Conferralism about Sex and Gender

In this chapter, the author offers a conferralist view of sex and gender, where sex is an institutional category and gender a communal one and both are context-dependent. The communal category of gender is radically context dependent and in different context people are trying to track different base features, such as sex assignment, style and presentation, role in the preparation of food, role in the reproductive economy, or role in the sex economy. Being of a certain sex is, likewise, not to have a certain biological feature, but to have a certain institutional status, where authorities are attempting to track the presence of various physical features in their conferral of that status. Comparison is then made with recent theories offered by Linda Alcoff, Talia Bettcher, Sally Haslanger, and Charlotte Witt. A conferralist theory of LGBTQ status is also offered.

«NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION» IN BIBLICAL DESCRIPTION: ATTEMPT OF GEOGRAPHICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION

The stories of paradise garden, first men living in it, their fall and exile from Eden are fixed in the Bible and considered a sphere of religious and mythological, but not a historical component of the Holy Scripture. Textual analysis of the second chapter of «The Book of Genesis» gives grounds to consider Eden a real geographical object, which limits correspond to the territories of today’s Tabriz Valley. Description of paradise garden, where Adam, created by God, was not aware of death and was richly fed, not making any additional efforts, is a peculiar human memory of an era of early pre-Neolithic being. «The exile from Eden» – is an era in history, when «unproblematic» life of primitive men was finished because of lack of the natural resourses, quantity of which was deficient for survival. It made people to occupy territories beyond the original range of their existence. The second result of «the exile from paradise» was a curse of Adam, as since then he had to get food «by the sweat of his brow». Modern scientific terminology calls it «Neolithic revolution», i.e. transition from the foraging to the agriculture, when human had to master the art of tilling for growing food. Inverse chronological calculation method of generations of biblical patriarchs allows to date this historical fracture by the first half – the middle of III millennium BC. The third result of «the exile from paradise» was declared loss of human’s immortality. The emergence of reproductive economy, when a person began to plow the ground, dig channels, build dams, pasture livestock and in such way «get the daily bread», intensified the development of protoscientific knowledge, which resulted in human’s awareness of finality of his personal physical existence. The Bible redefines this fact as the loss of «eternity» by human.

Species Size and Reproductive Economy in Herbaceous Vegetation

According to traditional theory, larger plants generaly have an advantage with respect to competition, especially for light. It seems a paradox then that most species that coexist within natural vegetation are relatively small; specis size distributions are right-skewed at virtually every scale. The critical question then becomes: if bigger is better in competition for resources, why then are there so many small plants? A potential explanation for this paradox is that smaller species may have greater reproductive economy-i.e. the ability to reproduce despite suppression from intense competition. Selection for greater reproductive economy may be associated with smaller seed sizes, increased rates of self-fertilization and/or clonality, and in the case of this study, smaller size at reproductive maturity. Random plots in an old field at Queen's University Biological Station were sampled and the largest and smallest reproductive individuals of each species were collected, dried and weighed - to test the hypothesis that smaller species can reproduce at a smaller proportion of their maximum potential plant sizes. The results did not support this, but the hypothesis that smaller plants have greater reproductive economy could not be rejected as it was not possible to record data for the largest possible plant size for each species (since even the largest plants were subjected to competition from neighbours). This provides a focus for future research. Understanding the role of plant size in affecting the process of species assembly has important implications for species coexistence and mechanisms of biodiversity preservation, and thus efforts involving conservation and ecosystem management.

Active Secretion in the Rabbit Oviduct

Determinations of the rates of secretion and the pressures against which ligated, catheterized oviducts of Dial-urethane-anesthetized rabbits produce tubal fluid indicate this to be an active secretion of the genital tract. Secretory activity is influenced by the hormonal condition of the animal. Both secretory rate and pressure are high during estrus (av., 0.79 ml/24 hr/tube and 46.0 cm H2O pressure) and low in late pregnancy (0.28 ml/24 hr/tube and 9.6 cm H2O pressure). Secretory activity is severely reduced after castration (0.14 ml/24 hr/tube and 11.8 cm H2O pressure), but this decrease can be counteracted by administration of estradiol benzoate (5 γ/day for 3 days). The secretory process is stimulated by pilocarpine (1.11 ml/24 hr/tube and 71.3 cm H2O pressure). The oviduct secretion may be considered to play a vital role in the reproductive economy of the rabbit.