Relative Contributions of the Male and the Female to Sexual Behavior and Reproductive Success in the Japanese Quail (Coturnix japonica).

Two contrasting investigative techniques provided evidence consistent with the interpretation that female quail (Coturnix japonica) regulate male copulatory behavior by the duration of their immobility and through this behavioral mechanism they also control the rate of fertilization of their eggs. In Experiment 1, copulation tests with males and females from different genetic lines showed that the type of female that participated in a copulatory test significantly influenced the latency of the male's grab, mount, and cloacal contact responses and also determined the efficiency of the male's copulatory behavior. These measures of male performance were correlated with female immobility in Experiment 2, which used a more homogeneous population of quail. Furthermore, 2 of these measures (copulatory efficiency and the latency to make cloacal contact) were correlated with fertilization rate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensitization of the acoustic startle reflex by footshock.

Administration of footshock (500-ms duration, 0.2–2.4 mA) increased the amplitude of the startle reflex for a long time after its presentation. The effect occurred with a single footshock, although its magnitude and consistency across animals were greater with 5 or 10 footshocks presented 1/s. The facilitatory effect came on within 2–4 min with a 0.6-mA shock, peaking in about 10 min and then dissipating over the next 40 min. Stronger shocks also increased startle, but with a more delayed onset of facilitation (8–20 min). Footshocks increased startle in rats not previously given startle-eliciting stimuli, indicating sensitization rather than dishabituation. The facilitatory effect may not be attributable to a rapid conditioning to the experimental context, because a change in lighting conditions from shock presentation to testing did not attenuate shock sensitization. This excitatory effect of shock on startle may represent the unconditioned effect of shock that can become associated with a neutral stimulus to support classical fear conditioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cytokine responses of human lung cells (BEAS-2B) treated with micron-sized and nanoparticles of metal oxides compared to soil dusts

Background  

The induction of cytokines by airway cells in vitro has been widely used to assess the effects of ambient and occupational particles. This study measured cytotoxicity and the release of the proinflammatory cytokines IL-6 and IL-8 by human bronchial epithelial cells treated with manufactured nano- and micron-sized particles of Al₂O₃, CeO₂, Fe₂O₃, NiO, SiO₂, and TiO₂, with soil-derived particles from fugitive dust sources, and with the positive controls LPS, TNF-α, and VOSO₄.     

The relation of acid rain to energy policy

Current energy policies have severely eroded the earth's natural atmospheric waste-receptor capacity. Present acid rain concentrations may require a switch to an alternative energy-resource emphasis. This policy recommendation follows directly from a deductive control theory demonstration which shows that, if fossil-fuel use is continued at present rates, then there is an ever-increasing risk of a man-made environmental crisis of uncertain nature and scope.     

Context and lexical access: Implications of nonword interference for lexical ambiguity resolution.

To eliminate potential "backward" priming effects, S. Glucksberg et al (see record 1986-29080-001) introduced a variant of the cross-modal lexical priming task in which subjects made lexical decisions to nonword targets that were modeled on a word related to either the contextually biased or unbiased sense of an ambiguous word. Lexical decisions to nonwords were longer than controls only when the nonword was related to the contextually biased sense of the ambiguous word, leading Glucksberg et al to conclude that context does constrain lexical access and that the multiple access pattern observed in previous studies was probably an artifact of backward priming. We did not find nonword interference when the nonword targets used by Glucksberg et al were preceded by semantically related ambiguous or unambiguous word primes. However, we did replicate their sentence context results when the ambiguous words were removed from the sentences. We conclude that the interference obtained by Glucksberg et al is due to postlexical judgments of the congruence of the sentence context and the target, not to context constraining lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A circuit model for the inductive strip in homogeneous finline

This article describes a circuit model for infinitesimally thin inductive strips centered in homogeneous finline. The model is valid for 0.1 ≤ W/b ≤ 1.0, 0.01 ≤ T/a, and 0.4 ≤ b/a ≤ 0.5 when frequency is in the normal operating band for the rectangular waveguide shield. The error is less than 2.5%.     

The effects of degree of mixing and concentration of carbon black on the tensile properties of filled elastomers

Based on the concept of entropy of mixing, a new method for determining the degree of mixing of the filler in a polymer matrix has been established. The measurement used in this method is based on a new variable, the effective volume fraction of the filler, ?′, which is a function of the mixing index, A, and the volume fraction of the filler, ?. The mixing index can be determined from the tensile modulus data of filled elastomers. Excellent agreement is obtained between the mixing index and the dispersion of the filler as determined by a morphological study of cryogenically fractured surfaces of filled elastomers. Using the new variable, the effective volume fraction of the filler, useful relationships for the tensile modulus and the ultimate stretch ratio of filled elastomer have been established. Experimental data confirm that these relationships can well describe the effects of concentration and degree of mixing on the two tensile properties of filled elastomers.     

Memory scanning: Are fixed and varied sets scanned concurrently or successively?

Subjects were timed as they decided whether individually presented probe letters were or were not contained in pairs of memorized sets of one, two, or four letters. One set was fixed in advance of a block of trials, while the other varied from trial to trial. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects responded positively if the probe was in either set and negatively otherwise; in Experiment 3 they made different responses to fixed-set, varied-set, and negative probes. In all three experiments, reaction time (RT) to varied-set probes depended more on the size of the varied set than of the fixed set, whereas RT to fixed-set and negative probes depended more on the size of the fixed set. These results were generally consistent with the hypothesis that scanning of the two sets was at least to some extent concurrent rather than successive, with the fixed set scanned more slowly than the varied set. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Efficient Management of Persistent Knowledge

Although computer speed has steadily increased and memory is getting cheaper, the need for storage managers to deal efficiently with applications that cannot be held into main memory is vital. Dealing with large quantities of clauses implies the use of persistent knowledge and thus, indexing methods are essential to access efficiently the subset of clauses relevant to answering a query. We introduce PerKMan, a storage manager that uses G-trees, and aims at efficient manipulation of large amounts of persistent knowledge. PerKMan may be connected to Prolog systems that offer an external C language interface. As well as the fact that the storage manager allows different arguments of a predicate to share a common index dimension in a novel manner, it indexes rules and facts in the same manner. PerKMan handles compound terms efficiently and its data structures adapt their shape to large dynamic volumes of clauses, no matter what the distribution. The storage manager achieves fast clause retrieval and reasonable use of disk space.