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Dominican Republic: History
The island of Hispaniola, of which the Dominican Republic forms the eastern two-thirds and Haiti the remainder, was originally occupied by Tainos, an Arawak-speaking people. The Tainos welcomed Columbus in his first voyage in 1492, but subsequent colonizers were brutal, reducing the Taino population from about 1 million to about 500 in 50 years. To ensure adequate labor for plantations, the Spanish brought African slaves to the island beginning in 1503.
In the next century, French settlers occupied the western end of the island, which Spain ceded to France in 1697, and which, in 1804, became the Republic of Haiti. The Haitians conquered the whole island in 1822 and held it until 1844, when forces led by Juan Pablo Duarte, the hero of Dominican independence, drove them out and established the Dominican Republic as an independent state. In 1861, the Dominicans voluntarily returned to the Spanish Empire; in 1865, independence was restored. Economic difficulties, the threat of European intervention, and ongoing internal disorders led to a U.S. occupation in 1916 and the establishment of a military government in the Dominican Republic. The occupation ended in 1924, with a democratically elected Dominican Government.
In 1930, Rafael L. Trujillo, a prominent army commander, established absolute political control. Trujillo promoted economic development--from which he and his supporters benefited--and severe repression of domestic human rights. Mismanagement and corruption resulted in major economic problems. In August 1960, the Organization of American States (OAS) imposed diplomatic sanctions against the Dominican Republic as a result of Trujillo's complicity in an attempt to assassinate President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela. These sanctions remained in force after Trujillo's death by assassination in May 1961. In November 1961, the Trujillo family was forced into exile.
In January 1962, a council of state that included moderate opposition elements with legislative and executive powers was formed. OAS sanctions were lifted January 4, and, after the resignation of President Joaquin Balaguer on January 16, the council under President Rafael E. Bonnelly headed the Dominican Government.
In 1963, Juan Bosch was inaugurated president. Bosch was overthrown in a military coup in September 1963. Another military coup, on April 24, 1965, led to violence between military elements favoring the return to government by Bosch and those who proposed a military junta committed to early general elections. On April 28, U.S. military forces landed to protect U.S. citizens and to evacuate U.S. and other foreign nationals.
Additional U.S. forces subsequently established order. In June 1966, President Balaguer, leader of the Reformist Party (now called the Social Christian Reformist Party--PRSC), was elected and then re-elected to office in May 1970 and May 1974, both times after the major opposition parties withdrew late in the campaign. In the May 1978 election, Balaguer was defeated in his bid for a fourth successive term by Antonio Guzman of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). Guzman's inauguration on August 16 marked the country's first peaceful transfer of power from one freely elected president to another.
The PRD's presidential candidate, Salvador Jorge Blanco, won the 1982 elections, and the PRD gained a majority in both houses of Congress. In an attempt to cure the ailing economy, the Jorge administration began to implement economic adjustment and recovery policies, including an austerity program in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In April 1984, rising prices of basic foodstuffs and uncertainty about austerity measures led to riots.
Balaguer was returned to the presidency with electoral victories in 1986 and 1990. Upon taking office in 1986, Balaguer tried to reactivate the economy through a public works construction program. Nonetheless, by 1988 the country had slid into a 2-year economic depression, characterized by high inflation and currency devaluation. Economic difficulties, coupled with problems in the delivery of basic services--e.g., electricity, water, transportation--generated popular discontent that resulted in frequent protests, occasionally violent, including a paralyzing nationwide strike in June 1989.
In 1990, Balaguer instituted a second set of economic reforms. After concluding an IMF agreement, balancing the budget, and curtailing inflation, the Dominican Republic experienced a period of economic growth marked by moderate inflation, a balance in external accounts, and a steadily increasing GDP that lasted through 2000.
The voting process in 1986 and 1990 was generally seen as fair, but allegations of electoral board fraud tainted both victories. The elections of 1994 were again marred by charges of fraud. Following a compromise calling for constitutional and electoral reform, President Balaguer assumed office for an abbreviated term and Congress amended the constitution to bar presidential succession.
Since 1996, the Dominican electoral process has been seen as generally free and fair. In June 1996, Leonel Fernandez Reyna of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) was elected to a 4-year term as president. Fernandez's political agenda was one of economic and judicial reform. He helped enhance Dominican participation in hemispheric affairs, such as the OAS and the followup to the Miami Summit. On May 16, 2000, Hipolito Mejia, the PRD candidate, was elected president in another free and fair election, defeating PLD candidate Danilo Medina and former president Balaguer. Mejia championed the cause of free trade and Central American and Caribbean economic integration. The Dominican Republic signed a free trade agreement (CAFTA-DR) with the United States and five Central American countries in August 2004, in the last weeks of the Mejia administration. During the Mejia administration, the government sponsored and obtained anti-trafficking and anti-money-laundering legislation, sent troops to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom, and ratified the Article 98 agreement it had signed in 2002. Mejia faced mounting domestic problems as a deteriorating economy--caused in large part by the government's measures to deal with massive bank fraud--and constant power shortages plagued the latter part of his administration.
During the Mejia administration, the constitution was amended to permit an incumbent president to seek a second successive term, and Mejia ran for re-election. On May 16, 2004, Leonel Fernandez was elected president, defeating Mejia 57.11% to 33.65%. Eduardo Estrella of the PRSC received 8.65% of the vote. Fernandez took office on August 16, 2004, promising in his inaugural speech to promote fiscal austerity, to fight corruption and to support social concerns. Fernandez said the Dominican Republic would support policies favoring international peace and security through multilateral mechanisms in conformity with the United Nations and the OAS. On May 16, 2008, President Fernandez was re-elected president with 53.8% of the vote. The Fernandez administration works closely with the United States on law enforcement, immigration, and counterterrorism matters.
Congressional and municipal elections were held in May 2010, with Fernandez’s PLD winning a slim majority of seats in the House of Representatives and 31 of 32 Senate seats, as well as a plurality of mayoral seats. President Fernandez’s role in the victorious congressional campaign led his supporters to promote his candidacy for re-election in 2012. The new constitution promulgated in January 2010 would seem to prohibit this, and ultimately Fernandez announced that he would not run in the 2012 elections. Following primary contests, the 2012 presidential race is divided between the ruling PLD's candidate, Danilo Medina, and the opposition PRD's candidate, former President Hipolito Mejia.
Sources:CIA World Factbook (March 2012)
U.S. Dept. of State Country Background Notes ( March 2012) | <urn:uuid:84ce1aba-46ff-4f03-a40d-d8d1bfa8c69a> | {
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Each year people from every walk of life, regardless of religion or political affiliation, gather for a National Day of Prayer that’s held on the first Thursday in May. Hoping to capitalize on the attention given to the National Day of Prayer, the American Humanist Association and the Secular Coalition of America “are joining forces to combat the National Day of Prayer by promoting the National Day of Reason.”
The history of prayer for our nation goes back to at least 1775 when the Continental Congress asked the colonies to pray for wisdom in forming a new nation. The day was officially recognized in 1952 when President Harry Truman signed into law a proclamation for an annual day of prayer.
Now the atheists want in on the action. They are claiming that we can solve our problems with reason alone. The reason-alone approach has been tried before with bloody results. The Enlightenment philosophers of the eighteenth century rejected the Christian religion and declared reason to be supreme. “Europe disintegrated because the goddess of Reason, whom the French revolutionaries placed, in the shape of a Parisian streetwalker, upon the altar of Notre Dame,” became France’s new authority. Outfitted in the attire of a Roman goddess, she was “carried shoulder‑high into the cathedral by men dressed in Roman costumes.”
To make the transition from the old religion of Christianity to the new religion of reason-worship the church of Notre Dame was reconsecrated to the “Cult of Reason.”
In the France of 1793, Reason was not only a god that failed, she was a goddess who cut her own throat. The fanaticism of reason that gripped the French revolutionaries convinced them that they could create a republic of reason out of thin air — or more correctly, out of hot air. The men who came up with the idea of celebrating the Festival of Reason were all quite intelligent men—rational actors in the most pronounced sense of this word. They were determined not only to think for themselves and control their own lives, but to build a society that would meet their ideals.
Belief in reason over religion is beginning to look like the modern materialist’s new savior. Sam Harris tries to make this point in his book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. Al Gore argues in a similar way in The Assault on Reason. If people were only reasonable, they and others argue, all would be right with the world.
Harris and the other reason-alone advocates don’t not tell us whose version of reason we are to follow. Is it the reason of the French Revolutionaries who hadn’t met a head they didn’t want to lop off or the reason of the Stalinists who believed the Gulag was a good place for someone to “get his mind right”? Maybe we should follow the reasoning of Aristotle who believed in the reasonableness and “natural order” for the institution of slavery because there are some people who are “slaves by nature.”
One last thing. The reason-only crowd contend that the Constitution is a “secular document” that does not mention anything about religion. It should be pointed out that the word “reason” does not appear in the body of the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment does use the word “unreasonable searches and seizures.” While the word “reason” is not found, a reference to Jesus Christ is. Just above George Washington’s signature, the following is found:
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names.
- Richard Hertz, Chance and Symbol (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), 100. [↩]
- Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (1976) in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, 5 vols. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1984), 5:122. [↩]
- Lee Harris, The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 67. [↩] | <urn:uuid:f3376b96-3476-4692-8854-85a55419a773> | {
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Dolly Sods Wilderness Description
Dolly Sods Wilderness is part of the Monongahela National Forest system. Much of the land in the higher elevations consists of eco-systems that are more commonly seen much further north in Canada.
The 17,000 acre wilderness has 47 miles of hiking trails, many of which follow old logging roads and railroad grades. The area is very popular with hikers, backpackers, cross-country skiiers, and campers.
Note: During World War II, the military used this wilderness area as a training ground. Many of the mortar and artillery shells used still exist, some of which could still be live.
The trails and campsites were surveyed in 1997, at which time 15 shells were discovered, some of which were live.
These were exploded on site. Please do not wander off of the designated trails as there could be live ordnances.
Note: For a printed map of the trails in the Canaan Valley, we highly recommend the 'Explorer Trail Map' by Voila Interactive Concepts.
This map was meticulously compiled by a local resident and is an excellent guide of the vast trail network in the Canaan Valley. You can find
it at local outdoor shops such as Blackwater Bikes in Davis and at the Timberline Resort store. | <urn:uuid:29821568-e568-4b0a-8307-1faf075a08d6> | {
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A Day in the Life of a Governor
- Using the Pupil Voice
- Recruiting for success
- Extended Schools
- Improving Attendance
- Involving Parents
School Case Study – Using the Pupil Voice
Primary School E – Governors use pupil voice to conduct school evaluation and monitor school improvement.
When the governors at the School were asked to provide evidence for the pupil-outcome based Ofsted evaluations, they realised that it was relatively straightforward to present the actions the school had taken, but it was not quite as easy to show the difference they had made. So for example, when asked about how children in the school felt about bullying or staying healthy, evidence presented tended to be about what had been done to tackle the issues, rather than the impact of those actions.
So working together with link adviser, they followed a scheme that brought governors, senior management and pupils together to check whether the support strategies being delivered were making a difference.
So how did they do it?
- They focused on three or four children from each class and invited them to attend a session, asking them to take some of their books. Members of the senior leadership team and governing bodies were invited to the group (but not class teachers).
- During the group session, after being put at ease, the children were asked a series of 20 questions about enjoyment, safety, health, participation, standards and suggestions. Some examples of questions included:
- What subjects do you like at school?
- Which subjects are hardest for you?
- Why does your teacher mark your books?
- What gets in the way of your learning?
- Is your work too easy, too hard or just right?
- Do you feel safe in school? What have you learnt about being safe?
- How do you keep healthy?
The link adviser initially ran the pupil meeting; however, the governors soon got the hang of it and started to lead with the questioning. After the first group had finished, the governors split into two teams to conduct the sessions simultaneously with different year groups.
- Following the discussion, the outcomes were shared with teachers and any actions agreed.
The Chair of Governors, attended the sessions with two other governors and the head teacher. He said: “It was lovely to see the children react to the questions posed to them and it proved an interesting and worthwhile exercise. “With one group, we were particularly pleased about how well aware they were of safety – both in and out of the school – and with another group, how they valued the work of the school council.” A number of other primary schools in the North have also adopted this approach and each discovered areas where the schools could improve their performance.
In one school, it was found that despite achieving good outcomes, the children weren’t clear on their targets, therefore governors left knowing they would have to question the head about how they would communicate with the children about targets. In another, children said how much they liked the extracurricular homework club, so the school increased the time it was made available and also widened the criteria for attendance.
How have governors benefited from this approach?
- It provided an opportunity to gain first-hand knowledge of learning and issues in the classroom
- It enabled them to participate in the school monitoring and self-evaluation processes
- It helped to inform the Ofsted process
- It gave them a better understanding of the self-evaluation framework (SEF) and the links to the school improvement process.
How has this supported school improvement?
- It has provided a great opportunity to collect evidence for the SEF, especially regarding personal development and wellbeing
- Schools can reflect on whether the support strategies they are delivering are appropriate and making an impact
- Governors and staff receive feedback directly from the children to help identify areas for school improvement
- Schools get a better understanding of how they can extend and accelerate the progress of underachieving children
- The school has an evidence trail of actions being taken to address underachievement and can monitor the impact of agreed strategies.
Recruiting for success
Governor D is the Chair of Governors at Primary School F, a special school catering for pupils aged 2–16 with complex medical conditions. In May 2007 it was judged as outstanding, and therefore when the headteacher announced she was retiring, it was crucial to find the right replacement. We spoke to Governor D about the school’s journey, which involved three recruitment campaigns before they finally got their headteacher.
How did you prepare for the recruitment process?
We convened a full governing body meeting, where we formed a five-person selection panel (helpful to avoid a split vote). It was important that we had different types of governors on the panel and that each understood the commitment required of them. We enlisted the support of experienced representatives from the local authority, who could guide us on areas such as safeguarding, equal opportunities, salaries and so on. We also prepared a contingency plan, in case we were not able to appoint first time round – worthwhile planning, as we ended up appointing the deputy after our first round failed to find the right person.
How did you define the type of person you were looking for?
We thought about the future development of the school and the specific leadership qualities needed. We are part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme and are bidding for specialist status in the Special Educational Needs (SEN) strand of communication and interaction, so we needed someone who could develop the school in this direction, while maintaining our ‘outstanding’ Ofsted judgement. We used the School Improvement Plan and Ofsted reports, looked at our self-evaluation data, and of course the criteria outlined in the National Standards for Headteachers. We changed the person specification second time round as we felt our first attempt was too narrow and that we were excluding some good candidates by being too specific about experience required.
How did you attract the right quality of candidate?
We were supported by management support advisers in putting together the job advert. I would strongly urge other governing bodies not to scrimp on advert placement – making it stand out will cost a little more up front, but will pay dividends if it gets the attention of the right candidates. We prepared a high-quality recruitment pack, which included job description, person specification, school information and the recruitment timetable (including interview dates). On our third attempt, we even invited people on a tour around the school before they applied – this helped candidates make a decision about whether it was the right school for them, and helped our short-listing process.
How did you select?
First time round, we didn’t even short-list. Second and third time round we got a much better response, probably due to the revised person specification, more prominent advert and better timed placement (by advertising earlier in the year we caught those looking for a new job for the new school year). As well as a match to the job description and person specification, we looked for two things in particular in the application letters: did they include how they could address the needs of our particular school, and did they include what impact their actions had in previous schools? We used a simple scoring matrix and short-listed up to three candidates to invite for interview. We used a variety of activities over two days to assess candidates, including teaching a class, undertaking a written task, a presentation and a formal interview. However, one of the most interesting and perceptive activities was the use of pupils from the school council, who fed back to the selection panel following time spent questioning each candidate.
How did you make sure you’d made the right choice?
We were confident that we had an outstanding candidate however, we took up references from his current school in as well as previous schools. We also advised the local authority, which did its own checks, before ratifying the decision with the full governing body.
What did your induction programme look like?
We kept in contact with the new head by email, and set up a number of meetings with the current acting head and the chair. He was invited to key events at the school (such as the SIP visit and BSF meetings) and spent a day with the senior leadership team. An assembly was held to introduce the new head to the school before the end of the summer term.
How would you summarise your recruitment campaign?
We had three attempts to recruit, but it was well worth the wait to get the right person. My advice to others would be to have the courage to keep going until you find the candidate you need. Getting the right headteacher is vital for the whole school community, but most importantly for the pupils.
Further guidance materials from the NCSL are available to help governors recruit headteachers and senior leaders. You can access them via http://www.nationalcollege.org.uk/ and Seven steps to successful recruitment
A research study by the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) found that the process of recruiting and appointing staff can be broken down into seven stages:
Step 1: Preparation
Getting ready to run an effective recruitment campaign
Step 2: Definition
Understanding and describing your ideal candidate
Step 3: Attraction
Getting the right people to apply
Step 4: Selection
Choosing the best candidate
Step 5: Appointment
Securing your chosen candidate
Step 6: Induction
Giving you a strong head start
Step 7: Evaluation
Learning from the experience
Extended Schools Case Study
Barrie Chalmers, headteacher at St Mary’s C of E, Moss Side, tells us how his school has developed a wide range of extended services for pupils, parents and the community, and gives us his top tips:
At St Mary’s C of E we offer a wide range of extended provision, from breakfast and after-school clubs, to a weekend Arabic school used by the local Arabic speaking community. The school is open from 8am to 6pm on weekdays. Some pupils take T’ai Chi classes before lessons begin, and until recently we worked with the local karate centre to provide a karate club.
We provide the Webster-Stratton parenting course, and our first group of 16 parents have recently completed the ten-week programme. Four of our staff are now trained as family intervention workers, which has made a real difference. Instead of referring families to social workers, we can now intervene and offer support ourselves where appropriate. We run an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) course for parents in collaboration with the Windrush Centre, which is invaluable to our many parents who don’t speak English as their first language.
“Our governing body has been key. It has put in a lot of time and effort to achieve this success.” It has been key in allowing us to develop our range of extended provision. It put in a formal bid to become one of the city’s pilot extended schools and put in a lot of time and effort to achieve this. We realised some time ago that the key to improving outcomes for our children was not just teaching and learning, but in offering a wider range of opportunities for children and particularly their parents. The governors have always recognised the impact extended schooling can have and have offered their full support for this.
We have found that working with partners has been an important part of our extended provision. We work with Manchester Academy to provide vocational experience for our year 5 and 6 pupils in a range of industries, and we have also developed close links with Whalley Range and Trinity High Schools.
“The rewards for creating as wide a range of opportunities as possible for pupils, parents and the community are massive.”
Building a successful extended offer takes a lot of time and effort, but the opportunities are there in any school and do not require special facilities. Providing good teaching and learning will, of course, always be a hugely important part of any school, but the rewards for creating as wide a range of opportunities as possible for pupils, parents and the community are massive. One final thing to remember is that extended provision is not a ‘bolt-on’ to your school. It will completely change the way the school works but, if done effectively, the benefits will be reaped by everyone.
- Don’t try and do too much too soon. Building an effective extended offer will take time, so build slowly and consolidate.
- Involve parents in any plans to introduce new provision – either they or their children will almost certainly be using it.
- Remember that things will go wrong. If something does not work, learn from it, and do not be afraid to try new things.
- Governing bodies have a vital role to play. Discuss how advanced your school’s extended offer is. Ask the leadership team what plans they have to develop extended provision and what benefits they would expect these to bring.
- Be imaginative! There is no right or wrong type of extended provision. Build on the opportunities that exist in your school and respond to the needs of your pupils, parents and community
Improving Attendance: A Governor’s Perspective
Sue Murphy is chair of governors at Brookway High School. She tells us how governors have been involved in helping to reduce absence at the school.
What measures have been used by Brookway to try and improve attendance?
We have tried as a governing body to really focus on attendance over a sustained period. We make sure that attendance is always an item on the agenda for the governing body to discuss. As a governing body we acknowledged that attendance was an issue, and we hold a regular monitoring working group involving a small panel of governors and the school leadership team to look at the School Improvement Plan, making sure one of the things we focus on is attendance.
This allowed us to really look at the impacts of measures we were employing. In terms of specific measures, we have used incentive schemes, as well as attendance panels which have helped to bring home to parents/carers and pupils the importance of attending school. One of the most crucial factors we have found has been to get on top of any potential attendance issues early, ensuring that all staff at the school see it as part of their role – staff have worked really hard to improve attendance.
Can you say a bit about how improved attendance has impacted on the school generally?
There is a link between improving attendance and raising attainment within the school, and getting a grip on attendance issues allows more pupils to benefit from efforts made to improve teaching and learning. Attendance is also often linked to a range of wider issues, so by engaging with children that are often absent and their parents, I think as a school we have been able to help to deal with some of these associated issues.
How have governors been involved in tackling attendance issues?
We have tried as a governing body to get really involved in improving attendance. We appointed a lead governor to focus on attendance issues and report back to the governing body on this. We also make sure that the attendance policy is reviewed regularly and that staff, pupils and parents are aware of the policy.
What advice would you give to other governors looking to improve their school’s attendance?
Just keep going! Raising attendance levels can be a slow process but it is just a case of making sure that you keep trying. Be prepared to try new things and be imaginative when tackling absence issues, making sure you evaluate well and keep doing what works. With commitment from the whole governing body and everyone else in the school, attendance levels can be raised.
Ofsted – a governor’s experience
Angela O’Hagan, Chair of GB at Crumsall Lane Primary School
Leading up to the inspection, was the school and governing body optimistic about the outcome?
We were aware that we were due an Ofsted inspection and that governance had been an issue at the previous inspection. Therefore, we had been working for some time towards becoming more effective as a governing body and, by the time this inspection was due, we were quite confident that policies and procedures were up to date and working well. We have an excellent clerk who supports us well and the Local Authority also provided valuable support by way of documents and a presentation to governors about increasing their effectiveness.
How did you prepare?
In readiness for Ofsted, governors made sure that they were familiar with the latest version of the SEF and School Improvement Plan, both of which we monitor regularly. Once the school received ‘the phone call’, I met briefly with the headteacher and deputy to make sure that I was completely up to date with any developments since the last governing body meeting and that I had the latest pupil progress data. We also ensured that the latest sub-committee meeting minutes were on file. As I know a Chair of Governors at another school, we had a brief chat about their recent experience of Ofsted.
Did you, or any other governors, attend school during the inspection?
As Chair, I was interviewed by one of the three Ofsted inspectors. My interview lasted about half an hour, was much more relaxed than I had feared, and in fact was extremely positive. I felt that the purpose of this interview was for the inspector to allow me to demonstrate my knowledge and commitment to the school, rather than trying to ‘catch me out’ so I would say that as long as you know your school well and can back up what you say you know with evidence then there is nothing to fear from Ofsted from a governor’s point of view.
Involving Parents Spring 2010
Abdoulie Drameh, parent governor at Cheetwood Primary School, tells us about the work being done at his school to involve parents.
What is going on at Cheetwood?
Although the school was already committed to involving parents, the past year has seen an increase in this type of work. There has been lots going on recently, including two really successful family learning weeks, which involved the whole school as well as many local partners. During both events, parents were asked what they enjoyed and what they would like to see in future.
Parents said they wanted more sports and fitness events as well as computer training, and they also enjoyed being part of their children’s learning and wanted more support to be able to help their children. This was all taken on board, resulting in a Pilates class, football training for kids and parents together, as well as opportunities for parents to work alongside their children in school time. A six-week computer course has also been offered to parents through Manchester Adult Education Service. Eighty parents attended school during events held for Manchester Parents’ Week, which was a great turnout. Parents have also been invited to join focus groups about policies such as cyber-bullying, and the school has written parent-friendly versions of policies.
What have you been involved in as a parent?
I seem to be in school all the time! I always try to attend events that the school invites parents to. I also go to the district network meetings, and recently I attended the parents’ conference at the Town Hall, which gave me a few good ideas to pass on to school.
How does the governing body get involved?
The governing body is always interested in how the school is involving parents. The teacher with responsibility for Every Child Matters, Tina Bakin, feeds back to the headteacher, who then briefs governors about how the school is working with parents. I also feed back from any events I have attended, as well as any relevant issues I have been speaking to parents about. The school is also part of the pilot of the Leading Parent Partnership Award (LPPA), which the governing body is very interested in supporting.
How do you make contact with parents and encourage them to get involved?
I speak to other parents on an informal basis all the time, and make sure that I let them know what’s going on at school and how they can be involved. I will also support parents to get involved if possible; for example I accompanied one parent to a couple of events and also encouraged one interested parent to stand for parent governor at the next election. In addition, I listen to the concerns of parents, and guide them in the right direction to solve any problems.
What has been the impact of the work that has been carried out with parents?
The turnout at events is increasing every time, including among parents who did not attend school previously. There has also been an increase in the number of parents volunteering in school. The teachers say they have seen positive effects on the children, who say they like their parents being involved in their work. | <urn:uuid:670b93f2-a476-4155-9593-4761247663e7> | {
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HP OpenVMS Systems Documentation
OpenVMS Debugger Manual
4.2.2 ASCII String Types
When displaying an ASCII string value, the debugger encloses it within quotation marks (") or apostrophes ('), depending on the language syntax. For example:
To deposit a string value (including a single character) into a string variable, you must enclose the value in quotation marks (") or apostrophes ('). For example:
If the string has more ASCII characters (1 byte each) than can fit into the location denoted by the address expression, the debugger truncates the extra characters from the right and issues the following message:
If the string has fewer characters, the debugger pads the remaining
characters to the right of the string by inserting ASCII space
You can examine an entire array aggregate, a single indexed element, or a slice (a range of elements). However, you can deposit into only one element at a time. The following examples show typical operations with arrays.
The following command displays the values of all the elements of the array variable ARRX, a one-dimensional array of integers:
The following command displays the value of element 4 of array ARRX (depending on the language, parentheses or brackets are used to denote indexed elements):
The following command displays the values of all the elements in a slice of ARRX. This slice consists of the range of elements from element 2 to element 5:
You can deposit a value to only a single array element at a time (you cannot deposit to an array slice or an entire array aggregate with a single DEPOSIT command). For example, the following command deposits the value 53 into element 2 of ARRX:
The following command displays the values of all the elements of array REAL_ARRAY, a two-dimensional array of real numbers (three per dimension):
The debugger issues a diagnostic message if you try to deposit to an index value that is out of bounds. For example:
In the previous example, the deposit operation was executed because the diagnostic message is of I level. This means that the value of some array element adjacent to (1,3), possibly (2,1) might have been affected by the out-of-bounds deposit operation.
To deposit the same value to several components of an array, you can use a looping command such as FOR or REPEAT. For example, assign the value RED to elements 1 to 4 of the array COLOR_ARRAY:
You can examine an entire record aggregate, a single record component, or several components. However, you can deposit into only one component at a time. The following examples show typical operations with records.
The following command displays the values of all the components of the record variable PART:
The following command displays the value of component IN_STOCK of record PART (general syntax):
The following command displays the value of the same record component using COBOL syntax (the language must be set to COBOL):
The following command displays the values of two components of record PART:
The following command deposits a value into record component IN_STOCK:
4.2.5 Pointer (Access) Types
You can examine the entity designated (pointed to) by a pointer variable and deposit a value into that entity. You can also examine a pointer variable.
For example, the following Pascal code declares a pointer variable A that designates a value of type real:
The following command displays the value of the entity designated by the pointer variable A:
In the following example, the value 3.9 is deposited into the entity designated by A:
When you specify the name of a pointer variable with the EXAMINE command, the debugger displays the memory address of the object it designates. For example:
The debugger recognizes address expressions that are associated with instructions. This enables you to examine and deposit instructions using the same basic techniques as with variables.
When debugging at the instruction level, you might find it convenient to first enter the following command. It sets the default step mode to stepping by instruction:
There are other step modes that enable you to execute the program to specific kinds of instructions. You can also set breakpoints to interrupt execution at these instructions.
If you specify an address expression that is associated with an instruction in an EXAMINE command (for example, a line number), the debugger displays the first instruction at that location. You can then use the period (.), Return key, and circumflex (^) to display the current, next, and previous instruction (logical entity), as described in Section 4.1.8.
For example, on Alpha processors:
Line numbers, routine names, and labels are symbolic address expressions that are associated with instructions. In addition, instructions might be stored in various other memory addresses and in certain registers during the execution of your program.
The program counter (PC) is the register that contains the address of the next instruction to be executed by your program. The command EXAMINE .%PC displays that instruction. The period (.), when used directly in front of an address expression, denotes the contents of operator---that is, the contents of the location designated by the address expression. Note the following distinction:
On VAX processors, you can use the /OPERANDS qualifier to control the amount of information displayed when you enter the EXAMINE .%PC command:
On VAX processors, use the /OPERANDS qualifier only when examining the current PC instruction. The information might not be reliable if you specify other locations. The command SET MODE [NO]OPERANDS enables you to control the default behavior of the EXAMINE .%PC command.
As shown in the previous examples, the debugger knows whether an address expression is associated with an instruction. If it is, the EXAMINE command displays that instruction (you do not need to use the /INSTRUCTION qualifier). You use the /INSTRUCTION qualifier to display the contents of an arbitrary program location as an instruction---that is, the command EXAMINE/INSTRUCTION causes the debugger to interpret and format the contents of any program location as an instruction (see Section 4.5.2).
When you examine consecutive instructions in a MACRO-32 program, the debugger might misinterpret data as instructions if storage for the data is allocated in the middle of a stream of instructions. The following example shows this problem. It shows some MACRO-32 code with two longwords of data storage allocated directly after the BRB instruction at line 7 (line numbers have been added to the example for clarity).
The following EXAMINE command displays the instruction at the start of line 6:
The following EXAMINE command correctly interprets and displays the logical successor entity as an instruction at line 7:
However, the following three EXAMINE commands incorrectly interpret the three logical successors as instructions:
4.3.2 Depositing Instructions (VAX Only)
On VAX processors, you can deposit instructions as well as examine them. Use the following DEPOSIT command syntax:
You must enclose language-expression (an assembly-language instruction) in either quotation marks or apostrophes. The /INSTRUCTION qualifier indicates that the delimited string is an instruction and not an ASCII string. Or, if you plan to deposit several instructions, you can first enter the SET TYPE/OVERRIDE INSTRUCTION command (see Section 4.5.2). You then do not need to use the /INSTRUCTION qualifier on the DEPOSIT command.
Instructions occupy different numbers of bytes depending on their operands. When depositing instructions of arbitrary lengths into successive memory locations, use the logical successor operator (Return key) to establish the next unoccupied location where an instruction can be deposited. The following example shows the technique:
When you replace an instruction, be sure that the new instruction, including operands, is the same length in bytes as the old instruction. If the new instruction is longer, you cannot deposit it without overwriting, which will destroy the next instruction. If the new instruction occupies fewer bytes of memory than the old one, you must deposit NOP instructions (instructions that cause no operation) in bytes of memory left unoccupied after the replacement. The debugger does not warn you if an instruction you are depositing will overwrite a subsequent instruction, nor does it remind you to fill in vacant bytes of memory with NOPs.
The following example shows how to replace an instruction with an instruction of equal length:
4.4 Examining and Depositing into Registers
The VAX architecture provides 16 general registers and 18 vector registers, some of which are used for temporary address and data storage. Table 4-1 identifies the debugger built-in symbols that refer to VAX registers.
On VAX processors:
On Alpha processors, the Alpha architecture provides 32 general (integer) registers and 32 floating-point registers, some of which are used for temporary address and data storage. Table 4-2 identifies the debugger built-in symbols that refer to Alpha registers.
On Alpha processors:
The following examples show how to examine and deposit into registers:
On VAX processors, the processor status longword (PSL) is a register whose value represents a number of processor state variables. The first 16 bits of the PSL (referred to separately as the processor status word, or PSW) contain unprivileged information about the current processor state. The values of these bits can be controlled by a user program. The latter 16 bits of the PSL, bits 16 to 31, contain privileged information and cannot be altered by a user-mode program.
The following example shows how to examine the contents of the PSL:
See the VAX Architecture Handbook for complete information about the PSL, including the values of the various bits.
You can also display the information in the PSL in other formats. For example:
The command EXAMINE/PSL displays the value at any location in PSL format. This is useful for examining saved PSLs on the call stack.
To disable all conditions in the PSL, clear bits 0 to 15 with the following DEPOSIT command: | <urn:uuid:fe413c4f-cc79-4a2f-9239-45852f745255> | {
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If you’re in to making your own PCBs at home, you know the trials of etching copper clad boards. It’s slow, even if you’re gently rocking your etch tank or even using an aquarium pump to agitate your etching solution. [cunning_fellow] over on Instructables has the solution to your etching problems, and can even produce printmaking plates, jewelry, photochemically machine small parts, and make small brass logos of your second favorite website.
The Etchinator is a spray etcher, so instead of submerging a copper clad board into a vat of ferric or cupric chloride, etching solution is sprayed onto the board. We’ve seen this technique before, but previous builds use pumps to spray the etching solution and cost a bundle. [cunning_fellow]‘s Etchinator doesn’t used pumps; it’s driven by two cordless drill motors sucking up etching solution through a hollow tube.
The basic idea behind the build is sticking a vertical PVC pipe in a box with etching solution. Mount an impeller in the bottom of the tube, drill many small holes in the side of the tube, and spin it with a motor up top. The solution is sucked up the tube, sprayed out the sides, and falls back down into the reservoir. Put a masked off copper board in the tank and Bob’s your uncle.
Not only did [cunning_fellow] come up with an awesome PCB etching solution, but the same machine can be used for etching brass plate for printmaking, and even photoetching brass sheets for model planes, trains, and automobiles. The quality is really amazing; the Instructables robot above was etched out of 0.7 mm thick brass, with an etch depth of 0.35 mm with only 0.05 mm of undercut. A very awesome build that is already on our ‘to build’ project list. | <urn:uuid:524653ff-9c6f-46e9-94a8-e668d1284ade> | {
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“ is the most significant black democratic socialist of early twentieth-century America. Jeffrey B. Perry has brought his thought and practice to life in a powerful and persuasive manner.” — Cornel West, Princeton University
“Jeffrey Perry’s significant biography lives up to the promise of its title. Finally, the voice of this majorprogressive is to be heard again loud and clear.” — David Levering Lewis, New York University, and author of a two-volume biography of
This is just some of the praise that Jeffrey B. Perry’s extraordinary new biography Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 has already earned. Perry’s work recounts and recovers the legacy and life and times of Hubert Harrison, a thinker and activist who influenced Marcus Garvey, Du Bois, and other important political and cultural figures of the Harlem Renaissance.
Please let me know if you would like a review copy of the book, would like to interview the author or have Jeffrey Perry contribute to your site.
For more information, you can also read the book’s introduction or read Jeffrey Perry’s postings on the Columbia University Press blog, here and here. (Please feel free to link to or excerpt from these materials.)
More on Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918:
Hubert Harrison was an immensely skilled writer, orator, educator, critic, and political activist who, more than any other political leader of his era, combined class consciousness and anti-white-supremacist race consciousness into a coherent political radicalism. Harrison’s ideas profoundly influenced “New Negro” militants, including A. Philip Randolph and Marcus Garvey, and his synthesis of class and race issues is a key unifying link between the two great trends of the Black Liberation Movement: the labor- and civil-rights-based work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the race and nationalist platform associated with Malcolm X.
The foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician of the Socialist Party of New York, Harrison was also the founder of the “New Negro” movement, the editor of , and the principal radical influence on the Garvey movement. He was a highly praised journalist and critic (reportedly the first regular Black book reviewer), a freethinker and early proponent of birth control, a supporter of Black writers and artists, a leading public intellectual, and a bibliophile who helped transform the 135th Street Public Library into an international center for research in Black culture. His biography offers profound insights on race, class, religion, immigration, war, democracy, and social change in America.
Thank you for your time and I hope you and your readers will be interested in this major contribution to. | <urn:uuid:85e07070-dfe7-4383-816d-9d3a9f9d6c66> | {
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Racism is Innate: The Human Brain Makes Unconscious Decisions Based on Ethnicity – “Racism is hardwired into the brain and operates unconsciously because areas that detect ethnicity and control emotion are closely connected, according to scientists.” – original research article. see also How the brain views race.
CSIC recovers part of the genome of 2 hunter-gatherer individuals from 7,000 years ago – “The DNA data, which represent the 1.34% and the 0.5% of both individuals total genome, show that they are not directly connected to current populations of the Iberian Peninsula. Iberians from the Mesolithic Period were closer to current populations of northern Europe, who could have assimilated part of the genetic legacy of these hunters-gatherers.”
Food and Porn as Supernormal Stimuli – from dennis mangan
Pottery 20,000 years old found in a Chinese cave – “Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery in the world, archaeologists say…. The findings … [refute] conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gathers to farmers.” – original research article.
Steady studs, dysgenic dolls – “Jayman found that among black men, the trend is neutral, while a pronounced dysgenic trend exists among black women. The story is similar among whites, although the dysgenic tilt among white women is gentler than it is among black women.” – from mr. a. epigone, esq.
also this!: Your Color Red Really Could Be My Blue – “‘I would say recent experiments lead us down a road to the idea that we don’t all see the same colors,’ Neitz said. Another color vision scientist, Joseph Carroll of the Medical College of Wisconsin, took it one step further: ‘I think we can say for certain that people don’t see the same colors….’”
bonus: Phylogeny: Rewriting evolution – “Tiny molecules called microRNAs are tearing apart traditional ideas about the animal family tree.”
bonus bonus: Low-carb diet burns the most calories in small study
bonus bonus bonus: Mysterious Fairy Circles Are ‘Alive’ – whoa.
bonus bonus bonus bonus: How presidential elections are impacted by a 100 million year old coastline – cool!
bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Mumbai doctors remove 12.5cm-long worm from man’s eye – ewwww!
(note: comments do not require an email. what the…?) | <urn:uuid:7a2354e7-e440-449d-afc7-3f2b2aeba8bb> | {
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There are no Mass Graves in Belzec
Holocaust deniers say:
The excavations that located and mapped 33 mass graves at the Belzec death camp from 1977 to 2000 revealed only traces of whole human remains in them. These traces are the result of death by disease and hardship of a handful of Jews as they were being deported farther to the East-not a program of mass murder.
Carlo Mattogno, an Italian Holocaust denier, makes two major claims about the mass graves in Belzec:
- The 33 mass graves contain only a "handful" of unburned bodies.
- The amount of ashes and bone fragments in the 33 graves is very small.
- Mattogno claims that these few bodies represent only a "resettlement policy" that showed a "very severe German attitude toward the Jews." 1
What we know about the existence of mass graves in Belzec
The 1945 Polish investigation
In 1946, Czeslaw Godzieszewks, the Regional Investigative Judge of the district court of Zamosc, presented a report about their investigation of the grounds of Belzec. The Commission dug 9 trenches about 10 meters (33 feet) across and 8 meters (26 feet) deep. In them they found meters-thick layers of human ashes, as well as the charred remains of human bodies, body parts, women’s hair and unburned human bones. In one 26-foot-deep trench alone they found a layer of human ashes 3 meters thick (about 10 feet.) 2
The Kola investigation
Between 1997 and 2000, a team of experts including archeologists, historians and cartographers exhaustively and scientifically surveyed the entire site of the camp. The research was authorized by the Polish government and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The team, headed by Professor Andrzej Kola of the University of Torun in Poland, undertook the study because the memorial at Belzec needed to be replaced and they did not wish to disturb the mass graves when they designed and built the new memorial space.
Kola’s team drilled 2,001 soil cores 5 meters (16.5 feet) apart to a depth of 6 meters (20 feet) in a grid over the entire area of the camp. The soil samples that contained human remains were analyzed in a laboratory and were returned and replaced in the original drill holes out of respect for the dead.
The Kola investigation found that Belzec was "one large a patchwork of mass graves." 3 They located and measured 33 mass graves which had a total volume of approximately 21,300 cubic meters or approximately 752,202 cubic feet.
More information about these investigations is available at http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/belzec1/bel150.html.
The facts about Mattogno’s claims
Claim 1: The graves contain only a "handful" of unburned bodies.
Mattogno claims that of the 33 mass graves found by Kola that only Graves 3, 10 and 20 contain a shallow layer of unburned bodies at the very bottom. He concludes that the "only legitimate conclusion one can draw" is that there are "only rare corpses here and there" totaling "at most several hundred corpses." 4
What Mattogno does not tell the reader is:
- Grave 3 is 16 meters long by 15 meters wide by 5 meters deep (about 52 feet by 50 feet by 16 feet.)
- Grave 10 is 24 meters long by 18 meters wide by 5 meters deep (about 78 feet by 59 feet by 16 feet.)
- Grave 20 extends outside the current camp boundaries and so could not be completely measured. The part that could be measured is 26 meters long by 11 meters wide by 5 meters deep (85 feet by 36 feet by 16 feet).
It is absurd to believe that the Germans would have dug such large, deep graves (about the height of a two-story house) with heavy excavating equipment and then laid only one or two layers of bodies on the very bottom of each before covering them up.
- More dishonestly, Mattogno fails to mention at all that Graves 1, 4, 13, 25, 27, 28 and 32 also contain unburned remains.
Therefore, out of 10 graves that held whole human remains, Mattogno only acknowledges 3 of them.
However, even Kola’s careful examination does not reveal exactly how many bodies might be in the mass graves because he took great care not to drill through layers of whole bodies if he could avoid it. For instance, in Kola discontinued drilling in Grave 4 when he hit a layer of whole human bodies.5 Therefore, in that grave we do not know how thick that layer was. Recall that mapping the depth and volume of the graves was not Kola’s brief-he was to determine where the mass graves were so they could be respected in the final memorial design.
Why are there any whole human remains in the mass graves at all if they were all incinerated?
We cannot say for sure why they are there but it is reasonable to suppose that:
- After long months of exhuming and burning the bodies, the Germans wanted to finish the job and get out of that backward and miserable place as quickly as possible. Despite their desire to eliminate the evidence of mass murder, leaving some bodies 25 feet below the surface probably did not seem like a very big risk.
- The condition of the bodies at the bottom of the graves is so terrible that the Germans-even though their Jewish slaves did the work-might not have been able to face exhuming them.
Claim 2: The amount of ashes and bone fragments in the mass graves is very small.
It would also be best for the Holocaust deniers’ "transit camp" theory if there were not a substantial amount of human ashes or fragments of bone or teeth in the graves either-or at least very little. So it should not be surprising that Mattogno claims that the graves contain "only a very thin layer of sand and ash" which is " absolutely incompatible with the cremation of 600,000 corpses." 6
But Mattogno is wrong: the layers of ash and bone in the graves are not "very thin" at all. Here are some examples.
- Grave 5 contains "pieces of burnt human bones so densely packed together that the drill could not penetrate further." The grave is 32 meters long by 10 meters wide by 4.50 meters deep (about 105 feet by 33 feet by 15 feet).
- Grave 6 is 30 meters long by 10 meters wide by 4 meters deep (about 99 feet by 33 feet by 13 feet). It contains "carbonized wood and pieces of fragments of burnt human bones. At the east end of the grave, the ground is covered with gray sand containing a mixture of crushed pieces of burnt and unburned pieces of human bones."
- Graves 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 33 all contain fragments of burnt human bones, human ashes and carbonized wood.
- Grave 14 is the largest in the camp. It contains "burnt pieces of human bones and fragments of carbonized wood mixed with grey sandy soil to a depth of 5 meters." That is about 16 feet deep. No matter how much Mattogno wants it to be, a 5 meter thick (16 feet) layer of ash is not a "thin layer" of ashes.
- The ashes and bone remnants are not just in the graves either. Kola’s team found them mixed with sand on the surface and scattered all around the mass graves. They can be seen by the human eye even today.
The above facts are devastating to Mattogno’s theory about Belzec being a transit camp and explains why he does not even mention them at all.
Kola’s report was written in Polish but you may read the English translation of portions of it and see the detailed map of the mass graves found on the site and the meticulous diagrams of the dimensions and contents of the mass graves at: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/05/carlo-mattogno-on-belzec.html.
Why were the remains not exhumed to be sure?
Mattogno complains that his questions about exactly how deep the graves were (when they exceeded the 20 foot core), how many whole bodies were in the graves and precisely how much human and wood ash and bone remnants were in them could have been solved by doing a thorough and proper exhumation in order to settle the matter. However, exhumation was not Kola’s brief. Even if it had been Kola’s charge, he would have been unable to complete the task because several of the largest mass graves extend outside the current boundaries of the camp onto private land and could not have been investigated.
In addition, some religious figures objected strenuously to any investigation being done at all, feeling that any disturbance of the graves was a violation of the dead.7 Digging up all the mass graves to count every body and quantify all the ashes and bone remnants would have been totally intrusive and would have raised a storm of controversy. Therefore, every effort was made to disturb the mass graves as little as possible.
The American Holocaust denier makes the same complaint about both Belzec and Treblinka. He contends that the "lack of searching for physical evidence is shocking" and states that Kola was handpicked because "they" knew he would not find anything that "didn’t support the story." He wants both camps to be entirely dug up to prove it is not all a "big lie." The same ethical considerations-as well as practical considerations of digging up every square foot of acres of land in both camps-applies.8
Mattogno’s attempt to diminish the number of unburned bodies to "at most several hundred" and the ashes and bones to a "thin layer" to fit his "transit camp" theory is both desperate and dishonest. In order to make it work Mattogno resorts to distortions, omissions and lies.
The facts show that two separate investigations 60 years apart show that the remains of the bodies of at some 450,000 Jewish men, women and children are buried in Belzec. Their deaths were part of a campaign of systematic mass murder by the Germans and not just the result of death by disease or hardship during the deportation process.
Mattogno did get one thing right: the Jewish men, women and children who were murdered at Belzec were the victims of a"very severe German attitude" towards them.
1. Carlo Mattogno, Belzec in Propaganda, Testimonies, Archeological Research, and History (Castle Hill Publishers, 2004), p. 99.
2. Ibid., p. 79-81.
3. "Archeological Investigation: Belzec: A Review by Historians," p. 5/9 at www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/modern/archreview.html.
4. Mattogno, Belzec in Propaganda, pp. 78, 79.
5. Robin O’Neil, Belzec: Prototype for the Final Solution: Hitler’s Answer to the Jewish Question at http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/belzec1/be1150.html.
6. Mattogno, Belzec in Propaganda, p. 87. (The emphasis is Mattogno’s in the text.)
7. See http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/05/carlo-mattogno-on-belzec.html, p. 4/6.
8. See www.onethirdoftheholocaust.com, Episode 18: Physical Evidence, Part 1. | <urn:uuid:a8cbba9d-50ae-4755-b5e5-ec13d217408e> | {
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No doubts about his genius
How could Shakespeare wind up as a `runner up' in any poll to select the greatest Briton, asks V.S.RAVI.
AN overseas poll conducted by the BBC has concluded that Sir Issac Newton was the "Greatest Briton" of all time, followed by Churchill and Princess Diana.
Newton's enormous scientific achievements seem to have influenced the outcome; while in the case of Churchill, it was his leadership qualities during World War II.
