The contribution of Academician L. A. Orbeli to the theory of higher nervous activity]

In the paper are discussed the main directions of the investigation of the higher nervous activity, fruitfully developed by academician L. A. Orbeli and his school. These directions are the following: the evolutionary approach, the study of the influence of the sympathetic nervous and endocrine systems, of the role of the extracortical brain structures, especially the hypothalamus and the cerebellum, and the significance of pain and efferent systems for the higher nervous activity.     

悼念中国科学院院士庞雄飞教授

~~悼念中国科学院院士庞雄飞教授$《昆虫分类学报》编辑部     

The 75th Birthday of Martin Ekabovich Beker,Academician of the Latvian Academy of Sciences

Applied Biochemistry and Microbiology -     

Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences A.P. Avtsyn Is the Founder of the Russian School of Human Geographical Pathology and Ecological Physiology

A short analysis is presented of the development in Russia of human geographical pathology and ecological physiology, and it is fair to say that Academician Alexander Pavlovich Avtsyn of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences was a founder of these scientific trends. His scientific heritage, theoretical bases of these sciences, and prospects for development of human ecological physiology and pathology are considered.     

I. P. Pavlov--a Full Member (Academician) of Russian Academy of Sciences (100-years anniversary)

I. P. Pavlov, the great Russian physiologist, the founder of a leading scientific school of physiology, first Russian scientist to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Pavlov's work received wide international recognition. He was elected full or honorary member of more than 120 academies, scientific societies and universities. In 1907 he was elected a Full Member (Academician) of Russian Academy of Sciences and headed the Physiological Laboratory of the Academy. In 1925, at his petition, the Laboratory was transformed into the Physiological Institute, remaining his head until 1936, when he had died. Since 1950 this is the Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.     

The pre-Pavlov period in the development of neurophysiology in the Academy of Sciences

Over the course of the XVIIIth-XIXth centuries, in the Russian Academy of Sciences investigations were actively pursued into the physiology of the nervous system. These studies were published and widely discussed. A valuable contribution was made by D. Bernulli, P. A. Zagorski?, G. F. Bidder, F. V. Ovsiannikov, I. M. Sechenov, I. R. Tarkhanov, N. E. Vvedenski?, I. G. Orshanski? and others.     

The contribution of developmental palaeontology to extensions of evolutionary theory

Evo‐devo is featuring prominently in current discussion to extend evolutionary theory. Developmental palaeontology, the study of life history evolution and ontogeny in fossils, remains an area of investigation that could benefit from, but also illuminate, the discourse and research agenda of evo‐devo. Understanding how and why evolution proceeds in phenotypic space is an important goal of evo‐devo and one that can be significantly enriched through the examination of development in the fossil record (Palaeo‐evo‐devo). Such an approach permits developmental pathways to be extended into the past, constraining hypotheses of developmental evolution in ways that cannot be predicted by patterns observed from extant taxa alone. The comparison of developmental dynamics among extant and extinct taxa yields a more complete understanding of the temporal persistence of factors that shape evolution in phenotypic space. As more data are compiled that document ‘fossilized ontogenies’, a stage will emerge from which insights into the evolution of development can begin to appraise those phenotypes that are inaccessible to evo‐devo.     

The place of development in mathematical evolutionary theory

Development plays a critical role in structuring the joint offspring-parent phenotype distribution. It thus must be part of any truly general evolutionary theory. Historically, the offspring-parent distribution has often been treated in such a way as to bury the contribution of development, by distilling from it a single term, either heritability or additive genetic variance, and then working only with this term. I discuss two reasons why this approach is no longer satisfactory. First, the regression of expected offspring phenotype on parent phenotype can easily be nonlinear, and this nonlinearity can have a pronounced impact on the response to selection. Second, even when the offspring-parent regression is linear, it is nearly always a function of the environment, and the precise way that heritability covaries with the environment can have a substantial effect on adaptive evolution. Understanding these complexities of the offspring-parent distribution will require understanding of the developmental processes underlying the traits of interest. I briefly discuss how we can incorporate such complexity into formal evolutionary theory, and why it is likely to be important even for traits that are not traditionally the focus of evo-devo research. Finally, I briefly discuss a topic that is widely seen as being squarely in the domain of evo-devo: novelty. I argue that the same conceptual and mathematical framework that allows us to incorporate developmental complexity into simple models of trait evolution also yields insight into the evolution of novel traits.