Brilliant Success Research Articles

Lost in Translation (LiT): IUPHAR Review 6.

Translational medicine is a roller coaster with occasional brilliant successes and a large majority of failures. Lost in Translation 1 (‘LiT1’), beginning in the 1950s, was a golden era built upon earlier advances in experimental physiology, biochemistry and pharmacology, with a dash of serendipity, that led to the discovery of many new drugs for serious illnesses. LiT2 saw the large-scale industrialization of drug discovery using high-throughput screens and assays based on affinity for the target molecule. The links between drug development and university sciences and medicine weakened, but there were still some brilliant successes. In LiT3, the coverage of translational medicine expanded from molecular biology to drug budgets, with much greater emphasis on safety and official regulation. Compared with R&D expenditure, the number of breakthrough discoveries in LiT3 was disappointing, but monoclonal antibodies for immunity and inflammation brought in a new golden era and kinase inhibitors such as imatinib were breakthroughs in cancer. The pharmaceutical industry is trying to revive the LiT1 approach by using phenotypic assays and closer links with academia. LiT4 faces a data explosion generated by the genome project, GWAS, ENCODE and the ‘omics’ that is in danger of leaving LiT4 in a computerized cloud. Industrial laboratories are filled with masses of automated machinery while the scientists sit in a separate room viewing the results on their computers. Big Data will need Big Thinking in LiT4 but with so many unmet medical needs and so many new opportunities being revealed there are high hopes that the roller coaster will ride high again.

Nutraceuticals: An Healthy Bet for the Future

<p>This Issue of the Journal of Food Research, dedicated to the IX Italian Congress on Food Chemistry, ChimAlSi 2012 (Ischia, Napoli, Italy-June 3-7), collects selected manuscripts presented at the Congress, and proposes some aspects and an in depth look of many subjects related to food, that have been the focus of the ChimAlSi 2012. The Scientific Committee, formed by Proff. Ettore Novellino, Luca Rastrelli, Alberto Ritieni, and Antonello Santini, made this event unique as it has been enriched by the participation of more than 300 delegates, including many young researchers from different Countries. On behalf of the Scientific and Organizing Committes, I would like to take the chance to thank here all the speakers and the partecipants, that gave their valuable contribution to the brilliant success of this scientific event. The Congress represented a challenging chance for scientists, regulators, and industry representatives, to meet and share aspects of cutting edge knowledge in the field of Food Chemistry, new research lines, and potential development opportunities to provide the market with higher quality food and nutraceuticals. The IX Italian Congress of Food Chemistry included 12 plenary lectures, 66 lectures, and 290 poster presentations. Two Workshops focused on food contaminants and on the role of food in human health, completed the program of the activities, that covered a wide variety of food related topics ranging from food contaminants and food quality to new analytical approaches, nutritional and health aspects, food integrators, medical foods, nutraceuticals. The scientific contributions were divided in four homogeneous sessions dedicated to food safety, techniques of food analysis, bioactive compounds, and nutraceuticals. These last food-derived compounds, mostly of vegetal origin, are starting to be considered the challenge for the future in the field of Food Chemistry and Nutrition, as a valid low cost, environmental friendly sources alternative to drugs as active supplements for the prevention and to support the therapy in many different health conditions.</p>

A note on similarity-based definitions of possibility and probability

Probability theory is a rigorous theorywhich rests on a firm foundation. The brilliant successes of probability theory are visible to all. What is problematical relates to the basic question: What is probability? There are many answers but no unanimity.What is suggested in this note are definitions of possibility and probability which are based on fuzzy logic. More concretely, the definitions are based on the concept of similarity. Similarity-based definition of probability reduces to the traditional frequency-based definition of probability when similarity is exact.

The Eichmann Trial (review)

