Robert Chambers and Thomas Henry Huxley, Science Correspondents: The Popularization and Dissemination of Nineteenth Century Natural Science

Robert Chambers and Thomas Henry Huxley helped popularize science by writing for general interest publications when science was becoming increasingly professionalized. A non-professional, Chambers used his family-owned Chambers' Edinburgh Journal to report on scientific discoveries, giving his audience access to ideas that were only available to scientists who regularly attended professional meetings or read published transactions of such forums. He had no formal training in the sciences and little interest in advancing the professional status of scientists; his course of action was determined by his disability and interest in scientific phenomena. His skillful reporting enabled readers to learn how the ideas that flowed from scientific innovation affected their lives, and his series of article in the Journal presenting his rudimentary ideas on evolution, served as a prelude to his important popular work, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Huxley, an example of the new professional class of scientists, defended science and evolution from attacks by religious spokesmen and other opponents of evolution, informing the British public about science through his lectures and articles in such publications as Nineteenth Century. He understood that by popularizing scientific information, he could effectively challenge the old Tory establishment -- with its orthodox religious and political views -- and promote the ideas of the new class of professional scientists. In attempting to transform British society, he frequently came in conflict with theologians and others on issues in which science and religion seemed to contradict each other but refused to discuss matters of science with non-professionals like Chambers, whose popular writing struck a more resonant chord with working class readers. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Hydra Model System

The freshwater Hydra polyp emerged as a model system in 1741 when Abraham Trembley not only discovered its amazing regenerative potential, but also demonstrated that experimental manipulations pave the way to research in biology. Since then, Hydra flourished as a potent and fruitful model system to help answer questions linked to cell and developmental biology, as such as the setting up of an organizer to regenerate a complex missing structure, the establishment and maintainance of polarity in a multicellular organism, the development of mathematical models to explain the robust developmental rules observed in this animal, the maintainance of stemness and multipotency in a highly dynamic environment, the plasticity of differentiated cells, to name but a few. However the Hydra model system is not restricted to cell and developmental biology; during the past 270 years it has also been heavily used to investigate the relationships between Hydra and its environment, opening new horizons concerning neurophysiology, innate immunity, ecosystems, ecotoxicology, symbiosis...     

Physiology in the oeuvre of a prominent Hungarian medical scientist--Endre H"ogyes.

Endre Hógyes, one of the most prominent and internationally-renown leaders in the field of medical research, especially the treatment of rabies, was born one hundred and fifty years ago in Hungary. E. Hógyes had started his medical and research carrier in 1870. In 1889 he had become vice-president of the Royal Hungarian Society of Natural Sciences and was elected as a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) and that member of the National Council of Public Health. Scientific carrier of E. Hógyes has always been closely linked to physiological sciences. E Hógyes made a significant contribution to different areas of physiological sciences; his most important scientific publications in this field deal with renal physiology, respitary mechanics, cerebellar function, and associated eye movement. Endre Hógyes was the first to organize Hungarian physiologists into a community. The "Special Physiological Conferences" were initiated within the Hungarian Royal Society of Natural Sciences in 1891. As a token of appretiation, Hungarian physiologists and other medical professionals have announced the year of 1997 as a memorial year of Dr. Endre Hógyes.     

Bill Ricker’s Entomological Contributions

Synopsis Bill Ricker was an internationally recognized expert on the stoneflies (Plecoptera). These insects have aquatic larvae that live mostly in cool and clear running water. They are of ecological significance in the breakdown of leaf-litter and the cycling of detritus in aquatic lotic habitats. Since they can account for a significant portion of the diet of some fishes in cold northern waters, they are linked with Ricker’s other work in fisheries. Within 1 year of taking up the study of stoneflies, Ricker was describing species new to science. He continued such activity through most of his life, describing or co-describing some 108 species and 46 genera. Ricker made other outstanding contributions, publishing in 1952 what is regarded as the most important publication dealing with stonefly systematics in the 20th century. Many names he coined in his studies clearly demonstrated his linguistic flair and humour. He made significant contributions to an understanding of the biogeography of stoneflies, and received many honours and citations for his research.     

