Those were the last deaths from infectious disease in my family. My grandmother and her children ran the farm throughout the Great Depression, the sons went off to World War II and returned, the daughters received teaching scholarships and sent money home for the next sibling's education, several offspring married and started new families. The eventual deaths of my grandmother and all her child...

The evolution of postmenopausal longevity in human females has been the subject of debate. Specifically, there is disagreement about whether the evolution of the trait should be understood as an adaptive or a neutral process, and if the former, what the selective mechanism is. There are two main adaptive proposals to explain the evolution of postreproductive longevity: the grandmother and the m...

An important debate in the anthropological literature concerns the benefits children in poor countries derive from the presence of a grandmother. The broadly held idea that grandmothers are beneficial for their grandchildren has been challenged by the finding that in a resource poor society (the Dogon in Mali) the presence of a grandmother could negatively affect the life chances of their grand...

Replies to the comments by Plaut and McClelland and Quian Quiroga and Kreiman on the authors original article both challenged my characterization of localist and distributed representations. They also challenged the biological plausibility of grandmother cells on conceptual and empirical grounds. This reply addresses these issues in turn. The premise of my argument is that grandmother cells in ...

The parent of origin-dependent expression of the IGF2 and H19 genes is controlled by the imprinting centre 1 (IC1) consisting in a methylation-sensitive chromatin insulator. Deletions removing part of IC1 have been found in patients affected by the overgrowth- and tumour-associated Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (BWS). These mutations result in the hypermethylation of the remaining IC1 region, los...

The WHO (2001) recommends exclusive breast-feeding and delaying the introduction of solid foods to an infant's diet until 6 months postpartum. However, in many countries, this recommendation is followed by few mothers, and earlier weaning onto solids is a commonly reported global practice. Therefore, this prospective, observational study aimed to assess compliance with the WHO recommendation an...

A 7-year-old white boy was referred to us with a history of 3 attacks of hypogastric pain over the previous 2 years and persistently elevated serum amylase concentrations. At physical examination, he was well with no evidence of clinical abnormalities. His weight and height were normal. Laboratory diagnostic investigations were all normal except for the presence of Ascaris lumbricoides in the f...

BACKGROUND Maternal smoking has been linked to lower birth weight and higher risk of childhood obesity. However, it is unknown whether grand-maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with grandchildren birth weight and body mass index (BMI) trajectories. METHODS We investigated associations of smoking during pregnancy with birth weight, risks of overweight and BMI trajectories among 46,...

Mothers face trade-offs between infant care and subsistence/economic activities. In traditional populations, allomothers such as fathers and grandmothers support mothers with young infants, allowing them to reduce labour activities and focus on breastfeeding. Similarly, the positive impact of social support on breastfeeding has been highlighted in developed populations. However, these studies h...

OBJECTIVE To analyze the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV) against women and children's dysfunctional behaviors and school problems. METHODS Population-based study part of the WHO Multicountry Study on Domestic Violence Against Women including 790 women living with their children aged five to 12 years in two different regions of Brazil: the city of São Paulo, Southeastern B...