Roosttime restlessness in captive American Robins (Turdus migratorius)

All-day observations of captive American Robins (Turdus migratorius) revealed that the birds became extremely active at dusk, the time when wild Robins typically fly some distance to a communal roost site. This roosttime restlessness occurred during every month of the year, and so was distinguishable from the migratory restlessness that the birds displayed during early morning hours of spring months. The present observations also uncovered a recapitulation effect, in that the changes in activity level that occurred within any single day (from dawn through dusk) tended to parallel the changes in activity level that occurred across the year (from spring through winter).     

Unlike American Robins (Turdus migratorius), European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) do not display roost-time restlessness

The daily perch-hop activity of six captive European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) was observed under natural lighting over 12 months. Moderately high levels of early morning activity gradually declined throughout the day. Unlike robins (Turdus migratorius), however, the starlings showed no evidence of the brief burst of activity at dusk calledroost-time restlessness (Eiserer, 1979). The present data support the hypothesis that roost-time restlessness depends upon the conjunction of territorial and roosting behaviors, which is the case for robins but not for starlings.     

月上柳梢头 人约黄昏后——解“婚”说“昏”

自汉以来 ,亲迎之礼何以“昏以为期”众说纷纭。大致说来有四种观点 ,它们都力图证明“昏以为期”在婚礼定制中的合理性 ,且都有自己立论的依据 ,但细研之 ,每种解释都不免有某种个案性和臆测性。本文作者注意到亲迎时间在文献记载中比较模糊 ,而在婚俗调查资料中则有较大的分歧。因而进一步分析爱情诗词中黄昏意象后 ,认为不管黄昏具有怎样的原型意义 ,幽期密约的情人选择的也许只是“日入群动静”这一时空意义。     

Collaborative processes in species identification using an internet-based taxonomic resource

Visual databases are increasingly important resources through which individuals and groups can undertake species identification. This paper reports research on the collaborative processes undertaken by pre-service teacher students when working in small groups to identify birds using an Internet-based taxonomic resource. The student groups are conceptualised as ‘knowledge-building communities’ working in a ‘joint problem space’ comprising the collective knowledge of the participants interacting with the taxonomic database. Collaborative group work and associated dialogue were recorded with digital video. The recordings were analysed for the categories of dialogue and the categories of knowledge used by the students as they interacted with the taxonomic database and how they drew on their previous experiences of identifying birds. The outcomes are discussed in the context of the interplay of individual and social processes and the interplay between abstraction and lived experience in the joint problem space.     

Social disorganization and the profile of child welfare: Explaining child welfare activity by the community-level factors

This article addresses the question of the structure of local child welfare activities in light of community-level factors. It poses the following research questions: how are different community-level factors related to child welfare client structures in communities and what is the extent to which these factors explain structural differences? The applied theoretical framework is based on social disorganization and strain theories as well as human developmental approach. The data has been collected from two Finnish national databases and it consists of variables containing 257 Finnish municipalities. The method of analysis is multinomial logistic regression. The results suggest that the local child welfare structures are tied to social disorganization, policing and culture as well as to the intensity of control in the communities. In general, the more fragile the communal structures, the more last-resort child welfare there is in the community. Combining fragile communal structures with weak dependency ratio and high proportion of social workers, the more intense the level of child welfare statistics indicated. The results indicate that the theoretical framework for the application of child welfare activity analysis is justified, but they also suggest that it requires further development through both context-bound reflection and application.     

Exploring the contexts of urban science classrooms. Part 2: The emergence of rituals in the learning of science

In Part 1 of this paper, I described the corporate and communal nature of research, teaching, and learning in urban science classrooms as both a theoretical approach to understanding, and way of viewing practices within these fields. By providing a new approach to theorizing the cultural misalignments that are prevalent in urban schools, I look to provide an informative tool for investigating under-discussed dynamics that impact science teaching and learning. In this body of work, I further expose the nature of the corporate|communal by describing practices that define communal practice. I do so conversant of the fact that synthesizing my previous work on corporate and communal practices necessarily pushes science education researchers and teachers to look for somewhat tactile explications of communal practices. That is to say, if communal practices do exist within the corporate structures of science classrooms, how do they present themselves and how can they be targeted? This paper begins a journey into such a study and focuses on student transactions, fundamental interactions and rituals as a key to redefining and attaining success in urban science classrooms.     

