Scaling procedures in climate science: Using temporal scaling to identify a paleoclimate analogue.

Using past episodes of climate change as a source of evidence to inform our projections about contemporary climate change requires establishing the extent to which episodes in the deep past are analogous to the current crisis. However, many scientists claim that contemporary rates of climate change (e.g.

Multi-model approaches to phylogenetics: Implications for idealization.

Phylogenetic models traditionally represent the history of life as having a strictly-branching tree structure. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the history of life is often not strictly-branching; lateral gene transfer, endosymbiosis, and hybridization, for example, can all produce lateral branching events. There is thus motivation to allow phylogenetic models to have a reticulate structure.

Reevaluating the grandmother hypothesis.

Menopause is an evolutionary mystery: how could living longer with no capacity to reproduce possibly be advantageous? Several explanations have been offered for why female humans, unlike our closest primate relatives, have such an extensive post-reproductive lifespan. Proponents of the so-called "grandmother hypothesis" suggest that older women are able to increase their fitness by helping to care for their grandchildren as allomothers. This paper first distinguishes the grandmother hypothesis from several other hypotheses that attempt to explain menopause, and then develops a formal model by which these hypotheses can be compared and tested by empirical researchers.