Winter Coats Research Articles

Does coat colour influence survival? A test in a cyclic population of snowshoe hares.

Some mammal species inhabiting high-latitude biomes have evolved a seasonal moulting pattern that improves camouflage via white coats in winter and brown coats in summer. In many high-latitude and high-altitude areas, the duration and depth of snow cover has been substantially reduced in the last five decades. This reduction in depth and duration of snow cover may create a mismatch between coat colour and colour of the background environment, and potentially reduce the survival rate of species that depend on crypsis. We used long-term (1977-2020) field data and capture-mark-recapture models to test the hypothesis that whiteness of the coat influences winter apparent survival in a cyclic population of snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) at Kluane, Yukon, Canada. Whiteness of the snowshoe hare coat in autumn declined during this study, and snowshoe hares with a greater proportion of whiteness in their coats in autumn survived better during winter. However, whiteness of the coat in spring did not affect subsequent summer survival. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the timing of coat colour change in autumn can reduce overwinter survival. Because declines in cyclic snowshoe hare populations are strongly affected by low winter survival, the timing of coat colour change may adversely affect snowshoe hare population dynamics as climate change continues.

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Cold-raised fruit flies are harder to paralyze

As winter nears, the days and nights grow colder in many parts of the world, and lots of mammals and birds keep themselves warm by donning their winter coats or plumage. But for animals that don't generate their own body heat, such as insects, life in the winter can be much harder. When insects get too cold, an interesting phenomenon occurs: they experience a spreading depolarization in their brain, paralyzing them and causing them to go into a chill coma. Generally, climate change causes the temperature to rise, but it also results in an increase in severe weather and cold snaps. Because of the unpredictability of their environment, the ability of insects to tolerate colder temperatures may give species an advantage. But could something as simple as being raised in a cooler environment help protect insects from the chill coma? Mads Andersen and Heath MacMillan of Carleton University, Canada, show that raising fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) in colder environments helps their brains function better when the temperature drops because of changes to the sodium/potassium (Na+/K+) pump.Working with R. Meldrum Robertson from Queen's University, Canada, Andersen and MacMillan raised some fruit flies at 15°C and tested whether growing up in this colder climate gave the insects some protection against the paralysis-inducing event. Normally, spreading depolarization would happen at 9°C, but they found that if the flies were raised in the cooler environment, it didn't occur until the temperature was down to 5°C. Not only that, but the magnitude of the paralysis-inducing event wasn't as large for the cold-raised flies, suggesting that these flies were able to maintain their brain cells’ ion balance.The team knew from previous research that the paralyzing effects of the spreading depolarization are the result of imbalances in the Na+ and K+ levels in the fluid between the brain cells. Andersen blocked the molecular pump (Na+/K+-ATPase) that maintains this balance to see whether the paralyzing event could be caused chemically at different temperatures. For the cold-acclimated flies, it took longer for a paralyzing event to happen, and it occurred at lower temperatures than in fruit flies raised at room temperature.Based on this, the team thought that the Na+/K+ pump must be working harder in the brains of cold-acclimated flies. Instead, they found these cold-raised fruit flies had lower Na+/K+ pump activity, but it worked better at lower temperatures than it did for normal fruit flies. This suggested that growing up in a cold environment allowed the pump to function even as the temperature dropped.Another possibility then occurred to Andersen: raising the flies in cooler temperatures could also have increased the number of the pumps in the brain cells, allowing the flies to better maintain the balance of Na+ and K+. However, when the team tested this, the cold-acclimated flies had a similar amount of Na+/K+ pumps to their more temperate fellows.Andersen points out that given the role of the Na+/K+ pump in maintaining the levels of ions on each side of the cell membrane, it isn't surprising that the activity of this molecular pump is important for preventing the paralyzing events that cause chill comas in the diminutive flies. Andersen and colleagues go on to highlight the impressive importance of a single molecular pump in setting the temperature limit to the insect's activity. So, as climate change causes more drastic deviations in the normal weather, being raised in the cold might just save the life of a fruit fly when the temperature unexpectedly drops.

