Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201

The Theory of Island Biogeography

(1998). Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor analytic studies. Gifted and Talented International: Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 97-98.

Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor analytic studies

Peter Berger (1929) is an American sociologist best known for his collaboration with Thomas Luckman in writing The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. That book argues that human reality, and knowledge of it, is a social construct, emerging from the individual or group’s interaction with larger social structures (institutions). Social structures, once widely adopted, lose their history as social constructions (objectivation), and come over time, by the people who live within them, to be deemed natural realities independent of human construction (reification). Berger predicted, in his later book, The Sacred Canopy, near-term all-encompassing secularization of religion, which prediction has proved false, especially in the third world (as Berger himself has acknowledged in his later work, Desecularization).

神圣的帷幕 : 宗教社会学理论之要素 = The sacred canopy elements of a sociological theory of religion

There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.

Why most published research findings are false

Measuring reward with the conditioned place preference paradigm: a comprehensive review of drug effects, recent progress and new issues.

Are acquiescent and extreme response styles related to low intelligence and education

https://khosachonline.ucoz.com/_ld/1/130_national-iqs-ca.pdf

National IQs calculated and validated for 108 nations

Although most surveys of happiness and general life satisfaction find only small differences between men and women, women report slightly higher subjective well-being than men in some countries, and slightly lower subjective well-being in others. The present study investigates the social and cultural conditions that favor higher female relative to male happiness and life satisfaction. Results from more than 90 countries represented in the World Values Survey show that conditions associated with a high level of female relative to male happiness and life satisfaction include a high proportion of Muslims in the country, a low proportion of Catholics, and absence of communist history. Among indicators of gender equality, a low rate of female non-agricultural employment is associated with higher female-versus-male happiness and satisfaction. Differences in the rate of female non-agricultural employment explain part of the effects of communist history and prevailing religion. They may also explain the recent observation of declining female life satisfaction in the United States.

Gender Differences in Subjective Well-Being and Their Relationships with Gender Equality

"Human capital" is a key requirement for the establishment and maintenance of effective institutions. It is the ultimate requirement for innovation, efficient use of resources, and economic growth. This contribution describes two measures of cognitive human capital: the average IQ of the population, and the performance of school children on international scholastic assessment tests in mathematics, science, and reading. These two measures are shown to be closely correlated at the country level, and distinct from traditional measures of education. A measure of human capital is described that is derived from IQ and school achievement. Data based on measured IQ and/or school achievement are given for 168 countries and territories, and estimates based on neighboring countries with similar population, culture and economy are provided for 28 additional countries. Key Words: Intelligence; IQ; TIMSS; PISA; School achievement; Human capital. Japan is a rich country, and Nigeria is a poor country. There is no lack of explanations for this discrepancy. Some authors have offered geography as an ultimate explanation for economic disparities between countries and world regions (Diamond, 1997; Hibbs & Olsson, 2004; Nordhaus, 2006). Everything else being equal, countries with greater natural resources and greater proximity to world markets should be richer. Nigeria has more natural resources than Japan and is closer to the old industrial centers of Europe. Therefore Nigeria should be richer than Japan. History and culture fare not much better than geography as explanations for macroeconomic trends and developmental disparities. For example, the backwardness of African countries today has been blamed on the trans-Atlantic slave trade of the 18th and early 19th centuries (Nunn, 2008). This, however, begs the question of why Europeans enslaved Africans but Africans did not enslave Europeans. Economic institutions are a more proximal explanation for worldwide economic disparities. For example, the current poverty of formerly rich countries has been blamed on Europeans who "introduced or maintained already-existing extractive institutions to force the local population to work in mines and plantations" (Acemoglu et al, 2002, p. 1279) during the colonial age. When geography is pitted against institutions as explanation for economic disparities in today's world, institutions are the more immediate predictor (Easterly & Levine, 2003; Rodrik et al, 2002). Institutions are made by people. Therefore the immediate causes of institutional quality and economic outcomes are to be sought in the physical, cognitive or attitudinal traits of the human actors. According to this view, Japan is rich and Nigeria is poor because the Japanese possess more "human capital" than the Nigerians. The importance of human capital at the country level is supported by the observation of large differences in labor productivity between countries (Hall & Jones, 1999). Human capital includes both cognitive and non-cognitive resources. Value systems have been stressed by many writers, from Max Weber's (1930) "spirit of capitalism" to Gregory Clark's notion that the industrial revolution was triggered not by new incentives, but by people responding differently to incentives that had been in place for ages (Clark, 2007). There is ample evidence for associations of non-cognitive traits with prosperity and economic growth (e.g., Knack & Keefer, 1997; McCauley et al, 1999), but the direction of causality is difficult to ascertain. In addition, the measurement of non-cognitive traits is fraught with conceptual and psychometric ambiguities. Perhaps for this reason, cognitive traits have received the greater attention, as is evidenced by the inclusion of measures for literacy, school enrolment and related measures in the Human Development Reports of the United Nations, the World Development Indicators of the World Bank, and similar compilations. …