Reviewed by: The Eichmann Trial Mary J. Gallant The Eichmann Trial, by Deborah E. Lipstadt. New York: Schocken Next-book, 2011. 237 pp. $24.95. Deborah E. Lipstadt is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Her work underscores the importance of confronting contested remembrance, as for instance in Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (Free Press/MacMillan,1993). Holocaust revisionism and denial come under attack as she applies the ideals of historical analysis in each of her works. Her quest for accuracy and an in-depth knowledge of her subject make an inestimable contribution to the larger orientation in Holocaust scholarship of tikkun olam, repairing the past to heal the future. In 1996, David Irving, a Holocaust denier and author, brought a libel suit against Lipstadt and Penguin Books for publishing a British edition of Denying the Holocaust in which he was mentioned. The case went on for six years. She described it in History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2005). Preparing for the Lipstadt v. Irving trial, she obtained some of the perpetrator testimony she used from the Eichmann trial (1961). Israeli authorities allowed her access to what until then had been a sealed document, the Eichmann memoir, written during his 1961 trial. From her engagement of materials in that earlier trial she determined to write the present work, The Eichmann Trial (2011), published fifty years after the 1961 trial in Israel. In The Eichmann Trial, Lipstadt is plain spoken and maintains that the trial delivered a correct verdict. It contains an Introduction, six chapters and a Conclusion in which she gives a clear picture of Adolph Eichmann, who as a Nazi career officer was completely dedicated to the goals of racial cleansing. He put his own stamp on the eradication of European Jewry during 1942–1945. Her forensics on the 1961 trial pays homage to Jews who were victims and survivors. So far from aligning with noted intellectuals at the 1961 trial, such as Hannah Arendt, who in her work, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: The Viking Press, 1963), saw Eichmann as a bumbling clerk merely carrying out the Nazi mandate, Lipstadt saw Eichmann as knowing exactly what he was doing. Eichmann was an unrepentant [End Page 192] antisemite who as a Nazi officer zealously sent millions to their deaths with intention and forethought. Marc Osiel, a student of Arendt’s, in his work Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory, and the Law (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers) takes the Eichmann trial as a brilliant success, not just in terms of a scrupulous rendering of justice, but in the way the chief prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, presented the facts for collective memory. Hausner had worked to give survivors the right to testify at the trial, and to have the Holocaust itself provide the context for interpreting the actions of the defendant. Osiel cites Haim Gouri (Facing the Glass Booth: The Jerusalem Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994, translated by Michael Swirsky), who in a lead article titled “Facing the Glass Booth” (in Geoffrey Hartman’s Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory and Anti‐Semitism, London: Blackwell, 1994), noted that the Eichmann trial had allowed the Israeli nation to face contradictions in its remembrance of the Holocaust at a time when the next generation was in danger of seeing Holocaust Jews as having “allowed” themselves to be slaughtered. In 1932, in Bavaria, Eichmann (b. 1906) joined the then secret agency, the Schutzstafel (SS), and in 1934 joined the terrorist “Austrian Legion” and the SS unit at Dachau. Bored by the SS appointment at Dachau, he asked for reassignment to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and was assigned to its central office in Berlin; there he became part of the section concerned with Jewish affairs. In 1938, as Lipstadt points out (p. 69), the SD sent him to Austria. Antisemitism there had peaked after the Anschluss. Eichmann added to it, becoming a main figure in the persecution of Austrian Jews. He had boasted about his power to an SS colleague in a letter produced at...

Dual Supramolecular Photochirogenesis: Ultimate Stereocontrol of Photocyclodimerization by a Chiral Scaffold and Confining Host

In contrast to the brilliant success in thermal asymmetric synthesis, precise stereocontrol remains a great challenge in chiral photochemistry because of the lack of effective tools and methodologies for controlling the short-lived, weakly interacting, and highly reactive electronically excited species. In this work, we achieved this goal through the "dual-chiral, dual-supramolecular" photochirogenesis approach, which enabled us to realized dramatic acceleration and perfect stereocontrol in one of the most representative photoreactions. Thus, the [4 + 4] photocyclodimerization of 2-anthracenecarboxylate tethered to an α-cyclodextrin scaffold was accelerated by a γ-cyclodextrin or cucurbit[8]uril host and gave a single enantiomeric cyclodimer (out of four possible chiral and achiral stereoisomers) in up to 98% chemical and 99% optical yield.

Face the challenges and make efforts to achieve more brilliant successes

岁月流逝，光阴荏苒，在耳鼻咽喉头颈外科工作者满怀喜悦迎来2011年新年钟声的时刻，我们满怀感激之情，感谢广大作者、读者和编者的珍爱，本刊圆满地完成了2010年的编辑出版任务，取得了历史上最骄人的业绩。中国科学技术信息所发布了《中国科技期刊引证报告（核心版）》，本刊在2009年1946种中国科技论文统计源期刊中，综合评价总分84.7分，居国内眼科学、耳鼻咽喉科学类18种统计源期刊的首位；

