WHY CENTENARIANS ARE SO OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THE FUTURE?

Why are physicians so upset about managed care?

Why are evergreen leaves so contrary about shade?

Leaf mass per area (LMA) is one of the most widely measured of all plant functional traits. In deciduous forests, there is similarity between plastic and evolutionary responses of LMA to light gradients. In evergreens, however, LMA is lower in shaded than sunlit individuals of the same species, whereas shade-tolerant evergreens have higher LMA than light-demanders grown under the same condition...

Why are so many people so unashamedly selfish about the prospect of combating aging?

165 ABRIEF PERUSAL OF MY PUBLICATION RECORD will reveal something about my recent activities that may—indeed, probably should—strike you as sad: I hardly contribute anything to the biogerontology literature any more, essentially restricting myself instead to my characteristic outbursts in this space and the occasional invited book chapter. Ultimately, however, this is not a reason for sympathy,...

Why are clicks so exclusive ?

Clicks occur abundantly in the languages of southern Africa, but are not found anywhere else. This is unexpected since the clicks seem to be both auditorily salient and easy to produce. This paper suggests that the reason for the areal skewness of clicks lies in the African phonetictypological environment rather than in production or perception constraints. In particular, clicks are limited to ...

Why are so many trees hollow?

In many living trees, much of the interior of the trunk can be rotten or even hollowed out. Previously, this has been suggested to be adaptive, with microbial or animal consumption of interior wood producing a rain of nutrients to the soil beneath the tree that allows recycling of those nutrients into new growth via the trees roots. Here I propose an alternative (non-exclusive) explanation: suc...