Maurizio Cailotto

Right - Left asymmetry in position learning of male chicks

Two-week-old chicks were trained to discriminate between two identical boxes on the basis of their position. The positive box was placed against the wall facing the entrance of the test cage, whereas the negative box was placed either on the right or on the left wall. Results showed that male chicks learned the task faster when the negative box was placed on the right than when it was placed on the left, whereas no right-left asymmetry appeared in females.

Sex differences in the response to social stimuli in young chicks

Ambulation latencies of pair-reared 6-day-old male and female chicks were measured (i) in the presence of a cagemate; (ii) in the presence of an unfamiliar chick; (iii) in isolated chicks. Results showed that a) in animals tested with a cagemate there were no differences in ambulation latencies between males and females; b) in animals tested with an unfamiliar chick ambulation latencies were higher in females than in males; c) in animals tested in isolation ambulation latencies were higher in males than in females. It is suggested that gender effects in the open-field behaviour of young chicks might be due to a stronger social reinstatement motivation in females than in males.

Algebraic connections on logarithmic schemes

Abstract In the theory of O -modules with an integrable logarithmic connection in the context of log schemes (over a field of characteristic zero), one of the first problems is that, contrary to the classical case, an object of these categories which is O -coherent is not necessarily locally free. We present some sufficient conditions for the local freeness, based essentially on the notion of residues of a log connection. Then we handle the problem of stability of local freeness under derived direct image for morphisms of log schemes; we prove a generalization of the Deligne–Illusie results on degeneration of the “Hodge to de Rham” spectral sequence, local freeness, compatibility with base change.