Abstract This study identified four themes of personal growth (integrative, intrinsic, agentic, and communal) in adults' stories of life transitions in careers and religions. Specific themes were expected to relate differentially to two forms of personality development (social-cognitive maturity and social-emotional well-being) and to transition satisfaction. Integrative themes correlated prima...

Analysis of human movement is an important research area, specially for health applications. In order to assess the quality of life of people with mobility problems like Parkinson’s disease (PD) or stroke patients, it is crucial to monitor their daily life activities. The main goal of this work is to characterize basic activities and their transitions using a single sensor located at the waist....

Throughout primate history there have been three major life history transitions towards increasingly delayed sexual maturation and biological reproduction, as well as towards extended life expectancy. Monkeys reproduce later and live longer than do prosimians, apes reproduce later and live longer than do monkeys, and humans reproduce later and live longer than do apes. These life history transi...

IMPORTANCE A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found that more persons die at home. This has been cited as evidence that persons dying in the United States are using more supportive care. OBJECTIVE To describe changes in site of death, place of care, and health care transitions between 2000, 2005, and 2009. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS Retrospective cohort study of a...

The evolution of life in our biosphere has been marked by several major innovations. Such major complexity shifts include the origin of cells, genetic codes or multicellularity to the emergence of non-genetic information, language or even consciousness. Understanding the nature and conditions for their rise and success is a major challenge for evolutionary biology. Along with data analysis, phy...

The Earth system is arguably one of the most complex systems in the known universe. Over 4.5 billion years it has self-organised into a state which features complex differentiated life that covers its surface and penetrates its crust. This widespread biosphere requires stability in the sense of maintenance of temperature and pressures on the surface that allow liquid water. Within this range th...

The history of life is punctuated by evolutionary transitions which engender emergence of new levels of biological organization that involves selection acting at increasingly complex ensembles of biological entities. Major evolutionary transitions include the origin of prokaryotic and then eukaryotic cells, multicellular organisms and eusocial animals. All or nearly all cellular life forms are ...

In the wild, organismal life cycles occur within seasonal cycles, so shifts in the timing of developmental transitions can alter the seasonal environment experienced subsequently. Effects of genes that control the timing of prior developmental events can therefore be magnified in the wild because they determine seasonal conditions experienced by subsequent life stages, which can influence subse...

Major transitions in evolution create the prerequisite features which allow natural selection to occur at a new level of organisation. Heredity, variation and reproduction must all be produced at a new higher level in order for a new evolutionary unit to arise. The origin of these features at new levels of organisation has been problematic for both theoretical biology and in artificial life mod...