Society Of London Research Articles

Geoscience and decarbonization: current status and future directions

At the 2015 United Nations International Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21), 197 national parties committed to limit global warming to well below 2°C. But current plans and pace of progress are still far from sufficient to achieve this objective. Here we review the role that geoscience and the subsurface could play in decarbonizing electricity production, industry, transport and heating to meet UK and international climate change targets, based on contributions to the 2019 Bryan Lovell meeting held at the Geological Society of London. Technologies discussed at the meeting involved decarbonization of electricity production via renewable sources of power generation, substitution of domestic heating using geothermal energy, use of carbon capture and storage (CCS), and more ambitious technologies such as bioenergy and carbon capture and storage (BECCS) that target negative emissions. It was noted also that growth in renewable energy supply will lead to increased demand for geological materials to sustain the electrification of the vehicle fleet and other low-carbon technologies. The overall conclusion reached at the 2019 Bryan Lovell meeting was that geoscience is critical to decarbonization, but that the geoscience community must influence decision-makers so that the value of the subsurface to decarbonization is understood.

The first report of ants (Formicidae: Hymenoptera) in salt marshes and salt pans in central parts of Iran

The present study was conducted in Salt marshes and Salt pans in central parts of Iran. 121 specimens of ants were collected by trapping and hand during spring, summer and autumn 2017 to 2019. Nine species belong to two subfamilies of Myrmicinae and Formicinae were identified. The vegetation, physical and chemical parameters of soil such as salinity, Ph, and other factors were investigated. Darband Shoor Mountain station with five species had the highest diversity and vegetation density and the lowest salinity of soil (72.14 ds/m) whereas Salt Lake station had only one species, with no vegetation and the highest salinity of soil (153.15 ds/m). Cataglyphis lividus (André, 1881) was the dominant species in all the stations except in Darband Shoor Mountain station. All the species were reported for the first time from salt marshes and salt pans in the central parts of Iran and were approved by Prof. Brian Taylor, in Royal Entomological Society of London, England.

James Alexander Green. 26 February 1926—7 April 2014

James Alexander Green, known as Sandy, was a mathematician of great influence and distinction. He was an algebraist, famous for his work on modular representations of finite groups, and the development of the theory of polynomial representations of general linear groups. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1968) and Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1987). He was awarded prizes of the London Mathematical Society, a Senior Berwick Prize (in 1984) and the De Morgan Medal (in 2001). In his doctoral thesis, on semigroups, Sandy introduced fundamental relations, now known as ‘Green's relations’. He determined the characters of arbitrary finite general linear groups published 1955. Sandy then turned to representations of finite groups over fields of prime characteristic; his work laid the foundations for the module theoretic approach to the subject. His next highlight is his monograph on polynomial representations of GL n , published in 1980, which has become the basis for algebraic highest weight theory. Furthermore, in 1995 he proved a fundamental result on Hall algebras, establishing a connection between quantum groups and representations of finite-dimensional quiver algebras.

Japan Watchers and the crisis in East Asia, 1931–1941

This paper is concerned with the changing informal views of Japan held in Britain in the decade after 1931. It investigates the relationship between understanding and policy, and how the needs of policy, most significantly the subordination of Asia to Europe, impinged on understanding. In looking in microcosm at where Japan Watchers, made up of newspapermen, missionaries and businessmen, interacted with formal diplomats and government officials, this paper focuses on the lectures and journals of learned societies in London, especially the Royal Central Asian Society, which served as one conduit through which knowledge of Japan passed to an audience with a regional interest. A wider audience was reached through newspapers. In trying to influence the reading public, the importance of ideas having to resonate with the concerns of the reader is stressed. It is emphasized that influence on perception is often dependent on a particular time. The views of Old China Hands came to supplant those of Japan Watchers in influencing the British image of Japan by the late 1930s.

The legacies of the Royal Society of London

The legacies of the Royal Society of London

Introduction to ground-related risk to transportation infrastructure

A conference was held at the Geological Society of London on the theme of ‘Ground-related Risk to Transportation Infrastructure’. This conference attracted nearly 200 delegates from around the world and, while there was a UK focus, presentations and posters of a very high quality were given on a wide range of topics illustrated by global examples. The thematic set of papers presented in this issue of the journal give a good indication of the range and quality of the subject matter presented to the conference. Transportation infrastructure is of vital strategic importance to countries, and is often referred to as the backbone of a modern economy. Risks arising from hazards in the ground, either natural or anthropogenic, pose a significant threat to the safety and performance of such transport networks and, hence, the subject of geotechnical asset management is of great importance. This set of papers covers examples drawn from the four themes of the conference: strategic geotechnical asset management; current and future resilience and monitoring; ground-related hazards; and operational response to hazards and events. It is hoped that the spirit of knowledge sharing and discussion engendered by the conference continues with future events and publications.

