Early 1990s Research Articles

Teaching about the birth of synchrotron light: the role of Frascati and a missed opportunity.

The users of synchrotron light are now tens of thousands throughout the world. Paradoxically, many of them do not know much about the early history of their domain. This is regrettable, since education about the initial developments makes it easier to fully understand synchrotron radiation and effectively use its amazing features. Scarcely known, in particular, is the key role of scientists working in Frascati, Italy. Partly based on his personal experiences, the author reports here relevant aspects of this story, including a pioneering French-Italian experiment that started in the early 1960s, and the Frascati contributions in the 1970s and 1980s to the birth of synchrotron light research. Finally, the unwise strategic decisions that prevented Italy from achieving absolute leadership in this domain - in spite of its unique initial advantages - are analyzed.

Evaluating Two Sampling Methods for Mycoplasma Bovis Diagnosis in American Bison (Bison Bison).

Mycoplasma bovis is a bacterial pathogen endemic to cattle. In the early 2000s, M. bovis emerged as a cause of respiratory disease in American bison (Bison bison), causing significant morbidity and mortality. Bison herds that experience an outbreak of M. bovis are at higher risk for subsequent outbreaks, suggesting that chronic, subclinical infections can be established. Antemortem testing is therefore crucial to disease management; however, the precise sampling method to maximize detection of M. bovis in bison is unknown. We evaluated two sample types-superficial nasal swabs and deep nasopharyngeal swabs-collected from apparently healthy or symptomatic bison from January 2021 through December 2022. We used real-time PCR to detect M. bovis in 76/938 bison (8.1%) from 11 herds. For bison testing positive on at least one swab type, M. bovis was detected in 63/76 (82.8%) deep nasopharyngeal swabs and 29/73 (38.1%) superficial nasal swabs. Agreement between swabs for positive bison was 21% (n=16, kappa coefficient 0.319). We conclude that deep nasopharyngeal swabbing is more sensitive than superficial nasal swabbing for detection of M. bovis in bison and that low agreement between methods may be related to stage of infection. We further tested pooled samples by PCR and found that pooling of up to five samples can be effective to increase throughput and minimize costs. Management of wild bison relies on the ability to relocate animals to maintain gene flow and healthy populations. Sensitive and specific diagnostic tests are needed to inform decisions and minimize risk of transmission, especially from subclinical carriers. This study provides valuable insight that will inform best practices for M. bovis testing, thereby supporting the conservation of bison as healthy wildlife, which in turn promotes ecological restoration, safeguards cultural practices of Tribal Nations, and upholds the bison as a unique American icon.

Interdecadal variations in the interannual relationship between winter tropical Pacific SST and subsequent summer Arctic sea ice in early 2000s

AbstractThe present study investigates the interdecadal change in the interannual relationship between winter sea surface temperature (SST) in the tropical central‐eastern Pacific and the subsequent summer Arctic sea ice concentration (SIC) and its possible mechanism using 1979–2023 monthly SST and SIC data from Hadley Center and atmospheric reanalysis data from NCEP/NCAR. It is found that the relationship between the winter tropical Pacific SST and the subsequent summer SIC of Beaufort Sea experienced an obvious interdecadal change from a significant negative correlation to a weak and insignificant correlation before and after the early 2000s, respectively. Before the early 2000s, when winter SST warming (cooling) anomalies occurred in the central and eastern tropical Pacific, it could sustain into summer and enhance a Rossby wave propagating from Tropic to high latitude, forming negative (positive) pressure anomalies in the North Pacific. Influenced by such anomalies, it is conducive to maintaining negative (positive) SST anomalies in the North Pacific from winter to subsequent summer. The summer SST cooling (warming) in the North Pacific could form a favourable atmospheric circulation anomaly for less (more) SIC. In contrast, after the early 21st century, the strong SST anomalies in winter over the eastern tropical Pacific would weaken with time and subsequently diminish in spring, leading to the SST anomalies in the North Pacific persist to spring, which can hardly affect summer SIC anomaly in the Beaufort Sea. Therefore, the relationship collapses after the the early 2000s due to the weakened persistence of the eastern tropical Pacific SST anomaly.