FRENCH CROSSINGS: I. TALES OF TWO CITIES

ABSTRACTUnder the general title, ‘French Crossings’, the presidential addresses over the next four years will explore intersections and relationships between cultures, periods, disciplines, approaches, historiographies and problems, all within the general field of early modern and modern French history. ‘Tales of Two Cities’ takes as its approach both comparative history andl'histoire croisée. It compares and contrasts the very differing cultural impact on each side of the Channel of one of the most influential British novels about Franco-British political culture, namely, Charles Dickens'sA Tale of Two Cities(1859). The novel has been conventionally hailed in England, especially from the end of the nineteenth century, as a parable unfavourably contrasting France's revolutionary tradition with the allegedly more humane political evolutionism of England. In France, the novel has been largely ignored or else viewed as a Burkean rant. Yet Dickens's personal attitudes towards France and in particular Paris suggests a more ambiguous and complicated history. For Dickens, modern Paris, as regenerated under Haussmann, was a brilliant success story against which he contrasted both Paris in the 1790s and the social and political circumstances he claimed to detect within English metropolitan culture in the recent past and present. Dickens views the radical and disinherited workers’ suburb of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine less, it is suggested, as quintessentially French than as quintessentially plebeian, and the prospect of a slide into revolutionary politics as a lurking threat within England as well as France.

The importance of rhesus status

The history of haemolytic disease of the newborn, caused by incompatibility between the fetus and mother for the rhesus D (RhD) antigen, has been called one of the most brilliant successes achieved in medicine.1 Preventive treatment is so effective that it has decreased the number of intrauterine fetal deaths by more than 100 fold and the incidence of maternal alloimmunisation by more than 50 fold.2 The first dated case report of haemolytic disease of the newborn was in a set of twins born in the 1600s.3 However, it was not until 1940 that the link with the RhD antigen was made by Landsteiner and Weiner. They discovered an antibody that led to the agglutination of human erythrocytes after experiments in which rabbits were immunised with rhesus monkey erythrocytes.4 In 1969, a campaign of anti-D immunoglobulin prophylaxis was introduced. Deaths attributed to RhD alloimmunisation were reduced from 46 in 100 000 births to 1.6 in 100 000 births during the first 20 years of the campaign. However, haemolytic disease of the newborn and neonatal death continued to occur, and still do—owing in part to covert sensitising events during pregnancy, and in part to a lack of knowledge and compliance with guidelines.5 Erythrocytes carry many antigens on their surface. The most important are those belonging to the ABO system and to the rhesus system. The rhesus system comprises antigens c, C, D, e, and E. Of these, the D antigen is the most important. It is inherited on one gene, located on chromosome 1. It has two alleles: the dominant RhD positive, where the individual expresses the D antigen, and the recessive RhD negative, where there is no expression.6 The incidence of the rhesus D antigen varies between different ethnic groups.6 It is estimated that the prevalence …

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) and Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818–1865): Preventing the Transmission of Puerperal Fever

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) and Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818–1865): Preventing the Transmission of Puerperal Fever

Operation Albion: The German Conquest of the Baltic Islands (review)

