New perspectives on the declining significance of race: a rejoinder

In sharp contrast to many earlier studies, the articles in this symposium encompass a careful discussion of the two major underlying themes of my book, The Declining Significance of Race: (1) the effect of fundamental economic and political shifts on the changing relative importance of race and class in black occupational mobility and job placement; and (2) the swing in the concentration of racial conflict from the economic sector to the sociopolitical order. In my rejoinder I reflect on their arguments, including those that relate these themes to more recent developments in American race and ethnic relations featuring other groups, including whites and Latinos.     

War and peace in phylogenetics: a rejoinder on total evidence and consensus

For more than 10 years, systematists have been debating the superiority of character or taxonomic congruence in phylogenetic analysis. In this paper, we demonstrate that the competing approaches can converge to the same solution when a consensus method that accounts for branch lengths is selected. Thus, we propose to use both methods in combination, as a way to corroborate the results of combined and separate analyses. This so-called "global congruence" approach is tested with a wide variety of examples sampled from the literature, and the results are compared with those obtained by standard consensus methods. Our analyses show that when the total evidence and consensus trees differ topologically, collapsing weakly supported nodes with low bootstrap support usually improves "global congruence".     

Sociobiology and discrimination: A rejoinder

The history of Malay nationalism traces a path from secular issues before World War II to religious issues in the post‐independence period. Before the War Malay nationalists were concerned with the encroachment upon their freedom by British colonialists and non‐Malay immigrants. The establishment of Malay political power after the War effected important economic changes, creating new class‐divisions in Malay society. These divisions provide a basis for the rise of Malay religious nationalism. The reactions of the non‐Malay population to these changes were expressed as non‐Muslim religious revivalisms. The role of the state in regulating religious movements through a process of ethnic rationalization cannot be understated.     

The United States of the United Races: a rejoinder

I respond to a review by C. Matthew Snipp, revisiting how my book connects abolitionist leanings to acceptance of racial mixing in the Early Republic. I reiterate that, contrary to the reviewer's claims, the book does not suggest that the defence of interracial marriage has been a thriving social movement. I correct his reading of my chapter on the Civil War era, referring to both the variety of voices present, and the claims of reformers' opponents, who were the only ones who claimed racial mixing was an aim of the abolitionist movement. Lastly, I defend The United States of the United Races against Professor Snipp's characterization of it as a work anticipating a ‘post-racial’ ideal, embodied by racially mixed people, who would be the end point of the obsolescence of race as a relevant analytic tool.     

Attitudes toward homosexuals: A rejoinder

The differences in the positions adopted by Gallup and myself are highlighted: the developmental process underlying the origin of homosexuality is crucial, because Gallup's reason for parents reacting with hostility to homosexuals is that they will affect their children's sexual orientation. My alternative, a two-process imprinting model, involves a different developmental process, the implications of which are that cross-gender behavior in childhood, rather than seduction by adults, is important for developing homosexual orientation. Criticisms of my alternative explanation of Gallup's findings in terms of xenophobia are also addressed, but it is emphasized that Gallup's hypothesis ultimately relies on the accuracy of his seduction theory of homosexual orientation.     

Antimicrobial potentiality of a new non-antibiotic: the cardiovascular drug oxyfedrine hydrochloride

Ten cardiovascular drugs, having diverse pharmacological action, were screened for possible antimicrobial property against known eight sensitive bacteria, belonging to Gram positive and Gram negative types. Although five drugs failed to show antimicrobial activity and three had moderate antimicrobial action, oxyfedrine HCl and dobutamine were seen to possess pronounced antimicrobial property. Oxyfedrine was further tested in vitro against 471 strains of bacteria from two Gram positive and fourteen Gram negative genera. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of oxyfedrine was determined by agar dilution method, which ranged from 50-200 microg/ml in most of the strains, while some strains were inhibited at even lower concentrations. In animal experiments, this compound was capable of offering significant protection to Swiss strain of white mice, challenged with 50 median lethal dose (MLD) of a virulent strain of Salmonella typhimurium at concentrations of 15, 30 and 60 microg/mouse. The in vivo results were highly significant according to chi-square test.     

Proton translocation by cytochrome c oxidase: a rejoinder to recent criticism

Ten years ago, intermediate reaction steps in the catalytic cycle of cytochrome c oxidase were titrated with phosphorylation potential in isolated mitochondria, and the results were interpreted as evidence for thermodynamic linkage of proton translocation exclusively to the oxidative reaction steps of the catalytic cycle [Wikstr?m, M. (1989) Nature 338, 776-778]. Michel has recently argued that this work was flawed, and proposed a mechanism in which one of the four steps of proton translocation is linked to the reductive phase of the catalytic cycle [Michel, H. (1999) Biochemistry 38, 15129-15140]. Here, the original data are scrutinized and related to information that has accumulated since this work was published. The analysis shows that the main conclusions from this work still hold. Michel's mechanism of proton translocation is briefly discussed, and found to be at odds with some experimental observations.     

植物钾营养性状的遗传潜力v

钾是植物生长发育所必需的大量元素,是与氮、磷并列的植物营养的“三大要素”之一。不同植物种类或同种类植物的不同品种之间钾营养效率的差异非常显著,这为植物钾营养性状的遗传改良提供了科学依据     

Substantial identity and the right to life: a rejoinder to Dean Stretton

In this article, I reply to criticisms of Dean Stretton of the pro-life argument from substantial identity. When the criterion for the right to life proposed by most proponents of the pro-life position is rightly understood--being a person, a distinct substance of a rational nature--this position does not lead to the difficulties Stretton claims it does.     

Antimicrobial potentiality of a phenothiazine group of antipsychotic drug-prochlorperazine

The antipsychotic drug, prochlorperazine (Pcp), was tested for its antimicrobial efficacy against 103 strains belonging to both gram positive and gram negative bacteria. The drug was found to possess maximum activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Vibrio cholerae and Shigella spp. Pcp was moderately active against E. coli but most of the strains belonging to Bacillus spp, Klebsiella spp, Salmonella spp and Lactobacillus spp were found to be resistant to this drug. The drug was tested for its mode of antibacterial activity against Shigella dysenteriae 1 and it was found to be bacteriostatic in action. In in vivo studies, Pcp offered significant protection to Swiss albino mice at concentrations of 0.75 micro g/g (P < 0.01) and 1.5 microg/g (P < 0.001) body weight when challenged with 50 median lethal dose of Salmonella typhimurium NCTC 74. Thus the result depicts that prochlorperazine may emerge as a strong antimicrobial drug to replace the conventional antibiotics and to overcome the problem of drug resistance.