Placentophagia in Nonpregnant Rats:\ud Influence of Estrous Cycle Stage and Birthplace

Prior parturitional experience and genotype have previously been found to affect the proportion of nonpregnant female rats and mice that will eat foster placenta. The present series of experiments was designed to investigate the influence of estrous cycle stage on placentophagia in rats. Foster placenta was presented to nonpregnant Long-Evans females, purchased from a commercial breeder, for 15 min on 5 consecutive days. We found that virgin placentophages were most likely to have eaten placenta on the first presentation, unless the first presentation occurred during proestrus. In fact, virgins would not eat placenta for the first time during proestrus, regardless of test-day. However, once they had eaten placenta, either in a nonproestrus stage, or, in the case of primiparae, during parturition, they would eat placenta during proestrus. Long-Evans rats born in our laboratory differed from the purchased rats, manifesting an incidence of placentophagia that was too low to be analyzed by stage of the estrous cycle; when tested as primiparae, however, there were no differences between the two groups

Creationist Resistance to Evolution: the Patriarchal Unconscious as the Key

Enlightened scientists and educators everywhere lament the persistence of disbelief in the process of evolution through natural selection, but they have done little to illuminate the psychological basis of this resistance. This neglect unfortunately applies even to psychoanalytic commentators, who, while uncovering oedipal elements in evolutionism, have remained silent about creationism. We believe, however, that psychoanalysis has much to offer toward a solution of the problem of creationism\u27s persistence. In particular, we propose that evolutionary theory stirs a profound fear, rooted in the psychosexual developmental processes characterizing human society thus far, of female power

The NASA high-speed turboprop program

Technology readiness for Mach 0.7 to 0.8 turboprop powered aircraft with the potential for fuel savings and DOC reductions of up to 30 and 15 percent respectively relative to current in-service aircraft is addressed. The areas of propeller aeroacoustics, propeller structures, turboprop installed performance, aircraft cabin environment, and turboprop engine and aircraft studies are emphasized. Large scale propeller characteristics and high speed propeller flight research tests using a modified testbed aircraft are also considered

Response of Feedlot Lambs to Chlortetracycline and Sulfamethazine

The objective of this experiment was to test the effects of chlortetracycline and sulfamethazine alone and in combination on feedlot performance and incidence of diseases of lambs weaned at an early age, shipped and finished in drylot with a high-concentrate ration

Log Fano varieties over function fields of curves

Consider a smooth log Fano variety over the function field of a curve. Suppose that the boundary has positive normal bundle. Choose an integral model over the curve. Then integral points are Zariski dense, after removing an explicit finite set of points on the base curve.Comment: 18 page

Strengthening the Cohomological Crepant Resolution Conjecture for Hilbert-Chow morphisms

Given any smooth toric surface S, we prove a SYM-HILB correspondence which relates the 3-point, degree zero, extended Gromov-Witten invariants of the n-fold symmetric product stack [Sym^n(S)] of S to the 3-point extremal Gromov-Witten invariants of the Hilbert scheme Hilb^n(S) of n points on S. As we do not specialize the values of the quantum parameters involved, this result proves a strengthening of Ruan's Cohomological Crepant Resolution Conjecture for the Hilbert-Chow morphism from Hilb^n(S) to Sym^n(S) and yields a method of reconstructing the cup product for Hilb^n(S) from the orbifold invariants of [Sym^n(S)].Comment: Revised versio

Orientifolds, Unoriented Instantons and Localization

We consider world-sheet instanton effects in N=1 string orientifolds of noncompact toric Calabi-Yau threefolds. We show that unoriented closed string topological amplitudes can be exactly computed using localization techniques for holomorphic maps with involution. Our results are in precise agreement with mirror symmetry and large N duality predictions.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures, published version; v4: typos correcte

Gate-defined graphene double quantum dot and excited state spectroscopy

A double quantum dot is formed in a graphene nanoribbon device using three top gates. These gates independently change the number of electrons on each dot and tune the inter-dot coupling. Transport through excited states is observed in the weakly coupled double dot regime. We extract from the measurements all relevant capacitances of the double dot system, as well as the quantized level spacing

Studies on a socio-ecological approach to environmental education – a contribution to a critical position in the education for sustainable development discourse

This paper outlines a critical position in relation to education for sustainable development referring to a socio-ecological approach to environmental education. This approach was developed in a cooperative research process with pre-academic secondary schools over several years in Switzerland. For 13 years our research group has been the one in Switzer-land to systematically research on curriculum and professional development in environ-mental education in secondary schools. The group was established at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) supported by funding of the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research, and from 1998 proceeded with research projects at the Institute for Teacher Education (upper secondary level) at the University of Zurich. Case studies were carried out to explore the potentials and constraints which teachers and students meet when working with environmental issues. Two case studies from different research phases are shown which illustrate how both teachers and learners are challenged to cope with increasingly unstructured and unknown situations, pluralistic and controversial perspectives, and with the critical role of science in society. Outcomes are discussed in the light of the social process of sustainable development