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Adaptive Memory
Adaptive memory is the study of memory systems that have evolved to help retain survival- and fitness-related information, i.e., that are geared toward helping an organism enhance its reproductive fitness and chances of surviving. One key element of adaptive memory research is the notion that memory evolved to help survival by better retaining information that is fitness-relevant. One of the foundations of this method of studying memory is the relatively little adaptive value of a memory system that evolved merely to remember past events. Memory systems, it is argued, must use the past in some service of the present or the planning of the future. Another assumption under this model is that the evolved memory mechanisms are likely to be domain-specific, or sensitive to certain types of information. History of adaptive memory research A recent development in the field of evolutionary psychology, adaptive memory was first proposed in 2007 by James S. Nairne, Sarah R. Thompson, and ...
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Serengeti - Plains
The Serengeti ( ) ecosystem is a geographical region in Africa, spanning the Mara and Arusha Regions of Tanzania. The protected area within the region includes approximately of land, including the Serengeti National Park and several game reserves. The Serengeti hosts one of the world's largest land animal migration (in terms of total body weight), which helps secure it as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa. The Serengeti is also renowned for its large lion population and is one of the best places to observe prides in their natural environment. Approximately 70 large mammal and 500 bird species are found there. This high diversity is a function of diverse habitats, including riverine forests, swamps, kopjes, grasslands, and woodlands. Blue wildebeest, gazelles, zebras, and buffalos are some of the commonly found large mammals in the region. The Serengeti also contains the Serengeti District of Tanzania. The name "Serengeti" is often said to be derived from the wor ...
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Controlling For A Variable
In causal models, controlling for a variable means binning data according to measured values of the variable. This is typically done so that the variable can no longer act as a confounder in, for example, an observational study or experiment. When estimating the effect of explanatory variables on an outcome by regression, controlled-for variables are included as inputs in order to separate their effects from the explanatory variables. A limitation of controlling for variables is that a causal model is needed to identify important confounders (''backdoor criterion'' is used for the identification). Without having one, a possible confounder might remain unnoticed. Another associated problem is that if a variable which is not a real confounder is controlled for, it may in fact make other variables (possibly not taken into account) become confounders while they were not confounders before. In other cases, controlling for a non-confounding variable may cause underestimation of the ...
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Reproductive Success
Reproductive success is an individual's production of offspring per breeding event or lifetime. This is not limited by the number of offspring produced by one individual, but also the reproductive success of these offspring themselves. Reproductive success is different from fitness in that individual success is not necessarily a determinant for adaptive strength of a genotype since the effects of chance and the environment have no influence on those specific genes. Reproductive success turns into a part of fitness when the offspring are actually recruited into the breeding population. If offspring quantity is not correlated with quality this holds up, but if not then reproductive success must be adjusted by traits that predict juvenile survival in order to be measured effectively. Quality and quantity is about finding the right balance between reproduction and maintenance. The disposable soma theory of aging tells us that a longer lifespan will come at the cost of reproduction ...
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Natural Selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the Heredity, heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with selective breeding, artificial selection, which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not. Genetic diversity, Variation of traits, both Genotype, genotypic and phenotypic, exists within all populations of organisms. However, some traits are more likely to facilitate survival and reproductive success. Thus, these traits are passed the next generation. These traits can also become more Allele frequency, common within a population if the environment that favours these traits remains fixed. If new traits become more favoured due to changes in a specific Ecological niche, niche, microevolution occurs. If new traits become more favoured due to changes in the ...
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Prediction
A prediction (Latin ''præ-'', "before," and ''dictum'', "something said") or forecast is a statement about a future event or about future data. Predictions are often, but not always, based upon experience or knowledge of forecasters. There is no universal agreement about the exact difference between "prediction" and " estimation"; different authors and disciplines ascribe different connotations. Future events are necessarily uncertain, so guaranteed accurate information about the future is impossible. Prediction can be useful to assist in making plans about possible developments. Opinion In a non-statistical sense, the term "prediction" is often used to refer to an informed guess or opinion. A prediction of this kind might be informed by a predicting person's abductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and experience; and may be useful—if the predicting person is a knowledgeable person in the field. The Delphi method is a technique for elicitin ...
