Historical Scientific Literature Research Articles

Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volumes 1 and 2: A Critical Edition ed. by Alexander von Humboldt

Reviewed by: Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volumes 1 and 2: A Critical Edition ed. by Alexander von Humboldt Lucas Nossaman (bio) Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volumes 1 and 2: A Critical Edition alexander von humboldt, edited by vera m. kutzinski and ottmar ette, translated by j. ryan poytner, kenneth berri, and vera kutzinski University of Chicago Press, 2019 Vol. 1, 586 pp.; Vol. 2, 634 pp. What is the relationship between New World colonialism and the sciences? These newly published volumes from the work of German polymath Alexander von Humboldt, the most celebrated scientist of the nineteenth century in Europe and the US, will help to nuance considerably the usual responses to that question. In The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America (U of Chicago P, 2009), Laura Dassow Walls contended that the story of US national origins must include Humboldt to make sense of the nineteenth-century drive to explore, collect, and connect new knowledges of nature. But following her book's title, scholars have focused mainly on the impact of Humboldt's Cosmos (1845–59). These freshly translated and edited volumes, in effect the first of their kind in English since the nineteenth century, remind us that it was the earlier Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (particularly the revised French edition published from 1825 to 1827) that established Humboldt's reputation for combining knowledges of nature and human cultures into interconnected wholes. Susan Scott Parish and others have historicized the various modes of New World science, but many scholars continue to assume that most nineteenth-century European naturalists of the Americas followed Thomas [End Page 623] Jefferson's example: they erased Native presence, idealized the continents as pristine wildernesses, and hardened racial distinctions to justify white paternalism. New Spain, however, offers a glimpse of an alternative nineteenth-century tradition that saw intrinsic value in the land and people of the New World. Humboldt frames his proto-ecological understanding squarely against that of Columbus and Cortés: he pulls the imperialistic past into the present nineteenth century to imagine a future composed of diverse civilizations, racial harmony, and environmental stewardship. The question of whether his vision was ever fulfilled, or will be anytime soon, can direct us to consider how historical scientific literature both contributes to and contests our present world of climate change, global inequality, and racial injustice. To be sure, these particular volumes are not for the faint of heart. They consist primarily of statistical facts and forecasts concerning New Spain's "economy," capaciously understood at the time to include what we now understand as the fields of sociology, anthropology, archaeology, mineralogy, engineering, geography, and geology, among other sciences. Reading New Spain is a dizzying endeavor not only because today we expect facts in tighter analytical categories but also because, even at the time, Humboldt was expanding genre conventions to propose a more global perspective as he progressed toward what he would later call the Cosmos, his numinous term for the ecological chains of connection running through Earth, its people, and even the stars and planets above. For him, New Spain became a unique vista for witnessing the myriad forces shaping Earth's present form: "Nowhere can one better observe the admirable order with which different types of plant life succeed each other. … At every step, one sees changes in the physiognomy of the land, in the appearance of the sky, in the bearing of the plants, the shape of the animals, the customs of the inhabitants and the type of cultivation they practice" (1.409). When Humboldt imagined the web of nature, he grounded his ecological perspective in the facts he amassed during his field studies and archival research of Mexico. Scholars who persevere through these volumes will discover commentary that dissents from the scientific mainstream, and these passages could function as valuable pedagogical material for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses on science, literature, and colonialism. For instance, when paired with Jefferson's Notes or Crevecoeur's Letters (Humboldt praises the former but also corrects it, in particular Jefferson's geographic coordinates [End Page 624] for the Presidio of Sante...

Analysis of historical data for a better understanding of post‐construction landslides at an artificial waterway

With growing urbanization, an increasing number of landslides worldwide are linked to construction works, especially along transportation routes. To get a better understanding of these post‐construction landslides at artificial waterways, archive studies have been conducted, in addition to analysis of historical scientific literature and technical reports. The resultant database is used to describe the occurrence and the characteristics of the landslides at the Mittelland Canal, and to evaluate aspects of conditioning and preparatory factors, potential triggers and applied mitigation measures. The Mittelland Canal has been chosen because it is one of the most important artificial waterways in Europe, and the high number of landslides that occur there is unique. In particular, landslides at the Mittelland Canal were frequently reported in the first half of the 20th century. The susceptibility to landslides is strongly influenced by material characteristics, as a large number of landslides is linked to sites where fine‐grained mudstone is abundant, which quickly decomposes under immersion in water or under dynamic stress. In addition, landslides can be linked to the creation of over‐steepened slopes. Construction works can also be considered another preparatory factor for landslides. In addition, some landslides in World War II appear to be connected to the blast of aerial bombings. Precipitation seems to play a minor role in triggering landslides. The applied mitigation measures were developed recently, marking the importance of the canal as a transportation route. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Automated Validation of Biological Names in Environmental Survey and Impact Assessments