Reviewed by: Operation Albion: The German Conquest of the Baltic Islands Mark D. Karau Operation Albion: The German Conquest of the Baltic Islands. By Michael B. Barrett. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-253-34969-9. Maps. Photographs. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 298. $29.95. On October 12, 1917, the Germans launched one of their most ambitious operations of the First World War, one that has largely been forgotten by historians. It was known as Operation Albion and its objective was to deal such a hard blow to the reeling Russian armed forces that the Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky would have no choice but to seek peace. The operation itself involved the seizure, by amphibious assault, of the major islands in the Gulf of Riga, most importantly Ösel and Moon islands. Control [End Page 1310] of the islands would give the Germans control of the Gulf of Riga which would in turn allow them to use the city and port of Riga as a base for an assault on the Russian capital of Petrograd. The campaign faced serious problems, not the least of which was the simple fact that it was Germany’s first (and only) amphibious operation of the war. Though they had learned some lessons from the British failure at Gallipoli, the Germans were not, by any stretch of the imagination, assured of success. Yet in the end they did succeed and though their victory did not lead directly to a Russian surrender it did demonstrate that, even when conditions strongly favored them, the Russian military could no longer effectively oppose the German war machine. Despite the success of the operation it has rarely been discussed by historians, especially in English language studies of the war. In this very useful work Michael Barrett corrects this oversight by providing a fully detailed and very insightful narrative and analysis of the operation. After relating the story of a German submarine that was sent to reconnoiter the Russian defenses in the Gulf of Riga, Barrett really begins his work by examining the geography of the eastern Baltic Sea, concentrating most heavily on the Gulfs of Riga and Finland, which became the hinge of the Russian defensive system for the capital, Petrograd (the former St. Petersburg). Barrett then discusses, in great detail, the Russian plans to defend the islands and the German plans to capture them. In the process, he illuminates the clashes between the services in each country, the major personalities that were involved in the battle, and the extent to which the revolutionary rot had set into the Russian forces. The heart of the book, however, is Barrett’s compelling narrative of the invasion itself. He writes with great skill and verve as he describes the German landings on Ösel Island and the Russian reactions to those landings; in particular the key struggle to take and hold the single causeway that connected Moon and Ösel islands. What becomes particularly clear from his narrative is the degree to which the Russian forces were affected by the March Revolution. The Russian units on the islands suffered from extremely poor morale and crises in leadership that made the German task much easier. These forces broke quickly and within ten days the Germans had succeeded in overrunning Ösel, Moon, and DagÖ islands while also clearing the Russian navy out of the Gulf of Riga. The operation proved to be a brilliant success for German combined arms. Barrett concludes that “Albion had not caused the collapse of the Russian military forces, but it had illustrated that the Russian armed forces were through” (p. 231). In the end, what we have in Operation Albion is a thoroughly researched, well organized, and very well written history of an operation that deserves to be more widely studied. One of the great strengths of the book is the fact that Barrett was able to make extensive use of the previously closed Russian archives and therefore was able to provide a well balanced look at the campaign. The book is also well illustrated with a number of rare pictures from the archives. I have only one criticism: the book would have benefitted from an...

Jane Morse, MD—A Physician–Investigator Whose “New Career” Gave Immeasurably to the Pulmonary Hypertension Community

In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.—Louis PasteurJane Morse, MD, possessed a prepared mind, and she used her years of preparation to serve patients andfamilies whose lives were devastated by pulmonary arterial hypertension. The story of her contributions is a tale of two careers, both of which were essential to her brilliant success. Dr Morse began her career in research after she received her MD degree from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. This was the right direction for a young physician with insight for careful observation, in-depth study, and the unique ability to identify important research questions. Dr Morse’s skills were honed under the tutelage of Dr. Henry Kunkel, her mentor at the Rockefeller Institute, who, she says, was very astute at knowing how to follow up observations. With her innate abilities and Dr Kunkel’s mentorship, the stage was set for an investigative career.After her postgraduate studies at the Rockefeller Institute, she returned to the College of Physicians andSurgeons with an academic appointment in rheumatology. Her initial interests were in autoimmune phenomena. However, fortunately for the pulmonary hypertension community, she became interested in the link between autoimmune phenomena and pulmonary hypertension. She investigated relationships between unexplained pulmonary hypertension and major histocompatibility complexes; and then began to turn her attention to the immunogenetic findings in families with pulmonary hypertension. In 1992 she published her observations of autoantibodies and the major histocompatibility locus in four families with pulmonary arterial hypertension.The known occurrence of pulmonary arterial hypertension in families with scleroderma triggered Dr Morse’s career change from autoimmune studies to genome studies of pulmonary arterial hypertension. One of her scleroderma families included a father and daughter in New Jersey. Dr Robyn Barst followed the child.Dr Barst not only followed the child, she followed a number of pulmonary arterial hypertension families. The collaboration of Drs Morse and Barst created the foundation needed for future investigations. Their initial work examined human leukocyte antigens (HLA) in patients with pulmonary hypertension. However, they realized that they needed to examine microsatellite markers across the human genome. One of Dr Morse’s technicians learned how to place microsatellite markers, which quickly suggested five possible regions of the genome where a causative gene might be found. Dr Morse had made the transition to her new career in genetic research. Soon, with the help of her colleagues, she located and reported the chromosome locus of the familial primary pulmonary hypertension gene to 2q33. This was a major breakthrough, providing independent confirmation of the location of a critical genetic determinant of inherited pulmonary arterial hypertension.The original work at Columbia was based in part on a family shared with a group of researchers led by investigators at Vanderbilt University who were doing similar studies. The Columbia group identified another family and confirmed their work; shortly thereafter, they identified another family whose data pointed to the same locus. Dr Morse remembers how exhilarating it was to find the mutations in the families. “When we had approximately 20 people with the mutations in the two affected families, we were in business...it was really exciting.”With the recruitment of more families, she and her colleagues identified the gene associated with familial pulmonary hypertension. They reported mutations in bone morphogenetic protein receptor 2 (BMPR2) as causing familial pulmonary arterial hypertension; Dr Morse credits Dr James Knowles and especially Dr Zemin Deng (a fellow in her lab) for narrowing the search to BMPR2. His suggestion that they look first at that gene was based on his background reading on lung development, once again showing the advantage of having a prepared mind.Dr Morse’s work continues. The group is now fine mapping. “We’re also doing some studies to see if different mutations cause more or less severe diseaseand could affect clinical outcome.” There may be more genes to be found (BMPR2 accounts for approximately 10% of idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension cases in the United States, although in Japan the number is reported to be as high as 40%). However, it is also possible that there are no modifying genes and the trigger is environmental.Dr Morse feels fortunate to have found a whole new career just before retirement. “I’ve been very lucky.” She is most grateful to the patients, their families, and their doctors. The work she’s done could not have been done without them and “it has enriched my life tremendously. I’ve always enjoyed people and have been fascinated by the differences. I’m grateful to patients and peers who have helped.”