Flora was His Interest and Prime Course of Study: A Botanical Career for W.E. Ricker Disappears

Synopsis Bill Ricker’s career went through many twists in his academic years. He had taken botany in his senior matriculation year at high school and he had collected over 100 species of flora before commencement of university life. At the conclusion of his first university year, he set out over the summer to collect a much larger sample of species, primarily from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence ecoregion, to fulfil a requirement for a second year botany course (spermatophytes). He identified about 390 species, and some 254 were collected and pooled with those from previous years to make a final submission of 354 spermatophyte species. Field plant identification continued in each academic year thereafter, in concert with collections and identifications of aquatic invertebrates in his summer projects while under the employment of the Ontario Fisheries Research Laboratory. At the conclusion of his undergraduate years, Bill had taken more courses in botany than in zoology, and it was the summer employment that had really prepared him for postgraduate work in fisheries biology, which was ecologically oriented. When Bill left Ontario in the autumn of 1931 he had identified over 600 species of plants, excluding lower cryptogams, but including many aquatic species of higher plants. In western North America Bill’s botanical career began at Cultus Lake in 1931. He again studied all aspects of the basin while employed with the federal government, and from the work he assembled a Ph.D. thesis. At the time of thesis completion he had identified over 300 species of flora, including alpine plants at timberline, 1500 – 1800 m above lake level, and planktonic algae in its water column. In 1939, after more field fisheries work in the Fraser River basin of British Columbia, Bill accepted a position with the biological staff at Indiana University. In this period which concluded in 1950 he identified another 50 – 110 species of flora, all in the Carolinian ecoregion, and hitherto not seen by him. Considering all floral classes, Bill’s eastern North American repertoire had by then added up to 791 species, representative of more than 112 families of plants. Returning west for the remainder of his life, new identifications elsewhere added to his Cultus Lake list which slowly added up to about 1000 species for the west coastal region of North America. Flora was also identified elsewhere in the mid-continental region of North America, in Eurasia where the Abisko region of Lappland was a highlight, and in South America and New Zealand. Records of his botanical prowess, were kept primarily in his diaries, which began in 1923 and were maintained consistently to the end of 1934, and thereafter intermittently to 1949. The diaries reveal that his career as a budding botanist was subtly hijacked by a wily Professor W.H.K. Harkness in the rival Biology Department who out-manoeuvred Drs. R.B. Thompson and R.A. Sifton in the Botany Department. The former always managed to employ Bill in summer and keep him occupied in the department’s labs during the autumn and winter and spring, tying up any free time when the botanist had approached him on lab work. Certainly, the botany courses taken and which he excelled at were more appropriate for his aquatic ecological pursuits. Salesmanship won the day for the zoologists, but Bill was a life-long botanist regardless of whatever else he studied or managed throughout his professional career. The last days of his life had a botanical conclusion.     

The medium of signs: nominalism, language and the philosophy of mind in the early thought of Dugald Stewart

In 1792 Dugald Stewart published Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. In its section on abstraction he declared himself to be a nominalist. Although a few scholars have made brief reference to this position, no sustained attention has been given to the central role that it played within Stewart's early philosophy of mind. It is therefore the purpose of this essay to unpack Stewart's nominalism and the intellectual context that fostered it. In the first three sections I aver that his nominalism emanated from his belief that objects of the mind--qualities, ideas and words--were signs that bore no necessary relation to the external objects that they were meant to represent. More specifically, it was these signs that were arranged into systems of thought by the 'operations of the mind'. The next three sections suggest that his treatment of words as signs most probably originated in his views on language and medicine and that his nominalistic philosophy of mind could also be extended to systems that sought to classify the natural world. I conclude by suggesting several avenues of enquiry that could be pursued by future scholars interested in excavating Stewart's thought.     