Taxonomic name validation and elucidation in biodiversity collection datasets (specimens and names) at institutions are well established, as is the enabling of historical scientific literature, thanks to the work at the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), Plazi TreamentBank, and others. However, a significant area yet to be enhanced in this way is in the assembly of environmental impact survey (EIS) assessments across states or countries. In this project, we looked at using new tools such as AWS Textract to extract text from a range of document types, together with the newly-released gnfinder tool to find taxon names in submitted EIS documents, match them in the Global Names Index and other sources, then use this unique names list to interrogate the Atlas of Living Australia to find additional applicable data, such as the taxonomic and conservation status of given names. The result is a consolidated report summarising the validity and status of taxon names in each EIS report, saving many hours of manual lookup across multiple datasets and thereby significantly streamlining the process of evaluating each environmental proposal.

Phylogenomics of Parasitic and Nonparasitic Lice (Insecta: Psocodea): Combining Sequence Data and Exploring Compositional Bias Solutions in Next Generation Data Sets.

The insect order Psocodea is a diverse lineage comprising both parasitic (Phthiraptera) and nonparasitic members (Psocoptera). The extreme age and ecological diversity of the group may be associated with major genomic changes, such as base compositional biases expected to affect phylogenetic inference. Divergent morphology between parasitic and nonparasitic members has also obscured the origins of parasitism within the order. We conducted a phylogenomic analysis on the order Psocodea utilizing both transcriptome and genome sequencing to obtain a data set of 2370 orthologous genes. All phylogenomic analyses, including both concatenated and coalescent methods suggest a single origin of parasitism within the order Psocodea, resolving conflicting results from previous studies. This phylogeny allows us to propose a stable ordinal level classification scheme that retains significant taxonomic names present in historical scientific literature and reflects the evolution of the group as a whole. A dating analysis, with internal nodes calibrated by fossil evidence, suggests an origin of parasitism that predates the K-Pg boundary. Nucleotide compositional biases are detected in third and first codon positions and result in the anomalous placement of the Amphientometae as sister to Psocomorpha when all nucleotide sites are analyzed. Likelihood-mapping and quartet sampling methods demonstrate that base compositional biases can also have an effect on quartet-based methods.[Illumina; Phthiraptera; Psocoptera; quartet sampling; recoding methods.].

Grigoriev institute for medical radiology and oncology centenary: historic events

Background. The historical survey of the activities carried out at Grigoriev Institute for Medical Radiology and Oncology is of present interest, resulting from the need to structure the Institute development trends in terms of a centenary celebration. Providing insight to visions of the past, one can also apprehend historical events, personalities and phenomena.
 Purpose – to summarize historical findings on establishing and development of SO «Grigoriev Institute for Medical Radiology and Oncology of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine».
 Materials. The study deals with analyzing historical scientific literature, manuscripts, archive paper records, data on electronic data storage devices and other carriers that reveal the historical aspects of forming X-ray Radiography, Radiology and Oncology in Ukraine, particularly in Kharkiv.
 Results and discussion. For a century of the existence of the Institute, the scientists of several generations have come a long way in forming and developing X-ray Radiography, Radiation Therapy, Diagnostic Radiology, Oncology, Radiobiology, Radiation Dosimetry and others. They were the first to receive radium for the country alongside with establishing oncology dispensaries, X-ray technical school and setting up a chain of remote research and support stations (13 radiology and 26 oncology ones). These days, the team of the Institute are going out of their way to further develop science and medicine to the benefit of human health.
 Conclusions. One hundred years ago, the first step in developing Oncology and Radiology initiated forming a new scientific community of experts, who contributed a lot to the formation of some frontmost medical science along with non-stop promoting efficacious scientific and theoretical evolvement of those.