Aged Care Clinical Fellowships a Brilliant Success

Aged Care Clinical Fellowships a Brilliant Success

Anonymous Milton, or, A Maske Masked

Reacting against older bibliographic theories devoted to single authorship and a stable authorial text, theater historians have recently focused on the wide range of collaboration that theater necessitates, including collaborative authorship, revisions in performance, actors' memorial texts, and publishers' reinterpretation of drama as a print commodity.1 There are few instances in early modern theater history where such rich detail survives about a play's progress from performance to print as survives for Milton's masque. Early modern drama's historians, however, have neglected this story because Milton is not regarded as a dramatist, and critics have transmogrified the masque into a Miltonic poem.2 Milton's success in constructing himself as English literature's great, solitary author whose career, even its necessary interruptions, forms an overarching plan of vatic power has also obscured the involved history of the masque.3 Yet Milton's theatrical involvements at Cambridge, the masque's theatrical identity, and the masque's material existence as a printed book all tell a counterintuitive story—collaborative, theatrical, and historically and culturally embedded. In the eighteenth century, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle was adapted for the professional stage, with the addition of lots of sexy temptation scenes and fun fairies. Retitled Comus, it was performed with brilliant success, becoming a staple of the theater for more than a hundred years. Oddly, this stagy title is the title we use to read the piece as a poem. Since, however, my concern here will be with its early history, I will use the title Milton used with close variations in the text's many manifestations during his lifetime, a title which itself insists on social connections and on performance.4 A Maske existed, first, as a script for an aristocratic family's celebration, the result of Milton's collaboration with Henry Lawes, court musician to Charles I. Lawes almost certainly got Milton the commission; he wrote the music for the masque's songs, rehearsed the Egerton children in their difficult roles, staged the piece at Ludlow Castle, making significant revisions under the exigencies of [End Page 609] performance, and, finally, performed a major role himself. Milton was asked to write a theatrical performance of a kind associated exclusively with the monarch and aristocracy and, by many, with their financial and sexual excesses. A poetic career rather than a life in the ministry or the law would have meant, in the early 1630s, being supported by patronage and writing within the constraints and obligations such a supported life entailed. By accepting the commission from the Egerton family he stood at the threshold of a life of literary service and artistic collaboration that seems to us now to be utterly inimical to our sense of Milton's career, but that then must have been the life he could see himself beginning. The textual history of A Maske is dauntingly complex. Milton worked on the masque in the Trinity College MS, returning to edit it on numerous occasions; the result is a rich editorial puzzle of various inks and pen nibs that has prompted unresolvable but fascinating speculation about chronology and intention. But we also have a presentation manuscript to the Egerton family, known as the Bridgewater MS, that was apparently copied from the working script of the actual performance in 1634. We know, therefore, that 115 lines were cut for performance and that speeches were rearranged and reassigned. Theories about the motivations behind the cuts (and the author of them) have played important roles in, for example, the ongoing controversy about the effect of the Castlehaven scandal on the masque's conception.5 In 1645 A Maske is the final English piece in Milton's Poems, where he has restored it to the Trinity MS version, with the addition of the lady's speech on "the Sun-clad power of Chastity" and Comus's lines in response, which begin "She fables not."6 According to longstanding critical consensus, A Maske becomes a poem in the Poems, a keystone...