Status Quo of Artificial Intelligence’s Role in the HRM Operations

Coexistence of technology and business dates back to the late 18th century when the first ever use of a computer was for recording the census by the US government in 1890. The use of technology in business can be ascribed to different organisations in the different nations on the parallel lines of time. It includes invention of cash machines and their use by Barclays in England in the early 1960s, the induction of telephone-based modems for order management by Baxter Pharmaceuticals and use of small desktop computing device called Minitel for processing customer orders in France were the other notable developments in the history of coexistence of technology and business. Increasing operations in the business functions have created an urge for the technological innovation in the industry to handle the operations electronically. Figueiredo and Cohen (2019) say that technology has become an indispensable component of every business function by delivering ease in operations and productivity. The end of the 20th century had witnessed the leaping progress in computing in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) performing the tasks that were unimaginable to comprehend a decade back in time. Developments in the technological research and development prove that organisations have started inducting AI into as many fields as possible at a considerable pace. As a part of the shifting technological dynamics in the industry HR function has also transformed digitally. Tools like enterprise applications have forayed intensely into the operations of human resources management (HRM). These enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools remain to primarily serve the integration of HRM to the other functions. However, enterprise tools could not serve the purpose of supporting decisiveness in the areas of HR planning, workforce design and performance management at large. However, Tuck (2019) argues that AI is assuming increased responsibilities in the different sections of the society and business including the HRM function. At present, the amount of knowledge on the status quo of the role of AI in the HRM functions is scarcely available. Literature related to this disruptive technology in the HR function is still at the nascent stage. This study will examine the role of AI as a key component in the HRM function, which is regarded to be highly human-driven.

Ellsberg 1961: text, context, influence

AbstractIn 1961 Daniel Ellsberg published an article titled “Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms” in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which became a seminal contribution to the theory of decision-making under uncertainty. This paper analyzes Ellsberg’s 1961 classic, situates it within the context of decision-making theory in the 1950s and early 1960s and within the development of Ellsberg’s ideas, and provides an overview of the experimental and theoretical literature to which it gave rise.

Assessment of the discrepancy between daylight factor and using illuminance data methods by climate zones under EN:17037

Conducting a rigorous evaluation of the daylight performance of buildings is essential for human health and energy efficiency. Today, there are two main methods used for analysis: the daylight factor, which has been used since the early 1900s, and the newer approach known as climate-based modelling. Both methods are employed in the EN 17037 Daylight in Buildings’ standard. Utilizing different calculation methods causes discrepancies in daylight provision performance analyses of a room. However, there is no definition or limitation for this subject in the standard. As a result, researchers prefer different calculation methods for the same location in daylighting analyses without a clear justification. Additionally, there is a lack of parametric methods that follow the guidelines of the standard. This study aims to analyse the impact of calculation methods on daylighting analyses according to different regions and generate parametric methods in compliance with the standard. In this respect, comparison calculations are conducted for a theoretical room situated in all 81 provinces of Turkey, where variant climate types occur over a year. Furthermore, parametric workflows are generated using Rhinoceros/Grasshopper following the directives of the standard. The findings indicate that the method choice affects the illumination levels in all zones, ranging from 15 to 114 %.

New Zealand Architects and Australia’s Federation Architecture

ABSTRACT In 1887, Thomas Searell (1855-1938), Percival Selwyn Richards(1865-1952) and William Allen Tombs (1866-1928), architects trained in Christchurch, New Zealand, migrated to Melbourne, Victoria. A few years later they spread out to regional Victoria and Tasmania consolidating practices in the early 1900s in Ballarat (Richards), Geelong (Tombs), Hobart and Launceston (Searell). In those locations they became prominent practitioners, proficient in design discourses at the turn of the twentieth century which are now described in Australia as “Federation” architecture – a term that aligns design with the political realisation of Australia as a nation in1901. Yet the maintenance of personal connections and commonalities in their Australian buildings might be traced to the New Zealand architectural practice of Frederick Strouts who articled Searell in the 1870s and Richards in the early 1880s, and whose one-time assistant, Thomas Stoddart Lambert (1842-1917), articled Tombs in the early 1880s. At stake in this article, then, is the role of a larger region in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Australian architecture. As such, the work of these regional NewZealand/Australian architects serve as a reminder of the limitations of nationalist frameworks that define our region’s architectural histories captured in stylistic terminology such as “Federation.”