“Media Man” in the Context of Developing Technologies of the Screen Documentary

Under the conditions of mediatization as the most important factor shaping modernity along with globalization, individualization and commercialization, an individual receives the nomination of a ”media man” on and acquires new functions in the development of media civilization. The ”media man” acts as a new kind of not only “the product” and “the consumer”, but also “the producer” and “the translator” of works of screen culture, including screen documentaries. General scientific and special scientific methods of research are used for writing the article. The article presents the results of systematization, understanding and analysis of the theoretical and historical scientific literature on mediatization and documentary films, as well as empirical observations of the practice of the Russian documentary. Prospects of the development of the documentary technologies in the changing conditions, including – within a new type of screen documentary – interactive and collaborative documentary cinema – idoc are outlined.
 Keywords: media, “media man”, media culture, screen culture, traditional, interactive and collaborative documentary.

Fitting Scleral Lenses Less Than 15 mm in Diameter: A Review of the Literature.

To perform a comprehensive review of the current and historical scientific literature on fitting small scleral lenses (diameter <15 mm) and clarifying their advantages and disadvantages, in addition to their clinical applications. The literature search was performed through PubMed from MEDLINE. Eleven studies of case series (258 eyes) were found. Indications were similar to those of larger scleral lenses, 74% for corneal irregularities (mainly keratoconus), whereas 26% for ocular surface diseases. In the studies on cases of irregular corneas, visual acuity improved significantly regarding the values before and after fitting the lenses (mean, 0.4-0.03 logMar, respectively). Moreover, no significant adverse effects on the ocular surface were reported, and most studies reported over 10 hr (or thereabouts) of daily wear without removing the lenses. A better corneal physiology and visual quality, easier fitting procedure and lens handling, and prolonged hours of wear are proposed as significant advantages over larger scleral lenses. Small scleral lenses may be a safe and healthy alternative option to treat corneal irregularities and ocular surface diseases. These lenses can be fitted when it is necessary to improve visual quality and corneal physiology, when discomfort with other contact lenses is experienced, or when patients have difficulty handling larger diameters of scleral lenses. However, fitting these lenses is not suggested in severe cases or when it is not a reasonable clinical option.

Researches of higher education development in Ukraine (1990s)

The article deals with the state of research in the contemporary historical scientific literature of the problems of higher Ukrainian education in the 1990s, and clarifies a range of topical and promising issues for the study of the educational field. Various studies on the history of higher education in Ukraine are controversial. After all, the evolution of educational systems is determined by the educational policy, which is a field of interaction, interconnection of different social groups with the involvement of public institutions to realize their interests and needs. The consistency and directionality of the analysis is ensured by the use of the problem-chronological approach and the structural-functional method, which allows to determine the level of knowledge regarding the different stages of development of the educational process in the scientific literature.Therefore, the historiography of the development of higher education in Ukraine in the 1990s has undergone several major stages. The writings of the early 1990s were dominated by negative evaluations of Soviet higher education and over-optimistic expectations about its reform and borrowing from the achievements of the Western Defense Law.&#x0D; The purpose of the article is to provide a historiographical overview of the basic scientific approaches of historians to the development of higher education in Ukraine in the 1990s.In modern research, there is a tendency to consider higher education in the 1990s through the prism of certain elements of its system: legislation, structural changes, quantitative indicators, funding and more. There is a lack of research that combines all the components of higher education and, most importantly, with the subjects of the educational process, human potential. The complex causes of the crisis phenomena in higher education, the peculiarities of the formation of the higher education network, the role of public organizations, the protection of the interests of participants in the educational process, the shadow relations, and so on, remain unanswered. To this day, comprehensive coverage by historians of the deep problems of higher education is relevant, which will help to understand the causes of its current crisis and the optimal ways to solve it.

The Natural Products Atlas: An Open Access Knowledge Base for Microbial Natural Products Discovery.

