Genuine Gift Research Articles

Adult sex ratio and male body condition affect alternative reproductive tactics in a spider

AbstractBiases in adult sex ratios can alter the intensity of sexual selection by enhancing competition for mates. Under intense competition males increase their investment in behaviors to outcompete rivals (e.g., fighting). Yet, given that in male-biased environments mating opportunities are rare males may alternatively reduce costly courtship and/or adopt alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs). Males of the spider Pisaura mirabilis adopt different mating tactics, offering females genuine nuptial gifts (prey), nutritionally worthless gifts (prey leftovers), or no gifts. To test whether behavioral shifts between gift tactics are triggered by changes in the competitive environment, we established replicate spider populations under natural conditions at varying adult sex ratios (male-biased, female-biased and equal) and sampled gift tactics repeatedly over time. We additionally explored how male individual traits, such as body size and condition, affect the expression of ARTs. In male-biased populations males produced more gifts but of low quality, suggesting competition to trigger increased mating effort to ensure mate acquisition and fertilizations, but through a worthless gift tactic. Production of gifts and of genuine gifts was favored by high body condition, pointing to energetic limitations as being central for male reproductive capacity. We hence highlight two co-existing mechanisms at play to explain ARTs in this system, the competitive social environment where expression of gift tactics is based on optimal-decision making to overcome competition, and a conditional strategy linked to the individual’s energetic state.

Unrequited Love, Self-victimisation and the Target of Appropriate Resentment

In “Tragedy and Resentment” Ulrika Carlsson claims that there are cases when we are justified in feeling non-moral resentment against someone who harms us without wronging us, when the harm either consists in their attitude towards us or in the emotional suffering triggered by their attitudes. Since they had no duty to protect us from harm, the objectionable attitude is not disrespect but a failure to show love, admiration, or appreciation for us. I explain why unrequited love is the wrong example to use when arguing for the possibility of justified non-moral resentment—and why, therefore, Carlsson’s claim remains unsubstantiated. Pace Carlsson, people who fail to return our love are not best described as harming us, but as merely failing to benefit us by saving us from harm. Moreover, their role in the causal chain that results in our coming to harm is insufficient to warrant our resentment; more plausibly, we ourselves play a greater and more direct causal role in this process. This is a welcome result: Responding with (non-moral) resentment to someone’s failure to return our love indicates that our love has not taken the form of a genuine gift. When we put conditions on successful gifting by allowing for justified resentment if the gift is not returned we are not in fact giving gifts but making a bid for an exchange: I love you so that you love me back.

Resource availability, mating opportunity and sexual selection intensity influence the expression of male alternative reproductive tactics.

The expression of alternative reproductive tactics can be plastic and occur simultaneously depending on cues that vary spatially or temporally. For example, variation in resources and sexual selection intensity is expected to influence the pay-off of each tactic and shape the decision of which tactic to employ. Males of the nuptial gift-giving spider Pisaura mirabilis can adopt three tactics: offering a genuine prey gift, a 'worthless' non-nutritious gift or no gift. We hypothesized that resources and/or male body condition, and mating opportunity and sexual selection intensity, vary over the course of the mating season to shape the co-existence of alternative traits. We measured these variables in the field over two seasons, to investigate the predictions that as the mating season progresses, (i) males become more likely to employ a gift-giving tactic, and (ii) the likelihood of switching from worthless to genuine gifts increases. Prey availability increased over the season and co-varied with the propensity of males to employ the gift-giving tactic, but we found no support for condition-dependent gift giving. Males responded to an increase in female availability by increasing their mating effort (gift production). Furthermore, the frequency of genuine gift use increased with sexual selection intensity, consistent with the assumption that sperm competition intensity increases with time. Our results suggest that the frequency of alternative tactics is shaped by seasonal changes in ecological factors and sexual selection. This leads to relaxed selection for the gift-giving tactic early in the season when females are less choosy and resources more scarce, and increased selection for genuine gifts later in the season driven by mating opportunity and risk of sperm competition.

Barclay’s Gift via ΧΑΡΙΣ: Grace and Race/ Place from St. Paul to King Jr.