Ranking Diana third has destroyed the credibility of the whole exercise. Her charm, kindness and involvement in charitable causes contributed greatly to make her an icon all over the world. But that is where the admiration for her has to stop. Including her in a list of 10 Greatest Britons of all time is carrying things a little too far.
However, I was shocked to find Shakespeare, the greatest genius of all time, had been relegated to the status of a `runner-up'. There is also no justification to deny Darwin his rightful place, in as much as his contribution to biology is as significant as Newton's is to physics. For all these reasons opinion polls of this kind are unreliable, misleading and invite ridicule.
Take a look at Shakespeare's enormous vocabulary. He employed 9,36,433 words in his writings, out of which 27,780 are different words. The average person uses less than 1,000 words in writing, a little more than that in speech and has a recognition vocabulary of about 5,000 words. Some of the greatest writers may have twice this capability.
Today, English has a total vocabulary of two million words followed by German as a pathetic second with 1,86,000 words, Russian with 1,36,000 words, and French with 1,26,000 words. Thus Shakespeare in the 16th Century used five times the number of words in modern German!
Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in history. His plays have been translated into 50 languages. In the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations containing about 20,000 quotations, Shakespeare alone monopolises a staggering 60 pages (10 per cent). He coined 1700 new words. Many of the phrases and terms created by him are in daily use. Some of them have been used as titles for books and movies.
The vastness of vocabulary and the ability to see the relationship between words is one of the major factors in measuring genius. Shakespeare excelled any other human being in this aspect. His encyclopaedic knowledge of science, history, mathematics, classical literature sociology, psychology, law, Latin, French politics, music and art acquired by studying books relating to almost every mental discipline and observing the habits and style of life of various sections of people all around him enabled him to draw ideas generously from all those sources for being used in his plays.
The lyrical grandeur of his language covers every known figure of speech from metaphor to simile, hyperbole to hendiadys. The alchemic process in the crucible of Shakespeare's brain transmuted emotions, like ambition, frustration, jealousy, greed, romantic love, joy, and sorrow he found all around him in people, into the rich gold of his everlasting plays. Hence there is no emotion or activity or situation in the human condition that is not found in his plays.
More people visit the place of Shakespeare's birth than that of any other human being. More books and articles have been written about him and his works than about any other individual or even any other single subject (at least till the age of computers!). Entire libraries and major sections of many famous libraries whether in Washington D.C or London are devoted to him.
Shakespeare has inspired more tributes than any other poet, scientist or painter; in fact some of the people who have showered praises on Shakespeare, like Coleridge, De Quincey and Dryden, are of such stature themselves that each would have got two Nobel Prizes for literature if they had lived in the 20th century.
Then what justification is there for any voter, whatever his profession, to place this extraordinary man who is " In judgment a Nestor/ In genius a Socrates/ In art a Virgil" in the position of a runner-up in a ranking of the greatest Briton ever.
Is it not ironical that a great poet like Coleridge had once equated Shakespeare to 500 Newtons but the voters who took part in the BBC poll have placed him far below Newton? Is it not even more ironical that Churchill, who once attributed his brilliant prose and eloquence to his having collected the quotations of Shakespeare early in life like "pennies in a slot", should be placed second in the list far above the very same man?
Any poll will only succeed in devaluing its own assessment, and lose its sanctity and credibility, if it denies this "mighty poet", to quote De Quincey, his rightful place as the greatest genius of all time.
As someone appropriately observed, "it is not only the crowning glory of England but also the crowning glory of all mankind that such a man as William Shakespeare should ever have been born".
More than all the triumphs of science and technology, and the glories of art and music, Shakespeare's poetry alone, with its great soliloquies packed with metaphors, similes, and every known figure of speech, (that reflects his flashes of genius and leaps of fantastic imagination), can be and should be regarded as the topmost achievement of man, on this planet, the fulfilment of long centuries of human civilisation and culture!
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Old State Capitol
Delve into the politics and everyday life of the tumultuous 19th-century by touring this National Historic Landmark that served as Kentucky's capitol from 1830 to 1910.
In the galleries of this stately building, witness the changing tastes of 19th-century Kentuckians in "Great Revivals: Kentucky Decorative Arts Treasures
," an exhibition that highlights five stylistic design eras and the commonwealth's treasures from those times. Estimated time: 1 hour.
Visit the re-created 1850s State Law Library
in its original site or debate legislative matters in the re-created 1850s House and Senate chambers
. Estimated time of historical building tour: 1 hour.
All Old State Capitol tours begin at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History.
History of the Building
Gideon Shryock, an early Kentucky architect, designed the Old State Capitol when he was only 25 years old. Shryock used architectural symbolism to connect the vigorous frontier state of Kentucky with the ideals of classical Greek democracy. The building, which introduced Greek-Revival architecture to the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains, is widely recognized as a beautiful masterpiece of 19th-century American architecture and boasts a self-supporting stone stairway, a light-flooded rotunda and dual legislative chambers.
This was the only pro-Union state capitol occupied by the Confederate army during the Civil War. Plans to swear in a Confederate governor and establish a Confederate state government were ruined by the approach of the Union army just days before the Battle of Perryville in 1862.
In the aftermath of the bitterly contested gubernatorial election in 1899, the state legislature met here in 1900 to decide the winner. An assassin, hiding in an office in the Old Capitol Annex next door, shot the Democratic claimant, William Goebel, as he approached the Capitol. Armed citizens and State Guard soldiers occupied the grounds, and here for a time Kentuckians threatened to fight their own miniature civil war. A plaque marks the site outside the building where Goebel, the only governor in United States history to be assassinated while in office, fell.
Replaced by the New Capitol in South Frankfort early in the 20th century, the building has served as the home of the Kentucky Historical Society since 1920. The subject of extensive restoration work since the early 1970s, the Old State Capitol looks today much as it did in the 1850s.
Old State Capitol
300 West Broadway
Frankfort, KY 40601
Tours of the Old State Capitol
Available March 9 - Dec. 14, 2013:
All tours begin at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History.
Wednesdays: 3 p.m.
Thursdays: 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Fridays: 3 p.m.
Saturdays: 10:30 a.m., noon, 1:30 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Hours and Admission
Plan a Field Trip
Calendar of Events
Old State Capitol Packet - Fourth and Fifth Grades | <urn:uuid:d0f3c7f2-9c90-4881-a54c-887f8789ba0c> | {
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Ki Tisa (Mitzvot)
For more teachings on this portion, see the archives to this blog, below at March 2006.
This week’s parasha is best known for the dramatic and richly meaningful story of the Golden Calf and the Divine anger, of Moses’ pleading on behalf of Israel, and the eventual reconciliation in the mysterious meeting of Moses with God in the Cleft of the Rock—subjects about which I’ve written at length, from various aspects, in previous years. Yet the first third of the reading (Exod 30:11-31:17) is concerned with various practical mitzvot, mostly focused on the ritual worship conducted in the Temple, which tend to be skimmed over in light of the intense interest of the Calf story. As this year we are concerned specifically with the mitzvot in each parasha, I shall focus on this section.
These include: the giving by each Israelite [male] of a half-shekel to the Temple; the making of the laver, from which the priests wash their hands and feet before engaging in Divine service; the compounding of the incense and of the anointing oil; and the Shabbat. I shall focus here upon the washing of the hands.
Hand-washing is a familiar Jewish ritual: it is, in fact, the first act performed by pious Jews upon awakening in the morning (some people even keep a cup of water next to their beds, so that they may wash their hands before taking even a single step); one performs a ritual washing of the hands before eating bread; before each of the daily prayers; etc. The section here dealing with the laver in the Temple (Exod 30:17-21) is also one of the four portions from the Torah recited by many each morning, as part of the section of the liturgy known as korbanot, chapters of Written and Oral Torah reminiscent of the ancient sacrificial system, that precede Pesukei de-Zimra.
Sefer ha-Hinukh, at §106, explains the washing of hands as an offshoot of the honor due to the Temple and its service—one of many laws intended to honor, magnify, and glorify the Temple. Even if the priest was pure and clean, he must wash (literally, “sanctify”) his hands before engaging in avodah. This simple gesture of purification served as a kind of separation between the Divine service and everyday life. It added a feeling of solemnity, of seriousness, a sense that one was engaged in something higher, in some way separate from the mundane activities of regular life. (One hand-washing by kohanim, in the morning, was sufficient, unless they left the Temple grounds or otherwise lost the continuity of their sacred activity.) Our own netilat yadaim, whether before prayer or breaking bread, may be seen as a kind of halakhic carryover from the Temple service, albeit on the level of Rabbinic injunction.
What is the symbolism of purifying one’s hands? Water, as a flowing element, as a solvent that washes away many of the things with which it comes in contact, is at once a natural symbol of both purity, and of the renewal of life. Mayim Hayyim—living waters—is an age old association. Torah is compared to water; water, constantly flowing, is constantly returning to its source. At the End of Days, “the land will be filled with knowledge of the Lord, like waters going down to the sea.” A small part of this is hinted in this simple, everyday gesture.
“See that this nation is Your people”
But I cannot pass over Ki Tisa without some comment on the incident of the Golden Calf and its ramifications. This week, reading through the words of the parasha in preparation for a shiur (what Ruth Calderon, founder of Alma, a secularist-oriented center for the study of Judaism in Tel Aviv, called “barefoot reading”—that is, naïve, without preconceptions), I discovered something utterly simple that I had never noticed before in quite the same way.
At the beginning of the Calf incident, God tells Moses, who has been up on the mountain with Him, “Go down, for your people have spoiled” (32:7). A few verses later, when God asks leave of Moses (!) to destroy them, Moses begs for mercy on behalf of the people with the words “Why should Your anger burn so fiercely against Your people…” (v. 11). That is, God calls them Moses’ people, while Moses refers to them as God’s people. Subsequent to this exchange, each of them refers to them repeatedly in the third person, as “the people” or “this people” (העם; העם הזה). Neither of them refers to them, as God did in the initial revelation to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:7 and passim) as “my people,” or with the dignified title, “the children of Israel”—as if both felt a certain alienation, of distance from this tumultuous, capricious bunch. Only towards the end, after God agrees not to destroy them, but still states “I will not go up with them,” but instead promises to send an angel, does Moses says “See, that this nation is Your people” (וראה כי עמך הגוי הזה; 33:13).
What does all this signify? Reading the peshat carefully, there is one inevitable conclusion: that God wished to nullify His covenant with the people Israel. It is in this that there lies the true gravity, and uniqueness, of the Golden Calf incident. We are not speaking here, as we read elsewhere in the Bible—for example, in the two great Imprecations (tokhahot) in Lev 26 and Deut 28, or in the words of the prophets during the First Temple—merely of threats of punishment, however harsh, such as drought, famine, pestilence, enemy attacks, or even exile and slavery. There, the implicit message is that, after a period of punishment, a kind of moral purgation through suffering, things will be restored as they were. Here, the very covenant itself, the very existence of an intimate connection with God, hangs in the balance. God tells Moses, “I shall make of you a people,” i.e., instead of them.
This, it seems to me, is the point of the second phase of this story. Moses breaks the tablets; he and his fellow Levites go through the camp killing all those most directly implicated in worshipping the Calf; God recants and agrees not to destroy the people. However, “My angel will go before them” but “I will not go up in your midst” (33:2, 3). This should have been of some comfort; yet this tiding is called “this bad thing,” the people mourn, and remove the ornaments they had been wearing until then. Evidently, they understood the absence of God’s presence or “face” as a grave step; His being with them was everything. That is the true importance of the Sanctuary in the desert and the Tent of Meeting, where Moses speaks with God in the pillar of cloud (33:10). God was present with them there in a tangible way, in a certain way continuing the epiphany at Sinai. All that was threatened by this new declaration.
Moses second round of appeals to God, in Exod 33:12-23, focuses on bringing God, as it were, to a full reconciliation with the people. This is the significance of the Thirteen Qualities of Mercy, of what I have called the Covenant in the Cleft of the Rock, the “faith of Yom Kippur” as opposed to that of Shavuot (see HY I: Ki Tisa; and note Prof. Jacob Milgrom’s observation that this chapter stands in the exact center, in a literary sense, of the unit known as the Hextateuch—Torah plus the Book of Joshua).
But I would add two important points. One, that this is the first place in the Torah where we read about sin followed by reconciliation. After Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Garden, they were punished without hope of reprieve; indeed, their “punishment “ reads very much like a description of some basic aspects of the human condition itself. Cain, after murdering Abel, was banished, made to wander the face of the earth. The sin of the brothers in selling Joseph, and their own sense of guilt, is a central factor in their family dynamic from then on, but there is nary a word of God’s response or intervention. It would appear that God’s initial expectation in the covenant at Sinai was one of total loyalty and fidelity. The act of idolatry was an unforgivable breach of the covenant—much as adultery is generally perceived as a fundamental violation of the marital bond.
Moses, in persuading God to recant of His jealousy and anger, to give the faithless people another chance, is thus introducing a new concept: of a covenant that includes the possibility of even the most serious transgressions being forgiven; of the knowledge that human beings are fallible, and that teshuvah and forgiveness are essential components of any economy of men living before a demanding God.
The second, truly astonishing point is the role played by Moses in all this. Moshe Rabbenu, “the man of God,” is not only the great teacher of Israel, the channel through which they learn the Divine Torah, but also, as it were, one who teaches God Himself. It is God who “reveals His Qualities of Mercy” at the Cleft of the Rock; but without Moses cajoling, arguing, persuading (and note the numerous midrashim around this theme), “were it not for my servant Moses who stood in the breach,” all this would not have happened. It was Moses who elicited this response and who, so to speak, pushed God Himself to this new stage in his relation with Israel—to give up His expectations of perfection from His covenanted people, and to understand that living within a covenant means, not rigid adherence to a set of laws, but a living relationship with real people, taking the bad with the good. (Again, the parallel to human relationships is obvious) | <urn:uuid:c4c19472-691a-44c6-a55b-21fbb183475b> | {
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To save weight on the A380 superjumbo aircraft, resourceful software helped design an innovative decentralized hydraulic system with lightweight micropumps delivering power locally to emergency braking and landing gear steering systems.
Edited by Alan L. Hitchcox, editor
With an overall length of 73 m and a wing span of nearly 80 m, the Airbus A380 provides seating for 525 passengers and a range of 15,200 km (nearly 10,000 miles) — sufficient to fly nonstop from New York to Hong Kong. To gain maximum fuel efficiency and payload capacity, weight savings was a must when developing this massive plane. Composite and other lightweight materials account for more than 25% of its structure, and engineers scrutinized every aspect of the aircraft to further trim it down.
Of particular interest were hydraulic lines running the length of the aircraft from large centralized pumps to actuators for brakes, landing gear, and the nose wheel steering system. Ordinarily, large commercial jets have three sets of redundant hydraulics: two primary circuits and a third back-up for safety.
To reduce this bulk, the all-hydraulic backup circuit was replaced with a decentralized hydraulicpower generation system. Signals from electronic control units (ECU) activate multiple small electrically- driven micropumps, each located close to the actuators they control. The micropumps provide 350 bar (5000 psi) of local hydraulic pressure over short runs of small-diameter, lightweight tubing for braking and steering, so it’s always available in an emergency.
|AMESim predictions of A380 nosewheel steering system performance closely matched bench tests of actual system behavior. |
A tall order for engineers
A world’s first in a commercial airliner, this Local Electrical Hydraulic Generation System (LEHGS) was developed by Messier-Bugatti, a subsidiary of the SAFRAN Group and a world leader in aircraft landing and steering systems. An Airbus partner for over 30 years, the company’s customers include 250 airlines, 20 military air forces, and major global aircraft manufacturers.
In optimizing system performance, project engineers faced challenges of integrating and sizing the many different physical parts, assemblies, and subsystems for the mechanical, electrical, and hydraulic systems. Moreover, they needed to assess any risk factors, such as electrical overloading.
Compounding the difficulty, tight deadlines and budgetary constraints prohibited numerous time-consuming and costly physical tests of system mock-ups. Instead, work in designing and optimizing the performance of this first-ever system would have to be done early in the plane’s development — before any hardware was built and at the same time other aircraft system designs were underway.
The solution: advanced predictive software
Messier-Bugatti met these challenges with the Imagine. Lab Ground Loads software based on the AMESim simulation platform, which the company had implemented on previous projects for predicting the behavior of complex multi-domain intelligent systems. Engineers began by selecting and piecing together individual components and subsystems from among a library of pre-defined items:
- hydraulic pressure drop,
- hydraulic component design,
- electromechanical, motors, and drives,
- thermal resistance,
- thermal hydraulics, and
- thermal, hydraulics, and electrical basics.
|Local electrohydraulic generation system (LEHGS) consists of a reservoir, left, with accumulator and other accessories, and an electric motor-driven pump, right. In addition to emergency braking on all 20 wheels of the A380, the power units also provide backup hydraulic power for the all-important nose wheel steering system. |
Unlike conventional system modeling languages that require computer programmers to write software, the overall system model is created graphically, and engineers are prompted to enter parameters where necessary. In this way, AMESim software creates a multi-domain system model from the overall conceptual information of interconnected parts and subsystems. Importantly, it does not require a full 3-D geometry representation, so engineers can simulate and predict the behavior of intelligent systems long before detailed CAD geometry becomes available.
Throughout this process, Messier- Bugatti system engineers took advantage of convenient access to Imagine. Lab Ground Loads software. The system’s flexible licensing arrangement enabled them to optimize the use of specific modules and libraries while lowering overall system simulation expenses.
Simulating complex behavior
Ground Loads modeling and analysis capabilities allowed Messier-Bugatti to analyze behavior of hydraulic systems in terms of performance, stability, and robustness. Engineers also used the model to study the thermal characteristics of hydraulic circuits and evaluate the need for heat exchangers. These results were then used to establish the sizing, output, and other component specifications for the entire hydraulic power unit, including its reservoir, pump, and accumulator.
Using Ground Loads, engineers could also explore alternate sets of parameters and scenarios. When developing a steering system, for example, various combinations of components and systems (actuators, motors, valves, ECU, etc.) could be compared from specification to validation, thus significantly improving the steering system quality.
|Signals from electronic control units (ECU) activate multiple small electricallydriven micro-pumps, each located close to the actuators they control. The micropumps provide 5000 psi of local hydraulic pressure over short runs of small-diameter, lightweight tubing for braking and steering — always available in an emergency. |
With these predictive capabilities, Messier-Bugatti simulated the behavior of the electrohydraulic system for the A380, validated system power-generating performance, and engineers accurately sized components early in development. This significantly reduced dependency on numerous physical prototypes. “Messier-Bugatti can use Imagine. Lab AMESim to tune complex multiphysics systems without performing a large set of tests on bench,” commented Michael Benmoussa, senior design engineer on the project.
“Simulation enabled us to anticipate and reduce the inherent development risks of a new technology by incorporating an upstream validation regarding the technical choices,” continued Benmoussa. “Simulation results obtained in the early project stages using LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim were later confirmed on test benches with a very good accuracy.”
In this manner, Ground Loads can significantly reduce guesswork and free the engineering team to focus on innovation and R&D. “Messier-Bugatti was able to predict systems and equipment performances — including critical new technologies — on the entire flight domain,” commented Benmoussa. “The A380 enters into service with its nose wheel steering system control loop only tuned with LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim. Tests were performed to confirm the good system performance.”
For more information on AMESim and Imagine.Lab Ground Loads software from LMS Ltd., Troy, Mich., call (248) 952-5664, or visit www.lmsintl.com. | <urn:uuid:cbaef119-7ed7-4b6f-86da-b8a6aa6a2e72> | {
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Air Traffic Control and Radar
Air Traffic Control and Radar
Every day tens of thousands of people board airplanes to travel from one place to another. These flights, thousands of which take off and land daily, are among the safest forms of travel. Although airplane crashes are tragic and headline grabbing, the fact is the sky is a very safe place to be. But how, with so many airplanes in the air, does air travel maintain such a good safety record? The answer is, in large part, air traffic control, the complex system of directing planes and telling them how high or low to fly, and when and where to land safely.
Air traffic control systems rely heavily on radar. Radar first made a huge impact during World War II when it was largely developed for use by battling nations. After the war the civil (that is, non-military) aviation community began to apply radar techniques developed during the war to civil aviation guidance and surveillance. The first use of this technology involved using radar to aid landing.
In 1943 U.S Air Force air traffic controllers began routinely using Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) equipment to help military pilots land safely in poor visibility. GCA employed a pair of oscillating radar antennas with narrow “pencil beams,” one scanning side to side (azimuth), the other up and down (elevation). A controller observed the precise angle returns from these azimuth and elevation radars and radioed landing guidance to the pilot. GCA also included a 360-degree rotating radar for surveillance of the entire terminal area. This radar used a “fan” beam (narrow in azimuth and tall in elevation) that detected planes out to about 20 miles from the airport and up to altitudes of about 3000 meters (10,000 feet).
Civil controllers first used military GCA equipment at LaGuardia Airport in 1945, where it helped triple the landing rate to 15 planes per hour. GCA experienced occasional problems, but it worked well enough so that by 1952 it was being used at many airports. By the mid-1950s, however, GCA landing guidance components were being replaced by a new landing aid called the Instrument Landing System (ILS). ILS uses similar course guidance principles, but uses receivers in aircraft that display course deviation directly to the cockpit.
While it’s crucial that planes land safely, it is equally important that they be safe during flight. Thus, as ILS replaced the GCA scanning pencil beams, improved rotating radars with faster scan rates and larger coverage areas also replaced the GCA terminal area surveillance radars. As air traffic continued to grow it also became important to track planes in high-altitude airspace. Accordingly, the coverage of air traffic radar surveillance grew throughout the 1960s as long-range radars were deployed along important air routes. Initially, these aircraft surveillance radars had no automatic tracking capability. Controllers pushed plastic markers called “shrimp boats” around the screen to track the movement of an aircraft. By the 1960s radar surveillance of civil aircraft routinely included automatic aircraft tracking. Air traffic control radars now track both aircraft and hazardous weather. Modern air traffic control radars use the Doppler effect to discriminate moving aircraft from stationary targets and to measure storm velocities.
Another system developed during World War II, and which had great impact on civil aviation, was the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system. IFF depended on special radar receiver/transmitter units located in friendly aircraft. These radar “transponders” responded to coded radar “interrogations” with coded replies to indicate that they were not hostile aircraft.
In the late 1950s it was proposed that IFF technology be used for surveillance of civil aircraft. The use of transponders increases the detection range of the radar, eliminates clutter interference from other reflectors, and provides a means of aircraft identification and altitude reporting. In the early 1960s the U.S Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published a national standard for air traffic control interrogators and transponders. By the end of the decade over 200 ground-based interrogators were in use in the U. S and the FAA made it mandatory to equip aircraft with transponders before they could operate in positive controlled airspace at high altitudes and near major airports.
In the 1970s the FAA enlisted the aid of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory to upgrade the original air traffic control radar beacon system to improve its surveillance performance in dense airspace and to expand its coded transmissions to transmit air traffic control data between the ground and individual aircraft. This “discrete addressed” beacon system uses ground sensors and airborne transponders that are interoperable with the original beacon system, but which achieve surveillance accuracy, capacity, and reliability that is adequate to support automatic safety warning functions for controllers and pilots.
In the 1980s the FAA developed an airborne collision avoidance system based on air-to-air surveillance of the same air traffic control transponders used for surveillance from the ground. Today the use of this collision avoidance system is required on all air carrier aircraft operating in the United States and Europe.
The last part of the air traffic control system to benefit from radar surveillance was the airport runways and taxi-ways. Radar surveillance to assure safety of aircraft on the airport surface is difficult because of reflections from the ground and from airport structures and service vehicles. Although several generations of airport surface detection radars have been deployed since the 1990s, and surface surveillance performance has improved, reflections continue to cause unreliable tracking.
As with other radar environments, surveillance quality on the airport surface can be improved by the use of transponders. Unfortunately, the resolution of the beacon system used for airspace surveillance is inadequate to distinguish between closely spaced aircraft at airports. However, high-resolution surface surveillance can be achieved with multiple receivers on the airport surface that estimate transponder locations by comparing arrival times of replies from conventional transponders. Systems that combine this “multilateration” technique with primary radar surveillance can now achieve surveillance accuracies and reliabilities that are good enough to input to automatic safety warning devices on the airport surface.
Related recommended reading
The story of the invention of the Klystron.
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Architectural educators use the scientific term “critical mass” to justify the necessity for design students to be present in the studio in order to gain momentum, share ideas, and learn from each other, while enjoying their camaraderie. Further, it is believed that the physical presence may yield an esprit de corps, albeit in a pedagogy which values individualism. Any of these educational objectives, however, such as communication, idea sharing and momentum, are within reach in the virtual environment. Indeed, telecommunication technology oriented design environment actually enhances educator-student and student-student participation in getting to know each others’ values and cultures. Such cooperation across time and space, leads future designers to identify and solve problems in a truly global setting The computer savvy profile of today’s students suggests that cross-cultural and across-distance design education is an achievable aim and even may weaken the argument for the merits of physical presence in the studio. Even in practice, for example, the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach will likely to change how professionals cooperate through networking media in creatively linking, sharing, and integrating their design expertise with their other professional team members.
Recent developments in telecommunication technology virtually have eliminated the necessity for sharing the same physical space by the members of a studio or cooperating professionals on a project. Professionals and students alike can easily work, debate, and share ideas even if they are many time-zones apart. In this paper, we concentrate on the implications of this technology upon design education, particularly on the studio component through a major global studio urban design project case study. It focuses on the pros and cons of global studios based on experiences in architectural education which is coming to focus as a variant in the studio typology both in traditional and in nascent on-line programs.
|Keywords:||Global Studio, Distant Learning, Educational Cooperation, Virtual Design Studio, Architectural Education, Architectural Design|
Associate Professor, Architecture, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
Associate Professor, College of Architecture, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
There are currently no reviews of this product.Write a Review | <urn:uuid:df4a8513-544e-41d4-9f40-78253f473f90> | {
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Governor of Indiana
December 5, 1822-February 12, 1825
Artist: Samuel Burtis Baker, American, 1882-1967
oil on canvas, 32 3/16 x 26 5/16 (81.7 x 66.8)
WILLIAM HENDRICKS, born in Pennsylvania, was educated in a common school, read law, and was admitted to the bar in Cincinnati. In 1812 he came to Madison, Indiana Territory, where he practiced law and established the Eagle, the second newspaper published in Indiana. After only a few years in Madison he was elected to the territorial house of representatives and was secretary of the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1816. A Democratic-Republican, Hendricks won election in August, 1816, as the first state representative to Congress from Indiana and was re-elected twice to this office.
Hendricks, running unopposed, was elected governor in 1822. It was during this term of office that the capital was moved from Corydon to Indianapolis. Hendricks resigned in 1825 upon election to the United States Senate. Re-elected to the Senate in 1830, Hendricks served until 1837, having been defeated for re-election by Oliver H. Smith in 1836. After twenty-one years in public office, he returned to Madison to practice law and manage his large estate.
Smith and Hendricks were friends, and Smith remembers him: "He had a smile on his face and a warm shake of the hand for all he met. He was not of the very first order of talents, but made all up by his plain, practical, good sense. He never attempted to speak upon subjects he did not understand." He was about six feet tall and had red hair and blue eyes. His nephew, Thomas A. Hendricks was elected governor of Indiana in 1873.
Source: Peat, Wilbur D. Portraits and Painters of the Governors of Indiana 1800-1978. Revised, edited and with new entries by Diane Gail Lazarus, Indianapolis Museum of Art. Biographies of the governors by Lana Ruegamer, Indiana Historical Society. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society and Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1978. | <urn:uuid:48a98d94-5928-4e97-aaae-2e50f525dd09> | {
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Holidays & Observances
Holidays and Observances Individually
Cinco de Mayo
Account of the events that occurred during the Battle of Puebla, Mexico, on May 5, 1862, and a brief explanation of why this day is important. Includes a bibliography. From a community college class project.
Montes de Oca de Marshall, Assunta | <urn:uuid:8cfaa0fb-a785-4770-b1de-1690d9e81c31> | {
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Youth Sports Training with Weights
At what age should a young person begin lifting weights or using Kettlebells?
The question I get asked more than any other.
Here’s my brief thought on the matter (taken right from the curriculum found in the IYCA’s Youth Fitness Specialist – Level 1 Certification material)
Simply stated, around the age of 9 or 10.
Within the ‘Guided Discovery’ phase of training (6 – 9 years) the goals are quite simple:
(1) Movement (in the form of multi-directional game play)
(2) Outcome-Based Coaching (not critiquing form, but rather supportive of effort)
(3) Experiential Learning
#3 is critical.
Kids need to learn-by-doing.
Experimenting with movement and implement dynamics.
In the absence of over-coaching or instruction, children in this age bracket will develop a vast and hearty warehouse of neural knowledge that can and will be translated into more specific, advanced forms of athletic ability in time.
The second phase of the IYCA’s long-term development model is called ‘Learning Exploration’.
In this section of our system (ages 10 – 13) we still maintain a very open, experiential-style of learning-through-doing, but add an element of complexity by beginning the process of dedicated instruction of both
Lifting and Movement.
It is within this phase that we must begin the process of external loading:
(1) Using Low Volume, Low Load
(2) Incorporating Both Free-Play as Well as Critical Instruction
(3) Involving Skill Sets or Other ‘Like’ Habitual Lessons
In terms of Kettlebells, Pamela MacElree and Jason C. Brown did a fantastic job of teaching the concept of how to incorporate this form of training into a young athletes life.
I’ve prepared a full 60-minute web-based presentation for you to enjoy on this topic.
Absolutely no charge whatsoever…
Just click on the link below and understand how best to incorporate Kettlebells into the youth sports training programs of young athletes: | <urn:uuid:290aade7-16dc-47d6-afd4-26386356fa23> | {
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THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, Tanakh 1917 edition
ACCORDING TO THE MASORETIC TEXT (JPS 1917 Edition)
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In the early nineteenth century, most American Jews couldnt read the Bible because they were not literate in Hebrew and an adequate English translation didnt exist. Isaac Leesers The Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures, published in 1854, attempted to fill this need. And it did, more or less, for many years. But Jewish interest in the Bible grew and a more discriminating audience found Leesers translation inadequate; it was antiquated and filled with many errors. At its second biennial convention in 1892, The Jewish Publication Society, just four years old, decided that its highest priority was to produce for American Jews a new and popular English rendition of the Bible.
The Society formed a Bible committee made up of representatives of the three major Jewish institutions of higher learning at the time: Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and Dropsie College in Philadelphia. The committee wanted its new Bible to be in the best English possible, and this, they felt, was to be found in the Protestant Revised Version, which was based on the King James Version. Its members agreed to use the Revised Version, and to remove all un-Jewish and anti-Jewish phrases, expressions, renderings, and usages and introduce traditional Jewish interpretation to reflect Jewish feeling, law, faith and tradition.
The committee had good intentions, but it floundered until Max Margolis, one of American Jewrys leading scholars of Bible and Semitics, was hired as editor-in-chief. Though he edited the translation (which had been prepared by 32 contributors) in just 12 months, a remarkable accomplishment, it had to be reviewed by a board of editors so diverse that its members argued for years over minor details. JPS Secretary Henrietta Szold then went over the manuscript 12 times. The project eventually cost about 10 times its original budget.
But it was worth it. The Holy Scriptures became the Societys best-selling volume, selling nearly 40,000 copies within its first year of publication. Most Jewish textbooks, as well as the leading Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform prayer books, turned to the Societys translation when quoting Scripture.
The back-to-the-Bible movement of the 1950s inspired JPS to make its Bible as widely available as possible. And so it published many editions: a quarto-sized pulpit Bible for Jewish chaplains, a two-volume Hebrew-English edition, and even a large-size illustrated version that was sold door-to-door.
This renewed interest in the Bible also inspired Harry Orlinsky, professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion in New York, to lobby for a brand new JPS translation, a clear departure from the King James Version, one that would truly be considered the authoritative Jewish view of what the words of the Bible meant.
The new Bible committee first published The Torah, Prophets, and Writings separately from the rest of the Bible, over a more than 20-year period. Orlinsky headed the committee that prepared The Torah, which was published in the mid-1960s. He was also part of the group that worked on the Prophets. The committee that prepared the Writings was made up of other scholars from North America and Israel. In 1985, all three parts were brought together in one volume, the JPS Tanakh. This translation came to be known as NJPS (New JPS) and the original 1917 translation as the OJPS (Old JPS). To date, the NJPS is the most widely read translation of the Hebrew (Jewish) Bible, and one of the worlds most accessible and readable English Bibles.
You will notice that the 1917 translation uses some archaic language, such as shalt, thee, and thou, because it borrowed heavily from the King James Version. Several passages in the 1917 version are much more poetic in tone than those in the 1985 translation (see Psalm 23). Also, the 1985 translation is more gender neutral than the 1917 version (see 2 Kings 25:9).
Sarna, JPS The Americanization of Jewish Culture 18881988, 97.
Sarna, JPS The Americanization of Jewish Culture 18881988, 104.
Greenspoon, A Short History of Bible Translations, JPS Guide The Jewish Bible, 48.
Please sign up for our email newsletter to download your free version of THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. You're FREE eBook will be sent to you via email: | <urn:uuid:5165eafb-5643-4c26-b0b4-ada26b8ce4ef> | {
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Concord ExpressA Christian Science Study Resource
We know Principle only through Science. The Prin‐6ciple of Christ is divine Love, resistless Life and Truth. Then the Science of the Principle must be Christlike, or Christian Science. More than regal is the majesty 9of the meekness of the Christ-principle; and its might is the ever-flowing tides of truth that sweep the universe, create and govern it; and its radiant stores of knowl‐12edge are the mysteries of exhaustless being. Seek ye these till you make their treasures yours.
When a young man vainly boasted, “I am wise, for I 15have conversed with many wise men,” Epictetus made answer, “And I with many rich men, but I am not rich.” The richest blessings are obtained by labor. A vessel 18full must be emptied before it can be refilled. Lawyers may know too much of human law to have a clear per‐ception of divine justice, and divines be too deeply read 21in scholastic theology to appreciate or to demonstrate Christian charity. Losing the comprehensive in the technical, the Principle in its accessories, cause in effect, 24and faith in sight, we lose the Science of Christianity, — a predicament quite like that of the man who could not see London for its houses.
27 Clouds parsimonious of rain, that swing in the sky with dumb thunderbolts, are seen and forgotten in the same hour; while those with a mighty rush, which waken the 30stagnant waters and solicit every root and every leaf with the treasures of rain, ask no praising. Remember, thou canst be brought into no condition, be it ever so severe, 150 150:1where Love has not been before thee and where its tender lesson is not awaiting thee. Therefore despair not nor 3murmur, for that which seeketh to save, to heal, and to deliver, will guide thee, if thou seekest this guidance.
Pliny gives the following description of the character of 6true greatness: “Doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read; and rendering the world happier and better for having lived in it.” Strive thou 9for the joy and crown of such a pilgrimage — the service of such a mission.
A heart touched and hallowed by one chord of Christian 12Science, can accomplish the full scale; but this heart must be honest and in earnest and never weary of struggling to be perfect — to reflect the divine Life, Truth, and Love. | <urn:uuid:7a828d4a-118d-4b02-b76b-a9489b509a37> | {
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Jython is distributed as a self-extracting .class file created by LiftOff. To install Jython, open the command line to the directory in which you have placed the jython-21.class file and then type:
You will probably type one of the following three lines, depending on your system. Be sure not to put ".class" at the end of the file name.
It can be necessay to set the CLASSPATH to include the current directory
Which command to use depends on your operating system and java version. If you have more than one java installed, you may have to supply an explicit path the java command. When installing the JDK 1.2 from javasoft, the default is it install both the JDK and a plugin JRE. The plugin JRE is added to your PATH, so running the java jython-21 command will make jython use the JRE. Specify the full path if you want to use JDK instead, ie: c:\Programs\JDK1.2\bin\java -cp . jython-21.
If you do not have a GUI, then add -o dir_to_install_to to the command above. Jython will install to the specified directory without bringing up the graphical installer. E.g. to install all modules to a Jython-2.1 subdirectory in the current directory do:
After completing installation, you should be able to run Jython by typing:
What Can Go Wrong
You should check out this section if your Jython installation doesn't quite work right. It will contain tips for solving the most common problems.
Can't Access Standard Python Modules
Not all the modules form CPython is available in Jython. Some modules require a C language dynamic link library that doesn't exists in java. Other modules are missing from Jython just because nobody have had a need for it before and no-one have tested the CPython module with Jython. If you discover that you are missing a module, try to copy the .py file from a CPython distribution to a directory on your Jython sys.path. If that works you are set. If it doesn't work, try asking on jython-users mailing list.
Any other problems with the installation should be reported to jython-dev.
As a workaround you can extract the jython-21.class manually. The class file is basicly a .zip file and most unzip programs can manage to extract the contents of the class into a directory. After doing that, you must
Platform Specific Notes
If all else fails, you might find that your problem is unique to your platform, and has a solution mentioned on the Platform Specific Information page. | <urn:uuid:a4d35bee-b13e-4d67-8af4-ae472971bd5d> | {
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Does your child ever have difficulty speaking? Does he or she hesitate or repeat syllables, words, or phrases? While your first inclination may be to call the issue stuttering, it may be a normal part of language development.
So when should you be worried about a youngster struggling to get words out, how can you know if it's a true problem or just normal development, what causes stuttering, what can you do as a parent to help, and when should you seek professional help?
These are just a few of the important questions to consider if you suspect your child is suffering from stuttering.
As children learn to talk, many will stutter on occasion as part of normal language development. This interruption in speech is mistaken for stuttering, but it is actually known as dysfluency. Many toddlers and preschoolers stumble on or mispronounce words, repeat sounds, hesitate as they talk, or have difficulty making certain sounds. A dysfluent child may occasionally repeat words or syllables once or twice. For example, they may say, “I li-li-like that.”
Normal dysfluency comes and goes and is more common in boys. It may be especially noticeable when a child is tired, stressed, or excited. While this may be worrisome to parents, most children learn to have normal speech and leave the dysfluency behind.
As opposed to normal dysfluency, a child with a true stuttering problem will continue to stutter for longer than six months and will not improve during that time. A child with mild stuttering will repeat sounds more than twice. (“I li-li-li-li-like that.”) You may notice tension in the facial muscles, usually around the mouth. The child's voice may get higher in pitch with the repetitions and the child may get quiet and not breath for several seconds.
A child with severe stuttering will struggle with more than 10 percent of his or her words and show considerable tension and effort. This child may even change words to avoid stuttering.
A variety of factors contribute to the problem of stuttering. Experts say that genetics play a large role, as nearly 60 percent of people who stutter have a family member who also stuttered. Additionally, other developmental delays or language problems contribute to stuttering. For those who stutter, language is processed in a different area of the brain. There seems to be a communication problem between the brain and the body muscles responsible for speaking.
If your child has a stuttering problem, it is important for parents and other family members to model relaxed, slow, normal-sounding speech when talking with the affected child. Speaking in this manner is better than telling your child to slow down or to take a deep breath. Each day, parents should give their child a time of undivided attention so the child can talk freely about what is on his or her mind. Parents should never show annoyance or frustration at a child's stuttering, and you should avoid correcting or interrupting a stuttering child. Being patient and reassuring is immensely important if your child is to outgrow stuttering.
A large part of overcoming stuttering is often more a matter of overcoming the fear of stuttering. Therefore, drawing attention to or making fun of a stuttering child will only make it worse for the child. Also try to avoid putting your child in uncomfortable situations in which they must talk in front of people.
If your child's stuttering lasts more than six months, if the stuttering is frequent and doesn't seem to be improving, if it is accompanied by facial or body movement, or if it is making your child self-conscious or anxious, speech therapy should be pursued. With effective treatment, your child can overcome stuttering and gain complete control over his or her use of language. | <urn:uuid:236ed3e6-524c-4908-8b1c-517297b6d1d0> | {
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|Search results for: All About Kerala & Kerala History
Over 15,000 square miles of land live a population of some 24 million people with an overall density of 1,600 persons per square mile. About one-sixth is forest; of the rest, most of the land is cultivated often with maximum efficiency according to current Indian standards. Rice still dominates,being the staple food of the masses. Rice cultivation is becoming extremely expensive due to high wages and high price of fertilizers; often cheap rice can be purchased from neighboring AndhraPradesh and Tamil Nadu,Kuttanad, the rich alluvial coastland is no longer considered the granary of Kerala;
the soil is no longer fertile; and labor troubles and socialist land-reforms have driven hard-working farmers out of business. Farmers are paying increasing attention to cultivating tea, coffee, pepper, cardamom, and rubber in the High Ranges and the middle laterite hill region. After rice, coconut is the chief crop; the coconut acreage is nearly equal to that of rice. Next to rice as the essential food. coconut palm is the basis of economy for a very large number of people. The chief products of coconut are coir, copra, oil, and oil-cake. Coconut is used as a staple article of diet in meat curries, vegetable curries, and pastries. The coconut-leaves are frequently used as thatch, for the manufacture of brooms, baskets, umbrellas, tattis (screens kept soaked to cool rooms), fans, and firewood. A large number of cottage industrial workers are employed in the production of coir-yarns (rope) which will later be used to make coco-mats (coir-mats).
Tapioca or Cassava is the next important crop which like potato has saved millions of people from starvation during times of famine; people eat less tapioca these days. Spices like cardamom, pepper, gingelly, cloves, and ginger are important peasant-produced cash crops. Nearly every homestead still has its plantains (banana), areca-nut palms, and mango trees. In the past ten years the Gulf countries of the Middle East have become avid buyers of Kerala's agricultural products, so much so, greedy farmers ship the best of all their products including livestock abroad leaving the natives with only the second best produce. The cashew industry, once the monopoly of Kerala, is still going strong in spite of stiff competition from China and Africa.
Fishing- plays a big part in Kerala's cultural and commercial life. Motorization of boats, better storage, and more efficient marketing have been undertaken during the past twenty-five years. They all have helped the fishing industry. Because of the lack of minerals, coal, and iron ore, Kerala can never become an industrial state like Maharashtra,Gujarat, and Punjab. However, the abundance of forest products, availability of electric power, efficient supply of water, and the abundance of skilled workers have attracted many industries to Kerala, notwithstanding the businessman's fear of the ever-looming specter of Communism that Kerala flaunts.
Except for local clay and laterite, the only minerals of Kerala are ilmenite, monazite, and zircon sands on the beaches from Quilon to Kovalam. These contain 8-10% thorium oxide which is of strategic importance in relation to atomic power. Titanium from ilmenite and cerium from monazite are essential in some electrical and chemical industries -- for electrodes, tracer bullets, and benzine synthesis, among others. The Titanium Plant near Trivandrum is a profitable undertaking. The Keltron Plant that manufactures radios and television sets makes Kerala's name synonymous with T.V. The Space Research Center of Thumba is one of its kind in all of India. In short, like India, Kerala also has entered the world of high technology and the age of space exploration.
Human Potential Export
The major export of Kerala today is its skilled workers and college graduates who go to most parts of India and abroad to places like the Gulf countries. When immigration to Europe and America opened up in the fifties and sixties, a large number of educated Keralites went abroad seeking employment and fortune. Their financial success in foreign lands resulted in increasing inflation in Kerala due to higher wages and short supply of indigenous products and the rising cost of real estate. The Gulf emigres hope that they would some day build a mansion and retire in glory in Kerala, Though the rate of immigration to the Gulf countries has leveled off, immigration from Kerala to other parts of India continue. This immigration phenomenon and the spread of education and prosperity have succeeded in checking Kerala's population growth. Kerala has almost achieved zero population growth.
Flora and Fauna
Kerala's forests abound in a variety of rare animals and birds. The elephant, tiger, lion-tailed monkey, Indian gaur, python, striped mountain goat, and wild fowl are still found in Kerala's forests, though in reduced numbers because of man's encroachment on animal territory.. Mahogany, sandal-wood, teak-wood, and rose-wood are still the proud products of these forests. During the past thirty years, the forest department has been taking meticulous care to plant new teak-wood trees and eucalyptus trees to prevent deforestation. It is to be mentioned that teak-wood from Kerala had found its way before the Christian era for the construction of buildings in places like the Ur of Chaldea; Kerala's teak-wood went into the construction of British ships used by Admiral Nelson in the battle of Trafalgar against Napolean. | <urn:uuid:fe21dfbc-4639-47a2-b89f-638b7e134c5a> | {
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What exactly is anthrax, and should you be worried about it?
Anthrax is an infection caused by a bacterium (a type of germ) called Bacillus anthracis (B. anthracis). Although it's most commonly seen in grazing animals like sheep, pigs, cattle, horses, and goats, anthrax also can occur in humans — although it's very rare.
In the environment, the anthrax-causing bacterium forms spores (a version of the germ covered by a hard protective shell) that can live in the soil for years. People can become infected by coming into contact with these spores through a break in the skin (such as a cut or scrape), by eating food (usually undercooked meat) contaminated by them, or by inhaling spores (breathing them into the lungs). But anthrax is not contagious, which means that it can't spread from person to person.
It's extremely unlikely that you or someone you know could get anthrax. In fact, there are usually only one or two reported cases of anthrax per year. Most of these have been in people who work with animals or animal products.
Why Are People So Concerned?
Anthrax that occurs naturally in the environment isn't a huge threat. But B. anthracis can be grown in a laboratory and some people are worried about anthrax germs being grown as a weapon.
The issue of laboratory-grown B. anthracis received lots of attention in 2001 after an anthrax outbreak in the United States. The outbreak scared many people, in part because five people died (which is very rare) and also because the outbreak coincided with the September 11 terrorist attacks. However, bioterrorism experts believe that it is technologically difficult to use anthrax effectively as a weapon on a large scale.
Types of Anthrax
The three main types of anthrax are:
Cutaneous or skin anthrax, can occur if someone with a cut or scrape handles contaminated animals or animal products. More than 95% of anthrax cases are of the cutaneous type, which is the least dangerous form. A person with cutaneous anthrax will notice a small sore that develops into a painless ulcer with a black area in its center. If left untreated, the infection can spread to other areas of the body.
Intestinal anthrax can occur if someone eats undercooked contaminated meat. Intestinal anthrax is far less common than cutaneous anthrax, but it can make someone much sicker. Intestinal anthrax symptoms include severe abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, severe diarrhea, and bleeding from the digestive tract.
Pulmonary, or inhaled, anthrax is the rarest form of anthrax — but it's also the most dangerous. Pulmonary anthrax can only occur if someone breathes thousands of anthrax spores into the lungs. Pulmonary anthrax usually seems like a common cold or the flu at first, but it rapidly turns into severe pneumonia and requires hospitalization.
It usually takes fewer than 7 days for a person to show signs of anthrax after being infected. However, symptoms of pulmonary anthrax can sometimes take months to appear.
It's very difficult to get anthrax. Just being exposed to the spores or coming into contact with an infected animal doesn't mean that a person will automatically develop the disease.
