People in Drawers: Finding Wonder in the Archives.

This article discusses relics housed in the Ringling Circus Museum in Sarasota, Florida: photos, works of art, newspaper clippings, performance records, and scrapbooks of mostly 19th- and 20th-century circus performers with varied, often "unusual," bodies that have been all but forgotten. Encountering these artifacts left the author wonderstruck-a feeling sometimes so abrupt that it heaves us into the conscious presence of others-and left him with a string of complex emotions. In this article, the author attempts to recreate the affective experience of wonder as the performers' images were lifted before him, and to reflect on the ways disability prompts that affective experience of wonder and functions in moral development.

Judgments of Monkey's (Macaca mulatta) Facial Expressions by Humans: Does Housing Condition "Affect" Countenance?

The ability to interpret facial expressions of others is one of the more important abilities possessed by humans. However, is it possible for humans to accurately interpret the facial expressions of another species of primate, namely rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)? We investigated this possibility by taking digital photos of four rhesus monkeys housed either singly or socially and allowing thirty-one participants to judge these photographs as representing either a happy, sad, or neutral monkey. Results indicated that the photographs of monkeys that were socially housed were more likely to be rated as happy or neutral than were photographs of singly housed monkeys.

Control of pollen-mediated gene flow in transgenic trees.

Pollen elimination provides an effective containment method to reduce direct gene flow from transgenic trees to their wild relatives. Until now, only limited success has been achieved in controlling pollen production in trees. A pine (Pinus radiata) male cone-specific promoter, PrMC2, was used to drive modified barnase coding sequences (barnaseH102E, barnaseK27A, and barnaseE73G) in order to determine their effectiveness in pollen ablation.

Detection of low numbers of Bacillus anthracis spores in three soils using five commercial DNA extraction methods with and without an enrichment step.

Aims: To (i) compare the limits of detection of Bacillus anthracis spores in three soils (one Florida, one Texas, and one a commercial Garden product) by PCR using DNA extracted with five commercial extraction kits and (ii) examine if removing organic acids or adding an enrichment step utilizing a growth medium will improve the detection limits.

Methods And Results: Bacillus anthracis spores were added to soil aliquots and used immediately with a DNA extraction kit or pretreated to remove organics or incubated overnight in a selective growth medium before the DNA extraction was performed. Using hybridization and PCR assays for capC, pag and lef genes, 10(5) -10(6) B.

What do Arabic numerals mean to macaques (Macaca mulatta)?

In the past, rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) have demonstrated an ability to use Arabic numerals to facilitate performance in a variety of tasks. However, it remained unclear whether they understood the absolute and relative values of numerals. In Experiment 1, numeral-trained macaques picked the larger stimuli when presented with pairwise comparisons involving numerals and analog quantities.

With his memory magnetically erased, a monkey knows he is uncertain.

Although intelligence is associated with what one knows, it is also important to recognize and to respond adaptively when one is uncertain. This competency has been examined developmentally and comparatively, but it is difficult to distinguish between objective versus subjective cues to which organisms may respond. In this study, transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to disrupt cognitive processing by a rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) in a computerized divided visual field memory task.

Improvement of a selective media for the isolation of B. anthracis from soils.

To prove linkage between an environmental sample and an anthrax case, there must be isolates obtained from both that can be compared. Although Bacillus anthracis is easily isolated from powder samples, isolating it from soil is difficult because of the high bacterial count in it. Formulations of PLET were prepared, inoculated with B.

Transcription of nitrification genes by the methane-oxidizing bacterium, Methylococcus capsulatus strain Bath.

Methylococcus capsulatus strain Bath, a methane-oxidizing bacterium, and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) carry out the first step of nitrification, the oxidation of ammonia to nitrite, through the intermediate hydroxylamine. AOB use hydroxylamine oxidoreductase (HAO) to produce nitrite. M.

Aerobic methane emission from plants in the Inner Mongolia steppe.

Traditionally, methane (CH4) emission from terrestrial plants is thought to originate from belowground microbial metabolism under anaerobic conditions, with subsequent transport to the atmosphere through stems. However, a recent study reported aerobic CH4 emission from plants by an unrecognized process, a result that has since been questioned. We investigated CH4 emissions under aerobic conditions from aboveground tissues of 44 species indigenous to the temperate Inner Mongolia steppe.

A comparison of the reverse and power punches in oriental martial arts.

In this study, we compared mechanical factors in the reverse and three-inch power punches. Twelve expert male martial artists stood on a force plate, and executed reverse and power punches against a padded target fixed to a wall-mounted force plate. The force plates measured horizontal forces, and subsequently impulses and body centre of mass velocity changes.