Acute phase reaction and acute phase proteins

INTRODUCTION The first reaction of the body to immunological stress is the innate, non-specific response preceding specific immune reactions. The acute phase response (APR) is a prominent systemic reaction of the or- ganism to local or systemic disturbances in its ho- meostasis caused by infection, tissue injury, trauma or surgery, neoplastic growth or immunological disor- ders (Gordon and Koy, 1985; Gruys et al., 1999). At the site of invasion by a micro-organism and the place of tissu…     

Review: Acute phase reaction and acute phase proteins

A review of the systemic acute phase reaction with major cytokines involved, and the hepatic metabolic changes,negative and positive acute phase proteins (APPs) with function and associated pathology is given. It appears that APPs represent appropriate analytes for assessment of animal health. Whereas they represent non-specific markers as biological effect reactants,they can be used for assessing nutritional deficits and reactive processes, especially when positive and negative acute phase variables are combined in an index. When such acute phase index is applied to separate healthy animals from animals with some disease, much better results are obtained than with single analytes and statistically acceptable results for culling individual animals may be reached.Unfortunately at present no cheap, comprehensive and easy to use system is available for assessing various acute phase proteins in serum or blood samples at the same time. Protein microarray or fluid phase microchip technology may satisfy this need;and permit simultaneous analysis of numerous analytes in the same small volume sample and enable integration of information derived from systemic reactivity and nutrition with disease specific variables. Applying such technology may help to solve health problems in various countries not only in animal husbandry but also in human populations.     

Social facilitation of drinking of a partially satiated duckling

Water-deprived and nondeprived ducklings were reintroduced to a flock companion which had been allowed to partially satiate itself after 3 h of water deprivation. The drinking and sieving behavior of the partially satiated “reactor” bird was immediately increased above that of similar birds left on their own. However, whether or not the introduced “actor” ducklings were deprived had no consequences for the drinking response of the reactor above that obtained by their introduction. The number of companions introduced also failed to have any effect other than that obtained by their introduction. The increase in sieving was greater when deprived, rather than nondeprived, actors were introduced. These results were discussed in relation to the motivational aspects of sieving behavior and the mechanism of social facilitation.     

The internal restlessness scale: performance of college students with and without ADHD

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was previously believed to be a disorder of childhood, with symptoms attenuating at the onset of puberty. Follow-up studies, however, suggest that the majority of children with ADHD continue to manifest symptoms into adulthood. Although the inattention components associated with ADHD persist into adulthood, the nature of the hyperactivity component is less well understood. For example, according to criteria established by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, hyperactivity in adolescents and adults may be limited to subjective feelings of restlessness. Recent studies with adults with ADHD have also reported that mental restlessness is commonly reported by individuals with the disorder. To better understand this characteristic of ADHD, the Internal Restlessness Scale (IRS) was developed. The results of the IRS suggest that (a) college students with ADHD report significantly higher ratings of internal restlessness than college students without ADHD, and (b) the IRS appears to have adequate test-retest reliability and a four-factor structure. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Modification of attending behavior in hyperactive children

This study investigated the efficacy of using a behavioral feedback procedure as a means of reducing the nonattending behavior in children with attentional deficits and/or motoric restlessness. It was hypothesized that children with an attentional deficit would be able to learn to attend to classroom work when provided information about their behavior. Subjects consisted of 4 children with attentional deficits and motoric restlessness, 4 with motoric restlessness alone, and 8 without attentional deficits or motoric restlessness. A modified operant design was used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the feedback procedure. Significant changes were evidenced by all groups of subjects. Initial results and follow-up observations indicated that the attending behavior of the experimental subjects increased, and was manitained, without the use of tangible reinforcers.     

Engaging Black and Latinx students through communal learning opportunities: A relevance intervention for middle schoolers in STEM elective classrooms

With the aim of bridging research in educational psychology and teacher education, we designed a research-practice partnership to unpack the concept of relevance from a race-reimaged perspective. Specifically, we employed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory research design to examine associations between the communal learning opportunities afforded to Black and Latinx students, and their engagement patterns during STEM activities. Within a nine-week instructional unit we provided students six opportunities to rate their scholastic activities. High levels of behavioral engagement were sustained over the course of the instructional unit. On weeks when students rated the activities as higher in communal affordances, they also reported more behavioral engagement. Classroom observations facilitated our efforts to create state space grids that show when and how teachers used emancipatory pedagogies to support students’ learning. We used these state space grids, along with teacher interviews and student focus groups, to develop contextualized illustrations of two teachers of color as they successfully provided communal forms of motivational support over the span of six observations per teacher. These strategies differed based on three key factors: where the lesson was placed within the larger instructional unit, the way teachers interpreted and responded to their students’ engagement patterns, and how the demands of the larger school environment impacted classroom dynamics.     

华南红树林潮滩带的鸟类

报道了广东及海南岛典型的红树林潮滩带生态系统的鸟类群落特点、种类概况。     

Before Breaking Bad News: Relationships Among Topic,Reasons for Sharing,Messenger Concerns,and the Reluctance to Share the News

Messengers are reluctant to reveal bad news, and this reluctance can hamper effective communication. With this investigation, we explore linkages among the topic of the news, messengers’ reasons for sharing, messenger concerns about sharing, the locus of the news, and whether these variables associate systematically with messenger reluctance to share the news. Retrospective self-reports (n = 330) revealed that bad news occurred in reliable topic categories, which in turn related to reasons for sharing, how extreme the news was perceived to be, and the concerns messengers had before sharing the bad news. Messengers reported more reluctance to share the news when they were also the locus of the news than when they were not, and they felt reluctance was greater when the topic was seen as more extreme. Theoretical implications and limitations are discussed.     

