The author analyzes attitudes to the phenomenon of sexuality on the basis of two theoretical perspectives, the evolutionary and the feminist, between which there has long been conflict. In his opinion, however, they are only seemingly contrary. The main texts of both trends of thought concern entirely different problems and at the substantive level there is basically no contradiction between them. It is important that evolutionary theory often undermines existing cultural schemas, although this is rarely perceived by proponents of feminist theories. Evolutionists, in turn, rather too often identify feminism with radical social constructivism. Another extreme is a view that could be described as evolutionary sexism, consisting in justifying the gender status quo by reference to biological essentialism. After elimination of the extreme approaches, which are rare in any case, it is possible to use the results of evolutionary research in the debate over gender equality and to transform the two monologues into a cohesive dialogue; this, in the author’s opinion, is an important task for empirically oriented social theory.

The subject of this study was Rhizopertha dominica F. population. The primary question referred to was the process of the lesser grain borer population spread depending on nutritional preferences of this species. The aim of performed laboratory experiments was to examine the adults’ ability to choose preferred kinds of food i conditions of free migration among them and to analyze the dynamics of population size. Sex ratio and the migration rate were also analyzed. Four types of food were used during the experiments: wheat, oat flakes, pearl barley and semolina. The experiments were conducted at 28°C and 60 ± 5% of relative humidity. Results of the study revealed that oat flakes were the most favourable nutriment for adult R. dominica whereas wheat grain was the most favourable for the population size since larvae were protected by grains and thus their increased number could survive. No population development in semolina was observed. It was the result of too small granulation of this food.

Adult females of a predatory fish, the blackfin icefish, Chaenocephalus aceratus examined at the South Shetland Islands and South Orkney Islands were by several orders of magnitude more infected with Acanthocephala than the males and immature females. Such phenomenon has not been observed in the neritic zone at South Georgia. Cystacanths of Corynosoma hamanni and Corynosoma pseudohamanni were the dominant parasites in Admiralty Bay, whereas Corynosoma bullosum was the dominant in the open sea off the South Shetland Islands and South Georgia, and in the sub-coastal waters off the South Orkney Islands. However, the dominance of C. bullosum was observed in several hosts in Admiralty Bay and the co-dominance of C. bullosum, C. hamanni, and C. pseudohamanni in one mature female in the neritic zone at the South Shetland Islands. Probably, these fish previously lived in the open sea. Cystacanths of Corynosoma arctocephali and Corynosoma shackletoni occurred in the fish in Admiralty Bay and off South Georgia. The former parasite was present also off the South Orkney Islands. One cystacanth of Andracantha baylisi was found off South Georgia. Two echinorhynchids, Aspersentis megarhynchus and Metacanthocephalus dalmori, occurred in the alimentary tracts of the fish caught in Admiralty Bay and one specimen of Echinorhynchus petrotschenkoi off the South Shetland Islands. The highest infection, amounting to 816 acanthocephalans, was found in a mature female in Admiralty Bay. One cystacanth of C. hamanni occurred in a single immature fish caught in the sub-coastal area off Deception Island.

Hope is often treated as a priceless human value anchored in goal-related cognitions. The experiment aimed to investigate whether current hopeful thinking is related to problem-solving performance and how induced goal-oriented thinking influences this problem-solving process. Participants (N = 410) were asked to recall and describe their successful or unsuccessful goal pursuit and complete a scale assessing current hopeful thinking. Subsequently, participants were instructed to (1) think about actions that would be taken to solve the societal problem (i.e., an insufficient number of volunteers in Social Welfare Centers) and (2) describe these actions. In general, people who recalled successful events felt more hopeful than those who recalled unsuccessful events. State Hope was positively correlated with both the quantity (i.e., the total number of solutions) and quality (i.e., usefulness) of participants’ offered solutions. No interaction between State Hope and type of conditions with solution quantity or solution quality was found. State hope, however, interacted with the type of recalled goal pursuit when sex differences were considered. More hopeful women had a better solution quality when they recalled an unsuccessful goal pursuit. For men, a similar pattern was found when they recalled a successful goal pursuit. Lastly, the findings were discussed in light of Snyder’s Theory of Hope.

Our aim was to test existing sex and age stereotypes related to emotional expressivity, gender and age. This was a complex analysis of facial expressions of all basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) to everyday life stimuli observing a large sample (2,969 unique participants creating 39,694 recordings) using an Emotion Artificial Intelligence. Our data partially support emotion-specific stereotype that women express more affiliate emotions and men express more dominant emotions except for sadness. There were found correlations of emotion expression with age, however intensity and frequency of emotion expression did not follow the same pattern. Not eliminating the differences between men and women in the baseline facial appearance resulted in men expressing dominant emotions (anger and disgust) more intensively, and women expressing more affiliative emotions (happiness, fear, and surprise). To sum up, facial appearance can be one of the origins of the existing gender stereotypic socialisation stereotype.