Fakery, forgery, and [Mis]representation during the English Civil War: dubious royal letters and contested diplomatic authority in the Russia trade, 1642-49

ABSTRACT The 1640s posed an existential threat to English trade interests in Russia. Tsar Aleksei’s accession to the throne in 1645 finally gave voice to native merchant opposition to the generously privileged Muscovy Company as the new government embarked on an aggressive protectionist course. By 1646, the Company in London and Moscow was pushing back against the stripping of its ancient right to duty-free trade. Resistance, however, was futile without the traditional support of the English monarch, which the London-based Muscovy Company failed to secure at this time. Instead, the Russia merchants found themselves under direct attack by the king himself as traitors. So would claim the royal envoy Luke Nightingale in a secret oral message to Aleksei, accompanied by letters from Charles of dubious provenance. These largely unexplored communications are fascinating for how they draw Russia into the dramatic orbit of the English Civil War. At the same time, they raise the possibility of documentary tampering and forgery in furtherance of personal and/or royalist objectives, while prompting consideration of how the collapse of royal authority in these years challenged merchants, trade, and diplomats.

Using the stochastic Galerkin method as a predictive tool during an epidemic

The ability to accurately predict the course of an epidemic is extremely important. This article looks at an influenza outbreak that spread through a small boarding school. Predictions are made on multiple days throughout the epidemic using the stochastic Galerkin method to consider a range of plausible values for the parameters. These predictions are then compared to known data points. Predictions made before the peak of the epidemic had much larger variances compared to predictions made after the peak of the epidemic.
 
 References B. M. Chen-Charpentier, J. C. Cortes, J. V. Romero, and M. D. Rosello. Some recommendations for applying gPC (generalized polynomial chaos) to modeling: An analysis through the Airy random differential equation. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 219(9):4208 4218, 2013. doi:10.1016/j.amc.2012.11.007 B. M. Chen-Charpentier and D. Stanescu. Epidemic models with random coefficients. Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 52:1004 1010, 2010. doi:10.1016/j.mcm.2010.01.014 D. B. Harman and P. R. Johnston. Applying the stochastic galerkin method to epidemic models with individualised parameter distributions. In Proceedings of the 12th Biennial Engineering Mathematics and Applications Conference, EMAC-2015, volume 57 of ANZIAM J., pages C160C176, August 2016. doi:10.21914/anziamj.v57i0.10394 D. B. Harman and P. R. Johnston. Applying the stochastic galerkin method to epidemic models with uncertainty in the parameters. Mathematical Biosciences, 277:25 37, 2016. doi:10.1016/j.mbs.2016.03.012 D. B. Harman and P. R. Johnston. Boarding house: find border. 2019. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.7699844.v1 D. B. Harman and P. R. Johnston. SIR uniform equations. 2 2019. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.7692392.v1 H. W. Hethcote. The mathematics of infectious diseases. SIAM Review, 42(4):599653, 2000. doi:10.1137/S0036144500371907 R.I. Hickson and M.G. Roberts. How population heterogeneity in susceptibility and infectivity influences epidemic dynamics. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 350(0):70 80, 2014. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.01.014 W. O. Kermack and A. G. McKendrick. A contribution to the mathematical theory of epidemics. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, 115(772):700721, August 1927. doi:10.1098/rspa.1927.0118 M. G. Roberts. A two-strain epidemic model with uncertainty in the interaction. The ANZIAM Journal, 54:108115, 10 2012. doi:10.1017/S1446181112000326 M. G. Roberts. Epidemic models with uncertainty in the reproduction number. Journal of Mathematical Biology, 66(7):14631474, 2013. doi:10.1007/s00285-012-0540-y F. Santonja and B. Chen-Charpentier. Uncertainty quantification in simulations of epidemics using polynomial chaos. Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine, 2012:742086, 2012. doi:10.1155/2012/742086 Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (Public Health Laboratory Service) and Communicable Diseases (Scotland) Unit. Influenza in a boarding school. BMJ, 1(6112):587, 1978. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.6112.586 G. Strang. Linear Algebra and Its Applications. Thomson, Brooks/Cole, 2006. D. Xiu. Numerical Methods for Stochastic Computations: A Spectral Method Approach. Princeton University Press, 2010.