The Libyan disarmament model

The Libyan disarmament agreement was a brilliant success for traditional non-proliferation diplomacy, mixing pressures and inducements to change behaviour rather than regimes. Unfortunately, the circumstances that produced the agreement are unlikely to be repeated in the case of Iran and North Korea. A negotiated settlement in these cases is more likely to represent difficult compromises and reciprocity, which, thus far, the Bush administration has not been prepared to undertake. With valuable time and opportunities lost, the next administration is likely to find it faces an even harder task to negotiate disarmament agreements with Tehran and Pyongyang.

Fortieth Anniversary of APLAR

What an honour it is to come to this exotic Miyazaki Island in this wonderful country of Japan. I bring to you warm greetings and felicitations from 22 APLAR countries ranging from Iraq/Syria in the West to Japan/New Zealand in the East. APLAR is most proud that Japan is a leading and outstanding member of the APLAR community of nations. This is a significant year for APLAR. We are celebrating the 40th Anniversary of APLAR. We find no better occasion or location to make this announcement from the outstanding platform of the GARN Conference. Ladies and Gentlemen, 3.7 billion people reside in APLAR countries; some highly developed, some economically prosperous and some developing nations. Rheumatology as a science and practice is firmly established in most APLAR member countries, including developing nations. There are highly qualified well-trained rheumatologists available who enjoy adequate practical laboratory support and are given to good therapeutics. There are centres of excellence where good education and training in rheumatology is imparted. Yet, there are some countries that are not yet members of APLAR and in which organised rheumatology centres hardly exist. It is the aim of APLAR today to undertake and help initiate rheumatology services in these countries. This is an ambitious and onerous task that we have undertaken. Exactly a year from now APLAR will hold its outstanding International Congress in Rheumatology in the picturesque Jeju Island in South Korea. We promise you an innovative, creative, stimulating scientific programme replete with warm hospitality. Do come to the APLAR Congress in South Korea in September 2004 – you will never ever regret it. The GARN Conference is certain to generate new data, new ideas with the plethora of brilliant scientists assembled under one roof here. We have come to learn a lot and to develop positive ideas into an action programme in the APLAR region. This is precisely why I am here to take away a message of advances in science and to give this message of cooperation and goodwill to the brilliant success of this GARN Conference. MAY PEACE AND HARMONY PREVAIL. MAY GOD BLESS US ALL.