Trust Fall

A gloomy landscape frames a worn yet charismatic stone, carried to the Alberta foothills centuries ago by receding glaciers. Around the rock is a trampled path of dirt and plants that was imprinted onto the land by bison who rubbed against the rock to shed their winter coats. Hidden off to the side is an artist, patiently gathering video footage of this rock and its material history. Thus begins a relationship between a migrant stone, a herd of prairie animals, and an artistic intuition about the importance of watching and listening to the environment around us. Rubbing Rock, 2016. Photo © Moria Whiteman A video of this stone is the centrepiece of a recent project by Maria Whiteman that examines questions of geological time and tells (or re-tells) the stories of the lands she encounters. In Whiteman’s work, the stone is juxtaposed with videos of bison, of other environmental sites, and of close shots of grass, ice and water. One might read in this another form of rubbing – not this time the desire to remove a winter coat but rather to contrast the speed of various environmental vitalities. In Whiteman's work the stone is not just a stone but a metaphor – a ‘rubbing rock’ that is also about reconsidering our tactile and kinaesthetic relationships with the landscape. At the same time, the stone is not a metaphor at all – it is actually a stone, and to put poetic elaborations aside is ultimately what grounds the very gaze the poetic intervention seeks to raise. This essay meditates on the use of the rubbing rock in and around Whiteman's work, as a method for thinking about the meeting points of artistic and environmental complexity.

The evolutionary pathways for local adaptation in mountain hares.

Understanding the evolution of local adaptations is a central aim of evolutionary biology and key for the identification of unique populations and lineages of conservation relevance. By combining RAD sequencing and whole‐genome sequencing, we identify genetic signatures of local adaptation in mountain hares (Lepus timidus) from isolated and distinctive habitats of its wide distribution: Ireland, the Alps and Fennoscandia. Demographic modelling suggested that the split of these mountain hares occurred around 20 thousand years ago, providing the opportunity to study adaptive evolution over a short timescale. Using genome‐wide scans, we identified signatures of extreme differentiation among hares from distinct geographic areas that overlap with area‐specific selective sweeps, suggesting targets for local adaptation. Several identified candidate genes are associated with traits related to the uniqueness of the different environments inhabited by the three groups of mountain hares, including coat colour, ability to live at high altitudes and variation in body size. In Irish mountain hares, a variant of ASIP, a gene previously implicated in introgression‐driven winter coat colour variation in mountain and snowshoe hares (L. americanus), may underlie brown winter coats, reinforcing the repeated nature of evolution at ASIP moulding adaptive seasonal colouration. Comparative genomic analyses across several hare species suggested that mountain hares’ adaptive variants appear predominantly species‐specific. However, using coalescent simulations, we also show instances where the candidate adaptive variants have been introduced via introgressive hybridization. Our study shows that standing adaptive variation, including that introgressed from other species, was a crucial component of the post‐glacial dynamics of species.

The Objective Form of the Object

The Objective Form of the Object H. Aram Veeser (bio) Review of Timothy Brennan, Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said, New York Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. 464 pp. The new biography of Edward W. Said, based on the now-public Said papers and many interviews, is rich in detail. The biographer, Timothy Brennan, a literary scholar and professor, describes Said's intellectual accomplishments incisively and for the most part fairly. Brennan's deep interest in music assumes great importance toward the end of the book when Said's musical turn afforded him a revitalizing outlet. The biography is somewhat severe, and it avoids the worldly realm of love, money, and sports. The facts of Said's early life are cataloged here, including many that were not covered in Out of Place, Said's popular 1999 memoir, which the present book—Places of Mind—echoes faintly in its own title. In those days long ago, his four sisters were goaded, for example, by his "lordly magnanimity" and mocked the way he would permit them "a glimpse of [his] room and even, on rare occasions, the right to cross the threshold of the sacrosanct place and gasp at his books and, in pride of place, his piano" (14). His former students will learn of Said's last report card at his expensive Cairo prep school ("A minus in English, C in biology, C plus in physics, C plus in chemistry, and a surprising C minus in French") (36). At this point, he was sent to an American boarding school to be "'educated abroad,' a phrase oft repeated," by those left behind, "in hushed, awestruck voices" (10). His fellow students at Mount Hermon considered him "aloof" and "a disgruntled know-it-all" (39), and he hated the school's would-be democratizing policy of assigning menial tasks like potato peeling to students. Vague suspicions of ethnocentrism, in Said's memoir, are now confirmed by William Spanos, then a Mount Hermon teacher and later the founder of theory journal boundary 2, who is quoted as saying that he himself was called "'spic' behind his back because of his Greek heritage." Nevertheless, Said's class rank improved at this remote Massachusetts boarding school; he graduated second in his class, with [End Page 367] his lowest grades in English and his highest in Bible studies and music appreciation (44). In places the biographer struggles to situate Said accurately in his class milieu. He mentions "Said's chronicle of the exotic world of the upper classes" (325), but in Cairo he was surrounded by hardworking middle-class intelligentsia (like his aunt Melia, a headmistress) and well-to-do merchants (like his businessman father). He had one very influential relative, by marriage, Charles Malik, a philosophy professor who held important posts in Lebanon and served as Lebanese ambassador to the United States. True, Said developed expensive tastes, favoring Burberry suits and Rolex watches. The biography affirms that, by the time Columbia hired him as an instructor, age twenty-seven, "Said the apprentice gave off the air of a man whose life was well lived, the indelible image being of him and his colleague Michael Rosenthal, his old acquaintance from grad school days, walking up Broadway smoking cigars in long winter coats" (96). Brennan adds that "he fit in well with the gentlemanly ease of the college" (123) but omits supporting details. We are never told, for example, that Said played tennis regularly with W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of Critical Inquiry. Said the social genius remains obscurely in the background of this biography. Said had his office in the undergraduate college, which he favored over the graduate English Department's amped-up professionalism, which was already gaining ground in literary studies. His second marriage, to Mariam Cortas, gave him a new set of Lebanese relatives, and as he became famous he received attention from international celebrities that, Brennan says, "made him feel like a starstruck child" (326). He had important friends among the editors and producers of left-liberal media (Jean Stein, Mary Kay Wilmer), and they in turn introduced him to Shelley Wanger, who as his agent got him to expand his reach and...