The Disappearance of Leo Africanus: Rival Repertoires of Historical Scholarship in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Abstract This article is about two twentieth-century attempts to produce an edition of the famous Cosmography and Geography of Africa (1526) by Johannes Leo Africanus. One attempt was French, colonial, collaboratively authored, presentist and successful; the other was Italian, academic, single-authored, historicist and unsuccessful, in that it never appeared. Drawing primarily on unstudied archival material from several countries, I reconstruct the trajectories of each edition and its author(s), in an effort to understand more broadly the different ways in which scholarship was produced inside and outside universities in the period between the end of the First World War and the early 1960s. In other words, this is a comparative study of two ‘repertoires’, to borrow a term recently introduced by Rachel Ankeny and Sabina Leonelli: two institutional praxes embodying different understandings of the world, but also different material resources and codes of personal conduct. But this essay also attempts to say something about the Cosmography itself. One of Leo’s greatest achievements was to reach out beyond his own world to adopt the language, ideas and culture of his Italian readers; this could only be fully grasped after the rediscovery of an early manuscript in 1931, which showed that the supposedly foreign, Italian elements of the book were not added later by others. It was precisely this feature, I argue, that was better reflected by the successful French edition than by the unsuccessful Italian one.

Community security systems in countering extremism: The case of Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a and Macawisley in Somalia

ABSTRACT Due to decades of conflict and the emergence of the al-Shabaab-led violent extremism in the early 2000s, subsequent governments in Somalia have been unable to guarantee basic needs such as security and social services. As a result, communities have been forced to develop alternative means to protect themselves. This led to the establishment of the community security systems (CSSs) which coincided with the escalation of the conflict in the country since the 1990s. In south-central Somalia, human rights violations including forced recruitment of children into militant groups and forced illegal taxation has largely forced communities to rebel and devise protective mechanisms including leading offensives against al-Shabaab. Two groups, namely Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a (ASWJ) and Macawisley formed the CSSs that are the subject of this article. The paper draws from the empirical evidence from primary data and literature reviews to examine the role of CSSs in countering violent extremism. More specifically, the article examines the ASWJ and Macawisley CSSs in south-central Somalia. It responds to the following questions: What is the context that aided the emergence of CSSs in Somalia? What are its achievements and what are the challenges of the CSSs and implications for peace and security in the country?

Multiple signs of ecosystem change in the zooplankton community of a large temperate lake

Large lakes, such as Lake Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, are undergoing significant change due to local and global stressors. Uni- and multivariate analyses of Lake Simcoe's zooplankton community from 1986 to 2012 indicated multiple events of ecosystem change that were synchronous across three lake stations . In the mid-1990s, shifts in zooplankton species abundance and richness, and total cladoceran body size were strongly correlated with the invasion of the zooplanktivore, Bythotrephes cederstroemii. In the early 2000s, additional shifts in zooplankton abundance, as well as copepod body size, coincided with increased water clarity (linked to filter feeding by the invader Dreissena polymorpha) and hypolimnetic water temperature. Further community changes occurred in the 2000s when Bythotrephes declined and many vulnerable cladoceran species recovered. However, the Lake Simcoe community did not fully return to its pre-invasion state as the cold-water herbivores, Daphnia longiremis and Daphnia pulicaria, remained absent. The Lake Simcoe zooplankton community illustrates ongoing ecosystem change that propagated throughout the lake food web and may be reflected in other lakes experiencing global stressors of climate change and species invasions.

Andrology laboratory technique for analysis of semen in men with azoospermia.

Discovery of spermatozoa during the 17th century led to developing technologies for semen analysis in the early 1900s, and then, standard techniques were implemented during the 20th century. Semen analysis has a pivotal role in the male infertility evaluation, and azoospermia is an important finding. Azoospermia is identified in 15% of infertile men. However, the accurate laboratory assessment of azoospermia poses certain technical challenges. Laboratories currently perform semen assessment with great variability; thus, a standard method should be used. Planning suitable management and determining the cause of infertility require a precise evaluation of azoospermia. This review aims to address the definition of azoospermia and highlight laboratory methods in the assessments of azoospermia. Basic methods such as centrifugation, repeat pellet analysis, and staining and advanced methods such as genetic testing and biomarkers have been discussed. These methods have helped in standardizing the protocol for accurate azoospermia assessments with less variability.

‘New’ Luxury or Off-Canon Luxury: A Compendium for the Changing Definition of Classical Luxury

This study aims to present a review for understanding the changing definition of luxury consumption. The ‘new’ luxury concept is shaped by democratization, globalization, sustainability, and meeting luxury with non-western societies. Although the first footsteps of new luxury began to be heard in the early 2000s, studies on this subject started to increase after 2010. This review focuses on 129 studies carried out in 2010-2021 to explain new luxury concept. It was concluded that ‘attainable luxury’, ‘creatable luxury’, ‘sustainable luxury’ and ‘rental (shareable) luxury’ can be components of new luxury. Accordingly, a framework was created, and adjacent keywords were presented with references. Finally, a research agenda for this ‘new’ luxury trend was presented. In contrast to the current many literature reviews on luxury treating the issue as a conservative and classical concept, this study focuses on the ‘new luxury’ and its potential horizons.

