ALMIRA HART LINCOLN PHELPS (1793–1884) AND THE SPREAD OF BOTANY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA

Mrs. Phelps was influenced by her older sister Emma Willard, a well known educational reformer, and by Amos Eaton, who helped form her botanical and scientific understanding. Feeling the lack of a suitable botanical textbook particularly for female students who were becoming more prevalant, she wrote, Familiar Lectures on Botany, published in 1829, using her first husband's surname (Lincoln). It quickly became popular and continued to be revised and reprinted through 1869. In 1833, a second botany text for lower level students, Botany for Beginners, appeared. It too, went through many reprintings up to 1891. Mrs. Phelps’ other books and writings on science and education were popular also. The botanical texts were educationally innovative in starting with flower structure using common living examples and integrating morphological and physiological aspects of plants. The Linnaean System was used to classify the “most common native and foreign” plants that were described mainly from Eaton's manuals. Clear figures, often copied from well-known authorities helped to instruct teachers and students. Because of its wide usage, even in later years in competition with the widely used textbooks of Asa Gray and Alphonso Wood, Mrs. Phelps’ books were an important factor in educating many students, especially females, in botany and inducing some of them to have a life-long interest in the science and in teaching it to others. She was, through her writings, a person who helped provide a favorable climate for the developing profession of botany in America.     

Anna Fraentzel Celli (1878-1958)

This paper provides a short history of Anna Fraentzel Celli life, from her arrival in Italy in 1898 to her death in 1958, reviewing available documents and written testimonies. Anna Fraentzel was born in Berlin in 1878, third of four daughters from a bourgeois family; her maternal grandfather, Luigi Traube, was a very well known physician, as well as her father Oscar, and she developed an early interest in medicine that she couldn't fulfill: actually after her father's death she was forced to shorten her education, she couldn't enter the medical school, as she would have liked to, and she attended the nursing school, instead, displaying a lot of good practical sense. As a nurse in Hamburg in 1896 she met Prof. Angelo Celli, who was there on a professional visit, and who assisted the young nurse in finding a job at the city hospital. She was much younger than him, who was already a middle aged respected scientist; anyhow, even after his departure, they kept in touch and eventually fell in love. They married in 1899 and she moved to Rome to work at the S. Spirito Hospital joining a brilliant group of physicians and researchers as Tommasi-Crudeli, Marchiafava, Bignami, Bastianelli, Dionisi, Grassi, and her husband Angelo. They had long been studying the mode of transmission of the malaria infection and in 1898 they had identified the mosquito Anopheles as the vector of the malaria parasite. She got enthusiastically involved both in the scientific work and in the antimalarial campaign which Celli promoted in the Agro Romano. The strong personality of Anna Celli, her active involvement in social problems, her passionate dedication to her work, her peculiar way of being feminist, expressed fully her commitment to the struggle against malaria and illiteracy in the Agro Romano and in the Paludi Pontine at the beginning of the twentieth century. She must be credited as a major force in the creation and functioning of the Peasant Schools, as well as in the organisation of the experimental antimalarial health clinics. After her husband's death in 1914 she continued as a promoter of the antimalarial campaign, co-operating with the Red Cross and other institutions. Moreover, she edited the scientific and historical papers which Angelo Celli had collected and written during his life. She was also a prolific writer and lecturer on these issues and gained widespread appreciation both in Italy and in Germany. Toward the end of her life she retired to a nursing home in Rome where she died almost alone in 1958.     

Sporotrichosis After Tattooing Caused by Sporothrix brasiliensis

Sporotrichosis is a subcutaneous mycosis caused by pathogenic species of the genus Sporothrix. Since 1998, the number of cases of sporotrichosis due to Sporothrix brasiliensis has grown significantly in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Nearly all cases are related to cats as the main source of fungal infection. We report two cases of sporotrichosis following tattoos, a transmission form of S. brasiliensis not yet reported. The first patient, a 22-year-old female, had cutaneous sporotrichosis, fixed form, over a tattoo in her lumbar region. The lesion appeared 12 weeks after she was tattooed. The second patient, a 27-year-old female, had a lymphocutaneous sporotrichosis over a forearm tattoo. The lesion appeared two weeks after she was tattooed. In both cases there was no history of contact with cats or other plausible source of infection. The present study highlights that other non-zoonotic forms of transmission of S. brasiliensis may occur in endemic areas.