In this article, Dr. John Barclay’s work in Pauline studies and particularly his research on the ancient notion of gift (charis [χάρις]) will be used to inform the modern social—and really the theological—predicament of race and place for the church of Jesus Christ. While reviews and reflections of Barclay’s work have focused on the author’s place in the so-called New Perspective and intertestamental understandings of soteriological constructs in the NT, his theological utility for systematics engaging in the social sciences, ethics and practical theology have largely remained unexplored. Civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., famously opined, ‘We must face the fact that…the church is still the most segregated major institution…’ With this in mind, Barclay offers a genuine gift to our understanding of charis, which has implications for the post-segregated church today as she finds herself in a racialized world of brokenness and disparity. This paper will aim to creatively explore the theological utility of Barclay’s work in this intersection of race and place for the church, as she bears witness to the gracious gift of God in Christ.

The Determination of Incident or What Is Character?

The Determination of Incident or What Is Character? Michael Cunningham (bio) I teach writing. One of the great things about teaching writing is that, in the process of figuring out how to teach your students, you find you teach yourself. I’m still surprised at how much I gain by taking what I feel I simply know about writing and breaking it down into its elements in an attempt to render it cogent and comprehensible to others. As it turns out, there’s nothing like being compelled to explain what you do to help clarify your own thinking about what you do. I want to tell you about a method I’ve developed for talking to students about how to imagine and develop characters. But first, let’s acknowledge an often-posed question: “Can writing be taught?” It can. I wouldn’t be teaching it if I believed otherwise. That question has a parallel question, which may be the one most people are really asking: “Can you impart a gift to students who lack a gift?” [End Page 738] I can’t. I never pretend otherwise. But gifts can be encouraged among those who are gifted. And genuine gifts—trust me about this—can sometimes arise from what may seem, initially, like merely the elusive intimation of promise. What may be more important than the question of giftedness, though, is the fact that although most of my students won’t become writers—most people don’t become writers—they are all, and will continue to be, readers, and readers who have some idea about how writing works are generally more astute, insightful readers than those who don’t. You could say, then, that I essentially teach readers, with the occasional appearance of an actual writer. It probably goes without saying that the world needs good readers every bit as urgently as it needs good writers. And it’s meaningful for readers and writers alike to think about what makes a voice compelling on the page, how complex but coherent characters are created, how stories are structured, and so on. I hope that all my students, whatever their futures, will better appreciate the miracle of good writing when they better understand the work required to pull that miracle down from the sky, haul it up from the bottom of the ocean, or from wherever else a writer seeks it. The commonest complaint I hear from writing students is that they have trouble with plot. To this I generally reply, “There’s really no such thing as plot. What I think you’re saying is that you have trouble creating characters. Because fully formed characters always produce a plot.” Here’s an exercise I’ve worked up by way of illustrating the above to my students. I’m going to give you a specific example from a class I taught to twelve undergraduates last spring. All one needs for this exercise is several blackboards, a piece of chalk, and a roomful of willing students. [End Page 739] We begin by devising a single character, together. I prefer to keep things somewhat chaotic, in that I simply ask the students to call out their answers, as opposed to raising their hands and waiting to be called on. Introducing a little raucousness into a classroom has always struck me as a good idea. Up to a point, anyway. We start with the most fundamental qualities. I say, “Race?” A student answers, “Latino.” I write Latino on the board. “Age?” “Thirty-eight.” I write thirty-eight on the board. I write everything on the board. “Gender, which of course includes a number of possibilities?” “Female.” “Sexuality?” “Bi.” “Most urgent emotional attachment, if any?” “Girlfriend.” “Girlfriend’s age, race?” “Mixed race . . .” “Asian and African American.” “She’s twenty-three.” “A younger woman,” I note. “That’s right.” “Occupation, if any, of our main character?” Now it becomes necessary to tell them—as it sometimes does—that this exercise tends to be more effective if our characters aren’t too exotic; if we agree that everyone, no matter how usual they may appear when viewed from a distance, is already exotic enough for our purposes, simply because...