Museomics Dissects the Genetic Basis for Adaptive Seasonal Coloration in the Least Weasel.

Dissecting the link between genetic variation and adaptive phenotypes provides outstanding opportunities to understand fundamental evolutionary processes. Here, we use a museomics approach to investigate the genetic basis and evolution of winter coat coloration morphs in least weasels (Mustela nivalis), a repeated adaptation for camouflage in mammals with seasonal pelage color moults across regions with varying winter snow. Whole-genome sequence data were obtained from biological collections and mapped onto a newly assembled reference genome for the species. Sampling represented two replicate transition zones between nivalis and vulgaris coloration morphs in Europe, which typically develop white or brown winter coats, respectively. Population analyses showed that the morph distribution across transition zones is not a by-product of historical structure. Association scans linked a 200-kb genomic region to coloration morph, which was validated by genotyping museum specimens from intermorph experimental crosses. Genotyping the wild populations narrowed down the association to pigmentation gene MC1R and pinpointed a candidate amino acid change cosegregating with coloration morph. This polymorphism replaces an ancestral leucine residue by lysine at the start of the first extracellular loop of the protein in the vulgaris morph. A selective sweep signature overlapped the association region in vulgaris, suggesting that past adaptation favored winter-brown morphs and can anchor future adaptive responses to decreasing winter snow. Using biological collections as valuable resources to study natural adaptations, our study showed a new evolutionary route generating winter color variation in mammals and that seasonal camouflage can be modulated by changes at single key genes.

