While enormous progress has been made in unraveling the proximate physiological mechanisms that account for anxiety, stress, and low mood, these states continue to give rise to considerable conceptual confusion. This is, in part, because proximate studies have neither been adequately distinguished from, nor integrated with, evolutionary explanations for the adaptive functions of anxiety, stress...

Explanations for suicide attacks abound. Yet the literature remains conceptually fragmented, with different authors focusing on different attitudes, incentive structures, values, psychological processes, strategic imperatives, and cultural, historical, and personal circumstances. Curiously, however, there have been few efforts to cast suicide bombing within the extensive evolutionary literature...

Residences located close to urban parks frequently sell at a premium. The increased home values represent a ‘capitalization’ of a park’s value to proximate homeowners and this phenomenon has been termed ‘the proximate principle’. The evolution of the principle from squares and gardens in small private estates to large park areas occurred with the development of Regent’s Park in London. The prox...

Health care services, in combination with several intermediate (proximate) determinants of health such as environmental sanitation and nutrition, directly influence health status. In the economics literature, this is referred to as the health production technology. Although many studies recognize that demand for health care depends on the health production technology, otherwise known as a "deri...

While enormous progress has been made in unraveling the proximate physiological mechanisms that account for anxiety, stress, and low mood, these states continue to give rise to considerable conceptual confusion. This is, in part, because proximate studies have neither been adequately distinguished from, nor integrated with, evolutionary explanations for the adaptive functions of anxiety, stress...

An immune and inflammatory response involving endothelial and smooth muscle cells accompanies the accumulation of lipids and fibrous materials in atheromatous arteries. The inflammatory response involves not only the intrinsic cells of the artery wall, but also circulating leukocytes. Lymphocytes as well as macrophages participate importantly in this disease process. Plaque composition and vuln...

BACKGROUND The fertility experience in Iran suggests that the family planning programs had an effective role in the fertility reduction. This study aimed to specify patterns of marriage in Iran and especially in a northern city of Iran and to investigate the association between patterns of marriage and contraceptive use before first pregnancy and current contraceptive use. METHODS In this cro...

BACKGROUND The distribution of birth intervals can be used to draw attention to important characteristics of dynamics of fertility process. The main objective of this paper is to examine the effects of socioeconomic, demographic and proximate determinants on the length of birth intervals of women of Bangladesh and also to see whether the effects are changed over the years. METHODS Birth inter...