The 2009 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: Peter Agre, Chemistry 2003

Peter Agre, born in 1949 in Northfield Minnesota, shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Roderick MacKinnon for his discovery of aquaporins, the channel proteins that allow water to cross the cell membrane.Agre''s interest medicine was inspired by the humanitarian efforts of the Medical Missionary program run by the Norwegians of his home community in Minnesota. Hoping to provide new treatments for diseases affecting the poor, he joined a cholera laboratory during medical school at Johns Hopkins. He found that he enjoyed biomedical research, and continued his laboratory studies for an additional year after medical school.Agre completed his clinical training at Case Western Hospitals of Cleveland and the University of North Carolina, and returned to Johns Hopkins in 1981. There, his serendipitous discovery of aquaporins was made while pursuing the identity of the Rhesus (Rh) antigen.For a century, physiologists and biophysicists had been trying to understand the mechanism by which fluid passed across the cell''s plasma membrane. Biophysical evidence indicated a limit to passive diffusion of water, suggesting the existence of another mechanism for water transport across the membrane. The putative "water channel," however, could not be identified.In 1988, while attempting to purify the 30kDa Rh protein, Agre and colleagues began investigating a 28 kDa contaminant that they believed to be a proteolytic fragment of the Rh protein. Subsequent studies over the next 3-4 years revealed that the contaminant was a membrane-spanning oligomeric protein, unrelated to the Rh antigen, and that it was highly abundant in renal tubules and red blood cells. Still, they could not assign a function to it.The breakthrough came following a visit with his friend and former mentor John Parker. After Agre described the properties of the mysterious 28 kDa protein, Parker suggested that it might be the long-sought-after water channel. Agre and colleagues tested this idea by expressing the protein in Xenopus oocytes, which typically have low water permeability. When the test oocytes were placed in a hypotonic solution, they swelled and exploded, thus revealing the function of the unknown protein as a water channel, which they named aquaporin.The Nobel Prize enabled Agre to take his research and scientific interests in new directions. He felt that over the years his work had continually taken him further from his original interests in third-world diseases, so he shifted his focus back in that direction. He now serves as the director of the Malaria institute at Johns Hopkins where he has applied his knowledge to the study of the malarial parasite and the Anopheles mosquito, which both express aquaporins. In addition, since winning the Nobel Prize, he has enjoyed increased opportunities for bringing science to the public and for "encouraging young people to go into science."Download video file.^{(110M, mp4)}     

Therapeutic antibody engineering

It is an important event in any knowledge area when an authority in the field decides that it is time to share all accumulated knowledge and learnings by writing a text book. This does not occur often in the biopharmaceutical industry, likely due to both the highly dynamic environment with tight timelines and policies and procedures at many pharmaceutical companies that hamper knowledge sharing. To take on a task like this successfully, a strong drive combined with a desire and talent to teach, but also an accommodating and stimulating environment is required. Luckily for those interested in therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, Dr. William R. Strohl decided about two years ago that the time was right to write a book about the past, present and future of these fascinating molecules. Dr. Strohl’s great expertise and passion for biotechnology is evident from his life story and his strong academic and industry track record. Dr. Strohl pioneered natural product biotechnology, first in academia as a full professor of microbiology and biochemistry at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and later in industry while at Merck. Despite his notable advances in recombinant natural products, industry interest in this area waned and in 2001 Dr. Strohl sought new opportunities by entering the field of antibody therapeutics. He initiated antibody discovery through phage display at Merck, and then moved to Centocor Research and Development Inc. (now Janssen Biotech, Inc.) in 2008 to head Biologics Research, where he now directs the discovery of innovative therapeutic antibody candidates.     

