We investigated discrimination of large quantities in salamanders of the genus Plethodon. Animals were challenged with two different quantities (8 vs 12 or 8 vs 16) in a two-alternative choice task. Stimuli were live crickets, videos of live crickets or images animated by a computer program. Salamanders reliably chose the larger of two quantities when the ratio between the sets was 1:2 and stim...

We live in the era of rankings. Universities are being ranked, journals are being ranked, and researchers are being ranked. In this era of rankings, the value of researchers is measured in the number of their papers published, the citations they received, and the volume of grant income earned. Academia today is governed by one simple rule: more is better. The idea to reward those who are produc...

Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online is a periodic publication of the Rockefeller Archive Center, a division of The Rockefeller University. Edited by Ken Rose and Erwin Levold under the general direction of the Center's director, Darwin H. Stapleton, Research Reports Online is intended to foster the network of scholarship in the history of philanthropy and to highlight the diverse...

1. Some philosophical problems are decidedly esoteric. It might be thought that certain counterexamples Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels have offered to the transitivity of the better-than relation are prime instances. For the most compelling of these putative counterexamples rely on our evaluative judgments concerning the quality of hypothetical lives that last an incredibly long time. And if t...

Discrimination of quantity (magnitude) was investigated in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Male zebrafish chose to approach the location previously occupied by the larger in number between 2 groups of female conspecifics (no longer visible at test) in sets of 1 versus 2 items, and 2 versus 3 items, but failed at 3 versus 4 items; similarly, when tested with larger numbers, zebrafish succeeded with 2 v...

High-density lipoprotein (HDL) particles are characterized by their heterogeneity in composition, structure, and biological properties. In addition to the major structural protein apolipoprotein A1, HDL proteomes and lipidomes show great diversity. Such constituents presumably carry out the multitude of HDL functions, for example, reverse cholesterol transport, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, a...