Brokering Glory for the Chinese Nation: Peking Opera's 1930 American Tour

Brokering Glory for the Chinese Nation: Peking Opera's 1930 American Tour Nancy Guy On 29 December 1929 a company of some twenty Peking opera actors, musicians, and artistic advisors left Shanghai for the United States. Head ofthe troupe was China's foremost actor ofPeking opera, Mei Lanfang, who was already an international sensation.1 The tour, to at least five major U.S. cities, would be a brilliant success. With a tremendous demand for tickets, the engagement in NewYorkwas extended from two to five weeks, during which Peking opera played to capacity houses. Scalpers were able to sell tickets that had cost $3.85 at the box office for as much as $18.00.2 The critic for the New York World proclaimed that it was one ofthe "most exciting evenings" that he had ever spent in a theater.3 Mei's success in New York was so great that a banquet held in his honor, sponsored by the newspapermen's club, was attended by five thousand guests, including the city's mayor, Jimmy Walker. Tables at the affair, which was held shortly after the 1929 stock market crash, were priced at $500, while booths in the balcony went for $1000 each.4 Upon arrival in San Francisco, the troupe was met by a huge delegation headed by Mayor James Rolph, Jr.5 Mei's tour was to receive an equally warm welcome in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. What, then, accounted for the tour's enormous success? The answer must lie with the Chinese motivation for organizing the tour and the reasons for the warm embrace of this aesthetically unfamiliar art form by American audiences. Performance is a dualistic process; presenters have certain aims and audience members have particular needs and expectations. A common assumption is that presenters primarily aim to give an aesthetically pleasing 377 378Comparative Drama performance.This viewoverlooks othermotivations thatmaybe ofequal, and sometimes even greater, importance. Likewise, the reason that a person attends (or a crowd flocks to) a performance may exceed hoping to experience an artistically satisfying moment. Mei Lanfang's 1930 tour to the United States (see fig. 1) provides an opportunity for examining the motivations of both presenters and receivers , and in this instance demonstrates that the Chinese and Americans entered into a discourse with each side having its expectations fulfilled . The highly favorable reception of the tour was by no means an accident, for the Chinese tour organizers had systematically studied the desires and aesthetic preferences offoreigners who had attended Peking opera performances (and Chinese culture in general) in China. They acted as "culture brokers" representing their own culture to nonspecialized others.As Richard Kurin has argued, culture brokering involves"the idea that these representations are to some degree negotiated, dialogical, and driven by a variety of interests on behalfofthe involved parties."6 To understand the context ofthe success ofMei's troupe in America, we need to know the environment in which the tour was conceived and launched. How did conditions in China shape the motivations of tour supporters and the touring performers? What were the prevailing conditions in American culture that helped to create an atmosphere ofreceptivity to this foreign and aesthetically unfamiliar art form? But we need to begin with the central figure in this story: Mei Lanfang. Born in 1894 to a prominent family of Peking opera performers, Mei was a superstar in his lifetime, and he remains one of the most important figures in the history ofthe genre. He made his stage debut at the age ofeleven and had achieved national fame by his early twenties. His specialty was the performance ofyoung female roles, and his performing style remains one ofthe most popular and widely practiced for such roles on the Peking opera stage. Cross-gendered performance was commonly though not exclusively practiced in China well into the midtwentieth century. In fact, several ofthe last century's most important Peking opera performers, known as the "four great dan" (si da ming dan) ofwhich Mei Lanfang was one, were male performers of young female roles.7 On accountofMei's stature, asubstantialbodyofwritings existswhich coversmanyaspects ofhislifeandartisticwork,includingthe 1930American Nancy Guy379 Fig. 1. Front cover of the program for Mei Lanfang...

Scanning the technology: Foreward

Publication of the Special Issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE - an issue dedicated to Industrial Innovations Using Soft Computing, is an important milestone in the evolution of soft computing (SC). It is a symbol of recognition that a decade after its debut, SC is emerging as a coherent body of concepts and techniques that has wide-ranging applications to the conception, design, and utilization of information/intelligent systems. Progress in science and technology has led to brilliant successes. We have sent men to the moon, built the web, and are on the brink of mapping the structure of genes. But what we have not learned is how to mimic the remarkable human capability to perform a wide variety of physical and mental tasks without any measurements and any computations. In performing such tasks, e.g., driving in city traffic or playing golf, we employ perceptions?rather than measurements? of time, distance, speed, shape, color, likelihood, and other attributes of physical and mental objects. It is this human capability that existing scientific theories do not possess. The computational theory of perceptions is aimed at adding this capability to measurement-based theories. I believe that, in time, the capability to operate on perception- based information will be added to all members of the SC coalition.

Sir Charles Tupper: Fighting Doctor to Father of Confederation (review)

Canadian history is replete with heroic figures, but there have been few men or women who have successfully attained national stature in both medicine and politics. Sir Charles Tupper was one of those rare exceptions. As William Osler wrote in his obituary, "Few men have lived more vigorously, first in the rough and tumble of a large general practice in Nova Scotia and then in the turbulent area of politics. . . . His [Tupper's] life is an illustration of the brilliant success of the doctor in politics." 1