Thomas Hunt Morgan as an Embryologist: The View from Bryn Mawr

Thomas Hunt Morgan taught at Bryn Mawr College from 1891 until1904. During his years there he concentrated his research interestson embryology; he included regeneration as an integral partof development. This article maintains that Morgan did not abandonhis interest in embryology when he became a geneticist at Columbia,but it deals mainly with his teaching and research while atBryn Mawr. He worked on the development of a great diversityof organisms, plant and animal, he used widely differing experimentalmethods to investigate them, and he concerned himself with manydifferent general and special problems. He strove to investigateproblems that were directly soluble by experimental intervention,and was highly critical, in the best possible way, of the experimentsand interpretations made by his contemporaries, who regardedhim as a leader. He exerted his influence on developmental biologynot only through his research, but also through a number offine textbooks, and by his teaching. During his Bryn Mawr yearshe encouraged his students, undergraduate and graduate, to carryout independent research. He sometimes published with them asco-author, but dozens of articles by his students were publishedwithout carrying Morgan's name as co-author.     

Milan Hasek and the discovery of immunological tolerance

This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a paper by Milan Hasek, in which he showed the phenomenon of immunological tolerance by the selective failure of chimaeric chick-embryo parabionts to produce antibodies against the red blood cells of each other. The discovery of tolerance was credited by the Nobel prize, but excluded Hasek, because he misinterpreted his original experimental results. Hasek exuded an impressive personality and a much admired joie de vivre. With the benefit of hindsight, this article assesses the background of the period and the circumstances that led to this important discovery. I discuss Hasek's experimental ingenuity, the influence of the Lysenkoist genetic doctrine, Hasek's acceptance of the immunological theory to explain his work and his role in establishing a successful institute at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.     

ECOLOGICAL WATER LEVEL MANAGEMENT STRATEGY FOR AQUATIC VEGETATION IN THE MID-LOWER YANGTZE SHALLOW LAKES北大核心CSCD

Eco-hydrological regulation of lakes have received more and more attentions in recent years, but systemic research on hydrological requirements of aquatic organisms is still limited. We systematically summarized the current status of aquatic plants and water level in the mid-lower Yangtze shallow lakes, influences of water level fluctuations on aquatic plants, and the requirement mode of water level fluctuation of aquatic plants. We also introduced a new method assessing ecological water level in shallow lakes based on aquatic plants, and provided corresponding strategies of water level regulations for lakes with different functions. © 2019, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.     

Effects of Carbon Nanotube Environmental Dispersion on an Aquatic Invertebrate,Hirudo medicinalis

The recent widespread applications of nanomaterials, because of their properties, opens new scenarios that affect their dispersal in the environment. In particular multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), despite their qualities, seem to be harmful for animals and humans. To evaluate possible toxic effects caused by carbon nanotube environmental dispersion, with regard to aquatic compartment, we proposed as experimental model a freshwater invertebrate: Hirudo medicinalis. In the present study we analyse acute and chronic immune responses over a short (1, 3, 6 and 12 hours) and long time (from 1 to 5 weeks) exposure to MWCNTs by optical, electron and immunohistochemical approaches. In the exposed leeches angiogenesis and fibroplasia accompanied by massive cellular migration occur. Immunocytochemical characterization using specific markers shows that in these inflammatory processes the monocyte-macrophages (CD45⁺, CD68⁺) are the most involved cells. These immunocompetent cells are characterized by sequence of events starting from the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines (in particular IL-18), and amyloidogenensis. Our combined experimental approaches, basing on high sensitive inflammatory response can highlight adverse effects of nanomaterials on aquatic organisms and could be useful to assess the MWCNTs impact on aquatic, terrestrial animal and human health.     

Toward the development of generally applicable models of the microbial loop in aquatic ecosystems

Simulation modeling has been an integral, albeit ad hoc, component of the field of aquatic microbial ecology for the past two decades. One of the most critical steps in simulation modeling is the initial formulation of a clear set of questions and goals. It is doubtful that a single generic model could be constructed to address adequately all questions of interest concerning the microbial loop because of the tremendous range in time scales that define these questions. Progress in the field of aquatic microbial ecology will benefit from an integrated research program including experimental and modeling approaches. A submodel of bacterial utilization of various qualities of organic matter that we have under construction is presented. This submodel will be a component of a larger model to evaluate the effects of quality and quantity of organic matter and inorganic nutrient inputs on estuarine food web structure and efficiency. The overall model will be general enough in its structure that it should be applicable to a wide range of questions concerning the microbial loop, with time scales ranging from hours to days.     

Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life

When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species 150 years ago he consciously avoided discussing the origin of life. However, analysis of some other texts written by Darwin, and of the correspondence he exchanged with friends and colleagues demonstrates that he took for granted the possibility of a natural emergence of the first life forms. As shown by notes from the pages he excised from his private notebooks, as early as 1837 Darwin was convinced that “the intimate relation of Life with laws of chemical combination, & the universality of latter render spontaneous generation not improbable”. Like many of his contemporaries, Darwin rejected the idea that putrefaction of preexisting organic compounds could lead to the appearance of organisms. Although he favored the possibility that life could appear by natural processes from simple inorganic compounds, his reluctance to discuss the issue resulted from his recognition that at the time it was possible to undertake the experimental study of the emergence of life.     

Ecology and Ethnobiology of the Slender-billed Grackle Quiscalus palustris

A renaissance-era encyclopedia compiled by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun and his research group of elite native scholars from the Royal College of the Holy Cross, Tlatelolco, Valley of Mexico, provides new information on the Slender-billed Grackle (Quiscalus palustris), a bird that disappeared before modern field studies of it could be made. In sixteenth-century Mexico, this grackle nested in emergent aquatic vegetation and in towns. It was abundant, went around in flocks, and did great damage in the maize crop. Although normally not eaten by humans, it was exploited for its feathers and sacrificed to the Aztec fire god. The Slender-billed Grackle inhabited both the Valley of Mexico and the Valley of Toluca. It was found in marshes, but the degree to which it was dependent on marsh habitats is unknown. Edward Alphonso Goldman, who saw living Slender-billed Grackles in the field, declined to call this bird a marsh specialist. Three records exist of Slender-billed Grackles and Great-tailed Grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) inhabiting the same locality during the same time period. The author recommends that searches for this grackle be expanded to include non-marsh habitats and areas outside its known historical range.     

Cornelis den hartog: An outstanding aquatic ecologist

A survey is given of the work and life of Cornelis den Hartog up to the date in 1996 at which he retired from his position as a professor at the University of Nijmegen. Cornelis (Kees) den Hartog made important contributions to aquatic ecology in the widest sense,e.g. on brackish water typology, meiofauna (microturbellaria), macroinvertebrates, littoral algae, seagrasses and aquatic macrophytes. He favoured the ecosystem approach in aquatic ecology by studying structure and functioning in an integrated way. He lead 31 students to their doctor's degree (PhD).     

Two Renowned Nigerian Scholars: Ikenna Nzimiro and Victor Chikesie Uchendu

The article honors two Nigerian anthropologists of Igbo background who recently passed away. Both scholars made major contributions to a broad range of scholarly thought in anthropology and in general social science to crucial issues in Nigerian politics, society and life. Nzimiro is considered in terms of his traditional anthropological training in Germany and England, through which he investigated four Niger River basin communities, and then his emergence as a Marxist anthropologist for the rest of his life in Nigeria, where he consistently critiqued neocolonialism in Nigeria. He explored issues of ethnicity, the Nigerian civil war, militarism, the state of the social sciences, the environment, Oguta culture, where he was born, ethnic conflicts, conditions at Nigerian universities, and other issues. Nzimiro generally rejected the post-colonial world, arguing that it was not revolutionary enough. Uchendu dealt with many of the same issues, but in contrast to Nzimiro he did so by accepting the existence of post-colonial Nigeria, though suggesting many ways to improve education, the environment, cultural and national transition, dependency theory, and to study urbanization and ethnicity, while also writing a major work on Igbo culture. Both authors are honored for their critiques of Nigerian society, as well as their contributions to Igbo ethnology.     