Why Do More People Commit Suicide after the Economic Bubble

This paper examines the relationship between the economic recession and the high suicidal rates in Japan during the post-economic bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The aim of the study is to explore the relationship between the economic recession, mental health, suicide prevalence and sociocultural dynamics. The literature review and empirical analysis show compelling evidence linking economic instability, financial distress, and unemployment to increased suicide rates. In addition, this paper explores the interplay of cultural factors for instance, stigma surrounding mental health and collective norms, in explaining the vulnerability experienced by individuals during economic recessions and hard times. Key findings emphasize the role of economic stability in increasing vulnerabilities as well as the effects of unemployment, familial relationships and self-esteem. The findings also show that the societal pressure to adhere to traditional roles, especially in times of economic uncertainty, is a key stressor affecting mental well-being. The study advocates for detailed research strategies such as interviews and surveys to further investigate causal relationships. This research provides key insights into the varying factors that contribute to suicide during economic crises, suggesting the need for holistic interventions that address both sociocultural and economic dimensions.

The Machine Learning Attribution of Quasi-Decadal Precipitation and Temperature Extremes in Southeastern Australia during the 1971–2022 Period

Much of eastern and southeastern Australia (SEAUS) suffered from historic flooding, heat waves, and drought during the quasi-decadal 2010–2022 period, similar to that experienced globally. During the double La Niña of the 2010–2012 period, SEAUS experienced record rainfall totals. Then, severe drought, heat waves, and associated bushfires from 2013 to 2019 affected most of SEAUS, briefly punctuated by record rainfall over parts of inland SEAUS in the late winter/spring of 2016, which was linked to a strong negative Indian Ocean Dipole. Finally, from 2020 to 2022 a rare triple La Niña generated widespread extreme rainfall and flooding in SEAUS, resulting in massive property and environmental damage. To identify the key drivers of the 2010–2022 period’s precipitation and temperature extremes due to accelerated global warming (GW), since the early 1990s, machine learning attribution has been applied to data at eight sites that are representative of SEAUS. Machine learning attribution detection was applied to the 52-year period of 1971–2022 and to the successive 26-year sub-periods of 1971–1996 and 1997–2022. The attributes for the 1997–2022 period, which includes the quasi-decadal period of 2010–2022, revealed key contributors to the extremes of the 2010–2022 period. Finally, some drivers of extreme precipitation and temperature events are linked to significant changes in both global and local tropospheric circulation.

French guidelines on TIPS: Indications and modalities.

Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) has become essential in the treatment or prevention of portal hypertension-related complications. In the early 1990s, the primary indication was refractory bleeding. It is now proposed for the treatment of ascites for the prevention of bleeding and in patients with vascular diseases of the liver. Thus, there are a growing number of patients being treated with TIPS all over the world. The broadening of indications, the involvement of multiple stakeholders, the need for an accurate selection, the positioning in relation to transplantation and the lack of standardization in pre-therapeutic assessment, in the procedure itself and in the follow-up have led the board of the French Association for the Study of the Liver to establish recommendations.

A ‘heavy hammer to crack a small nut'? The creation of the European Molecular Biology Conference (EMBC), 1963–1970

ABSTRACT This article reconstructs the complex diplomatic negotiations that led to the peculiar organization of molecular biology at the European level, by focusing in particular on the establishment of the European Molecular Biology Conference (EMBC), the intergovernmental structure founded in 1969–70 to support the scientific program of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). By combining the analysis of the informal decision-making kept in the Nobel Prize laureate John C. Kendrew’s personal papers (Oxford) with the in-depth exploration of the institutional documentation available in the EMBO and CERN archives (Heidelberg and Geneva) and the Swiss Federal Archives (Bern), the article sheds light on the importance of the EMBC not only for the construction of molecular biology as a scientific, social, and political field in the European context, but also for the broader process of definition of the European research policy. Far from being just a mere replica of CERN, the EMBO/EMBC inaugurated in fact an alternative and flexible ‘bottom-up’ model of science policy in the European context, based on competition, networking, and scientific excellence, which paved the way to the establishment of the European Research Council (ERC) in the early 2000s.

