by which mothers can affect their offspring fitness, and that individual variation in maternally derived antibodies mainly depends on a mother's characteristics and the environmental conditions she experiences. To test this, we assayed six colostrum‐derived antibodies in the plasma of 1447 neonates in a wild red deer population. Neonatal antibody levels were mainly affected by maternal genes, environmental variation and costs of prior reproductive investment. We found consistent heterogeneity in maternal performance across traits, with mothers producing the heaviest calves also having calves with more antibodies. Unexpectedly, antibody levels were not associated with calf survival. We provide a unique example of how evolutionary theory on maternal effects can be used to gain insight into the causes of maternal effects in wild populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]