For example, to get pulmonary anthrax (the type of anthrax that killed the five people in the 2001 outbreak), a person has to inhale thousands of spores. This is extremely difficult to do when the anthrax spores are found in soil or on infected animals.
Even in the case of the manmade outbreak in 2001, several of the people who were exposed were found to have B. anthracis spores only in their nostrils when tested. These spores hadn't made it to their lungs in sufficient amounts to cause a problem. In other words, the people had been exposed to the bacteria but had not developed the disease.
How Is Anthrax Diagnosed and Treated?
Medical professionals can diagnose anthrax by taking samples from the skin sores, blood, or other bodily fluids of people who are believed to have been exposed to B. anthracis. These samples are then sent to a lab to check whether the person has the bacteria in his or her system.
If anthrax is caught early, it is almost always successfully treated with antibiotics. If a person is known to have been exposed to B. anthracis but has no signs or symptoms of the disease, antibiotics may be given (after exposure) to prevent the disease from occurring.
Although there is a vaccine for anthrax, in the United States it is currently only recommended for people who are at risk of coming into contact with B. anthracis. They include people who work with B. anthracis in laboratories, people who handle potentially infected animal products, and U.S. military personnel. The vaccine is not given routinely to people in the United States and it hasn't been studied for use in people younger than 18.
If you worry when you hear about anthrax, remember that it's very rare, and it's unlikely that you will ever be exposed to the germs that cause anthrax. If you're worried about it, talk to a science teacher or medical professional — someone who can help you find the answers to any questions you may have about anthrax. | <urn:uuid:ff2dca58-2dce-4cd5-b727-bb1a18ab7c99> | {
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Hereditary hemochromatosis is a genetic disease that causes the body to absorb and store too much iron. The condition gets its name from "hemo" for blood and "chroma" for color, referring to the characteristic bronze skin tone that iron overload can cause. Someone with hereditary hemochromatosis who has never taken an iron supplement could find out in later years that iron overload is causing serious health problems.
Iron is a trace mineral that plays a vital role in the body. Every red blood cell contains iron in its hemoglobin, the pigment that carries oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. We get iron from our diet, and normally the body absorbs about 10% of the iron found in foods. People with hemochromatosis absorb double that amount.
Once absorbed, the excess iron doesn't leave the body. Instead, it's stored in synovium (joints) and major organs such as the liver, heart, brain, pancreas, and lungs. Over many years, iron accumulates to toxic levels that can damage or even destroy an organ. The iron overload can cause many health problems, most frequently a form of diabetes that's often resistant to insulin treatment. Because of this, hereditary hemochromatosis is sometimes called "bronze diabetes."
Some people with the disease develop symptoms by age 20, although signs of the condition usually appear between ages 40 and 60, when iron in the body has reached damaging levels. Women are less likely to develop symptoms of iron buildup than men, probably due to normal iron loss during menstruation.
However, hereditary hemochromatosis should not be considered a disease of older people or men. Iron buildup is often present and silently causing problems long before symptoms occur — in men, women, adolescents, and in rare cases, children.
Causes of Hereditary Hemochromatosis
Although many people have never heard of hereditary hemochromatosis, it is not rare and affects as many as 1 in every 200 people in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Hereditary hemochromatosis is a genetic disorder caused by a mutation on a gene that regulates iron absorption — 1 in every 8 to 10 people in the United States carries a single copy of this defective gene, called HFE. Carriers don't necessarily have the condition themselves, but can pass the mutated gene on to their children.
Hereditary hemochromatosis is an autosomal recessive condition, which means that in order to get it, a child must inherit two mutated HFE genes — one from each parent. If a child inherits just one mutated HFE gene, the normal gene essentially balances out the defective HFE gene.
Even with two mutated genes, not everyone becomes ill. Although a majority of those with two mutated genes will eventually develop some type of iron overload, far fewer of them will absorb enough iron to develop serious problems.
In some cases, inheriting only one mutated gene may still eventually lead to iron overload, possibly affecting the heart, according to the Iron Disorders Institute. In these people, the iron overload may be triggered by a precipitating factor, such as hepatitis (inflammation of the liver) or alcohol abuse. Individuals with one mutated gene who become ill may also have mutations in other genes, yet to be discovered, that increase iron absorption.
Some people who test positive for hereditary hemochromatosis remain symptom-free for life. Kids who test positive rarely have any symptoms because iron takes years to accumulate.
Patients who do have symptoms may experience:
muscle aches and joint pain, primarily in the fingers, knees, hips, and ankles; one of the earliest symptoms is arthritis of the knuckles of the first and second fingers
depression, disorientation, or memory problems
stomach swelling, abdominal pain, diarrhea, or nausea
loss of body hair, other than that on the scalp
gray or bronze skin similar to a suntan
increased susceptibility to bacterial infections
With such a wide range of possible symptoms, the disease can be extremely difficult to diagnose. As symptoms progress, it's frequently misdiagnosed as chronic hepatitis, other forms of diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, iron deficiency, gallbladder illness, menstrual problems, thyroid conditions, or polycythemia (an increase in the number of red blood cells).
It's important to understand that someone with hereditary hemochromatosis can have some symptoms without having all of them (i.e., heart problems without skin color changes, diabetes, or liver problems).
Luckily, the damage from hereditary hemochromatosis is completely preventable if it's diagnosed and treated early. Doctors may use these blood tests to measure the amount of iron in the blood and diagnose iron overload:
serum ferritin measures the blood level of the protein that stores iron many places in the body
serum iron measures iron concentrations in the blood
total iron-binding capacity (TIBC) measures the amount of iron that can be carried in the blood
With these results, a transferrin saturation percentage (transferrin is a protein that carries iron in the blood) is calculated by dividing the TIBC into the serum iron. An elevated transferrin saturation percentage or serum ferritin level indicates iron overload.
Several gene mutations can cause hemochromatosis. A genetic test is available for the most common type of hemochromatosis, which accounts for about 85% of cases in the United States. However, only some of those who test positive will actually develop serious illness. The other 15% of individuals with symptomatic hemochromatosis will have mutations not in the HFE gene, but in other genes, which may be unknown or for which gene testing isn't routinely available.
Therefore, in cases in which high transferrin saturation and high serum ferritin are found but gene testing doesn't confirm hemochromatosis, a liver biopsy may be done to determine whether symptomatic hemochromatosis exists or is likely to develop.
Also, the doctor may recommend a DNA test to confirm hereditary hemochromatosis when a spouse or first-degree relative (parent, child, or sibling) has been diagnosed with it.
Given the prevalence of the condition, some specialists suggest screening to detect hereditary hemochromatosis before it causes problems. The following approaches to screening have been suggested:
transferrin saturation testing on all adults at age 20, and every 5 years thereafter for anyone who has a family history of the condition (recommended by the College of American Pathologists)
genetic screening for newborns to potentially benefit both the child and the rest of the family (proposed by the American Hemochromatosis Society)
routine iron testing of all kids at age 4; those who have a genetic risk, but remain symptom-free, continue to be tested every 5 years thereafter
If you have a family history of hereditary hemochromatosis and are concerned about your child, talk to your doctor about screening tests.
Besides specific treatment for complications of the condition — such as insulin for diabetes — most individuals with hereditary hemochromatosis are treated by regularly drawing blood, a process called phlebotomy that's similar to making a blood donation.
Initially, blood may be drawn once or twice weekly during the "de-ironing" phase until the level of iron in the body has dropped to normal. In many cases, it requires 2 or 3 years of periodic phlebotomy to reach the desired level.
After the de-ironing phase, when the serum ferritin level has fallen into the normal range, the patient usually remains on a maintenance schedule of three to four phlebotomy sessions a year. Doctors check ferritin levels annually to monitor iron accumulation. For most people, this treatment will continue for life.
When detected and treated early, any and all symptoms of hereditary hemochromatosis can be prevented, and the person can live a normal life. If left untreated, however, it can lead to damaging or even fatal iron overload.
Complications of untreated iron overload include: diabetes, arthritis, depression, impotence, hypogonadism (deficient production of sex hormones by the testicles or ovaries), gallbladder disease, cirrhosis (disease and scarring of the liver), heart attack, cancer, and failure of other organs.
Caring for Your Child
Treatment for kids typically isn't as aggressive as for adults, and making some minor dietary changes can help slow iron accumulation.
Talk to your doctor about taking steps to delay or reduce iron overload. You might:
Limit red meat in your child's diet. Iron-rich vegetables are fine because the body doesn't absorb iron from plant sources very well.
Include moderate amounts of black, green, or oolong tea in your child's diet. The tannin from tea helps minimize iron absorption (note: herbal tea doesn't contain tannin).
Avoid breakfast cereals, breads, and snacks that are enriched with iron.
Ensure your child is immunized against hepatitis A and B.
Limit vitamin C supplements to less than 100 milligrams per day, because vitamin C enhances iron absorption.
Use a children's multivitamin that doesn't contain iron.
Avoid raw shellfish, which occasionally can be contaminated with bacteria that might be harmful to someone with an iron overload.
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Toddlers this age are moving from the eating habits they had as infants toward a diet more like your own.
Your job is to keep introducing new flavors and textures. Food preferences are set early in life, so help your child develop a taste for healthy foods now.
Toddlers have little tummies, so serve foods that are packed with the nutrients they need to grow healthy and strong, and limit the sweets and empty calories.
Your toddler will continue to explore self-feeding, first with fingers and then with utensils at around 15 to 18 months of age. Give your child many opportunities to practice these skills, but lend a hand when frustrations arise. As skills develop, step back and let your little one take over.
Toddlers also like to assert their independence, and the table is one place where you should give yours some sense of control. Allow your toddler to respond to internal cues for hunger and fullness but set the boundaries.
Remember: You decide what variety of healthy foods to offer at a meal and your child decides which of those foods to eat, how much to eat, and whether to eat at all.
A Word About Milk
Milk is an important part of a toddler's diet because it provides calcium and vitamin D, which help build strong bones. Kids under age 2 should drink whole milk for the dietary fats needed for normal growth and brain development.
When your child is 2, you can probably make the switch to low-fat or nonfat milk, but talk with your doctor before doing so.
Between 12 and 18 months of age is a good time for transition to a cup. Instead of cutting out bottles all at once, you can gradually eliminate them from the feeding schedule, starting with mealtime. Offer whole milk in a cup after the child has begun the meal. If you are breastfeeding, only offer milk in a cup and avoid the bottle habit altogether.
Some kids don't like cows milk at first because it's different from the breast milk or formula they're used to. If that's the case, it's OK to mix whole milk with formula or breast milk and gradually adjust the mixture so that it eventually becomes 100% cow's milk.
It's important to watch out for iron deficiency after kids reaches 1 year of age. It can affect their physical, mental, and behavioral development, and also can lead to anemia.
To help prevent iron deficiency:
Limit your child's milk intake to 16-24 full ounces (480-720 milliliters) a day.
Increase iron-rich foods in your child's diet, like meat, poultry, fish, beans, and iron-fortified foods.
Continue serving iron-fortified cereal until your child is 18 to 24 months old.
Talk with your doctor if you're concerned that your child drinks a lot of cow's milk or isn't getting enough iron, or if you're thinking of giving your child a vitamin supplement.
Foods to Avoid
By now your child should be eating a variety of foods. Continue to watch for allergic reactions when introducing new foods. Be aware that a child is at higher risk of developing food allergies if the child or one or more close family members have allergies or allergy-related conditions, like food allergies, eczema, or asthma. Talk to the doctor if you have any concerns.
Avoid foods that could present choking hazards, like popcorn, hard candies, hot dogs, raw vegetables and hard fruits, whole grapes, raisins, and nuts. Supervise your child at all times when eating.
How Much Should My Child Eat?
Offer your child three meals and two or three healthy snacks a day, but keep in mind that it's common for toddlers to skip meals. Allowing kids to skip a meal is a difficult concept for many parents, but kids should be allowed to respond to their own internal cues for hunger and fullness. Don't push food on a child who's not hungry, but kids shouldn't be allowed to eat on demand all day long either.
Maintain a regular schedule of meals and snacks so your kids will come to expect that food will be available at certain times of the day. If you have any questions about how much your child should eat, speak with your doctor. | <urn:uuid:e976bb15-d9f3-43a9-b71f-2adcc39bf065> | {
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Most people play a sport for the thrill of having fun with others who share the same interest. But it's not always fun and games. There can be a ton of pressure in high school sports. A lot of the time it comes from the feeling that a parent or coach expects you to always win.
But sometimes it comes from inside, too: Some players are just really hard on themselves. And individual situations can add to the stress: Maybe there's a recruiter from your No. 1 college scouting you on the sidelines.
Whatever the cause, the pressure to win can sometimes stress you to the point where you just don't know how to have fun anymore.
How Can Stress Affect Sports Performance?
Stress is a feeling that's created when we react to particular events. It's the body's way of rising to a challenge and preparing to meet a tough situation with focus, strength, stamina, and heightened alertness. A little stress or the right kind of positive stress can help keep you on your toes, ready to rise to a challenge.
The events that provoke stress are called stressors, and they cover a whole range of situations — everything from outright danger to stepping up to take the foul shot that could win the game. Stress can also be a response to change or anticipation of something that's about to happen — good or bad. People can feel stress over positive challenges, like making the varsity team, as well as negative ones.
Distress is a bad type of stress that arises when you must adapt to too many negative demands. Suppose you had a fight with a close friend last night, you forgot your homework this morning, and you're playing in a tennis match this afternoon. You try to get psyched for the game but can't. You've hit stress overload! Continuous struggling with too much stress can exhaust your energy and drive.
Eustress is the good type of stress that stems from the challenge of taking part in something that you enjoy but have to work hard for. Eustress pumps you up, providing a healthy spark for any task you undertake.
When the stress of competition starts to get to you, try these techniques to help you relax:
Deep breathing: Find a quiet place to sit down. Inhale slowly through your nose, drawing air deep into your lungs. Hold your breath for about 5 seconds, then release it slowly. Repeat the exercise five times.
Muscle relaxation: Contract (flex) a group of muscles tightly. Keep them tensed for about 5 seconds, then release. Repeat the exercise five times, selecting different muscle groups.
Visualization: Close your eyes and picture a peaceful place or an event from your past. Recall the beautiful sights and the happy sounds. Imagine stress flowing away from your body. You can also visualize success. People who advise competitive players often recommend that they imagine themselves completing a pass, making a shot, or scoring a goal over and over. Then on game day, you can recall your stored images to help calm nerves and boost self-confidence.
Positive self-talk: Watch out for negative thoughts. Whether you're preparing for a competition or coping with a defeat, tell yourself: "I learn from my mistakes!" "I'm in control of my feelings!" "I can make this goal!"
When sports become too stressful, get away from the pressure. Go to a movie or hang out with friends. Put your mind on something completely different.
If sports make you so nervous that you get headaches, become nauseated, or can't concentrate on other things, you're experiencing symptoms of unhealthy stress that’s becoming a pattern. Don't keep such stress bottled up inside you; suppressing your emotions might mean bigger health troubles for you later on.
Talk about your concerns with a friend. Simply sharing your feelings can ease your anxiety. Sometimes it may help to get an adult's perspective — someone who has helped others deal with sports stress like your coach or fitness instructor. Here are some other things you can do to cope with stress:
Treat your body right. Eat well and get a good night's sleep, especially before games where the pressure's on.
Learn and practice relaxation techniques, like those described in the previous section.
Get some type of physical activity other than the sport you're involved in. Take a walk, ride your bike, and get completely away from the sport that's stressing you out.
Don't try to be perfect — everyone flubs a shot or messes up from time to time (so don't expect your teammates to be perfect either!). Forgive yourself, remind yourself of all your great shots, and move on.
It's possible that some stress stems only from uncertainty. Meet privately with your coach or instructor. Ask for clarification if his or her expectations seem vague or inconsistent. Although most instructors do a good job of fostering athletes' physical and mental development, you may need to be the one who opens the lines of communication. You may also want to talk with your parents or another adult family member.
If you're feeling completely overscheduled and out of control, review your options on what you can let go. It's a last resort, but if you're no longer enjoying your sport, it may be time to find one that's less stressful. Chronic stress isn't fun — and fun is what sports are all about.
Recognizing when you need guidance to steer yourself out of a stressful situation doesn't represent weakness; it's a sign of courage and wisdom. Don't stop looking for support until you've found it.
Enjoy the Game
Winning is exhilarating! But losing and some amount of stress are part of almost any sports program — as they are in life. Sports are about enhancing self-esteem, building social skills, and developing a sense of community. And above all, sports are about having fun. | <urn:uuid:09ff7258-5277-44ab-a03a-4bcef102991d> | {
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Thu October 20, 2011
'Living Fossils' Just A Branch On Cycad Family Tree
Although dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, there are still thought to be a few species left over from those days. Plants called cycads are among these rare "living fossils" — they have remained pretty much unchanged for more than 300 million years, but a study in Science magazine suggests that glamorous title may not be deserved.
There's no time machine in Washington, D.C., but Harvard botanist Sarah Mathews leads me to what's arguably the next best thing — a room made of glass in the U.S. Botanic Garden, just downhill from the U.S. Capitol.
The sign says "The Garden Primeval — The First Land Plants."
Right away we see something that looks like a fern growing out of the top of a palm trunk. But it's not a fern or a palm. In fact, it's more closely related to a pine tree. Cycads produce seeds but not flowers. They evolved along with dinosaurs, which presumably munched them for lunch. So they've earned the title living fossil.
But "that assumption began to break down as we began sequencing DNA," Mathews says.
She and her colleagues — notably Nathalie Nagalingum from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney — have used that DNA to reconstruct the "family tree" of cycads. They find that the "trunk" of the family tree may reach back 300 million years, but the "branches," today's 300 species, actually burst onto the scene about 12 million years ago.
"And then it looks like around the world on multiple continents, cycads became more species-rich," Mathews says.
What caused that sudden burst of new species?
"That's the really fun puzzle of course," she says.
It's probably not a coincidence that other plants also put forth a burst of new species around that time, including cacti, ice-plants and agave. Mathews suspects climate change played a role.
"There was drying out and cooling going on, globally," she says.
This research is part of a broader effort to understand how all plants — most notably flowering plants — evolved. That story is gradually taking shape as scientists study more and more of the DNA from plants.
Of course, you might argue this research has some broader philosophical repercussions as well. By finding that these species of cycads are just 12 million years old — and so were not survivors from the days of the dinosaurs — has Mathew's team demoted these species from their lofty status as living fossils?
She says not.
"I think that we've actually found some interesting patterns for people who didn't think much about cycads before," she says.
What about people who think a lot about cycads? Bart Schutzman edits the Cycad Society's journal (global circulation: 500 copies). He's attracted to these plants because he feels a primal bond with this ancient species. And he says the news does not rock his world. Today's cycads still predate human species, and by a lot.
"What's the difference between old, older and very old, and very, very old? I mean they're all still very old," he says with a chuckle.
As for the moniker, living fossil?
"It won't stop people from glamorizing the cycads as the living fossils because their lineage extends so far back," Schutzman says.
So here's a little good news from Washington: A walk through the "Garden Primeval" greenhouse still offers a reasonable glimpse of foliage from the days of the dinosaurs, though the species themselves don't have quite the same bragging rights. | <urn:uuid:9fef6959-0818-4cac-94d3-4ad60e69186a> | {
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When Spilled Food Makes A Huge Mess (In A Tunnel Or On A Road)
Originally published on Thu January 24, 2013 7:42 am
Rarely do we consider the trucks, trains and tankers that transport our food around our cities — and around the world. It's not until an accident happens, and the food inside these vessels comes pouring out, that we remember all this food in motion around us, and how damaging it can be when it spills.
The truth is, a lot of food is extremely sticky, bulky — and sometimes, flammable. And apparently, the people who move it around are just as accident prone as the rest of us.
At least, that's what struck us after reading this week about the massive goat cheese fire in Norway, in which nearly 30 tons of a specialty brown cheese called brunost caught on fire and burned for days, forcing the closure of a tunnel for an estimated two weeks.
This giant roadside cheese flambé is hardly the first food disaster to cause more than a few headaches in recent years.
Take, for example, the recent yogurt disaster of May 2012, in which 36,000 pounds of Chobani Greek yogurt spilled down a hillside in southern New York state.
Then there was the great pancake syrup fiasco of 2012: Last June, an entire semitrailer's worth of the sticky liquid spilled across Interstate 75 in Ohio and Kentucky. (Ironically, the accident occurred after the truck slammed into an overpass at — wait for it — Buttermilk Pike.) That cleanup required the expertise of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
And our pals over at The Two-Way reported in 2011 on the tanker filled with yeast extract destined for a Marmite factory in England that crashed and spilled, jamming the M1, which connects London to the northern part of England.
Food disasters can be deadly, too, as the folks at Smithsonian's Food & Think blog have noted. Some 94 years ago, Boston's North End fell victim to the great molasses tragedy, when a giant tank capable of holding more than 2 million gallons of the sticky stuff exploded. The blast and ensuing mini-tsunami of molasses killed 21 people and injured 150 others.
But not all spills are disastrous for bystanders. In China last year, when 770 pounds of eggs spilled out of a truck in a traffic accident, locals used it as an opportunity to stock up. You can watch the video on YouTube here. | <urn:uuid:8abd8888-9a9e-454c-8b42-4609b09db9cc> | {
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|This review appears in the November 8, 2002 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Why Hiroshima Was Bombed:
The 'Utopians' Duped a Nation
by William Jones
Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie Groves, The Indispensable Man, by Robert Norris. South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press, 2002, 700 pages, hardback, $40.00.
The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, by Gar Alperovitz. New York: Alfred Knopf Books, 1995, 847 pages, paperback, $17.00.
"The United States decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved over one million American lives which would have been sacrificed by an invasion of Japan."
How often has this claim been restated whenever that horrendous event is mentioned on TV or in newspapers. And yet, it remains to this day a total fiction. Not only the figure of "one million"which was gratuituously added in the cover story published later to enhance the much lower figures actually predicted by the War Department had the United States been forced to invade Japanbut even the lower, more accurate estimates, represented a complete fallacy. There would have been no casualties in a land invasion of Japan because there would not have been any land invasion of Japan. By mid-May 1945 it was clear to all who wished to see: Japan was on the brink of surrendering.
It is the merit of Gar Alperovitz's work that he documented the facts available as of 1995 by using the then-latest declassified records from the war period. The real purpose of the atomic bomb was not to win the war, but rather to shape the contours of the post-war world. Alperowitz had an entire team working the files on this subject, with excellent results. The "team" aspect of the work leads, however, to a good deal of repetition. The recent biography by Robert Norris of one of the key players in that policy decision, Gen. Leslie Groves, helps to fill out the picture of the real scope and purposes of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japanese cities.
The Open Conspiracy of H.G. Wells
In order to understand the real significance of the atom bomb decision, we must, however, go a bit beyond the confines of these two particular worksback to 1928, to the publication of a little-noticed manuscript by science-fiction writer H.G. Wells, entitled The Open Conspiracy. In that work, Wells called for the establishment of a "world government" which would supersede the nation-state as the primary form of human social and political existence. Reading Wells today, one gets the eerie feeling of a weird fascist experiment, wrapped in pseudo-scientific rhetoric, in which Big Brother controls one's every move. This "Utopian" scheme, as Wells himself dubbed it, probably had little hope of success, except under conditions of raw terror, where a frightened population might come to feel that only in the womb of such a "world government" would there be any security.
With the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, such a condition, it was felt by Wells' devotees, had been brought about. Shortly after the dropping of the bomb in 1945, Lord Bertrand Russell, a compatriot of Wells in the "world commonwealth" project, wrote a short essay entitled "The Bomb and Civilisation." In this work Russell wrote: "The prospect for the human race is sombre beyond all precedent.... Either war or civilization must end, and if it is to be war that ends, there must be an international authority with the sole power to make the new bombs. All supplies of uranium must be placed under the control of the international authority, which shall have the right to safeguard the ore by armed forces. As soon as such an authority has been created, all existing atomic bombs, and all plants for their manufacture, must be handed over. And of course the international authority must have sufficient armed forces to protect whatever has been handed over to it. If this system were once established, the international authority would be irresistible, and wars would cease. At worst, there might be occasional brief revolts that would be easily quelled.
"The power of the United States in international affairs is, for the time being, immeasurably increased," Russell continued. "If America were more imperialistic there would be another possibility, less Utopian and less desirable, but still preferable to the total obliteration of civilized life. It would be possible for Americans to use their position of temporary superiority to insist upon disarmament, not only in Germany and Japan, but everywhere except in the United States, or at any rate in every country not prepared to enter into a close military alliance with the United States, involving compulsory sharing of military secrets. During the next few years, this policy could be enforced; if one or two wars were necessary, they would be brief, and would soon end in decisive American victory."
Russell's comments were undoubtedly aimed at encouraging the very thing he expressed his skepticism about. While his hatred of the United States as a nation-state was almost visceral, were a U.S. government prepared to become the center of a new Roman Empire, dictating policy to the world, he would stifle his revulsion and sign on to the project in that form.
Indeed there were in Washington, in late 1945 when Russell was writing this, already people intent on creating just such a solution. The totally unnecessary, and absolutely criminal, dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was their attempt to impose this Wellsian nightmare on an unwitting world.
Japan Prepares To Surrender
By the Spring of 1945, it was clear to all that the end of the war in the Pacific was close at hand. The successful island-hopping strategy of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, moving always for the strategic flank of the Japanese army rather than fighting for every foot of land occupied by its tenacious and fanatical soldiers, had given the greatest victory to U.S. arms with the minimum casualties, a feat perhaps unequaled in the annals of U.S. military history. Now, what terms should be presented to the Japanese to bring the Pacific war to a close?
The real discussion hinged on the question of what role, if any, the Japanese Emperor would have in a post-war Japan. Given that the tenacity of the Japanese troops was intimately bound to the role of the Emperor in society and religion, peace terms which would result in his destruction would be disastrous. As a report from MacArthur's staff to the War Department in Washington in the Summer of 1944 notes, "to dethrone, or hang, the Emperor would cause a tremendous and violent reaction from all Japanese. Hanging of the Emperor to them would be comparable to the crucifixion of Christ to us. All would fight to die like ants. The position of the gangster militarists would be strengthened immeasurably. The war would be unduly prolonged; our losses heavier than otherwise would be necessary." For the same reason, it was also clear that, were the Emperor to order his troops to surrender, they would, for the very same reason, do so to the very last solder.
In March 1945, MacArthur sent Lt. Gen. George Kenney, the head of his air forces, to Washington to brief the Joint Chiefs on the situation in the Pacific. In a long talk with Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall, on March 16, Kenney argued that Japan had lost its air power, its navy and merchant marine, and that there was no longer any necessity to wait for an end to the war in Europe or for the Russians to enter the Pacific war, before moving toward a surrender.
As Kenney relates in The MacArthur I Know: "When I was in Washington in March 1945, I repeated MacArthur's ideas, but everyone I talked to in the War Department and even among the Air crowd disagreed. The consensus was that Japan would hold out for possibly another two years.... While the dropping of the two atomic bombs may have hurried the Japanese decision to quit, there is little doubt that MacArthur was right in July when he told me that the projected Operation Olympicto invade Japan on November 1, 1945would never take place."
"It was quite evident from a study of the context of the messages, that the Japanese realized further resistance was futile, and were willing to grant any concessions to halt the war, providing the Emperor remained as the spiritual head of the country," Kenney wrote.
By the Spring of 1945 these peace-feelers were coming in fast and furious. On May 7, 1945, the OSS representative in Portugal informed President Truman that the Counsellor of the Japanese Legation in Portugal had told a source that the Japanese were ready to cease hostilities provided they were allowed to retain possession of the home islands and that the terms "unconditional surrender" not be employed in the actual peace terms.
Other OSS sources working with the Vatican's Cardinal Giuseppe Montini (later Pope Paul VI), were also in touch with the Japanese, who were in the process of working out the terms of an eventual Japanese surrenderagain with the proviso that the institution of the Emperor be retained.
The stated policy of the United States had been that of "unconditional surrender." This had been stated by President Roosevelt, almost fortuitously, when he met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at Casablanca in January 1943. And yet, with Roosevelt, the consummate politician, there was always room for finding a way out of a dilemma if the conditions warranted it. Roosevelt did, in fact, deviate from the "unconditional surrender" formula when Italy agreed to surrender in 1944. But by May 1945, Franklin Roosevelt was dead, and his new Vice President, Harry Truman, had been sworn in as President of the United States.
Truman had replaced Henry Wallace as FDR's Vice President prior to the 1944 elections, through the machinations of the southern Democrats who hated Roosevelt's New Deal as well as his envisioned post-war Grand Design. They knew that Roosevelt would not survive a fourth term. They therefore wanted to replace the strong New Deal Vice President Henry Wallace, with one of their own. Former Missouri tailor Harry Truman, a proud son of the Confederacy (both grandfathers fought for the South during the Civil War), who had come to prominence in Missouri politics as a stooge of the Kansas City-based criminal Pendergast mob, was their man. As his chief foreign policy adviser, Truman chose Sen. James Byrnes from South Carolina, an even more dyed-in-the-wool Confederate sympathizer. In June 1945, Truman made Byrnes Secretary of State.
The Russian Factor
From the beginning of the war, the Allied forces had decided that their main thrust would be in Europe. In every aspect of supply and logistics, the Atlantic theater received the primary attention, with MacArthur, the army commander in the Pacific, having to make do with whatever he got.
The Russian armies were almost solely deployed on the European front. After initial clashes with the Japanese in Manchuria in 1939, in which the Japanese fared badly, the Russians signed a Neutrality Treaty with Japan. In his discussions with Stalin at Tehran in November 1943 and at Yalta in February 1945, Roosevelt had talked to the Soviet leader about the possibility of redeploying Russian troops to the East at the conclusion of the war with Nazi Germany. Already in the beginning of the Pacific campaign, MacArthur had called for Russian engagement against the Japanese in Manchuria, a measure that would have helped tie up some of their forces that would otherwise be available to be deployed against him. The Russians, hard pressed by the advance of the Nazi armies, were not eager to engage in a two-front war if that could be avoided.
And yet, after the decisive victory of the Red Army at Kursk in July 1943, it was felt in U.S. military circles that the Russians might now consider moving against Japan. In a Joint Chiefs' instruction cited by Alperovitz, in the Fall of 1943 to the head of the American Military Mission in Moscow, Brig. Gen. John Deane, "the great importance to the United States of Russia's full participation in the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany, as essential to the prompt and crushing defeat of Japan at far less cost to the United States and Great Britain," was clearly stated. Again, just before the Big Three meetingRoosevelt, Churchill, and Stalinat Tehran in 1943, the Joint Chiefs stated: "We are agreed that every effort should be exerted to bring the U.S.S.R. into the war against Japan at the earliest practicable date, and that plans should be prepared in that event."
By the end of 1944, the war in Europe was approaching a close. Following the Big Three meeting in Yalta in February 1945, representatives were sent to MacArthur to brief him on the results. MacArthur again called for a Russian move on Manchuria in order to tie up as many Japanese divisions as possible, especially if events necessitated an invasion of the Japanese home islands, for which preparations were, in fact, being made.
The Japanese were also aware that Russian refusal to renew the Neutrality Pact would mean that they would also have Russia to fight. The signals of a Japanese willingness to surrender then began to multiply.
In addition to the OSS contacts in Italy and Portugal, the Japanese were also making their desires known through their representatives in Moscow and in Sweden, with representatives of the Swedish Royal Family. The Swedish reports were forwarded to the United States by Herschel V. Johnson, the U.S. Ambassador in Stockholm. Reporting on April 6, 1945, Johnson wrote that it was "probable that very far-reaching conditions would be accepted by the Japanese by way of negotiation," but that "there is no doubt that unconditional surrender terms would be unacceptable to the Japanese because it would mean dishonor. Application of such terms would be fatal and lead to desperate action on the part of the people.... The Emperor must not be touched," Johnson wrote.
The Atom Bomb Project
On April 25, 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Gen. Leslie Groves, the manager of the Manhattan Project, met at the White House to brief the President on the status of the atomic bomb.
The bomb project had been initiated by President Roosevelt on the basis of an appeal by Albert Einstein. Einstein, aware of Nazi work on developing such weapons, had been urged by Leo Szilard, a protégé of Bertrand Russell, who played on Einstein's fears, to write a letter to President Roosevelt urging him to begin work on an atomic weapon.
Szilard, a Hungarian physicist and a devotee of H.G. Wells, had worked his way into Einstein's confidence while still a young physicist in Berlin. In 1928 Szilard had read Wells' Open Conspiracy, and waxed enthusiastic. By 1929 he had travelled to London to meet with Wells and to negotiate the rights to publish Wells' works in Central Europe. Szilard himself worked on a scheme to realize Wells' vision of a "world government" controlled by a chosen "scientific elite." In fact, so enamored was he of this idea that he developed his own plan for creating such an "elite," which he called the Bund, "a closely knit group of people whose inner bond is pervaded by a religious and scientific spirit." Although formulating this proto-fascist vision at an early age, Szilard bandied such ideas about in different forms until his death.
How the Einstein letter led to the Manhattan Project, under General Groves, is well known. By the time the new President, Harry Truman, was briefed on the Manhattan Project in April 1945, the bomb was almost ready for testing. The growing realization by Truman of the power and capability of the new weapon gave Truman the means to accomplish the task for which he had been chosento dismantle Roosevelt's entire post-war design.
Roosevelt had dealt with the mercurial Russian leader, Joseph Stalin, in a rather straightforward and open manner. Not that this was without its difficulties, given Stalin's propensities and paranoia. Nevertheless, by 1944 Roosevelt felt that he had created a certain rapport with Stalin and intended to work to bring wartime ally Russia into the concert of European nations after the war. Writing in May 1944 in the Saturday Evening Post, Forrest Davis, a correspondent favored by Roosevelt, wrote: "Mr. Roosevelt is striving to bring the Soviet Union, which has fallen out with the European tradition, back into the family of nations, as a condition precedent to world organization. Convinced that unless that reunion takes place, there can be no world association, nor assured hope of peace, the President's 'great design' rests on two assumptions. First, he accepts the prevalent view that the Soviet Union will be able to organize effectively its manpower and resources in peace as well as war, thus becoming permanently a great power. He further assumes that the interests of a victorious Russian state can be reconciled to those of the Atlantic powers, China, and the small nations of Europe and America. Mr. Roosevelt, gambling for stakes as enormous as any statesman ever played for, has been betting that the Soviet Union needs peace and is willing to pay for it by collaborating with the West. By no means unaware of the risks, he declines, nevertheless, to acknowledge them even to close associates. The White House is a delicate sounding board, reflecting everything that happens everywhere on the globe. It would be absurd to suppose that the President has not considered the implications of his Russian policy in all angles and facets. The alternativea Russia excluded, aggrieved and driven in on itself to prepare for the inevitable war of continentswas to him so much worse, that he saw himself with little choice. He chose, moreover, to prosecute his policy so sincerely that the Russians, proverbially mistrustful, could have no ground for misgiving."
The Utopians' plans for establishing their global dictatorship were, on the other hand, precisely geared to play into those Russian misgivings.
The Road to Potsdam
While the production of the atomic bomb had been initiated by Roosevelt based on assumptions (later proven false) that the Nazis were progressing rapidly on building a similar device, the "bomb" now became, in the hands of the Utopians, the essential tool in imposing their political vision on the post-war world. But, in order to do that, the power of this new weapon had to be demonstrated in a devastating manner, to convince all nations to accept the straitjacket of "world government."
The Manhattan Project had been essentially an Anglo-American project from the start, although certain aspects of it were revealed to Churchill only after the fact. The wartime alliance with Russia had not included informing them of the existence of the bomb project. Some people had, however, urged this step on Roosevelt, aware that withholding the information now might create serious misunderstandings after the war.
Danish physicist Niels Bohr, aware that the Russians certainly knew of the possibility of developing atomic weapons and had perhaps more than an inkling of the Manhattan Project, feared a post-war arms race. He therefore urged President Roosevelt to inform Stalin of the bomb project. He also spoke to the British Prime Minister, who rejected the idea out of hand. "As for any post-war problems," Churchill told Bohr, "there are none that cannot be amicably settled between me and my friend, President Roosevelt." Roosevelt, who saw things quite differently, but who, for reasons of his own was not prepared at that time to reveal the secrets of the bomb to Stalin, didn't overrule the British Prime Minister on this issue.
By May 1945, with Roosevelt dead, differences over the post-war fate of Poland were calling for top-level consultations among the Big Three. Churchill wrote to Truman in May 1945 that it was urgent "that a settlement must be reached on all major issues ... before the armies of democracy melted." But Truman was not interested in meeting with Stalin until he had a successful test of the atomic bomb to use as a bargaining chip in such a meeting.
The political implications of the bomb were clearly in the forefront of interest for the Utopian faction. Chief among them was Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Speaking on May 14 to Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall and John J. McCloy (one of Stimson's top assistants at the War Department), relating a discussion he had just had with British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, Stimson commented: "It is a case where we have got to regain the lead [over Russia] and perhaps do it in a rough and realistic way.... I told him this was a place where we really held all the cards. I called it a royal straight flush and we mustn't be a fool about the way we play. They can't get along without our help and our industries, and we have coming into action a weapon which will be unique."
Truman was of one mind with Stimson on this point, and, therefore, worked to delay a meeting with Stalin. Truman wrote Churchill that he wanted to put off the Big Three meeting until after June 30 on the flimsy pretext that the U.S. budget was coming up in Congress. Stalin was anxious to meet. Harry Hopkins, just back from a trip to Moscow on May 28, was told the meeting would not be until July. Hopkins objected: "I think Stalin would like to have the meeting at an earlier date because of the many pressing problems to be decided." And yet Truman persisted in delaying, raising suspicions among the Russians as to his motives.
For what was Truman waiting? General Groves was pushing his scientists to test the bomb by the beginning of July. Technical considerations caused a delay in the testand another delay in Truman's planned meeting with Stalin. Finally, Grove pushed for a test on July 14. Biographer Norris notes how Groves, in explaining the rush to project director J. Robert Oppenheimer on July 2, stressed "the importance of trying to arrange for the 14th [of July] ... and to tell his people that it wasn't his fault. But came from higher authority." On June 5, Truman then informed Churchill in regard to the forthcoming meeting, "I find, after full consideration that July 15 is the earliest date that is practicable for me to attend." Indeed, if all went well, it was the earliest date at which Truman would would know if the test had been successful.
The Decision To Bomb
The test in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 14, 1945, produced results beyond anyone's imagination. As reports streamed back to Washington, the mood was almost ecstatic among the Utopians. Indeed, Stimson felt that the effect of the bomb was so great that he advised Truman the weapon might enable the United States to force the Soviet Union to abandon or radically alter its entire system of government. A War Department memorandum on June 16 noted that "the President feels the U.S. is by far the strongest country in the world and he proposes to take the lead at the coming meeting," and that in "this connection he proposes to raise all the controversial questions."
With the successful test of the bomb, the issue now became whether to use itand, if so, against whom? With the surrender of Nazi Germany already a fact, Japan was really the only candidate. But what if the Japanese also surrendered before the bomb was actually used in war, as all indicators were showing they intended to do? Testing the bomb in a real-time situation required, therefore, delaying such a surrender for as long as possible in order to use the bomb to end the warand demonstrate in an unequivocal and stark, terrifying manner, the raw power now possessed by the United States.
Plans for the bombing of Japan were already well under way when the Alamogordo test took place. Under the frenetic leadership of Groves, targets were being picked. An Interim Committee had been set up by Stimson's assistant, Harvey Bundy, consisting of Stimson; James Conant, chairman of the National Defense Research Committee; Dr. Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD); Dr. Karl Compton, head of the Office of Field Service (OSRD) and president of MIT; Assistant Secretary of State William Clayton; and the Undersecretary of the Navy, Ralph Bard. At Stimson's suggestion, Truman appointed Jimmy Byrnes to serve as Truman's personal liaison to the committee. The Interim Committee was to advise the President on how the bomb was to be used after the war. Groves, who was a member of the Target Committee, also received a permanent invitation to attend the meetings of the Interim Committee, and, in fact, attended all of their meetings. Two or more bombs were to be prepared.
Truman became totally euphoric when Groves' more detailed report on the Alamogordo experiment reached him on July 21. "The President was tremendously pepped up by it and spoke to me of it again and again when I saw him," Stimson confided in his diary. Byrnes was also ecstatic, telling Szilard "that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe."
Indeed, there was a growing feeling that with the Anglo-Americans retaining sole possession of the bomb, the post-war period would indeed become something of an Anglo-American Century, as Bertrand Russell would call for in his piece later in 1945. Norris' book clearly shows Groves to have been a strong proponent of such a view, though more inclined to make this solely an "American" preserve, not to be shared fully with the British. As he would express this later more publicly, in an important quote overlooked by his biographer Norris, but not lost on Alperovitz, Groves was committed to "an American-administered Pax-Atomicaan atomic league of nations, founded upon the West's supposed technological superiority and the secret, preclusive monopoly of atomic raw materials."
In the light of this policy shift, the appearance of Japanese peace-feelers now became a threat that might obviate the use of the atomic bomb in war. Anything that would permit the Japanese to surrender before its use against Japan was therefore to be squelched. The envisioned entry of the Russian forces into Manchuria had therefore to be delayed for as long as possible.
Some people in Washington saw clearly what was in the works. Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew, a former ambassador to Japan, caught wind of what was happeningand it frightened him. Grew renewed his efforts to quickly get a statement of intent from the United States which would guarantee a retention of the Emperor, and facilitate a rapid Japanese surrenderbefore the bomb could be used. More generally, Grew realized that there was a substantial peace party in Japan, and that the peace-feelers the Allied intelligence forces were picking up, were for real. The position of the United States, he felt, should be supportive of that peace party, and immediately clarifying the role of the Emperor in the peace terms was absolutely essential if peace were to be quickly achieved.
Many leading Republicans were also calling for such a statement. On July 3, the New York Times reported that the Senate Republican minority leader, Wallace White, "declared that the Pacific war might end quickly if President Truman would state, specifically, in the upper chamber, just what unconditional surrender means for the Japanese." The War Department's Operations Division advised on July 12, 1945 that "the present stand of the War Department is that Japanese surrender is just possible and is attractive enough to the U.S. to justify us in making any concession which might be attractive to the Japanese, so long as our realistic aims for peace in the Pacific are not adversely affected."
Indeed, by this time the Japanese peace-feelers were becoming a drumbeat. On July 12, as Truman was travelling to Potsdam aboard the Presidential yacht, the Augusta, Emperor Hirohito was declaring in a meeting of the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, that although war planning had to continue, it was also "necessary to have a plan to close the war at once." A cable intercepted on July 12 from Foreign Minister Togo to Japanese Ambassador Sato in Moscow, and given to Truman aboard the Augusta on his way to Potsdam, stated: "We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad." Unlike the previous peace-feelers, these were very official and very high-level, even involving the leadership of the Japanese Army, the only real hold-outs for continued fighting. By the time of the Potsdam meeting it was also known that Japan was asking Russia, with which it still had a neutrality treaty, to help it get out of the war.
Using the Bomb 'Diplomatically'
But Truman, with an entirely different agenda, was not ready for peacenot yet at any rate. Indeed, arriving at Potsdam, the United States was already taking measures to delay Russian entry into the war in the Pacific.
At Yalta it had been agreed that Russia would enter the Pacific theater in exchange for several conditions: It would receive the Kurile Islands from Japan, regain control over the Chinese Far Eastern and South Manchurian railroads as well as the ports of Dairen and Port Arthur, and the "independence of Mongolia would be assured." In turn, Stalin agreed to sign a treaty with Nationalist China. Roosevelt had assured Stalin that he would convince Chiang Kai-shek to accept concessions to Russia in Manchuria.
The signing of an agreement between China and the Soviet Union would therefore be the immediate prelude to Soviet entry into Manchuria. With Truman's new agenda, and the successful demonstration of the atomic bomb, the brakes had to be put on the signing of such an agreement. On July 6, as he was leaving for Potsdam, Jimmy Byrnes instructed Averell Harriman, the key contact with the Soviets, to "inform both the Soviet Government and T.V. Soong [the Chinese Foreign Minister then in Moscow for negotiations with the Russians] that as a party to the Yalta Agreement we would expect to be consulted before any arrangement is concluded between the Soviet and Chinese governments." Harriman even had to pressure Soong to be tougher with the Russians about these concessions. "He [Soong] was far less concerned than we had been about such details as whether Chinese or Russian troops would guard the railroad or who would be the Port Master of Dairen," Harriman wrote. "I saw him almost every day and urged him to be more firm."
At Potsdam, Truman adopted his most belligerent pose. In a letter to his wife Bess on June 20, Truman wrote: "We had a tough meeting yesterday. I reared up on my hind legs and told 'em where to get off, and they got off. I have to make perfectly plain to them at least once a day that so far as this President is concerned, Santa Claus is dead, and that my first interest is U.S.A., then I want the Jap War won and I want 'em both in it."
After the plenary session of July 24, Truman approached Stalin as Stalin was about to leave the conference, and mentioned to him casually "that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force." The poker-faced Stalin simply commented, according to Truman, that "he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make 'good use of it against the Japanese.' " Judging from Stalin's placid reaction, Truman and Churchill thought that Stalin didn't really understand that Truman had been referring to the atomic bomb. The wily Soviet leader, however, knew a lot more than he was letting on. What his Russian science advisers, like the great scientist Vladimir Vernadsky, were not able to tell him about the bomb, well-placed spies in the Manhattan Project were. Marshal Zhukov relates Stalin's comments to his own people following this encounter with Truman. "Stalin, in my presence, told Molotov about his conversation with Truman," Zhukov wrote in his memoirs. " 'They're raising the price,' said Molotov. Stalin gave a laugh, 'Let them. We'll have to have a talk with Kurchatov today about speeding up our work.' " Stalin was referring to the Soviet bomb program, headed up by Academician I.V. Kurchatov.
Potsdam: Preventing Japan's Surrender
It was also at Potsdam that Churchill was informed of the successful test. British Chief of Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brookesby wrote that Churchill "was completely carried away. It was no longer necessary for the Russians to come into the Japanese war; the new explosive alone was sufficient to settle the matter. Furthermore, we now had something in our hands which would redress the balance with the Russians."
By this time, the Interim Committee had decided that the bomb would be used, without warning, on a Japanese war plant, preferably in the vicinity of an area in which many Japanese workers were living, for maximum psychological effect. Norris relates how Groves wanted to target Kyoto itself, the most important religious center for the Japanese, but Stimson, anxious that the Japanese remain malleable enough after the war in order to serve in the post-war battle against the spread of Communism in Asia, rejected this proposal, assenting only to the targetting of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Niigata, and Kokura. There was only one true dissenter to this decision of the committeeRalph Bard, Navy Secretary James Forrestal's undersecretary and representative. In a June 27 memorandum, Bard wrote: "Ever since I have been in touch with this program I have had a feeling that before the bomb is actually used against Japan, that Japan should have some preliminary warning, for say two or three days in advance of use. The position of the United States as a great humanitarian nation and the fair play attitude of our people generally is responsible in the main for this feeling." Bard also stressed that some U.S. declaration regarding the status of the Emperor should be given to encourage the Japanese to surrender quickly. But Truman and Byrnes were not prepared to issue such a declaration.