Beyondism: Raymond B. Cattell and the new eugenics

A significant confusion has arisen out of the mass of work done on the history of eugenics in the last two decades. Early scholars of the subject treated eugenics as a marginalized or obsolete movement of the radical right. Subsequent research has shown that eugenic ideas were adopted in diverse national settings by very different groups, including – among others – liberals, communists and Catholics, as well as radical rightists. This complexity is sometimes taken to mean that eugenics has no special ideological associations, that it is historically and potentially a beast of a thousand heads. It is not. Although people of varied ideological commitments have been attracted to eugenics, ideologues of the radical right, and above all interwar fascists, have been uniquely and centrally involved in its development. Fascism and the radical right are also complex entities, but for all the heterogeneity of both eugenics and fascism, the special historical relationship between the two cannot be ignored. This relationship is exemplified in the work of the influential psychologist, Raymond B. Cattell. Cattell was an early supporter of German national socialism and his work should be understood in the context of interwar fascism. The new religious movement that he founded, ‘Beyondism’, is a neo-fascist contrivance. Cattell now promulgates ideas that he formulated within a demimonde of radical eugenists and neo-fascists that includes such associates as Revilo Oliver, Roger Pearson, Wilmot Robertson and Robert K. Graham. These ideas and Cattell's role in the history of eugenics deserve deeper analysis than they have hitherto received. Far from being of merely antiquarian interest, his work currently encourages the propagation of radical eugenist ideology. It is unconscionable for scholars to permit these ideas to go unchallenged, and indeed honored and emulated by a new generation of ideologues and academicians whose work helps to dignify the most destructive political ideas of the twentieth century. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Immunomodulation by different types of N-oxides in the hemocytes of the marine bivalve Mytilus galloprovincialis

The potential toxicity of engineered nanoparticles (NPs) for humans and the environment represents an emerging issue. Since the aquatic environment represents the ultimate sink for NP deposition, the development of suitable assays is needed to evaluate the potential impact of NPs on aquatic biota. The immune system is a sensitive target for NPs, and conservation of innate immunity represents an useful basis for studying common biological responses to NPs. Suspension-feeding invertebrates, such as bivalves, are particularly at risk to NP exposure, since they have extremely developed systems for uptake of nano and microscale particles integral to intracellular digestion and cellular immunity. Evaluation of the effects of NPs on functional parameters of bivalve immunocytes, the hemocytes, may help understanding the major toxic mechanisms and modes of actions that could be relevant for different NP types in aquatic organisms.In this work, a battery of assays was applied to the hemocytes of the marine bivalve Mytilus galloprovincialis to compare the in vitro effects of different n-oxides (n-TiO(2), n-SiO(2), n-ZnO, n-CeO(2)) chosen on the basis of their commercial and environmental relevance. Physico-chemical characterization of both primary particles and NP suspensions in artificial sea water-ASW was performed. Hemocyte lysosomal and mitochondrial parameters, oxyradical and nitric oxide production, phagocytic activity, as well as NP uptake, were evaluated. The results show that different n-oxides rapidly elicited differential responses hemocytes in relation to their chemical properties, concentration, behavior in sea water, and interactions with subcellular compartments. These represent the most extensive data so far available on the effects of NPs in the cells of aquatic organisms. The results indicate that Mytilus hemocytes can be utilized as a suitable model for screening the potential effects of NPs in the cells of aquatic invertebrates, and may provide a basis for future experimental work for designing environmentally safer nanomaterials.     

Towards the analysis of vegetation succession

Attention is drawn to canonical analysis as a plausible model for analyzing vegetation succession. An assessment of the opportunities afforded by canonical analysis for this purpose is then made by reference to two applications of the method. The applications deal with characteristics of hydroseral processes and with the dynamic status of an area of lowland tropical rain forest. On the basis of these and other studies the conclusion is drawn that canonical analysis could contribute usefully in efforts to place the study of dynamic ecosystem processes on a more analytic footing.This work was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council award to L. Orlóci. It is a pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness both to Dr. Orlóci for his support and encouragement and to the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Western Ontario for hospitality and help. Appreciation is expressed also to Dr. John Ogden, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra for kindly placing his rain forest data at my disposal and for his invaluable help in interpreting the results of analyses of these data.