Vaccinating Against Sars-Cov-2 at a Snail’s Pace

Free AccessVaccinating Against Sars-Cov-2 at a Snail’s PaceEdouard BattegayEdouard Battegay International Center for Multimorbidity and Complexity in Medicine (ICMC), University of Zurich, and Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Hospital Basel, SwitzerlandSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:April 20, 2021https://doi.org/10.1024/1661-8157/a003703PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInReddit SectionsMoreThe pace of the vaccination programme against COVID-19 is slow in Switzerland, even when vaccines are available. This limits the predictability of the future for the unvaccinated, whether young adults or the elderly, for businesses and organizations, the economy, and society in its entirety. In turn, a lack of predictability and a lack of will to fight and overcome a threat generates considerable anxiety, fear, and sometimes despair, both individually and collectively. These negative moods cannot always be controlled, and an uneasy sense of defenselessness and helplessness ensues.According to media reports, there are significant delays in the delivery of vaccines and the actual vaccinations. For example, large quantities of vaccine arrived in Switzerland just before Easter 2021, but in some cantons, vaccination did not begin until a week later. The United Kingdom and Israel are two countries with a gross national income per capita in 2019 of about half of ours [1]. Compared to Switzerland, these countries have considerably fewer human and material resources in the health care system per capita or per patient and are also struggling with substantial other problems. Nonetheless, the vaccination programme was carried out immediately after the supplies had arrived. In Israel for example, mass vaccinations with the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, which is particularly difficult to handle logistically, were carried out just a few hours after the vaccines arrived at Tel Aviv airport. My general practitioner friends in London told me as early as winter 2021 that they were attending to vaccinations from the early morning hours into the night, sometimes in hubs, wearing winter coats and with freezing fingers, but – God save the Queen! – lots of hot tea. In Israel, up to 3 % of the population were vaccinated daily. Not only doctors tackled the task, but also nurses, MPAs, paramedics, etc., because in most countries with fewer resources it is unusual that doctors vaccinate personally, but of course, medical doctors are always available should complications and special questions pop up. In the U.S., the week after Easter, starting April 5th, over 1 % of the population were vaccinated every day. Vaccinations are available almost everywhere, in stadiums, at the shopping mall, at the pharmacy, in the street, at the drive-through. Starting April 19th, 2021, all adult Americans can get vaccinated, no ifs or buts. Motto: Speed trumps perfection! In contrast, Switzerland presents itself with far too much risk aversion, unnecessary and slowing perfectionism, and an oppressive bureaucratic complexity and inertia. However, lack of efficiency is not an option, not epidemiologically, medically, psychologically, socially, organizationally nor economically, and certainly not ethically. In this context, a lack of efficiency and speed simply costs lives. If a vaccine is available, it has to be delivered to the people quickly; once a vaccine is available, vaccination has to start within hours, regardless of the time of day, of weekend, holiday or whatever. This is what a conscientious medical profession and all the other people in health professions stand for. The steadfast and improvisation-tested Brits should serve us as an example; they are ready to go at any time.Bibliography The World Bank. GNI per capita, PPP (current international $) 2019. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD?year_high_desc=true)); last access: 08.04.2021. First citation in articleGoogle ScholarProf. Edouard Battegay, MD, FACP, Specialist in Internal Medicine, ESH Specialist in Hypertension,, Fellow SSPH and Editor of “Praxis”., Head of Innovation Hub, International Center for Multimorbidity and Complexity in Medicine (ICMC), University of Zurich, edouard.battegay@uzh.chFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 110Issue 6April 2021ISSN: 1661-8157eISSN: 1661-8165 Published online20. April 2021 InformationPraxis (2021), 110, pp. 1-1 https://doi.org/10.1024/1661-8157/a003703.© 2021Hogrefe AGPDF download

Development of Kapok/Recycled-PET Blended Needle-Punched Thermal Waddings

ABSTRACT Kapok fiber is emerging as a cheaper natural fiber having excellent thermal insulation properties. Recycled polyester/kapok blended needle punched nonwoven waddings are prepared where the effect of kapok fiber %, sheet areal density, and needle punch density on thermal resistance and air permeability is measured and analyzed with the help of MINITAB®18.1. Three percentages of kapok fiber (20, 40, 60%), four levels of fabric areal density (150, 300, 450, 600 g.m-2) and two levels of punch density (15, 20 punches.cm-2) were chosen. The statistical analysis revealed that kapok fiber % and areal density had a significant effect on both thermal resistance and air permeability of nonwovens. The thermal resistance was decreased significantly with the increase in kapok fiber %, especially at higher punch density. A significant interaction between kapok fiber % and areal density was observed for air permeability. It may be concluded that, in the selected range of input variables, recycled PET/kapok nonwovens with less % of kapok fibers and punch density display better thermal insulation performance, especially at higher areal density. The prepared nonwovens may find applications in winter coats and wadding layers for quilts, etc., and will also help to reduce the pollution from the environment.

Convergent evolution of seasonal camouflage in response to reduced snow cover across the snowshoe hare range.

Determining how different populations adapt to similar environments is fundamental to understanding the limits of adaptation under changing environments. Snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) typically molt into white winter coats to remain camouflaged against snow. In some warmer climates, hares have evolved brown winter camouflage-an adaptation that may spread in response to climate change. We used extensive range-wide genomic data to (1) resolve broad patterns of population structure and gene flow and (2) investigate the factors shaping the origins and distribution of winter-brown camouflage variation. In coastal Pacific Northwest (PNW) populations, winter-brown camouflage is known to be determined by a recessive haplotype at the Agouti pigmentation gene. Our phylogeographic analyses revealed deep structure and limited gene flow between PNW and more northern Boreal populations, where winter-brown camouflage is rare along the range edge. Genome sequencing of a winter-brown snowshoe hare from Alaska shows that it lacks the winter-brown PNW haplotype, reflecting a history of convergent phenotypic evolution. However, the PNW haplotype does occur at low frequency in a winter-white population from Montana, consistent with the spread of a locally deleterious recessive variant that is masked from selection when rare. Simulations of this population further show that this masking effect would greatly slow the selective increase of the winter-brown Agouti allele should it suddenly become beneficial (e.g., owing to dramatic declines in snow cover). Our findings underscore how allelic dominance can shape the geographic extent and rate of convergent adaptation in response to rapidly changing environments.

Consumers’ perceptions of professional laundry shops using semantic network analysis

Laundry services are becoming more specialized and diversified. Therefore, this study investigated consumers’ perceptions of professional laundry shops by analyzing social media data. For this purpose, text data from blogs, cafes, and Q&A sections (‘Ji-Sik-In’) on the portal site, naver.com, was collected. Sixty-four keywords were extracted from 2,213 social texts and transformed into a one-mode matrix using KrKwic, a program for the analysis of Korean text. Semantic network analysis was conducted to understand the network structure and the results were visualized using NodeXL. Keywords included fashion items and materials that require specialized professional laundry services, words related to the establishment of laundry shops, and laundry shop brands. Essential keywords of professional laundry shops included ‘luxury,’ ‘footwear,’ ‘removal,’ ‘bag,’ ‘leather,’ ‘sneakers,’ ‘padding,’ ‘premium,’ ‘dyeing,’ and ‘franchise.’ These results could be used to deduce that consumers perceive a professional laundry shop as a franchise shop offering specialized professional laundry services. A cluster analysis was conducted to identify the types of consumer perceptions of professional laundry shops. The network was divided into three groups: ‘specialized professional laundry service,’ ‘laundry and repair of winter coats and jackets,’ and ‘the establishment of a professional laundry shop.’ According to the results, consumers perceive professional laundry shops as franchises that offer specialized professional laundry services rather than general laundry services. Therefore, professional laundry shops need a strategy to develop special laundry services that differentiate them from other companies and communicate with consumers about these services.

37 Genetic aspects of livestock adaptation

Abstract Livestock adaptation to less than favorable ambient has a genetic basis. Estimates of additive genetic variance and narrow sense heritability for % intramuscular fat in Hereford varied across United States geography quantifications evaluated in random regression analyses. Shedding and regrowth of winter coats of Angus cows in subtropical areas may indicate differential adaptation in cattle not adapted to the subtropics. Acquired adaptation to local conditions (multiple generations across more than 50 years) may was evidenced by performance of Florida Angus relative to prominent U.S. Angus in subtropical Florida; later sexual maturation may be a prominent component of such adaptation, and increasing milk production may be antagonistic to adaptation in natural conditions. Cattle temperament may be indicative of adaptation and is highly heritable; however, results from random regression analyses suggest that the additive genetic component appears to decrease in importance and the permanent environmental component of phenotype appears to become more important as calves age. Crossbreeding represents a proven strategy to improve adaptation almost immediately. Heterosis influences cattle body temperature maintenance, reproduction, survival, and, to a lesser extent, temperament in subtropical or other stressful environmental conditions (for example, in toxic fescue). Prenatal stress alters patterns of methylation (and likely other epigenetic mechanisms) and thereby encourages or inhibits gene expression to promote postnatal fitness. Brahman exposed to prenatal stress exhibited substantially different patterns of methylation across the genome in lymphocytes in both male and female calves; those patterns differed by sex. Female longevity may be the ultimate adaptation trait, as annual compliance to reproductive standards may be an appropriate assessment of a combination of attributes that represent adaptation. Longevity has documented heterotic influence; the additive genetic component is less well characterized but real. A simple, effective way to improve longevity may be to select bulls from aged, proven cows.

Waltz

Waltz Erin Somers (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution UP UNTIL HER FORTIETH YEAR, there hadn't been a season of Marian's life she hadn't had to grovel and beg, send off invoice reminders couched in manic cheer: Just checking in! At forty, an unexpected windfall changed all of that. She bought a house in a town in the Hudson Valley that seemed occupied solely by arty people, and made a hobby of overpaying for furniture. She spent $5,899 on an antique chest of drawers, laughed as they loaded it into her car. "What's funny?" asked the guy with the dolly. "Where to begin?" she said. The children adjusted instantly. They shrugged off their old lives like [End Page 143] winter coats on the first real day of spring. Marian never caught them pining or calling the friends they'd left behind. She bought them anything they asked for, and they asked for a lot. Sophie wanted a horse and Dan wanted a BMX bike. "It's not exactly fair, is it?" she said to them. "Horses eat tons of grain and have to be boarded. BMX bikes eat almost nothing." She loved them equally, so she got them each one of each. The horses lived ten minutes away in a stable surrounded by green grass. The BMX bikes lived in the garage. One afternoon the children's father came to visit. He walked around peeking into rooms and doing that low whistle of his. The house was huge, simple, and old, everything that impressed him. He pointed at different features and pronounced their names. "Wainscoting. Crown molding. Antique mahogany tallboy." And at the stable: "Steeds." "They're Mort and Zombie," Sophie told him. The children had found the horses' original names unsatisfactory. Marian had always let the children do whatever they wanted, and in return they worshipped her. But since the money appeared, they'd been thinking bigger. Their father laughed. "Zombie?" Marian reached out and touched the horse's velvety nose. She was afraid of him, of his shuddering animal intelligence, but it seemed important to demonstrate that they were all together on one side against the children's father. "What's wrong with it? Dan chose it. He's seven." "I know how old he is. Don't insult me. Why does a seven-year-old need a horse?" "He's gone this whole time without one," said Marian. "And without other things too. The amount of Batmobiles he wished for and didn't get could fill a truck." "How could notional toys fill a truck?" asked the father, whose name was also Dan. Marian felt like divorcing him all over again. Zombie sneezed. The air in the stable was filled with particles of blond dirt floating around in beams of light. Marian took in a lungful and explained that the children adored the horses and were very sweet about brushing them and shoveling their dung and such, which proved, ipso facto, that they deserved them. You had to use words like ipso facto with the children's father if you wanted to him to pay any attention. Dan Senior laughed again and said, "If you say so." "Do you want to see me ride?" asked Sophie. "Why not?" said Dan Senior. They got the stable manager to help take Mort out. Sophie rode him [End Page 144] around, while the rest of them leaned against the split-rail fence. She wore her round black helmet and sporty jodhpurs. Beyond the dirt enclosure, a field extended to the tree line. Heavy clouds inched in over it. It was a spectacle—the churn of muscle, the blue creep of thunderheads. Sophie with her cruel posture and shiny boots, like the officer of a preteen cavalry. "God, she's a natural," said Dan Senior. Now that he mentioned it, Marian could see it was true. She had an inborn lightness that seemed suited for horseback. Possibly they'd found her calling; they'd only had to vault about three social classes to do it. The wind picked up and it was time to get Mort back inside. Dan Junior ran ahead to say...

Personalized charity advertising. Can personalized prosocial messages promote empathy, attitude change, and helping intentions toward stigmatized social groups?

This study examines the role of personalized charity advertising in promoting empathy, attitude change, and helping intentions toward stigmatized social groups. Based on theories of message involvement, empathy, and reactance, we predicted that higher levels of involvement elicited by a personalized charity advertisement would reinforce empathy and prosocial outcomes. An online experiment was conducted using a personalized and a nonpersonalized version of a charity advertisement for a campaign soliciting donations of winter coats for homeless people. As expected, structural equation modeling revealed a positive indirect effect of personalization on prosocial outcomes (attitudes and behavioural intentions toward homeless people, and willingness to donate to the campaign) that was mediated by involvement and empathy. However, in addition to promoting involvement and empathy, personalization also led to heightened reactance, which detracted from the positive effects. Theoretical as well as practical implications of the findings for personalized charity advertising are discussed.

Winter color polymorphisms identify global hot spots for evolutionary rescue from climate change.

Maintenance of biodiversity in a rapidly changing climate will depend on the efficacy of evolutionary rescue, whereby population declines due to abrupt environmental change are reversed by shifts in genetically driven adaptive traits. However, a lack of traits known to be under direct selection by anthropogenic climate change has limited the incorporation of evolutionary processes into global conservation efforts. In 21 vertebrate species, some individuals undergo a seasonal color molt from summer brown to winter white as camouflage against snow, whereas other individuals remain brown. Seasonal snow duration is decreasing globally, and fitness is lower for winter white animals on snowless backgrounds. Based on 2713 georeferenced samples of known winter coat color-from eight species across trophic levels-we identify environmentally driven clinal gradients in winter coat color, including polymorphic zones where winter brown and white morphs co-occur. These polymorphic zones, underrepresented by existing global protected area networks, indicate hot spots for evolutionary rescue in a changing climate.

The Number of Louse Eggs on Wild Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata) Varies with Age, but Not with Sex or Season

During grooming, primates remove harmful ectoparasites, such as ticks and lice, and there is direct evidence for a health benefit of tick removal. Grooming behaviors differ among primates with respect to age and sex. Moreover, the number of ectoparasite may exhibit seasonal variation. Therefore the number of ectoparasites on a host may vary with effects, host age and sex, and season. However, these effects have not been a focus of louse infestation studies of primates. Grooming in Japanese macaques is related to sex and age, with developmental changes in behavior corresponding to the timing of tooth eruption. Moreover, behavioral data for Japanese macaques suggest that lice load may differ with the season. Thus, we examined whether the number of louse eggs varies according to host macaque sex, age, and season, and whether it changes in response to tooth eruption. We counted unhatched and hatched eggs attached to the hair on six 1-cm2 areas on the left wrist skin of culled macaques, using a stereoscopic microscope. We sampled five winter coats and three summer coats for each age class: infant, juvenile, adolescent, and adult. The number of unhatched and hatched eggs was related to age, but not to sex and season. There were significant differences in the number of unhatched eggs between infants and adults, juveniles and adults, and adolescents and adults. There were also significant differences in the number of hatched eggs between infants and adults, juveniles and adults, adolescents and adults. Tooth eruption did not influence the number of louse eggs. These results suggest that researchers should consider the age of host animals when assessing the relationship between grooming and ectoparasites.

Sound, Space and Bodies: Building Relations in the Work of Invisible Flock and Atelier Bildraum

In this article, I discuss sounds potential to construct fictional spaces and build relations between bodies using two performance installations as case studies. The first is Invisible Flock’s 105+dB, a site-specific sound work which transports crowd recordings of a soccer match to alternative geographical locations. The second is Atelier Bildraum’s Bildraum, an installation performance using live photography, architectural models and ambient sound. By writing through these two works, I question how sound builds relations between bodies and across space as well as questioning the role of site within sound installation works.

Carla and the Werewolf

Carla and the Werewolf Peter Tiernan (bio) The two people I meant to avoid when I moved back to Flagstaff were Carla and Eddie the Werewolf, yet I'd been in town less than forty-eight hours when I bumped into the first of them. This was back in the nineties, after I graduated from college. I had a degree in philosophy, a 2.78 GPA, and nowhere to go but back to Dad's house. So, my second day in town, I went out to relive the glory days with a Dungeons & Dragons marathon that I expected would go about sixteen hours. It was in a musty-smelling basement, surrounded by shelves of trading card boxes and painted orc miniatures. Around the table with Carla sat three of my friends from high school, only one of whom I'd seen in the last four and a half years. He'd assured me Eddie didn't play with them anymore, but how would I have known to ask about Carla? I'd never even seen her talk to these guys. I gave my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim basement light, praying they were playing a trick on me, that her face would become someone else's. It didn't. Carla had plain blond hair that hung limp down her cheeks, and a trace of acne that I thought only made her all the more interesting. She gave me a nervous smile and a wave, and I scowled back. Most of the day I spent being a jerk. Responding snarkily when she talked, making a big deal of it when she rolled the wrong dice, pretending not to hear when she asked if someone would pass the Chex Mix. But when she risked her life to save me from a level-40 snow troll, I felt guilty. After the gaming ended, when we were back upstairs putting on our winter coats, I said, "Sorry. I've been an ass today." "I was the ass," she said. "That night with Eddie…" "Let's not talk about it," I said. She sat on the floor to pull on her red rubber boots. Looking up at me, she said, "Your nose healed up pretty good." It wasn't true, but she made it sound like it was. Face-to-face with her, I felt my hatred melting away. Not only because she was the prettiest girl who'd ever shown interest in me. It was the way she scuffed to her car, shoulders slumped, like she was feeling the weight of every mistake she'd ever made, that night with Eddie atop it all, and hating herself for it more than I ever had. As long as I'd known her, that was how Carla picked her way through life. It filled me with a need to do something nice. [End Page 90] I suppose I ought to explain about Eddie and Carla. In high school, he was my best friend, and she the girl I'd wanted as my girlfriend. The last time I'd seen them was the summer before I left for college, the night of Rob Deacon's party. Carla and I had gone off by ourselves in the back yard where the Japanese creeper runs up the fence, and the things we talked about weren't like things I talked about with anyone else. I told her that in my dreams I was waiting around to get caught for crimes I'd committed, and she told me that in her dreams she was running away because she couldn't bear to face anyone again, and I thought we were going to kiss until Eddie stumbled out into the yard, brayed at the moon, shapeshifted, and chomped off the end of my nose. I dripped a trail of blood through the house until someone drove me to the hospital, and the next day, I heard Eddie and Carla were an item. I wanted to kill Eddie. I even bought a gun, but by the time I found a silver bullet, the rage had faded. I buried the pistol in a box of clothes at Dad's house...

Geographic variation in winter adaptations of snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus)

Understanding adaptations of nonhibernating northern endotherms to cope with extreme cold is important because climate-induced changes in winter temperatures and snow cover are predicted to impact these species the most. We compared winter pelage characteristics and heat production of snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus Erxleben, 1777) on the southern edge of their range, in Pennsylvania (USA), to a northern population, in the Yukon (Canada), to investigate how hares might respond to changing environmental conditions. We also investigated how hares in Pennsylvania altered movement rates and resting spot selection to cope with variable winter temperatures. Hares from Pennsylvania had shorter, less dense, and less white winter coats than their northern counterparts, suggesting lower coat insulation. Hares in the southern population had lower pelage temperatures, indicating that they produced less heat than those in the northern population. In addition, hares in Pennsylvania did not select for resting spots that offered thermal advantages, but selected locations offering visual obstruction from predators. Movement rates were associated with ambient temperature, with the smallest movements occurring at the lower and upper range of observed ambient temperatures. Our results indicate that snowshoe hares may be able to adapt to future climate conditions via changes in pelage characteristics, metabolism, and behavior.

Reflecting on the 64th Annual AAACE Conference

The 64th Annual American Association for and Continuing Education (AAACE) meeting in Oklahoma City showcased the theme Evolutions and Revolutions. The keynote speakers bookending this conference illuminated their sociocultural experiences through powerful stories. In my work with life stories, I have come believe, as Carter (1993) suggested, to understand thinking, it is necessary find the story that structures an individual's model or theory of events (p. 7). My personal experience at this conference--listening colleagues and speakers and touring a local memorial with a family member--strengthened my intention better understand story literacy and its application in adult education. This kind of literacy, which involves the skills of telling, listening, responding, and interpreting stories, has become imperative in our technological and globalized world. For example, stories, particularly of civility and humanity, help us cope in complex and dangerous situations (Moon, 2010). Here is what I heard and saw in Oklahoma and some implications. On Wednesday, Dr. Katarina Popovic opened the conference by walking the audience through a brief history of social movements, illuminating political upheavals in Eastern Europe and the Arab Spring. She is the newly appointed Secretary General of the International Council for Education and professor at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and was previously vice president of the European Association for the Education of Adults. Midway through the talk, Dr. Popovic projected a picture of herself standing with several women and a young Afghan girl who spoke surprisingly good English. When asked how she came speak English so well, the girl explained she attended English class before the Taliban shut down her school. When the teacher offered continue language classes in one of the girl's home, they secretly met, hiding textbooks in their Korans and reciting English cross-legged on the floor. One day, the Taliban came the home, but the girls had warning, so hid the texts beneath blankets laid across their laps and began reading aloud from their Korans. The Taliban left; had the girls and their teacher been caught, the punishment would have been unspeakable. Dr. Popovic shared this story of quiet revolution as a reminder of adult education's social justice roots carefully nurtured by Freire, Horton, hooks, and many others. Throughout the talk, she wondered aloud, Are we asking the wrong questions in a world that needs values not skills? This question evokes Briton's (1996) concern two decades ago: Adult education is a sociohistorical and political practice, not a range of techniques and instructional methodologies devoid of human interest (p. 116). Dr. Popovic's call for adult education's return practices built on humanitarian foundations might be considered revolutionary, from the Latin word revolutio meaning a turn around. Revolutionary change, while not always sudden or quick, tends occur over a shorter time period. In contrast, deep and lasting changes in culture may evolve slowly as complex interactions and understandings replace simple dictates. The next story demonstrates such slow, mature evolution in attitudes and behaviors over time. On Friday, Dr. Michael Fire closed the conference by sharing stories of growing up as a member of one of the most marginalized cultures in America. He is a Cheyenne and Arapaho Elder, is a registered nurse, and holds numerous degrees including a PhD in Health Care Administration. Growing up as a Native American in the 1940s and 1950s, Dr. Fire shared many stories of hardship, told with a delightful sense of humor, including when the U.S. government delivered crop seed and machinery the family's plot of land but no information on how farm. In addition, the delivery of livestock arrived at the homestead without instruction. The stories described cold Oklahoma winters with no indoor plumbing, treasured winter coats stolen from classroom hooks, and blatant incidents of discrimination in the military and higher education. …