IF YOU ARE READING THIS COMMENTARY, the title probably irked your professional sensibilities. That's good. During 32 years of publishing, I've experienced two authorship disputes. Both of these problems have demonstrated to me that there is a disturbing and pervasive lack of understanding of what authorship on scientific papers means, of the responsibilities that it conveys, and of how it is de...

Fertility decline is still a puzzle. A recent body of work has suggested that changes in kin networks may help explain changing reproductive behaviour. As countries modernise, kin networks break down and association with non-relatives becomes more common. This reduces both the practical support available to mothers in raising children, and affects reproductive norms. This paper presents the res...

In many cooperatively breeding vertebrates, a dominant breeding pair is assisted in offspring care by nonbreeding helpers. A leading explanation for this altruistic behavior is Hamilton's idea that helpers gain indirect fitness benefits by rearing relatives (kin selection). Many studies have shown that helpers typically provide care for relatives, but relatively few have shown that helpers prov...

OBJECTIVES To assess the knowledge and behaviour of researchers regarding criteria for authorship, and the practices of ghost and gift authorship. DESIGN Semidirective interviews of senior clinical researchers. SETTING University hospital. PARTICIPANTS Thirty-nine main investigators of clinical research programmes. MAIN MEASUREMENTS Awareness and use of International Committee of Medica...

2008 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am greatly indebted to Dr. Sung Wing-Kin for being my supervisor in this project. He has been unyielding in providing me with guidance and inspiration. Our many invaluable discussions helped me significantly to navigate through the research process. I extend my utmost gratitude for his constant encouragement and support. Karuturi Radha Krishna Murthy for the many great...

Despite widespread interest in kin selection and nepotism, relatively little is known about the perceptual abilities of animals to recognize their relatives. Here I show that a highly nepotistic species, Belding's ground squirrels (Spermophilus beldingi), produces odours from at least two sources that correlate with relatedness ('kin labels'), and that ground squirrels can use these odours to m...

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to retrospectively identify trends in the representation of female authorship in prominent general radiology journals over the past 2 decades. METHODS A comprehensive search was conducted for all articles published in 1993, 2003, and 2013 in Radiology, the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), European Radiology, and Investigative Radiology. The genders of...

Aim and Objectives: To increase the understanding of next of kin’s life situation in the context of supporting persons who are long term ill, disabled and/or older by describing their experienced burden and quality of life and also the relationship between QoL, burden and socioeconomic variables. Methods: Cross-sectional, descriptive and correlative design. Eighty-four next of kin answered two ...