Intelligence: A Measure of Human Capital in Nations

Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century James R. Flynn Cambridge University Press, 2012.The question that Flynn asks in the title of his book is one of the most important that we can ask about modern societies. Why? It is not because smart people have an advantage in the rat race for status and money, but because a "good" society needs thoughtful citizens who create not only prosperity, but the entire set of attitudes and the way of life that we traditionally characterize as civilization. Civilization is likely follow the trend lines for intelligence during the 21st century, as it has done, it appears, in centuries past.No one is more qualified than Flynn to write about this topic. Back in the 1980s it was Flynn who first recognized that rising intelligence - or at least, rising performance on IQ tests - had been a pervasive trend throughout most or all of the 20th century. At about 2 standard deviations in all, the IQ rise was enormous. Someone who scored at the 84th percentile of the bell curve at the beginning of the 20th century would score at the 16th percentile today. In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray dubbed this astonishing phenomenon the Flynn effect, and the term has stuck.Flynn's most important conclusions about the secular IQ gains are summarized in this book. Readers will find some interesting information about the ongoing history of the phenomenon: rising scores for both adults and children during most of the time for which we have reliable information; performance increases that are larger for children than for teenagers and young adults in some recent studies; recent stagnation and sometimes decline for older teenagers and young adults in some of the countries of northern Europe; and the important observation that even as IQ gains are becoming erratic in the West, Flynn effects are now observed with some regularity in the less developed countries. Flynn does not emphasize the evidence for the end of IQ gains in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Britain, Finland and even Australia in recent years, and he does not discuss the possibility that this may indicate that genetic limits for intelligence are being approached in these countries. He rather emphasizes that continuing IQ gains have been reported from countries such as the United States and Germany even in the most recent years.Flynn offers a thorough and enlightening discussion of the patterns of IQ gains over time, with the subtests of the Wechsler scale as the best studied examples. In analyzing the cognitive requirements of the tests, he uses distinctions such as "school basics", "modern age" and "scientific spectacles" tests that he tries to relate to different kinds of social developments. This is perhaps the most sensible discussion of cognitive gains that I have come across so far.Less satisfactory is his attempt at making sense of g, the general factor that describes the positive correlations among all cognitive tests. In the tradition established by Arthur Jensen, g is considered a general ability rather than a mere correlation pattern. It is also the most heritable aspect of intelligence. However, Flynn effects are usually unrelated and sometimes negatively related to the g loadings of cognitive tests. The "purest" measures of intelligence are not those that rise the most over time. Flynn rejects, correctly I believe, that this shows the "hollowness" of the IQ gains, but his critique is neither forceful nor consistent. He could have argued that the strongest determinant of a test's g loading is its reliability. …

Gerhard Meisenberg

Papers

Are acquiescent and extreme response styles related to low intelligence and education

National IQs calculated and validated for 108 nations

Gender Differences in Subjective Well-Being and Their Relationships with Gender Equality

Intelligence: A Measure of Human Capital in Nations

Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century