Speculative History Research Articles

Provincializing the history of speculation from colonial South Asia

AbstractThis article proposes that South Asia has produced rich histories of economic practices understood variously as hoarding, speculation, and extortion. This essay frames the discussion of speculation in South Asian history along these three axes. First, it puts the term speculation under scrutiny to look at its changing meanings within the colonial and metropolitan context in order to assess how the term enters the colonial archive of law and finance. Especially, it looks at how the colonial officials created and sustained (mis)translations between indigenous practices and Anglo‐European categories of economic crimes. Second, it looks at the early scholarship on 18th and 19th century indigenous commercial practices that were coded as hoarding, speculating, profiteering, hedging, and squeezing in an attempt to rescue the colonial bazaar and what has been called its “inside history” alongside the development of market practices. This body of scholarship remains primarily focused on trading activities under the Mughals and East India Company. In the third and final section, we turn to the recent histories that have returned to vernacular commercial practices and the historical roots of India's market society to raise critical questions about how speculation and calculation shaped late colonial capitalism and governmentality.

Insights into Endothelial Progenitor Cells: Origin, Classification, Potentials, and Prospects.

With the discovery of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) in the late 1990s, a paradigm shift in the concept of neoangiogenesis occurred. The identification of circulating EPCs in peripheral blood marked the beginning of a new era with enormous potential in the rapidly transforming regenerative field. Overwhelmed with the revelation, researchers across the globe focused on isolating, defining, and interpreting the role of EPCs in various physiological and pathological conditions. Consequently, controversies emerged regarding the isolation techniques and classification of EPCs. Nevertheless, the potential of using EPCs in tissue engineering as an angiogenic source has been extensively explored. Concomitantly, the impact of EPCs on various diseases, such as diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, has been studied. Within the limitations of the current knowledge, this review attempts to delineate the concept of EPCs in a sequential manner from the speculative history to a definitive presence (origin, sources of EPCs, isolation, and identification) and significance of these EPCs. Additionally, this review is aimed at serving as a guide for investigators, identifying potential research gaps, and summarizing our current and future prospects regarding EPCs.

Eurasianism versus IndoGermanism: Linguistics and mythology in the 1930s' controversies over European prehistory.

In 1935, the Russian linguist Prince Nicolai S. Trubetskoi and the French mythologist Georges Dumézil engaged in a vicious debate over a seemingly obscure subject: the structure of Northwest Caucasian languages. Based on unknown archival material in French, German, and Russian, this essay uses the debate as a pathway into the 1930s scientific and political stakes of IndoEuropeanism - the belief that European cultures emerged through the spread of a single IndoEuropean people out of a single "motherland." Each of the two authors held strong commitments to visions of European order and its origins - in "Eurasia" for Trubetskoi and a Northern European Heimat for Dumézil. The North Caucasus, long a privileged site for Russian and European scholars, now became key to the renegotiation of the origins and reach of imagined prehistoric IndoEuropean conquerors, but also the 1930s' debate over the value of different disciplines (linguistics, mythology, archaeology, folklore studies) for the origins of language, myth, and the European deep past. As a moment in the history of modern speculations about prehistory, pursued in the shadow of Nazi scholarship, the debate transformed fields of research - notably linguistics, comparative mythology, and structuralism - and the assumptions about the shape of Europe.

Risk factor analysis of the patients with solitary pulmonary nodules and establishment of a prediction model for the probability of malignancy

