Rape and respectability: ideas about sexual violence and social class

Women on low incomes are disproportionately represented among sexual violence survivors, yet feminist research on this topic has paid very little attention to social class. This article blends recent research on class, gender and sexuality with what we know about sexual violence. It is argued that there is a need to engage with classed distinctions between women in terms of contexts for and experiences of sexual violence, and to look at interactions between pejorative constructions of working-class sexualities and how complainants and defendants are perceived and treated. The classed division between the sexual and the feminine, drawn via the notion of respectability, is applied to these issues. This piece is intended to catalyse further research and debate, and raises a number of questions for future work on sexual violence and social class

The ecology of sex explains patterns of helping in arthropod societies

Authors thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NGD), the Clarendon Fund (NGD) and the Natural Environment Research Council (LR, NE/K009516/1; AG, NE/K009524/1) for funding.Across arthropod societies, sib-rearing (e.g. nursing or nest defence) may be provided by females, by males or by both sexes. According to Hamilton's ‘haplodiploidy hypothesis’, this diversity reflects the relatedness consequences of diploid vs. haplodiploid inheritance. However, an alternative ‘preadaptation hypothesis’ instead emphasises an interplay of ecology and the co-option of ancestral, sexually dimorphic traits for sib-rearing. The preadaptation hypothesis has recently received empirical support, but remains to be formalised. Here, we mathematically model the coevolution of sex-specific helping and sex allocation, contrasting these hypotheses. We find that ploidy per se has little effect. Rather, the ecology of sex shapes patterns of helping: sex-specific preadaptation strongly influences who helps; a freely adjustable sex ratio magnifies sex biases and promotes helping; and sib-mating, promiscuity, and reproductive autonomy also modulate the sex and abundance of helpers. An empirical survey reveals that patterns of sex-specific helping in arthropod taxa are consistent with the preadaptation hypothesis.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Physical Processes in Star Formation

© 2020 Springer-Verlag. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00693-8.Star formation is a complex multi-scale phenomenon that is of significant importance for astrophysics in general. Stars and star formation are key pillars in observational astronomy from local star forming regions in the Milky Way up to high-redshift galaxies. From a theoretical perspective, star formation and feedback processes (radiation, winds, and supernovae) play a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of the physical processes at work, both individually and of their interactions. In this review we will give an overview of the main processes that are important for the understanding of star formation. We start with an observationally motivated view on star formation from a global perspective and outline the general paradigm of the life-cycle of molecular clouds, in which star formation is the key process to close the cycle. After that we focus on the thermal and chemical aspects in star forming regions, discuss turbulence and magnetic fields as well as gravitational forces. Finally, we review the most important stellar feedback mechanisms.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

The role of the Beaufort Gyre in Arctic climate variability: Seasonal to decadal climate scales

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2002GL015847This paper presents a new hypothesis along with supporting evidence that the Beaufort Gyre (BG) plays a signific ant role in regulating the Arctic climate variabili ty. We propose and demonstrate that the BG accumulates a significant amount of fresh water (FW) during one climate regime (anticyclonic) and releases this water to the North Atlantic (NA) during another climate regime (cyclonic). This hypothesis can explain the origin of the salinity anomaly (SA) periodically found in the NA as well as its role in the decadal variability in the Arctic region.This research has been supported by a grant from NOAA. It is contribution 10756 of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Contour Mapping of Arctic Basin Ice Roughness Parameters