In fact, the draft statement for the Potsdam meeting, drawn up by Stimson and John McCloy, had included explicit assurances for the Emperor. William Leahy, the chief of staff of the Army and Navy under Roosevelt, who had been kept on by Truman, wrote on July 18: "From a strictly military point of view, the Joint Chiefs of Staff consider it inadvisable to make any statement or take any action at the present time that would make it difficult or impossible to utilize the authority of the Emperor to direct a surrender of the Japanese forces, in the outlying areas as well as in Japan proper." Although Truman was in agreement with the policy of building up post-war Japan as a counterweight to Soviet influence, he, in collaboration with Byrnes, decided to purge the reference to the Emperor from the Potsdam Proclamation. As far as the Japanese knew, "unconditional surrender" was still the policy of the allies. In a further affront to Stalin, the United States issued the Proclamation to the press before even informing him, much less soliciting his approval of the final text.
The effect of the Potsdam Declaration was devastating. Navy Captain Ellis Zacharias, a specialist who had been working on psychological-warfare ideas in cooperation with the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information, had been, like his Navy commanders, keen on encouraging a quick Japanese surrender. Zacharias had been closely following the Japanese intercepts, and knew that the signals to end the war were coming from the highest levels, and that the position of the Emperor was the decisive issue. The Potsdam Declaration smashed these hopes. It "wrecked everything we had been working for," Zacharias would later explain. "Instead of being a diplomatic instrument, transmitted through regular diplomatic channels and giving the Japanese a chance to answer, it was put on the radio as a propaganda instrument pure and simple. The whole maneuver, in fact, completely disregarded all essential psychological factors [for] dealing with Japan."
Also at Potsdam, more pressure was put on T.V. Soong to conduct a delaying action. On July 23 Churchill wrote to Sir Anthony Eden, "Mr. Byrnes told me this morning that he had cabled to T.V. Soong advising him not to give way on any point to the Russians, but to return to Moscow and keep on negotiating pending further developments. It is quite clear that the United States do not at the present time desire Russian participation in the war against Japan." Nevertheless, hearing from Truman that the bomb test had been successful, Stalin pushed up the invasion of Manchuria from Aug. 15 to Aug. 8a mere two days, in the event, after the bombing of Hiroshima.
Opposition to the Decision
The decision to bomb was, however, meeting with considerable resistance. The initial reaction came from those who were most in the know on the subjectthe Manhattan Project scientists. A nervous Groves was keenly aware of the growing opposition among the scientists to the use of the bomb without warning. In a poll taken among 150 of the scientists working at the Manhattan Project's Chicago facility, almost half of those polled also recommended "a military demonstration" to be followed by renewed opportunity for surrender "before full use of the weapon is employed."
Leo Szilard was perhaps more upset than anyone. The spiritual "father" of the atomic bomb. Szilard, like Bohr, knew something of the Soviet capabilities through his early contact with Russian scientist Peter Kapitsa, and realized that the atomic bomb would not long remain the monopoly of a single power. Indeed, its use in combat, he feared, threatened to set off an arms race which would upset all his plans for using it to establish the "world government." In late May 1945, Szilard and fellow scientists Harold Urey and Walter Bartky met with Jimmy Byrnes. Byrnes told them that General Groves had informed him that Russia had no uranium, and that therefore there was no fear of them developing atomic weapons.
In reality, already in 1940, Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky had appointed a committee to investigate the uranium resources of the Soviet Union. While they did discover uranium deposits in Central Asia, it would be the countries of Eastern Europe and Soviet-occupied East Germany which would provide the great bulk of the uranium for the Soviet nuclear program. In a memorandum to Byrnes, Szilard underlined that it was the post-war organization of the atomic bomb threat which would be of utmost importance. In accordance with his Wellsian program, he urged that there be established international controls on atomic research, with the direct involvement of the scientists in the decisions as to its use. Byrnes found the idea rather ludicrous. "He [Szilard] felt that scientists, including himself, should discuss the matter with the Cabinet, which I did not feel desirable. His general demeanor and his desire to participate in policymaking made an unfavorable impression on me."
More significant opposition came from the military leadership of the country, most of whom were adamantly opposed to the use of the atomic bomb. Alperovitz documents this resistance quite extensively in separate chapters dealing with the reaction from each of the uniformed services; all regarded the bombing as militarily unnecessary. Stimson himself, when in Europe for the Potsdam talks, saw fit to solicit the opinion of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces in Europe. "The incident took place in 1945 when Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan," Eisenhower would later write in his autobiography, Mandate for Change. "I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act.... The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During the recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression, and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment, I thought no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.' The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions."
Although Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Pacific theater commander, wasn't informed of the existence of the atomic bomb until five days before it was dropped on Hiroshima, he had already, in the Spring of 1945, sent his air force chief, Maj. Gen. George Kenney, to Washington to explain his view that the Japanese were close to surrender. When Kenney came to Washington and explained this to Gen. George Marshall, Marshall called in his top advisers. Kenney would report to MacArthur later that he had not succeeded in convincing them. MacArthur, until his death, insisted that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military value whatsoever.
Truman's Chief of Staff, Adm. William Leahy, who chaired the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, continually insisted that the Japanese were on the brink of surrender. As late as July 16, Leahy was urging the British Chief of Staff to have Churchill get Truman to modify the term "unconditional surrender." Leahy would later say, quite accurately, of the decision: "Truman told me it was agreed they would use it, after military men's statements that it would save many, many American lives, by shortening the war, only to hit military objectives. Of course, then they went ahead and killed as many women and children as they could, which was just what they wanted all the time."
Adm. Ernest King, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet, was convinced that the successful blockade of Japan was bringing Japan to its knees. There was no need to invade Japan proper, King argued, because Japan was as good as defeated. This analysis would later be fully corroborated by the Strategic Bombing Survey, which in 1946 examined the destruction caused in Japan by a combination of the blockade and the incessant conventional bombing. The Survey concluded that Japan would likely have surrendered in 1945 without atomic bombing, a Soviet declaration of war, or an American invasion.
That the Utopians were also aware of these facts is attested by comments made to Truman on June 6 by Stimson. Stimson wrote in his diary. "I told him I was anxious about this feature of the war [massive conventional bombing] for two reasons: first, because I did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities; and second, I was a little fearful that before we could get ready, the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength. He laughed and said he understood."
On Aug. 6 at 8:16 in the morning the bomber Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy," with a yield equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT, on the city of Hiroshima, with a population of 290,000 civilians and 43,000 soldiers. When calculations were made at the end of August, the death toll was in the realm of 100,000, but many more would die soon thereafter from the effects of the bombing. By the end of 1950, the toll had reached 200,000, with death rates calculated at 54%! On Aug. 9, "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki, with 70,000 dead calculated by the end of 1945 and a total of 140,000 dead within the next five years. On hearing of the successful bombing of Hiroshima, Truman commented, "This is the greatest thing in history!" General MacArthur was dumbfounded, as MacArthur's pilot, Weldon E. Rhoades, noted in his diary on the day after the bombing: "General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster. I had a long talk with him today, necessitated by the impending trip to Okinawa. He wants time to think the thing out, so he has postponed the trip to some future date to be decided later."
The Reaction and the Cover-Up
More significant, perhaps, than the arduous plodding through the files to get a clear step-by-step picture of the events leading up to the decision, are the revelations by the Alperovitz team of the growing U.S. domestic reaction to the bombing and the frantic efforts by the perpetrators to cover their tracksa story which has received very little publicity.
Reports of the terrible facts and consequences of the atomic bombingsmost especially, author John Hersey's "Hiroshima," which filled the August 1946 issue of The New Yorker magazine and sold hundreds of thousands of copieshad a strong impact on the American public. A steady stream of criticism of the bombing came from key religious leaders in the United States. The effect of what James Conant derided as "this type of sentimentalism" moved Conantnow president of Harvardto ask his friend Harvey Bundy to get Stimson to counterattack. Conant agreed with Bertrand Russell that the demonstration of the atomic bomb in a war situation had been essential to force the world into a control regime. But the American citizen had to be "convinced" by a counter-story on Japan.
At the time Stimson was working on his memoirs, being assisted by Harvey Bundy's son, McGeorge Bundy. The two now readily undertook the task of providing the "cover-up" for the atom bomb decision. McGeorge Bundy would write a draft for Stimson's perusal and signature. After his discussions with Conant, Harvey Bundy himself had drafted a number of "pointers" that he felt should be included in such an article: namely, that the bomb decision was primarily ordered with the thought that it would save American lives; that no major person in authority thought that Japan would surrender on terms acceptable to the Allies; that the Interim Committee had rejected targets "where the destruction of life and property would be the very greatest"; that the committee had discussed "intensively" whether the bomb should be used at all; and that the committee had also considered the possibility of a demonstration prior to its use in war. In particular he wanted to downplay any inference that the bomb played any role in U.S. relations with the Soviet Union.
With "old Bundy's" notes in hand, "young Bundy"who later, as National Security Adviser to Kennedy and Johnson, would help to maneuver these Presidents into the jungles of Vietnamwent to work on the draft. Various people, including Groves, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Secretary of War Robert Patterson, and Bernard Baruch, who would shortly present Truman's first draconian nuclear control plan to the United Nations, had their say in the draft. Groves underlined the basic lie of the piece: that the dropping of the bomb shortened the war by months and saved many human lives which the planned invasion of Japan would have exacted.
Conant himself wanted to make the point that, given the tremendous destruction of the conventional bombing of Japan, the atom bomb was just like any other bomb, only a bit more destructive. Tellingly, Conant urged Bundy to drop all reference to the issue of the Emperor in the paper.
In the final draft, Bundy so exaggerated the figures that it stated twice that the dropping of the bomb had saved over a million lives. And yet, the best estimates given to General Marshall of the possible casualty rates of American forces in a full-scale invasion, were always in the range of 40,000 to 46,000. The big lie just kept getting bigger.
The essay was published in the February 1947 issue of Harper's magazine. Breaking all precedent as regards copyright, Harper's gave permission for anyone who wanted to reproduce the article to do so. It was therefore quickly reprinted in the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Omaha World Herald, Reader's Digest, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and many other papers. McGeorge Bundy quipped to Stimson, "The Harper's article has been read by everyone I meet, and it seems to have covered the subject so well that I find no follow-up work needed.... I think we deserve some sort of medal for reducing these particular chatterers to silence."
Not everyone felt that the effect was sufficient, however. Conant had Karl Compton, the president of MIT, launch a parallel defense of the bombing in the Atlantic Monthly, upping the ante in terms of the outrageous claims of the number of lives saved. "I believe, with complete conviction, that the use of the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousandsperhaps several millionsof lives, both American and Japanese," Compton wrote. This was, for them, not merely an attempt to justify their actions. "If the propaganda against the use of the atomic bomb had been allowed to grow unchecked," Conant wrote Stimson, "the strength of our military position by virtue of having the bomb would have been correspondingly weakened, and with the weakening would have come a decrease in the probabilities of an international agreement for the control of atomic energy." Indeed this, and not the defeat of Japan, had been the real Wellsian purpose of the bomb project to begin with.
The Cold War Begins
The effect on Russia of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings was immediate. Visiting Moscow together with Marshal Zhukov a few days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Eisenhower, according to Edgar Snow, answered "a private question privately," with the following remarks: "I would have said, I was sure we could keep the peace with Russia. Now, I don't know. I had hoped the bomb wouldn't figure in this war. Until now I would have said that we three, Britain with her mighty fleet, America with the strongest air force, and Russia with the strongest land force on the continent, we three could have guaranteed the peace of the world for a long, long time to come. But now, I don't know. People are frightened and disturbed all over. Everyone feels insecure again."
Three policies emerged for dealing with the advent of the nuclear age. Bertrand Russell and his Utopian co-thinkers demanded the United States get ready for preventive nuclear war against the Soviet Union, to enforce a U.S.-British nuclear monopoly.
The policy of Truman, and of Wall Street, was the "Baruch Plan" for world government enforcement of complete nuclear technological apartheid. Among Truman's circles there was still the illusion that the United States would remain sole proprietor of nuclear weapons for a long time to come. On Oct. 8, 1946, Truman was asked if the United States would keep control of all nuclear technological information. "Well, I don't think it would do any good to let them in on the know-how," Truman said, "because I don't think they could do it, anyway."
Truman's initial response to this was to attempt to use the forum of the United Nations to impose top-down control on the nations of the world with regard to the research and development and the production of nuclear technology, and the top-down control of the nuclear materials themselvesone of the key elements in the Groves post-war plans for nuclear weapons, as Norris documents. Truman appointed the aging financier Bernard Baruch, formerly head of the War Production Board during World War I, as the head of the U.S. delegation to the UN Atomic Energy Commission, assuring a hard line on the control issue. Baruch's plan demanded "swift and sure punishment" of any nation which attempted independently to develop nuclear technology, and insisted that the veto power of the UN Security Council be suspended entirely in matters of atomic control.
Bertrand Russell was also delighted with the Baruch Plan, as the realization of his "world government" idea. And the Soviet Union's swift and complete rejection of the Baruch Plan in 1946, provided grist for Russell's "preventive war" mill; in 1949 George Eliot published a book entitled If Russia Strikes, in which he called on the United States to present Moscow with an ultimatum: Cease research and production efforts on the atomic bomb and accept the Baruch Plan, or face an American attack that would "raze the U.S.S.R. with an air atomic offensive." The "preventive war" scenario also won its adherents among some U.S. military layers, particularly those Air Forces officers who had bought into the supremacy of "air power" as the real war-winning capability.
The head of the newly founded United States Air Force, Gen. Henry H. (Hap) Arnold, in a report to Secretary of War Stimson, asserted that the "one defense against the atomic bomb" was "to hit it before it starts." In a speech at the Boston Navy Yard on Aug. 25, 1950, Navy Secretary Francis Matthews gave a speech which supported the Utopians' thesis. Matthews said that the United States should consider "instituting a war to compel cooperation for peace." Many other leading figures in the Truman Administration supported Matthews' callincluding Stuart Symington, director of the National Security Resources Board and former secretary of the Air Force, and Gen. Albert Wedemeyer, commander of the Sixth Army.
By the time of the Matthews' speech, however, the Soviets had eliminated the U.S. atomic monopoly on nuclear weapons, exploding a nuclear device on the steppes of Kazakstan in August 1949. The proposals for "preventive war" would continue on and off for several years, but neither Truman, nor much less Eisenhowerwho effectively judoed the Utopian gameplanwere ever prepared to go that far. The world now entered the era of Mutual and Assured Destruction.
Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace
From here on in, preventive war with the Soviets would be viewed as more and more suicidal. The resulting ''balance of terror" would now be used by the same Utopians as the argument for bringing the world into the era of world government, including Russell's attempt during the Cuban Missile Crisis to bring the Americans and the Soviets into an "arms control regime."
The third post-war nuclear policy, however, and the initiative that promised to break through this controlled environment, was the "Atoms for Peace" program launched in 1953 by President Eisenhower. Envisioning international cooperation between states as the means of fostering their development by the peaceful uses of nuclear power, rather than the establishment of the institutional straitjacket of a world police regime, Ike succeeded in engaging the Soviet Union in cooperation for development. In the course of that program, between 1956 and 1959, the United States concluded nuclear cooperation agreements with 40 different countries, with the Soviet Union providing nuclear power for the satellite countries of Eastern Europe.
From 1956 to 1962, the Atoms for Peace program provided research reactors, nuclear training, and fissionable material to 26 states. Later, in a similar peace-through-development initiative, President Ronald Reagan adopted Lyndon LaRouche's technology-sharing concept for his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) proposal. The Utopians in the Reagan Administrationwho included such well-known figures in today's "Get Saddam" operation as Richard Perle, Doug Feith, and Paul Wolfowitzsucceeded in sabotaging that program, creating the basis for their "comeback" under George Herbert Walker Bush. They are now intent on realizing the nightmare of the Wellsian-Russellite vision by the establishment of a new Roman Empire under Anglo-American direction. | <urn:uuid:8c671533-e46c-4e90-a13b-028295ee4417> | {
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As regular readers know, I constantly have my students interact with text in many ways both in the classroom and in the computer lab. In the classroom, Post Its are my favorite tool of choice if students are reading something they can’t actually write on.
I’ve recently added some to that list, so I’m not quite sure which one I’ll have students use next year. And now, there’s one more I like.
It’s called Rooh It!.
Since the Make Use of blog has written a good post describing it, I’m going to encourage you to read their explanation.
I’d like to highlight a couple of great features, though. One, you don’t have to register for it. And, two, all you have to do is put “roohit.com/” before any web URL address and you can start highlighting and leaving notes about it.
The only negative I see is that it looks a little “busy” — English Language Learners could be a bit confused by all the initial options and text. But a short teacher explanation should take care of that. | <urn:uuid:750b7928-5998-4f85-ba01-86d556ae192c> | {
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Drayton Hall, Charleston vicinity, South Carolina.
Begun in 1738 for John Drayton, a prominent official and businessman in colonial South Carolina, Drayton Hall is one of the finest and best-preserved Georgian Palladian houses in the nation. Known for its symmetrical design, two-story portico (porch), and exquisite interior decorative wood and plasterwork, the house was the only plantation house on the west bank of the Ashley River not to be burned during the Civil War. Still without running water, central heat, or electricity, Drayton Hall is now a National Trust historic site.
Old Blacksmith Shop, Fort Bennett, Pierre vicinity, South Dakota.
The old wagon wheel rims and wire resting against the wall of this run-down blacksmith shop were but a few of the items made or repaired for the United States Army garrison at Fort Bennett. The U.S. government established the fort on the outskirts of the Great Sioux Nation [Indian] Reservation in 1870 in order to provide protection to the personnel overseeing and implementing governmental policies following the Red Cloud War. Built in 1880, the sod-covered shop is Fort Bennett’s only surviving structure.
First Presbyterian Church (Downtown Presbyterian Church), Nashville, Tennessee.
The interior columns, moldings, and illusionistic fresco ornament shown here along the south wall of Nashville’s First Presbyterian Church are in the Egyptian Revival style, an exotic style of architecture that became popular in the first half of the nineteenth century following Napoleon’s conquests. The Egyptian Revival style is noted for its lotus-leaf-inspired capitals, bulging columns, and Egyptian gorges, the dramatically curved cornice topping many Egyptian buildings. Begun in 1849 by William Strickland, the architect of the Tennessee State Capitol, this is the largest and best-preserved Egyptian Revival church in the United States.
Minion Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuna, San Antonio, Texas.
The church depicted in these axonometric views is one of the oldest surviving mission churches in the American Southwest. Built in the mid-eighteenth century by Franciscan monks from Spain, the church once served as the centerpiece of a large missionary compound. In its heyday, the mission included a convent, farmland, workshops, a granary, and a pueblo, or quarters, for christianized American Indians. In common with many Catholic churches built at the same time in Spain and Europe, this church features a vaulted stone roof, twin towers, and a dome over the crossing. | <urn:uuid:1f400e44-2300-4c54-8458-9fc7b3718652> | {
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Whose Point of View? The Journey of Three Generations
(Literature Link for the book Whale Journey)
In her 50 years, Old Gray has traveled a distance equal to traveling to
the moon and home again. What's in store for her baby, about to make his first migration?
Whale Journey by Vivian French (1998, Zero to Ten Limited) is
a fact-filled picture book and gripping tale about the life cycle of the gray
whale. You'll want
to "journey" through the book more than once as you join three generations
of whales on their migration. For Three Scars, it may be the last
of her journeys, bittersweet with memories and quite exhausting. For Old Gray,
it's a middle journey, one of many more to come. She's been there and done that many
times in her life. And for Baby Gray, this is a first. It's a time of wild excitement,
challenging thrills, and unknown dangers. It's the same
journey, yet different for each one making it.
The journey of three generations provides rich opportunities for personal connections,
science learning, and author's craft. Begin with the point-of-view writing activity
and expand with the extensions that follow. Whatever
the age of your students, you'll find something for everyone!
Try This! Writing Activity
After reading the story, ask students to choose one of the whales in the
story: Three Scars, Old Gray, or Baby Gray. Tell them they will write a journal entry
from that point of view. Students may use events from the book or events they imagine
will happen along the migratory journey. (Older students may wish to write a short
story, essay, or memoir from their chosen character's point of view.) Then follow
these steps in the writing process:
- Prewriting: For
students who would benefit, encourage brainstorming with other writers
who chose the same character. What is it like to be that whale? What
are their fears, concerns, joys, satisfactions? What have they
experienced to make them feel that way? What lies ahead for each? How
do they view this migration? What
memories do they have? Other students may prefer freewriting
or clustering to get their ideas and "experiences" flowing.
- Drafting: Encourage students to freely write first drafts, leaving blanks
to which they can return instead of spending time fleshing out details. Have them
review their drafts, then read them aloud to partners. A partner's questions and
comments can help writers decide what to change.
- Revising: Remind students that revising is the most important step, where
85 percent of a writer's time should be spent. This is the chance to make their writing
better, more exact, more descriptive--or even shorter!
- Editing: Have students check for errors, make corrections, and prepare
final copies. Students may wish to illustrate their stories using a favorite art
- Publishing and Sharing: Provide time for authors to share their works!
- Look at the author's craft. Take another journey through the book to collect
descriptive phrases that create mental pictures. Then take a journey to collect strong,
active verbs. Next, have students imagine they've been hired to create a travel brochure
that makes a whale want to come along and join the 5,000-mile journey. Display brochures
or share with other classes.
- Have students create a timeline or draw a map that shows the annual migratory
cycle of a gray whale.
students to come up with a list of whale biology or migration questions
for which they can research answers. Journey North's Archives
or Answers from Experts (See Site Map)
are great places to start.
- Encourage students
to make personal connections. Ask them to identify "big
journeys" they are making in their lives. Ask them to think about their life
journey until now, and to identify big landmarks. How would they answer the same
questions from a parent's or a grandparent's point of view? What advice would they
give about life's journeys or milestones to children they may have in the future?
What "words to live by" can they contribute? | <urn:uuid:790caffd-cd32-4177-ac77-da114f892cb7> | {
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I’ve been puzzling over a phenomenon lately that I’d like to talk a bit about. I want to put this out into the ether and get feedback from all of you. Because I can’t make sense of this—and perhaps your superior brains can.
With the rise in digital content, we’ve seen more and more examples of technology being created to enforce the law and/or a company’s terms of service for their product. And just because technology can do this, does it mean that we as a society should allow it?
In the past, here’s how the law was enforced:
- the law exists
- as a member of a society, you are expected to know about the law
- if you violate the law, in theory someone punishes you
And here’s how the law is enforced now in some cases:
- the law exists
- technology is created to make it difficult or impossible for you to break the law
- if you somehow manage to break through the technology and break the law, you are punished for breaching the system as well as breaking the law itself
Here’s a real-world example of technology-enforced laws to start the discussion. The Saudi Arabian government developed an RFID chip with a cyanide implant. These chips were implanted in known criminals (supposedly terrorists) and if their handlers or probation officers or whoever was watching them suspected that they were violating the law again, BOOM – cyanide in the blood…instant death. No trial, no due process, just a remotely activated death penalty.
In the world of digital content we see this same practice but in a non-lethal incarnation.
The utilization of internet filters in schools and libraries (and on school-issued computers in kids’ homes) is intended as a way to mandatorily enforce laws against child pornography and the display of harmful and obscene materials in public. Advocates for this technology sell it as a way to enforce these laws without human intervention. Unfortunately, the technology doesn’t actually work very well, and about 30% of sites that should be blocked aren’t and 30% of sites that should be allowed get blocked erroneously. The intention is good, but the side effects are not worth the trade off—both access to legitimate information and the false sense of security the technology creates. Some schools and libraries realize the inherent flaws in the technology and choose, instead, to do what we as a society have been doing for generations—trusting people to follow the law, and when they don’t we have policies in place for reprimands or punishments (e.g. calling the cops on their asses).
Another key example is the technology used in digital rights management, called “digital restrictions management” by its detractors, including yours truly. Once again, the technology was created to enforce the applicable copyright law as well as the company-created terms of service for their products and content. And once again, the technology doesn’t actually work. Why?
Digital Rights Management technology doesn’t work because it doesn’t do what the companies tell you it does: stop piracy. If copyrighted content was easy to get legally at a fair price in an easy to access format (read: one not locked down with layers of DRM software), then more people would be willing to pay for it. Why? Convenience and safety. It’s why the music industry is selling DRM-free MP3s and still making money. I’d rather give $7.99 to a band and get a full, DRM-free, legal copy of their album than try to find a complete, high quality, virus-free version on a torrent site. Ultimately, these failed attempts to decrease piracy and (in theory) increase sales not only fail, but they drive even more users away. I strongly believe it is the current state of DRM that drives people into the arms of the pirates—not greed, a lack of ethics, or pure evil. Unless you count DRM as pure evil, which I do.
So…if the idea of the cyanide-laden RFID chip disturbs you, then (following my logic, anyway) the idea of internet filters and digital rights management should equally perturb you. And if you’re a librarian, then dammit—both internet filters and digital rights management should perturb you as a professional and you should do everything in your power to fight them both—in your own library and in the profession as a whole. Fight, librarians! Fight! | <urn:uuid:5b3f9e1e-41e4-4ad1-8725-a291c2812b7e> | {
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In this section...
Pathologies Detected by Cardiac Catheterization
Cardiac catheterization, as discussed earlier, involves the insertion of a catheter into the heart for the diagnosis of various diseases. Cardiac catheterization is typically used for diagnosing the following pathologies.
Aortic Dissection - Cardiac catheterization is a method used in treating aortic dissection. The catheter called a stent is inserted and threaded to the location of the tear. The stent then provides as a channel for blood flow with minimal leakage.
Aortic Aneurysm – As with aortic dissection, cardiac catheterization is a method of treatment. A stent is inserted and threaded to the location of the affected blood vessel. The stent provides a channel for blood flow without further damaging the widened blood vessel.
Congenital Heart Disease – Cardiac catheterization is performed to measure oxygen levels and pressures within the heart chambers. Cardiac catheterization may also be used as a way to treat conditions by closing holes to prevent mixing of the blood between chambers.
Aortic Regurgitation - Cardiac catheterization can be used as a diagnostic tool since it is a method of measuring blood pressure in the various chambers.
Atrial Septal Defects (ASD) – Cardiac catheterization has been used to evaluate this defect. This invasive procedure allows the analysis of the oxygen saturation in both right and left sides of the heart.
Cardiomyopathy – Cardiac catheterization has been used to measure blood pressures in the various cardiac chambers to diagnose this condition.
Coronary Heart Disease – Cardiac catheterization is used to inject dye to make the coronary arteries visible on x-rays, thereby showing where blockages are. | <urn:uuid:e4b18bde-d2ec-4439-897e-1cad731a7ece> | {
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Sunday, July 22, 2012
Long time readers of this blog will know that it's a myth that people with Asperger's syndrome can't empathize and that if a situation is explained to them, they can certainly feel emotion and put themselves "into the shoes of another". The question is, can a person with Asperger's learn to empathize automatically and without the need for explanation.
Empathy is a tricky thing to define but one thing is for sure; it isn't about feeling sorry for someone. It's about either feeling as they do, understanding how they feel or having a reciprocal feeling.
Some of the biggest challenges for people with Asperger's syndrome lie around the interpretation of gestures, tone and expression in both directions, sending and receiving. Gestures, tone and expression are the primary means of communicating the human emotional state with talking and writing being used far less. In fact, quite often spoken expression confusingly communicates the exact opposite of what the emotional state is; for example when a person says "oh, that is just GREAT!"
Given these communication difficulties, the question then becomes less about empathy and more about expression. I guess you could ask, can a neurotypical person learn to express their true feelings in the moment? Can an aspie learn to interpret those feelings and express empathy in a way that can be understood by a neurotypical - again, in the moment.
It's clear why people with Asperger's syndrome often need a detailed explanation before they can get into the shoes of another. It's just not normal for us and since we're using our own emotional state as a guide, our reactions to news and events are less empathetic of others and more interpetive of our own internal state. Neurotypicals may be surprised to hear that your own empathy towards us is usually not in a form that we want either.
We've all heard those "horror stories" about people with Aspgerger's syndrome who either act indifferent or laugh at funerals. Sadly these incidents lead people to presume that they are cold and "without emotion". The problem here is that their emotional state is not the same as the majority, not that they don't have emotions at all.
An aspie with strong beliefs may feel that a person has moved on to a much better life. They may feel that Grandma has finally been reunited with Grandpa and that they will be happy as a result. In this case, they're empathising with the recently dead, not the recently bereaved. This doesn't make their reaction any less empathetic and it certainly doesn't make them a "cold person". It's the interpretation of others who misread the target of the emotion that is at fault.
As people with Asperger's syndrome pass through life they, like everyone else, acumulate a lot of "social wisdom". Eventually they learn that their laughter, though well founded, has no place at a funeral and that the correct "group feelings" are of loss and sadness. The first time that these expressions kick in, they may be a little forced or fake. Later as the aspie begins to get into a proper understanding of loss, usually because they suffer loss themselves and have an emotional state to relate to, those expressions become real and stronger.
It's not usual to see an older person with Asperger's syndrome overwhelmed by sadness at a funeral, even one for a distant relative. Once those feelings of sadness are tapped into, it's difficult to let go and almost impossible to control the intensity of feeling. It's been said that people with Asperger's syndrome often feel emotion more strongly than others. I'd be inclined to agree with that.
I used the funeral example above to show a progression from delayed and even wrong emotion to instantaneous "empathy". Clearly it is possible for a person with Asperger's syndrome to learn how another
is feeling but they need a few key things to happen;
The Situation must be clearly stated
In the case of a funeral, it's easy to tell that one is occurring, hence a person with Asperger's syndrome can easily tap into the feelings (and rules) for prior funerals. If the feelings of a neurotypical match those of a previous occurance, you need to let your aspie know. Sad puppy-dog eyes aren't necessarily going to communicate what is needed. You need to "use your words".
The Target must be obvious
In the funeral example, the target wasn't the deceased person, it was the grieving family. Our aspie projected empathy towards the wrong target. Usually in domestic situations, the target is more obvious but just in case, make sure that your aspie knows that the target is you. Perhaps even say "can you understand what I'm feeling?" or "can you see it from my point of view?" These things will help your aspie to find the target.
The Emotion must be familiar
One of most commmon and obviously "doomed to failure" empathetic problems occurs when a woman experiences strong period pain and expects her male partner to be empathetic. We understand stomach aches and headaches, which are similar but still far from the same but that's about as much understanding as a male can bring to the table. You need to use expressive language such as; "it's like being repeatedly punched in the gut" to get the idea accross. Empathy works best when you can relate to an emotion or feeling so if you can relate your feelings back to something your aspie will understand, then do so. It's your best chance.
The Requirement for Empathy must be Stated
Aspies, and male aspies in particular, are problem solvers. Throw a problem at them and their brains will go into overdrive to solve it. The problem is that quite often their partners don't want solutions, they simply want empathy. Unfortunately, too often the need for empathy is presented in the form of a problem to be solved. If you don't want solutions, just empathy, then please say it clearly.
The moment must be Right
Picture this, you're in the middle of a fight with your partner and then suddenly he turns around and asks you if you could get him a bowl of ice cream. It's not going to happen. You're going to say "get it yourself!" The same applies to empathy. If you ask for empathy in the middle of a fight, you're simply not going to get it. Choose your moments carefully.
So, is it possible for your aspie partner to empathise in the moment without you having to spend time explaining things to them?
No. The main reason for this is that it's not yet possible for us to read each other's minds.
Is is possible for you, to communicate your needs in a short series of words and get the empathy you require without a long discussion of why? Yes, definitely yes but it will take a bit of practice. Start with longer and more expressive conversations and then over your years as a couple, you'll find yourselves increasingly able to anticipate each other's needs.
Of course, if you've already been married 10+ years and it's not happening, then there's a good chance that there is something wrong with the expression techniques that you and your partner are using. If that's the case, see a counselor - or better still go on a marriage encounters course. You'll find that a change of technique makes all the difference.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Today I'm blogging over at Special-ism and the subject is Disciplining Children with Special Needs, click over to have a read.
Discipline and Kids with Special Needs
Discipline and Kids with Special Needs
Posted by Gavin Bollard at 10:42 AM
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
This post is a response to;
Want to commit suicide because of my son’s autism
Tammy, who blogs at Autism Learning Felt (http://www.autismlearningfelt.com/) was looking through the search words used to get to her blog when she saw “Want to commit suicide because of my son’s autism”. Her post is a heartfelt response to the unknown person who searched for the phrase.
Please read Tammy's post.
A short while ago, there was a wave of support for a similar search using the term "I wish I didn't have Aspergers" and it was great to see the community come together to provide support and encouragement for the person in this position but I'm keen to see whether or not we're willing to open our arms to the carers.
I hope so.
The Issues between Advocates with Autism and Carers
Unfortunately, there is one big problem which stands between the advocates with autism and carers of people with autism - and it's a misunderstanding.
Advocates with autism see themselves as fighting to be accepted, not changed and certainly not cured. They see society as a major problem but they often see their carers as problems too. Their view is person-centric and it's all about themselves and others like themselves. They're usually less concerned about what they can't do and more focused on what they can. It's a great positive attitude which makes it much easier to accept oneself and be the best that you can be.
Carers have exactly the opposite view. Often they are carers of people with autism who are unable to self-advocate. As such they aren't as attuned to the internal thinking of those under their care and can only report what they see from their point of view. Since they are focussed on their job as carers, they think in terms of the things they are required to do for the people under their care. Obviously if a carer needs to do something, then it registers as a deficit. Carers still blame society for many of the issues but they also find issues with the "disabilities" of the people under their care.
Carers and advocates are mostly thinking the same things. They have similar needs and they are fighting for many of the same rights and support. Unfortunately their different frames of reference often put them at odds with each other.
When Carers Burn Out
Carers are often buried under the weight of their responsibilities. Since they are usually parents or close relatives, they feel that they have a responsibility to the people under their care and they are unable to escape from their situations. Caring is hard work and long hours. It often requires the carers to put their working and social lives on hold while they address the needs of their children well past the years they expected to. It's little wonder that carers often feel burnt out. It doesn't help either that the people who need carers often have communications difficulties and are unable to make it clear just how much they appreciate the help.
We all know about carers who reach breaking point and end up harming those in their care. These are well documented cases - and the autism community has rightly risen up in anger. It's understandable. There's no excuse to ever hurt a person who needs assistance. If you can't cope, then at least hand them over to "the system". If nothing else, it's a much better option than harming them.
Unfortunately, the autism community and our society are both neglecting carers on the edge. These carers aren't harming their children but they aren't coping either. They shouldn't be condemned but consoled. They need support to lighten their load, they need options to provide them with breaks and most of all, they need reassurance that their efforts aren't in vain.
This is one of the major issues I have with fundraising for autism research. Those funds aren't required to increase the scans for autism, or to print placards and leaflets about immunization - or even to support scientists in their search for the elusive autism genetic code. No, that funding should be used to provide services and assistance to people who are already on the autism spectrum and their carers. They should be used to improve the quality of life of families - not to try to detect and remove autism before it is born.
The Message to Carers
I know that I've strayed a little from the main point of this article but somehow it all felt important. My message to carers in general and to the carer on the edge who wrote; “I want to commit suicide because of my son’s autism” in particular is;
Thank you carers! Your care and your dedication is very much appreciated by those whose lives you enrich every day with your presence. We know that it's not an easy task and we know that sometimes we seem less appreciative than we should be.
We know that your life has not gone in the direction you probably imagined. We didn't choose the difficulties we face either but this is who we are and we are willing to work with what we have. There are a lot of positives in our life, if only you could see them from our point of view. I would love it if you could spend less time looking for miracle cures and more time simply trying to understand what it feels like to be me. The autism blogging and facebook communities are there for you. Please talk to these people because they hold the keys to that understanding.
We want you to continue doing your best but we need you to look after yourself too. Take regular breaks, arrange respite care and seek counselling for yourself. An exhausted carer can't help anyone. Don't consider permanent solutions like murder and suicide. If you find yourself thinking along these lines get help - it will get better but only if you ask for help. There's no shame in asking and your life and my life are both too valuable to risk if you're feeling overwhelmed.
Finally, don't sweat the small stuff. It doesn't matter that our reading level is behind that of other kids our age or that we don't eat with our mouths closed. Don't paint our future with the word NEVER. Don't give up, just wait and see what happens. Don't withhold activities and opportunities simply because you think we won't cope - give us a go and if it fails, try again next year - we may surprise you.
Looking from the outside in might make you feel sad but if only you could see from our point of view, you'd understand how happy we can be too. Don't interpret a grimace as an expression of pain or a jumping episode as simply exercise - these are often expressions of extreme happiness and if it is you that gets this response from us, then please understand that we've just given you a "million dollar smile".
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
We are a society obsessed with betterment through numbers and it seems that we are constantly trying to find ways to have simple numbers prove our worth in society.
Films, for example, are rated by the number of stars a reviewer gives them - or by their gross takings at the box office but neither of these is a personal rating applicable to you, the viewer. We've all had times where we've disagreed with critics and we all know that box office success doesn't always mean that a film is great.
The same applies to other parts of our lives. People who engage us in conversation want to know what type of car we drive, where we live and what we do for a living. They seem like harmless enough questions but quite often these people are fishing for the clues which will help them either outrank you in some way - or become insanely jealous.
Of course, our lives are far too complex to be defined by such simple comparisons but that doesn't stop people from trying - particularly if they have the numbers on their side.
Believe it or not, school grades and awards are just another ranking. Unfortunately, they're a ranking which can destroy young lives if they're taken too seriously.
"You'll never get a good job if you can't get good grades", a parent will often say, "you'll end up being unemployed or collecting garbage for the rest of your life".
Such statements aren't helpful - and they're not true either. We live in a world where the "white collar" middle-management class is top-heavy and surplus - and there aren't enough tradies to go around. People can live without a project manager but leave them with a blocked toilet for a few days and they'll pay almost anything to have it fixed.
Even those of us with good grades are at the mercy of our social skills. It's the main reason why so many people with Asperger's syndrome work in jobs far below their capabilities and certification - or not at all. It's not what you know, it's who you know, how you relate to others and how well you fit into normal social conventions.
The Three "R"s
No doubt you've heard of the three "R"s; Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. These are core skills which will be needed by our kids throughout their lives regardless of the career they pursue. They will need to be able to read signs, fill in forms and calculate costs as part of their daily lives. The three Rs form the basis of all other parts of learning and need to be developed in the school years because our capacity to learn drops off sharply in our twenties.
These skills take precedence over everything else including, science, religion, Shakespeare and art.
So if your special needs child is failing Shakespeare, ask yourself; are they improving in reading, writing and basic arithmetic? These are the things which really matter.
You're probably interpreting the three Rs as having kids who can read books, write essays and perform pages of mathematics. These a great ideas but let us be a little looser in our interpretation.
- Reading is to communicate via unspoken language. You'll find that there are signs to be read all around us but only some of them have words. Have your child interpret iconic signs as well as words. In fact, iconic signs are often an easier place to start. Start with the basics such as ladies and gents toilets and then move up to less obvious ones like Stop and give way. Make sure that you child understands the meanings of these signs since reading without understanding meaning is pointless. When iconic signs are mastered, work on worded signs, street names for example. Show your child how to reference street names in a directory or GPS as you drive. Reading is not just about books.
- Writing is a means of communication via written language. Just as the first writings were pictographs, so too can your child's first written communication. Have them draw things that they want such as food and drink. Leave bottles and cans with labels about for them to copy - you'll find that they copy the words too. Don't stress over legibility - I know plenty of doctors who can't write legibly today. Don't stress over backward or transposed letters either. It is a pain and it is disconcerting when it continues for years but it's not necessarily a sign of dyslexia. Be patient with your child's stresses and remember that low muscle tone which is common in children with Aspergers syndrome, can make writing very uncomfortable.
Ultimately, if your child has too much difficulty forming letters, then give them alternatives such as touchpads or computers to type on. Remember that writing isn't about letter formation, it's about getting ideas down onto paper in a form that others can understand.
- The idea behind arithmetic is that your child should be able to conceptualise quantity and adjustments to it quantity. You'll find very little everyday life mathematics that involves multiplication and division Most of the time it's simply addition and subtraction. Fractions rarely make an appearance and many people can go through their entire post-school lives without raising numbers to powers or using algebra or calculus. For most of us, mathematics is all about determining how much change to expect when buying things so that you can tell if you can afford something and if you're being "ripped off". With that in mind, take your child on trips to the shops. Give them small amounts of money and ask them to buy what they can. Lolly shops with patient storekeepers are great for this exercise and it's this kind of maths that is far more important than pages of exercise problems.
Beyond the "Three Rs"
After the three R's come social skills and the ability to form concepts. Usually neither of these even warrant a grade at school but they're critical skills. Social skills are far more critical than than grades, degrees and diplomas when it comes to getting a job - and they're even more important when it comes to keeping it. If your child isn't learning appropriate social skills at school, then get them involved in extracurricular activities. These can include sports, scouting, chess clubs, movie clubs - anything provided that there's a social aspect to it.
The ability to generalise from concepts is critical too but for some reason, this isn't even a skill that is taught or acknowledged. It's simply expected to materialise from nowhere. Unfortunately, it's not something that happens easily when a child has Asperger's syndrome. In those cases, it needs to be taught explicitly.
Put Away the Report Cards
We'd all like our children to get great marks and we'd all like them to get student of the week or citizen of the term but the fact is that sometimes our child's differences work against them. Lets not fall into the trap of comparing our child's metrics with those of other children. It gets in the way of real learning. | <urn:uuid:6c957188-3fc5-4e4c-9f20-69729e9e36bf> | {
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The phenomenon of unaccusativity is a central focus for the study of the complex properties of verb classes. The Unaccusative Hypothesis, first formulated in 1978, claimed that there are two classes of intransitive verbs, the unaccusative (Jill arrived) and the unergative or agentive (Jill sings). The hypothesis has provided a rich context for debating whether syntactic behaviour is semantically or lexically determined, the consequence of syntactic context, or a combination of these factors. No consensus has been reached. This book combines new approaches to the subject with several papers that have achieved a significant status even though formally unpublished. Among the issues the authors address are: the determination of the unaccusative class of verbs, the problem of unaccusativity diagnostics, the implications of special morphology for the structural representation of unaccusatives and the status of the external thematic role, the properties guiding the unergative versus unaccusative distinction in acquisition, and the properties of second-language lexicon. | <urn:uuid:6498a514-4308-4b74-9aef-ac590d2a350a> | {
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While pipeline construction requires a substantial capital expenditure, it is fast becoming the preferred mode of transportation of oil and gas resources when there is a long-term commitment between trade partners. As a result, the global oil and gas trunk pipeline length is set to increase by over 100,000km by 2015.
The majority of oil and gas transportation occurs through tankers and pipelines. Oil and gas companies tend to prefer pipeline trade over trade through tankers, as pipeline trade requires fewer operational procedures and low operating expenditure.
High consuming nations will go to new lengths to meet oil and gas demand
GlobalData estimates that the global oil and gas trunk pipeline length will increase by 104,884.2km during 2011–2015, the top five countries in terms of planned pipeline length addition will account for around half of all planned additions globally; namely Russia, India, the US, China and Canada.
Russia plans to develop pipeline infrastructure to target Asian markets such as Korea and China for oil and gas exports, while China plans to add pipelines to secure its oil and gas supplies from source countries such as Myanmar and Russia.
However, India, the US and Canada mainly plan to develop their pipeline infrastructure for transportation reasons. While India is focused on the internal transportation of gas and petroleum products, the US and Canada seek to transport gas and petroleum products from resource-rich to resource-deficient regions across their large geographical areas.
The successful development of unconventional energy sources in North America has led to new pipeline construction projects in the region. Due to the successful development of oil sands in Canada and shale gas fields in the US, the countries are better equipped to meet the growing regional demand across North America. This will, of course, depend on the construction of new pipelines or upgrades to the capacity increment of existing pipelines.
Top countries step on the gas in terms of global pipeline addition plans
Global natural gas production is expected to increase at an average annual growth rate (AAGR) of 2.7% during 2011–2015. During the same period, global oil production is expected to increase at an AAGR of 1.0%. The increase in oil and gas production will naturally lead to the expansion of the existing pipeline network in order to transport the oil and gas production to various demand centers. Due to a higher rate of gas production, gas pipelines will be responsible for 75% of the total global planned pipeline length addition during 2011–2015.
The majority of global pipeline length additions will be associated with state-owned companies. Of the top 10 companies in terms of associated pipeline length, only two companies are privately-owned. This emphasizes the importance of pipeline projects for governments across the world. | <urn:uuid:856c22c3-87be-45ed-95a2-c26c5eac966b> | {
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Making Wellness Work: A Guide to Implementing and Monitoring School Wellness Policies in Maryland
Wellness policies in Maryland have come a long way since the initial development prior to the 2006 – 2007 school year. Creating a school-wide culture of wellness for students and staff is crucial for the health of future generations. A Wellness Policy will benefit our children only when we are able to follow through with successful implementation, monitoring and evaluation activities. This guide was developed to support the efforts of school systems’ in Maryland to monitor and evaluate their Wellness Policy. Each of the four required components of Wellness Policies–physical activity or education, nutrition standards, nutrition education, and other school-based activities that promote student wellness–is addressed in the guide. The guide provides information on:
• Wellness Policy goals;
• implementation activities;
• steps to support implementation;
• expected outcomes aligned with activities; and
• monitoring opportunities. | <urn:uuid:53fec7ea-4f93-42ee-96b3-3bf68036bcbd> | {
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Faces, Vertices, and Edges of Cylinders, Cones, and Spheres
Date: 12/28/2003 at 17:21:33 From: Cara Subject: Characteristics of polyhedra I need to know how many faces, vertices, and edges do cylinders, cones, and spheres have? Logically I would say that a sphere has 1 face, 0 vertices and 0 edges. Problem: a face is flat, sphere is not flat. Secondly this does not satisfy Euler's formula v - e + f = 2. I would say a cone has 2 faces, 1 edge, and 1 vertex. Problem: while this does satisfy Euler, it does not satisfy the definitions.