Biometrical and behavioural associations with offering nuptial gifts by males in the spider Pisaura mirabilis

Nuptial gifts are under strong selection in terms of female choice. It is hypothesized that nuptial gifts represent an honest signal resulting from the trade-off between self-maintenance and mating effort. Furthermore, nuptial gift size may correlate with certain personality traits, such as male fighting or hunting abilities. We investigated the nuptial gifts of a gift-giving spider, Pisaura mirabilis, consisting of both exogenous (prey) and endogenous (silk) components and their relationships to male biometry (the honest signalling hypothesis) and personality traits (the personality traits hypothesis). The gift's weight in the field was positively correlated with male size providing support for the honest signalling hypothesis. No differences in body condition and fluctuating asymmetry between males carrying and not carrying gifts in the field were found which does not support the honest signalling hypothesis. A substantial proportion of males offered worthless gifts that were smaller and lighter than genuine gifts. Reliable personality traits of males were not identified and no behavioural or survival differences between males carrying nuptial gifts, unwrapped prey and not carrying gifts in the field were observed. These results suggest that male size serves as an honest indicator of the exogenous component of the gift (i.e. the nuptial prey).

Silk wrapping of nuptial gifts aids cheating behaviour in male spiders

Sexual traits, such as nuptial gifts, are costly and often condition-dependent. Males should be under selection to reduce these costs without impairing their reproductive success. Spider gifts consist of silk-wrapped food, but may also consist of worthless (non-nutritive) donations that successfully lead to mating, despite yielding shorter copulations. Worthless gifts may either represent a cheaper cheating strategy or the inability to produce genuine gifts due to resource limitations (i.e. poor body condition). Unless energetic constraints limit expenditure in silk, males should apply more silk to worthless gifts to compensate for their lower reproductive value. We ask whether in Pisaura mirabilis 1) worthless gifts are condition-dependent and 2) males strategically use silk based on gift type (genuine vs worthless). We tested whether male body condition explains the gift-giving strategy and compared silk amounts covering each gift type, in gifts collected from the field and produced in the laboratory by males given different feeding regimes. Our findings show that worthless gifts are not promoted by poor body condition or limited resources. They rather result from a cheating strategy evolved to opportunistically reduce the costs of genuine gifts while ensuring nutritional advantages, with cheaters gaining body mass. Males applied more silk to worthless gifts regardless of their body condition or feeding state, suggesting they can strategically adjust silk expenditure despite its costs. By masking gift contents and prolonging female feeding, silk is crucial for the maintenance of cheating, likely resulting from an evolutionary arms race between male deception and female assessment.

Impact of WhatsApp on LIS Professionals

Socially Aware Computing is breaking the bricks of information communication. The emergence of Mobile phone/smart phone is helping to do so. Mobile phone/Smart phone is like magical tool which allows one to do anything like surfing to chatting to messaging to entertainment. The mobile phones are the genuine gift of the technological transformation and development to the present generation. WhatsApp messenger is one of the popular social networking tool among the students, professionals and households. Almost everyone is using to promote their business, products and services and even using it to manage their team. Library and Information professionals are not much for away with its acceptance. Empirical research one of the reasons to get real time responses of the contributors. To know LIS professional’s view point, online survey method is adopted. In this paper, I am also trying to understand at what extent LIS professionals are using WhatsApp messenger. The activities in which they have involved WhatsApp messenger, It is also an effort to understand the impact of the WhatsApp messenger on LIS professionals.

Interpretations of the concept of faith in contemporary Protestant theology

The paper looks into the main logical interpretations of the phenomenon of faith in contemporary Protestant theology. The research methodology is based on the paradigmal analysis theory of theological knowledge of G. Kng and H. U. von Balthasar, which present-day co-developers are T. Rowland, F. Kerr, A. Kolodnyi, Y. Chernomorets, G. Khrystokin et al. The author draws a conclusion that contemporary Protestant theology interprets faith in a non-metaphysical and personalistic way. Thus, K. Bart perceives faith as a new way of living of an individual, that real mode of existence which existentialists distinguished from usual existence. That way of living becomes possible after an individual accepts his or her own condemnation acknowledged owing to propagation of Christian kerygma. Protestant theology of the late 20th-early 21st centuries interprets faith as commitment to the Community of God and acceptance of the biblical narrative (N. T. Wright). An alternative concept is interpretation of faith as intuitive knowledge (J. Milbank). In general, Protestant theologians describe faith as an occurrence which takes place during communication with God and as such, faith is not a result of activities of human abilities but a genuine gift from God, which the possessor can only accept and affirm.