Objective: This study aims to analyze the relationship among the clinical features, radiologic characteristics and pathological diagnosis in patients with solitary pulmonary nodules, and establish a prediction model for the probability of malignancy. Methods: Clinical data of 372 patients with solitary pulmonary nodules who underwent surgical resection with definite postoperative pathological diagnosis were retrospectively analyzed. In these cases, we collected clinical and radiologic features including gender, age, smoking history, history of tumor, family history of cancer, the location of lesion, ground-glass opacity, maximum diameter, calcification, vessel convergence sign, vacuole sign, pleural indentation, speculation and lobulation. The cases were divided to modeling group (268 cases) and validation group (104 cases). A new prediction model was established by logistic regression analying the data from modeling group. Then the data of validation group was planned to validate the efficiency of the new model, and was compared with three classical models(Mayo model, VA model and LiYun model). With the calculated probability values for each model from validation group, SPSS 22.0 was used to draw the receiver operating characteristic curve, to assess the predictive value of this new model. Results: 112 benign SPNs and 156 malignant SPNs were included in modeling group. Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that gender, age, history of tumor, ground -glass opacity, maximum diameter, and speculation were independent predictors of malignancy in patients with SPN(P<0.05). We calculated a prediction model for the probability of malignancy as follow: p=e(x)/(1+ e(x)), x=-4.8029-0.743×gender+ 0.057×age+ 1.306×history of tumor+ 1.305×ground-glass opacity+ 0.051×maximum diameter+ 1.043×speculation. When the data of validation group was added to the four-mathematical prediction model, The area under the curve of our mathematical prediction model was 0.742, which is greater than other models (Mayo 0.696, VA 0.634, LiYun 0.681), while the differences between any two of the four models were not significant (P>0.05). Conclusions: Age of patient, gender, history of tumor, ground-glass opacity, maximum diameter and speculation are independent predictors of malignancy in patients with solitary pulmonary nodule. This logistic regression prediction mathematic model is not inferior to those classical models in estimating the prognosis of SPNs.

The Vagrancy of Race Suicide Through the Early Twentieth Century: Reimagining Fear

The American Eugenics Archive defines race suicide as an alarmist term that describes, “when thebirth rate within a so-called race dropped below the death rate...with the ultimate consequence thatthe “race” would die out.”1 This article traces the ways in which fears and the concept of race suicide,a term coined by a sociologist committed to racial hierarchies, was reimagined by emerging blacksociologist, W.E.B. DuBois who actively sought liberation from systematic racism in the PostbellumEra. This historical research seeks to analyze the ways in which fear among communities of colormade claims of genocide inseparable from the histories of reproduction, birth control, sociology,race science, the Antebellum, and Jim Crow Era in the early twentieth-century. This is an attempt toprovide a speculative history that allows fears of those most vulnerable within systematic oppressionto be historicized, without the reigns of rigid, objectivity that act as a gatekeeper within the field ofhistory. I argue that tracing fears of race suicide allows for a complicated and necessary reimaginingof race science. The reimagining of race science allows us to see historical actors of color activelyengaging in liberation struggle through what Britt Rusert calls oppositional science. Similarly,analysis of race suicide allows us to bridge what Judith Butler calls, the theory-practice divide.

Kinetic Model for the Activation of Mammalian Olfactory Receptor.

The sense of smell is triggered by binding of odorants to a set of olfactory receptors (ORs), the activation of which generates specific patterns of neuronal signals in olfactory bulbs. Despite a long history of research and speculations, very little is known about the actual mechanism of OR activation. In particular, there is virtually no theoretical framework capable of describing the kinetics of olfactory activation at a quantitative level. Based on the fact that mammalian ORs belong to a class of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and utilizing the information available from recent studies on other types of GPCRs with known structural data, we construct a minimal kinetic model for mammalian olfactory activation, obtaining a new expression for the signal strength as a function of odorant and G-protein concentrations and defining this as odor activity (OA). The parametric dependence of OA on equilibrium dissociation and rate constants provides a new comprehensive means to describe how odorant-OR binding kinetics affects the odor signal, and offers new quantitative criteria for classifying agonistic, partially agonistic, and antagonistic (or inverse agonistic) behavior. The dependence of OA on the concentration of G-proteins also suggests a new experimental method to determine key equilibrium constants for odorant-OR and G-protein-OR association/dissociation processes.

Extending Genome-Wide Association Study Results to Test Classic Anthropological Hypotheses: Human Third Molar Agenesis and the "Probable Mutation Effect".