Date: 12/28/2003 at 20:41:45 From: Doctor Peterson Subject: Re: Characteristics of polyhedra Hi, Cara. To start, take a look at this page: Cone, Cylinder Edges? http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/sets/select/dm_cone_edge.html Properly speaking, Euler's formula does not apply to a surface, but to a network on a surface, which must meet certain criteria. The "natural" faces and edges for these surfaces, or those determined by applying the definitions used for polyhedra, do not meet these criteria. Just taking the natural parts of a cone, as you say, it has one presumed vertex, the apex; one edge, the circle at the base; and two faces, one flat and one curved. (I say "presumed" because the apex is not really a vertex in the usual sense of a place where two or more edges meet, but it is a point that stands out.) This gives 1 - 1 + 2 = 2 So it does fit the formula; but there is no reason it should, really, because it doesn't fit the requirements for the theorem, namely that the graph should be equivalent to a polyhedron. Each face must be simply connected (able to shrink to a disk, with no "holes" in it), and likewise each edge must be like a segment (not a circle). One of our "natural" faces has a "vertex" in the middle of it, so it is not simply connected; and the "edge" has no ends, so it doesn't fit either. These errors just happen to cancel one another out. As another example, take a cylinder, which in its natural state has no vertices, two "edges", and three "faces": 0 - 2 + 3 = 1 It doesn't work, and the theorem doesn't claim it should. In each case you can "fix" the graph by adding one segment from top to bottom. In the cone, this gives one extra vertex (on the base), and one extra edge, so the formula still holds. In the cylinder, it gives two new vertices and one extra edge, and the formula becomes correct. What do you have to do to "fix" the sphere? Here is a deeper discussion of these ideas: Euler's Formula Applied to a Torus http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/51815.html If you have any further questions, feel free to write back. - Doctor Peterson, The Math Forum http://mathforum.org/dr.math/
Search the Dr. Math Library:
Ask Dr. MathTM
© 1994-2013 The Math Forum | <urn:uuid:b7a43f40-aa4a-4a8e-bff9-be77db0b79c6> | {
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In his essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," T. S. Eliot said that "not only the best, but the most individual parts of [the poet's] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously."1 The poet's ancestors are those to whom he is indebted for all that he has inherited—his language, his sensibility, his outlook, and his standards of conduct. He acknowledges his debt by letting these forebears speak through his work. Paradoxically, the more freely and fully he allows them to speak—which is to say the less he self-indulgently tries to make his work appear original with him—the more completely his work bears the stamp of his individuality. Tradition provides discipline; out of the discipline springs the unselfconscious and uncontrived quality of all good writing, which in this essay we will call "spontaneity."
Eliot wrote this essay before he was converted to Anglicanism. He thought he was describing a general cultural phenomenon, which is that a cultural tradition (for example, that of Europe) could liberate the artist who assimilated it. We agree with Eliot's thesis, but only if it is taken to its proper conclusion. That conclusion is that tradition will liberate the artist only if he becomes a guileless and self-forgetful individual, and we believe self-forgetfulness is possible only by yielding one's heart to God.
Why are assimilation of the tradition and personal self-forgetfulness indispensable qualities of a genuine artist? Why do we add this to Eliot's thesis? Because the artist's talent is more than flair and ability that he possesses naturally. It is also a sensitivity to the ways and heritage of his people; probably without being aware of it he speaks for them, because he uses the language and images bequeathed to his people by its forebears. So, in significant part, his talent is something entrusted to him by others, and it is just for this reason that using this talent self-servingly is forbidden. If he does (and nonuse, too, is a kind of self-service), what he will produce will be artificial. On the other hand, the tradition is given fresh life in and through artists who magnify their talents without self-regard. Nowhere else does literary tradition live. Nowhere but in such artists can a living past be encountered. Without them, ritual petrifies and folk art becomes sentimental or vulgar.
We have inverted the title of Eliot's essay because we want to express this modification of Eliot's thesis. The inversion expands the usual connotations of the terms "talent" and "tradition." It suggests that there is a strong sense in which talents are fully employed by individuals only when they do not regard them as their own (or simply, do not regard them), and that there is an equally strong sense in which tradition exists only in the form of individuals in whom it is reincarnated. We use this word rather than "transmitted" because it suggests that tradition is not merely transported intact by individuals along the passageway of time, but renewed and revitalized.
Eliot was thinking of the literary tradition in a way that comprehends the whole of that tradition, including the writing of philosophy, criticism, drama, social tracts, psychology, and history. What we have to say about the historian in this essay might be said (with appropriate adjustment of detail) about any practitioner of any literary art, and this is a point that needs to be kept firmly in mind if our thesis is to be intelligible. For our motivation in thinking about the subject is not accusatory. We would do ill to write of other people, present or past, as if their plight were not ours. Indeed, we have keenly felt the moral hazards that beset historians in our own disciplines of philology and philosophy.
The discipline that must be acquired in order to assimilate one's tradition is more than an accumulation of information. In the historian's case this discipline is a matter of care, in every sense of that word: carefulness in studying the random residue which past people have left of themselves and caring for them even though they are no longer with us. Without careful discipline there can be no incarnation of tradition, and without incarnation there is no individuality.
By defining the historian's discipline this way, we want to distinguish it from method. Method can be mastered and misused. For some practicing historians (philosophers, psychologists, and so forth), this is just what happens; their method is not simply the thoroughgoing care with which they set out a story of the past. Instead it is an affectation, a style deliberately adopted with an eye for professional legitimacy and success. In the writing of the disciplined historian who is absorbed in what is to be done rather than in any social advantage that might accrue from doing it, there is unmistakable freshness, individuality. On the other hand, the historian who employs method and style for social recognition's sake cannot duplicate these results. The reason is, in seeking recognition he is withholding part of himself from his work, controlling his response as a whole human being to historical situations in favor of what he thinks is an ideal response of a historian. However he may try to make it "original," his work will be stylistically stereotyped. He will produce less than he understands in order to conform to the accepted canons of historical writing. Method and rigor are necessary for the sort of historical work we want to praise, but not sufficient—just as the law is honored by all who live the gospel, but not all who live the law honor the gospel. Our subject, then, is the abuse of method which might be thought of as an academic analogue of self-righteousness. And our thesis is that those who are in the historian's profession primarily for themselves will, like the self-righteous, make sounds of brass.
Until recent years, stylistic anonymity among historians for self-promotional purposes masqueraded as "objectivity." But the issue is not an epistemological one about the possibility of telling the past's story "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist," even though historiographers may have thought otherwise for decades. The issue is a psychological one about the quality of the historian's motivation. With the breakdown of philosophical positivism in our century, many historians have disclaimed any profession of objectivity, yet even some of these still assess one another's work against (largely tacit) methodological and stylistic norms. It is not the objectivity/subjectivity axis that should command our ultimate historiographical concern, but the purity-of-heart/impurity axis. The question is not whether the historian, like other craftsmen, colors what he makes with his own personality, for inevitably he does. Rather, the question is what sort of colors he gives it. Does he discolor it by harboring self-seeking intentions?
We have no disposition to pick on historians. Philosophers are probably even more self-crippling, because the modes of philosophical thinking are more explicit, canonized, and coercive than the modes of historical thinking. For example, many philosophers assume that, except in its most extreme speculative reaches, contemporary logic defines not only the standard of one type of discourse among others, but the single type of discourse in which certain kinds of truths may be stated. Historically, logic was no such standard; instead, it was considered a branch of rhetoric—and that in fact is what it is. To speak with philosophical precision is to adopt a very narrow register of human speech in which much that human beings experience cannot be expressed or described. Why would anyone speak so artificially? Why would anyone be willing to censor his responses as a whole person in deference to narrow philosophical canons of expression? Recent work in the rhetoric of scientific discourse suggests that at least some of the motives are self-assertion and professional legitimacy, and if there are others, we do not know them. So philosophers and historians alike make myths when they take themselves too seriously: when they promote themselves in their work. (Of course, this means not taking themselves seriously enough as individual human beings—trusting the canons of their discipline more than their own sensibility.)
Believing that a disciplinary method is a mode of knowing rather than a heuristic device for arranging material for specific purposes may not be simply an error. It may be a sin. The historian or philosopher who uses his discipline self-promotionally finds immediate promise of exoneration in the view that the discipline can validate his work independently of his intentions. He clings to the idea that his social purposes are professionally irrelevant. By this means, he provides himself with an alibi if his conscience accuses him of seeking his own interest. How can he be accused of coloring his materials, he insists, when his constant aim is to rid them of coloration? Preoccupation with technique and method fits Plato's definition of sophistry and pinpoints the self-seeking in it: one sends out a highly controlled signal in order to elicit a highly manipulated response. One can sin in scholarship as anywhere else. It is wrong in writing to do anything but write what is in us to be written.
Understanding Past People
The problem of understanding people in the past, including their policies and institutions, is only a form of the problem of understanding people generally. By setting out certain features of our ability to understand our contemporaries, we may illuminate the claims we are making about historical knowledge. Consider the following points:
Knowing about people is not knowing them; that is, it is not understanding them. One cannot but withdraw from other human beings—and thus render them humanly unreal—if one concentrates on what properties they have, for that construes them as objects. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Buber, Polanyi, and Levinas have all taught us this by numerous cogent insights. When we know a person, we know more than we can tell; and supposing otherwise is a mode of pushing that person away. Understanding people, as opposed to knowing about them, comes in the course of being with them unselfconsciously; it is a residuum of living in a sharing, trusting, and caring community with them. Hence to observe people in order to know about them rather than to respond unguardedly to them is to withdraw from the conditions which must obtain if they are to be understood.
Thus, acting as if one is an observing center rather than a person does not mean one is disinterested. Such action is an apparent self-obliteration in the form of a perceptual and stylistic anonymity which is actually an intense preoccupation with guarding, vindicating, and advancing the self. It is an intense form of self-assertion.
A historian can live with and understand past people only if he regards the accoutrements of his profession (the habits, the jargon, the frame of reference, and so forth) as inferior to, and less valuable than, himself as a man and any man as a man. Only then can he enter with unselfconscious empathy into others' situations.
The Historian as Tradition Incarnate
Contrast the self-seeking, depersonalizing writer of history with the guileless one. The former imposes generalizations and theories upon "the data." The latter expresses patterns of selection in his work that go beyond what he can deliberately produce or even completely comprehend. These living patterns of selection taken together are an expression of what he is as one who by historical study has assimilated tradition through his language, in his interaction with his immediate forebears. This tradition then expresses itself in his unselfconscious writing and teaching. And therefore what he produces is right. It is not false to what he transforms. When he speaks or writes it is as if history is finding one expression of its accumulating truth in his responses to that part of the world which has preceded him. The self-serving historian, on the other hand, stylizes what he comprehends of the past and thwarts the flow of tradition through him. He is untrue to the living tradition that has enabled him to become both a person and a historian.
If a historian accepts the gospel, he is adopted; he gains a new ancestry; a fresh heritage becomes active in him. His open, artless, and fresh way of seeing and speaking about the past will be a correlative, an expression, of the new person he has become. If purely motivated, he gives the history he has absorbed a spontaneous—that is, an unguarded and guileless—expression. That kind of expression is wisdom. On the other hand, the self-deceived historian performs something extraneous to the purpose of the history which had made him what he is, and he is thereby unfaithful to himself. And if he knows anything about the gospel, he is unfaithful to the Lord. He does not produce wisdom.
Let us further contrast generalization and wisdom. Generalizations are generally valid for general purposes; they are not valid for specific purposes. We may induce a generalization from a number of specifics, but when we have done so we find that it does not completely apply to any of them. Perhaps in natural science it could (or could it?), but historically it will not. Any generalization to be valid has to be one arising totally from a total specific situation, not a generalization inductively arrived at over many instances.
This is where the word "wisdom" comes in: We read history in order to gain the great historian's wisdom. In him we encounter a unique historical situation alive in a living, interfusing, and blending individual, the historian. And we discover in the nature of that unique totality something of the nature of all other unique totalities—something which cannot be expressed in any list of generalizations, however lengthy. That is why history is an art rather than a science (we are assuming, we suspect incorrectly, that there are in fact sciences, the essence of which can be expressed in a theory, i.e., in an adequate and consistent set of generalizations). It is why a fine history, like a Baucis-and-Philemon pitcher, is inexhaustible (though not unfathomable). There is no essential difference between the way in which Herodotus and Thucydides use their material and the way in which Aeschylus and Sophocles use theirs. The Swedish philosopher, Hans Larsson, said in 1892 (in spite of the shadow of Herbert Spencer) that social scientists should not ignore the fact that literature has given them far more subtle exemplars of human behavior than they themselves describe. (The converse is also true: When social scientists describe behavior well, they write literature; Adler is not literature but Freud is, and that is the only reason why Freud is worth more attention.)
The historian can be true to the history reposited within him only if he endeavors to give it the form that suits the whole of it, and not merely parts of it. In doing this, he is doing the same thing as someone who makes a poem. He should from this point of view recognize himself as an artist and realize that his totality of knowledge should be expressed through a totality of means. The historian who has a style that is true to him will produce history that is also true to him, and because it is true to him in this naive sense it will have truth in it.
This is a patently different sense of "truth" than is current among many social scientists. It is predicated upon the view that contact with history is not contact with the past as such but with the historian who embodies the tradition in his own unique way. The book he writes is only an aspect of what he has achieved in human terms and cannot be understood apart from that achievement. The historian whose style is true to him will be one in whom the tradition will have been truly incarnated; style and what we are calling "incarnation" are but aspects of the same thing. And if the style is wrong, the history written will be wrong. There is no question of the style's varying independently of the "facts"—of the style's being wrong and the "facts" right or of the style being right and the "facts" wrong. To think otherwise is to have a befuddled—an objectivist—view of factuality. In the light of this personifying view of truth Gibbon comes off as a great historian, for his style expresses himself. The same can be said of Thucydides, Herodotus, and Livy; it could not be said of those nineteenth-century historians who were eager to put rational order onto the material; or of those twentieth-century historians who consider it imperative to order the material professionally and impersonally. There is never a more significant result of the study of history than the historian himself.
Historical Uniqueness and Moral Universalizability
These three things happen together if they happen at all: the author is self-forgetful, the historical situation is captured in its uniqueness, and—we have not mentioned this yet—the history written serves as an inexhaustible fund for moral lessons. Yet it is not didactic in any ordinary sense of that term. Only a history that in the first instance tried to abstract out the moral content of a past situation would in the second instance be compelled to try to reimpose it in the form of cautionary conclusions.
A situation captured in its uniqueness has moral relevance because it is a whole situation like our own situation. We are free to see it in any of indefinitely many ways, including those most instructive for us. But when the historical situation is subsumed under a generalization, it is seen in just one way, and we can easily exclude ourselves from it. Many similarities between that situation and our circumstance are artificially suppressed. (This is one of the great lessons of Nietzsche's doctrine that all events, including the propagation of ideas, have multiple genealogies.) We let our preoccupation with discrete personal properties and comparisons become a pseudo-Mosaic alternative to conscience. (Why aren't we led by everything we see to have a broken heart and contrite spirit? Certainly it is not because we don't have ample cause.) But letting the story tell itself in all of the completeness with which we spontaneously apprehend it is tantamount to a repudiation of this pseudo-Mosaic context. The reader is left to face up to the whole of the matter—to be impressed by moral dimensions and standards inherent in the story, dimensions which even the author may not suspect are there.
Take the example of David. David is not just any oriental monarch. He has been chosen by the Lord to be the leader of Israel. He has shown himself obedient in every particular to the Lord. He has not tried to hasten or evade the Lord's plan for him; he has not anticipated the time when he is to take over the kingdom; he has left the shape and direction of his destiny to the Lord. He spares Saul's life more than once. He makes his way faultlessly to the throne. Who else in history ever did that? Only after he has achieved the throne does he fail, and the story of his failure, down to his last bloody deathbed utterance, is told in more detail than the story of his success. Now to make the moral point of the story of David other than the way in which Nathan did would be to hide that point. That is, to impose a superficial moral generalization on the story would be to rob it of its moral applicability to every reader— its moral universalizability. What Nathan did was to set David a trap by presenting a parable, and David fell into the trap. The climax of David's life is Nathan's statement: "Thou art the man." This climax is not set out in detail and the moral point is not put in a proposition: it could not be. We cannot even say that the story shows the moral point (i.e., the punishment for adultery and murder). That is too cut and dried and limited a characterization, for the punishment does not "fit the crime": the crime's consequences are its punishment—to be an adulterer is the punishment for adultery. Instead, the history's moral point pulsates throughout the whole of it, as through a parable, and cannot be abstracted from it. And we in our own individual and different ways—in ways apposite to our individual cases—draw the parable's conclusion—a conclusion which may well differ from what we may discover upon returning to the story later, after further experiences have altered us. We are allowed to experience David's life totally, to sense its emotive tides, to work out the ironical implications of the account. The inspired historian has produced, in a language of the whole man which uses all the devices of rhetoric (including juxtaposition), a better biography, a finer account, than any other anywhere. It is written for a spiritually educated and subtle people. It goes as far as history can go, which is to re-create the story of a past human being in the terms in which it is lived and valued, which is to say, in predominantly moral terms.
The closest a self-deceiving historian can come to morality is this: "There but for the grace of God go I." This effort at self-decontamination is not found in a historian who produces pure history, precisely because his acknowledgment of impurity has been for him a path to purity. The response of the guileless historian is therefore, "Lord, have mercy on me, there go I also." This is what the prophet Nathan, speaking for the Lord, meant when he said, "Thou art the man." And for us, in all of the pages of history, there is implicit in every line the unarticulated reminder: "We are the men."
Thus does the response of the guileless historian place him in community with the past people he encounters in his work. He understands them as people. It is remarkable that only as we become more individual, rather than less, can we live in community with one another. And conversely: Only as we live in and through one another in our individual uniqueness—the historian taking past people to understand and they taking him to be understood by—is it possible for us to partake of each other's strengths and be individually richer for it. Otherwise, our relation to one another is manipulative: we treat ourselves and each other as replicable—indeed, as artifacts which in our social interaction with one another we ourselves are continuously producing. For those of us who insulate ourselves from one another by using each other, even the present is a sort of past, cadaverized, an unbridgeable distance away; whereas for the pure even the past is present, vivified and immediately felt. This is in the spirit not only of the gospel but of thinkers like Heidegger, who have tried to clear away the intellectual debris from our modern mentality so that we might receive the revelation from God if only it were to come.
What Shall It Profit a Man?
It cannot profit a person to try to be individualistic in his way of perceiving others' situations or in his way of writing about them. It is as unprofitable as trying to be nonchalant or sincere. One who does not feel exigencies in his present situation is nonchalant; one who tries to be nonchalant is tense. One who is concentrating wholly on something other than himself in what he is doing is sincere; one who is trying to be sincere is concentrating on himself, no matter how hard he pretends he is not. Taking thought to make ourselves or our work be some particular way or other is in principle self-defeating.
Another reason why it is profitless to try to be an individual is that taking thought to make ourselves is self-delimiting. Taking thought for the morrow in any way at all means trying to conform to an anticipated pattern of self which in principle is too simple to be a self. The more we conform to that pattern, the more we make of ourselves not an individual but rather a replicable artifact—our own artifact. And the work we produce is also too simple to be the work of the self, for behind it was the motivation to produce that which will reflect a character too simple to be a self.
A third reason why we cannot by taking thought add a cubit to our stature as historians: By trying to conform ourselves to a replicable model of what a historian should be we block our own creativity. How? Taking thought for the morrow means substituting an imagined tomorrow for the one that is really going to be there. And as we do not know the one that is really going to be there, we prepare ourselves for a number of hypothetical tomorrows that will never come. We do this instead of being ready, by merely being ourselves, for any tomorrow that will come. When we wake up in the morning, we don't readily pick up the thread of the day that awaits us, for we have determined in advance where it will be, and therefore we do not see where it really is. Alas for Benjamin Franklin, planning his day at 5:00 A.M., how he will manipulate various Philadelphians! He must compulsively and obsessively try to extrude many threads, to manipulate many clues to the labyrinth in order to convince himself that he is on the right track. And Franklin's kind of planning for the future is simply the mirror image of the self-serving historian's planning for the past. The generalizations the historian has convinced himself are the right guidelines for interpreting history preclude him from discovering new patterns in the history he encounters; he is only able to gather more details.
Here is a fourth reason why writing the kind of history we have suggested is not something a person could possibly set out to do: To try to get for ourselves in any fashion is to be anxious over the treasure we seek, and to be thus anxious is to forfeit the freedom and spontaneity or openness necessary for a total response to a total situation. That is a message of W. H. Auden's poem, "The Bard."
He was their servant—some say he was blind—
And moved among their faces and their things;
Their feeling gathered in him like a wind
And sang: they cried—'It is a God that sings'—
And worshipped him and set him up apart
And made him vain till he mistook for song
The little tremors of his mind and heart
At each domestic wrong.
Songs came no more: he had to make them.
With what precision was each strophe planned.
He hugged his sorrow like a plot of land,
And walked like an assassin through the town,
And looked at men and did not like them,
But trembled if one passed him with a frown.2
The moment we start to care about succeeding we forfeit every possibility of it.
Auden's bard was, to begin with, a servant; later, a slave. At first he did not regard himself as being original. He did not repeat himself at all. Instead he expressed what came to him to be expressed and thus passed on an oral tradition. Later, he insisted on his originality and individuality and suffocated his creativity. In the first phase he was a classicist; in the second, a romantic. A Milton landscape is a characteristic landscape—it is a typical landscape; yet at the same time it is Milton's landscape. He did not try to make it his: it is his because in looking in another direction than himself he did not obstruct the expression of his personality in and through it. It is only the inferior artist who feels a need to make a highly individual response in order to be able to do something original, new, and different. The result is strained. The result is precious. The result, ironically, is replicable: the original of the piece is already a stereotype. For his part, the classicist is never concerned with individuality for its own sake. He is concerned with tradition. Were we living in 1798 and afflicted with tremors of insecurity about whether what we were writing would be regarded as individual, we might take exception to this statement, because our contemporaries would be interpreting the tradition as a means of throttling individuality. But the truth is that tradition can liberate the person who interacts with it.
Almost any moderately intelligent human being could produce something highly individual and profound if he took no thought for what was in it for him, provided he had assimilated a good deal of the tradition. The old statement that everyone has at least one book in him is relevant here; and, indeed, we have had occasional examples in English literature of a peculiar pellucidity appearing just once. John Woolman's Journal is an example. Compare it with Franklin's Autobiography. The inadequacy and arrogance of Franklin resemble the explanations of the knights in Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. They are murderers who rationally explain away their act. (Whatever books there may have been in Franklin, he murdered them.) It is not beside the point that in creating the rationalizing knights Eliot was satirizing Shaw. Shaw's plays are appealing to many, for they offer an easy clarity, and (like many psychiatrists and psychotherapists and like Eliot's knights) a facile—a reasonable—mode of explaining away personal guilt. The witch doctor, the advertiser, and the politician make similar offers—reasonable offers.
These offers are quackery. An essential feature of this kind of quackery is its respectability. The offers come in the guise of a virtuous practice to be followed, an approved technique or method, with all of the half-suspected quasitheory shared by the people who endorse it. The quacks rail at historicism and point to the history Hitler wrote as a misuse of history. That is a way of establishing their respectability by comparison. Their doctrine is almost irresistible when made so respectable—so decently indecent. From that point they can perpetrate immoralities in an atmosphere of legitimacy, as in the contemporary theater where lewdness frolics on the stage without being condemned as such because, besides being immoral, it is also dishonest about what it is. Was not Hitler partly seduced by the wrong kind of history that he read?
For a person to be a historian—a genuine historian—is for him cheerfully to run the risk that he may never be acknowledged as such. He will also have to concede in advance that he himself may discover what he has had to say after, rather than before, he writes his words. He will draw his identity at a source different from the well of his peers' opinions.
We have been advocating what used to be called "enthusiasm." Contrary to what some would have us believe, enthusiasm has nothing to do with romanticism; and if they think it historically has nothing to do with classicism, it is because they tend not to consider the classicists, like Milton and Dante, who were enthusiastic Christians.
We acknowledge that nothing could be more alien to the intellectualist ideal of calculated impersonality. It is true that this ideal seems not altogether unwarranted, for historical instances of enthusiasm have been justifiably attacked. There is this danger in enthusiasm, that impure people, like Hitler, will yield to an impure spirit. Our thesis in this paper is that by the same token, there is an equally horrifying danger in the repudiation of enthusiasm—namely, in the protection which some erect against novelty and spontaneity in themselves—a disguised form of demonism in which seizure by the Holy Spirit is precisely what is resisted. The one alternative to being possessed by some sort of devil is to yield to—voluntarily to let ourselves be taken over by—God's Spirit. The depersonalizing "wisdom" of the age, like the so-called wisdom of ages generally, will when unmasked be seen to be only the self-protective smoke screen of a professional clique so fearful of self-revelation through their productions that they have yielded themselves up proudly to the demon of reasonableness.
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
—T. S. Eliot, "East Coker"3
If you ask us to point to a historian who represents much of what we say, we can readily do it: Hugh Nibley, of whom we thought as we wrote. Who among us has been more completely absorbed in peoples of the past and less occupied with impressing anyone with his style? Who has expressed his own personality so well, with so little thought for it? Who has better inspired us to care about and learn from the vast population of historical souls who have intrigued and delighted him over the years? And he has done this not by exhortation but by his example of wonder and absorption in his constant learning and his gracious acts of sharing it with us.
This essay originally appeared in a slightly different form in the unpublished "Tinkling Cymbals: Essays in Honor of Hugh Nibley," John W. Welch, ed., 1978.
1. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, new ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1960), 4.
2. W. H. Auden, A Selection by the Author (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1958), 60.
3. T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963), 184-85. | <urn:uuid:a38562f4-b18b-45c6-a87d-438bf1f943bb> | {
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What is Acceptance? From the dictionary it’s “ The act or process of accepting”. Makes sense.
I had been raised without a father. He’s not dead, but he seems to be in a difficult place where he can no longer be with us. It’s sad. Very sad.
People may think why I still think of my father, why don’t I hate him for leaving us, why do I care, why? Mainly because he’s my father. A female child needs her father’s comfort in difficult times, as per a male child needs his mother. It’s so hard to contain all the burden of not having someone to run to in times like these.
One thing that I am proud of is that I never gave up on myself. I know it’s easy to say all this because I’m still young and all but one thing is certain, The world has placed me in a situation only I could handle and I know I can.
I’ve dealt with different people, situations, emotions, all that the world could feed me at a very young age. As many people see me as a normal girl, I’m not. Deep down I’m broken and I’m searching for a way to fix myself.
How I handle things? there goes the acceptance. You have to accept everything that you cannot change, everything your hands are not capable of fixing, everything the world would be giving you. For a while you would cry, get angry, be furious, be regretful, but then you would find another way to remain with the happiness that you could still get.
- Learn from the past, this means learn from other people’s as well not just yours. This lead me to a very bright path today.
- Live in the present, because thinking about the past or the future won’t help.
- Forget the Future, it’s never going to be a straight path towards your goals.
- Accept the unacceptable and let them live where you have a joyful life. | <urn:uuid:ebd050fb-a59b-4154-a9b6-dfb5e3e71664> | {
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Ask Marilyn: You and Your Vocabulary
Theresa Douglas of Townville, Pennsylvania, writes:
Marilyn: You once wrote about the inherent differences in one's reading, writing, listening, and speaking vocabulary. Could you please repeat that question and answer?
Here it is:
Question: Why can I understand programs about complicated or philosophical subjects when I struggle for the right words and a more sophisticated level of conversation myself?
Answer: You're normal. Educators define four categories of vocabulary: Our reading vocabulary is the largest by far, followed by our listening vocabulary. Our speaking vocabulary is much smaller, followed by a much, much smaller writing vocabulary.
The more demanding the category, the smaller it is. To listen, one need only rapidly recognize the word as the speaker voiced it and comprehend its meaning in context. To speak, one must recall the particular word without prompting and insert it instantly into the appropriate context. That's much more difficult.
People with large speaking or writing vocabularies are almost always professionals. | <urn:uuid:aa9d29e8-5762-4153-bd0b-eb43441653c8> | {
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Kentucky Historical Society
KHS to Host Family History Workshop Sept. 8
FRANKFORT, Ky. (Aug. 23, 2012) – The Kentucky Historical Society (KHS) and Kentucky Genealogical Society (KGS) will host a free family history workshop at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 8, at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in downtown Frankfort. Topics include Frankfort Cemetery and how to locate and document burial sites.
The morning session will be a presentation about the historic Frankfort Cemetery by its former superintendent, Jim Richardson. Frankfort Cemetery, incorporated in 1844, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is the final resting place of 17 Kentucky governors and a number of notable military leaders, civic leaders, artists, writers and early pioneers, including Daniel Boone. Participants will receive driving directions and a map of Frankfort Cemetery, and be able to visit the cemetery after the workshop, weather permitting.
In the afternoon, Tina Wingate will talk about her work documenting Frankfort Cemetery. She will also demonstrate strategies for using findagrave.com to locate ancestors’ burial sites, post photos and gravestone transcriptions, and document cemeteries.
To make a reservation, contact the KHS Reference Desk at 502-564-1792, ext. 4460 or [email protected]. The registration deadline for this workshop is noon Friday, Sept. 7.
Presented by KHS and KGS on the second Saturday of each month, each free family history workshop takes place at the Center for Kentucky History. Topics range from how to begin documenting your ancestry to specialized resources for experienced genealogists. If requested at the time of registration, an optional light lunch is available for $6, payable at the door.
-30-An agency of the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, the Kentucky Historical Society, established in 1836, is committed to helping people understand, cherish and share Kentucky's history. The KHS history campus includes the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History, the Old State Capitol and the Kentucky Military History Museum at the State Arsenal. For more information about the Kentucky Historical Society and its programs, visit www.history.ky.gov. | <urn:uuid:b4ea986b-878e-4ce9-8e6d-c768798e1925> | {
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A Reference Resource
William Jennings Bryan (1913–1915): Secretary of State
William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois, on March 19, 1860. He graduated from Illinois College in 1881 and earned his law degree in 1883 from the Union College of Law in Chicago.
After practicing law for two years, Bryan moved to Nebraska, becoming, in 1890, only the second Democrat to win a Nebraska seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Bryan remained in the House for two terms before running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1894. As a delegate to the 1896 Democratic convention, Bryan's rousing "cross of gold" speech, advocating a silver standard for U.S. currency, rallied the masses behind him and brought him his party's nomination for the presidency. He would lose the election that November to Republican candidate William McKinley of Ohio.
Following the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Bryan served as a colonel in Nebraska's Third Regiment. He ran for the presidency once again in 1900, only to meet with the same result. Bryan subsequently founded a newspaper -- The Commoner -- to disseminate his ideas, writing editorials for the sheet between 1901 and 1908 and speaking often in public.
In 1908, Bryan chose once again to run for the presidency, losing to the popular secretary of war, William Howard Taft. Four years later, Bryan became President Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state. He would resign from that position on June 8, 1915, following the sinking of the British cruise liner Lusitania, fearing that the President's stern warnings to Germany, and Wilson's reluctance to ban passenger travel on belligerent ships, would involve the United States in hostilities.
Bryan continued to write and lecture, and in the famed Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, defended the teaching of creationism in public schools. William Jennings Bryan died in Dayton on July 26, 1925, shortly after the trial's conclusion. | <urn:uuid:b227bb60-7c0b-4ca7-a747-31802d36acad> | {
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Here’s a provocative history, claiming the shape of American culture lies in the pocketbook: Armies of Consumers: 1776’s Secret Weapon?
Deceptively simple, his argument goes like this: two and a half million strong and scattered along 1,800 miles of coastline, the colonists had little in common besides a weakness for what Samuel Adams derisively termed “the Baubles of Britain.” When Britain imposed stiff taxes on this appetite for stuff — without granting any political representation — Americans responded with an ingenious invention with instant and widespread appeal: the consumer boycott. By the time the First Continental Congress was convened in September 1774, transforming mass consumer mobilization into a successful political rebellion was a relatively straightforward task.
[...] It sounds far-fetched, possibly scandalous: pinning Americans’ success in the war for independence even partly on their common experience in the marketplace. Moreover the notion seems to contradict the long-standing assumption among scholars that lofty ideas elegantly expressed — and a brisk trade in political pamphlets and newspapers — were sufficient to unite the public behind the revolutionary cause.
[...] And while others, including Gordon S. Wood, another Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, who teaches at Brown, predict that Mr. Breen’s thesis will be controversial, they concede his book is important. “I’m not persuaded by the attempt to explain the Revolution,” Mr. Gordon said. But he added, it is the first book about the period “to show the scale and depth of consumption in any kind of statistical detail.”
How long before this set of thoughts becomes a basis for a new interpretation of “Progress of Science and Useful Arts?” | <urn:uuid:00bfeae9-b7c2-4765-a422-835413bb0e19> | {
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While seagrasses can be damaged by random and unpredictable natural phenomena, following several simple steps can prevent the damage caused by humans.
Each species of seagrass recovers from damage at a different rate, but in general, recovery can take anywhere between a few months to several years. Injuries to leaves and stems are less detrimental than damage to the underground root system, from which seagrasses may not be able to recover.
As Florida's population grows, the number of boats on the water also increases. The negative effects of careless boating on seagrasses are becoming more pronounced, especially in nearshore communities and popular boat access areas. When a boat's propeller cuts through seagrasses, it fragments the bed and can restrict the movement of the species found in that habitat. This loss is detrimental to not only the animals that depend on seagrasses, but to the economy of the area and the state of Florida. The institute's 1995 publication, Scarring of Florida's Seagrasses: Assessment and Management Options, analyzes damage resulting from propeller scars in Florida's seagrass beds. This document includes many GIS-based maps documenting areas where scarring is present, information about the recovery of seagrasses after prop scar damage, and management options that address the problem.
Another important factor to consider when boating is what can happen to personal property when grounding in a shallow bottom area or seagrass bed: vessel engines, hulls, and propellers can be damaged. In addition to towing fees, groundings that cause damage to seagrasses can result in both federal and state fines. The economic and environmental importance of seagrasses has led to regulations that can hold boaters that scar seagrass beds responsible for the costs of assessing damage, restoring habitat, and long-term monitoring of the restored area.
The easiest way to protect seagrasses is by preventing damage in the first place. The tips that follow on how to protect seagrasses are taken directly from the institute's publication, Florida's Seagrass Meadows.
- Be Aware: If you live near the coast or along a river, be careful when applying fertilizers and pesticides to your lawn. Use only the amount of fertilizer required and consider using a slow-release fertilizer. Gutters and storm drains transport excess lawn chemicals to the water.
- Read the Waters: Wear polarized sunglasses when boating to reduce the surface glare to help you see shallow areas and seagrass beds. Polarized sunglasses can also help you see and avoid manatees and underwater hazards.
- Know Your Boating Signs and Markers: Operate your boat in marked channels to prevent running aground and damaging your boat and seagrass beds. Know the correct side to stay on when approaching channel markers. Learn the shapes and markings of signs warning boaters of dangerous shallows and areas where boats are prohibited by law.
- Know Your Depth and Draft: When in doubt about the depth, slow down and idle. If you are leaving a muddy trail behind your boat, you are probably cutting seagrass. Tilt or stop your engine if necessary. If you run aground, pole or walk your boat to deeper water. Never try to motor your way out. This will cause extensive damage to seagrass and may harm your motor. Know the times for your low and high tides.
- Be On the Lookout: Docks, boathouses, and even boats can block sunlight from reaching the seagrass below. When building or repairing a dock, consider building the dock five feet above the water and using grating rather than planks. Extend the dock to deeper water so your boat does not shade seagrass.
- Study Your Charts: Use navigational charts, fishing maps, or local boating guides to become familiar with waterways. These nautical charts alert you to shallow areas so you don't run aground and damage seagrass. Know before you go. | <urn:uuid:3b2ec3cf-5cba-46f9-b92b-059ed09d543d> | {
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Circulating Tumor Cells Can Reveal Genetic Signature of Dangerous Lung Cancers
Using a miniature laboratory-on-a-chip device, a team of investigators at the Massachusetts General Hospital, led by Daniel Haber, M.D., Ph.D., and Mehmet Toner, Ph.D., both members of the MIT-Harvard Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE), has developed a method that detects and analyzes the genetic signature of rare tumor cells in the bloodstream. The results from this analysis allowed the researchers to identify those patients most likely to respond to a specific targeted treatment. This chip-based analysis also allowed the researchers to monitor genetic changes that occur during therapy.
According to Dr. Haber, this chip opens up a new field of studying tumors in real time. “When the device is ready for larger clinical trials, it should give us new options for measuring treatment response, defining prognostic and predictive measures, and studying the biology of blood-borne metastasis, which is the primary method by which cancer spreads and becomes lethal.” Dr. Haber and his team published their results in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are living solid-tumor cells found at extremely low levels in the bloodstream. Until the development of the CTC-chip by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-Harvard CCNE team, it was not possible to get information from CTCs that would be useful for clinical decision-making. The current study was designed to determine whether the device could go beyond detecting CTCs to helping analyze the genetic mutations that can make a tumor sensitive to treatment with targeted therapy drugs.
The researchers tested blood samples from patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. In 2004, cancer researchers had discovered that mutations in a protein called epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) determine whether NSCLC tumors respond to a group of drugs called tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), which includes gefitinib (Iressa) and erlotinib (Tarceva). Although the response of sensitive tumors to those drugs can be swift and dramatic, eventually many tumors become resistant to the drugs and resume growing.
The CTC-chip was used to analyze blood samples from 27 patients—23 who had EGFR mutations and 4 who did not—and CTCs were identified in samples from all patients. Genetic analysis of CTCs from mutation-positive tumors detected those mutations 92 percent of the time. In addition to the primary mutation that leads to initial tumor development and TKI sensitivity, the CTC-chip also detected a secondary mutation associated with treatment resistance in some participants, including those whose tumors originally responded to treatment but later resumed growing.
Blood samples were taken at regular intervals during the course of treatment from four patients with mutation-positive tumors. In all of those patients, levels of CTCs dropped sharply after TKI treatment began and began rising when tumors resumed growing. In one patient, adding additional chemotherapy caused CTC levels to drop again as the tumor continued shrinking.
Throughout the course of therapy, the tumors’ genetic makeup continued to evolve. Not only did the most common resistance mutation emerge in tumors where it was not initially present, but new activating mutations—the type that causes a tumor to develop in the first place—appeared in seven patients’ tumors, indicating that these cancers are more genetically complex than expected and that continuing to monitor tumor genotype throughout the course of treatment may be crucial.
“If tumor genotypes don’t remain static during therapy, it’s essential to know exactly what you’re treating at the time you are treating it,” says Haber. “Biopsy samples taken at the time of diagnosis can never tell us about changes emerging during therapy or genotypic differences that may occur in different sites of the original tumor, but the CTC-chip offers the promise of noninvasive continuous monitoring.”
This work, which was supported in part by the National Cancer Institute’s Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, is detailed in the paper “Detection of Mutations in EGFR in Circulating Lung-Cancer Cells.” An abstract of this paper is available through PubMed. | <urn:uuid:15d35381-6d1a-4fb9-882e-57203c169a2c> | {
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- Collection care
- Information and records management
- Digital preservation
- What to keep
- Reform of public bodies
- Public inquiry guidance
- Information principles
The Digital Preservation department at The National Archives was set up in July 2001 and charged with developing a method of storing, preserving and providing access to electronic government records.
Following an intensive development period, the digital archive was launched in 2003. For the first time a digital repository, successfully storing and making available electronic records of government held here at The National Archives, was available to users. Our work on this digital repository (in partnership with private company Tessella) led to us winning the prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation, for developing a system for preserving digital information. This system, Safety Deposit Box, has since been adopted by archives and libraries around the world.
The digital archive's holdings include the records of high-profile public inquiries, parliamentary committees and royal commissions. Electronic records exist in an enormous variety of formats, including email and other office documents, applications, virtual-reality models and audio-visual material.
Our presentation system, Electronic Records Online, was launched in 2005 and makes digital records available on the internet, allowing access to our readers around the world. | <urn:uuid:0bcd492f-e18b-4f57-ae13-db22afe4ce1f> | {
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By itself, the WNV-Cp protein can cause inflammation. Weiner and his colleagues found that WNV-Cp drives apoptosis in cell cultures through what is called the mitochondrial pathway. The protein begins the process of cell suicide by somehow disrupting the membrane potential of the cell's mitochondria, which then leads to the activation of proteins such as caspase-9 and caspase-3 that start a cascade of reactions to subsequently cause the cell to digest itself.
Since the protein enters the nucleus of the cell, it is possible that WNV-Cp changes the host cell's transcriptional machinery, resulting in an over production of certain proteins related to an apoptotic program, which consequently feed back to the mitochondria.
Alternatively, as WNV-Cp moves from the cytoplasm to the nucleus, it may inactivate an important part of the cell's natural control system that keeps apoptosis in check overpowering the guard as it were thus inducing the cell suicide.
"Overall, our data suggest that WNV-Cp may interact with host cell proteins to induce apoptosis in the host cell," said Weiner, "Identifying these proteins will likely give more insight into the biology of West Nile."
The proteins pathogenic properties extend outside of the tissue culture. WNV-Cp also directly caused apoptosis and inflammation in mouse muscle cells. More importantly, the WNV-Cp protein caused inflammation and apoptosis in mouse brain in a manner similar to what is observed in natural infections. | <urn:uuid:943735a1-40b2-4d49-8634-57c1c0e3a40a> | {
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I have a friend who still looks out for her stolen bike wherever she goes. She might not be so obsessed with the loss if the bike had been made for $9 out of recycled cardboard.
Bike enthusiast and designer Izhar Gafni built a functioning bicycle out of cardboard. The inspiration came from a another inventor's cardboard canoe project.
Gafni ran his idea by some engineers who told him to give up the dream, that it was impossible. He tried it anyway. The result is an attractive, working bike that costs as little as $9 to make. Of course, that price tag doesn't include the immense amount of R&D time Gafni put into it.
The bike went through a tremendous amount of prototyping and tweaking. The finished piece is dipped in a coating material that gives it a shiny outer shell and protects the material from the elements. You wouldn't know it was cardboard just by looking at it.
The bike design could eventually make its way into the hands of buyers around the world. It would be inexpensive, but not likely to hold up as long as a regular bike.
Perhaps the best part is if you bought one and it got swiped, it wouldn't break the bank to replace it. | <urn:uuid:1aed4a5d-e5a9-446b-b561-092e98e82317> | {
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for National Geographic News
If a worker ant dares to reproduce in the presence of the queen, her sisters will smell her attempt and attack, according to a new study.
Typically, only queens produce offspring in an ant colony, and males die after mating. The sons and the daughter queens fly away, with hopes of reproducing elsewhere, while the worker daughters stay on to build the colony and care for the next generation.
These worker ants are biologically capable of a type of parthenogenesis, the process that allows a female to produce offspring without a mate. When they try, however, they produce chemicals called pheromones that their sisters detect with antennas.
"It's basically smell, but not the smell we know," said study co-author Jürgen Liebig of Arizona State University.
If the colony lacks a queen, workers are permitted to have their own babies, Liebig explained.
But when a queen is present, only she is allowed to produce the pheromone that signals fertility status. If a worker tries to "cheat," her sisters will physically restrain the disobedient ant from successfully reproducing.
(Related: "Ants Practice Nepotism, Study Finds" [February 26, 2003].)
The research was published online January 8 in the journal Current Biology.
Scent of a Woman Ant
Previous studies showed a correlation between ant's reproductive policing behavior and these pheromones, Liebig said, so there was strong reason to believe the chemicals were tipping them off.
"The problem was that nobody could ever show it," he said.
Liebig's team studied the ant species Aphaenogaster cockerelli because it uses a simple version of the compound that the scientists could easily obtain.
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES | <urn:uuid:2011961b-4bfb-4d0e-8634-1a01b40cf290> | {
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You’ve heard that you should lower your cholesterol, but do you know why? Sometimes we tend to ignore advice when we don’t understand the reasons. That’s why it’s important to learn what cholesterol is, what it does in your body and why you need to make sure too much isn’t flowing in your blood.
Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that your body needs to function normally. It’s used in the cell membranes that surround cells throughout your body. You also use cholesterol to make important chemicals, including hormones, vitamin D and the acids that help you digest fat.
“Cholesterol has a variety of uses in the body that are very important,” says Dr. James Cleeman, coordinator of NIH’s National Cholesterol Education Program, “but the body makes all it needs and we don’t need to get any more from our food.”
In fact, when the level of cholesterol in the blood gets too high, it can start to cause trouble. The landmark Framingham Heart Study, funded by NIH, first showed that the higher the cholesterol level in your blood, the greater your risk for heart disease—the number 1 killer
of Americans, both women and men.
What’s the connection? Well, there are 2 forms of cholesterol in your blood: LDL and HDL. When there’s too much cholesterol in your bloodstream, the cholesterol from LDL can build up in the walls of your arteries. Along with fats like triglycerides and other things in the bloodstream, it forms a growing “plaque” that bulges out of the artery wall and can begin to block blood flow—a process called atherosclerosis. Problems get even worse if a plaque bursts and a blood clot forms on top, which can block an artery.
“Where LDL cholesterol does its most harm,” Cleeman says, “is in the walls of the arteries going to the heart—the coronary arteries.”
That’s why a high LDL cholesterol level increases your risk for heart disease. Like any muscle, the heart’s own muscle needs a constant supply of oxygen and nutrients, delivered by the blood in the coronary arteries. When these arteries become narrowed or clogged by plaque, the result is coronary heart disease. If the blood supply to a portion of the heart is completely cut off, the result is a heart attack.
HDL cholesterol seems to have the opposite effect of LDL; higher HDL levels are associated with a lower risk for heart disease.
Some factors affecting your cholesterol level are out of your control. As you get older, for example, your cholesterol level naturally rises. Before menopause, women have lower total cholesterol levels than men of the same age, but after menopause women’s LDL levels tend to rise. High blood cholesterol can also run in families. Your genes affect how fast you make cholesterol and remove it from the blood.
However, there are things you can control. “The clinical trial data are absolutely conclusive that lowering LDL cholesterol reduces your risk for heart disease,” Cleeman says. “This is true both for those with high cholesterol levels and for those with average cholesterol levels.”
How do you know whether your cholesterol levels are where they should be? In general, the higher your risk for heart disease, the lower your LDL level should be. Cleeman says, “Your goal is individualized to your risk for a heart attack. The number depends on your own risk factors.” NIH has a heart disease risk calculator online at http://hp2010.nhlbihin.net/atpiii/calculator.asp, but you should also talk to your doctor about your risk factors and what your cholesterol levels should be.
“A person who has a cholesterol level higher than their goal LDL should follow the TLC program,” Cleeman recommends. TLC stands for Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes. It involves 3 things: changing what you eat, doing more physical activity and controlling your weight.
First, diet. Saturated fat raises your LDL cholesterol level more than anything else in your diet. It’s found mostly in meats and full-fat dairy products like whole milk, cheese and butter. Another type of fat called trans fat raises cholesterol similarly, but makes up far less of the American diet. Cholesterol in foods can also raise blood cholesterol levels, but its effect is not as strong as these fats’. Saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol are all listed on food labels so that you can choose foods with lower amounts to help lower your LDL cholesterol level.