     

Infanticide in a Dryinid Parasitoid, Haplogonatopus atratus

When a parasitized host is superparasitized, the second comer—an immature parasitoid originating from the second oviposition—is usually handicapped relative to the first comer in the competition for the host. In Haplogonatopus atratus, however, the survival rate of second comers is frequently higher than that of first comers. Infanticide is assumed to be responsible for this phenomenon. The present report reveals that, when the female wasp of H. atratus superparasitizes, she examines several membranes between the host's abdominal terga with her stinger before laying a supernumerary egg and that, when she locates the first comer, she pierces it with her stinger to kill it. Moreover, once she catches a host she performs infanticide irrespective of whether the host is self- or conspecifically parasitized.     

A case of 'contagious delusional parasitosis' in an adult pair of twin sisters

In July 1992, a 50-year-old married woman, who was a hospital administrative clerk with an adult daughter, stated that, for over 5 years, she had been parasitised by 'small animals coming out from her skin'. While physical and microscopical examinations did not show either lesions or parasites on the skin, both the patient's medical history and the conviction with which she reported the phenomenon, led to a diagnosis of Delusory Parasitosis, a condition which has been well-defined for over 50 years and considered of prevailingly psychiatric competence. The patient was examined several times during the course of 6 years. She exhibited varying levels of anxiety, and brought with her different species of insects which she had captured 'when she saw them coming out of her skin'. In July 1998 the patient returned with her twin sister, who 'had been infected by her'. Indeed, she too 'had discharged various insects from her skin' for more than a year. The authors provide information on the response of this hallucinatory syndrome to therapy which, as in this case, appears to be resistant to treatment, unless appropriate psychoactive drugs are used.     

Sexual cannibalism by Octopus cyanea on a Pacific coral reef

Sexual cannibalism is rare in the animal kingdom. Although cannibalism is not uncommon in cephalopods, here we report the first documented case of sexual cannibalism. A large female Octopus cyanea was observed continuously for 2.5 days in Palau, Micronesia, when she was out of her den. On the second day, a small male followed and mated her 13 times during 3.5 h while she continued to forage over 70 m distance. After the 12th mating, she aggressively chased a different small octopus that barely escaped by jetting, inking and swimming upwards. Shortly thereafter, the original small male mated her a 13th time, but subsequently she attacked and suffocated him and spent 2 days cannibalizing him in her den. This sort of intraspecific aggression helps to explain several reports of octopuses mating out in the open, a behaviour that may serve to allow the smaller mate to escape cannibalism.     

An abnormal facial gesture in an estrous mare

A 24-year-old mare exhibited abnormal behavior only when she was in estrus. She was subordinate to other mares. During diestrus she aggressed against an approaching stallion as a normal non-receptive mare would, but during estrus she flexed her limbs, clamped her tail and opened and closed her mouth when a stallion approached. The facial expression appeared when she first noticed the stallion or heard his neighs. The limb flexing occurred only when a stallion was in close proximity. The facial expression closely resembled snapping (also known as champing or tooth-clapping) of immature equids and jawing of receptive zebra and donkey mares.It is hypothesized that the mare's expression, the snapping of foals and the facial expression of donkeys and zebras are the same expression — one that indicates that the animal is in an approach—avoidance situation. In this case, the mare may have been both fearful of, and attracted to, stallions.     

Self-Rehabilitation of a Captive American Crow at Binghamton Zoo

The behavioral transition from an entirely unflighted-to-flighted, female yearling American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) in captivity in a specially designed exhibit was documented at the Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park in Binghamton, NY. Upon arrival, the focal crow had no complete primary feathers or retrices and had been in captivity since fledging. She apparently had never flown successfully and was using her legs and an abnormal body orientation to cushion her landing on the ground. In a social and physical environment with 3 flying companion crows and staggered perches, she developed and appeared to “practice” routines that ultimately resulted in her recovering normal body posture and flight ability. The crow’s practice routine was recorded during daily observations using an ethogram of social and locomotor behaviors. Both enclosure design and the social environment may have provided an ideal setting for the self-motivation of practice and this recovery. Attention to the potential for such practice could facilitate rehabilitation in individuals for whom rehabilitation was not thought possible.     

