Maintenance of Multifemale Social Organization in a Group of Nomascus concolor at Wuliang Mountain, Yunnan, China

Many short-term studies have reported groups of black crested gibbons containing >= 2 adult females (Nomascus concolor). We report the stability of multifemale groups in this species over a period of 6 yr. Our focal group and 2 neighboring groups included 2 breeding females between March 2003 and June 2009. We also habituated 1 multifemale group to observers and present detailed information concerning their social relationships over a 9-mo observation period. We investigated interindividual distances and agonistic behavior among the 5 group members. The spatial relationship between the 3 adult members (1 male, 2 females) formed an equilateral triangle. A subadult male was peripheral to the focal group, while a juvenile male maintained a closer spatial relationship with the adult members. We observed little agonistic behavior among the adult members. The close spatial relationship and lack of high rates of agonistic behavior among females suggest that the benefits of living in a multifemale group were equal to or greater than the costs for both females, given their ecological and social circumstances. The focal group occupied a large home range that was likely to provide sufficient food sources for the 2 females and their offspring. Between March 2003 and June 2009, 1 adult female gave 2 births and the other one gave 1 birth. All individuals in the focal group survived to June 2009. A long-term comparative study focused on females living in multifemale groups and females living in pair-living groups would provide insight into understanding the evolutionary mechanisms of the social system in gibbons.

Stress within the postseizure time window inhibits seizure recurrence

Recurrence is a key characteristic in the development of epilepsy. It remains unclear whether seizure recurrence is sensitive to postseizure stress. Here, tonic-clonic seizures were induced with a convulsive dose of pentylenetetrazole (PTZ), and acute seizure recurrence was evoked with a subconvulsive dose of the drug. We found that stress inhibited seizure recurrence when applied 30 minutes or 2 hours, but not 4 hours, after the tonic-clonic seizure. The time-dependent anti-recurrence effect of stress was mimicked by the stress hormone corticosterone and blocked by co-administration of mineralocorticoid and glucocorticoid receptor antagonists. Furthermore, in a PTZ-induced epileptic kindling model, corticosterone administered 30 minutes after each seizure decreased the extent of seizures both during the kindling establishment and in the following challenge test. These results provide novel insights into both the mechanisms of and therapeutic strategies for epilepsy. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

恋情嫉妒倾向及其影响因素和影响作用的研究_恋情嫉妒倾向与自尊、社会比较偏好及嫉妒情绪反应之间的关系

As a well-related concept with close relationship, dispositional romantic jealousy (worrying about the romantic relationship will decrease or be threatened because of the rival) is accepted more and more attention. As the first system study on romantic jealousy under Chinese culture, this study use the combinative methods of questionnaire survey and provided situation-imagine design to study the dispositional romantic jealousy and get some conclusions. 1、The structure of the dispositional romantic jealousy in Chinese undergraduate students consist of three factors: suspicion , exclusivity and dependency . The scale of romantic jealousy has good reliability and validity. 2、The dispositional romantic jealousy can well predict the love attitudes and love experiences. The three factors respectively have different relationship with the love attitudes and love experiences. 3、Comparing with the high self-esteem samples, low self-esteem (include explicit self-esteem, and special implicit self-esteem) samples express more dispositional romantic jealousy among some of the three aspects: suspicion , exclusivity and dependency. 4、Those who get high scores on Scale of Social Comparison Orientation have far more remarkable dispositional romantic jealousy than those who get low scores, the difference exits in three factors: suspicion , exclusivity and dependency. 5、The result of SEM tells us that explicit self-esteem and special implicit self-esteem can negetivly predict some of the three factors of the dispositional romantic jealousy. And special implicit self-esteem also can predict the jealous emotional reaction .Social comparison orientation can predict all three factors of the disposition. And all three factors can positively predict jealous emotional reaction. These findings help us identify the structure of the dispositional romantic jealousy and know more about the influence factors of dispositional romantic jealousy. So we can provide an academic reference on the prevention and intervention of the conflicts among marriage and love relationships.

大学生应激应付研究

In this study, we made research on coping with stress in undergraduate students. The whole work included two parts: (a) We developed the Coping Strategies Questionnaire and had it tested. Five kinds of coping strategies were found by factor analysis: Problem Solving, Passive Acceptance, Support Seeking, Emotion Regulation, and Unadaptation. The reliability and validity coefficients of the questionnaire was high. (b) We examined the relations among personality characteristics (Locus of control, Extraversion, Neuroticism), emotion state, cognitive appraisal (psychological pressure, controllability, resource of social support), and the specific coping processes in several specific stressful events. The results indicated that coping have some degree of consistency across different situations which suggested that there is a general coping tendency, and that this general coping tendency, in addition to the above considered variables, have different degree of effects on subjects' choice of specific coping strategies. Finally, theoretical model of the relationship was tested through path analysis.