Describes age-related changes in central nervous system pertinent to biology of suicide. Reviews postmortem biological studies of brains of suicides and suicide attempters. As suicide attempts in elderly are characterized by violence, discusses biological studies of impulsive violence. Describes data on effect of degenerative diseases on serotonin…

Studies of families, twins, and adoptees support a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. Alcohol metabolism may affect the regulation of alcohol intake, because interference with production or elimination of the alcohol metabolite acetaldehyde has behavioral effects. Ongoing research is examining individual and tribal differences in alcohol…

Notes that, although social work credits itself for using biopsychosocial perspective, "bio" is virtually absent from profession's knowing and doing. Review of areas in which biological knowledge is growing ("biology of hope"--psychoneuroimmunology, for example--and the new biomedical approach to mental health) yields some ideas about how theory…

Used prospective data to examine the relationship between the family environment and child and adolescent achievement and to determine genetic and environmental contributions to this relationship. Data from 2,108 sibling full- and half-sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth suggest that genetic factors explain about…

Examines the need for social workers to have appropriate knowledge when working with transgendered persons, examining seven areas from which social work practice is derived: practice wisdom; personal experiences; history and current events; professional literature; research; theoretical and conceptual analyses; and knowledge derived from…

Attempts to show how genes and environments cooperate in the construction of organisms, focusing on how genes require environmental and behavioral inputs to function appropriately during the normal course of human development. The discussion is related to a model of probabilistic epigenesis. (SLD)

The biometrical school of scientists who fit models to IQ data traces their intellectual ancestry to R. Fisher (1918), but their genetic models have no predictive value. Fisher himself was critical of the concept of heritability, because assortative mating, such as for IQ, introduces complexities into the study of a genetic trait. (SLD)

The introduction to this special issue on nature-nurture interactions notes that the following articles represent five biologically oriented research approaches which each provide a tutorial on the investigator's major research tool, a summary of current research understandings regarding language and learning differences, and a discussion of…

Although Homo sapiens emerged in Africa some 170,000 years ago, the origins of "modern" behavior, as expressed in technology and art, are attributed to people who migrated out of Africa around 50,000 years ago, creating what has been called a human revolution in Europe and Asia. There is recent evidence that a mutation of the FOXP2 gene (forkhead…

In 2 experiments, the authors examined the evolution of folkbiological reasoning in children (4 to 10 years of age) and adults from 4 distinct communities (rural Native American, rural majority culture, and suburban and urban North American communities). Using an adoption paradigm, they examined participants' intuitions regarding the inheritance…

One of 16 booklets designed for use in an Open University course on the education of handicapped students in the United Kingdom, this document considers biological factors involved in handicapping conditions. An initial chapter examines the portrayal of disabled persons in drama, literature and film. Genetic involvement (autosomal dominant…

Proposing a shift in the locus of theoretical analysis of cognition, this paper argues that cognitive functioning may be more readily characterized without the mediation of long-term mental associations and structure. An account of cognition is proposed in which mental relations are transient functional relations, and in which psychological…

The author argues that no "hard" data exists on genetically based differences in intelligence among human groups. IQ measures the heritability of IQ, and statistical inaccuracies in reported studies are discussed and questioned. The current interest in biological determinism of intelligence is trivial; individuals can not be judged by group means.…

This document discusses identification and control of the pests of trees and shrubs. The insects are grouped according to feeding habits and the type of damage caused to plants. Categories include the sucking insects and mites, leaf eating insects, pests attacking trunks and branches, and gall causing insects. (CS)

Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association on Mental Deficiency (92nd, Boston, 1968).