Self-directed EMG training for the control of pain and spasticity in paraplegia: A case study

A 25-year-old paraplegic woman was able to gain control of her debilitating leg and bladder spasms and abdominal pain using self-directed EMG biofeedback. The case is significant in that she previously had only cursory exposure to biofeedback as an undergraduate student and received only minimal support and direction from an instructor. She proceeded through daily home practice using a borrowed EMG unit and audiotapes from Lester Fehmi'sOpen Focus series. Records were kept of the frequency and intensity of her pain and spasms, as well as the frequency and procedures of her home practice. She also maintained a record of specific psychosocial events in her life, which, over time, showed a strong, consistent pattern of influence on the recurrence and severity of her symptoms. The woman's physician declared her medical progress remarkable and encouraged her biofeedback work. At 2-year follow-up, she remains virtually symptom- and medication-free. Her successful biofeedback training program provides support for the value of client-directed biofeedback in selected cases.     

From the beginning to the present state of molecular microbial pathogenesis—A tribute to Pascale Cossart

The universe of Molecular Microbial Pathogenesis is filled with many female and male stars. But there are two particularly bright shining supernovae-like stars: the late Stanley Falkow and the very lively and creative Pascale Cossart. These two outstanding luminaries, surrounded by numerous planets, do not only belong to different scientific generations but their splendor also comes from very different scientific concepts. Stanley Falkow, often referred to as the ‘Father of Molecular Microbial Pathogenesis’, made many groundbreaking contributions to this field by addressing almost all important bacterial pathogens. Pascale Cossart, who could be called in analogy the ‘Queen of Modern Molecular Microbial Pathogenesis’ by combining the Microbiology and Cell Biology, concentrates in her similarly impressive scientific work essentially on a single bacterial species which she studied and still studies in great depth: the facultative intracellular bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes—and the vast majority of her most prominent publications deals with this pathogen in almost all facets. It is certainly not an exaggeration to say that she together with her co-workers and collaborators developed this model bacterium into a paradigm among the intracellular bacterial pathogens.     

Book Review Essay: Mary Angela Uwalaka. Ọfọ: Its Juridical and Linguistic Potency. Ibadan, Afrika-Link Books, 1996. 69 pages

Rev. Mother (Dr.) Mary Angela Uwalaka was a distinguished and devoted religious woman linguist. Her major area of research was Igbo syntax, where she made tremendous contributions, through published texts and scholarly articles towards the development of a unified Igbo language and the field of Linguistics. As a renowned scholar, her research interest was not limited to Linguistics only. In the words of Prof. Ben Elugbe, her colleague at the University of Ibadan where Mother Uwalaka worked until her demise in January 7 2007, she also “found time and ability to work and publish in the areas of religion and Igbo culture.” Ọfọ: Its Juridical and Linguistic Potency, which we shall review here, is an evidence that Uwalaka’s interests extended to other areas of Igbo studies, apart from the Igbo language.     

The Consequences of Being a Gift

The issues of dislocated identity are epitomised in Mary's story. Brought from Papua New Guinea to Australia at a very young age as a ‘gift’, she grew up in a series of foster homes in Adelaide, South Australia. Now, as a teenager, Mary constitutes her identity through her body, emphasising her distinctive physical features, through idealised memories and through representations—photographs, cultural icons and people who ‘look like me’. The self she creates in this way sits uneasily along side another self; the Western adolescent self in trouble with the law, the self who struggles to be ‘one of the boys’ on the streets, one who ‘runs amuck’. This paper explores the process of ‘self-making’, the ‘serious play’ that Mary has employed to constitute her identity through her juggling of and reappropriation of cultural symbols. As a participant in a wider ethnographic study into Australian youth and representation, Mary portrayed the complexities of her growing up between worlds, embedded in neither and desperate to belong to her past.     

Inbreeding,eugenics, and Helen Dean King (1869–1955)

Helen Dean King’s scientific work focused on inbreeding using experimental data collected from standardized laboratory rats to elucidate problems in human heredity. The meticulous care with which she carried on her inbreeding experiments assured that her results were dependable and her theoretical explanations credible. By using her nearly homozygous rats as desired commodities, she also was granted access to venues and people otherwise unavailable to her as a woman. King’s scientific career was made possible through her life experiences. She earned a doctorate from Bryn Mawr College under Thomas Hunt Morgan and spent a productive career at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia where she had access to the experimental subjects which made her career possible. In this paper I examine King’s work on inbreeding, her participation in the debates over eugenics, her position at the Wistar Institute, her status as a woman working with mostly male scientists, and her involvement with popular science.     