The current survey was carried out to evaluate the effect of different nitrogen levels (0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.9 g ∙ pot–1 nitrogen as urea 46%) on tomato fruit worm Helicoverpa armigera on six common tomato cultivars (e.g., Kingston, Riogrand, Earlyurbana, Redston, Superstrain-B and Primoearly) under laboratory conditions [25 ± 1°C, 60 ± 5% RH, 16 : 8 (L : D) h]. The mortality, developmental period of immature stages as well as the longevity and fecundity of adult stages were recorded. Data were analyzed based on the age-stage, two-sex lifetable theory. The longest (24.21 ± 0.59 days) larval developmental period was recorded in Earlyurbana variety with zero nitrogen level and the shortest (15.44 ± 0.36 days) in Superstrain-B variety with the highest nitrogen level. Consequently, the net reproductive rate (R0) ranged from 35.7 ± 7.06 to 62.16 ± 18.9 offspring/female/individual in Redston variety with zero nitrogen level and in Superstrain-B variety with the highest nitrogen level, respectively. The lowest and highest values of the intrinsic rate (r) and finite rate of increase (l) were estimated for Redston variety with zero level of nitrogen (0.0712 ± 0.0065 and 1.0732 ± 0.0069 day–1) and Superstrain-B variety with the highest nitrogen fertilizer (0.1507 ± 0.0057 and 1.1629 ± 0.0066 day–1), respectively. The results demonstrated that nitrogen fertilizer influenced nearly all the life parameters of the pest which depended on the cultivars. Finally, it could be concluded that Kingston and Superstrain-B were suitable and Earlyurbana and Redston were unsuitable host plant cultivars for H. armigera.

The article addresses the relation between the grammatical gender and the linguistic encoding of sex distinction (natural gender). Our goal is to problematize the category of gender as a multipart and multifunctional linguistic phenomenon operating in diverse dimensions of a language. The analysis of Italian and Polish languages illustrates that grammatical gender – whose main function is to signal syntactic relations between text constituents – and natural gender – whose main function is to encode information about the sex of a referent – are in principle autonomous and independent linguistic phenomena which are however strongly interrelated in a linguistic system through a morphological and syntactic interface.

The purpose of this two-wave longitudinal study was to investigate cross-lagged relations between sexual attitudes, perception of love and sex, and young adults’ relationship status over a period of one year. The current study tested two hypotheses: the first hypothesis assuming that sexual attitudes, perception of love and sex can be predictive of relationship status after a one-year interval; and the second hypothesis assuming that relationship status at T1 can be predictive of sexual attitudes and perception of love and sex after a one-year interval. Results from 117 Polish young adults (94 females and 23 males) aged 20–33 (M = 21.42, SD = 1.79) indicated that the conviction that sex is no longer as much a part of the relationship as it used to be (i.e., Sex is Declining scale) measured in the first assessment was a significant predictor of relationship status after a one-year interval. Furthermore, sexual attitudes and perception of love and sex at T1 were found to be predictive of sexual attitudes and perception of love and sex at T2. In addition, gender at T1 was predictive of instrumentality at T2, while being female at T1 related to higher instrumentality at T2.

The subject of this study was the lesser grain borer Rhizopertha dominica F. The aim of the experiments was to verify the hypothesis suggesting that the course of simultaneous vertical migration and horizontal spread of the R. dominica population is determined by nutritional and habitat selectivity. The following products were used as nutrients in the experiments: wheat, oat flakes, pearl barley and semolina. It was found that the course of a migration process is connected with nutritional preferences determined mainly by a nutrient type and its granulation. At the initial stage of the study the highest emigration was noted in the oat flakes. After a time the highest migration was directed to as follows: wheat, oat flakes, pearl barley and semolina. Females showed a higher migratory activity.

Rumex thyrsiflorus Fingerh. is mentioned as a European folk medicinal plant. This species has also been traditionally used as an edible plant in Eastern Europe because of its nutritional value. During the study, qualitative and quantitative sex-related differences of phenolic constituents in methanolic leaf extracts of R. thyrsiflorus were evaluated. The presence of the same substances (nine phenolic acids before, and six phenolic acids after acid hydrolysis, nine flavonoids, and a catechin) was estimated in both female and male specimens, using the HPLC-DAD method. A statistically significant higher content of eleven constituents in female plant extracts (acids: chlorogenic, p-coumaric, cryptochlorogenic, gallic, protocatechuic, neochlorogenic, vanillic; flavonoids: quercitrin, rhamnetin, rutoside; and catechin) was shown. This is the first report concerning the relation between the sex and the content of biologically active phenolic secondary metabolites in leaf extracts of R. thyrsiflorus. Female plants of R. thyrsiflorus could be useful for pharmaceutical purposes as a preferential source of bioactive phenolic acids, flavonoids and especially catechin.