Despite rapid evolution in the area of microbial natural products chemistry, there is currently no open access database containing all microbially produced natural product structures. Lack of availability of these data is preventing the implementation of new technologies in natural products science. Specifically, development of new computational strategies for compound characterization and identification are being hampered by the lack of a comprehensive database of known compounds against which to compare experimental data. The creation of an open access, community-maintained database of microbial natural product structures would enable the development of new technologies in natural products discovery and improve the interoperability of existing natural products data resources. However, these data are spread unevenly throughout the historical scientific literature, including both journal articles and international patents. These documents have no standard format, are often not digitized as machine readable text, and are not publicly available. Further, none of these documents have associated structure files (e.g., MOL, InChI, or SMILES), instead containing images of structures. This makes extraction and formatting of relevant natural products data a formidable challenge. Using a combination of manual curation and automated data mining approaches we have created a database of microbial natural products (The Natural Products Atlas, www.npatlas.org) that includes 24 594 compounds and contains referenced data for structure, compound names, source organisms, isolation references, total syntheses, and instances of structural reassignment. This database is accompanied by an interactive web portal that permits searching by structure, substructure, and physical properties. The Web site also provides mechanisms for visualizing natural products chemical space and dashboards for displaying author and discovery timeline data. These interactive tools offer a powerful knowledge base for natural products discovery with a central interface for structure and property-based searching and presents new viewpoints on structural diversity in natural products. The Natural Products Atlas has been developed under FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and is integrated with other emerging natural product databases, including the Minimum Information About a Biosynthetic Gene Cluster (MIBiG) repository, and the Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) platform. It is designed as a community-supported resource to provide a central repository for known natural product structures from microorganisms and is the first comprehensive, open access resource of this type. It is expected that the Natural Products Atlas will enable the development of new natural products discovery modalities and accelerate the process of structural characterization for complex natural products libraries.

Educational and cultural-educational work in the Red Army in 1920s–1930s: the Orenburg Region on materials

The article is sanctified important aspect in eradicating illiteracy in the years of Soviet power training soldiers and youth of premilitary age. From the state of literacy of the population category to a large extent dependent on the fighting capacity of the Red Army. Having analyzed the historical scientific literature on the subject, the conclusion is made that the topic under consideration was studied to date is not enough. It is noted that in its entirety the problem of improving the combat training of the Red Army stood in 1923, when she moved to a peacetime footing. At the same time it developed a decree the Central Executive Committee and the CPC to bring to mandatory classes in literacy of youth of premilitary age during the passage of pre-conscription military training. The paper revealed that in the late 1920s early 1930s. work on training soldiers and youth of premilitary age continued during the cultural campaign. It is indicated that the organization of training, considerable attention was paid to the content of educational material related to the political education of soldiers. The peculiarities, difficulties and shortcomings in the organization of work with the staff of the Red Army in Orenburg: low attendance of paragraph literacy, large dropout of them. The article concludes that the system of eradication of illiteracy in the difficult war years, has proven to be extremely vital importance and necessity in the case of direct protection, strengthening and building of the state. This was an important factor in the victory of the Great Patriotic War.

The National Landslide Database of Great Britain: Acquisition, communication and the role of social media

The British Geological Survey (BGS) is the national geological agency for Great Britain that provides geoscientific information to government, other institutions and the public. The National Landslide Database has been developed by the BGS and is the focus for national geohazard research for landslides in Great Britain. The history and structure of the geospatial database and associated Geographical Information System (GIS) are explained, along with the future developments of the database and its applications. The database is the most extensive source of information on landslides in Great Britain with over 17,000 records of landslide events to date, each documented as fully as possible for inland, coastal and artificial slopes. Data are gathered through a range of procedures, including: incorporation of other databases; automated trawling of current and historical scientific literature and media reports; new field- and desk-based mapping technologies with digital data capture, and using citizen science through social media and other online resources. This information is invaluable for directing the investigation, prevention and mitigation of areas of unstable ground in accordance with Government planning policy guidelines. The national landslide susceptibility map (GeoSure) and a national landslide domains map currently under development, as well as regional mapping campaigns, rely heavily on the information contained within the landslide database. Assessing susceptibility to landsliding requires knowledge of the distribution of failures, an understanding of causative factors, their spatial distribution and likely impacts, whilst understanding the frequency and types of landsliding present is integral to modelling how rainfall will influence the stability of a region. Communication of landslide data through the Natural Hazard Partnership (NHP) and Hazard Impact Model contributes to national hazard mitigation and disaster risk reduction with respect to weather and climate. Daily reports of landslide potential are published by BGS through the NHP partnership and data collected for the National Landslide Database are used widely for the creation of these assessments. The National Landslide Database is freely available via an online GIS and is used by a variety of stakeholders for research purposes.