Better than CD: Eugénie Cotton (1881-1967)

Aimé Cotton is known for his invention of circular dichroism spectroscopy. In 1913, he married Eugénie Feytis, a scientist who studied physics with Marie Curie. Following the Second World War, Eugénie Cotton was determined to advance the rights and standing of women, sure in the belief that doing so was necessary not only because it was just but also because a world with women in the forefront would be more secure and less susceptible to the catastrophe worldwide military conflict. She was a cofounder of the Women's International Democratic Federation and served as its first president. In 1951, she was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize, and in 1961, the gold medal from the World Peace Council. The extraordinary life of Eugénie Cotton is reconstructed in a new biography by Loukia Efthymiou, Eugénie Cotton (1881-1967) (Éditions Universitaires Européennes, 2019) that is reviewed here. Among the contributions of Eugénie Cotton of particular interest to the Chirality readership is the biography she wrote of her husband, Aimé Cotton, l'optique et magneto-optique (Éditions Seghers, 1967), the most complete source of information on the founder of the science of circular dichroism. This biography is also discussed here, thereby building two reviews of books, one new and one old, one about Eugénie Cotton and one by her, into a single essay.     

Memoirs of an amnesiac--two years with brain cancer,or the outer space of living with brain tumors.

Alexandra Dane Dor-Ner ("Ali" to friends) was a photographer, writer, and a producer of programs on child development. In February 1989, at the age of 41, she was diagnosed with malignant brain cancer. During the following months she underwent brain surgery, radiation, and implant radiation. Throughout her treatment, she continued to work on a novel and write stores and literary criticism. A volunteer in hospitals before her illness, she now became very active in a support group of brain tumor patients and often served as a first resource and contact for others diagnosed with brain cancer. All was very accomplished; her award-winning photographs have been exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and her articles and pictures were published in books, periodicals, and newspapers around the world. A native of Boston, Ali lived for 17 years in Israel, where she joined a group of photographers documenting disappearing neighborhoods in Jerusalem. She was awarded first prize in the "Israel Through the Camera''s Eye" competition in 1977. She also taught English and photography in Israeli high schools. Ali traveled extensively on photographic assignments. Early in their 22-year marriage, she and her husband circumnavigated the globe on a freighter, producing a documentary film of the voyage. "Memoirs of an Amnesiac" was written while Ali was a student at the Warren Wilson College Writers'' Program in North Carolina; she intended to explore the compensatory aspects of her disease. In February 1991, within days of completing the piece, Ali had a third brain operation to remove a regrowth of cancerous tumor cells, as well as necrotic tissue. Two days later, she was again operated on to remove blood clots resulting from the previous surgery. For the next 12 weeks she fought to regain her ability to walk, talk, and write. In May, she underwent a fifth operation to relieve pressure in the brain. She was still in the hospital when she learned, to her great pleasure, that she would be awarded a master of fine arts degree from Warren Wilson College. She died on June 19, 1991.     

First case of aplastic anemia in a Japanese child with a homozygous missense mutation in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">NBS1</Emphasis> gene (I171V) associated with genomic instability

The NBS1 gene is strongly linked to several factors involved in genome integrity. Functional disruption of NBS1 could therefore induce genomic instability and carcinogenesis. Four children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia have been reported to be heterozygous for a germline and/or somatic missense mutation in NBS1, leading to the I171V substitution. We screened healthy controls and pediatric patients with hematological malignancies and aplastic anemia (AA) for the presence of I171V. Of the 62 patients, one individual with AA was confirmed to harbor a homozygous I171V mutation. Genetic analysis of NBS1 in this patient and her healthy parents indicated that she inherited the germline I171V mutation from her father and the wild-type allele from her mother, and that the second I171V hit occurred on the wild-type allele early in embryonic development. Furthermore, cytogenetic analysis of lymphoblastic cell lines from the patient indicated a remarkable increase in numerical and structural chromosomal aberrations in the absence of clastogens, suggesting that she potentially carried genomic instability. This is the first report of AA with a homozygous I171V mutation. We hypothesize that NBS1 may play an important role in the pathogenesis of AA.H. Shimada and K. Shimizu contributed equally to this work     

An attempted within-group infanticide in wild chimpanzees

Two high-ranking adult male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) of M group in the Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania, tried to get a newborn female infant of an adult female who was born in M group. The mother was not seen to mate with these adult males during the probable conception cycle of the infant, but she disappeared from the group during the later cycle, when she may have been inseminated by a male of one of the neighboring unit groups. The adult males failed to get the infant because the grandmother of the newborn and her female friend cooperated to protect the mother and infant from attacks by the males. The sexual selection hypothesis for infanticide by adult male chimpanzees holds for this observed case. The sudden disappearance of another infant, a healthy female, strongly suggests the killing of female infants too. Therefore, the asserted male-biased infanticide in chimpanzees appears to be less tenable.