A genome-wide association study (GWAS) identifies regions of the genome that likely affect the variable state of a phenotype of interest. These regions can then be studied with population genetic methods to make inferences about the evolutionary history of the trait. There are increasing opportunities to use GWAS results-even from clinically motivated studies-for tests of classic anthropological hypotheses. One such example, presented here as a case study for this approach, involves tooth development variation related to dental crowding. Specifically, more than 10% of humans fail to develop one or more permanent third molars (M3 agenesis). M3 presence/absence variation within human populations has a significant genetic component (heritability estimate h 2 = 0.47). The evolutionary significance of M3 agenesis has a long history of anthropological speculation. First, the modern frequency of M3 agenesis could reflect a relaxation of selection pressure to retain larger and more teeth following the origins of cooking and other food-softening behaviors (i.e., the genetic drift hypothesis or, classically, the "probable mutation effect"). Alternatively, commensurate with increasing hominin brain size and facial shortening, M3 agenesis may have conferred an adaptive fitness advantage if it reduced the risk of M3 impaction and potential health complications (i.e., the positive selection hypothesis). A recent GWAS identified 70 genetic loci that may play a role in human M3 presence/absence variation. To begin evaluating the contrasting evolutionary scenarios for M3 agenesis, we used the integrated haplotype score (iHS) statistic to test whether those 70 genetic regions are enriched for genomic signatures of recent positive selection. None of our findings are inconsistent with the null hypothesis of genetic drift to explain the high prevalence of human M3 agenesis. This result might suggest that M3 impaction rates for modern humans do not accurately retrodict those of the preagricultural past. Alternatively, the absence of support for the positive selection hypothesis could reflect a lack of power; this analysis should be repeated following the completion of more comprehensive GWAS analyses for human M3 agenesis.

A Speculative History of DNA: What If Oswald Avery Had Died in 1934?

This speculative Essay explores the consequences of the imagined premature death of Oswald Avery, who in 1944 provided evidence that genes are made of DNA. Four imaginary alternate routes to the genetic function of DNA are outlined, each of which highlights different aspects of the actual process of discovery.

Nationalism in the Context of Christian Religion

When the term "nationalism" is mentioned, then people with different political and social experiences, respectively, have different connotations that cover a very wide range. For some, nationalism is a positive and practical phenomenon of social consciousness, in which man is self-affirming as a citizen and a member of a nation. For another (which is probably more familiar with the history of nationalism and political speculation on it), nationalism is a manifestation of intolerance and limited thinking. Such a dualistic range of values ​​of nationalism as a term is recognized by almost all authors of research on this topic. The history of this phenomenon makes it possible to look at nationalism as broadly as possible.

Classification of Red Beds at Point of Rocks, Morton County, Kansas

The age of red beds exposed below the bluff-capping Ogallala Formation at Point of Rocks in Morton County, Kansas, has been disputed since they were first recognized in the late 1800s. Over the years, nearly 25 maps and reports have variously classified the strata as Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, or Permian, creating an interesting history of speculation and stratigraphic nomenclature. Many of the interpretations relied on the indirect method of comparing lithologies to similar exposures in surrounding states, but none were in-depth studies. Until recently, the Kansas Geological Survey has considered the rocks to be Jurassic based on Zeller (1968), the currently recognized stratigraphic guide and chart for Kansas. A comprehensive study by Smith et al. (2015)--using outcrop descriptions, subsurface information, and detrital zircon data--constrained the age of the red beds at Point of Rocks, assigning them to the Guadalupian Big Basin Formation, the uppermost Permian unit in Kansas.

Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media. David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, and Greta A. Niu

Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media. David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, and Greta A. Niu

MODERNITY AND THE PROBLEM OF ITS CHRISTIAN PAST: THE GEISTESGESCHICHTEN OF BLUMENBERG, BERGER, AND GAUCHET

ABSTRACTRecent years have seen the rise of “post‐secularism,” a new perspective that criticizes the dominant secularization narrative according to which “modernity” and “religion” are fundamentally antagonistic concepts. Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Gianni Vattimo are the most prominent defenders of such a post‐secularist account. But though post‐secularism presents itself as a necessary rectification of the secularization story, it has not been able to come up with a credible and generally accepted alternative account. In this article I will explain why, arguing that the use of “essentially contested concepts” such as “Christianity” and “modernity” rest on normative standpoints of the narrators that are incompatible with one another. To show this I will analyze the position of three older voices in the debate, namely those of Hans Blumenberg, Peter Berger, and Marcel Gauchet. These authors seem to agree in understanding the modern disenchanted worldview in relation to Christian transcendence, but I will show that beneath their similar narratives lie incompatible normative beliefs on which their use of the concepts of “Christianity” and “modernity” is founded. After having laid bare the roots of the contemporary debate by exploring these three fundamental positions, I will finally argue that we should not take their accounts as objective, historical descriptions but as what Richard Rorty has called “Geistesgeschichte“: a speculative history that is aimed at conveying a moral, in which essentially contested concepts play a constitutive role. Each author draws his own moral, and consequently each author will construct his own corresponding history. This lesson can then be applied to the contemporary debate on secularization. The value of the debate does not lie in its historical claims but in the visions of the protagonists; at the end of this article I will explain how we can capitalize on this value.