From Eden to savagery and civilization: British colonialism and humanity in the development of natural history, ca. 1600–1840

This article is concerned with the relationship between British colonization and the intellectual underpinnings of natural history writing between the 17th and the early 19th centuries. During this period, I argue, a significant discursive shift reframed both natural history and the concept of humanity. In the early modern period, compiling natural histories was often conceived as an endeavour to understand God’s creation. Many of the natural historians involved in the early Royal Society of London were driven by a theological conviction that the New World contained the natural knowledge once possessed by Adam, but lost in the Fall from Eden. By the early 19th century, however, this theological framework for natural history had been superseded by an avowedly progressive vision of the relationship between humanity and nature. No longer ontologically distinct from the rest of creation, the human became a subject of natural history writing in a new way. Encounters between colonizers and colonized thus became a touchstone for tensions between divine and natural historical knowledge. The resolution of these tensions lay in the emergence of a concept of savagery that imbibed both a rational account of historical progress towards civilization and a religious conviction that savage humanity needed rescue from its animal nature.

Woman’s Identity vs. Beauty Ideals: A Comparative Study of Selected Contemporary Novels

Cultural notions about woman’s identity play a role in woman self-acceptance and self- worth. Generally speaking, these ideas affected women since they have shaped their feelings of worth and beauty. Nowadays pursuit of beauty ideal has become one of the problematic issues to meet particular standards. Moreover, the development of selfhood is influenced by the mirror of the society. Ethnicity, body shape, skin colour, age, and wrinkles are various forms of society standards of beauty which some women shape their identities by modifying accordingly. Thus, beauty ideals become a form of restriction and enslavement because women are forced to follow and sometimes suffer to have the sense of belonging. Three novels are selected in this paper to study the problematic issue of what is meant by beauty ideal. Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of the Face (1994) depicts the suffering of a woman who has a struggle with jaw cancer since early childhood. Surviving the cancer means removing part of her jaw which causes the tragedy of her life. Zadie Smith’s The White Teeth (2000) is a work about the postcolonial society of London where Irie considers herself British despite her dark skin due to her Jamaican roots. White skin is one of the ideals of beauty according to the British standard. Ellen Hopkins’ Perfect (2011) is a novel in which the writer asks the question who defines the word ‘perfect’, the question is asked through Kendra whose dream is to be a model and a star.

Robert Boyle's weather journal for the year 1685

Robert Boyle was one of the most influential natural philosophers of the Enlightenment. Although he recorded fragmentary instrumental meteorological readings in his numerous works, it was generally thought that he did not record observations with the regularity seen in the journals of other late‐seventeenth century philosophers. However, in the Boyle archive at the Royal Society in London is a diary that was recorded while Boyle was living in London and which provides a largely complete record of twice‐daily barometer, thermometer and weather readings from December 1684 to January 1686. As far as I can tell, these data have not been converted to modern units or scrutinised in any systematic manner. In this paper I derive corrections for the instrumental observations and examine the weather descriptions. Although the record is short, it does provide a detailed daily snapshot of weather conditions for this 14‐month period around London. The dry conditions that lasted into early summer 1685 constituted the most prominent feature of the weather during that year. The journal indicates that the winter 1684/1685 was cold and frequent frosts and fog were experienced, although the following winter of 1685/1686 was relatively mild; summer 1685 appears to have been relatively cool. Overall, the data attest to the variety of weather conditions that could be experienced in London during the Late Maunder Minimum.

Modern mothers, modern babies: breastfeeding and mother’s milk in interwar Britain

ABSTRACTIn 1938, an obituary of Frederic Truby King, the New Zealand doctor who had founded the Mothercraft Training Society in London in 1918 announced that he had ‘hypnotise[d] thousands of mothers into the belief that breast feeding is the important factor in infant care … ’ (Mother and Child (March 1938): 454). Truby King was an influential figure in the promotion of ‘scientific breastfeeding’, and this article investigates the position of breastfeeding in infant welfare and infant care advice directed at middle-class mothers in the interwar period. Positioned as the ‘natural’ way of feeding infants, breastfeeding was concurrently represented as the ‘modern’ and ‘scientific’ way of safeguarding babies’ healthy development. This article examines the development of the science of breastfeeding, which centred on the practice of breastfeeding and breast milk as a substance, and explores middle-class women’s experiences of breastfeeding in interwar Britain.

