Birth is not merely a biological event; it is also a social event in that it creates relationships. As a consequence of reproductive technologies, the boundaries between the biological and social basis of kinship have become blurred. Reproductive technologies challenge previously held cultural constructions of kinship and bring about new kinds of social relations in that kinship boundaries are ...

Kinship terms have been found to be highly diverse across languages. Here we investigated the brain representation of kinship terms in two distinct populations, native Chinese and Caucasian English speakers, with a five-element kinship identification (FEKI) task. The neuroimaging results showed a common extensive frontal and parietal lobe brain activation pattern for different kinship levels fo...

We have traced the developmental origins of various CNS neurons and glial cells of a leech to 10 clonally related groups of cells, the bilaterally paired M, N, O, P, and Q kinship groups. Each kinship group is descended from one of 10 identifiable blastomeres of the early embryo, the teloblasts. Of the approximately 200 neurons in each side of a segmental ganglion, 130 to 160 are in the ipsilat...

Genetic relatedness (kinship) among Anopheles gambiae Giles female mosquitoes was assessed using microsatellite loci in five locations across Africa and in nine samples taken between 1994 and 1999 in western Kenya. We assessed variation among samples in kinship as well as the effect of distance on kinship. Relatedness within populations was low, and differences among samples taken at various ti...

We address a long hypothesized relationship between the proximity of individuals' dwelling units and their kinship association. Better understanding this relationship is important because of its implications for contact and association among members of a society. In this paper, we use a unique dataset from Nang Rong, Thailand which contains dwelling unit locations (GPS) and saturated kinship ne...

Knowledge of kin relationships between members of wild animal populations has broad application in ecology and evolution research by allowing the investigation of dispersal dynamics, mating systems, inbreeding avoidance, kin recognition, and kin selection as well as aiding the management of endangered populations. However, the assessment of kinship among members of wild animal populations is di...

The goal of this paper is to relate formal analysis of kinship terminologies to a better understanding of who, culturally, are defined as our kin. Part I of the paper begins with a brief discussion as to why neither of the two claims: (1) kinship terminologies primarily have to do with social categories and (2) kinship terminologies are based on classification of genealogically specified relati...

OBJECTIVE To examine the influence of kinship care on behavioral problems after 18 and 36 months in out-of-home care. Growth in placement of children with kin has occurred despite conflicting evidence regarding its benefits compared with foster care. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, October 1999 to March 2004. PARTICIPANTS One th...