Practical Multidimensional Branch Prediction

The most efficient branch predictors proposed in academic literature exploit both global branch history and local history. However, local history predictors introduce major design challenges, particularly for the management of speculative histories. The wormhole (WH) branch predictor was recently introduced to exploit branch outcome correlation via multidimensional histories. For some branches encapsulated in a multidimensional loop, their outcomes are correlated with those of the same branch in neighbor iterations, but in the previous outer loop iteration. Unfortunately, the practical implementation of the WH predictor is even more challenging than the implementation of local history predictors. This article introduces a practical, cost-effective mechanism for capturing multidimensional branch correlations: the innermost-loop iteration (IMLI) counter.

Brain Mediation of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Symptoms: Evidence From Functional Brain Imaging Studies in the Human and Nonhuman Primate.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has a long history of speculations concerning its cause. This article reviews human functional neuroimaging studies of OCD, then presents data from a study in the nonhuman primate that concerns the localization of brain systems that may mediate the expression of OCD symptoms. We use these lines of evidence to argue that increased "neural tone" through a section of the behaviorally disinhibiting "direct" basal ganglia pathway, relative to tone in the behaviorally inhibiting or moderating "indirect" basal ganglia system, may mediate the expression of OCD symptoms. The limbic orbital prefrontal cortex, the involvement of which is highly implicated in OCD, may have a greater influence on neural tone in the direct pathway than in the indirect, whereas more dorsal neocortical prefrontal regions may have the opposite effects on these two basal ganglia subsystems. Effective OCD treatments may obtain their results by preferentially decreasing neural tone through the direct relative to the indirect basal ganglia system.

Speculative Histories: Photo essay

History and Speculation, Past and Future, are not as separate as they once were in our disciplinary imaginations. Science fiction has emerged as one of many new speculative frequencies in today's scholarly spectrum. Visual representation is an older mode that brings thought and feeling, analytics and prediction together. It pre-dates both historical and fictional narrative forms. Shaped by long histories of artistic and critical conversations, images today are being used in ways that extend and complicate our interdisciplinary scholarly methods. Here, they are put to work in order to pose different questions and suggest alternative analyses of the histories and futures of Asia's changing landscapes.

The anterolateral ligament (ALL) and its role in rotational extra-articular stability of the knee joint: a review of anatomy and surgical concepts.

The anterolateral ligament of the knee (ALL) has caused a lot of rumors in orthopaedics these days. The structure that was first described by Segond back in 1879 has experienced a long history of anatomic descriptions and speculations until its rediscovery by Claes in 2013. Its biomechanical properties and function have been examined recently, but are not yet fully understood. While the structure seems to act as a limiter of internal rotation and lateral meniscal extrusion its possible proprioceptive effect remains questionable. Its contribution to the pivot shift phenomenon has been uncovered in parts, therefore it has been recognized that a concomitant anterolateral stabilization together with ACL reconstruction may aid in prevention of postoperative instability after severe ligamentous knee damages. However, there are a lot of different methods to perform this procedure and the clinical outcome has yet to be examined. This concise review will give an overview on the present literature to outline the long history of the ALL under its different names, its anatomic variances and topography as well as on histologic examinations, imaging modalities, arthroscopic aspects and methods for a possible anterolateral stabilization of the knee joint.

Intraspecific variation of phragmocone chamber volumes throughout ontogeny in the modern nautilid Nautilus and the Jurassic ammonite Normannites.

Nautilus remains of great interest to palaeontologists after a long history of actualistic comparisons and speculations on aspects of the palaeoecology of fossil cephalopods, which are otherwise impossible to assess. Although a large amount of work has been dedicated to Nautilus ecology, conch geometry and volumes of shell parts and chambers have been studied less frequently. In addition, although the focus on volumetric analyses for ammonites has been increasing recently with the development of computed tomographic technology, the intraspecific variation of volumetric parameters has never been examined. To investigate the intraspecific variation of the phragmocone chamber volumes throughout ontogeny, 30 specimens of Recent Nautilus pompilius and two Middle Jurassic ammonites (Normannites mitis) were reconstructed using computed tomography and grinding tomography, respectively. Both of the ontogenetic growth trajectories from the two Normannites demonstrate logistic increase. However, a considerable difference in Normannites has been observed between their entire phragmocone volumes (cumulative chamber volumes), in spite of their similar morphology and size. Ontogenetic growth trajectories from Nautilus also show a high variation. Sexual dimorphism appears to contribute significantly to this variation. Finally, covariation between chamber widths and volumes was examined. The results illustrate the strategic difference in chamber construction between Nautilus and Normannites. The former genus persists to construct a certain conch shape, whereas the conch of the latter genus can change its shape flexibly under some constraints.

