The persistence of social attraction in socially deprived and satiated rats

Pairs of socially deprived or satiated rats were observed for 71÷2 continuous hours in an open field. Social contact increased monotonically throughout this time, with socially deprived animals showing more attraction, and a greater increase in attraction, than satiated animals. The quality of social contact changed, however, from a predominantly active interaction, in which the most sociable animals were most mobile, to a predominantly passive huddling, in which the most sociable animals were least mobile. The results suggest that social attraction in rats is not transitory, and may serve several different functions.     

Practices and opinions reported by coordinators of graduate programs

Information is presented about the organization of graduate studies, based on questionnaire responses of 582 coordinators of Canadian graduate programs. These coordinators, who were representative of disciplines and geographic regions, provided information about a wide range of matters, including enrolments, staff, admissions, supervision, research, publications, financial support, teaching experience, and completion rates and times. Many substantial differences were noted among the percentage frequencies of responses for departments classified by discipline and size. For example, students were perceived to choose their doctoral theses topics themselves much more frequently in education, social sciences, and humanities than in engineering, medical sciences, physical sciences, and biological sciences. Also, departments with smaller numbers of full-time graduate students tended to provide all doctoral students, with some teaching experience to a greater extent than did larger departments.