Foods with soluble fiber—such as whole grain cereals, fruits and beans —help lower your cholesterol, too. And some products, such as specially labeled margarines, orange juices and yogurts, contain the LDL-lowering compounds “stanols” and “sterols.”
Excess weight can increase your LDL cholesterol level. “Fat tissue is not inert,” Cleeman says. “It’s chemically active and produces all kinds of changes.” One is raising LDL blood cholesterol levels. Losing weight can help lower your LDL and total cholesterol levels, as well as raise your HDL and lower your triglycerides.
Regular physical activity can help you control your weight, lower your LDL and raise your HDL levels. You should try to be physically active for at least 30 minutes a day.
If these lifestyle changes don’t lower your LDL cholesterol enough, medication can help. “Medication should be added to lifestyle changes,” Cleeman advises, “not substituted for them.” Lifestyle changes can bring benefits medications can’t. While both can lower LDL, lifestyle improvements can lower blood pressure and other risk factors as well.
NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recommends that everyone older than 20 have their blood cholesterol measured at least once every 5 years. Learn your numbers. Then talk to your doctor about whether you need to take steps to alter your diet, lose weight or get more physically active to lower your blood cholesterol and stay healthy. | <urn:uuid:4caf3bd8-6ee9-45a6-9cd8-186ae6fbf312> | {
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New tool developed to trace brown fat, fight obesity
London, July 19 (IANS) Scientists have enlisted a pioneering new tool which uses thermal imaging to spot brown fat - the body's good fat - to fight obesity.
Brown fat plays a vital role in quickly burning away the calories and produces 300 times more heat than any other tissue in the body.
It means that the more of it we have, the less likely we are to store excess energy or food as harmful fat.
Michael Symonds, professor of developmental physiology at the University of Nottingham, who led the study, said: "This completely non-invasive technique could play a crucial role in our fight against obesity," the Journal of Paediatrics reports.
"Potentially, we could add a thermogenic index to food labels to show whether that product would increase or decrease heat production within brown fat. In other words, whether it would speed up or slow down the amount of calories we burn," added Symonds, according to a Nottingham statement.
Helen Budge, clinical associate professor in neonatology at Nottingham, who worked with Symonds, said: "Babies have a larger amount of brown fat which they use up to keep warm soon after birth making our study's finding that this healthy fat can also generate heat in childhood and adolescence very exciting."
Read More: University Grants Commission (UGC) | Guru Nanak Dev University | Kumaon University Nainital | Gorakhpur University | Agra University | Ayurvedic University | Bundelkhand University So | Mds University Ajmer Dtso | Madras University Po | World University Centre | Pondicherry University | Annamalai University | Kannur University Campus | Calicut University | Kochi University | Jadavpur University | Kolkata University | Budge Budge Natun Bazar S.o. | Budge Budge S.o. (hsg-ii) | Vidyasagar University So
4TH C V RAMAN INT'L FELLOWSHIP LAUNCHED FOR RESEARCH
May 21, 2013 at 10:07 PM
WE WILL BRING A NEW LAW TO REGULATE FIXING : JITENDRA SINGH
May 21, 2013 at 10:00 PM
COURT ALLOWS FIVE DAY POLICE CUSTODY FOR THE IPL FIXERS
May 21, 2013 at 9:58 PM | <urn:uuid:3f05cf18-6580-4c7b-8b9e-b286d9b11267> | {
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In 1860–61 Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills led an expedition to cross Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north. After arriving at their base camp at Cooper’s Creek, Burke selected Wills, John King and Charles Gray to accompany him to the gulf and left four men at the base camp. They reached the gulf but on their return journey Gray died of exhaustion, and when the others arrived back at the base camp it was deserted, the reserve party having departed only nine hours before they arrived. Burke decided to try to reach a police station
at Mount Hopeless, but they eventually became too weak to continue, and he and Wills died from exhaustion and starvation. Only King survived, kept alive by Indigenous Australians until a search party found him.
Lambert depicted the exhausted body of Burke slumped against a tree, with King standing looking into the far distance and Wills crouching near an exhausted camel.
He placed the event within a harsh and desolate Australian outback scene, overlooked by ominous black crows.
He made this watercolour as an illustration
for W.H. Lang’s account of the expedition.
It was published with the caption: ‘On the way to Mount Hopeless’ in a volume of boys’ stories, Romance of empire: Australia, in 1908. This was the first attempt to present Australia’s history in the form of an illustrated book for boys and met with considerable success.
Many artists depicted this story, including Ludwig Becker and Hermann Beckler, who participated in the expedition. John Longstaff painted Arrival of Burke, Wills and King at the deserted camp at Cooper’s Creek, Sunday evening, 21st April 1861 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne)in the same year that Lambert made this watercolour. | <urn:uuid:b9d3ec48-6c2f-4559-b4b1-f76441b4bbd0> | {
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France 1868 – 1941
Breton women with umbrellas
[Les bretonnes aux ombrelles] 1892
oil on canvas
canvas 81.0 (h) x 105.0 (w) cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris , Purchase 1955
© RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
In 1886, at the age of eighteen, Bernard set off on a walking trip through Normandy and Brittany. There he met Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven, at the recommendation of Emile Schuffenecker. Two years later, in a letter from Arles dated 20 June 1888, van Gogh proposed that Bernard meet again with the older artist: ‘Gauguin too is bored at Pont-Aven and complains like you of his isolation. Why not go and see him?’1 Bernard did so. He was just twenty years old and brimming with new theories and ideas about how to make art.
It was at Pont-Aven that Bernard painted a canvas, Breton women in a meadow, which, according to the artist, preceded Gauguin’s radical painting Vision of the sermon (Jacob wrestling with the angel).2 The two artists worked together, along with Louis Anquetin and Paul Sérusier, developing a style which came to be known as ‘Cloisonismé’, or Cloisonnism—a term coined by the critic Edouard Dujardin when reviewing the art of Anquetin in his essay for La Revue indépendante, 1 March 1888. Cloisonnism abandoned three-dimensional modelling for flatter two dimensional forms with heavy dark outlines. It was a style that shunned naturalism and adopted a more symbolic focus, assuming a brighter palette in order to express human emotion. It was, in part, inspired by Gothic art (particularly stained-glass and enamel work) and Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, in vogue amongst many artists of the Pont-Aven school.
The close artistic collaboration between Bernard and Gauguin ended in 1891, when Gauguin was described as the founder of the evolving Pont-Aven movement.3 Bernard considered this role rightfully his. Bernard’s sister Madeleine accused Gauguin of reneging on his promise to exhibit together with Bernard before he left for Tahiti: ‘you are a traitor, you have broken your pledge and done the greatest harm to my brother, who is the real initiator of the art that you claim as being your own’.4
Breton women with umbrellas was made the year after this rift. It is one of a series of paintings created in bold outlines and colours which extend Bernard’s monumental style of the late 1880s and signal his claim to be the originator of what he called ‘pictorial symbolism’. The canvas reveals Bernard’s continuing fascination with Gothic art and adds to the exotic perception of Breton women as timeless and immutable beings, living simple pious lives. The artist has depicted these figures in simplified forms and bold colours, and placed them within an almost two-dimensional village backdrop. Bernard came to admire these women, and frequently represented them as figures of devotion, as if they had stepped out of the art of the medieval ages.
Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2009
From Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin and beyond Post-Impressionism from the Musée d'Orsay exhibition book, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2009
- Quoted in Douglas Lord (ed. and trans.), Letters to Emile Bernard, New York: Museum of Modern Art 1938, p. 40.
- National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.
- In an article by Albert Aurier, ‘Le Symbolisme en peinture—Paul Gauguin’, Mercure de France, March 1891, pp. 159–64.
- Henri Dorra, Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6 series, vol. 45, April 1955, p. 244. | <urn:uuid:a7540a24-2de7-4ec8-859a-7217dae32f51> | {
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During the 1980s the number of babies born annually was around 12. The total twice fell sharply in the 1990s until just a single calf appeared in 2000. Since then, the average has risen to more than 20 calves a year. Yet this remains 30 percent below the whales' potential rate of reproduction. Why? If scientists are to guide the species' salvation, they need more data and more answers. Fast.
One August morning in 2006, when the sea was a sheet of dimpled satin shot through with silver threads, I joined Scott Kraus, the New England Aquarium's vice president of research, and Rosalind Rolland, a veterinarian and senior scientist with the aquarium, on an unlikely quest in the Bay of Fundy. When leviathans rose in the distance through the sea's shimmering skin, Kraus steered the boat downwind of where they had briefly surfaced, handed me a data sheet to log our movements, and zigzagged into the faint breeze. Rolland moved onto the bow. Beside her was Fargo, the world's premier whale-poop-sniffing dog.
Fargo began to pace from starboard to port, nostrils flaring. Rolland focused on the rottweiler's tail. If it began to move, it would mean he had picked up a scent—and he could do that a nautical mile away. Twitch … Twitch … Wag, wag. "Starboard," Rolland called to Kraus. "A little more. Nope, too far. Turn to port. OK, he's back on it." A quarter of an hour ran by like the bay's currents. All I saw were clumps of seaweed. Suddenly, the dog sat and turned to fix Rolland with a look. We stopped, and out of the vast ocean horizon came a single chunk of digested whale chow, bobbing along mostly submerged, ready to sink from view or dissolve altogether within minutes.
Kraus grabbed the dip net and scooped up the fragrant blob. You'd have thought he was landing a fabulous fish. "At first, people are incredulous. Then come the inevitable jokes. But this," said the man who has led North Atlantic right whale research for three decades, "is actually some of the best science we've done."
With today's technology, DNA from sloughed-off intestinal cells in a dung sample can identify the individual that produced it. Residues of hormones tell Rolland about the whale's general condition, its reproductive state—mature? pregnant? lactating?—levels of stress, and presence of parasites. | <urn:uuid:f20dd62f-b6cd-4a43-b899-d8bd8fdb0627> | {
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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/916979
- The 'humped' soil production function: eroding Arnhem Land, Australia
Heimsath, Arjun M.;
Hancock, Greg R.
- The University of Newcastle. Faculty of Science & Information Technology, School of Environmental and Life Sciences
- We report erosion rates and processes, determined from in situ-produced beryllium-10 (¹⁰Be) and aluminum-26 (²⁶Al), across a soil-mantled landscape of Arnhem Land, northern Australia. Soil production rates peak under a soil thickness of about 35 cm and we observe no soil thicknesses between exposed bedrock and this thickness. These results thus quantify a well-defined ‘humped’ soil-production function, in contrast to functions reported for other landscapes. We compare this function to a previously reported exponential decline of soil production rates with increasing soil thickness across the passive margin exposed in the Bega Valley, south-eastern Australia, and found remarkable similarities in rates. The critical difference in this work was that the Arnhem Land landscapes were either bedrock or mantled with soils greater than about 35 cm deep, with peak soil production rates of about 20 m/Ma under 35–40 cm of soil, thus supporting previous theory and modeling results for a humped soil production function. We also show how coupling point-specific with catchment-averaged erosion rate measurements lead to a better understanding of landscape denudation. Specifically, we report a nested sampling scheme where we quantify average erosion rates from the first-order, upland catchments to the main, sixth-order channel of Tin Camp Creek. The low (~5 m/Ma) rates from the main channel sediments reflect contributions from the slowly eroding stony highlands, while the channels draining our study area reflect local soil production rates (~10 m/Ma off the rocky ridge; ~20 m/Ma from the soil mantled regions). Quantifying such rates and processes help determine spatial variations of soil thickness as well as helping to predict the sustainability of the Earth's soil resource under different erosional regimes.
- Earth Surface Processes and Landforms Vol. 34, Issue 12, p. 1674-1684
- Publisher Link
- John Wiley & Sons
- Resource Type
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Draw a square. A second square of the same size slides around the
first always maintaining contact and keeping the same orientation.
How far does the dot travel?
Points A, B and C are the centres of three circles, each one of
which touches the other two. Prove that the perimeter of the
triangle ABC is equal to the diameter of the largest circle.
An AP rectangle is one whose area is numerically equal to its perimeter. If you are given the length of a side can you always find an AP rectangle with one side the given length?
Tom and Jerry started with identical rectangular sheets of paper. Each of them cut his sheet into two. Tom obtained two rectangles, each with a perimeter of $40$cm while Jerry obtained two rectangles, each with a perimeter of $50$cm. What was the perimeter of Tom's original sheet of paper?
If you liked this problem, here is an NRICH task which challenges you to use similar mathematical ideas.
This problem is taken from the UKMT Mathematical Challenges. | <urn:uuid:cb13c13b-4a27-4c7f-9370-9daf73c47fb4> | {
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- Blockages in the lungs and airways
- Problems digesting and absorbing nutrients
|Copyright © Nucleus Medical Media, Inc.|
- Parents who are known carriers of the CF gene
- Siblings with CF
- Parents with CF (mostly mother since men with CF are often sterile)
- Difficulty passing the first stool (meconium)
- Meconium ileus (intestinal obstruction), sometimes requires surgery
- Salty sweat
- Coughing and wheezing
- Shortness of breath
- Difficulty with exercise
- Repeated pneumonia
- Severe, chronic sinusitis
- Abnormally shaped clubbed finger tips
- Barrel chest
- Nasal polyps
- Trouble gaining weight
- Poor growth
- Failure to thrive
- Bulky, bad-smelling, floating stools, due to poor digestion of fats
- Insulin-dependent diabetes
- Liver cirrhosis
- Salty sweat
- Mildly decreased fertility in females
- Prolapsed rectum
- Prevention of sperm production in males
- Sweat chloride testing (still the standard for making a diagnosis of CF)
- Transepithelial difference measurement
- Improving the amount of nutrition your body receives
- Preventing and treating lung infections
- Keeping the airways and lungs as clear as possible
- High-calorie diet planned by a registered dietitian
- Nutritional supplements, including fat-soluble vitamins
- Pancreatic enzyme tablets with meals to improve digestion and absorption of nutrients
- Drinking lots of fluids, especially in hot weather or when ill
Managing Lung Infections
- Inhaled and/or systemic antibiotics
- Antibiotics to treat recurrent lung infections
Lung and Airway Support
- Bronchodilators—to relax muscles and open the airway
- Steroid inhalers—to decrease swelling and irritation
- Mucolytic agents—to reduce mucus and help it move out of the lung
- Hypertonic saline is a special type of salt water. A nebulizer machine creates a mist of this saline, which is inhaled by the user. The mist may help thin out the mucus in the lungs.
- Chest percussion and postural drainage or high-frequency chest wall oscillation are rhythmic clapping over the chest. They may help clear mucus from airways.
American Lung Association http://www.lungusa.org/
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation http://www.cff.org/
About Kids Health http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/
Sick Kids http://www.sickkids.ca/
About cystic fibrosis: what you need to know. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation website. Available at: http://www.cff.org/AboutCF/ . Accessed December 11, 2012.
Cystic fibrosis. American Academy of Pediatrics Healthy Children website. Available at: http://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/conditions/chronic/Pages/Cystic-Fibrosis.aspx . Updated January 9, 2012. Accessed December 11, 2012.
Cystic Fibrosis. EBSCO DynaMed website. Available at: http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed . Updated November 7, 2012. Accessed December 11, 2012.
Cystic fibrosis testing. American Medical Association website. Available at: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-science/genetics-molecular-medicine/related-policy-topics/genetic-testing/cystic-fibrosis-testing.shtml . Accessed December 11, 2012.
Conn HF, Rakel RE. Conn’s Current Therapy. 54th ed. Philadelphia, PA: WB Saunders Company; 2002: 720-721.
Federico, MJ, Kerby, GS, Deterding, RR, et al. Respiratory Tract & Mediastinum. In Hay W.W., et al, Eds. Current Diagnosis & Treatment: Pediatrics . 20th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc; 2011.
Kleigman RM, Jensen HB, Behrman RE, Stanton BF. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 18th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders Elsevier; 2007.
4/16/2009 DynaMed's Systematic Literature Surveillance http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed/what.php : Lai HJ, Shoff SM, Farrell PM; Wisconsin Cystic Fibrosis Neonatal Screening Group. Recovery of birth weight z score within 2 years of diagnosis is positively associated with pulmonary status at 6 years of age in children with cystic fibrosis. Pediatrics. 2009;123:714-722.
- Reviewer: Michael Woods, MD
- Review Date: 11/2012 -
- Update Date: 11/26/2012 - | <urn:uuid:3fc8b5ed-eb00-4556-9ebb-a2a7788e87b8> | {
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Every year, tens of millions of sharks are killed for their fins alone. Shark fins are used to make shark fin soup, a popular and expensive dish that is a symbol of wealth and status primarily in Asian cultures.
The demand for fins can lead to cruel and wasteful practices, such as cutting off a shark’s fins at sea and then throwing the rest of the shark, sometimes still alive, back into the water. And shark fin soup can be dangerous to humans. Since sharks are at the top of the food chain, they accumulate toxins like mercury, which is a dangerous neurotoxin.
So are there any alternatives to shark fin soup? Shark fins themselves have no taste and are used only for texture. In traditional shark fin soup recipes, chicken or fish stock is added to give the soup flavor which means that there are a lot of ways to enjoy shark fin soup without using shark fins – like this recipe from the Monterey Bay Aquarium:
Today, the Maryland state Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee is holding a hearing on numerous bills including a bill that would ban the possession, sale, trade and distribution of shark and ray fins.
This bill will help protect global shark populations by reducing the demand for their fins. Each year, tens of million sharks are killed so that their fins can be used in shark fin soup. In the United States, the cruel and wasteful practice of shark finning is illegal. However, many fins are imported from all around the world, contributing to the demand for shark fins and the overfishing of sharks.
Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and California have already passed similar laws, and bills have also been introduced in New York, Illinois, Florida, and Virginia. Oceana supports Maryland’s initiative and asks that state residents do so as well.
Please show your support by telling your legislator to vote for SB 465!
In Singapore, we’re seeing more proof that dedicated activists can make a difference in the world. Singapore is one of the shark fin capitals of the world, but thanks to an outcry from local customers, its largest supermarket chain, Fairprice, will be pulling fins from its shelves.
Shark fins are often cut from live sharks, which are then thrown overboard to die. The huge demand for fins, considered a delicacy, puts some shark species at risk of extinction.
And while shark fin is a culturally important food in Singapore, the tide is turning. A campaign by divers against shark fins caused one of Fairprice’s suppliers to launch an online attack ad that said “Screw the divers!”
Luckily for sharks, the ad backfired. Not all Singaporeans are shark fin fans. Local groups like Project Fin have been fighting to create change from the inside out, and they are finally having an impact. In response to the ad, Singaporeans sent hundreds of complaints to Fairprice and suggested a boycott.
In response, Fairprice made the smart—and surprising—decision to stop selling shark fins.
"It is encouraging to see FairPrice respond promptly to the public reaction. They can progress further by selling only sustainable food," said Jennifer Lee, founder of Project Fin.
Kudos to the Singaporean shark protectors for such a powerful victory in the wake of cultural pressure.
It’s not every day that you hear about the Marshall Islands. Scattered across a swath of the Pacific Ocean, these islands are home to only about 68,000 people. But as of this week, the waters around these islands may become home to a whole lot more sharks.
That’s because the government has decided to make all of its waters—more than 750,000 square miles, or about the size of Mexico—a shark sanctuary. This move will almost double the area in which sharks are protected globally.
Within the Marshall Islands, it will now be illegal to commercially fish sharks, sell any shark products, and use wire leaders (a type of fishing gear often responsible for shark deaths). In addition, all sharks caught accidentally must be released, and fishing boats will be required to bring all their catch directly to port for inspection—an important step in combating seafood fraud. Fines for having shark products will run the equivalent of $25,000 to $200,000.
Great news this shark week! We just got word that Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber will sign a bill this afternoon banning the sale, trade, and possession of shark fins in the state. Oceana was instrumental in the passage of this bill, which passed the State House and Senate with bipartisan support.
The bill’s passage moves the U.S. West Coast closer to a full ban on the trade of shark fins, thereby helping to protect global populations of at-risk shark species that are being targeted in unsustainable and unregulated fisheries worldwide.
While shark finning is illegal in the U.S., current federal laws banning the practice do not address the shark fin trade. As a result, fins are being imported to the U.S. from countries with few or even no shark protections in place.
Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington State signed similar legislation into law on May 12, 2011 and a bill in the California legislature passed the Assembly and is currently under consideration in committee in the Senate.
We commend Governor Kitzhaber for his extraordinary leadership to protect the ocean’s top predators, and congratulate our Pacific colleagues for their work in achieving this victory!
Fantastic news! Earlier this afternoon, the Chilean National Congress passed a nationwide ban on shark finning.
This groundbreaking decision comes on the heels of a very similar ban passed by the United States Congress last December, and puts both countries at the forefront of shark conservation. Oceana drafted the Chilean bill in January, and we are elated to see it pass into law – without a single dissenter.
Shark finning is an inhumane practice that often involves throwing the rest of the shark’s body back into the water once the desired fin is obtained. Despite its cruelty, shark finning is incredibly rampant, due to culinary demand from Asian countries such as China, where shark fin soup is popular.
With the passage of this bill, Chile joins a growing list of countries leading the way in shark conservation. Because sharks do not respect national boundaries, this legislation will help protect shark populations and ocean health in Chile and beyond.
Stellar news for sharks today: Washington Governor Christine Gregoire signed into law a ban on the trade of shark fins.
“By signing this legislation the Governor took a very large west coast leadership role in initiating action to address a global problem,” said Whit Sheard, Senior Advisor and Pacific Counsel for Oceana. “This bill will do two things, help us move closer to ending the wasteful and unnecessary depletion of our ocean’s top predators and serve as a model for Oregon and California as they have similar pending legislation.”
While shark finning is illegal in the U.S., current federal laws banning shark finning do not address the issue of the shark fin trade. As a result, fins are being imported to the U.S. from countries with limited to zero shark protections in place. Similar legislation passed recently in Hawaii and Guam and is pending in Oregon and California.
Each year, tens of millions of sharks are killed for their fins, mostly to make shark fin soup. In this wasteful and cruel practice, a shark’s fins are sliced off while at sea and the remainder of the animal is thrown back into the water to die.
Congrats to Oceana’s Pacific campaigners for helping win this great victory for sharks!
Chinese NBA basketball star Yao Ming hopes so. As center for the Houston Rockets, Ming is spreading the word to “Say no to shark fin soup” with his new ads sponsored by Oceana and WildAid.
Ming’s message is traveling through San Francisco by bus, including those on Chinatown routes to support legislation (AB 376) to ban the possession, sale, trade, and distribution of shark fins in California.
Great news from the Evergreen State: Washington State’s legislature has passed a bill banning the illegal trade of shark fins, an extraordinary step toward shark conservation on the U.S. Pacific coast. The legislation now goes to the governor’s desk to be signed into law.
While shark finning is illegal in the U.S., current federal laws banning shark finning do not address the issue of the shark fin trade. As a result, fins are being imported to the U.S. from countries with limited to zero shark protections in place. Similar legislation passed recently in Hawaii and is pending in Oregon and California.
“This legislation is an excellent example of a state taking action to address a global problem,” said Whit Sheard, Senior Advisor and Pacific Counsel for Oceana. “This bill will help us move closer to ending the wasteful and unnecessary depletion of our ocean’s top predators.”
As shark week comes to a close, we thought we’d hit you with the good stuff: numbers. Here are some of the most revealing statistics about sharks that we could find:
400 million: Approximate number of years that sharks have been on planet Earth.
50: Number of shark species that are listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of threatened species
138,894: Number of people in the U.S. who suffered ladder-related injuries in 1996.
13: Number who suffered shark-related injuries in the U.S. in 1996.
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As with paper, you can write (or type) anywhere on a OneNote page. Just click and write. The inking technology is really great if you'd like to include sketches or diagrams; you can doodle away as you would on paper. | <urn:uuid:74668ceb-55e0-4b61-84ae-10aed1e3ce7f> | {
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Front Page Titles (by Subject) Origin and Causes of the Sterility of first Crosses and of Hybrids. - The Origin of Species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life, vol. 2
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Origin and Causes of the Sterility of first Crosses and of Hybrids. - Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life, vol. 2
The Origin of Species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life, with additions and corrections from the sixth and last English edition, in two volumes (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1896). Volume 2.
Part of: The Origin of Species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life, 2 vols.
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Origin and Causes of the Sterility of first Crosses and of Hybrids.
At one time it appeared to me probable, as it has to others, that the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids might have been slowly acquired through the natural selection of slightly lessened degrees of fertility, which, like any other variation, spontaneously appeared in certain individuals of one variety when crossed with those of another variety. For it would clearly be advantageous to two varieties or incipient species, if they could be kept from blending, on the same principle that, when man is selecting at the same time two varieties, it is necessary that he should keep them separate. In the first place, it may be remarked that species inhabiting distinct regions are often sterile when crossed; now it could clearly have been of no advantage to such separated species to have been rendered mutually sterile, and consequently this could not have been effected through natural selection; but it may perhaps be argued, that, if a species was rendered sterile with some one compatriot, sterility with other species would follow as a necessary contingency. In the second place, it is almost as much opposed to the theory of natural selection as to that of special creation, that in reciprocal crosses the male element of one form should have been rendered utterly impotent on a second form, whilst at the same time the male element of this second form is enabled freely to fertilise the first form; for this peculiar state of the reproductive system could hardly have been advantageous to either species.
In considering the probability of natural selection having come into action, in rendering species mutually sterile, the greatest difficulty will be found to lie in the existence of many graduated steps from slightly lessened fertility to absolute sterility. It may be admitted that it would profit an incipient species, if it were rendered in some slight degree sterile when crossed with its parent form or with some other variety; for thus fewer bastardised and deteriorated offspring would be produced to commingle their blood with the new species in process of formation. But he who will take the trouble to reflect on the steps by which this first degree of sterility could be increased through natural selection to that high degree which is common with so many species, and which is universal with species which have been differentiated to a generic or family rank, will find the subject extraordinarily complex. After mature reflection it seems to me that this could not have been effected through natural selection. Take the case of any two species which, when crossed, produced few and sterile offspring; now, what is there which could favour the survival of those individuals which happened to be endowed in a slightly higher degree with mutual infertility, and which thus approached by one small step towards absolute sterility? Yet an advance of this kind, if the theory of natural selection be brought to bear, must have incessantly occurred with many species, for a multitude are mutually quite barren. With sterile neuter insects we have reason to believe that modifications in their structure and fertility have been slowly accumulated by natural selection, from an advantage having been thus indirectly given to the community to which they belonged over other communities of the same species; but an individual animal not belonging to a social community, if rendered slightly sterile when crossed with some other variety, would not thus itself gain any advantage or indirectly give any advantage to the other individuals of the same variety, thus leading to their preservation.
But it would be superfluous to discuss this question in detail; for with plants we have conclusive evidence that the sterility of crossed species must be due to some principle, quite independent of natural selection. Both Gärtner and Kölreuter have proved that in genera including numerous species, a series can be formed from species which when crossed yield fewer and fewer seeds, to species which never produce a single seed, but yet are affected by the pollen of certain other species, for the germen swells. It is here manifestly impossible to select the more sterile individuals, which have already ceased to yield seeds; so that this acme of sterility, when the germen alone is affected, cannot have been gained through selection; and from the laws governing the various grades of sterility being so uniform throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, we may infer that the cause, whatever it may be, is the same or nearly the same in all cases.
We will now look a little closer at the probable nature of the differences between species which induce sterility in first crosses and in hybrids. In the case of first crosses, the greater or less difficulty in effecting an union and in obtaining offspring apparently depends on several distinct causes. There must sometimes be a physical impossibility in the male element reaching the ovule, as would be the case with a plant having a pistil too long for the pollen-tubes to reach the ovarium. It has also been observed that when the pollen of one species is placed on the stigma of a distantly allied species, though the pollen-tubes protrude, they do not penetrate the stigmatic surface. Again, the male element may reach the female element but be incapable of causing an embryo to be developed, as seems to have been the case with some of Thuret’s experiments on Fuci. No explanation can be given of these facts, any more than why certain trees cannot be grafted on others. Lastly, an embryo may be developed, and then perish at an early period. This latter alternative has not been sufficiently attended to; but I believe, from observations communicated to me by Mr. Hewitt, who has had great experience in hybridising pheasants and fowls, that the early death of the embryo is a very frequent cause of sterility in first crosses. Mr. Salter has recently given the results of an examination of about 500 eggs produced from various crosses between three species of Gallus and their hybrids; the majority of these eggs had been fertilised; and in the majority of the fertilised eggs, the embryos had either been partially developed and had then perished, or had become nearly mature, but the young chickens had been unable to break through the shell. Of the chickens which were born, more than four-fifths died within the first few days, or at latest weeks, “without any obvious cause, apparently from mere inability to live;” so that from the 500 eggs only twelve chickens were reared. With plants, hybridised embryos probably often perish in a like manner; at least it is known that hybrids raised from very distinct species are sometimes weak and dwarfed, and perish at an early age; of which fact Max Wichura has recently given some striking cases with hybrid willows. It may be here worth noticing that in some cases of parthenogenesis, the embryos within the eggs of silk moths which had not been fertilised, pass through their early stages of development and then perish like the embryos produced by a cross between distinct species. Until becoming acquainted with these facts, I was unwilling to believe in the frequent early death of hybrid embryos; for hybrids, when once born, are generally healthy and long-lived, as we see in the case of the common mule. Hybrids, however, are differently circumstanced before and after birth: when born and living in a country where their two parents live, they are generally placed under suitable conditions of life. But a hybrid partakes of only half of the nature and constitution of its mother; it may therefore before birth, as long as it is nourished within its mother’s womb, or within the egg or seed produced by the mother, be exposed to conditions in some degree unsuitable, and consequently be liable to perish at an early period; more especially as all very young beings are eminently sensitive to injurious or unnatural conditions of life. But after all, the cause more probably lies in some imperfection in the original act of impregnation, causing the embryo to be imperfectly developed, rather than in the conditions to which it is subsequently exposed.
In regard to the sterility of hybrids, in which the sexual elements are imperfectly developed, the case is somewhat different. I have more than once alluded to a large body of facts showing that, when animals and plants are removed from their natural conditions, they are extremely liable to have their reproductive systems seriously affected. This, in fact, is the great bar to the domestication of animals. Between the sterility thus superinduced and that of hybrids, there are many points of similarity. In both cases the sterility is independent of general health, and is often accompanied by excess of size or great luxuriance. In both cases the sterility occurs in various degrees; in both, the male element is the most liable to be affected; but sometimes the female more than the male. In both, the tendency goes to a certain extent with systematic affinity, for whole groups of animals and plants are rendered impotent by the same unnatural conditions; and whole groups of species tend to produce sterile hybrids. On the other hand, one species in a group will sometimes resist great changes of conditions with unimpaired fertility; and certain species in a group will produce unusually fertile hybrids. No one can tell, till he tries, whether any particular animal will breed under confinement, or any exotic plant seed freely under culture; nor can he tell till he tries, whether any two species of a genus will produce more or less sterile hybrids. Lastly, when organic beings are placed during several generations under conditions not natural to them, they are extremely liable to vary, which seems to be partly due to their reproductive systems having been specially affected, though in a lesser degree than when sterility ensues. So it is with hybrids, for their offspring in successive generations are eminently liable to vary, as every experimentalist has observed.
Thus we see that when organic beings are placed under new and unnatural conditions, and when hybrids are produced by the unnatural crossing of two species, the reproductive system, independently of the general state of health, is affected in a very similar manner. In the one case, the conditions of life have been disturbed, though often in so slight a degree as to be inappreciable by us; in the other case, or that of hybrids, the external conditions have remained the same, but the organisation has been disturbed by two distinct structures and constitutions, including of course the reproductive systems, having been blended into one. For it is scarcely possible that two organisations should be compounded into one, without some disturbance occurring in the development, or periodical action, or mutual relations of the different parts and organs one to another or to the conditions of life. When hybrids are able to breed inter se, they transmit to their offspring from generation to generation the same compounded organisation, and hence we need not be surprised that their sterility, though in some degree variable, does not diminish; it is even apt to increase, this being generally the result, as before explained, of too close interbreeding. The above view of the sterility of hybrids being caused by two constitutions being compounded into one has been strongly maintained by Max Wichura.
It must, however, be owned that we cannot understand, on the above or any other view, several facts with respect to the sterility of hybrids; for instance, the unequal fertility of hybrids produced from reciprocal crosses; or the increased sterility in those hybrids which occasionally and exceptionally resemble closely either pure parent. Nor do I pretend that the foregoing remarks go to the root of the matter; no explanation is offered why an organism, when placed under unnatural conditions, is rendered sterile. All that I have attempted to show is, that in two cases, in some respects allied, sterility is the common result,—in the one case from the conditions of life having been disturbed, in the other case from the organisation having been disturbed by two organisations being compounded into one.
A similar parallelism holds good with an allied yet very different class of facts. It is an old and almost universal belief founded on a considerable body of evidence, which I have elsewhere given, that slight changes in the conditions of life are beneficial to all living things. We see this acted on by farmers and gardeners in their frequent exchanges of seed, tubers, &c., from one soil or climate to another, and back again. During the convalescence of animals, great benefit is derived from almost any change in their habits of life. Again, both with plants and animals, there is the clearest evidence that a cross between individuals of the same species, which differ to a certain extent, gives vigour and fertility to the offspring; and that close interbreeding continued during several generations between the nearest relations, if these be kept under the same conditions of life, almost always leads to decreased size, weakness, or sterility.
Hence it seems that, on the one hand, slight changes in the conditions of life benefit all organic beings, and on the other hand, that slight crosses, that is crosses between the males and females of the same species, which have been subjected to slightly different conditions, or which have slightly varied, give vigour and fertility to the offspring. But, as we have seen, organic beings long habituated to certain uniform conditions under a state of nature, when subjected, as under confinement, to a considerable change in their conditions, very frequently are rendered more or less sterile; and we know that a cross between two forms, that have become widely or specifically different, produce hybrids which are almost always in some degree sterile. I am fully persuaded that this double parallelism is by no means an accident or an illusion. He who is able to explain why the elephant and a multitude of other animals are incapable of breeding when kept under only partial confinement in their native country, will be able to explain the primary cause of hybrids being so generally sterile. He will at the same time be able to explain how it is that the races of some of our domesticated animals, which have often been subjected to new and not uniform conditions, are quite fertile together, although they are descended from distinct species, which would probably have been sterile if aboriginally crossed. The above two parallel series of facts seem to be connected together by some common but unknown bond, which is essentially related to the principle of life; this principle, according to Mr. Herbert Spencer, being that life depends on, or consists in, the incessant action and reaction of various forces, which, as throughout nature, are always tending towards an equilibrium; and when this tendency is slightly disturbed by any change, the vital forces gain in power. | <urn:uuid:4540dd27-0634-4475-8fab-6880639fbba8> | {
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Front Page Titles (by Subject) CHAP. VI.: The Reason why Interest was lowered one half after the Conquest of the Indies. - Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws
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CHAP. VI.: The Reason why Interest was lowered one half after the Conquest of the Indies. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws
The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2.
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The Reason why Interest was lowered one half after the Conquest of the Indies.
GARCILASSO informs us,‡ that in Spain, after the conquest of the Indies, the interest, which was at ten per cent. fell to five. This was a necessary consequence. A great quantity of specie being all of a sudden brought into Europe, much fewer persons had need of money. The price of all things increased, while the value of money diminished; the proportion was then broken, and all the old debts were discharged. We may recollect the time of the system;* when every thing was at a high price except specie. Those who had money after the conquest of the Indies, were obliged to lower the price or hire of their merchandize; that is, in other words, their interest.
From this time they were unable to bring interest to its ancient standard, because the quantity of specie brought to Europe has been annually increasing. Besides, as the public funds of some states, founded on riches procured by commerce, gave but a very small interest, it became necessary for the contracts of individuals to be regulated by these. In short, the course of exchange having rendered the conveying of specie from one country to another remarkably easy, money cannot be scarce in a place where they may be so readily supplied with it, by those who have it in plenty.
[‡ ]History of the civil wars of the Spaniards in the West Indies.
[* ]In France, Mr. Law’s project was called by this name. | <urn:uuid:8b3bb864-1d21-4225-9d11-f4e9a449eb52> | {
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Sugar might not be the infant pain reliever clinicians have long thought it to be, according to a study in the Lancet. At a hospital in London, researchers randomly assigned 44 newborns to receive a squirt of either sugared or plain water before pricking their heels. (The heel prick is a common method for drawing infants' blood.) Meanwhile, electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes measured the infants' pain-specific brain activity.
Previous studies have found that newborns exhibit fewer grimaces and other facial expressions of pain when given sugared water before a procedure. Despite that, in this study the EEGs showed no difference in pain between children given sugared or plain water.
Caveat: Activity in the targeted brain regions might not capture the entirety of infant pain, an accompanying editorial said. The small number of infants in the study meant that the researchers would only have been able to detect a large difference between the two groups.
- Oral Sucrose as an Analgesic Drug for Procedural Pain in Newborn Infants: A Randomised Controlled Trial
Internal Clocks: Tissue from hair follicles can reveal where people are in the circadian rhythm that governs their sleeping and waking periods, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The genes regulating this so-called circadian clock leave traces of their activity throughout the body.
Previously, the researchers tried sampling blood and mouth-tissue cells for DNA to track circadian phases. They decided that collecting follicle cells, attached to the bottom of plucked chin or head hairs, would be an easier and less-invasive method. In one experiment, they found that follicle cells from an average of 10 hairs contained enough information to differentiate among workers with morning, afternoon or night shifts.
Caveat: The study doesn't include the costs of processing hair follicles. The technique, which could help diagnose erratic or slow-to-adapt circadian clocks, needs to be improved before it's ready for clinical use, the researchers said.
Lung Cancer: The world's most prescribed anti-diabetes drug halved the eventual size of lung tumors in mice, according to a study in Cancer Prevention Research. Metformin, typically the first choice for treating Type 2 diabetes, may slow tumor growth by regulating enzymes that become overactive during cancer.
The researchers injected cancer-prone mice with a carcinogen specific to cigarette smoke, and then gave them either a placebo or moderate doses of metformin. After 13 weeks, the lung tumors in metformin-fed mice were 38% to 53% smaller than those in the placebo-fed mice on average. More-potent, injected doses of metformin led to a 72% tumor reduction.
Caveat: As with all animal studies, the findings might not apply to human subjects. The National Cancer Institute is planning a clinical trial to test metformin in people at highest risk of developing lung cancer.
Brain Exercises: Reading and other cognitive exercises compress late-life dementia into a shorter but more-rapid decline, according to a study in Neurology. At the beginning of the study, 1,157 dementia-free seniors reported how often they read newspapers, magazines and books; listened to the radio; watched television; played games like cards or crosswords and visited museums. Every three years, the researchers tested a subset of the participants for cognitive impairment, and followed those patients for another 5.7 years on average.
Cognitive exercise appeared to delay dementia. Every one-point increase on a five-point mental-activity scale corresponded to an average 52% slower cognitive impairment at first. But the exercises appeared to have the opposite effect on subjects who had developed Alzheimer's: for every one-point increase on the scale, cognitive skills declined 42% more quickly.
Caveat: The researchers tested each participant fewer than four times on average, and the participants reported their cognitive exercises just once.
Migraine: Researchers discovered the first common gene linked to migraine risk, according to their report in Nature Genetics. The researchers compared DNA samples from 2,731 migraine sufferers to 10,747 otherwise similar subjects, examining more than 400,000 DNA sequences per participant. A variation in only one sequence, on the long arm of chromosome 8, appeared to have any effect on the debilitating condition.
The researchers confirmed their initial findings by examining this sequence in another 3,202 people with migraine and 40,062 controls. Overall, 24.3% of migraine sufferers and 20.6% of non-sufferers carried the variant—an 18% higher rate for sufferers. The sequence's location, between two genes that help regulate the neurotransmitter glutamate, provides fresh clues for understanding and treating migraine.
Caveat: All subjects were European, and all migraine sufferers were recruited from specialized headache clinics. It's unclear whether the variant is as common, or as closely associated with migraine, in other populations.
Low-Carbohydrate Diets: Low-carbohydrate diets based on animal protein appear to shorten dieters' lives, while those based on vegetable proteins appear to increase longevity, according to a study in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Researchers tracked 85,168 female nurses between 1980 and 2006. They also tracked 44,548 male health-care professionals (such as optometrists and veterinarians) between 1986 and 2006. During that time, about 16% of the participants died.
The participants who consumed few carbohydrates and the greatest proportion of animal protein and fat were 23% more likely to die than those who consumed the least. On the other hand, the mortality rate was 20% lower for participants on low-carb diets who consumed the most vegetable protein and fat, compared to those who consumed the least.
Caveat: Smaller differences in diet—for example, between diets in the 40th and 60th percentiles for carbohydrates, instead of the top and bottom 10%—were mostly insignificant. The researchers adjusted their analyses for age, physical activity and smoking, but not race, income or education.
Esophageal Cancer: The most popular anti-osteoporosis medications may boost the risk of esophageal cancer, according to a study in the British Medical Journal. The Food and Drug Administration raised the possibility last year of a link between oral bisphosphonates and esophageal cancer, based on case reports it collected. Yet a recent analysis of a large British patient database suggested that the medications weren't to blame for the cancer.
The BMJ study used the same database, but tracked patients for nearly twice as long: 7.7 years versus 4.5 years on average. Over the longer period, a greater proportion of the 2,954 patients with esophageal cancer had used oral bisphosphonates, compared to a control group. (There was no association between the medication and gastric or colorectal cancer.)
The risk was concentrated among patients who had received at least 10 prescriptions for oral bisphosphonates. They were 93% more likely to get esophageal cancer than subjects who received no prescriptions. The overall risk for esophageal cancer in Europe and North America is about 1 in 1,000.
Caveat: The data didn't show whether patients who were prescribed oral bisphosphonates actually used them, or whether they followed the instructions meant to reduce esophageal irritation.
- Oral Bisphosphonates and Risk of Cancer of Oesophagus, Stomach, and Colorectum: Case-Control Analysis Within a U.K. Primary Care Cohort
Heart Health: Margarine fortified with omega-3 fatty acids appears not to prevent second heart attacks, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dutch researchers gave 4,837 elderly heart-attack survivors, all taking "state-of-the-art" medications, each a 40-month supply of margarine. One-quarter of patients received standard margarine, while the others were given margarine laced with omega-3s derived from fish, plants or a mix of the two.
By the end of the 40 months, 14% of the patients had another heart attack, a stroke or other major cardiovascular trauma. The type or amount of margarine the patients consumed had no significant influence on this rate.
The findings contrast with earlier studies, which found that omega-3s helped to protect the heart. One possible explanation, according to the researchers: the increasing use of highly effective cardiovascular drugs, particularly cholesterol-reducing statins, could have outweighed any benefits of omega-3s.
Caveat: If the study had enrolled more patients, particularly women, it would have had more power to detect possible omega-3 effects. Nearly 80% of the participants were male, yet the fortified margarines seemed more effective in women. | <urn:uuid:a86c87e3-c213-4236-9c73-3cda264caf88> | {
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Sin has a lot of moving parts. It features seven ancient figures, some of whom have instant name recognition (Jesus, Paul, Augustine) and some of whom do not (Valentinus, Marcion, Justin, Origen). Jesus and Paul were both Jews whose ideas about sin related in positive and creative ways to the sacrificial cult of Jerusalem’s temple. Marcion, Valentinus and Justin, all gentiles, shaped subsequent centuries of Christian doctrine by arguing about how to read Jewish scriptures (which by 300 CE will become the ‘Old Testament’ for some churches), how to identify the god of the Jewish Bible (is he the father of Christ, or someone else?), how to understand evil, and, thus, how to understand sin. Origen and Augustine, finally, were two towering geniuses of the early church. Dealing with the same scriptural and doctrinal points of principle, they each framed huge, complex, and contrasting theologies. Not only do their ideas of sin contrast dramatically: so too do their ideas about the universe, about humanity, and about God.Learn more about Sin: The Early History of an Idea at the Princeton University Press website.
Page 99 introduces these last two men, and sets up these contrasts. According to Origen, all would be saved; according to Augustine, most were damned. According to Origen, since God is just, he gave humanity free will so that a person could choose whether or not to sin. According to Augustine, since God is just, he condemned all humanity to a broken will as part of the price of Original Sin. According to Origen, even Satan will at last be redeemed; according to Augustine, even babies, if unbaptized, go to hell.
Augustine is one of history’s winners. His views prevailed. In their secular refraction, they continue to affect even American public policy: According to Augustine, since sex is a sinful act, its only morally admissible function is procreation. Any other use of sex other than for procreation – as the expression of affection, say – is to be condemned. The current struggles over whether U.S. government funds can or should be used to provide Americans with access to contraception is an early 21st-century spin-off of Augustine’s early fifth-century arguments on the nature of sin. | <urn:uuid:83b6ecf4-03c0-4490-953b-c924a973aa93> | {
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S. Nurnberg, M. Aberhan. Habitat breadth and geographic range predict diversity dynamics in marine Mesozoic bivalves. Paleobiology. [#175]
M. E. Clapham, M. L. Fraiser, P. J. Marenco, S. Z. Shen. Taxonomic composition and environmental distribution of post-extinction rhynchonelliform brachiopod faunas: constraints on short-term survival and the role of anoxia in the end-Permian mass extinction. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. [#174]
M. Pearson, R. Benson, P. Upchurch, J. Fröbisch, C. Kammerer. Reconstructing the diversity of early terrestrial herbivorous tetrapods. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. [#173]
The Paleobiology Database seeks to provide researchers and the public with information about the entire fossil record.
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Archosaurs ([Greek for 'ruling lizards') are a group of diapsid reptiles that first evolved from Archosauriform ancestors during the Olenekian (Lower Triassic Period). They are represented today by birds and crocodiles. Archosaurs are set apart by having socketed teeth (a feature that inspired the traditional name, 'thecodonts', for the Triassic forms) and four-chambered hearts, among other characteristics. Most early forms were carnivores, with narrow serrated meat-tearing teeth. Their "reptilian" metabolism seem to have given them a clear advantage over the mammal-like therapsids that were their contemporaries in the arid interiors and strong monsoon climates that were the natural result of the single world-continent, Pangaea. Thus, whereas the Permian was dominated by synapsids, the Triassic came to be dominated by sauropsids.
There are two primary groups of archosaurs — the Ornithodira which were insignificant during the Middle Triassic but in the Late Triassic radiated as the dinosaurs and pterosaurs; and the Crurotarsi, which were the predominant group at this time, and included a number of purely Triassic groups like the rauisuchians, the phytosaurs, and the herbivorous aetosaurs, as well as the ancestors of the crocodilians.
A number of these archosaur groups - chiefly those large Crurotarsi that are in pre-cladistic books called the Thecodonts - became extinct 195 million years ago, during the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event. The survivors - the Dinosaurs and the Pterosaurs among the Ornithodira, and first the Sphenosuchia and Protosuchia then their descendants the Crocodilia among the Crurotarsi - flourished during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. The dinosaurs dominated the land, the pterosaurs and later another archosaurian group, the birds, dominated the air,and the crocodiles dominated the rivers and swamps and even invaded the seas (the Teleosaurs and Metriorhynchidae).