Copying images in the archives of the early Royal Society

This article argues that the copying of text and image was a key process in acquiring, approving, and recording knowledge in the early Royal Society of London. In particular, it focuses on how the administrative archives were set up and sustained in the nascent Society to preserve and establish new knowledge through a copying practice. Images were copied alongside texts to facilitate the collaborative scientific practice among the members of the Royal Society; to communicate essential features of an argument; to serve as proof of rare phenomena; and to establish priority for an invention or an idea. This copying practice was part of a unique system of emphasizing, prioritizing, and preserving for contemporary and future Fellows what was deemed important, ground-breaking, or useful knowledge.

The Beccari series of precipitation in Bologna, Italy, from 1723 to 1765

The precipitation record taken by J.B. Beccari in Bologna from 1723 to 1765, with three observations a day, has been recovered from the original Logs and analysed. Although metadata are scarce or even missing, a thorough investigation of the contemporary sources, the interactions between Beccari, his colleagues in Padua, and the Royal Society London, as well as the record analysis, have allowed reconstruction of most of the information concerning the instrument, its location and exposure, the measuring protocol and units. Daily, monthly and yearly amounts and frequencies, as well as extreme events, have been analysed. The first decade (i.e. 1723–1733) was drier than the 1961–1990 reference period and the subsequent decades wetter. During the calendar year, summer was dryer and October was characterized by a stronger activity of Atlantic perturbations.

About this title - Aspects of the Life and Works of Archibald Geikie

Sir Archibald Geikie (1835–1924) was one of the most distinguished and influential geologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, President of the Geological Society of London, President of the British Association, Trustee of the British Museum and President of the Royal Society. He was also an accomplished writer, a masterful lecturer and a talented artist who published over 200 scientific papers, books and articles. The papers in this volume examine aspects of Geikie's life and works, including his family history, his personal and professional relationships, his art, and his contributions as a field geologist and administrator. Together, they provide a deeper understanding of his life, his career and his contribution to the development of Geology as a scientific discipline. Much of the research is based on primary sources, including previously unpublished manuscripts, donated in part by members of the family to the Haslemere Educational Museum, UK.

REMEMBERING ROMAN SYRIA: VALUING TADMOR-PALMYRA, FROM ‘DISCOVERY’ TO DESTRUCTION

AbstractThe 1753 publication of The Ruins of Palmyra by Robert Wood was key in the formation of archaeological understandings of the site. Examining the original notebooks and drawings of the expedition, which formed the basis for this publication (now held by the Combined Library of the Institute of Classical Studies and the Hellenic and Roman Societies in London), this article examines the relationship between those first documents, the publication, and some of its afterlives. We demonstrate how Wood's treatment of Tadmor-Palmyra and its inhabitants has shaped memories of the site, prioritizing certain narratives and occluding others, a process that continues today.

An experimental community: the East India Company in London, 1600-1800.

The early East India Company (EIC) had a profound effect on London, filling the British capital with new things, ideas and people; altering its streets; and introducing exotic plants and animals. Company commodities - from saltpetre to tea to opium - were natural products and the EIC sought throughout the period to understand how to produce and control them. In doing so, the company amassed information, designed experiments and drew on the expertise of people in the settlements and of individuals and institutions in London. Frequent collaborators in London included the Royal Society and the Society of Apothecaries. Seeking success in the settlements and patronage in London, company servants amassed large amounts of data concerning natural objects and artificial practices. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, company scholars and their supporters in London sought to counter critiques of the EIC by demonstrating the utility to the nation of the objects and ideas they brought home. The EIC transformed itself several times between 1600 and 1800. Nonetheless, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its knowledge culture was characterized by reliance on informal networks that linked the settlements with one another and with London.

'Greenwich near London': the Royal Observatory and its London networks in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Built in Greenwich in 1675-1676, the Royal Observatory was situated outside the capital but was deeply enmeshed within its knowledge networks and communities of practice. Scholars have tended to focus on the links cultivated by the Astronomers Royal within scholarly communities in England and Europe but the observatory was also deeply reliant on and engaged with London's institutions and practical mathematical community. It was a royal foundation, situated within one government board, taking a leading role on another, and overseen by Visitors selected by the Royal Society of London. These links helped develop institutional continuity, while instrument-makers, assistants and other collaborators, who were often active in the city as mathematical authors and teachers, formed an extended community with interest in the observatory's continued existence. After outlining the often highly contingent institutional and personal connections that shaped and supported the observatory, this article considers the role of two early assistants, James Hodgson and Thomas Weston. By championing John Flamsteed's legacy and sharing observatory knowledge and practice beyond its walls, they ensured awareness of and potential users for its outputs. They and their successors helped to develop a particular, and ultimately influential, approach to astronomical and mathematical practice and teaching.

