Mate choice, and sex differences in romantic behaviours, represented one of the first major applications of evolutionary biology to human behaviour. This paper reviews Darwinian approaches to heterosexual mate assessment based on physical characteristics, placing the literature in its historical context (1871-1979), before turning (predominantly) to psychological research on attractiveness judgements based on physical characteristics. Attractiveness is consistently inferred across multiple modalities, with biological theories explaining why we differentiate certain individuals, on average, from others. Simultaneously, it is a judgement that varies systematically in light of our own traits, environment, and experiences. Over 30 years of research has generated robust effects alongside reasons to be humble in our lack of understanding of the precise physiological mechanisms involved in mate assessment. This review concludes with three questions to focus attention in further research, and proposes that our romantic preferences still provide a critical window into the evolution of human sexuality.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/brv.13131 | DOI Listing |
Ecotoxicology
January 2025
Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
Songbird reproductive success can decline from consuming mercury-contaminated aquatic insects, but assessments of hydrologic conditions influencing songbird mercury exposure are lacking. We monitored breast feather total mercury (THg) concentrations and reproductive success in the U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Clin Med
December 2024
Pharmacy Department, Institut Català Oncologia (ICO), Institut d'Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge (IDIBELL), L'Hospitalet Llobregat, 08908 Barcelona, Spain.
Everolimus, an oral inhibitor of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), is actually used to prevent organ transplant rejection and treat metastatic breast, renal, and neuroendocrine cancers. Despite significant pharmacokinetic variability among patients, routine therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is not commonly used in oncology. The aim of this multicenter, prospective observational cohort study is to assess the prevalence of everolimus minimum concentration at a steady state (Cminss) falling outside the therapeutic range (10-26.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJAMA Pediatr
December 2024
Centre for Translational Medicine, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary.
Importance: Intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) has been described to typically occur during the early hours of life (HOL); however, the exact time of onset is still unknown.
Objective: To investigate the temporal distribution of IVH reported in very preterm neonates.
Data Sources: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science were searched on May 9, 2024.
Planta
January 2025
Universidade Federal do Paraná, Av. Prefeito Lothário Meissner, 623, Curitiba, PR, ZIP 80210-170, Brazil.
The mini-cutting physiological condition is vital for the rooting process. For accurate interpretation, considering all mini-cutting responses in an experiment is necessary to identify significant rooting-biomarkers. The study investigates rooting-biomarkers during vegetative propagation, focusing on Ilex paraguariensis (yerba mate) clones of contrasting mini-cutting rooting performance as a case study (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Chem
January 2025
Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Background: Mate-pair sequencing detects both balanced and unbalanced structural variants (SVs) and simultaneously informs in relation to both genomic location and orientation of SVs for enhanced variant classification and clinical interpretation, while chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) only reports deletion/duplication. Herein, we evaluated its diagnostic utility in a prospective back-to-back prenatal comparative study with CMA.
Methods: From October 2021 to September 2023, 426 fetuses with ultrasound anomalies were prospectively recruited for mate-pair sequencing and CMA in parallel for prenatal genetic diagnosis.
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