Abstract Science and science policy are characterised by expectations. These expectations—as in the field of biomedicine—may be related to describing novel findings, their use curing diseases or economic benefits. Previous research has shown that expectations often communicated with help metaphors. In this article, we take a closer look at one metaphor—‘closing window opportunity’—and examine h...

0

Introduced species have been linked to declines of native species through mechanisms including intraguild predation and exploitative competition. However, coexistence among species may be promoted by niche partitioning if native species can use resources that the invasive species cannot. Previous research has shown that some strains of the aphid Aphis craccivora are toxic to a competitively dom...

Margaret Chisolm: It’s accepted that pregnancy is a window of opportunity when women are highly motivated to make behavioral changes. There’s a higher spontaneous quit rate among pregnant smokers than in the general population of smokers. Most of the women in our program are extremely motivated for treatment. In part, primarily, they are concerned about the fetus. Those who are abusing illegal ...

We show that democratic change may be triggered by transitory economic shocks. Our approach uses within-country variation in rainfall as a source of transitory shocks to sub-Saharan African economies. We find that negative rainfall shocks are followed by significant improvement in democratic institutions. This result is consistent with the economic approach to political transitions, where trans...

The pressure with which circulating blood is contained in the arterial circulation is related to a number of factors. Prominent among these is the structure of resistance vessels, or arterioles, and conduit vessels, or arteries. For a normal intravascular volume and cardiac output, pathological distortions in arteriolar structure are accompanied by intravascular pressures greater than the expec...

Diurnal rhythms in plants and animals have been observed for centuries, but their endogenous and circadian nature were not acknowledged until the 1960s (Menaker, 1969). Research during that decade provided ample evidence for an internal ‘clock’ generating daily rhythms in behavior through biochemistry; however, the nature and anatomical location of this clock were a mystery. Insects helped to u...