There's no contest: Human sex differences are sexually selected

The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009An evolutionary psychological perspective drawing on sexual selection theory can better explain sex differences in aggression and violence than can social constructionist theories. Moreover, there is accumulating evidence that, in accordance with predictions derived from sexual selection theory, men modulate their willingness to engage in risky and violent confrontations in response to cues to fitness variance and future prospects

La violence contre l’épouse, un crime passionnel

Two Statistics Canada data sources provide case information on violence against Canadian wives : the "Homicide Survey", an archive of all homicides known to police since 1974, and the 1993 national telephone "Violence against Women Survey". When combined with population-at-large information, these sources illuminate risk patterns for lethal and nonlethal violence, which are similar in most, but not all, particuliars. Rates of both lethal and nonlethal violence against wives vary in relation to age, registered versus common law status, separation, and autonomy-limitating behaviour by the husband. These risk patterns are discussed in relation to factors affecting the intensity of male sexual proprietariness. Risk patterns in Quebec parallel those for Canada as a whole in most, but not all, particulars

The Governor-Generalship of Sir Lee Stack in the Sudan, 1917-1924.

The subject of this thesis is the history of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan during the governor-generalship of Sir Lee Stack, 1917-1924. The study is based primarily on the unpublished records of the Sudan Government and various collected private papers. The first chapter deals with the appointment of Stack to succeed Sir Reginald Wingate; the economic and political effects on the Sudan of the first world war; the structure of the central government and the officials who directed it; and provincial administration. Stack's relations with Wingate and Viscount Allenby as high commissioners in Cairo are discussed. Among the most important developments of Stack's tenure were the emergence, on the one hand, of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi as leader of the revivified Mahdist sect, and, on the other, of secular opposition to the Sudan Government. The second chapter traces the rise of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman, the nature of his support, and the government's attempts both to utilize and to limit his influence. The second part of the chapter charts the tentative beginnings, after the war, of secular opposition, and in focussing on the disturbances of 1924 attempts to analyse the motives of this opposition and the response of the government to it. The surge of Egyptian nationalism following the war led to a fundamental change in the relationship of Egypt and Britain, the co-domini in the Sudan. The Sudan's prominent place in the complicated series of negotiations before and especially after the British declaration to Egypt in February 1922, is considered in chapter three. An attempt is made to analyse the reasons for the breakdown in negotiations that culminated in the British ultimatum to Egypt in November 1924 following the assassination of Sir Lee Stack. The ultimatum itself and its consequences in the Sudan are considered in detail. Revived Mahdism, secular opposition, and Egyptian hostility, combined with a latent mistrust of educated Sudanese led the administration under Stack away from the direct, "bureaucratic" methods of the Wingate era toward Indirect Rule. This development is traced in the final chapter, in which conclusions are reached regarding the nature of Indirect Rule in the Sudan and its consequences for the political future of the country

The independence of eye movements in a stomatopod crustacean is task dependent

ABSTRACT Stomatopods have an extraordinary visual system, incorporating independent movement of their eyes in all three degrees of rotational freedom. In this work, we demonstrate that in the peacock mantis shrimp, Odontodactylus scyllarus, the level of ocular independence is task dependent. During gaze stabilization in the context of optokinesis, there is weak but significant correlation between the left and right eyes in the yaw degree of rotational freedom, but not in pitch and torsion. When one eye is completely occluded, the uncovered eye does not drive the covered eye during gaze stabilization. However, occluding one eye does significantly affect the uncovered eye, lowering its gaze stabilization performance. There is a lateral asymmetry, with the magnitude of the effect depending on the eye (left or right) combined with the direction of motion of the visual field. In contrast, during a startle saccade, the uncovered eye does drive a covered eye. Such disparate levels of independence between the two eyes suggest that responses to individual visual tasks are likely to follow different neural pathways.</jats:p

Revamping the ‘scientific method’: A unifying framework for scientific literacy

Despite long-standing criticism from scientific and philosophical communities, the hypothetico-deductive model still forms the foundation of the ‘scientific method' as typically taught at primary, secondary and some tertiary education levels. In an age of heated debate over critical scientific findings, the growing need for scientific literacy is hindered by this educational reliance upon an out-dated and unrealistic account of science. A working revision of the ‘scientific method' is proposed in this paper, comprising a set of theoretical postulates and a system for diagramming research inquiry and method. Encompassing key 20th Century epistemological developments, this Framework aims to (1) clarify scientific vocabulary, (2) incorporate core scientific concepts such as validity, replication and representativeness, (3) clarify and detail the relationship between theory and observational data, and (4) provide a realistic account of the nature of, and challenges to, high-quality research design. Commonly applicable across all empirical disciplines and scalable in complexity, the Framework’s potential to act as a united foundation underpinning scientific literacy from primary levels through to professional research practice is explored