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False Memory
In psychology, a false memory is a phenomenon where someone recalls something that did not actually happen or recalls it differently from the way it actually happened. Suggestibility, activation of associated information, the incorporation of misinformation, and source misattribution have been suggested to be several mechanisms underlying a variety of types of false memory. Early work The false memory phenomenon was initially investigated by psychological pioneers Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud. Freud was fascinated with memory and all the ways it could be understood, used, and manipulated. Some claim that his studies have been quite influential in contemporary memory research, including the research into the field of false memory. Pierre Janet was a French neurologist also credited with great contributions into memory research. Janet contributed to false memory through his ideas on dissociation and memory retrieval through hypnosis. In 1974, Elizabeth Loftus and Jo ...
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Science
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which study the physical world, and the social sciences, which study individuals and societies. While referred to as the formal sciences, the study of logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science are typically regarded as separate because they rely on deductive reasoning instead of the scientific method as their main methodology. Meanwhile, applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine. The history of science spans the majority of the historical record, with the earliest identifiable predecessors to modern science dating to the Bronze Age in Ancient Egypt, Egypt and Mesopotamia (). Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped the Gree ...
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Empirical
Empirical evidence is evidence obtained through sense experience or experimental procedure. It is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. There is no general agreement on how the terms ''evidence'' and ''empirical'' are to be defined. Often different fields work with quite different conceptions. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what determines whether holding a certain belief is rational. This is only possible if the evidence is possessed by the person, which has prompted various epistemologists to conceive evidence as private mental states like experiences or other beliefs. In philosophy of science, on the other hand, evidence is understood as that which '' confirms'' or ''disconfirms'' scientific hypotheses and arbitrates between competing theories. For this role, evidence must be public and uncontroversial, like observable physical objects or events and unlike private mental states, so ...
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A Priori (epistemology)
('from the earlier') and ('from the later') are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics,Some associationist philosophers have contended that mathematics comes from experience and is not a form of any ''a priori'' knowledge () tautologies and deduction from pure reason.Galen Strawson has stated that an argument is one in which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science." () knowledge depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge. The terms originate from the analytic methods found in ''Organon'', a collection of works by Aristotle. Prior analytics () is about deductive logic, which comes from defini ...
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Just-so Story
In science and philosophy, a just-so story is an untestable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals. The pejorative nature of the expression is an implicit criticism that reminds the listener of the fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation. Such tales are common in folklore genres like mythology (where they are known as ''etiological myths''see etiology). A less pejorative term is a pourquoi story, which has been used to describe usually more mythological or otherwise traditional examples of this genre, aimed at children. This phrase is a reference to Rudyard Kipling's 1902 '' Just So Stories'', containing fictional and deliberately fanciful tales for children, in which the stories pretend to explain animal characteristics, such as the origin of the spots on the leopard. It has been used to criticize evolutionary explanations of traits that have been proposed to be adaptations, particularly in the evol ...
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Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
''Post hoc ergo propter hoc'' (Latin: 'after this, therefore because of this') is an informal fallacy that states "Since event Y ''followed'' event X, event Y must have been ''caused'' by event X." It is a fallacy in which an event is presumed to have been caused by a closely preceding event merely on the grounds of temporal succession. This type of reasoning is fallacious because mere temporal succession does not establish a causal connection. It is often shortened simply to ''post hoc fallacy''. A logical fallacy of the questionable cause variety, it is subtly different from the fallacy '' cum hoc ergo propter hoc'' ('with this, therefore because of this'), in which two events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown. Post hoc is a logical fallacy in which one event seems to be the cause of a later event because it occurred earlier. ''Post hoc'' is a particularly tempting error because correlation sometimes appears to suggest causality. Th ...
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Evolutionary Pressure
Evolutionary pressure, selective pressure or selection pressure is exerted by factors that reduce or increase reproductive success in a portion of a population, driving natural selection. It is a quantitative description of the amount of change occurring in processes investigated by evolutionary biology, but the formal concept is often extended to other areas of research. In population genetics, selective pressure is usually expressed as a selection coefficient. Amino acids selective pressure It has been shown that putting an amino acid bio-synthesizing gene like ''HIS4'' gene under amino acid selective pressure in yeast causes enhancement of expression of adjacent genes which is due to the transcriptional co-regulation of two adjacent genes in Eukaryota. Antibiotic resistance Drug resistance in bacteria is an example of an outcome of natural selection. When a drug is used on a species of bacteria, those that cannot resist die and do not produce offspring, while those that ...
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