Guillain-Barré syndrome: History, pathogenesis, treatment, and future directions.

Since its description by Guillain, Barré, and Strohl in 1916, Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) has attracted a large literature. The author reviews the history of research into its pathogenesis and treatment to highlight promising avenues for future research. This is a nonsystematic personal review. Since the early 1900s, the clinical picture of GBS has been illustrated in multiple series culminating in the ongoing International Guillain-Barré Syndrome study of 2000 patients. In the 1950s and 1960s, the inflammatory nature of the commonest form, acute inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (AIDP), was described. In the 1990s, two axonal forms, acute motor-sensory axonal neuropathy and acute motor axonal neuropathy, were recognized. In the 1990s and early 2000s, these forms were shown to be due to antibodies against Campylobacter jejuni glycans cross-reacting with glycolipids on axonal membranes. The pathogenesis of AIDP remains unknown, but T-cell responses to the compact myelin proteins, P2 and P0, which cause experimental autoimmune neuritis, suggest that T cells are important. Randomized controlled trials in the 1970s and 1980s showed no benefit from corticosteroids. Trials in the 1980s showed benefit from plasma exchange and in the 1990s from intravenous immunoglobulin. Future research should seek biomarkers to identify subgroups with different treatment responses, define the true natural history of the disease with population-based epidemiological studies, study the pathology in autopsies early in the disease, seek causative antibodies and confirm autoimmune T-cell responses in AIDP, and expand treatment trials to include anti-T-cell agents.

‘Homegrown and national culture’: the cultural policies of Erdogan’s ‘New Turkey’

ABSTRACT The events that have happened since 2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power, contain rich research topics that need to be examined for many years by social scientists who work on Turkey. However, AKP’s cultural policies have not yet received sufficient attention in academic studies. The dissolution of the moderate atmosphere created by the EU accession negotiations and liberal policies in the early 2000s had a direct impact on AKP’s cultural policies in the 2010s. This article argues that the cultural policies implemented in the last decade, which I will define as yerli ve milli (homegrown and national) cultural policy, emerged intending to fill the cultural hegemony gap that manifested after the conservative art debates (2012), Gezi Park Protests (2013) and the termination of the Turkish-Kurdish peace process (2015). By analysing the formation and implementation levels of the yerli ve milli culture, the article shows that this unofficially implemented yerli ve milli cultural policy seeks to construct a neoliberal cultural space in which the Islamic elements are integrated into the traditional national cultural policies centred on Turkishness.

From raw seismic data to quantitative interpretation via cloud-based FWI

Full-waveform inversion (FWI) has evolved in recent years from a technique for recovering long- to intermediate-wavelength updates of acoustic overburden velocities as part of a broader model building workflow to a standalone tool for high-fidelity seismic imaging using raw seismic data – with ever greater resolution and ever more sophisticated physics being sought. In doing so, it has moved notably closer to fulfilling the vision of its original inventors in the late 70s and early 80s. In this work, two novel approaches to FWI along with enabling technologies for their effective deployment are considered. The first of these allows for robust long-wavelength updates to be generated from raw seismic data in the absence of diving wave energy, providing reliable estimates of acoustic velocity at depths equivalent to or greater than the longest offsets available in the data – thereby enabling more effective imaging with data of limited quality. The second allows for the estimation of elastic amplitude-versus-angle behaviour while still using an acoustic wave equation, thereby mitigating the significant computational burden typically associated with elastic FWI. Finally, it is demonstrated that these approaches can be deployed in a reliable and cost-effective manner via the considered use of public cloud resources, with learnings relevant for analogous massively parallel scientific applications. Case studies from two marine environments are provided for discussion, one being from deep-water US Gulf of Mexico and the other from intermediate water depths offshore Western Australia.

The making of Holocaust education in Britain, 1945–1991

ABSTRACT Despite the prevalence of research in Holocaust memory and Holocaust education, the historical development of British Holocaust education remains understudied. This paper reconstructs this history, presenting Anglo-Jewish efforts to teach about the Holocaust in the 1970s for the first time and using the concept of ‘cosmopolitan memory’ to explain its proliferation in the early 1980s. This article argues that the origins of contemporary Holocaust education should not be found in the increase of its teaching with the National Curriculum of 1991 but in the changing culture of memory and history teaching in the late 1970s and early 1980s.