Moti Nissani

Wayne State University | WSU · Department of Biological Sciences

Drosophila melanogaster gynandromorphs were introduced into a mating chamber containing two wild type males. From the differential courtship responses of these males it could be concluded that the only important factor which enables a male to distinguish between conspecific males and females and to direct persistent courtship only toward females is...

Experimental psychology strongly supports the notion of conceptual conservatism—the human tendency to cling to strongly-held beliefs long after these beliefs have been decisively discredited. Following a partial review of the experimental literature and of a few relevant theories, the implications of this human failing to political history, literat...

The Encyclopedia of Domestic Assassinations provides irrefutable statistical, historical, empirical, and predictive evidence that the American and British governments routinely smear, harass, bribe, blackmail, incarcerate, or murder their influential opponents. Always and everywhere, humanity's champions get neutralized long before they can accompl...

Eight Billion Cheers for Direct Democracy presents a compelling and comprehensive defense of direct democracy. It argues that direct democracy — as opposed to such token democracies as India, the Russian Federation, or the United States — provides the best hope for a free, just, prosperous, peaceful, and sustainable future. It defends the direct de...

Following brief reviews of (a) the decisive role of the media in American politics and (b) earlier studies of media partiality and superficiality, this paper examines media coverage of the greenhouse effect. It does so by comparing two pictures. The first picture emerges from reading all 100 greenhouse-related articles published over a five-month p...

Here is a list of books, book excerpts, articles, and videos which might enable a few people to give the slip to the corporate book “industry” and modify their worldview.

Belief Perseverance Experimental Protocol:Two major impediments on the road to rationality and human progress are closed-mindedness and belief perseverance. Indeed, most of us refuse to genuinely listen to anything that undermines our convictions. When we do, or forced to, listen, and even if provided with overwhelming contrary evidence, we still c...

Belief Perseverance Experimental Protocol: Two major impediments on the road to rationality and human progress are closed-mindedness and belief perseverance. Indeed, most of us refuse to genuinely listen to anything that undermines our convictions. When we do, or forced to, listen, and even if provided with overwhelming contrary evidence, we still...

In a real democratic entity, the people themselves make all major political, legal, and judicial decisions. The absence of real democracy provides one explanation for the growing strength of the Invisible Government-and for that Government's successful campaigns against freedom, peace, living standards, spirituality, and the biosphere. Revolutionar...

Interdisciplinary theory (talking about interdisciplinarity itself) is of limited interest and only deserves a cursory look aimed at understanding its basic principles. It emphatically does not merit a lifelong—nor even a semester-long—study. By contrast, interdisciplinary practice—the long search for a holistic perspective in classrooms, laborator...

El desprecio generalizado hacia la investigación y el conocimiento interdisciplinarios refleja una profunda incomprensión de los vitales aportes que han hecho al mundo académico, a la sociedad y a las personas. El presente artículo presenta la única defensa abarcativa y autocontenida de la investigación y el conocimiento interdisciplinarios. Se arg...

This brief review focuses on the question whether elephants—one contender for high intelligence in animals—can act thoughtfully. For the purposes of the present discussion, we shall arbitrarily narrow down the meaning of thinking to just one aspect: the ability to plan future actions in one’s head, before embarking on any specific course of action.

Two experiments addressed contradictory claims about causal reasoning in elephants. In Experiment 1, 4 Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) were pretrained to remove a lid from the top of a bucket and retrieve a food reward. Subsequently, in the first 5 critical trials, when the lid was placed alongside the bucket and no longer obstructed access to th...

Two experiments explored the behavior of 20 Asian elephants (Elephas aximus) in simultaneous visual discrimination tasks. In Experiment 1, 7 Burmese logging elephants acquired a white+/black- discrimination, reaching criterion in a mean of 2.6 sessions and 117 discrete trials, whereas 4 elephants acquired a black+/white- discrimination in 5.3 sessi...

This chapter attempts to provide an accessible review of a fundamental scientific and philosophical question: Are animals conscious? Instead of trying to address the issue of consciousness as a whole, this partial review will for the most part touch upon just two facets of consciousness—theory of mind and insight.

After proposing a common-sense definition of bruxism, this partial review distills its various symptoms and consequences from the literature. That literature suggests that the splint-the most popular treatment modality-falls short in some respects. The research literature is even less sanguine about the efficacy of such other traditional therapies...

The first part of this note sketches a biofeedback modality for the treatment of bruxism. A mildly aversive, safe liquid is inserted into, and sealed in, small, bilaterally sleeved, polyethylene capsules. Two capsules are attached to a simple dental appliance that comfortably and securely places them between the lower and upper back teeth. The appl...

The frequently-encountered wholesale dismissal of either interdisciplinary knowledge or research reflects a profound misunderstanding of their vital contributions to scholarship, society, and individuals. This article presents the only self-contained, comprehensive defense of interdisciplinary knowledge and research, arguing that they are important...

The frequently-encountered wholesale dismissal of either interdisciplinary knowledge or research reflects a profound misunderstanding of their vital contributions to scholarship, society, and individuals. This article presents the only self-contained, comprehensive defense of interdisciplinary knowledge and research, arguing that they are important...

Presents a guided discovery activity that uses fruit flies and can be implemented in introductory biology and nature of science classes to flesh out abstract lectures about life cycles, insect morphology, patterns and causes of animal behavior, and the nature of science. Discusses strengths and drawbacks and results of student evaluations of the ac...