Perception of degraded vocalizations by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus)

Three budgerigars were trained with operant techniques to discriminate examples of species-specific contact calls. Once the birds learned the discrimination among a large set of calls, they were tested with the calls altered in various ways. The birds’ performance on altered calls was compared with performance on normal calls. Results show that the birds could tolerate large spectral and temporal alterations in the calls with little or no decrement in performance. A comparison of the birds’ performance across conditions shows clear evidence of a redundancy in information contained in the calls. The birds were equally adept at discriminating among the calls when given only high-frequency information and when given only low-frequency information. The birds also performed just as well when presented with only the short beginning portions of the calls as they did when presented with somewhat longer portions near the end of the calls. This ability of budgerigars to discriminate among species-specific vocal signals that are highly distorted is reminiscent of the ability of humans to discriminate and recognize highly distorted speech sounds.     

Using a Mobile Dichotomous Key iPad application as a scaffolding tool in a museum setting

This study tested an iPad application using a dichotomous key as a scaffolding tool to help students make more detailed observations as they identified various species of birds on display in a museum of natural science. The Mobile Dichotomous Key (MDK) iPad application was used by groups of fifth- and seventh-grade students. Analysis of the findings suggests that the MDK was equally as effective and in some ways more effective than the educator-led intervention at improving students' scientific observation skills. In general, the scaffolding key in both mobile and educator-led form was found to be more effective for fifth-grade students than for seventh-grade students. In addition, it was found to be effective at improving the level of detail students provided and the number of scientific terms they used, but not at improving the number of valid inferences students made.     

Relationship orientation,jealousy, and equity: An examination of jealousy evoking and positive communicative responses

The intentional evoking of jealousy has received little attention in interpersonal research, yet eliciting jealousy in another may perform critical functions in relationships such as meeting personal needs and relational goals. The purposes of these two studies were to examine how evoking jealousy may be used as a communicative strategy in relationships, and to develop the Evoking Jealousy Scale. Two studies examined evoking jealousy, relationship orientation (exchange versus communal), positive responses to jealousy, and equity in relationships. Results from study one indicated both exchange oriented and communal oriented individuals make attempts to evoke jealousy from their partners. Results from study two indicate the only variable in this study related to the active strategy of evoking jealousy was being exchange oriented. Feelings of equity, being overbenefited, and communal orientation each were related to positive responses to feeling jealous. The Evoking Jealousy Scale was developed and tested in study two and appears to have good face validity, unidimensional factor structure, and internal reliability     

“Same/different” symbol use by pigeons

Pigeons learned to respond at one spatial position when a pair of stimuli matched and at a different spatial position when they mismatched. All birds were then transferred to novel stimuli on an orthogonal dimension. For the positive-transfer group, the correct positions for matching and mismatching stimuli remained as they were during training. For the negative-transfer group, the correct positions were reversed. In Experiment 1, the birds were trained with shape stimuli and transferred to hue stimuli. Significant group differences were found, in spite of considerable stimulus-specific learning. In Experiment 2, when the same birds (counterbalanced for Experiment 1 transfer group) were transferred to steady-intermittent stimuli, even larger group differences were found. The data indicate that pigeons have some capacity for representing the concepts “same” and “different” with arbitrary stimuli (i.e., symbols). The data further suggest that distinctions that have been made between matching/oddity transfer tasks and same/different tasks may be procedural rather than conceptual.     

Stereotyped adjunctive pecking by caged pigeons

The behavior of 77 pigeons maintained at 80% of their free-feeding weights in open-wire battery cages was monitored 16 times a day by observers for up to 285 days. Five distinct types of stereotyped behaviors were operationally defined. One of these behaviors, “spot pecking,” clearly predominated. Forty-nine of the 77 pigeons were observed spotpecking on at least 25% of the days they were observed, and several pigeons emitted more than 50,000 spot pecks per day. This occurred in spite of the total absence of any explicit reinforcer. A series of three experiments demonstrated that the great majority of spot pecks occurred in the hours immediately after feeding, that only food-deprived birds spot pecked, and that the behavior of adjacent birds influenced the rate of acquisition of stereotypes. Difficulties with labeling spot pecking as superstitious, respondent, or mediating are discussed. It is suggested that spot pecking be classed as an “adjunctive” behavior.     

梅县机场鸟类群落结构及鸟击防治对策

2009年3月至2010年2月,对梅县机场附近4 km范围内不同类型的生境进行鸟类调查,共记录到鸟类68种,分属于13目29科,其中非雀形目鸟类33种占总种数的48.53%,雀形目鸟类35种占总种数的51.47%。留鸟占36种,夏侯鸟占16种,冬候鸟占15种,旅鸟占1种。东洋界物种31种,广布种28种,古北界物种9种。构成梅县机场和附近鸟撞隐患主要集中在3~11月期间,较多分布在西南面,种类主要是鸣禽和陆禽鸟类,其次是隼类,这与梅州地处山区环境有关。通过对调查数据的分析,探讨了不同生境类型和不同时期的鸟类多样性,进行鸟撞影响程度的分析,提出了"鸟击"的综合防治措施及建议。