Strain Effect on Electrolytic Hydrogen Isotope Separation

The effect of strain in Pt and Pd monolayer catalyst is explored for electrolytic hydrogen isotope separation. Positive/negative strain increases/decreases strength of adsorbed hydrogen bond in overpotential region where recombination of hydrogen atoms is the rate determining step in hydrogen evolution reaction. As a result, the increased/decreased hydrogen isotope separation efficiency of Pt and Pd monolayers is expected as compared to bulk Pt and Pd. The positive/negative strain rises/lowers diffusion barrier for adsorbed hydrogen atoms. This effect favors/retards recombination of isotopes with smaller mass. As the surface is stretched/compressed, the neighboring adsorption sites separate/approach each other which affects heavier hydrogen isotopes more/less and results in their lower/higher probability for recombination. All these fundamental consideration indicate that Pt and Pd monolayers with different level of strain should have much different separation factors than corresponding bulk electrodes. To study described effects, Pt and Pd monolayers we synthesized electrochemically on Au(111) and Ru(0001) electrodes each yielding qualitatively different strain levels (Au-positive, Ru-negative). Pd monolayers are synthesized using electrodeposition[1] while Pt monolayers were synthesized using deposition via surface limited redox replacement reaction[2]. The adsorption strength of hydrogen isotopes is studied by infra-red spectroscopy. These results will are input in our classical models for isotope separation[3] and to our DFT calculations. The calculated ratio between the rates of hydrogen and deuterium recombination and separation factors for Pt and Pd monolayers and corresponding bulk electrodes are compared to experimentally measured ones. The following discussion is focused on understanding and quantification of strain effects on separation efficiency of Pt and Pd monolayers. [1] H. –F. Waibel, M. Kleinert, L. A. Kibler, and D. M. Kolb, Electrochim. Acta, 47, 1461 (2002). [2] S. R. Brankovic, J. X. Wang and R.R. Adzic, Surface Science, 474, L173 (2001). [3] B. E. Conway, Proceedings of The Royal Society of London, A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 247, 400 (1958).

Bodies in Play: Maternity, Repertory, and the RivalRomeo and Juliets, 1748–51

In her recent book on celebrity pregnancy, legal scholar Renée Ann Cramer writes, “in the years from 1970 to 2000, popular culture became more open to performances of pregnancy; once kept secret and articulated as private, pregnancy became ‘public.’” This is not wholly true. In the English-speaking world, “celebrity pregnancy,” with its overt performances of femininity and maternity, bodily monitoring, and careful dance between the concealment and revelation of private information, had its first public moment in the long eighteenth century. That century's professional theatre was a site for the intersection of two forms of women's labor: the maternal labor of pregnancy and birth, which affected women of all classes throughout a century with rapidly rising birth rates, and the theatrical labor of professional actresses. Although the latter has been the subject of much-needed study in recent decades, the impact of maternal labor on the professional theatre of the time is only beginning to be explored. Between 1700 and 1800, birth rates for middle- and upper-class British woman rose significantly. Among the aristocracy, rates doubled from four to eight children, and middle-class women averaged seven births by the end of the century. At the same time, women in the professional theatre were inventing and modeling new forms of public womanhood, capitalizing on a burgeoning culture of female celebrity, and, in some cases, wielding exceptional economic and artistic power. Though not all actresses had children, many did, and at rates that were not unlike those of their nontheatrical counterparts. For these women, the successful balancing of maternal and theatrical labor could be vital to their careers and, in many cases, their family's survival. The need to balance personal and professional demands was all the more imperative within the hectic and extremely competitive repertory system. The day-to-day repertory of a London company was of necessity a malleable thing, accommodating short runs of popular pieces, audience requests, illnesses and absences of company members, and the perpetual state of competition between the patent houses of Covent Garden and Drury Lane. To compete profitably, managers needed competent and popular performers (bodies) and performance vehicles (texts) in which to feature them. As the available bodies changed, then, so too did the available plays for performance.