Essays In Science Research Articles

В.П. Бурнашев как анекдотист

Being a journalist, author of many books for children, popular science essays and compilations, a newspaper day laborer, Vladimir P. Burnashev is especially interesting for literary historians as a memoirist who in the 1870s performed with the memoirs about contemporary writers and historical figures, mainly of the 1820s –1840s. The publication is devoted to the anecdotes collected from the literary and social life of Russia in the 19th century, which were recorded by Burnashev. It is an important and still unsufficiently studied aspect of his creative heritage. The article is accompanied by the publication of a selection of uncensored (mostly scandalous in their subjects) texts by Burnashev from the archives of the Pushkin House and the National Library of Russia. The article raises the question of the anecdotes genre specifics in the 19th century as well.

“With Hindsight, I See That I Was Right”: John C. Burnham’s Final Words, as Recounted by a Trickster

“With Hindsight, I See That I Was Right”: John C. Burnham’s Final Words, as Recounted by a Trickster

Introduction to Special Issue on Personal Essays in Social Science

Dear colleagues, [...]

How should bibliometrics be used in assessing research quality?

Essays in Science and Nature present diametrically contrasting answers. Essays in Science and Nature present diametrically contrasting answers.

Impact of Culturally Relevant Contextualized Activities on Elementary and Middle School Students’ Perceptions of Science: An Exploratory Study

Although researchers have argued that textbooks should be customized to local cultures and experiences, they rarely are. Ciencia Puerto Rico, a non-profit group interested in promoting science literacy and education among Latino(a)s/Hispanics, identified a need to provide schools with culturally relevant materials. The result was the publication of the book ¡Ciencia Boricua! Ensayos y anécdotas del científico puertorro, an anthology of short, multidisciplinary science essays written by Puerto Rican scientists to develop awareness of Puerto Rican science and scientists. The purposes of this manuscript are (a) to provide evidence of instances of contextualization and cultural relevance in ¡Ciencia Boricua!, and (b) to determine the extent to which the use of ¡Ciencia Boricua! and related activities changed the perception toward science of 57 elementary and middle school students enrolled in a public school in Puerto Rico, and which contextualized science activities students preferred. The results showed that the contextualized activities improved the perception about science in many children, particularly boys. Students preferred activities with more interactivity, like presenting their science posters during Closing Night, visiting a science laboratory, and receiving guest scientists at the school. Results showcase a successful strategy for developing culturally relevant and contextualized science education resources.

Shaping the Beast

Scientists often claim that science is necessarily non-metaphorical and that scientific knowledge is poles apart from imagination. However, there is a long-standing debate on metaphors and analogies in science. This essay will raise the issue of the dual or unstable position of metaphorical language in scientific theory, focussing on the giant beasts that fascinated the Victorians and were spectacularised and sensationalised throughout the nineteenth century in shows, public lectures, popular science books and novels. Throughout the nineteenth century, works of popular science and scientific essays were full of structural metaphors and analogies that attempted to give shape to creatures that were extinct. Analogies were thus essential to scientific reasoning and Palaeontological discourse. Yet this type of metaphorical language was used in different ways: on the one hand, it served the authors’ and publishers’ commercial ambitions; on the other, it aimed to promote the scientific validity of an emerging discipline. This essay will analyse the visual rhetoric that appeared in scientific reports, popular science books and literary narratives in order to examine the interrelations between science and literature and explain why artists seized on scientific models to respond to fears, anxieties and societal issues.

Science writing as an Education of Multidisciplinary Consilience - In the Context of Science Essays -

Science writing as an Education of Multidisciplinary Consilience - In the Context of Science Essays -

All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Natural Anxieties Into Mental Disordersby HorwitzAllan V. Ph.D., and WakefieldJerome C. D.S.W., Ph.D. New York, Oxford University Press, 2012, 320 pp., $29.95.

All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Natural Anxieties Into Mental Disordersby HorwitzAllan V. Ph.D., and WakefieldJerome C. D.S.W., Ph.D. New York, Oxford University Press, 2012, 320 pp., $29.95.

Evidence for the Deterministic or the Indeterministic Description? A Critique of the Literature About Classical Dynamical Systems

It can be shown that certain kinds of classical deterministic and indeterministic descriptions are observationally equivalent. Then the question arises: which description is preferable relative to evidence? This paper looks at the main argument in the literature for the deterministic description by Winnie (The cosmos of science—essays of exploration. Pittsburgh University Press, Pittsburgh, pp 299–324, 1998). It is shown that this argument yields the desired conclusion relative to in principle possible observations where there are no limits, in principle, on observational accuracy. Yet relative to the currently possible observations (of relevance in practice), relative to the actual observations, or relative to in principle observations where there are limits, in principle, on observational accuracy the argument fails. Then Winnie’s analogy between his argument for the deterministic description and his argument against the prevalence of Bernoulli randomness in deterministic descriptions is considered. It is argued that while the arguments are indeed analogous, it is also important to see they are disanalogous in another sense.