The article of record as published may be found at http://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:24050052The US Navy has recently developed an underwater acoustic propagation loss model suitable for use in ice-covered seas. The under-ice scattering component of this model requires a spatially varying input data base of ice roughness characteristics to support both empirically- and theoretically derived scattering loss algorithms. The empirical algorithms characterize the under-ice roughness by the standard deviation of the mean ice draft. The theoretical algorithms are based upon keel characteristics, namely the mean deep draft keel and the number of deep draft keels per unit distance. The authors have attempted to construct a data base of these parameters for the Arctic Ocean based upon analysis of under-ice thickness distribution data acquired from inverted echo-sounder data from submarines transmitting under the ice. From the voyages of 13 submarines, which traversed virtually all regions of the Arctic Ocean during all seasons, a suite of ice thickness statistics have been calculated for 50-km segments along each submarine track. Contour maps of the roughness parameters were constructed. Not surprisingly they show that the roughest ice and the greatest number of deep draft ice keels are found off the north coasts of the Canadian Archipelago and Greenland due to ice convergence on these land barriers. A linear regression demonstrates that the ice roughness, characterized by the standard deviation, increases with increasing ice thickness at a rate of about 0.5. Similar maps based on further analysis of all submarine-collected under-ice thickness distribution data on a year by year basis could be invaluable in the determination and monitoring of geographically specific and basin-wide sea ice changes. Such maps could be of considerable significance in the determination of the role of the polar regions in global change

Genetic caste determination in Pogonomyrmex harvester ants imposes costs during colony founding.

Some populations of Pogonomyrmex harvester ants comprise genetically differentiated pairs of interbreeding lineages. Queens mate with males of their own and of the alternate lineage and produce pure-lineage offspring which develop into queens and inter-lineage offspring which develop into workers. Here we tested whether such genetic caste determination is associated with costs in terms of the ability to optimally allocate resources to the production of queens and workers. During the stage of colony founding, when only workers are produced, queens laid a high proportion of pure-lineage eggs but the large majority of these eggs failed to develop. As a consequence, the number of offspring produced by incipient colonies decreased linearly with the proportion of pure-lineage eggs laid by queens. Moreover, queens of the lineage most commonly represented in a given mating flight produced more pure-lineage eggs, in line with the view that they mate randomly with the two types of males and indiscriminately use their sperm. Altogether these results predict frequency-dependent selection on pairs of lineages because queens of the more common lineage will produce more pure-lineage eggs and their colonies be less successful during the stage of colony founding, which may be an important force maintaining the coexistence of pairs of lineages within populations

A new concept of relatedness and its significance to the theory of social evolution

Data on primitively social groups of Hymenoptera have been somewhat contradictory with respect to kin recognition, degree of relatedness and social evolution. This study presents a new concept of "relatedness coefficient". Called "aggregated relatedness", the hypothesis here introduced proposes that genes shared by any two individuals affect formation of family units to an extent dependent on their frequency and manner of dispersion in neighboring populations.<br>Dados de campo de espécies de Hymenoptera primitivamente sociais têm se mostrado contraditórios quanto ao papel do reconhecimento de parentes e do grau de parentesco na evolução social. Nesse trabalho um novo conceito de "coeficiente de parentesco" foi desenvolvido. Esta nova hipótese foi chamada de "parentesco agregado". Nesse conceito, genes compartilhados por dois indivíduos quaisquer têm importância significativa na formação das unidades familiares, dependendo de suas freqüências e da forma como estão distribuídos na população circunvizinha a esta unidade familiar

Unicoloniality, recognition and genetic differentiation in a native Formica ant.

Some ants have an extraordinary form of social organization, called unicoloniality, whereby individuals mix freely among physically separated nests. This mode of social organization has been primarily studied in introduced and invasive ant species, so that the recognition ability and genetic structure of ants forming unicolonial populations in their native range remain poorly known. We investigated the pattern of aggression and the genetic structure of six unicolonial populations of the ant Formica paralugubris at four hierarchical levels: within nests, among nests within the same population, among nests of populations within the Alps or Jura Mountains and among nests of the two mountain ranges. Ants within populations showed no aggressive behaviour, but recognized nonnestmates as shown by longer antennation bouts. Overall, the level of aggression increased with geographic and genetic distance but was always considerably lower than between species. No distinct behavioural supercolony boundaries were found. Our study provides evidence that unicoloniality can be maintained in noninvasive ants despite significant genetic differentiation and the ability to discriminate between nestmates and nonnestmates