From Computing with Numbers to Computing with Words

Interest in issues relating to consciousness has grown markedly during the last several years. And yet, nobody can claim that consciousness is a well-understood concept that lends itself to precise analysis. It may be argued that, as a concept, consciousness is much too complex to fit into the conceptual structure of existing theories based on Aristotelian logic and probability theory. An approach suggested in this paper links consciousness to perceptions and perceptions to their descriptors in a natural language. In this way, those aspects of consciousness which relate to reasoning and concept formation are linked to what is referred to as the methodology of computing with words (CW). Computing, in its usual sense, is centered on manipulation of numbers and symbols. In contrast, computing with words, or CW for short, is a methodology in which the objects of computation are words and propositions drawn from a natural language (e.g., small, large, far, heavy, not very likely, the price of gas is low and declining, Berkeley is near San Francisco, it is very unlikely that there will be a significant increase in the price of oil in the near future, etc.). Computing with words is inspired by the remarkable human capability to perform a wide variety of physical and mental tasks without any measurements and any computations. Familiar examples of such tasks are parking a car, driving in heavy traffic, playing golf, riding a bicycle, understanding speech, and summarizing a story. Underlying this remarkable capability is the brain's crucial ability to manipulate perceptions--perceptions of distance, size, weight, color, speed, time, direction, force, number, truth, likelihood, and other characteristics of physical and mental objects. Manipulation of perceptions plays a key role in human recognition, decision and execution processes. As a methodology, computing with words provides a foundation for a computational theory of perceptions: a theory which may have an important bearing on how humans make--and machines might make--perception-based rational decisions in an environment of imprecision, uncertainty, and partial truth. A basic difference between perceptions and measurements is that, in general, measurements are crisp, whereas perceptions are fuzzy. One of the fundamental aims of science has been and continues to be that of progressing from perceptions to measurements. Pursuit of this aim has led to brilliant successes. We have sent men to the moon; we can build computers that are capable of performing billions of computations per second; we have constructed telescopes that can explore the far reaches of the universe; and we can date the age of rocks that are millions of years old. But alongside the brilliant successes stand conspicuous underachievements and outright failures. We cannot build robots that can move with the agility of animals or humans; we cannot automate driving in heavy traffic; we cannot translate from one language to another at the level of a human interpreter; we cannot create programs that can summarize non-trivial stories; our ability to model the behavior of economic systems leaves much to be desired; and we cannot build machines that can compete with children in the performance of a wide variety of physical and cognitive tasks. It may be argued that underlying the underachievements and failures is the unavailability of a methodology for reasoning and computing with perceptions rather than measurements. An outline of such a methodology--referred to as a computational theory of perceptions--is presented in this paper. The computational theory of perceptions (CTP) is based on the methodology of CW. In CTP, words play the role of labels of perceptions, and, more generally, perceptions are expressed as propositions in a natural language. CW-based techniques are employed to translate propositions expressed in a natural language into what is called the Generalized Constraint Language (GCL). In this language, the meaning of a proposition is expressed as a generalized constraint, X isr R, where X is the constrained variable, R is the constraining relation, and isr is a variable copula in which r is an indexing variable whose value defines the way in which R constrains X. Among the basic types of constraints are possibilistic, veristic, probabilistic, random set, Pawlak set, fuzzy graph, and usuality. The wide variety of constraints in GCL makes GCL a much more expressive language than the language of predicate logic. In CW, the initial and terminal data sets, IDS and TDS, are assumed to consist of propositions expressed in a natural language. These propositions are translated, respectively, into antecedent and consequent constraints. Consequent constraints are derived from antecedent constraints through the use of rules of constraint propagation. The principal constraint propagation rule is the generalized extension principle. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)

The pioneers of flight: a documentary history

pioneers of flight left a legacy of inventions that changed the world. Unknown to most people, many also left compelling written accounts of their ideas, scientific discoveries, and attempts--both successful and disastrous--to take to the air. Phil Scott presents the first major anthology of these writings. His selections show how humans from Ovid to the Wright brothers and beyond dreamed about flying and puzzled over the principles of physics and aerodynamics that kept birds aloft and men grounded. Their eloquent and incisive writings form a record of scientific curiosity and individual tenacity that will fascinate aviation enthusiasts, historians of technology, and anyone interested in the drama of early flight.Scott begins with Ovid's story of Icarus, who met his legendary fate by flying too close to the sun and melting the wax that held his wings together. He presents accounts of crude medieval experiments and the beginnings of a scientific approach to flight in Renaissance and early modern Italy. He includes a letter from the Marquis d'Arlandes about being aboard the Montgolfiers' famous balloon for the first ever manned flight. book's main focus, however, is the development of airplanes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scott presents scientific notes, letters, patent applications, fund-raising proposals, newspaper reports, journal articles, and personal stories by or about such central figures as Sir George Cayley, John Stringfellow, Otto Lilienthal, Clement Ader, Octave Chanute, Louis Bleriot, Glenn Curtiss, and, in particular, the Wright brothers. We read about the insights that led to propellers and to the shape of the modern wing, the frustrations and dangers of attempting flight, the Wrights' revolutionary technological innovations and their brilliant successes at Kitty Hawk, technical and commercial disputes, and the experiences of early women aviators and the adventurers who made the first long-distance flights.Scott includes an extensive introduction that puts the selections in the context of aeronautical history. The Pioneers of Flight is a remarkable resource for anyone who wishes to understand how humans struggled and eventually learned to fly.