Susceptibility of Bacillus anthracis, Bacillus cereus, Bacillus mycoides, Bacillus pseudomycoides and Bacillus thuringiensis to 24 antimicrobials using Sensititre automated microbroth dilution and Etest agar gradient diffusion methods.

Objectives: To examine susceptibilities of Bacillus anthracis and related species to 24 antimicrobials using and concurrently comparing two methods.

Methods: Twenty-four antimicrobials were tested against 95 isolates of the Bacillus cereus group including 18 B. anthracis, 42 B.

Pesticides reduce symbiotic efficiency of nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and host plants.

Unprecedented agricultural intensification and increased crop yield will be necessary to feed the burgeoning world population, whose global food demand is projected to double in the next 50 years. Although grain production has doubled in the past four decades, largely because of the widespread use of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation promoted by the "Green Revolution," this rate of increased agricultural output is unsustainable because of declining crop yields and environmental impacts of modern agricultural practices. The last 20 years have seen diminishing returns in crop yield in response to increased application of fertilizers, which cannot be completely explained by current ecological models.

A new breed of computer users: rats control a cursor via joystick manipulation.

Many exciting findings have been reported in the 15 years since monkeys were first demonstrated to have the capacity to perform computerized tasks. The present data indicate that albino rats can also learn to respond to computer-generated stimuli by manipulating a joystick. Although the rat's control of the cursor is not as skillful as has been reported for primate species, it is clearly better than chance and suggests the great potential for comparative investigation afforded by use of the computer test system.

Effects of long-term nitrogen fertilization on the uptake kinetics of atmospheric methane in temperate forest soils.

To determine whether repeated, long-term NH(4) (+) fertilization alters the enzymatic function of the atmospheric CH(4) oxidizer community in soil, we examined CH(4) uptake kinetics in temperate pine and hardwood forest soils amended with 150 kg N ha(-1) y(-1) as NH(4)NO(3) for more than a decade. The highest rates of atmospheric CH(4) consumption occurred in the upper 5 cm mineral soil of the control plots. In contrast to the results of several previous studies, surface organic soils in the control plots also exhibited high consumption rates.

Family- and genus-level 16S rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes for ecological studies of methanotrophic bacteria.

Methanotrophic bacteria play a major role in the global carbon cycle, degrade xenobiotic pollutants, and have the potential for a variety of biotechnological applications. To facilitate ecological studies of these important organisms, we developed a suite of oligonucleotide probes for quantitative analysis of methanotroph-specific 16S rRNA from environmental samples. Two probes target methanotrophs in the family Methylocystaceae (type II methanotrophs) as a group.

PTS performance by flight- and control-group macaques.

A total of 25 young monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were trained with the Psychomotor Test System, a package of software tasks and computer hardware developed for spaceflight research with nonhuman primates. Two flight monkeys and two control monkeys were selected from this pool and performed a psychomotor task before and after the Bion 11 flight or a ground-control period. Monkeys from both groups showed significant disruption in performance after the 14-day flight or simulation (plus one anesthetized day of biopsies and other tests), and this disruption appeared to be magnified for the flight animal.

The heuristic and motivational value of video reinforcement.

Four rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were tested on joystick-based computer tasks in which they could choose to be reinforced either with pellets-only or with pellets + video. A variety of videotapes were used to reinforce task performance. The monkeys significantly preferred to be rewarded with a pellet and 10 s of a blank screen than a pellet plus 10 s of videotape.

Low-concentration kinetics of atmospheric CH4 oxidation in soil and mechanism of NH4+ inhibition.

NH4+ inhibition kinetics for CH4 oxidation were examined at near-atmospheric CH4 concentrations in three upland forest soils. Whether NH4+-independent salt effects could be neutralized by adding nonammoniacal salts to control samples in lieu of deionized water was also investigated. Because the levels of exchangeable endogenous NH4+ were very low in the three soils, desorption of endogenous NH4+ was not a significant factor in this study.

Can monkeys (Macaca mulatta) represent invisible displacement?

Four experiments were conducted to assess whether or not rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) could represent the unperceived movements of a stimulus. Subjects were tested on 2 computerized tasks, HOLE (monkeys) and LASER (humans and monkeys), in which subjects needed to chase or shoot at, respectively, a moving target that either remained visible or became invisible for a portion of its path of movement. Response patterns were analyzed and compared between target-visible and target-invisible conditions.

Game-like tasks for comparative research: leveling the playing field.

Game-like computer tasks offer many benefits for psychological research. In this paper, the usefulness of such tasks to bridge population differences (e.g.