The ‘British World’, other worlds, and the five rings: possibilities for trans-imperial histories and historical ‘what ifs’

In the early 1890s an ardent British imperialist proposed a ‘Pan-Britannic Olympics’ that included not only the British Empire but the USA in a plan to use sport to unite the English-speaking peoples of the globe into a world-ruling coalition. While that proposal was eventually bested by the Baron Pierre de Coubertin's movement that created an even more inclusive modern Olympics, the sentiments of the ‘Pan-Britannic’ scheme became in embroiled in debates over the national and imperial uses of international sport. Pondering the role of Coubertin's Olympics in forging a variety of imperial and national identities within the British Empire while also employing speculative alternative histories reveals the complex transnational and trans-imperial dimensions of the Olympics in modern global history.

Speculative boundaries: Chicago and the regulatory history of US financial derivative markets

This paper considers the history of governance and speculation on US derivative markets from their emergence in the middle of the 19th century through their incursion into finance in the late 20th century. It explores the importance of derivatives’ extended ancestry in agricultural markets before analyzing their entanglement with financial markets, which came much later in the 1970s and 1980s. The paper is particularly concerned with the institutional inheritance of a set of legal–regulatory boundaries that prioritized price making and the speculative trading that was necessary to produce a consistent flow of prices. This governance system for derivatives is set in contrast with the governance of securities markets, which during the 1930s became subject to more strict government oversight, particularly with regard to speculative trading. The legal boundaries between these two markets began to deteriorate in the 1970s when the Chicago derivative exchanges applied the speculative logic of agricultural derivative markets to financial instruments. The implications of this are twofold. First the paper argues that market mechanisms and market regulation are analytically inseparable, and ought to be studied as such. Second, employing this approach, the paper argues that US financial derivative markets are originally ‘derivative’ not of New York and the finance sector, but of Chicago and the agricultural sector.

The kidney and lipids: preface

From June 5 through June 7, 2013, there was a World Congress of Nephrology 2013 Satellite Symposium on the Kidney and Lipids in Fukuoka, Japan. This meeting was held in conjunction with The 25th Annual Meeting of Japanese Society of Kidney and Lipids. There were 158 participants, all with an interest in the role of lipid abnormalities in chronic kidney disease (CKD). There is a long history of speculation regarding the association between lipid abnormalities and CKD. Virchow [1] was one of the first to describe this association and referred to the ‘‘fatty metamorphosis’’ of diseased kidneys as early as 1860. Fifty years later, Munk was intrigued by fatty deposition in patients with nephrotic syndrome and coined the term ‘‘Lipoidnephrose’’ [2]. Others subsequently referred to the presence of lipid in diseased kidneys and speculated on its role in the pathogenesis of kidney damage. Kimmelstiel and Wilson [3] in their classic description of diabetic nephropathy in 1936 noted the prominent role of lipid deposition. More recently, attention was again focused on the possible role of lipids in CKD with the publication of an editorial review by Moorhead et al. [4] in 1982. They hypothesized that lipid abnormalities might be both a consequence and a cause of progressive kidney injury. Specifically, lipids might be involved in glomerular and tubular injury in much the same way that dyslipidemia causes atherosclerosis. A number of groups actively investigated ways to test this hypothesis and in October 8–10, 1998, there was a symposium on ‘‘Lipids and Renal Disease’’ at Kashikojima/Ise-Shima National Park, Japan [5]. Since that time, there have been many more basic science studies and clinical trials testing the hypothesis that dyslipidemia may play an important role in the development and progression of CKD. Thus, the organizers thought it was an opportune time to gather and discuss what we know, and what we need to learn regarding this important topic. This preface reviews a few of the highlights of the meeting, many of which are described in more detail in the articles of this special issue.