Conceiving ethical gamete and embryo research in a post-Dickey-Wicker USA

In a recent essay in Science, we advocated lifting restrictions on federal funding for research involving parthenogenesis, restrictions that have been placed by a rider, the Dickey--Wicker Amendment (DWA), to every budget for the US Department of Labor, Health, and Human Services, and Education since 1996. We concluded that contribution by calling for the reconsideration of the entire amendment and suggesting that it be removed from the budget. In this contribution, we outline how research using human parthenotes, embryos, stem cells, eggs, or sperm could be ethically funded if the DWA were to be rescinded in the USA. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Intensive Care Unit Palliative Medicine: Some Issues—Part I

Who gets it and how much of the health care resources has been bantered about in this country for decades if not centuries. One of the better analogies regarding the finite nature of health care resources was published in 1968. In an essay in Science, Garrett Hardin eloquently paints a picture in which he describes the ‘‘The Tragedy of the Commons.’’ His thesis is that the population problem is a member of the class of human problems that have no technical solution. He likens the commons to the area where all herdsmen graze their cattle. Over centuries, this arrangement worked quite well due to tribal wars, poaching, and disease keeping the number of men and cattle well below the capacity of the land. As rational human beings, each herdsman sought to maximize his gain by adding one more animal to his herd. On the positive side, this produced more revenue for the herdsman in the sale of the additional animal. On the negative side, this created additional grazing, however, this overgrazing is shared by all herdsmen. In view of the advantage of adding one more cow to the herd, the rational herdsman continues to add animals to his herd. This same beneficial conclusion is reached by each and every herdsman sharing the common resulting in overgrazing and ultimately destroying the commons. As noted by Harding, each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limits in a world with limits. Furthermore, quoting Hardin:

What is Mental Disorder? An Essay in Philosophy, Science and Values - By D. Bolton

Review article: 'What is Mental Disorder? An Essay in Philosophy, Science and Values' – By D. Bolton

Derek Bolton: What is mental disorder? An essay in philosophy, science, and values

Derek Bolton: What is mental disorder? An essay in philosophy, science, and values

On the Origin of Tomorrow

What is the future of evolution? In the final essay in Science 's series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Carl Zimmer explores the subject of human-driven evolution.

On the Origin of Religion

How and when did religion arise? In the 11th essay in Science 's series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Elizabeth Culotta explores the human propensity to believe in unseen deities.

Broadcasting Green: Grassroots Environmentalism on Muslim Women's Radio

In 1967, Lynn White published a wide-ranging essay in Science arguing that the causes of the world’s ecological crises are, at their roots, spiritual. He wrote that Abrahamic thought has always been profoundly anthropocentric, beginning with the creation account in Genesis in which God gives humanity full dominion over the earth and over animals. According to White, Western Christianity and related traditions, such as Islam, have seen nature as instrumental to human needs. These branches of thought have therefore justified the exploitation of nature. White concluded that ‘[s]ince the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not’. Using St. Francis of Assisi as a model, White called for a re-envisioning of the modern human relationship with nature that reached to the depth of the soul. Though perhaps not quite what White had in mind, a religious reshaping of environmental ethics is at work in the West within some of its Muslim communities. In this paper I will investigate the particular case of the Muslim Community Radio (MCR, 87.8 FM) environmental broadcasting campaign in the East End of London during Autumn 2007. The radio campaign is an instance of a small but significant set of Muslim environmental collective action campaigns emerging in Britain. I focus the paper on the women’s radio programming during the MCR radio campaign. I argue that the women’s radio broadcasts were intended to ‘sacralize’ environmentalism in the minds of the female Muslim listening audience, imbuing environmental ethics with religious meaning. Though the primary overt discourse in the campaign was this sacralized environmentalism, I will also point out two underlying discourses: 1) The assertion that Islam is modern and compatible with selected western values and 2) the call for Muslim women to take up a carefully gender-structured community activism. Therefore, the radio campaign was in reality three simultaneous campaigns: for environmental activism, for the justification of Islam in modern Britain, and, in a more veiled form, for women’s empowerment. These interconnected layers of meaning reveal something of the complexity of concerns within Muslim communities in Britain. As I will argue in the conclusion, the case also contributes to our general understanding of religious influences on environmental behaviours and of the agentic role of women in sacralization processes in the modern West (Aune, Sharma and Vincett, 2008).

On the Origin of Ecological Structure

What dictates the kinds and proportions of organisms in a community? In the 10th essay in Science 's series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Erik Stokstad explores the question of the relative importance of the various forces that act on a biological community.

On the Origin of Cooperation

How did cooperation evolve when cheaters—those who benefit without making sacrifices—can threaten its stability? In the ninth essay in Science 's series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Elizabeth Pennisi discusses the genetic nuts and bolts of cooperation in systems from microbes to humans.

On the Origin of Eukaryotes

If the eukaryote cell hadn't evolved, we wouldn't be here to discuss the question of how it originated. In the eighth essay in Science 's series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Carl Zimmer describes one of the most important transitions in the history of life: the origin of cells with a nucleus, which gave rise to every multicellular form of life.

On the Origin of The Nervous System

What did the first neurons and nervous systems look like, and what advantages did they confer on the animals that possessed them? In the seventh essay in Science 's series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Greg Miller discusses some tantalizing clues that scientists have recently gained about the evolutionary origins of nervous systems.