Historical Scientific Literature and the Spreading of Oil on Water

Using historical scientific literature in the classroom has certain advantages. However, a modern reader of such material can be led astray by, among other things, obsolete terminology.

Response to Historical Scientific Literature and the Spreading of Oil on Water

Response to Historical Scientific Literature and the Spreading of Oil on Water

Time to Grow: Circadian Clock Controls Plant Hormone Signaling and Response

Unable to move from one place to another in response to changing conditions, plants survive by moderating their growth to make the most of their circumstances. Plants sprout new leaves and roots and grow toward or away from light and gravity, all of which requires the growth hormone auxin. Buried in historical scientific literature are hints that auxin might affect plants differently at different times of day. This makes sense from an adaptive standpoint: an internal clock allows plants to respond to stimuli such as sun, rain, and being eaten in the context of regular rhythms of the inescapable world around them. But how do they do it? The mechanisms tuning growth to internal rhythms, with implications for everything from growing crops to protecting biodiversity in the face of global climate change, have remained a mystery. Now, Michael Covington and Stacey Harmer have discovered clues to the roots of rhythmic growth. The researchers began by identifying genes in Arabidopsis, the botanical equivalent of the laboratory rat, showing a circadian (daily) rhythm in transcription as indicated by changes in messenger RNA abundance. A surprising number of these genes are involved in auxin signaling. But at what stage? Looking closely at the genes involved, the researchers determined that auxin and the circadian clock are intimately intertwined virtually every step of the way. Genes regulating the production of auxin are clock controlled. So are genes that make auxin carriers, that inactivate auxin, and that make the receptor molecules that sense auxin and subsequently alter the transcription of other genes. Many of the genes auxin induces also show a circadian rhythm. To explore in more detail where the circadian clock and auxin signaling pathways intersect, the researchers used a luciferase reporter assay—basically, a firefly gene inserted into the genome that produces a glow when it and associated genes are activated. Covington and Harmer began by determining whether auxin affects circadian rhythms. Using the luciferase reporter assay to determine when genes controlling circadian rhythm were activated, they found that in the short term, added auxin didn’t affect the phase of the rhythm, but at some concentrations it increased period length and reduced amplitude (that is, the magnitude of fluctuation in the apparent activity of reporter genes). Prolonged auxin treatment slightly lengthened the period and dramatically reduced the amplitude of the rhythm. To determine whether rhythms affect auxin’s effects on gene transcription, the researchers inserted the firefly gene into plants in a way that caused them to glow when an auxin promoter, eDR5, is activated. These “eDR5::LUC” plants showed a circadian rhythm in reporter gene expression, indicating that auxin signaling is indeed clock controlled. The circadian regulation of auxin responses suggests that many aspects of plant physiology not previously thought to be under circadian control may show time-of-day-specific sensitivity. (Image: Michael F. Covington and Kimberly J. Cope) Next, the researchers explored whether the circadian fluctuation of auxin levels is what causes the rhythm in the transcription of auxin-related genes by administering auxin to eDR5::LUC plants. The plants responded with a quick glow, but not with change in phase or amplitude of glowing over the long term. The researchers then repeated the same experiment using plants in which auxin transport mechanisms were disrupted, with similar results. Their conclusion: the rhythms in transcription of auxin-controlled genes are not due to rhythms in auxin synthesis or transport. Circadian clocks have been found to alter responses to certain stimuli, a phenomenon known as “gating.” To find out whether the sensitivity of plants to exogenous auxin is altered by their biological clock, the researchers administered auxin to eDR5::LUC seedlings under constant light conditions. When auxin was given during day, the plants showed little if any increase in glowing; when it was given at night, they showed a clear response that peaked just before dawn. This differential response affirmed that auxin signaling is indeed gated by the plant’s internal rhythms. To determine whether gating shows up in growth patterns as well as in transcription, the researchers observed the growth of the embryonic shoot under continuous light in both control and auxin-treated seedlings. Control plants showed a rhythm in elongation. Auxin treatment boosted growth when given during what would have been night, but not during what would have been day—the same rhythm shown previously in transcription activation. The researchers concluded that growth is gated by auxin, too. Buoyed by their findings, the researchers look forward to exploring the interplay of rhythms and auxin action with respect to various aspects of plant development, including photo- and gravitropism and the development of specialized structures. Such studies will provide additional valuable insights into how circadian rhythms help plants adapt to the world around them.