A recent, rather typical, essay argues that even if the greenhouse threat is real, even if temperatures rise and low-lying lands must be protected forever by an enormous system of dikes, such unlikely occurrences do not justify imposing vast costs on the present generation rather than helping developing countries overcome the environmental problems...

Reviews the nature of apprenticeship in non-writing contexts. Describes, distinguishes, and illustrates the apprenticeship, traditional, and process approaches to writing instruction. Surveys evidence that apprenticeship provides the best model; highlights some practical applications of this model to writing instruction. Concludes that it assimilat...

The extent of resistance to original contributions of obscure scientists is controversial. Some hold that such resistance is rare, and hence requires little study and no remedy. But others argue that, although not widespread, it happens often enough to merit study and reform. And others again hold it to be common, constituting the single most formi...

Interdisciplinarity involves bringing together distinctive components of two or more disciplines. In academic discourse, interdisciplinarity typically applies to four realms: knowledge, research, education, and theory. Interdisciplinary knowledge involves familiarity with distinctive components of two or more disciplines. Interdisciplinary research...

En 1946 apparait un enseignement de philosophie des sciences sous l'impulsion de J.B. Conant. Ce cours englobe les differentes philosophies des sciences et les evolutions des nouveaux procedes conceptuels. L'A. presente le contenu et l'organisation de ce cours en insistant sur la necessite de tenir compte de l'experience

The various aspects that the Moon presents to observers on the Earth as the proportion of its sunlit side which is visible changes in the course of its orbit around the Earth. There are four principle phases: new moon, first quarter, full moon and last quarter. One complete cycle of phases is termed a lunation, and is completed in just over 29½ day...

Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies

Natural scientists were invited to evaluate a rediscovery-based written manual for teaching high school science and math. The first session refamiliarized participants with the concepts this experiment presupposed, reinforced the legitimacy of the instructional setup, and fostered tolerance for unconventional mathematical formulas. The session also...

Besides providing an integrated, self-contained history of the Cold War, Lives in the Balance throws new light on subjects as diverse as the nature of freedom, American Third World policies, roots of collective misbehavior, and reform strategies. Lives in the Balance should be of special interest to those wishing to understand or change the realiti...

Comments on S. Milgram's (1974) observations on obedience to authority. It is suggested that the underlying cause for Milgram's Ss' striking conduct could be conceptual and not the alleged "capacity of man to abandon his humanity…as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all r...

Although we are indisputably capable of changing our beliefs, everyday experience suggests that such changes are hard to make: we often cling to old and familiar conceptions of reality, disregarding or explaining away contradictory evidence. This report presents a new experimental paradigm for the study of this critically important human attribute....

Mosaic analysis is introduced to study tissue specificity of the maternal effect which characterizes the wild-type allele of cinnamon (=cin). The methodology presented is applicable to studies of other maternal effect mutations, as well as to female or male sterility mutations. One hundred and forty-three pal-induced fertile cin-mosaic females were...

The Y chromosome is essential for fertility in D. melanogaster males. An analysis of 126 pal-induced Y chromosome mosaics indicated that its function is only required in the germ line of fertile males. This analysis also showed that approximately 1/4 of all pal-induced Y chromosome mosaics had an XO/XYY constitution and hence that they resulted fro...

This paper draws attention to the formal parallelism that exists between chromosomal-loss mosaicism and mutagenically induced mosaicism in Drosophila and suggests that, although the underlying processes by which these two types of genetic mosaics are generated are very different, the more refined methodology employed in developmental analyses of ge...

Drosophila melanogaster gynandromorphs were introduced into a mating chamber containing two wild-type conspecific males. From the differential courting responses of these males, the only important factor that enables a male to distinguish between conspecific males and females and to direct persistent courtship only toward females could be concluded...

Cell lineage analysis of the maroon-like mutation of Drosophila melanogaster revealed the most extensive degree of non-autonomy reported to date in Drosophila: all 1454 gynandromorphs in which X chromosome loss uncovered the ma-l mutation had ma-l+. eye colour. In contrast, among 331 gynandromorphs in which X chromosome loss simultaneously uncovere...

THE initial events of differentiation of genetically identical nuclei within the eggs of higher organisms are generally believed to be triggered by a heterogeneous distribution of substances within the egg1,2. One of the clearest examples of such differential distribution of determinative substances concerns the posterior polar plasm of some insect...

Three-hundred and twenty fertile,pal-induced Y-chromosome mosaic males and females were obtained. Fractional analysis of the sons of 55 somatically mosaic flies that were also germinally mosaic tentatively suggests that the number of functional primordial germ cells inDrosophila melanogaster is variable and that it is seldom greater than 24. From t...

A mathematical method for calculating the number of blastoderm cells whose descendants form the various imaginal discs is described. The method differs from available approaches in two respects: (1) It is based only upon the frequency of mosaicism of the adult derivatives of a given imaginal disc and ignores the relative surface area of the two gen...

Six hundred and ten gynandromorphs were produced in which an X chromosome loss uncovered the vermilion mutation. The mosaic patterns observed indicate that wild type ocelli are incapable of kynurenine production and that, in addition to the eyes, postembryonic kynurenine producing cells originate from two separate regions of the blastoderm. The pos...