Most of these taxa perished 65 million years ago, during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. The only groups of archosaurs to continue through to the Tertiary and, ultimately, to the present day, are the birds (which are descended from the dinosaurs) and the crocodylia (which include all modern crocodiles, alligators, and gharials).
Birds are traditionally treated as a separate class, Aves, while the rest of the archosaurs are treated as a subclass or infraclass, Archosauria, within the class Reptilia. More recently, with the cladistic method dominating Biology, only monophyletic groups are considered valid and birds are included within the division Archosauria.
Avesuchia `--Archosauria |--Crurotarsi | |-?Ctenosauriscidae | `--Crocodylotarsi | |--Ornithosuchidae | `--+--Phytosauria | `--Suchia | |--Prestosuchidae | `--Rauisuchiformes | |--Aetosauria | `--Rauisuchia | |--Rauisuchidae | `--+--Paracrocodylomorpha | `--Crocodylomorpha (crocodiles and relatives) `--Ornithodira |--Pterosauromorpha | |--Scleromochlus | `--Pterosauria `--Dinosauromorpha `--Dinosauriformes `--Dinosauria |--Ornithischia `--Saurischia `--Aves (birds)
- Benton, M. J. (2004), Vertebrate Paleontology, 3rd ed. Blackwell Science Ltd
- Carroll, R. L. (1988), Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, W. H. Freeman and Co. New York
|This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Archosauria. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Paleontology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.| | <urn:uuid:6b193445-04a8-4c96-a4bc-c96ac2be0e58> | {
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The tumor ( Images A & B) shows lobules of cells similar to basal cells with masses of small keratinocytes surrounded by larger, palisading cells (Image C) on the periphery of the lobules. These uniform tumor cells possess large, oval, elongated nuclei and scant, poorly defined cytoplasm. There are no intercellular bridges. The nuclear size is relatively uniform and identifiable mitoses (Image D) are normal, although variable. The surrounding myofibroblastic stroma (Image C) is arranged in parallel bundles. There are an abundance of keratotic cysts and occasional retraction lacunae (Image C) where the stroma retracts from the tumor.
The odontogenic keratocyst is lined by a two to five layer squamous cell epithelium with a well-differentiated basal layer. It forms keratin, possesses no granulocytic cell layer or rete ridges, and may consist of one large cyst, or multiple microcysts.
The parakeratotic odontogenic cyst (Images E & F) possesses a thin lining of stratified squamous epithelium with a palisading basal layer and a corrugated surface of parakeratin. The epithelium surrounds a cyst cavity containing keratin.
The orthokeratotic odontogenic cyst (Image G) also possesses a thin surrounding epithelium but without a corrugated surface. There is a well-developed granular layer and a flattened or cuboidal, non-palisading, basal layer. This cyst cystcontains orthokeratin. | <urn:uuid:6f893d9d-f341-4960-b214-610c3fac088e> | {
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If you take a prescription or an over-the-counter drug, and you can answer yes to any of these other questions, then you may be experiencing a drug interaction or conflict that is having an negative affect on your health:
- Do you take more than one drug - prescription or over-the-counter?
- Do you take vitamins or other supplements?
- Do you ever drink grapefruit juice, eat licorice or chocolate?
- Do you enjoy a glass of wine, a bottle of beer or another alcoholic beverage?
Drug-to-drug, drug-to-supplement, drug-to-food and drug-to-alcohol conflicts and interactions may simply give you a bit of intestinal discomfort - or they may kill you. We hear too frequently in the news about a celebrity who has died because of conflicts from drugs, in particular. Sometimes we hear them labeled as overdoses. But overdoses can result from a drug that was taken in its prescribed quantity, then its effect was altered by the presence of another substance like another drug or alcohol. Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Anna Nicole Smith, and others are all considered to have died from drug interactions.
Here are some examples of drug conflicts and interactions that may surprise you.Drug with Other Drug Conflicts:
If you take more than one drug, then your drugs may be getting in each other's way. The more different medications you take, the more chances there are of conflicts. According to the Institute for Safe Medication practices, almost 40% of Americans take four or more different drugs.
Here are some examples of problems that can occur when two conflicting drugs are taken by the same patient:
Antihistimines, those usually over-the-counter drugs we take for runny noses, sneezing, congestion or watery eyes, can increase the depressive effects of many sedatives, tranquilizers, high blood-pressure medications or medicines for depression. In turn, that makes patients sleepier and more fatigued, which can be deadly to the patient or others if the patient tries to drive a car, operate heavy machinery or any other activity that requires concentration. Antihistimines can also cause an increase in blood pressure or speed up the heart rate of patients who take blood pressure-reducing medications.
Acid reducers like Prilosec (omeprazole), Nexium or others known as drugs to treat GERD (gastrointestinal esophageal reflux disease) will interact with any drug that contains cimtidine, such as some asthma drugs, seizure drugs or warfarin (Coumadin), used as a blood thinner.
Cardorone (also called amiodarone) conflicts with the cholesterol-lowering drug, Zocor (simvastatin) and can lead to kidney failure or death if the dose of Zocor is 20 mg or higher. Cardarone also conflicts with Coumadin.
There may be thousands of examples of these interaction problems. Be sure to double check any possible conflicts before you begin taking a new drug that could possibly conflict with a drug you already take.
Drug with Vitamins, Minerals or Herbal Supplement Conflicts:
At least 50% of Americans take dietary supplements according to the federal government. Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs, botanicals and other substances that many of us call "natural" are being ingested in hopes of improving our health.
Whether or not most of them truly help us is not the question here. But whether or not they might have an impact on the effectiveness of drugs we take is something we must all be concerned with.
Here are some examples of drug and supplement conflicts:
Vitamin E and ginko biloba can interact with Coumadin (also called warfarin, Jantoven, Marevan, Lawarin, Waran and Warfant), increasing its blood-thinning properties and putting those who take it at risk for increased bleeding.
Ginseng also interacts with Coumadin and also creates potential bleeding problems for people who take heparin, aspirin or NSIADs (ibuprofen, naproxen and others). Ginseng can also cause headaches, nervousness or hyperactivity among those who take MAO inhibitors.
St. John's Wort may create problems for those who take antidepressants.
Drug with Food and Alcohol Conficts:
According to the Food and Drug Administration, some foods and all alcoholic beverages can increase how the body metabolizes some drugs, meaning the drug will be absorbed and used by the body in a different way than it was intended to. This can increase, decrease or neutralize the effect of the drug.
Here are some examples:
Grapefruit juice can cause problems for people who take certain blood-pressure lowering medications or for those who take cyclosporin after an organ transplant. There may be dozens of other drugs that grapefruit juice affects, causing problems for those who drink it along with those drugs. (Learn more about avoiding these drug conflicts and interactions.)
Chocolate - who can live without chocolate? Some of us need to - because the drugs we take will become problematic if we eat chocolate, too. For example, anyone (including children) who takes a stimulant drug such as Ritalin or a sedative-type drug like Ambien must avoid any food that includes caffeine, including chocolate and coffee.
Chocolate can also cause problems for anyone who takes MAO inhibitors for depression or Parkinson's disease. MAO inhibitors include drugs like Nardil (phenelzine) or Parnate (tranylcypromine). In fact, chocolate isn't the only food that needs to be avoided by those who take MAO inhibitors. Here is a list of foods to avoid, which include smoked, aged or pickled meat or fish, sauerkraut, aged cheeses, beef or chicken liver and red wines.
Licorice, another favorite, needs to be avoided by people who take certain blood-pressure lowering drugs like digitalis (also called digoxin, digitoxin, Cardoxin, Digitek, Lanoxicaps or Lanoxin.)
With so many ways to negatively affect the drugs we take to improve our health, it makes sense to avoid those drug conflicts and interactions. Whenever your provider gives you a new prescription for a drug, or if you decide to use an over-the-counter drug to address difficult symptoms, be sure you make yourself aware of the potential conflicts, then avoid them.
From Medline Plus (National Library of Medicine)
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May 04 2010
Today we talked about hydrogen and how it can be used to power vehicles. Of the forty-four free response questions on previous A.P. exams, none have addressed hydrogen power, so Mr. Willard said this would be “good knowledge to have in our pockets.”
First we reviewed what we already knew about hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Despite this fact, there is almost none in the troposphere, and this is because hydrogen has a very low density and so it rises. Additionally, hydrogen is very unstable, so it likes to bond with things (i.e. with oxygen, thus water).
In a hydrogen-powered car, the traditional internal combustion engine is replaced with a fuel cell. Here is a link to a video we watched in class about how a fuel cell works: How A Fuel Cell Works: Inside A Hydrogen-Powered Car (http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/dangerous-hydrogen-fuel1.htm)
As with every energy source, there are pros and cons. The pros to a hydrogen-powered car is that water is its only emission, it is a strategy for reducing fossil fuel use, and hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. On the flip side, the cons to a hydrogen-powered car are that we have to harvest the hydrogen or “make it” (which requires energy input), since this source of energy is new, the infrastructure for hydrogen power is not there, and that we can’t simply convert petro-gas stations to hydrogen gas stations. Perhaps we can add on to our petro-gas stations, and if we harvest the hydrogen or “make” the hydrogen by generating energy from renewable resources such as wind or solar power, technically the energy is still clean. But if we generate the energy for hydrogen from a coal-based power plant, then we’re just moving the source, but the impact is still the same.
Hydrogen can be “harvested” or “made” from electrolysis (splitting water), from biomass, and from fuel.
The U.S. Government is currently funding research on hydrogen power in the state of California. Hydrogen power is still very much in the research and development stage. Hope this helped!
Below is a picture of a typical hydrogen fuel cell: | <urn:uuid:d2593b31-f83e-45c5-92d3-66550eb9883c> | {
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“A remote Indian village is responding to global warming-induced water shortages by creating large masses of ice, or “artificial glaciers,” to get through the dry spring months. (See a map of the region.)
Located on the western edge of the Tibetan plateau, the village of Skara in the Ladakh region of India is not a common tourist destination.
“It’s beautiful, but really remote and difficult to get to,” said Amy Higgins, a graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies who worked on the artificial glacier project.
“A lot of people, when I met them in Delhi and I said I was going to Ladakh, they looked at me like I was going to the moon,” said Higgins, who is also a National Geographic grantee.
People in Skara and surrounding villages survive by growing crops such as barley for their own consumption and for sale in neighboring towns. In the past, water for the crops came from meltwater originating in glaciers high in the Himalaya.”
Read more: National Geographic | <urn:uuid:5050ac83-4770-4e9c-9b44-38ba46d2466e> | {
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The list has been arranged, as possible, in reverse chronological order. I should note that the contents have been lightly edited to reduce entry length; almost all of these edits have removed references to recent sources in the outside literature which are not further identified. My apologies for this to the authors, but readers should of course consult the original sources to get the full picture, often extending well beyond Wallace studies per se.
. . . How is it that the memes of poetry remained a strong presence in the life of Wallace but disappeared from the life of Darwin even though both men were very much involved in scientific research that led both to the same revolutionary paradigm of natural selection? Perhaps the answer to this question may be found in a famous clash between the two scientific titans. For as Himmelfarb (1986) has remarked, 'Wallace not only had the distinction of being the first Darwinist; he was also the first renegade Darwinist'. And the issue on which Wallace became a 'renegade' was hardly trivial. Whereas Darwin believed that the science of evolution could completely account for the human species, Wallace had his doubts. His 'little heresy' as he called it was actually not so little, for he questioned whether the science of natural selection could account for 'the moral and higher intellectual nature of man' . . . --Bryce Christensen, October 2012. Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education 18(4): 400.
. . . The first author who expected mimicry by light was Wallace (1878) himself, who erroneously supposed click beetles for firefly mimics. Nevertheless, their light is different and they also appeared inedible too (Harvey 1956). Cockroaches are fat and tasty, so the mimic is at the place. One mimicry by light (aggressive, Batesian-Wallacian or Peckhammian) is actually known (Lloyd 1965, 1984): Predaceous fireflies Photuris (and also Bicellychonia) mimic the flash responses of females of other, up to five different (Lloyd 1983) species, attract males, and catch them, often during flight . . . --Peter Vršanský et al., September 2012. Naturwissenschaften 99(9): 748.
. . . Background matching prey coloration and its adaptive features have been recognized by biologists for a long time. The related idea that prey animals can decrease their probability of being detected through behavioural features was already discussed by Alfred Russel Wallace. . . . It has been shown experimentally that background matching effectively reduces predation risk imposed by predators, for example, in fishes and birds. Preference for backgrounds that reduce the risk of detection has thus been suggested to be an important and wide spread strategy among prey animals to decrease their predation risk. It is also a common assumption that prey animals have been selected to actively prefer visually matching backgrounds. However, considering the popularity of this idea, surprisingly few experimental studies testing it exist . . . --Karin Kjernsmo & Sami Merilaita, August 2012. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 279(1745): 4192.
. . . After planting doubts about sexual selection as the unique explanation, Wallace (1868) associated sexual dichromatism with the nesting habits of birds in relation to the risk of nest predation. He considered that, assuming that (i) incubation attendance by either sex promotes cryptic plumage in open nesters, but (ii) not in cavity or domed nesters, (iii) conspicuous sexual monochromatism should be associated with cavity or domed nesting, and (iv) sexual dichromatism with conspicuous males and cryptic females should be related to open nesting (Table 1). Wallace (1868) offered support for the two last predictions by listing 23 phylogenetically related groups of birds (i.e. families or genera) with conspicuous monochromatism nesting in cavities or domed nests and seven families with bright males and dull females with open nesting habits. Wallace (1868, 1889) also predicted that because of the higher phylogenetic lability of plumage colour, changes in nesting habits would come first and be followed by changes in coloration. Darwin (1871) disagreed with this view and forcefully argued that plumage coloration could select for changes in nesting habits while the opposite was less plausible. In nearly a century and a half elapsed since Wallace first presented his theory on avian sexual dichromatism in relation to nesting habits, few attempts have been made to empirically check its validity despite the attention that sexual dichromatism as variable reflecting the strength of sexual selection in different bird species has received during the last decades (see for instance, Amundsen & Pärn, 2006) and the huge increase in information on avian natural history and phylogeny . . . --J. J. Soler & J. Moreno, May 2012. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 25(8): 1615.
. . . In this article, we tested some assumptions and predictions of Wallace’s theory by analysing plumage conspicuousness and dichromatism, nesting habits and incubation attendance of European passerines as described in Handbook of Birds of The Western Palearctic (HBWP; Cramp & Perrins, 1988, 1992, 1993, 1994a,b). We have also corrected for phylogenetic relationships in all analyses as nesting habits, and to a lesser degree sexual dichromatism, may show a marked phylogenetic component as already argued by Wallace (1889). According to the fundamental assumption of Wallace that incubation attendance by either sex promotes cryptic plumage in open nesters, but not in cavity nesters, conspicuousness in either sex should be related to incubation attendance, nest type and their interaction (Prediction 1). Moreover, the predictions by Wallace that conspicuous sexual monochromatism should be associated with cavity or domed nesting, and sexual dichromatism with conspicuous males and cryptic females should be related to open nesting, were tested by relating degree of male and female conspicuousness to nest type and sexual dichromatism. . . . --J. J. Soler & J. Moreno, May 2012. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 25(8): 1615-1616.
. . . The world 's terrestrial zoogeographical regions were originally outlined by Sclater (1858) and Wallace (1876), primarily on the basis of vertebrates, because their distribution records were the most complete at the time. Since then, the completeness of records has improved dramatically for both vertebrates and invertebrates, and although invertebrates represent a far greater proportion of total animal diversity, tetrapod vertebrates remain the best group for comparatively testing biogeographical hypotheses, with a comprehensive data set having become openly available online (WWF 2010). Specifically, where the world's biogeographical regions are concerned, it makes sense to test their accuracy using the same groups of organisms used to delimit them in the first place . . . --Şerban Procheş & Syd Ramdhani, March 2012. Bioscience 62(3): 260.
. . . During his student days, however, Meyer had also encountered the works of the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. In 1869, when Wallace published The Malay Archipelago, describing his travels and observations in the region from 1854 to 1862, Meyer produced an authorised translation, Der Malayische Archipel, within the same year. In 1870, he added two collections on the origin of species and the theory of natural selection, translated from original essays by Wallace and Darwin. On 6 July of the same year, Meyer embarked for Batavia (Jakarta) and by the end of September was stationed in Menado (Manado, North Sulawesi). Clearly, his admiration for Wallace's work influenced his decision to go abroad; indeed, Chris Ballard counts him as one among a 'wave of naturalist explorers' who travelled to the Malay Archipelago during the 1870s in Wallace’s wake, 'each bearing copies of his book and consciously emulating his earlier feats' . . . --Hilary Howes, March 2012. The Journal of Pacific History 47(1): 25.
. . . Most species remain undescribed and unknown. Recognizing and describing them is, however, just the beginning of a process. For most of the species already described, we probably know little more than some morphological characteristics and a few, if not a single, locality (as a spot distribution within an unknown range). This shortfall was named by Lomolino (2004) as the "Wallacean shortfall". Compiling good distributional data is the first stage of any systematic conservation planning exercise (Margules and Pressey, 2000). Without reasonable information of where species live, it is impossible to know which are endangered and where to concentrate efforts to preserve them . . . --Pedro Cardoso et al., November 2011. Biological Conservation 144(11): 2651.
. . .Wallace's Line demarcates the most abrupt faunal transition in the world. To a seasoned naturalist like Wallace, this unique juxtaposition of dramatically different faunas, first noted by Müller (1846), was obvious, was anomalous, and begged explanation; so it is perhaps no accident that biogeographic study effectively began in the IAA. The range limits of many terrestrial taxa are coincident with the eastern edge of the Sunda Shelf, and the taxonomic compositions of communities on either side are distinctly different. Wallace advocated geological explanations for these biological differences. He suggested, for example, that Bali and Lombok were formerly widely separated and had only recently moved to their present positions <40 km apart; he also noted that faunal discontinuities were associated with deep straits (Wallace 1860). Wallace first described the Line in an 1858 letter to H.W. Bates (Marchant 1916, p. 66) before he mapped the Line (Wallace 1863) that was later given his name by Huxley (1868) and expounded upon these observations in books on the IAA and biogeography in general (e.g., Wallace 1869). The veracity of Wallace's observations was debated because the existence of such a stark faunal divide seemed improbable, and this spurred intense study of distribution patterns in the region (e.g., Weber 1902). . .–David J. Lohman et al., August 2011. Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 42: 208.
. . . The processes governing the evolution of sexual dimorphism provided a foundation for sexual selection theory. Two alternative processes, originally proposed by Darwin and Wallace, differ primarily in the timing of events creating the dimorphism. In the process advocated by Darwin, a novel ornament arises in a single sex, with no temporal separation in the origin and sex-limitation of the novel trait. By contrast, Wallace proposed a process where novel ornaments appear simultaneously in both sexes, but are then converted into sex-limited expression by natural selection acting against showy coloration in one sex. Here, we investigate these alternative modes of sexual dimorphism evolution in a phylogenetic framework and demonstrate that both processes contribute to dimorphic wing patterns in the butterfly genera Bicyclus and Funonia . . . Our analyses support both hypotheses advocated by Darwin and Wallace for the origin of sexual dimorphism: some sexually dimorphic ornaments arise concomitantly with sex-limited expression, while others arise in both sexes but are subsequently lost in one sex. Thus both modes of evolution are applicable to the evolution of sexual dimorphism in butterflies . . . --Jeffrey C. Oliver & Antónia Monteiro, 7 July 2011. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 278(1714): 1981, 1985.
. . .Wallace (1889) was the first to propose that cuckoo-hawk resemblance was a form of mimicry, which Wyllie (1981) suggested might aid parasitic laying by frightening aggressive hosts away from the nest. In support of this idea, hawk-like plumage, with cryptic upperparts and pale, barred underparts, is more prevalent in parasitic than in nonparasitic cuckoos (Payne 1967) and most likely evolved after the evolution of brood parasitism (Krüger et al. 2007) . . . –Justin A. Welbergen & Nicholas B. Davies, May-June 2011. Behavioral Ecology 22(3): 574.
. . . While there were numerous previous philosophical treatises on the topic, stretching back to speculations about the origin of the universe in ancient times, scientific proposals are more recent. A well known one was biologist Alfred Russell Wallace, who wrote in 1904: "Such a vast and complex universe as that which we know exists around us, may have been absolutely required . . . in order to produce a world that should be precisely adapted in every detail for the orderly development of life culminating in man". But that was before modern cosmology was established; the idea of the expanding and evolving universe was yet to come . . . --George Ellis, 13 May 2011. General Relativity and Gravitation 43(11): 3213.
This brings us back to the Popp. et al. analysis of Empetrum. Their dating analysis shows quite convincingly that the relevant phylogenetic splits do not date to the Jurassic--not even close. Instead, they probably happened in the Pleistocene less than 1 Mya. We can, therefore, immediately rule out ancient vicariance, but it is not quite as easy to choose between a Darwin or a Wallace migration scenario and the long-distance dispersal favored by Popp et al. As Popp et al. point out, Empetrum is not currently known along the Andes, and its distinctive pollen grains have never been found there. However, as Wallace (1880) argued, this does not entirely rule out that they passed through the Andes and then disappeared as suitable habits shrank . . . --Michael J. Donoghue, 19 April 2011. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108: 6341-6342.
. . . Although theories of animal colouration were developed principally in regard to terrestrial species (Wallace 1879; Poulton 1890; Cott 1940; Edmunds 1974), from early on they were applied to aquatic species too (e.g., Wallace 1889; Beddard 1895; Longley 1916, 1917). Nonetheless, colouration of aquatic organisms is subject to different selection pressures than those operating on land because scattering of light in water leads to an unchanging angular distribution of light direction; light only penetrates surface waters, the extent to which additionally depends on turbidity; light may be refracted at the surface; and species that use the water column may be viewed by prey, predators or conspecifics from almost any angle (Lythgoe 1987; Marshall 2000; Hanlon et al. 2009; Zylinski et al. 2009). These properties favour certain mechanisms of crypsis including transparency, counter illumination and countershading (Johnsen 2011; Johnsen et al. 2004; Ruxton et al. 2004) . . . –Tim Caro et al., April 2011. Evolutionary Ecology 25(6): 1232.
. . . More than 130 years on, the biogeographic scheme of Sclater and Wallace continues to form a basis for continental-scale geographic comparison of mammalian communities. Any observer of modern Africa can quickly recognize the stark ecological boundary delimited by the Sahara Desert, with the vast diversity of African-endemic taxa restricted to regions to its south. With almost no African fossil record to consult, scientists of the 19th and early 20th centuries could only speculate on the age or historical development of this continent's biogeography. In contrast, the last 100 years of paleontological exploration have provided a wealth of information that allows for an investigation into the developmental history of African endemism as a whole, and the Ethiopian biogeography realm in particular. Wallace's proposal of "long epochs" of isolating barriers can now be more precisely formulated and addressed . . . --Faysal Bibi, February 2011. PloS One 6(2): 1-10.
. . . Wallace noted the problem of incipient evolutionary stages. He argued that incipient and intermediate stages might have little selective survival advantage, as with a partially developed wing; yet evolution progressed to new forms and greater complexity as if teleologically guided. Wallace thus predicted the problem of "irreducible complexity" (Behe, 2004). A group composed of Paleo-anthropologists and Linguists similarly argued that the physical and cognitive articulations required for human speech are so sophisticated that it is difficult to imagine intermediary systems (Picq et al., 2008). They described as a Neo-Darwinian tautology the argument that if a human feature existed, then it must be adaptive, otherwise it would not have survived. This is a form of Panglossian, overly-optimistic), post-hoc reasoning . . . --Michael M. DelMonte, January 2011. The International Journal of Healing and Caring 11(1).
. . . the evolution of longer floral tubes forced the evolution of longer insect proboscides, which in turn forced the selection for even longer floral tubes. Wallace (1867) noted that this positive feedback system would continue generating longer and longer traits until it is balanced by an opposing selective pressure. Although he did not elaborate much on opposing selective pressures, Wallace (1867) implied that proboscis and tube lengthening would only be advantageous to a point, after which increased length may become a liability (e.g. Harder 1983; Kunte 2007). Insects with excessively long proboscides may have difficulty maneuvering them and inserting them accurately into the narrow gullets of flowers (e.g. Harder 1983) . . . --Allan G. Ellis & Bruce Anderson, 2011. In Sébastien Patiny, ed., Evolution of Plant-Pollinator Relationships (Cambridge University Press): 237-262.
. . . Inspired by evolutionary computation, artificial life, multi-agent systems and social cognition, we develop a more realistic distribution of environments. The basic idea is straightforward: intelligence is the result of evolution through millions of generations interacting with other live beings. Thus we define intelligence in this context, interacting with other agents of similar intelligence. We formalise the so-called Darwin-Wallace distribution for agents and environments. Despite the many options and the many sources of uncomputability, we claim that, conceptually, the notion of Darwin-Wallace distribution is useful to re-visit previous definitions of intelligence. The next step is how this notion can be used for AGI development and evaluation. We present a procedure which approximates a Darwin-Wallace distribution by using intelligence tests over environments such that 'certified' systems are incorporated into the environments, so making them socially more complex . . . --José Hernández-Orallo et al., 2011. 'On more realistic environment distributions for defining, evaluating and developing intelligence' (http://users.dsic.upv.es): 3.
Wallace's approach to cosmology shows how the consideration of the conditions necessary for the evolution of life is not wedded to any particular theory of star formation and development but must be used appropriately in any cosmology we pursue . . . --John D. Barrow, 2011. The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (W. W. Norton).
. . . The term used to describe this type of speciation is allopatry, as opposed to sympatry, where ancestral and descendant species coexist in the same environment (or parapatry if they exist side by side, with a hybridisation zone in between). If two populations having evolved separately come back in contact later on, the intermediate phenotype of their offspring could make them unfit for either environment, and this would then provide the selective pressure for the selection of additional reproductive barriers, in a process called reinforcement, and often referred to as 'the Wallace effect'. Indeed, the earliest promoter of the view that reinforcement could occur under the pressure of natural selection was undoubtedly Alfred Wallace, who disagreed with Darwin's views that reproductive isolation could not possibly result from natural selection: "The sterility of first crosses and of their hybrid progeny has not been acquired through natural selection" (The Origin, Summary of Hybridism chapter). This point was a subject of written exchanges and arguments in private correspondence between the two around 1858 [[sic]], 10 years after their joint communication to the Linnean Society in July 1858, but Wallace formally published his views only in 1889, some twenty year later, in chapter VII of his book called Darwinism. On the subject of allopatry versus sympatry, I do take a very divergent view to that adopted by a majority of evolutionary biologists to this day. Rather, I choose to follow Wallace's path against Darwin's in thinking that natural selection plays a major role in the reproductive isolation that defines species, and I shall actually venture some steps further than Wallace, and will advocate in the following pages that natural selection can act on the very first stages of reproductive isolation, and not just on reinforcement after divergence has taken place . . . --Etienne Joly, 25 November 2010. Nature Precedings: 3.
. . . By the time he wrote Island life, Wallace (1881) knew of 21 species of Philippine mammals, most of which are either widespread species or Palawan endemics. Thus, he had virtually no knowledge of the highly endemic mammal communities in the oceanic Philippines. At the time, even less was known of amphibian and reptile diversity (Boulenger, 1894). Thus, Wallace's impression of the Philippine fauna, and his biogeographic delineations of it, were taken from a very small, biased sample of the diversity . . . --Jacob A. Esselstyn et al., November 2010. Journal of Biogeography 37(11): 2055.
. . . With growing knowledge about species distributions, updated summary information on species richness, endemism and faunistic resemblance has been assembled and analysed within the classic Wallace scheme (Chapin, 1923; Smith, 1983; Cole et al., 1994; Newton & Dale, 2001). Furthermore, various refinements have been proposed, many of them addressing delineations of subregions, districts etc. within classic Wallace regions (e.g. Chapin, 1923; Hagmeier & Stults, 1964; Hagmeier, 1966; Hershkovitz, 1969; Crowe & Crowe, 1982) or boundaries and transition zones between regions, e.g. between the Oriental and Australian realm (e.g. Mayr, 1944; Simpson, 1977; Vane-Wright, 1991; Beck et al., 2006b) . . . --Holger Kreft & Walter Jetz, November 2010. Journal of Biogeography 37(11): 2030.
. . . Few recognize, as Cronin (1991) documents, that the contemporary dominance of adaptive intersexual selection models, which assuming a controlling power of natural selection on mating preferences, represents a triumph of Wallace's view over the arguments of Darwin himself. Most contemporary researchers are the intellectual descendents of Wallace. Like Wallace, they are using the logic of Darwin's Origin to argue against Darwin's Selection in Relation to Sex. For one, Dawkins proudly embraces Cronin's label as a modern Wallacean, describing the theories of Zahavi, Hamilton, and Grafen as a "neo-Wallacean" triumph over the incomplete and muddled mate choice mechanism of Darwin and Fisher . . . --Richard O. Prum, November 2010. Evolution 64(11): 3097.
The key feedbacks that amplify change in the region are the reflectivity of the ground and the moisture in the air, factors that were discussed more than a 100 years ago by the geologist James Croll and the naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace. Wallace, for example, wrote as follows (1895, p. 157): ... the increased heat of summer could not be in any way stored up, but would be largely prevented from producing any effect, by reflection from the surface of the snow and by the intervention of clouds and fog ... Reflectivity (albedo) is now generally recognized as the dominant feedback factor. The net contributions of clouds and fog, although clearly important, are less obvious and are difficult to quantify . . . --Wolfgang H. Berger, Michael Schulz & Gerold Wefer, October 2010. International Journal of Earth Sciences 99, Supplement 1: 171-189.
For Wallace, the two processes of isolation in space and biological differentiation through time were inseparable, because one (isolation) led to the other (speciation). Wallace's view of what constituted natural--the dual criteria of biological and geological uniqueness--has some important implications for how natural biogeographical units are identified. Because Wallace was the first to suggest a geological/historical component to the identification of natural biogeographical areas. I propose to name such entities Wallacean biogeographical units . . . --Bernard Michaux, September 2010. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 101: 193-212.
. . . In my view there is a further step to take, and that is to confirm that areas of endemism are also Wallacean biogeographical units. These are the fundamental units for further biogeographical analysis because they are natural entities, not human constructs. For example, 'Sulawesi' is an area of endemism, but not a Wallacean biogeographical unit: it is a human geopolitical construct that has no biogeographical reality. Any attempt to use the area 'Sulawesi' in biogeographical analysis is doomed to failure . . . --Bernard Michaux, September 2010. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 101: 193-212.
. . . Roy Davies has assembled a convincing case that Darwin was much more cavalier with attribution, particularly with regard to Wallace, than commonly thought and in several instances failed to cite or give adequate credit to his antecedents. He concludes that Wallace has a stronger claim to the theory of evolution than commonly realized . . . --David Lloyd, Julian Wimpenny & Alfred Venables, September 2010. Journal of Biosciences 35: 339- 349.
That Wallace almost certainly solved the problem of divergence before Darwin did is, perhaps, not surprising. Wallace had much the greater experience in the field of biogeography, which was so fundamental to unravelling the relationships between species. But, even more importantly, he had the advantage that, unlike Darwin, he was looking actively for evidence of evolution while in the field, and could therefore tailor his data collection appropriately. By contrast, Sulloway has recently argued most persuasively that during the voyage on The Beagle Darwin was still a creationist in attitude; this blunted his appreciation of the evolutionary significance of the Galapagos fauna to the extent that he failed to collect a single tortoise specimen and neglected to label his finch specimens with their exact islands of origin . . . --David Lloyd, Julian Wimpenny & Alfred Venables, September 2010. Journal of Biosciences 35: 339-349.
. . . 'Muir went over to Darwinism with all the rest' (Worster, 2008, p. 204), stating 'Not that I would in any way oppose the discovered truths of evolution for I embrace them cordially' (Worster, 2008, p. 206). And so Worster (p. 207) suggests a 'glowing endorsement' of Darwinism, taking Muir 'far . . . from, the evangelical orthodoxy and towards a more liberal, science-based view of the world'. There is, then, a likely influence of Darwin in Muir's later life and reading. Moreover, books in the Muir collection at Pacific University show that he was also reading the works of Alfred Russel Wallace, whom he met, the two naturalists together visiting the Muir Woods of northern California (Wallace, 1905, p. 158) . . . --R. M. McDowall, September 2010. Journal of Biogeography 37(9): 1634.
. . .Biological barriers act throughout the lifecycle and are often classified according to the point in the life cycle that they are encountered (e.g. premating vs. postmating). Barriers at each stage can arise as byproducts of within lineage evolution as a result of natural or sexual selection or genetic drift, but natural selection against maladaptive hybridization itself can also drive evolution of reproductive isolation barriers (Wallace, 1889; Fisher, 1930; Dobzhansky, 1937). This process is usually termed reinforcement, and as the name implies, it requires the pre-existence of some degree of reproductive isolation, which is then 'reinforced' by the evolution of additional barriers. Studies of reinforcement have focused overwhelmingly on premating barriers. . . . Nevertheless, selection on postmating barriers is at least theoretically possible (Wallace, 1889; Coyne, 1974). Wallace argued that selection among demes could drive hybrid inviability by reducing the negative impact of low-quality hybrids (Wallace, 1889) . . . --E. Turner, D. J. Jacobson & J. W. Taylor, August 2010. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 23(8): 1642.
. . . He spent years living on his own in Amazonia and then in the Malay archipelago, making detailed and sympathetic observations about local peoples, practices and cultures. In the latter context his travelling companion and research assistant for many years was a young Malay man, Ali. At their parting, in 1862, Wallace commissioned a photograph of Ali to carry home to England and included it in his 1905 autobiography. Compare this to the erasure of non-white participation and assistance in other European explorers' accounts of the time . . . --Kathleen Bolling Lowrey, August 2010. Anthropology Today 26(4): 18-21.
. . . one must simply concede that during the 20th-century history of the discipline anthropologists have accumulated a huge wealth of data relating to question 3 for which no plausible explanation, general theory, or provisional hypothesis exists . . . And this is why, under present circumstances, I want to advocate for Wallace--a brilliant and unashamed crank--as an ancestor-figure for contemporary anthropology. In Wallace's articulation of the theory of evolution, he arrived at the same answers to questions 2 and 3, responding as follows: (1) common origin, endless divergence; (2) co-operation; (3) no . . . --Kathleen Bolling Lowrey, August 2010. Anthropology Today 26(4): 18-21.
Wallace quite rightly considered the lush complexity of human thought a serious mystery, one inexplicable within the necessity-driven framework of natural selection. As he put it, the human brain 'furnishes a surplusage of power--of an instrument beyond the needs of its possessor'. This sounds very much like Levi-Strauss's enchanting assertion that 'the universe is never charged with sufficient meaning [...] the mind always has more meanings available than there are objects to which to relate them' . . . --Kathleen Bolling Lowrey, August 2010. Anthropology Today 26(4): 18-21.
Wallace (1890) suggested that the primary function of egg coloration was to provide crypsis to avoid predation, although the experimental evidence supporting this hypothesis has been equivocal. One possible reason for this is that the experimental protocols typically involve painting eggs and comparing predation rates on painted versus natural eggs. With but one exception, all the egg-predation experiments cited in their review use painted eggs . . . --Michael I. Cherry & Andrew G. Gosler, August 2010. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 100: 753-762.
. . . Beatty et al. (2004) conducted another study, this time assessing the selection for mimicry using human predators and computer-generated prey. They found that when there are only 2 unprofitable prey types, selection for mimicry was weak. One reason for the results, they suggested, was that predators may not be sufficiently confused to generate selection for mimicry when just 2 different forms are involved. In an explanation for the evolution of conspicuous signals, Wallace (1889, p. 255) suggested that "not only do fewer individuals of each species need to be sacrificed in order that their enemies learn the lesson of their inedibility (in cases of mimicry), but they are more easily recognized at a distance and thus escape even pursuit. There is thus a kind of mimicry between closely allied species as well as between species of distinct genera, all tending to the same beneficial end." One explanation for Beatty et al's findings is that mimicry reduces confusion in visually complex environments. It has also been argued, in a theoretical treatment, that the mere coexistence of visually distinctive aposematic species can be mutually beneficial (Turner and Speed 1999). If predators that ingest members of one chemically defended species become risk averse with respect to further toxin ingestion, while their physiology copes with the toxins, it has been suggested that predators may heighten avoidance of species that could contain toxins, even in the absence of signal mimicry . . . –Hannah M. Rowland et al., July-August 2010. Behavioral Ecology 21(4): 851-852.
. . . Selection fundamentally acts on genes or individuals of distinct species. At the individual level, the success of a collection of interesting genes is mediated through the fitness of an individual phenotype. But what is the phenotype? What is a species? It may be worth remembering what Alfred Russel Wallace, natural selection's co- discoverer, published as species definition: 'A species . . . is a group of living organisms, separated from all other such groups by a set of distinctive character(istic)s, having relations to the environment not identical with those of any other group of organisms, and having the power of continuously reproducing its like'. Thus, it is the relation to the environment which is one of the features defining a species. The crucial role of many microbes in development demonstrates that environmental and genetic information interact . . . --Sebastian Fraune & Thoms C. G. Bosch, July 2010. BioEssays 32(7): 578.
. . . Darwin (at least, in the first edition of The origin of species) relied on selection as the main cause of evolutionary change, but saw that hybrid sterility could not be directly selected; instead, he argued that it arises as a side-effect of divergence. In contrast, Wallace's (1889) enthusiasm for selection led him to argue that not only could it strengthen prezygotic isolation, by what we now call reinforcement, but that group selection could even cause hybrid sterility. Then, as now, ecological divergence that allows distinct species to live together in sympatry received less attention than reproductive isolation . . . --N. H. Barton, 12 June 2010. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, Biological Sciences 365: 1825-1840.
. . . In the present study, we use all known non-African Charaxes species to explore the history of diversification in the Oriental and Australian region, especially the 'transitional' Wallacea. Several of these Charaxes species are poorly known and/or represent recently described taxa. Indeed, the highly distinctive C. marki Lane & Müller is known only from the holotype. This work forms part of a larger study that demonstrates Wallacea is not only a transitional zone, but also comprises a very unique area, with distinct geological and biogeographic histories . . . –Chris J. Müller, Niklas Wahlberg & Luciano B. Beheregaray, 1 June 2010. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 100(2): 458.
Despite Southeast Asia's abundance of organisms and islands, however, finding a repeated signal of geological events beyond the encroachment of the Indo-Australian plate has been difficult. A hierarchy of Southeast Asian landmass associations, expressed as a single area cladogram, would be a more intriguing pattern to extrapolate and explore. Just such a hypothesis was suggested by Wallace (1863) and used as a theoretical model by Nelson & Platnick (1981). Unfortunately, a convincing area cladogram for the region has been elusive, notwithstanding proposals for certain taxa . . . --Ronald M. Clouse & Gonzalo Giribet, June 2010. Journal of Biogeography 37: 1114-1130.
. . . While the distribution of many flora and fauna conforms to Wallace's line, the seafaring capabilities of human settlers to this region undoubtedly overcame this barrier to dispersal. Indeed, Asian ancestry exceeds 50 per cent as far as east as the island of Alor, which is well within Wallacea and approximately 1000 km east of Bali, as well as on the island of Sulawesi, which is located east of Wallace's line in the north. Curiously, Wallace himself noted this difference, positing a second line in eastern Indonesia corresponding to changes in human phenotype (Wallace 1869 . . . ). Wallace's second 'phenotypic' line broadly parallels the rapid decline in Asian admixture identified here . . . --Murray P. Cox et al., 22 May 2010. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B, Biological Sciences 277: 1589-1596.
. . . Wallace was scandalized by Darwin's sexual selection theory, considering it Darwin's greatest error, because it appeared to admit a subjective factor into evolutionary theory, because it appeared to admit a subjective factor into elocutionary theory. Indeed, it appeared to elevate aesthetic appreciation to the status of a significant factor in evolution. Wallace's alternative theory to account for exaggerated display traits relied instead on explanations that invoked incidental physiological mechanisms in males and the need to suppress their effects in females, to avoid predation . . . Wallace was of course wrong in his denial of the plausibility of sexual selection, although not completely wrong to doubt that aesthetic appreciation of combative prowess were the primary factors. It took a century to recognize that the theory needed to be based instead on asymmetries of parental investment in offspring care between the sexes. Today, sexual selection theory is again considered an important adjunct to the theory of natural selection; however, its reinstatement has not resuscitated the power of Darwin's account of language origins . . . --Terrence W. Deacon, 11 May 2010. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, Supplement 2: 9000-9006.
. . . Few scientists today accept Wallace's creationism, teleology, or spiritualism. Nonetheless it is appropriate to engage the profound puzzle he raised; namely, why do humans have the ability to pursue abstract intellectual feats such as science, mathematics, philosophy, and law, given that opportunities to exercise these talents did not exist in the foraging lifestyle in which humans evolved and would not have parlayed themselves into advantages in survival and reproduction even if they did? I suggest that the puzzle can be resolved with two hypotheses. The first is that humans evolved to fill the "cognitive niche," a mode of survival characterized by manipulating the environment through casual reasoning and social cooperation. The second is that the psychological faculties that evolved to prosper in the cognitive niche can be coopted to abstract domains by processes of metaphorical abstraction and productive combination, both vividly manifested in human language . . . --Steven Pinker, 11 May 2010. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, Supplement 2: 8993.
. . . Toward the end of their lives, Darwin and Wallace became estranged. Darwin argued that natural selection was sufficient to explain the origin of the existing biological world. Wallace believed that natural selection alone was insufficient to explain the existence of complex structures such as the human brain. From the bioenergetic perspective, Wallace's reservations were justified, as complexity can be generated only through the information- generating power of energy flow and the cumulative information storage capacity of nucleic acids. It took more than 3.5 billion years for these systems to amass sufficient information to generate the human brain. Thus the missing concept that Wallace sought to explain the ascent of man is the interaction between energetics and information . . . --Douglas C. Wallace, 11 May 2010. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, Supplement 2: 8952.
Wallace proposed to redefine Darwinism in a way that excluded Darwin's principle of sexual selection. The main result of the Darwin-Wallace controversy was that most Darwinian biologists avoided the subject of sexual selection until at least the 1950's, Ronald Fisher being a major exception. This controversy still deserves attention from modern evolutionary biologists, because the modern approach inherits from both Darwin and Wallace. The modern approach tends to present sexual selection as a special aspect of the theory of natural selection, although it also recognizes the big difficulties resulting from the inevitable interaction between these two natural processes of selection . . . --Jean Gayon, February 2010. Comptes Rendus Biologies 333: 134-144.
. . . Early evolutionary theories of senescence (Wallace, ca. 1865; Weismann, 1889) were group-selectionist in nature, proposing that individuals senesce and eventually die in order to make space and resources available for future generations composed of younger, more vigorous individuals. However, such arguments are circular because, if ageing is one of the reasons why individuals must be replaced, they presuppose that individuals must deteriorate over time. Moreover, they fail to explain how a population of altruistically senescing individuals would not be subject to invasion by more slowly senescing or even non-senescing invaders. Recent studies have placed group- selectionist arguments on a stronger theoretical foundation by emphasizing instances where senescence appears to be "selected for its own sake" as a result of kin- or group-level benefits including payoffs to close relatives, and reduced local extinction risk due to communicable diseases or chaotic population dynamics . . . --Robert A. Laird & Thomas N. Sherratt, February 2010. Biosystems 99(2): 130.
. . . Other questions, such as whether maternal emotions influence the fetus, have made a remarkable tour. Alfred Russel Wallace was co-originator of the theory of evolution by natural selection written in 1859 by Darwin. When Wallace (1893c) wrote the above quoted sentence in a letter entitled 'Prenatal influences on character' into Nature, the belief that a mother's emotions could affect the child she carries was seen as resting on old wives' tales. Wallace (1893a,b) was also publishing articles about the possibility of being able to study whether 'individually acquired characters are inherited'. Lamarck had incorporated this idea in his theory of directed evolution; it was seriously challenged in 1880 by Weismann's theory, on which the modern understanding of genetic inheritance became based, and since the turn of the 20th century it became widely rejected by the scientific community. However, this old question that had originated in ancient time, with Greek philosophers, recently got renewed interest with the discovery of epi-genetic variation between individuals and the finding that in some cases epigenetic variants can be inherited by the offspring, a biological inheritance that cannot be explained by changes in the DNA- sequence itself . . . --Bea R. H. Van den Bergh, January/February 2010. Infant and Child Development 19(1): 42.
The Wallace (1881) and Briggs (1966) lineage age hypothesis suggests that there are low levels of endemism in the Azores biota because the biota is of recent (post-Pleistocene) origin. Avila et al. (2008) challenged this hypothesis to explain at least mollusc diversity patterns by demonstrating that the endemic mollusc fauna of the Azores was largely unaffected by Pleistocene climatic oscillations and that the current endemic fauna is therefore not of post-Pleistocene origin. Evidence from phylogenetic relationships of Azorean plant lineages suggests that the lineage age hypothesis similarly fails to explain the distinctive patterns of Azorean endemic plant diversity . . . --Mark A. Carine & Hanno Schaefer, January 2010. Journal of Biogeography 37: 77-89.
. . . although it is sometimes argued that aposematic signalling is fundamentally about raised distinctiveness rather than heightened conspicuousness, the two often amount to the same thing (Wallace 1889). If this is generally true, the association between conspicuousness and aposematism in the primary evolution of warning signals, in our view, is not problematic . . . --Thomas J. Lee, Nicola M. Marples & Michael P. Speed, January 2010. Animal Behaviour 79(1): 70.
. . . Wallace's essay was remarkable for two reasons: First, it conveys a sophisticated understanding of the nature of selection among individuals belonging to a normal distribution of trait values. "The flowers most completely fertilized by these moths being those which had the longest nectaries, there would in each generation be on the average an increase in the length of the nectaries, and also an average increase in the length of the proboscis of the moths, and this would be a necessary result from the fact that nature ever fluctuates about a mean, or that in every generation there would be flowers with longer and shorter nectaries, and moths with longer and shorter probosces than the average" (p. 476). Second, Wallace actually mentions Xanthopan (Macrosila) morganii, the species of moth that is now considered the most likely pollinator of A. sesquipedale. Wallace was not aware of the long-tongued Malagasy race of this hawkmoth, but he had measured a specimen of the African mainland form in the British Museum and found that its tongue measured 7.5 inches [18 centimeters]. Wallace (1867) wrote "That such a moth exists in Madagascar may be safely predicted; and naturalists who visit that island should search for it with as much confidence as astronomers searched for the planet Neptune,--and they will be equally successful!" . . . --Steven D. Johnson & Bruce Anderson, 2010. Evolution, Education and Outreach 3(1): 34.