Evolution of worthless gifts is favoured by male condition and prey access in spiders

Males from gift-giving species attempt to obtain food to offer to females. Therefore, food access may affect both their body condition and their reproductive success. In some species, males reduce the costs associated with giving gifts by reusing gifts, or by offering inedible items. Males from the spider Paratrechalea ornata (Trechaleidae) offer fresh prey or ‘genuine gifts’ to females, but also offer prey leftovers or ‘worthless gifts’. We examined gift weight and content, and their relation to male condition in the field. We also investigated how gift content, male condition and female reproductive status (virgin/mated) affect male mating success. In the field, most gifts were worthless; genuine gifts were heavier than worthless ones; and gift weights (both genuine and worthless gifts combined) were positively correlated with male condition. In the laboratory, males in good condition had higher mating success than males in poor condition. Males offering gifts (genuine or worthless) to virgin females enjoyed similar mating success and duration; neither differed significantly when compared to males without gift. In contrast, mated females behaved differently. Males without gifts were consistently rejected by mated females, while those that offered worthless gifts achieved matings. The interplay between male condition, prey access, female mating history and female preferences for gifts can favour the evolution of worthless gifts under certain conditions. Females do not penalize males with non-nutritive items by not mating or by reducing mating duration, but penalties may be potentially exerted via postcopulatory process.

Which Sin to Bear? Authenticity and Compromise in Langston Hughes by David Chinitz

Which Sin to Bear? Authenticity and Compromise in Langston Hughes by David Chinitz New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. 269 pages These are heady days for Langston Hughes scholarship. In 1959, James Baldwin opened his review of Hughes's Selected Poems with the slam that Every time I read Langston Hughes I am amazed by his genuine gifts--and depressed that he has done so little with Ten years later and Lindsay Patterson, in the New York Times, referred to Hughes as the most critically abused poet in America. Both would be surprised by the cottage industry in Hughes scholarship that has emerged over the past fifteen years; a wealth of primary and secondary material has substantially changed the critical conversation about his range of interests and his importance to modern--and modernist--American literary history. most important contribution to this resurgence is the sixteen-volume edition of his collected works issued by the University of Missouri Press, which makes much of his output readily accessible for the first time--including in the critically neglected areas of his journalism and essay writing, his translations, his children's fiction, and his drama. Three new volumes of his correspondence have recently been published, providing his exchanges with his mother, with Carl Van Vechten, and with the South African anti-apartheid magazine Drum. Attention to Hughes's radical verse and plays from the 1930s, material which was long treated as an embarrassing aberration from the poet's lifelong commitment to African American folk culture, has now moved to center stage in his critical reception, as scholars such as James Smethurst, Anthony Dawahare, William J. Maxwell, Kate Baldwin, Cary Nelson, and David Chioni Moore have positioned Hughes as a major figure in complex international and interracial circuits of experimental, proletarian writing. And critics such as Brent Hayes Edwards and Vera Kutzinski have begun to pay serious attention to Hughes's work both as a translator and in translation. Kutzinski's recent Worlds of Langston Hughes makes a strong case that Hughes's status as the most famous US poet of the twentieth century in Latin America needs more critical notice, and posits Hughes as a key proponent of a fringe modernism which flourished in spaces worldwide in which we find avant-garde literary practices typically excluded from modernist studies for being too 'transparent,' too 'realistic,' too 'ethnic,' or too 'political'--or simply for using languages other than English (8). Hughes, for so long faulted for being--like his most famous fictional character--Simple, has in recent years come to seem anything but. David Chinitz's Which Sin to Bear? is as much a meditation on this altered critical terrain as it is a consideration of two of the most persistent issues in Hughes's reception--the racial of his vernacular writing, and the ethics of his political transition from communist fellow-traveler in the 1930s to co-operative witness at Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953. In addressing the former, Chinitz--like most recent scholars--is more interested in how (and why) criteria of racial are formulated than in how well or poorly a writer conforms to them. And Hughes emerges here as the defining figure in establishing racial authenticity as a supreme criterion of African American literature (12), a criterion which would be endorsed in the Black Arts era and again in the vernacular-centered black literary criticism of the 1980s epitomized by the scholarship of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Houston Baker. signal exhibit in Hughes's establishment of that criterion is his most famous essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain; rooting the culture of authentic blackness in the black working class, this essay also influentially faulted an emergent urban black middle class for its racial self-loathing and its aping of white aesthetic standards. …

