Hartwick College

About: Hartwick College is a education organization based out in Oneonta, New York, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Public opinion. The organization has 223 authors who have published 435 publications receiving 11484 citations. The organization is also known as: Hartwick Seminary & Hawks.

Effects of fluoxetine on hippocampal-dependent and hippocampal-independent learning tasks.

Abstract: It is generally assumed that fluoxetine does not produce cognitive impairments, based on observations that fluoxetine-treated animals do not show impairment in learning the spatial water-maze task. As fluoxetine has different effects on different brain regions and as learning is not a unitary phenomenon, it may be the case that fluoxetine has different effects on different types of learning and memory paradigms. In this study, 15 male Sprague-Dawley rats were given chronic injections of either fluoxetine or saline and received training in two hippocampal-independent tasks in addition to a spatial water-maze task. The two hippocampal-independent tasks were a short-delay appetitive Pavlovian-conditioning task and an object-recognition task. The results showed that the fluoxetine-injected rats did not show any impairment relative to the saline controls in either the acquisition or the retention phases of the water-maze task, but were significantly impaired in both of the hippocampal-independent tasks. Fluoxetine-injected rats spent significantly less time exploring the novel object in the object-recognition task and took longer to learn the association between the conditional stimulus and the appetitive unconditional stimulus in the appetitive Pavlovian-conditioning task.

Tree species do not influence local soil chemistry in a species-rich Costa Rica rain forest

Abstract: In a now classic study, Zinke (1962) showed that a single Pinus contorta tree growing on a sand dune along the coast of California modified the chemistry of the soil underneath its crown. He found distinct patterns of pH, exchangeable cations and nitrogen (N) content moving from the bole outward to the crown drip zone, because the acidic bark and stemflow were concentrated around the bole (Zinke 1962). Subsequent studies in temperate forests have also found tree species to affect soil chemical properties such as pH, organic carbon (C) and rates of N mineralization (Boerner & Koslowsky 1989, Boettcher & Kalisz 1990, Finzi et al. 1998). Presumably, these species-specific effects are caused by inter-specific differences in organic acid exudation, nutrient uptake, litter quality or quantity, decomposition rates or nutrient outputs (Binkley & Giardina 1998, Knops et al. 2002, Rhoades 1997). Regardless of the causes, species-generated soil heterogeneity has implications for stand-level estimates of biogeochemical processes such as soil C storage and N-cycling as well as implications for plant diversity and regeneration (Finzi et al. 1998). Although a number of studies have demonstrated that tree species modify soil environments in temperate forests or monospecific tree plantations in the tropics (Fisher 1995, Rhoades 1997), few studies have investigated these processes in species-rich tropical forests (but see Rhoades et al. 1994).

The Bath Refilled: Migration in Archeology Again

Abstract: Chapman and Dolukhanov have produced a brief criticism of my theoretical stance on migration and a long dissection of the case study I used as an illustrative example. Their criticisms of my specific theory derive largely from misunderstandings, in my view, and therefore do not affect the model I proposed. They also question my basic theoretical premise, which is that uniformitarian models are necessary if we are to understand the archeological record. It is a great irony that in the current climate of anti-uniformitarian particularism, migration (almost a taboo word among processualists) should emerge as a phenomenon that is surprisingly amenable to processual, uniformitarian analysis. Contrary to Chapman and Dolukhanov, uniformitarian arguments have not been falsified as a class. A great many biophysical "laws" are accepted as relatively stable propositions about how the world works, even in archeology, and higher-level uniformitarian approaches, such as evolutionary theory in biology, have been modified over time without being rejected. Generally, it is the ecologicalfunctionalist uniformitarian theories that have been attacked in archeology with the most success, but this does not mean that all uniformitarian approaches are false. Neither do uniformitarian theories necessarily ignore history and local context; evolutionary theory in biology only served to emphasize the importance of local ecological conditions and population dynamics. The model I proposed correlates variables that might be considered ahistorical economic categories (focal as opposed to diffuse subsistence strategies, presence or absence of spatial unevenness in economic development, and cost of available transportation technologies) with contextspecific factors (the nature of social integration in the donor region, change in goal orientations between chronologically successive migrant groups, the importance of kinship linkages in defining the flow of information about the destination region, and the significance of ideology as a complicating factor in identifying proximate causes for migrations). In essence, I have argued that migration tends to be a patterned, structured behavior partially because it reacts to localized patterns in the flow of information about potential routes and destinations. Since so much human behavior

Experiencing New Hampshire: The Effects of an Experiential Learning Course on Civic Engagement

Abstract: In January of 2004, we took 35 college students to Manchester, New Hampshire, where they were immersed in the crucial final weeks of the Democratic Presidential Primary as part of a course on the presidential election. This course required students to work on the campaign of their choice in the weeks leading up to the state's primary as well as take part in more traditional classroom academic activities. This article examines the impact of that political immersion experience on students' civic attitudes and engagements. While some hypothesized effects were not supported by the data, we do find a substantial impact on engagement and a modest effect on some measures of political efficacy. In light of the importance to a democratic society of engaging young people in the political process, we believe our research justifies greater experimentation with political immersion experiences and careful evaluation of the effects thereof.