. . . In the 1890s an English linguist, S. H. Ray, pointed out that some of the languages of British New Guinea and the Solomon Islands were not Austronesian. A parallel discovery had already been made in the Moluccas by in the 1850s by the naturalist A. R. Wallace, when he collected vocabularies in these easternmost islands of the Indo- Malaysian archipelago. In a well-known book on his travels in this region Wallace proposed a distinction between 'Malay' and 'Papuan' languages in the Moluccas. Following Wallace's lead, Ray applied the name 'Papuan' to the non-Austronesian languages of Melanesia, as a convenient catch-all. Soon after, Wilhelm Schmidt observed that non-Austronesian languages were present on the north coast of the New Guinea mainland and in New Britain. What was striking about the various small groups of Papuan languages, was that, unlike the Austronesian languages, there was no evidence of common origin. Only in the last 50 years has the full extent of the diversity of the languages of Near Oceania become clear . . . --Jan Lucassen, 2010. In Migration History in World History: Multidisciplinary Approaches (Brill): 87-88.
. . . any system seeking to utilize all the energy or resources for its own purposes is bound to be challenged by other systems. The consequence of these interactions between self-organizing systems is a continuous stream of new things, or in the case of humans, new thinking. This is diversity. Bateson interpreted self-organizing systems as working together to sustain the existence of an evolving ecosystem. This approach has its roots in Alfred Russell Wallace's work. Wallace saw that the job of evolution was to maintain the constancy of something in his case, the entire ecosystem made up of all species and their environment--a process rather like the cruise control system or constant velocity transmission (CVT) on a motor car. We can also think of it in terms our bodies' ability to adapt to changes in the outside temperature, at least within a limited range. By shivering or perspiring, our body temperature remains more or less constant because we vary internal conditions in response to those changes in outside temperature . . . --Edward Moulding, 2010. In 5s: A Visual Control System for the Workplace (AuthorHouse): 129.
. . . Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is a chain of more than 17,000 islands that stretches between the continents of Asia and Australia . . . Early explorers noticed morphological differences from east to west that were dramatic enough to lead Alfred Russell Wallace to designate a human phenotypic boundary demarcating the transition between Asian and Melanesian features. Relative to his more well-known biogeographic boundary, this line lies slightly east, running between the islands of Sumbawa and Flores (Wallace 1869 . . . ). The languages of the region follow a similar pattern, with the majority belonging to the extensive Austronesian language family but with more distantly related Papuan languages occurring in the Far Eastern provinces, especially in areas where Melanesian features predominate (Wallace 1869). To explain these patterns, the prehistory of this region has often been framed as the story of two major range expansions: the initial Paleolithic colonization of Sahul ~45 ka ago and the much later Neolithic expansion of Austronesian-speaking farmers (4-6 ka ago) out of mainland Asia or Taiwan into Indonesia and the Pacific . . . --Tatiana M. Karafet et al., 2010. Molecular Biology and Evolution 27(8): 1833.
. . . Even within the technologist's definition of technology as dealing with mechanical artifacts alone, Wallace's insight has major relevance. The subject matter of technology, according to the Preface to History of Technology, is "how things are done or made"; and most students of technology, to my knowledge, agree with this. But the Wallace insight leads to a different definition: the subject matter of technology would be "how man does or makes." As to the meaning and end of technology, the same source, again presenting the general view, defines them as "mastery of his (man's) natural environment." Oh no, the Wallace insight would say (and in rather shocked tones): the purpose is to overcome man's own natural, i.e. animal, limitations. Technology enables man, a land- bound biped, without gills, fins, or wings, to be at home in the water or in the air. It enables an animal with very poor body insulation, that is, a subtropical animal, to live in all climate zones. It enables one of the weakest and slowest of the primates to add to his own strength that of elephant or ox, and to his own speed that of the horse. It enables him to push his life span from his "natural" twenty years or so to threescore years and ten; it even enables him to forget that natural death is death from predators, disease, starvation, or accident, and to call death from natural causes that which has never been observed in wild animals: death from organic decay in old age . . . --Peter Ferdinand Drucker, 2010. Technology, Management, and Society (Harvard Business Press): 41-42.
. . . What I have called here the "Wallace insight," that is, the approach from human biology, thus leads to the conclusion that technology is not about things: tools, processes, and products. It is about work: the specifically human activity by means of which man pushes back the limitations of the iron biological law which condemns all other animals to devote all their time and energy to keeping themselves alive for the next day, if not for the next hour. The same conclusion would be reached, by the way, from any approach, for instance, from that of the anthropologist's "culture," that does not mistake technology for a phenomenon of the physical universe. We might define technology as human action on physical objects or as a set of physical objects characterized by serving human purposes. Either way the realm and subject matter of the study of technology would be human work . . . --Peter Ferdinand Drucker, 2010. Technology, Management, and Society (Harvard Business Press): 42-43.
. . . By contrast, Alfred Russell Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of natural selection, believed that count words were essential for numerical cognition, in particular arithmetic: "if, now, we descend to those savage tribes who only count to three or five, and who find it impossible to comprehend the addition of two and three without having the objects actually before them, we feel that the chasm between them and the good mathematician is so vast, that a thousand to one will probably not fully express it" (Wallace, 1871, p. 339). The question of the role of language in arithmetic became the focus of recent experimental psychological studies in cultures with few number words, in particular the Pirahã and the Mundurukú, two cultures from the Amazon forest with an extremely limited number vocabulary . . . --Helen De Cruz, Hansjörg Neth & Dirk Schlimm, 2010. In Benedikt Löwe & Thomas Müller, eds., PhiMSAMP: Philosophy of Mathematics: Sociological Aspects and Mathematical Practice (College Publications): 74.
. . . Moreover, Alfred Wallace, co-inventor of the theory of the evolution by natural selection, doubted that evolution could produce anything like states of consciousness. This problem was later labelled the "explanatory gap". Individuals use different names for what it is that they are opposing to physical phenomena. Huxley and Romanes used "consciousness". Some use "sentience" . . . many now refer to "Phenomenal Consciousness" (PC) in contrast with "Access Consciousness" (AC), or, in the terminology of Chalmers, distinguish the so-called "Hard Problem" of consciousness from a (relatively) "Easy Problem". Such formulations presuppose a dichotomy: a binary divide between things that do and things that do not have the problematic extra feature over and above their physical features . . . –Stéphane Doncieux, 2010, in From Animals to Animats 11: 11th International Conference on Simulation and Adaptive Behavior (Springer).
One possibility is that Wallace was deliberately romanticizing his actual observations and experiences there. Nancy Stepan has noted that the popular success of The Malay Archipelago came from its fulfilment of contemporaneous readers' expectations of what an account of the tropics should be, in contrast to his 1853 account of his travels in South America, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, which was not only "unromantic," but "unheroic," and did not sell well . . . However, I would like to put forth another possibility: what if Wallace's portrayal of the archipelago as paradise, and more specifically, his portrayal of interracial relations and "uncivilized" society as positively pre-lapsarian, resulted not from the impulse to romanticize, but rather, a stubborn fidelity to scientific accuracy? . . . --Tiffany Tsao, 2010. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies 15: 28-41.
. . . I will show how Wallace arrived at his surprisingly favourable and anti-scientific" assessments of the inhabitant races and communities of the Malay Archipelago by applying the principles of taxonomic classification to the human realm. Given that Wallace's primary employment in the Malay Archipelago was to collect specimens of flora and fauna and classify them according to the principles of the Linnaean taxonomic classification system, his adoption of what I will term a "taxonomic perspective" in viewing the humans whom he encountered should hardly be surprising. Using these same principles of taxonomic classification, Wallace was able to achieve a perspective on the Malay Archipelago hitherto unachieved by authoritative accounts of the region, challenging the predominant scientific views of race held at the time and unsettling even his own views of the "uncivilized" races . . . --Tiffany Tsao, 2010. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies 15: 28-41.
. . . for Wallace, feeling "that savages were in some respects superior, would not have necessarily made it true. I would argue instead that his positive portrayals of human life in the archipelago had just as much scientific basis as his opening portrayals of the archipelago's natural environment as an otherworldly Eden. If Wallace's construction of a paradisiacal natural environment relied on his utilization of scientific precedent and natural selection theory, it was his application of taxonomic classification that enabled him to see the human individuals and communities of the archipelago as uniquely paradisiacal as well. Wallace's taxonomic perspective enabled him to break away not only from dominant perceptions of the races as different stages on a single, linear scale of sociocultural evolution, but also from the social Darwinist tendency of his day to view interracial relations as an inexorable struggle in which the white races would prevail . . . --Tiffany Tsao, 2010. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies 15: 28-41.
. . . Cloete's poetry does not shy away from inter alia "controversial scientific subjects" in a number of poems, and he contemplates the origin of creation and the development of life on earth. The reader is led to consider Cloete's views on creation and evolution. In this article the emphasis will be on the role of evolution in Cloete's poetry and how he uses a well-known observation by one of the main exponents of evolution theory in one of his poems, "toegedig aan Alfred R. Wallace", to present a text that expresses wonderment at a natural phenomenon . . . --Johann Lodewyk Marais, Desember 2009. Tydskrif vir Geeteswetenskappe 49(4): 548.
. . . This paper is divided into three parts. In the first part I will outline the development of the reciprocal nature of biology and geology. Surprisingly reciprocality had been proposed more than 50 years before Wegener by the biogeographer Alfred Russel Wallace, co-author of the theory of evolution by means of natural selection (Wallace, 1858). I will briefly outline Wallace's biogeographic ideas as they pertain to reciprocality, before examining Wegener's reconstruction hypothesis of the Cretaceous polar region in more detail . . . --B. Michaux, December 2009. Gondwana Research 16(3-4): 656.
. . . The female limitation of mimicry is usually explained by a combination of sex-dependent predation pressure and sexual selection: (1) female butterflies carry heavy egg-loads and are therefore aerodynamically constrained in their escape flights. Thus, females are thought to be more vulnerable to predation and presumably gain a greater fitness advantage from Batesian mimicry compared to males (Wallace 1865 . . . ), and (2) wing colour patterns are assumed to be constrained by sexual selection to a much greater extent in males than in females. Thus, male mimicry is selectively disfavoured when its natural selective advantage is overwhelmed by the sexual selective advantage of nonmimetic coloration that may be more successful during inter- or intrasexual encounters. However, these hypotheses do not explain the presence of and natural variation in female-limited mimetic polymorphism . . . --Krushnamegh Kunte, November 2009. Animal Behaviour 78(5): 1029.
. . . The behavior of females in search of a mate impacts the success of males in mate competition and, hence, the force of sexual selection on male phenotypic characters. The search behavior of females is also subject to selection because the search strategy used by a female determines the likelihood that she encounters a high quality male in the search process. This latter idea is germinal in the views of Alfred R. Wallace who argued that females would, had they evolved the cognitive ability, choose mates who provide them with a fitness benefit (Wallace, 1871, 1889; reviewed by Cronin, 1991). The search strategy favored by selection, in this situation, is the strategy that provides the highest fitness return to searchers. Janetos (1980) stimulated the study of search strategies when, more than one hundred years later, he showed that a fixed sample search strategy provides a higher fitness return to females than several alternative strategies. . . . --Daniel D. Wiegmann, Steven M. Seubert & Gordon A. Wade, October 2009. Journal of Theoretical Biology 262(4): 596.
. . . More than 150 years ago, Wallace had already recognized a profound connection between geology and the distribution of plants and animals, and many of his insights were based on his observations in Southeast Asia. Our understanding of the Earth has changed considerably since Wallace's time but an understanding of the geology of Southeast Asia remains fundamental to interpreting biotic distributions in the region. However, the links between geological history and life are not simple, and a great deal of work is still required to understand the complex interrelationships and feedbacks between plate tectonics, changing distributions of land and sea, emergence of land and rise of mountains, subsidence below sea level and formation of deep ocean basins, uplift and erosion, changing ocean currents, climatic impacts of all these changes, and their effects on plants and animals and their evolution and distribution . . . --R. Hall, October 2009. Blumea 54(1-3): 148.
. . . Because most butterflies can fold their wings together, hiding the dorsal surface, a dorsal-ventral partitioning of visual signals may present one solution to accommodating potentially antagonistic selective pressures. The speculation that dorsal wing patterns are important for mate signalling, while the ventral surface may be more subject to selection by natural enemies is, in fact, not new (Darwin 1871; Wallace 1889), although no study has directly tested this hypothesis in a comparative framework. In addition to a dorsal/ventral partition, butterflies may separate signals between forewing and hindwing, given their ability to hide the forewing behind the hindwing when at rest. These two surface axes, dorsal-ventral and forewing/hindwing, offer butterflies two spatial dimensions that may be partitioned to serve different, potentially antagonistic, signal functions . . . --Jeffrey C. Oliver, Kendra A. Robertson & Antónia Monteiro, 7 July 2009. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 276(1666): 2369.
Island radiations are thought to undergo evolutionarily short 'taxon cycles' of diversification and rapid demise, before being superseded by different lineages of colonizers. The archipelagos of Wallacea (eastern Indonesia), Melanesia (including New Guinea) and Oceania have long served as a natural laboratory to study the evolutionary dynamics of such colonizations and biological radiations (Wallace 1859 . . . ). Yet, the faunal origins and mechanisms responsible for the region's diversification as well as their contribution to global diversity remain poorly understood . . . --Michael Balke et al., 7 July 2009. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 276: 2359-2367.
Darwin (1862) and Wallace (1867) provided a possible explanation for such extreme elongation, suggesting that the long nectar spur of the Malagasy star orchid (Angraecum sesquipedale) evolved in a coevolutionary race with a giant hawkmoth. According to this model, selection on the hawkmoth favours longer tongues to better reach the orchid's nectar, while selection on the orchid favours nectar spurs that are longer than hawkmoth tongues because this ensures contact with the orchid's reproductive parts (thus maximizing pollen transfer) . . . Darwin was not proposing a general mechanism for the evolution of corolla tube length, but was specifically interested in the extreme case of A. sesquipedale (Darwin 1862). Furthermore, in expounding on Darwin's idea, Wallace (1867) actually envisioned that initial stages in tube elongation would involve pollinator shifts, and suggested that a coevolutionary race would begin only when the tube length corresponded to the tongue length of the largest hawkmoth in the habitat . . . --Nathan Muchhala & James D. Thomson, 22 June 2009. Proceedings of The Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 276(1665): 2147-2148.
. . . The classical view of reinforcement is that selection can only strengthen prezygotic isolation, not postzygotic because selection cannot favor a further reduction in the fitness of hybrids (Wallace 1889; Dobzhansky 1940). (Selection can favor a reduced fitness of juveniles where these compete with siblings, but the principle is the same). This argument applies where a single allele strengthens isolation, but not when isolation is strengthened by an association between existing incompatibilities. As we show below, the two different incompatibilities then do not have to be at different stages of the life cycle: each may have the same status, and we cannot say that one evolves "to" reinforce the other. The evolution of the association itself can be seen as adaptive, in the sense that (directly or indirectly) it raises the mean fitness of the population. However, it can involve incompatibilities at any stage of hybridization . . . --Nicholas H. Barton & Maria Angeles Rodriguez de Cara, May 2009. Evolution 63(5): 1172.
Two additional attributes that make islands lasting focal points for evolutionary studies--their relative youth and geographical isolation--were clearly identified by Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-originator of the theory of evolution by natural selection, in his 1881 book Island Life. First, many islands are either volcanic in origin or have been completely under water at some point in their history. These islands emerge above the ocean surface as blank slates for colonization and subsequent evolutionary diversification, on which the development of ecological and evolutionary systems can be observed from their beginnings. Each island represents a new opportunity for living forms to appear and proliferate. The first colonists, finding untapped resources and lacking the constraints of a resident biota, often diversify in novel directions. This evolutionary idiosyncrasy is enhanced by unbalanced colonization--strong dispersal abilities are not evenly distributed across the ecological spectrum of continental biotas--with the result that some ecological niches on islands are filled by diversification rather than colonization . . . --Jonathan B. Losos & Robert E. Ricklefs, 12 February 2009. Nature 457(7231): 830-831.
Wallace, who promoted Strickland's methods, wrote that every systematic work should include diagrams,"without which it is often impossible to tell whether two families follow each other because the author thinks them allied, or merely because the exigencies of a consecutive series compels him so to place them". In essence, Wallace claims that without diagrams the reader cannot know whether information is meaningful or is simply a product of the representational medium's limitations; Darwin capitalizes on this basic ambiguity within his diagram itself . . . --Heather Brink-Roby, Winter 2009. Victorian Studies 51: 247-273.
. . . Many questions are involved in Wallace's Line, but it represents a line of major faunal break between the Oriental and the Australian regions. According to Sweet & Pianka (2003), varanid species are diversified to the east of Wallace's Line while this side lacks carnivorous placental mammals. The diversity of varanid species and that of carnivorous mammals are virtually inverted to the west of Wallace's Line, a region that harbours nearly 20 mammalian carnivores and that lacks small varanid lizards. These observations suggest that the coexistence of mammalian carnivores and varanid lizards is limited because they are too similar as predators . . . --Marc Augé & Richard Smith, January 2009. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 155: 148-170.
The little that we have learned about the likelihood of reciprocal selection operating in this system helps to explain the observation of extreme trait exaggeration. However, directional selection for trait exaggeration does not act in isolation. In addition to escalating reciprocal selection, there are a theoretically infinite number of other selective forces that simultaneously act on proboscis and tube length and some of these must serve to balance the forces that favor trait elongation (Wallace 1867). Understanding some of these forces and how they vary in strength across the landscape will be important in explaining the observation of twofold variability in proboscis and tube length. For example, one of the many costs of longer proboscis might include increased handling time. It was observed that flies feeding on windy days required several attempts before succeeding in inserting their proboscides into flowers. Possibly windier conditions in the South might lead to stronger balancing selection at this latitude . . . --Anton Pauw, Jaco Stofberg & Richard J. Waterman, January 2009. Evolution 63(1): 275.
Floral trait recognition and pollinator consistency have been extensively studied, i.e., insect pollinators tend to exhaust one floral morph for resources before moving on to other floral morphs. Indeed, A. R. Wallace (1889) may have been the first to suggest that sympatric plant species pollinated by "flower constant" pollinators will profit from having different floral recognition traits. Consequently, we would expect statistically significant correlations among the first appearances of critical floral traits and the diversification of the flowering plants and their insect pollinators. As noted, the first appearances of floral traits and the diversification of flowering plant species are significantly correlated. Likewise, the first appearances of key floral traits and insect families in the fossil record are significantly correlated . . . as are angiosperm species number and insect family number . . . --William L. Crepet & Karl J. Niklas, January 2009. American Journal of Botany 96(1): 372.
. . . Despite of their seemingly large number, aerosol particles are true trace constituents of the atmosphere, their mass fraction typically being below one part per billion and thereby much below that of any important gaseous climate agent. Nevertheless they may have a profound influence on our climate. This perception is not at all new, only 20 years after Aitken discovered the importance of aerosols as condensation nuclei, Alfred R. Wallace noted in 1898: "But in all densely-populated countries there is an enormous artificial production of dust.. This superabundance of dust . . . must almost certainly produce some effect on our climate; and the particular effect it seems calculated to produce is the increase of cloud and fog, but not necessarily any increase of rain." . . . --J. Feichter & T. Leisner, 2009. The European Physical Journal, Special Topics 176(1): 84.
. . . Non-exclusive hypotheses have traditionally been proposed to account for spectacular woodiness examples in the neo-flora of oceanic islands (Wallace, 1878 . . . ). Selection for successful pollination with large, long-lasting inflorescences, niche competition among initial colonizers, and promotion of the outbreeding ratio to overcome inbreeding depression may be related to Echium longevity and woodiness. Irrespective of the causes generating woodiness, the trait utility of this character is manifested by the large number of woody plant groups that rapidly evolved from herbaceous ancestors not only in Macaronesia (Sonchus, Isoplexis, Aeonium group, Pericallis), but also in the Hawaiian (silversword alliance, Schieda), Galápagos (Scallesia), and Juan Fernández (Dendroseris) archipelagos . . . --Federico García-Maroto, 2009. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evoution 52(3): 572.
. . . The current extinction crisis and the extent of anthropogenic alteration of natural habitats have reached alarming proportions . . . Potential hindrances to global assessment of priority list candidates have been divided into eight categories: (1) the extreme heterogeneity of existing data; (2) the restricted availability of relevant data and lack of information exchange between scientists and conservationists; (3) the uncertainty in species number and taxonomic division of the given taxon (Linnean shortfall); (4) the fragmentary knowledge of distributions (Wallacean shortfall); (5) incomplete or erroneous red-listing across the entire distribution of a given taxon; (6) the lack of homogenous and reliable population trend data; (7) the lack of exhaustive information on observed and potential threats; and finally (8) the incomplete general biological knowledge of a given taxon (e.g., its reproduction biology, genetic diversity, dispersal parameters, etc.). It has been demonstrated that Linnean and Wallacean shortfalls are among the most serious problems in modern conservation biology and biogeography, and that the majority of deficits in knowledge during any global conservation status assessment results from these two shortfalls . . . --Gregor Kozlowski et al., 2009. Biodiversity and Conservation 18(9): 2308.
It has long been recognized that Thailand is subdivided into two zoogeographic subregions with the Indochinese subregion to the north and Sundaic subregion to the south with a transition zone in the Isthmus of Kra. Distribution patterns corresponding to this division have been observed in a range of biota including rodents, insects, reptiles and plants. Initially, Wallace (1876) had placed the transition zone at 13-14ºN, whereas Wells fixed the avifaunal transition zone at about 10º30'N, in the Isthmus of Kra. Subsequently, Hughes et al., based on forest birds, found a highly significant transition zone at 11-12ºN, in the north of the peninsula. The distribution patterns of the three species [considered here] were of considerable interest since they strongly support the existing concepts of a subregional division . . . --Pipat Soisook et al., December 2008. Acta Chiropterologica 10(2): 238.
The powerful effect of clinging on the emotional behavior of infant nonhuman primates had been known for many years. It was mentioned by Van Wagenen in her recommendations and in many other naturalistic accounts of primate infants. One of my favorite quotations is from Alfred Russel Wallace, who describes an "artificial mother" of buffalo skin he devised for an orphan orangutan (1869). All of us associated with the nursery project were impressed by the strength of the infants' emotional attachment to their cloths. When I suggested to Harlow that we devise an experiment pitting our monkeys' responses to the feeding station against their attachment to a claspable object, he urged me to proceed. Accordingly, I designed an experiment around two mother surrogates that were the functional counterparts of the diaper and the feeding rack. These prototypes had the bodies of the final versions, although they lacked the famous distinctive faces, which were added later . . . --William A. Mason, December 2008. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 42(4): 390-391.
. . . Wallace wrote that "[i]n the equable equatorial zone there is no . . . struggle against climate. Every form of vegetation has become alike adapted to its genial heat and ample moisture, which has probably changed little even throughout geological periods". We now know that lowland tropical climates have changed substantially and relentlessly ever since species-rich forests resembling modern ones first occupied the lowland wet tropics in the mid-Tertiary. Although the notion of long-term constancy of tropical climates is now universally dismissed, Wallace's view of tropical climates as benign lingers on, underlying the apparently widespread conviction that "[m]any tropical species may well be able to withstand higher temperature[s] than those in which they currently exist." . . . --Robert K. Colwell et al., 10 October 2008. Science 322(5899): 259.
. . . we must consider the possibility that hominids in general and humans in particular have partially escaped from classic Darwinian selective control of some aspects of the genome, and that humans have even escaped the final stage of Baldwinian genetic hard-wiring of long-standing species-specific learned behaviors. This might in turn help to explain the unusual degree of exaptation displayed by the human brain, presented as 'Wallace's Conundrum' in Box 6. The advantages of such novel changes are flexibility, plasticity, more rapidly developing population diversity and greater opportunities--but the disadvantages are that genomes cannot recover what has been irrevocably lost, and cultural advantages can be sensitive to the whims of history and fate . . . --Ajit Varki, Daniel H. Geschwind & Evan E. Eichler, October 2008. Nature Reviews Genetics 9(10): 758.
The importance of avian egg coloration for crypsis, once accepted as a general principle (Wallace 1890, Cott 1940, von Haartman 1957, Harrison 1968), has recently been questioned because tests of this hypothesis have often failed to support a role for egg coloration in deterring predation. As a result, more recent work has emphasized the importance of nest crypsis as the primary mediator of clutch survival . . . --David Westmoreland, September 2008. Journal of Field Ornithology 79(3): 263.
Evolved mimicry of hawks by parasitic cuckoos. Wallace (1889) suggested that the resemblance was an example of protective mimicry, which might reduce attacks from hawks, noting that cuckoos were otherwise 'an exceedingly weak and defenceless group of birds'. Prolonged periods of surveillance for host nests, sometimes from exposed perches, might make parasitic cuckoos especially vulnerable to hawk attack. In Asia, drongo-cuckoos (Surniculus lugubris) may likewise gain from protective mimicry of drongos Dicrurus spp., which are extremely aggressive to larger birds, including birds of prey and crows (Wallace 1889). Alternatively, hawk mimicry might influence host behaviour, either by frightening or luring hosts away to facilitate egg laying or by inducing mobbing to help the cuckoo locate host nests, which may be especially advantageous in open country with few secret vantage points . . . --N. B. Davies & J. A. Welbergen, August 2008. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 275(1644): 1818.
. . . It has been argued that Ostriches lay white eggs because they are powerful enough to defend their nests (Wallace 1889). However, when nests are unattended, such big eggs are quite visible on the ground to both mammalian and avian predators. In our visibility study, a naturally white egg was seen first by the observer, suggesting that the brown eggs are better concealed. Ostriches would therefore have derived a selective advantage in the face of predators by having brown eggs. Our results therefore are consistent with the prediction, and support Bertram and Burger's conclusion, that white Ostrich eggs minimise overheating, but are prone to predation . . . --Flora John Magige et al., July 2008. Journal of Ornithology 149(3): 327.
Why there are so many species in tropical rainforests is one of the most complex and debated questions in evolutionary biology. Among the mechanisms that have been proposed to explain diversification in the tropics is the idea that mode of speciation might differ with latitude. A long-standing hypothesis, first proposed by Wallace (1878) and developed by Dobzhansky and Schemske, is that biotic interactions play a greater role in the adaptation of tropical populations than do abiotic factors, whereas the converse holds for temperate-zone populations . . . --G. Léotard et al., July 2008. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 21(4): 1133.
Within each of his major biogeographical regions, Wallace (1876) distinguished between four subregions. For the Palearctic he recognized a Northern European, Southern European, Siberian, and Manchourian subregion. However, it had already been pointed out by contemporary workers that Wallace's separation of the European and Siberian subregions, for example, was based on insufficient data and that the criteria used were more geographic than faunistic. Nevertheless, in later years Wallace's boundary between the European and Siberian subregions, running along the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea, has been used to demarcate western subsections of the Palearctic Region . . . --Mansour Aliabadian et al., 2008. Contributions to Zoology 77(2): 101.
. . . Wallace writes that, among human beings, there is no evident distinction between the mental powers of the most primitive and the most advanced . . . From this manner of observation it follows, Wallace argued, that characteristic human abilities must be latent in primitive man, existing somehow as an unopened gift—the entryway to a world that primitive man himself does not possess and would not recognize. But the idea that a biological species might possess latent powers makes no sense in Darwinian terms. It suggests the forbidden doctrine that evolutionary advantages were frontloaded, far away and long ago. It is in conflict with the Darwinian principle that just as useful genes are selected for cultivation and advancement, useless genes are subject to negative selection pressure and must therefore drain away into the sands of time. Wallace identified a frank conflict between his own theory and what seemed to him to be obvious facts about the solidity and unchangeability of human nature. That conflict persists; it has not been resolved . . . --David Berlinski, April 2008. Commentary 125(4): 35.
. . . Alfred Russel Wallace (1853) was perhaps the first naturalist to write about the white-water, clear-water, and black-water river types of the Amazon basin and to relate the color of tributaries to the nature of their drainage basins. Wallace astutely linked the sediment load of white-water tributaries to erosion in their steep Andean headwaters, and identified clear-water rivers with the crystalline "mountains of Brazil" (the Guyana and Brazilian shields). He knew that black-water rivers emerged from lowland sources, and he correctly attributed their dark coloring to leaching of "decaying leaves, roots, and other vegetable matter" (Wallace 1853) . . . --Michael E. McClain & Robert J. Nainan, April 2008. BioScience 58(4): 325.
While he maintained that 'social heredity' was consistent with the theory of evolution by natural selection, Baldwin followed Wallace in claiming that humans had evolved to such a degree of conscious intelligence that they had freed themselves from the pressures of natural selection, and surmounted instinctual constraints on behavior: 'intelligence and the social life which it makes possible so far control the acquisitions of life to limit the action of natural selection as a law of evolution.' In this fashion Baldwin defended human freedom against the hereditarian determinism of Darwin's theory of evolution, by claiming that thought and will had emancipated humans from the constraints of natural selection . . . --John D. Greenwood, February 2008. History of the Human Sciences 21(1): 114.
Later behaviorists rejected the role of consciousness and purpose in human and animal psychology and behavior--with the notable exception of Edward C. Tolman--but continued to stress the critical role of plasticity and learning in adaptive behavior. They also depreciated the explanatory role of inherited instincts, which became the object of sustained critiques by behaviorist psychologists in the 1920s. Like functional psychologists (and Wallace), behaviorists came to believe that humans had developed (through evolution by natural selection) to such a degree that they could surmount the constraints of their biological inheritance, and exploit their intelligence to create a scientific psychology devoted to the further advancement and improvement of the human condition . . . --John D. Greenwood, February 2008. History of the Human Sciences 21(1): 118.
. . . In other words, as Wallace so clearly realized, human symbolic reasoning is not simply an extrapolation of this extended history, simply a little bit more of the same. It is, instead, something truly new and unpredicted by what went before—even by the increase in the mass of metabolically expensive brain tissue that seems to have independently characterized several lineages within the genus Homo, though it was clearly dependent on this development. And while Wallace was regrettably unable to profit from our modern perspective, today it is possible to see that the origin of modern human consciousness must have been an emergent event, whereby an entirely unanticipated level of complexity was achieved by a sheer chance coincidence of acquisitions . . . --Ian Tattersall, 2008. Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews 3: 111.
Researchers of animal coloration have noted the perplexing nature of egg pigmentation in open-nesting birds (i.e., birds whose nests are not in cavities or enclosed by a dome). One of the founders of the theory of natural selection wrote "the colours of birds' eggs have long been a difficulty on the theory of adaptive coloration, because, in so many cases it has not been easy to see what can be the use of the particular colours, which are often so bright and conspicuous that they seem intended to attract attention rather than to be concealed" (Wallace 1890). Wallace went on to argue that bird eggs are well camouflaged when viewed from below via light penetrating the nest . . . --David Westmoreland & Richard A. Kiltie, November 2007. Journal of Avian Biology 38(6): 686-687.
Alfred Wallace, Darwin's contemporary and rival, argued that when species hybridize, natural selection favors individuals who are more fussy about whom they mate with, which therefore increases female discrimination of males from different species. Modern evolutionary genetics has questioned the importance of the "Wallace effect" (also known as "reinforcement") because genetic recombination between female discrimination and male trait genes would scramble combinations of loci that favor speciation. Several solutions to this have been proposed, including close genetic linkage of such loci. A simpler possibility is sexual imprinting, which causes a female to prefer males that resemble her father . . . --Michael G. Ritchie, 5 October 2007. Science 318: 54.
While Chamupati largely ignored Darwin, whose views of Hindu scriptures were hardly flattering, Chamupati was attracted to the ideas of Alfred Russel Wallace, codiscoverer of evolution. Chamupati noted Wallace's praise of the mind of the Vedic hymn makers who, despite the "very limited knowledge [of Nature] at this early period, . . . could not have been in any way inferior to those of the best of our religious teachers and poets—to our Miltons and our Tennysons." For Chamupati and other followers of Dayananda, Wallace was far more congenial than Darwin, for, despite Wallace's espousal of some of the most theologically challenging aspects of evolutionary theory, namely, random variation and natural selection, Wallace made considerable exceptions. He insisted on some sort of "spiritual influx" to account for the origin of life as well as of mind and morality. Accordingly, he was a much safer corroborator of Vedic insights, at least in Chamupati's views . . . --C. Mackenzie Brown, September 2007. Zygon 42(3): 718.
Using the theoretical framework of evolution by natural selection, Wallace developed Crawfurd's proposal that the two distinct aboriginal races were the Malays and Papuans. From his observations, Wallace postulated an ethnological line dividing the Malayan and Polynesian races. The position of this line east of the famous line dividing the Indo-Malayan and Austro-Malayan bioregions demonstrated Crawfurd's hypothesis that the civilized Malays were pushing the savage Papuans back from their natural border. Wallace's ethnological line functioned to support his representation of two races as radically different from each other, not only in terms of physical characteristics but also in what Wallace called 'moral characteristics' (1869: 588) . . . --Daniel P. S. Goh, September 2007. International Journal of Cultural Studies 10(3): 328.
Darwin's originality and priority are, strictly speaking, separate questions. One can be original and yet fail to achieve priority if, for example, someone else comes forward first in print with the same theory without one's knowledge. Such, in fact, is more or less the case with A. R. Wallace. No one, least of all Darwin, doubted that Wallace arrived at his theory independently of Darwin, but Darwin was proven by history to have brought the theory into print—if not exactly publication—first. Nevertheless, Darwin often conflated the two issues in his private correspondence, referring to his originality and priority almost as if they were interchangeable ideas . . . --Curtis N. Johnson, Fall 2007. Journal of the History of Biology 40(3): 533.
At a given latitude, the most striking feature of avian seasonality is the consistency with which the successive stages of reproduction, moult and migration take place each year—not only on a populational scale, but also within individuals. Day-length—the most consistent sources of temporal information about the environment—was suggested to play a role in the scheduling of avian annual cycles, in particular of migration, as early as 1876 (e.g. Palmén 1876; Wallace 1876) . . . --Timothy Coppack, 23 June 2007. Journal of Ornithology 148, Suppl. 2: S460.
[concerning the organization of a forest preserve] . . . Although Wallace's proposal is controversial and raises environmental concerns, it is important to recognize that he was focused on key ecological issues. He fought to preserve in an unsullied state the forests that had not been cleared. He also recognized that severe ecological destruction had been wrought on the state of nature. And in this, he contributed to a philosophy of ecological restoration by raising the issue of how we are to address anthropogenic environmental problems. In "Epping Forest," Wallace documented that environmental degradation had taken place, as profiteers and lords of manors had destroyed whole areas of the forest. He provided a reasoned discussion of the different temperate forests in the Northern Hemisphere and an argument that recognized how the species found in a particular location are, in part, influenced by the much longer, geological, and climate history of the earth. In this, Wallace provided important insights and helped open a realm of debate . . . --Brett Clark & Richard York, June 2007. Organization & Environment 20(2): 231.
Wallace found fault with two aspects of domestication as a heuristic for understanding adaptation in nature. He argued first that the analogy was flawed: artificial selection requires an intelligent selector, whereas no such force acts in natural systems. Additionally, he insisted that the selection itself was fundamentally different, leading to intrinsically different kinds of variation. Domesticated species, he wrote, "are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature: their very existence depends altogether on human care; so far are many of them removed from that just proportion of faculties, that true balance of organization, by means of which alone as an animal left to its own resources can preserve its existence and continue its race." Both Wallace's lines of argument find modern audiences, from those who see a fundamental difference between the conscious selection of humans and natural processes to those who argue that variation in domesticated species differs from that in nature . . . --Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, Peter L. Morrell & Brandon S. Gaut, 15 May 2007. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, Suppl. 1: 8641-8642.
The coloration of this genus of weevils is among the most astonishing visual effects displayed in nature. Many animal species that are distasteful to predators have evolved aposematism (they have a distinctive, conspicuous coloration, which functions as a warning signal, advertising their inedibility to potential predators). Wallace notes in a passage on the genus Pachyrrhynchus that many weevils have excessive hard integuments, which render them inedible to most birds, and our own dissections of this species confirm their extremely tough exoskeleton. It seems likely, therefore, that the stark coloration of this species is a form of aposematism. Further evidence in support of this comes from the finding that a number of edible species, such as the longicorn beetles Doliops curculionides and Doliops geometrica and the cricket Scepastus pachyrhynchoides mimic various Pachyrrhynchus species weevils . . . --Victoria Welch et al., 30 April 2007. Physical Review E 75(4): 7.
Several features of the results give some reassurance because they support plausible notions and other evidence that most nonsynonymous mutations and many nonsynonymous polymorphisms are deleterious. Our analysis implies that some 19 of 20 new amino acid replacements are deleterious with an average fitness reduction on the order of five times the reciprocal of the effective population size. These estimates pertain only to the subset of nonsynonymous mutations whose effect are not so severe as to preclude their becoming polymorphic, but they support other evidence that selection against deleterious mutations plays in key role in shaping patterns of genetic variation in Drosophila. Likewise, we estimate that [about] 7 of 10 amino acid replacements that are polymorphic in samples are deleterious. One feature of our results that might animate some surprise is the high proportion of amino acid fixations between species that show positive selection, [about] 95% in our data. This finding seems to reflect what Wallace called the "overwhelming odds against the less fit" . . . --Stanley A. Sawyer et al., 17 April 2007. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104(16): 6509.
Given that phenomena strive for reality--that is, to become distinct--then there must by default be a process whereby constitutive elements are demarcated as 'included' and, of course, an opposite process, whereby elements become the 'excluded'. According to [Charles] Fort: "It is our expression that nothing can attempt to be, except by attempting to exclude something else: that that which is commonly called 'being' is a state that is wrought more or less definitely proportionately to the appearance of positive difference between that which is included and that which is excluded." This process leaves a trace, however, in the sense that one cannot subsequently provide a full and comprehensive description of the thing in question. Even Darwin, Fort argued, 'was never able to tell what he meant by a "species".' Echoing Wallace's (1875) earlier concerns over the close-mindedness of modern science, Fort argued that this body of knowledge was itself but one instance of localization, wherein an attempt is made to separate out those explanations which are deemed acceptable and proper from those that are not. The raw material of the world becomes organized and interpreted to fit into preconceived notions of how things should work. Slowly but surely, this drive towards explanation causes a plethora of facts and events to emerge from this chaotic landscape, each of which is seen to form part of an overarching pattern. 'A theory feels its way through surrounding ignorance,' he suggested, like 'a wagon train feels its way across a prairie.' And yet, 'Science relates to real knowledge no more than does the growth of a plant, or the organization of a department store, or the development of a nation: that all are assimilative, or organizing, or systematizing processes that represent different attempts to attain the positive state--the state commonly called heaven, I suppose I mean' . . . --Deborah Dixon, April 2007. Cultural Geographies 14(2): 193.
The conspicuous displays that warn predators of defenses carried by potential prey have been of interest to evolutionary biologists from the time of Wallace and Darwin to the present day. Although most studies implicitly assume that these "aposematic" warning signals simply indicate the presence of some repellent defense such as a toxin, it has been speculated that the intensity of the signal might reliably indicate the strength of defense so that, for example, the nastiest prey might "shout loudest" about their unprofitability. Recent phylogenetic and empirical studies of Dendrobatid frogs provide contradictory views, in one instance showing a positive correlation between toxin levels and conspicuousness, in another showing a breakdown of this relationship. In this paper we present an optimization model, which can potentially account for these divergent results . . . --Michael P. Speed & Graeme D. Ruxton, March 2007. Evolution 61(3): 623.
. . . Kantian philosophers do not have the exclusive right to transcendental arguments, which can be and are used by philosophers and scientists alike. For instance, physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose have invoked the anthropic principle, the weak version of which was anticipated by Alfred Russel Wallace (1904, pp 256-257): "Such a vast and complex universe as that which we know exists around us, may have been absolutely required . . . in order to produce a world that should be precisely adapted in every detail for the orderly development of life culminating in man." More recently, the biologists John Bonner and Richard Lewontin have offered transcendental arguments for the modular organization of development as a requirement for evolvability . . . --Werner Callebaut, March 2007. Acta Biotheoretica 55(1): 77-78.
In his extensive monograph of the genus, Talbot, building on the earlier work of Wallace (1867), Dixey (1894) and others, originally divided Delias into twenty species-groups, according to differences in form of the androconia, male genitalia and, to a lesser extent, wing pattern. Talbot noted, however, that the Australian endemic D. aganippe, provisionally placed in the belisama group, 'seems somewhat isolated' on structural grounds and is 'placed doubtfully in this group'. Wallace (1867: 349) similarly remarked that, 'It is difficult locate this common Australian species', and placed D. aganippe in the belladonna group . . . --Michael F. Braby & Naomi E. Pierce, January 2007. Systematic Entomology 32(1): 6.
. . . In his notes, essays and correspondence from the field, Wallace consistently emphasized species and genera, and separated these descriptions from his rarer and briefer discussions of individual organisms. The first passage above, from an 1857 article describing collecting in the Aru Islands, is typical: Wallace provides an enthusiastic litany of species, families and genera. It is easy to miss his distinction at the end of the passage, between families, species and individuals, in terms of "abundance." Yet this too is characteristic of Wallace's writings from the field. At a given locality, families contain more or fewer species, and species contain more or fewer individual organisms. Wallace did not collapse or confuse these levels, but carefully distinguished between different sorts of abundance. In general, his natural history writing emphasized species, with clear distinctions between individual organisms and groups . . . --Melinda B. Fagan, 2007. Journal of the History of Biology [electronic file].
The contrast in the two naturalists' writings from the field thus has two aspects. First, Wallace emphasized groups of organisms, while Darwin described many details of individual organisms. Second, Wallace clearly distinguished between groups and individuals, while Darwin was more ambiguous. Both aspects can be explained by differences in natural history practice. Wallace and Darwin's contrasting habits and working routines in the field were shaped in turn by their different circumstances and motivations. The two naturalists went to the field with different training and social connections, different finances and responsibilities, and different theoretical interests . . . --Melinda B. Fagan, 2007. Journal of the History of Biology [electronic file].
The use of soil animals as protein source in human nutrition is still widely represented in indigenous populations in most regions of the world and was first reported by Wallace (1853, 1889) more than 100 years ago . . . --T. Decaëns et al., November 2006. European Journal of Soil Biology 42 (Suppl. 1): S26.
. . . Knowledge about biodiversity remains inadequate and plagued by the so-called Linnean and Wallacean shortfalls (Lomolino, 2004; Whittaker et al., 2005; see also Brown & Lomolino, 1998). The first refers to the fact that most species living on Earth were still not formally described, whereas the second is defined by the fact that, for the majority of taxa, geographical distributions are also poorly understood and contain many gaps. As recently pointed out by Whittaker et al. (2005), these two shortfalls are scale dependent, both on evolutionary and on ecological dimensions. Although work done since the 18th century allows us to make general predictions of broad-scale diversity gradients based on current climate effects (see Hawkins, 2004 and references therein), we are far from a predictive theory capable of predicting species diversity based on complex environmental and historical factors acting at different scales in time and space . . . --Luis Mauricio Bini et al., September 2006. Diversity and Distributions 12(5): 475.
Here I present a critical review of the literature which, when combined with the results of some comparative analyses, suggests that just a few selective agents can explain much of the variation in egg appearance. Ancestrally, bird eggs were probably white and immaculate. Ancient diversification in nest location, and hence in the clutch's vulnerability to attack by predators, can explain basic differences between bird families in egg appearance. The ancestral white egg has been retained by species whose nests are safe from attack by predators, while those that have moved to a more vulnerable nest site are now more likely to lay brown eggs, covered in speckles, just as Wallace hypothesized more than a century ago. Even blue eggs might be cryptic in a subset of nests built in vegetation. It is possible that some species have subsequently turned these ancient adaptations to new functions, for example to signal female quality, to protect eggs from damaging solar radiation, or to add structural strength to shells when calcium is in short supply. The threat of predation, together with the use of varying nest sites, appears to have increased the diversity of egg colouring seen among species within families, and among clutches within species. Brood parasites and their hosts have probably secondarily influenced the diversity of egg appearance. Each drives the evolution of the other's egg colour and patterning, as hosts attempt to avoid exploitation by rejecting odd-looking eggs from their nests, and parasites attempt to outwit their hosts by laying eggs that will escape detection . . . --R. M. Kilner, August 2006. Biological Reviews 81(3): 383.
Wallace's hypothesis for egg colouring is intuitively appealing because it can explain why so many bird eggs are white or speckled or some shade of brown in colour, and because it is consistent with observations that more cryptic offspring are less vulnerable to attack by predators. Furthermore, Lack (1958) found that a species' nest site could explain some of the variation in egg patterning and colouring amongst the Turdinae. He found that hole-nesters were more likely to lay white immaculate eggs, whereas about 80% of birds whose nests were placed in exposed sites covered their eggs in red or brown speckling, which he interpreted as an adaptation for concealment. However, experimental evidence in support of Wallace's hypothesis is rather mixed . . . --R. M. Kilner, August 2006, Biological Reviews 81(3): 385.
Why do organisms age and die? This question has long vexed biologists. Alfred Russel Wallace first suggested that ageing and death might be adaptive (Weismann 1882, Wallace 1889). In the 1860s Wallace wrote "Natural selection . . . in many cases favours such races as die almost immediately after they have left successors." Despite some early support, this adaptive view of ageing and death was soon dismissed, to such an extent that in the 1920s it was labelled a "perverse extension of the theory of natural selection" (Pearl 1922). This has remained the case since with almost all biological gerontologists believing that "longevity determination is under genetic control only indirectly," and that ". . . ageing is a product of evolutionary neglect, not evolutionary intent." Today, there are three largely competing theories used to explain ageing; mutation accumulation, antagonistic pleiotropy and disposable soma . . . --Calvin Dytham & Justin M. J. Travis, June 2006. Oikos 113(3): 531.
When you ask beginning students why we age, they usually respond that physical decay culls the old to make way for the young, says evolutionary biologist Ophélie Ronce of the University of Montpelier in France. That explanation carries a long pedigree—it dates back to Alfred Russel Wallace the co-discoverer of natural selection—but most modern evolutionists spurn it . . . --Mitch Leslie, 3 May 2006. Science of Aging Knowledge Environment 2006 No. 8: nf12.
During his collecting expedition in the Rio Negro and tributary Rio Uaupés basins (1850 to 1852), Wallace collected and sketched a specimen that was most likely Tetranematichthys wallacei. His pencil sketch of the specimen (Wallace, 2002: fig. 122) clearly illustrated the elongate dorsal-fin spine, the ossified, curved maxillary barbels, the elongation of the anterior rays of the anal fin, and the overall form of the head and body characteristic of nuptial males of Tetranematichthys (note: the orientation of the fish in the illustration is such that the mandibular barbels are not apparent). Given that T. wallacei is the only species of the genus known to occur in the Rio Negro and Rio Uaupés basins, we identify Wallace's specimen as that species . . . --Richard P. Vari & Carl J. Ferraris, Jr., May 2006. