HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: eb3@world.std.com (Edwin Barkdoll)
Subject: Re: Toads and Frogs
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 21:25:55 GMT

In article <9209081655.AA07080@TIS.COM> richard@TIS.COM writes:
>
>	Its them dang cats! Seriously! Cats go over fences with the greatest
>of ease, and kill just for the sheer pleasure of the chase. A case in point

	I can't really say whether cats kill for the "sheer pleasure
of the chase" or not but it is unlikely that cats affect amphibian
populations to any significant extent (particularly toads).  In
general the most common prey species of feral and free running cats is
small rodents (various microtine spp, young rats ...), young
rabbits...  Amphibians typically make up between 0-1% of the diet.

-- 
Edwin Barkdoll
eb3@world.std.com
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Aspertame (was Toads and Frogs)
Date: 11 Sep 92 16:58:02 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <YefvJCi00VBNA0m15J@andrew.cmu.edu> lv08+@andrew.cmu.edu (Lili Velez) writes:
|I like _saccharine_ better than I like the taste of NutraSweet.  I find
|aspartame to taste really "fake" just as I'm trying to swallow the
|stuff.  Glad to know that I'm not the only one who fails to find it a
|tasty sugar substitute.
|
You are not alone by a long shot.  I have yet to find a diet soda I cannot
identify as such in a single sip.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.skeptic,soc.men,soc.women,comp.ai.philosophy
From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Biological Sex Differences? ("Women only" excusable ?)
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 11:33:00 GMT

In article <1992Sep7.035229.21429@msc.cornell.edu> hillyard@msc.cornell.edu writes:

>"Damn, if only I could add and subtract better, my programming would
>go so much better."
>
>From across the room.  "Hey, I had the same problem, until I got one of
>these."
>
>Flash to $5 calculator.

If you need too attend to a calculator for every hex translation and
every order-of-magnitude memory estimate, you're dead meat.
Furthermore, setting up the problem properly is most of the battle, and
not helped by a calculator.


-- 
szabo@techbook.COM  Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81) 
Newsgroups: sci.bio
From: toby@milton.u.washington.edu (Toby Bradshaw)
Subject: Re: Beetle Nuts
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 05:51:23 GMT

In article <BuJrMK.EpI@ddsw1.mcs.com> arf@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Jack Schmidling) writes:
>Does anyone know the botanical name for beetle nuts as in
>"Bloody Mary's chewing beetle nuts"  from South Pacific?
>
>Can't fin beetle nut in any of my references.

Try "betel" (I think).

Toby Bradshaw
Department of Biochemistry and College of Forest Resources
University of Washington, Seattle
toby@u.washington.edu




Newsgroups: sci.bio
From: rivera@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Stefan Fischer_Rivera)
Subject: Cochinilla
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 12:14:35 GMT
Organization: Universitaet Bielefeld, Technische Fakultaet.

Hi,

I need some information about the Cochinilla!

That's a louse of mexican origin. It is used to extract a
red color. I'm intrested in all kind of information about the
louse and the color. Culturing the louse, extracting the color,
the possibilities of using it, especially for dyeing wood.

Historical information about this topic are welcome too.

If you have some hints about this stuff please send it by mail.

Ciao
	Stefan

PS.: Dactylopius coccus costa or Coccus cacti are the 
     scientific names of the louse.
     E 120 or C.I. 75 470, C.I. Natural Red 4 are the list
     numbers of Carminic acid which is extracted.
-- 
++ The first word of the first line - The card's not there ++
+                                  | Stefan Fischer Rivera  +
+ e-mail :                         | Technische Fakultaet   +
+ rivera@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de  | Universitaet Bielefeld +
+ stefan@unibi.uni-bielefeld.de    | 4800 Bielefeld 1       +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.skeptic,soc.men,soc.women,comp.ai.philosophy
From: wentzell@ace.acadiau.ca (LEEANN WENTZELL)
Subject: Re: Biological Sex Differences? ("Women only" excusable ?)
Organization: Acadia University
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 17:29:05 GMT

In article <1992Sep6.154026.14965@techbook.com> szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:
>From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
>Subject: Re: Biological Sex Differences? ("Women only" excusable ?)
>Date: 6 Sep 92 15:40:26 GMT
>In article <92241.144153RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes:
>
>>Exactly.  It seems like a matter of Common Sense, but people seem to have a
>>shortage of this commodity.  for example, the chiarperson of a Computer
>>Science Dept is asked by the administration to `explain' why only 37% of the
>>CS majors are women.  However, Doreeen Kimura states explicitly that high
>>mathematical ability (which is involved in many parts of CS) occurs 13
>>times as often among boys as among girls.  The implication is clear that the
>>chairperson HAS nothing to `explain'.
>
>What is meant by "high mathematical ability", and why is it important
>to CS?  Two things that I know are important to CS, are verbal ability
>and arithmetic.  In fact, in daily software engineering work these are
>very important and "higher math" not at all important.  Women (to
>grossly simplify things, as is usually done in these sorts of
>discussions) are slightly better at verbal skills and arithmetic.
>So, there is still the strong possibility that a bias exists here, and
>that it could be ingrained in the prerequisites to CS, classes like 
>calculus and physics that are important to the older engineering 
>disciplines, but not to CS.  (IMHO, logic and philosophy classes
>would be far more relevent, with perhaps a bow to linear algebra).
>
>So, I might (given these simplistic theories) expect to see more 
>men in "higher math", physics, and the kinds of engineering
>that actually require those skills, but I would expect women to dominate
>in computer science, if the prerequisites weren't biased in favor of
>men's skills (to be fair, they're biased in favor of traditional
>engineering skills, any bias against women may only be a side-effect).
>
>
>-- 
>szabo@techbook.COM  Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
>Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81) 

I recently read an article which pointed out the bias in the college 
entrance tests (GMAT?? Sorry, I'm not American) towards males. For example, 
there were many analogies which dealt in sports terms. This is certainly 
not to say that females know nothing about sports, but I'm about to start my 
PhD (in biology) and I have never been interested in sports. Would I have 
been "weeded" out before even entering college in the States? Perhaps a 
little more fairness in these questions would lead to more women in 
traditionally male faculties, and, of course, vice versa.
Xref: sparky sci.bio:3174 sci.skeptic:16240 soc.men:16253 soc.women:16420
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.skeptic,soc.men,soc.women
Subject: Re: Biological Sex Differences? ("Women only" excusable ?)
Date: 10 Sep 92 20:00:15 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Sep9.215226.5884@access.usask.ca> bickis@skmath3 (M. Bickis) writes:
|In article <BuBC3A.2FI@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
|>This is the sort of garbage which keeps popping up. ...
|>I would not object to denying credit in high school algebra to students
|>who have difficulty with questions like that; it does not matter if it
|>is basketball teams or sewing clubs.  Mathematics is applicable in any
|>context, and the objects discussed do not matter.
|
|The issue is more complicated than that.  Granted that mathematics is 
|context-free, it still takes less time to understand a word-problem if
|you are familiar with the subject matter. The standardized tests are
|written under time stress.  

I suppose it depends on what strategy you use for word problems.  I have
developed a strategy that essentially ignores almost the entire context,
so I have no *need* to understand it.  All I do is extract the numbers
and thier relationships from the text.

One could thus see this as a test of the ability to extract the mathematical
bases from arbitrary situations.

Perhaps an effort should be made to make the situations more *uniformly*
unfamiliar.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Immune response - jukebox or grammaphone?
Date: 8 Sep 92 18:58:44 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: na
Reply-To: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.197
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   

In a 1959 essay titled "The Future of Man," by Sir Peter Medawar, he discusses
the way we are genetically programmed to produce antibodies against various
invasive organisms and substances.  He discusses the difference between
jukeboxes and grammaphones.  Jukeboxes receive a stimulus (you push a button)
and then play a preprogrammed song.  Grammaphones have no such preprogramming
and must respond to the stimulus (put on a record) by extemporaneously 
decoding the complex stimulus in order to perform the required music.
He calls for former stimulus response "elective" (the jukebox chooses from 
a preset menu of options) and the latter "instructive" (the grammaphone
acts based upon external information to design an appropriate response.

He goes on to say that he doesn't know whether the human immune system
response electively or instructively.  He says that the old view was 
"instructive", i.e., that the immune system is designed in a generic way
to identify "not self" and design an appropriate antibody for any (even
previously unseen) antigen, such as an environmental toxin, virus, etc.
But he claims that the "new" view (in 1959) began to favor the "elective"
model, i.e., the immune system is precoded with some hundreds or thousands
of possible antibodies, and simply chooses the most effective one in 
response to the particular substance identified as "not self."

Not being a biologist, I don't know the answer to this question in 1992.
What's the story?  How does the body come up with the correct antibody 
for a particular antigen?

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Preserving insects/arachnids
From: z_mcwestkj@ccsvax.sfasu.edu
Date: 10 Sep 92 16:56:11 CST
Organization: Stephen F. Austin State University

ccccccc










>freezing works well...

one of my methods (long tested and used by arachnologists worldwide)
of *preparing* critters for preservation...i.e., killing the little
buggers *quickly*... is to drop them (alive, *snif*) in near-boiling
water.   when doing this, be sure to be  ready to remove them quickly
so they won't *cook*.  they die, i reiterate, quickly.

the neat thing about this method as opposed to freezing is that the
poor unfortunate beasties are *totally* limp....perfect for 
manipulating into position for plasticc preservation, i assume
(i can't find the original query...bummer).

for more info, see "Scorpion preservation methods", Stanley C. Williams,
Wasmann Journal of Biology (science?), 1968....sorry, i don't have
the paper with me.  good little paper on preserving soft bodied
arachnids....spiders, solpugids, whip-scorpions, etc........

hope i helped some..

freezing works good for shaping, after death.
this method ccan be used at home, and free...no liquid nitrogen to
deal with (i use a portable one-cup coffee maker)..

c'ya

kari/exit

  
  
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.skeptic,soc.men,soc.women,comp.ai.philosophy
From: ecsd@tfs.com (Eric C. S. Dynamic)
Subject: Re: missing verbs
Organization: TFS
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 14:50:21 GMT

szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:
>
>Dr. Minsky has pointed out a curious assymetry in the English language,
>but does any language _not_ have such an assymetry?
>
>bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>
>>Anyway, English (and other languages) are full of curious asymmetries.
>>For example, it's okay to say "The bicycle is next to the house", but
>>it's not okay to say "The house is next to the bicycle", though
>>logically they ought to mean the same thing.
>
>"Is" here seems to carry far more than an Aristolean logic semantics;
>in particular it seems to imply an action -- one would park a bicycle
>next to the house, but not vice versa.

I may have missed the full original context, but why is the asymmetry
curious? Houses are presumed to be stationary objects, and much larger
than bicycles.

The bike is next to the car
The car is next to the bike

The bike is next to the elephant
The elephant is next to the bike

The bike is next to the monument
The monument is next to the bike

I don't know, but I actually 'feel' the asymmetry changing by weight
and kind of the one object vs. the other (the bike).
Newsgroups: sci.bio
From: le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel (x2025))
Subject: Re: cells inside of cells?
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. - Rye Canyon
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 22:07:08 GMT

In article <1992Sep15.181239.5679@das.harvard.edu>, love@geophysics.harvard.edu writes...
> 
>Are there any cells that live inside of other cells? 
>(Not counting viruses!)

There's a good case for mitochondria being cells that became linked with
their hosts' DNA.
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.skeptic,soc.men,soc.women,comp.ai.philosophy
From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: Biological Sex Differences? ("Women only" excusable ?)
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 16:22:11 GMT

In article <dgsnzqd@lynx.unm.edu> bevans@carina.unm.edu (Mathemagician) writes:
)In article <1992Sep9.034138.15488@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
)>More generally, I have found only a very few verbs that reflect any
)>appreciable discredit upon the subject-agent.  It is almost impossible
)>to admit to a fault without using the passive, or other form of
)>periphrase to be evasive.  Could this be a subtle way of imparting a
)>society's values to its members?  Weird.
)
)I'd disagree.  It depends upon what is being spoken:
)
)I lost.
)I lost the game.
)I biffed it.
)I ate it.
)I bit it.
)I spooged.
)I fucked up.
)I bought the farm.

'I choked' is what I hear in sports (esp tennis) all the time.  In fact,
I've seen players grab their throats to indicate that they are experiencing
this condition without verebalizing it.

'Choking' is different from loosing, BTW.  You can be playing well and loose,
to superior play - or perhaps even random chance, or maybe even bad
refereeing :-), - but choking is something that you do by yourself to
yourself, or at least is seen that way. So 'choking' _is_ more of an active
act, and loosing is more of a passive act, IMO.

This is probably slang usage, but quite common on TV.
From: barkdoll@cattell.psych.upenn.edu (Edwin Barkdoll)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: cells inside of cells?
Date: 15 Sep 92 18:27:45 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Sep15.181239.5679@das.harvard.edu> love@geophysics.harvard.edu writes:
>
>Are there any cells that live inside of other cells? 
>(Not counting viruses!)

Various intracellular parasites - salmonella, brucella, rickettsia,
chlamydia for example.

Edwin Barkdoll
barkdoll@cattell.psych.upenn.edu
eb3@world.std.com
From: klier@iscsvax.uni.edu
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Pets/Projects
Date: 8 Sep 92 01:45:17 -0500
Distribution: world
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

In article <65287@cup.portal.com>, dbell@cup.portal.com (David J Bell) writes:
> In the mean time, what happened to the twin threads on Bacteria
> as Pets, and Winogradski Column construction? Did the gentleman
> who offered to post the Column information ever get back to us?

My recollections of making Winogradsky columns are that they were 
pretty simple: obtain a glass tube of perhaps 2-8 cm diameter, and
a meter+ in length.  Constrict one end so you can put some packing material
like glass fiber in to the end, but still allow water flow.  Add a 
chunk of rubber tubing and a pinchcock to that end.  Mount the whole
column upright, tubing end down.  Put some packing material in the
base, then add soil and/or silt and/or compost heap material, etc.
Add water.  Incubate at room temperature and watch.  You can change
conditions by adding more water, or letting in dry out, by
adding nutrients in the water, or by moving the column to other lighting
conditions or temperatures.

Enjoy!  (but watch out-- if it's too soggy and goes anaerobic, it's
a stinky mess if you break it!)

Kay Klier  Biology Dept  UNI
From: josh@cqs.washington.edu (Josh Hayes)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Sexual Selection
Date: 11 Sep 92 00:43:03 GMT
Article-I.D.: mowgli.josh.716172183
Organization: University of Washington

szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:

>In article <9SEP199214492487@utkvx1.utk.edu> ljones@utkvx1.utk.edu (Jones, Leslie Lamont) writes:

>> [you assume females with preference are rare]

>Well, no.  I assume that a female can be sensitive, or not, and I am
>asking why are they? 

>> [swordtail reference deleted]
>>The females are hardwired in the sense that their sensory/neural
>>systems 
>>respond to certain stimuli without prior exposure to that stimuli.

>This needs more explanation.  What is it in neural structures that would
>make this a ubiquitous side effect?  (If it is, which has not been
>demonstrated).  Why could not the opposite, a disposition to ignore
>the obvious male, be the most common side effect?

Well, of course, both occur. In some species there appears to be sexual
selection in a direction which is distinctly not parallel to the remainder
of selective pressures, i.e. females like big gaudy males who fight each
other or some such nonsense. On the other hand, there are plenty of 
species (ground birds, for example) where males are distinctly un-gaudy,
and scuttle around acting meek most of the time. They may perform some
ritualized thing for females (drumming, for example), or they may not.
Not ALL females exhibit preferences for funny-looking males. Some do.
It is interesting to note, however, that most of the cases of females
preferring apparently maladaptive traits in males appear in the so-called
"higher" animals, i.e. the ones related closely to us: vertebrates. This
may be due to the bias toward research in this group. Anyone have info
on similar patterns in inverts? I suspect such cases are the exception
rather than the rule; most insects are not particularly sexually dimorphic,
for example.

And this should serve as a warning against interpreting every little thing
as necessarily "adaptive"; we should be very cautious in telling what
Lewontin and Gould call "adaptive fairy tales". They're fun, of course,
but nature never promised to be fun. Why is some trait the way it is?
Sometimes the correct answer is "why not?".

Josh

--
Josh Hayes, Quantitative Sciences HR-20 U of Washington
josh@mowgli.cqs.washington.edu             206 685-2793
Exclaimer: Hey!           Plan: Birth School Work Death
Newsgroups: sci.bio
From: ozalp@cs.cornell.edu (Ozalp Babaoglu)
Subject: help! gypsy moths invade italy!
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 19:50:59 GMT

a friend who lives in bologna, italy has asked me if i could help
her out through the marvels of netnews.

as of this summer, all of the trees in her back yard are infested with
a bug that has been identified as "metcalfe pruinosa" (sp?) in italian.
i have seen the animal myself and to my untrained eyes it looks like a
white moth.  she has further found out that it is native to north america
and has been transported to italy recently where it has spread rapidly to
many more trees than its favourite acacia.

in addition to damaging the trees, it has made the back yard practically
unusable since it secretes an oozy substance to whatever is underneath the
leaves.  since the back yard borders on a large public garden, no local
intevention seems toobe effective.

does this creature sound like a gypsy moth?  if not, what is it?  how can
it be combatted effectively?  any help and suggestions will be appreciated.
please respond via e-mail since i don't follow this group.
-- 
Ozalp Babaoglu					E-mail:	ozalp@cs.cornell.edu
Dept. of Computer Science
4130 Upson Hall, Cornell University		TEL:	+1 607 255-5418
Ithaca, New York 14853-7501 (USA)		FAX:	+1 607 255-4428
Xref: sparky sci.bio:3104 sci.skeptic:16011 soc.men:16039 soc.women:16228 comp.ai.philosophy:5974
From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.skeptic,soc.men,soc.women,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Biological Sex Differences? ("Women only" excusable ?)
Date: 6 Sep 92 15:40:26 GMT
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636

In article <92241.144153RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes:

>Exactly.  It seems like a matter of Common Sense, but people seem to have a
>shortage of this commodity.  for example, the chiarperson of a Computer
>Science Dept is asked by the administration to `explain' why only 37% of the
>CS majors are women.  However, Doreeen Kimura states explicitly that high
>mathematical ability (which is involved in many parts of CS) occurs 13
>times as often among boys as among girls.  The implication is clear that the
>chairperson HAS nothing to `explain'.

What is meant by "high mathematical ability", and why is it important
to CS?  Two things that I know are important to CS, are verbal ability
and arithmetic.  In fact, in daily software engineering work these are
very important and "higher math" not at all important.  Women (to
grossly simplify things, as is usually done in these sorts of
discussions) are slightly better at verbal skills and arithmetic.
So, there is still the strong possibility that a bias exists here, and
that it could be ingrained in the prerequisites to CS, classes like 
calculus and physics that are important to the older engineering 
disciplines, but not to CS.  (IMHO, logic and philosophy classes
would be far more relevent, with perhaps a bow to linear algebra).

So, I might (given these simplistic theories) expect to see more 
men in "higher math", physics, and the kinds of engineering
that actually require those skills, but I would expect women to dominate
in computer science, if the prerequisites weren't biased in favor of
men's skills (to be fair, they're biased in favor of traditional
engineering skills, any bias against women may only be a side-effect).


-- 
szabo@techbook.COM  Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81) 
Newsgroups: sci.bio