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The socio-politico-cultural context of sexual orientation often influences the attitudes, beliefs, and values produced in a given society. This study employed a qualitative methodology to explore the current attitudes, beliefs, [...]

During the winter, animals face limited food availability. Many animals enter dormancy to reduce their winter energy expenditure. Most insects spend the winter in diapause, a state of programmed dormancy. It is often assumed that diapausing insects need nutrient stores to fuel their many months of basal metabolism and must grow heavier than their non‐diapause‐programmed counterparts. However, the extent to which food limitation affects body weight during overwintering preparation as well as the likelihood and duration of diapause remains unclear. We limited the duration of the feeding period and thus the total quantity of food available to diapause‐destined larvae of the pupal‐diapausing flesh fly, Sarcophaga crassipalpis, to test how food limitation affects body weight in the context of diapause programming. We also tested the extent to which food deprivation and body weight affect the likelihood and duration of diapause. We hypothesized that diapause‐destined larvae grow more quickly and pupariate at a heavier body weight than non‐diapause larvae. We also hypothesized that body weight is more dramatically reduced by food limitations when a larva is programmed for diapause. Finally, we hypothesized that larvae with lighter body weight (i.e., food limited) are less likely to enter pupal diapause and also stay in diapause for a shorter duration than heavier, well‐fed, individuals. Contrary to our hypotheses that diapausing insects are heavier than their non‐diapausing counterparts, we found diapausing pupae weighed less than non‐diapausing pupae, especially when larvae received limited food. We found light pupae did not abort their diapause program. In both diapausing and non‐diapausing pupae, body weight was positively correlated with simulated winter survival. However, above a weight threshold, body weight no longer affected simulated winter survival in diapausing pupae. Contrary to our predictions and the general consensus in much of the diapause literature, we also found that lighter pupae stayed in diapause longer than heavier pupae. Overall, our results challenge the precept that body weight and diapause are positively associated. The relationship between body weight and diapause is complex and may be affected by the availability of food before and after winter, the availability of high‐quality overwintering sites, and the life history of a particular insect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies found similarities in adults' disgust responses to benign (e.g. obesity) and actual disease signs (e.g. influenza). However, limited research has compared visual (i.e. benign and actual) to cognitive (i.e. disease label) disease cues in different age groups. The current study investigated disgust responses across middle childhood (7–9 years), late childhood (10–12 years), adolescence (13–17 years), and adulthood (18+ years). Participants viewed individuals representing a benign visual disease (obese), sick-looking (staphylococcus), sick-label (cold/flu), and healthy condition. Disgust-related outcomes were: (1) avoidance, or contact level with apparel the individual was said to have worn, (2) disgust facial reactions, and (3) a combination of (1) and (2). Avoidance was greater for the sick-looking and sick-label than the healthy and obese conditions. For facial reaction and combination outcomes, middle childhood participants responded with greater disgust to the sick-looking than the healthy condition, while late childhood participants expressed stronger disgust towards the sick-looking and obese conditions than the healthy condition. Adolescents and adults exhibited stronger disgust towards sick-label and sick-looking than obese and healthy conditions. Results suggest visual cues are central to children's disgust responses whereas adolescents and adult responses considered cognitive cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service robots, e.g. massage robots, have attracted more and more attention in recent years and the most popular study within this field is trajectory tracking. Due to the actual demand for service robots, the solution of trajectory tracking requires fast convergence and high accuracy. In order to solve the above issues, this paper proposed an enhanced Gated recurrent unit (GRU) to deal with trajectory tracking tasks of robot manipulators. The main feature of enhanced GRU is utilizing cell states as well as various gate units to build a novel neural cell. Besides, the presented enhanced GRU resolves the problem of the general neural network model and large memory occupancy. Then the derivations about the computational process of cell state and mixed hidden state of the proposed model have been illustrated. Finally, three trajectory tracking applications, comparison, and visual simulation have verified feasibility as well as the superiority of the enhanced GRU model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details the political and legal contestations that shaped the status and development of professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) in Canada from the sport's high-profile and highly contested arrival in 1996, to its legalization across the country after 2013. The transformation of MMA from criminal activity to sporting spectacle in this short period of about 15 years was due, in part, to contextual and political factors centred on indigenous political contestation in themselves not related to the sport; and in part to political debates that focused on the activity's popular acceptability, augmented by a lobbying campaign devised by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) the sport's pre-eminent promotion company, in the province of Ontario. As a result of these contestations, legal constraints formulated at both the federal and provincial levels had been rescinded by 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]