WTO Customs Valuation Agreement: Customs Value of Goods Imported as Gifts

This paper addresses the issue of how to determine the customs value of goods that are imported as genuine gifts, that is, goods that are neither the subject of an export sale nor sold in the country of importation. The goods used as an example for purposes of the analysis are publications and electronic media (e.g., CD, DVD and Video) of denomination-specific religious content, imported and then passed on free of charge to believers and/or the general public based on religious, non-commercial motives. This paper argues that the customs value of such goods has to be determined based on Article 7 of the Customs Valuation Agreement, which sets forth the fall-back method, since none of the other customs valuation methods under the Customs Valuation Agreement is applicable to the aforementioned goods due to their non-commercial nature. The customs valuation of the goods in question based on the fall-back method involves a modified application of the computed value method, excluding an amount for profit given that these goods are not the subject of commercial sales transactions. This paper is structured as follows: section A briefly explains the link between customs valuation and market access commitments undertaken by WTO Members. Section B provides an overview of the two key principles underlying the Customs Valuation Agreement, namely transaction value and the sequential order of application of customs valuation methods. Sections C and D assess whether the customs value of the goods at issue can be established on the basis of the customs valuation methods set out in Articles 1-6 of the Customs Valuation Agreement. As this assessment leads to the conclusion that none of these methods is applicable in the present case, section D deals with the application of the fall-back method.

Five Values of Giftedness

This article describes five values attributed to giftedness. The ascription of values to this phenomenon resembles values attached to gifts in gift-giving processes. Whereas gift-giving often includes expectations of reciprocity, each gift possesses a numerical, utility, social, personal, and intrinsic value. Developmental models of giftedness and educational thinking reflect these values. Within prevailing models, the utility value of giftedness reigns. Its numerical value comes second. Social and personal values play a considerable role, yet the gift's intrinsic value is almost absent. This finding leads to the conclusion that the value attribution is unbalanced. This article suggests turning to dynamical-systems approaches, which might balance the value attribution to giftedness. It could expand valuations with the idea of a genuine gift, not requiring reciprocation.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ. By J. TODD BILLINGS.

While working as a community developer in Uganda, Todd Billings experienced gifts as patronizing responses to poverty. The search for a genuine gift led him to consider recent philosophical and theological discussions of ‘the Gift’. Yet it was not this literature, but the writings of one of its common foils, John Calvin, that provided him with the most satisfying framework for conceiving gift-giving and receiving, both human and divine. This book, a revision of his doctoral thesis at Harvard University under Sarah Coakley and winner in 2009 of the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, is his attempt to correct misinterpretations of Calvin by Gift theologians, to demonstrate that their dismissal of him has been too cavalier, and to commend Calvin to the conversation. The opening chapter identifies the relevant criticisms of Calvin by Stephen Webb, Kathryn Tanner, John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, and Simon Oliver and then likens them to perennial complaints against Calvin’s theology, most notably that it annihilates human agency. Billings sets as his goal the vindication of Calvin’s theology of participation against suggestions that it is underdeveloped, contradicted by a view of salvation as imputation, nominalist, ignorant of the Church Fathers’ achievement, and the worst of theories of ‘unilateral gift’ in which human response and receptivity are immaterial.

Evangelicalism Nearsighted: A Response to Melani McAlister

Melani McAlister’s essay on US evangelical “enchanted internationalism” is a genuine gift: insightful, provocative, critical, yet generous, it both invites and deserves “thinking along” rather than challenges, rebuttals, or corrections. In what follows, I pursue two lines of thought in McAlister’s essay, one having to do with the constitution of internationalism in contemporary US evangelical culture, and the other having to do with ways in which “enchanted internationalism” might be theoretically and historically situated within the vast phenomenon we call modernity. With respect to the former, I want to suggest the importance of the “look” in contemporary US evangelical internationalism, understood both as a kind of gaze or look of the eyes, and as aesthetic, or appearance. With regard to the latter, I want to suggest the continuities twenty-first-century evangelical enchanted internationalism might have with twentieth-century US liberal (theologically and politically) Protestantism, as well as with the eighteenthcentury rise of the “aesthetic.” I start with a video found on YouTube featuring Caedmon’s Call’s “Dalit Hymn,” apparently produced independently of the band, using the music as a kind of inspirational soundtrack accompanying an edited series of shots from the sort of missions trip McAlister describes in her piece. 1 Indeed, one thing that needs to be noted about this “Dalit Hymn” video, and other videos like it, is how it functions as a video travelogue. It consists of snapshots of foreign places and faces, and the aesthetic alternates between, and even blends together, the candid shot and the scene of spectacle, the mundane and the spectacular. This travelogue aesthetic could be attributed simply to the typical practices of picture-taking

Selected Poems (review)

Reviewed by: Selected Poems Robert M. West (bio) Selected Poems By James ApplewhiteDuke University Press, 2005184 pp. Paper $18.95 It's remarkable how often the national poetry establishment fails to celebrate the many fine southern poets writing today. Our poets win an oddly small number of major literary awards, and they appear in far too few anthologies of national scope. No informed person could seriously argue that contemporary southern poetry is on the whole inferior to contemporary northeastern or west coast poetry, but the national scene is dominated by poets from those regions. Even when southerners manage to break through to some form of national acknowledgment, the stalwart anthologists often hold the line. The new, third edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry expands that standard textbook to two volumes, but still finds no room for Bollingen Prize-winning Fred Chappell or Pulitzer Prize-winning Henry Taylor. And Maya Angelou and Miller Williams may have built reputations that won them commissions for Presidential Inaugural poems, but neither has ever appeared in the annual Best American Poetry series. The chief tastemakers of contemporary American poetry, Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler, clearly believe that American poetic talent is concentrated in the Northeast; when they do exalt contemporary southerners, those poets (chiefly Robert Penn Warren, A. R. Ammons, and Charles Wright) have typically either moved to the Northeast or established second homes there. For recent poets, southernness tends to be a handicap. All of which makes it especially interesting that James Applewhite, unmistakably a southerner, has managed to win fame at the national level. Born and bred in eastern North Carolina, Applewhite attended Duke University; he began his career as an English professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and in 1972 he returned to Duke, where he teaches today. The poetry itself is as southern as the man, routinely engaging as it does with the region's culture and landscape. Despite his background in and persistent concern with the South, Applewhite has in recent years been lauded by "national" critics and poet-critics. For instance, [End Page 106] John Hollander included Applewhite's "Botanical Garden: The Coastal Plains" in The Best American Poetry 1998, and in The Western Canon Harold Bloom wagered that Applewhite's book River Writing: An Eno Journal would eventually be regarded as a canonical text. Of the three blurbs on the back of Applewhite's new Selected Poems, one is by fellow southerner Dave Smith, but the other two are by Bloom and New York School poet John Ashbery. Bloom writes that Applewhite "has individuated a logical and meditative voice all his own," and adds that he is one of only "a few living American poets who fuse so remarkably intellect and emotion"; Ashbery says that Applewhite writes "in language whose timeless gravity and sweetness are close to sublime" and deems the Selected Poems "an essential book." A poet must be doing something right to earn such recognition and praise. And he is. For one thing, these poems demonstrate a genuine gift for figurative thinking and writing; often they provide extraordinary recastings of the extra ordinary. Consider the talk of two tobacco farmers in "Some Words for Fall": Applewhite tells us, "The language they speak is things to eat." (Michael McFee borrowed this line for the title of his fine North Carolina poetry anthology.) Or the poet's response to an altar call in "A Forge of Words": "From the anvil of Christ, I receive my hammered name." Or the onset of evening in "Like a Body in the River": "The sepia light rusted toward oblivion." Some of the book's very best poems—such as "Water," "Jonquils," and "Collards"—are virtuosic exercises in trope-making, one metaphor or simile leading to the next from beginning to end. Ezra Pound's famous dictum, "Make it new," is one that Applewhite follows time and again, hallowing the everyday through his verbal transformations. As he explains in "Prayer for My Son," "any tree is a marvelous city." Such metamorphosis is valuable in itself, for the way it helps us appreciate things and customs we've come to take for granted—but for Applewhite it also operates...

