•We show that, 50 years after first formulated, Tinbergen's four questions remain valid.•We update Tinbergen's four questions in the light of recent findings.•We stress how the questions may ...sometimes need to be considered together.•We point to questions additional to those of Tinbergen such as ‘How is the behaviour inherited?’, ‘What is the character?’, and ‘Of what is an animal seemingly aware?’.
This year is the 50th anniversary of Tinbergen's (1963) article ‘On aims and methods of ethology’, where he first outlined the four ‘major problems of biology’. The classification of the four problems, or questions, is one of Tinbergen's most enduring legacies, and it remains as valuable today as 50 years ago in highlighting the value of a comprehensive, multifaceted understanding of a characteristic, with answers to each question providing complementary insights. Nonetheless, much has changed in the intervening years, and new data call for a more nuanced application of Tinbergen's framework. The anniversary would seem a suitable opportunity to reflect on the four questions and evaluate the scientific work that they encourage.
Following the 1898 Battle of Omdurman in Sudan, Winston Churchill, then a second lieutenant in the British army, donated a skin graft to Richard Molyneux, a wounded fellow officer. This contribution ...tells the story of Churchill's skin graft donation within the context of the development of skin grafting as a viable treatment for serious wounds and burns.
We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain ...of 'culturomics,' focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. Culturomics extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.
The history of medicine makes it possible to understand both the evolution of the conceptualization of pathological processes, but also the modification of therapeutic principles and patient ...management. In the context of dermatology, we are interested here in the case of Jean-Paul Marat, who was murdered in his bathtub at the end of the 18th century in France and had severe dermatosis. Examination of deposits of pharmaceutical products inside the bathtub in which he spent most of his time made it possible to reconstruct the nosological and therapeutic framework of his dermatosis.
Social media have permeated the lives of adolescents and may be altering the way that teens engage with their favorite media celebrities and characters. This study surveyed 316 adolescents to examine ...the relationship between social media surveillance and the strength of adolescents' parasocial relationships (PSRs) with media personae they follow on social media. Results indicated a significant positive relationship between exposure to media personae on Twitter and strength of PSRs. Adolescents who had experienced social interactions with their favorite media personae on Twitter in the form of retweets or responses to tweets had stronger PSRs than adolescents who had no such interactions. The realism of the media personae did not moderate findings as expected. The findings suggest that Twitter provides intimate glimpses into the personal lives of media personae that increase audiences' feelings of connectedness to those celebrities and characters, an important finding given that teens are more likely to learn from media personae with whom they have PSRs.
Celebrities are well-known individuals who receive extensive public and media attention. There is an increasing body of research on the effect of celebrities on body dissatisfaction and disordered ...eating. Yet, there has been no synthesis of the research findings. A systematic search for research articles on celebrities and body image or eating disorders resulted in 36 studies meeting inclusion criteria. Overall, the qualitative, correlational, big data, and experimental methodologies used in these studies demonstrated that exposure to celebrity images, appearance comparison, and celebrity worship are associated with maladaptive consequences for individuals’ body image.
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