An Invasion of CheatsThe Evolution of Worthless Nuptial Gifts

Nuptial gifts are food items or inedible tokens that are transferred to females during courtship or copulation [1Vahed K. The function of nuptial feeding in insects A review of empirical studies.Biol. Rev. 1998; 73: 43-78Crossref Scopus (464) Google Scholar, 2Pizzari T. Food, vigilance, and sperm The role of male direct benefits in the evolution of female preference in a polygamous bird.Behav. Ecol. 2003; 14: 593-601Crossref Scopus (51) Google Scholar, 3Thornhill R. Alcock J. The Evolution of Insect Mating Systems. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA1983Google Scholar]. Tokens are of no direct value to females, and it is unknown why females require such worthless gifts as a precondition of mating. One hypothesis is that token giving arose in species that gave nutritious gifts and males exploited female preferences for nutritional gifts by substituting more easily obtainable but worthless items [4Sakaluk S.K. Sensory exploitation as an evolutionary origin to nuptial food gifts in insects.Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B. Biol. Sci. 2000; 267: 339-343Crossref Scopus (97) Google Scholar]. An invasion of such behavior would require that females accept the substitute gift and copulate for a period of time similar to that with genuine gifts. We show that both these prerequisites are met in the dance fly Rhamphomyia sulcata, in which females normally accept a nutritious gift. We removed the gift from copulating pairs and replaced it with either a large or small prey item or inedible token. We found that although pairs copulated longest with a large genuine gift, the tokens resulted in copula durations equivalent to those with a small genuine gift. We also observed that males that returned to the lek with tokens re-paired successfully. These findings suggest that female behavior in genuine gift-giving species is susceptible to the invasion of male cheating on reproductive investment.

An Invasion of Cheats

Nuptial gifts are food items or inedible tokens that are transferred to females during courtship or copulation . Tokens are of no direct value to females, and it is unknown why females require such worthless gifts as a precondition of mating. One hypothesis is that token giving arose in species that gave nutritious gifts and males exploited female preferences for nutritional gifts by substituting more easily obtainable but worthless items. An invasion of such behavior would require that females accept the substitute gift and copulate for a period of time similar to that with genuine gifts. We show that both these prerequisites are met in the dance fly Rhamphomyia sulcata, in which females normally accept a nutritious gift. We removed the gift from copulating pairs and replaced it with either a large or small prey item or inedible token. We found that although pairs copulated longest with a large genuine gift, the tokens resulted in copula durations equivalent to those with a small genuine gift. We also observed that males that returned to the lek with tokens re-paired successfully. These findings suggest that female behavior in genuine gift-giving species is susceptible to the invasion of male cheating on reproductive investment.

Faulkner and the politics of reading

With this study Karl F. Zender offers fresh readings of individual novels, themes, and motifs while also assessing the impact of recent politicised interpretations on our understanding of achievement. Sympathetically acknowledging the need to decenter the canon, Zender's searching interrogation of current theory clears a breathing space for Faulkner and his readers between the fustier remnants of New Criticism and the excesses of post-structuralism. Each chapter opens with a balanced presentation of the genuine gifts contemporary theory has bestowed on our comprehension of a particular novel or problem in Faulkner criticism and then proceeds with a groundbreaking reading. Politics of Incest challenges older psychoanalytic interpretations of use of the incest motif, and Faulkner's Privacy defends the novelist's difficulty or reticence as an aesthetic resistance against the rude candor of deregionalized and depersonalized culture. Subsequent chapters take up the volatile issues of representations of women and of African Americans, and a close reading of the classic Barn Burning critiques the current tendency to blur the concepts of patriarchy and paternity. The elegiac final chapter, Where is Yoknapatawpha County? draws on a comparison with John Updike's Pennsylvania fiction and a reading of Joan Williams's The Wintering to explore disinclination to represent the quotidian realities of southern life in his later novels. Zender shows that stylistic withdrawal attempts to transform into his alienation from the postwar world and his fear of aging. That Faulkner and the Politics of Reading itself recovers and gives new luster to beauty will surely please, in the author's words, those readers . . . for whom literature is less a mechanism of social change than a source of pleasure. The originality of its critical vision will inspire Faulkner scholars, students of American literature, and general readers.

Discovering the Cause of AIDS

Great discoveries in science are infrequent, yet they are the grist that motivates every scientist. This source of motivation is critical because most experiments advance our knowledge little, and even when an experiment “works,” the step forward is small. Great discoveries happen within different contexts. Some occur when the scientists are not anticipating the outcome—these are genuine gifts of nature. Others occur when clearly defined questions, usually with “yes” or “no” answers, are posed. And often those posing the query are not the ones making the discovery.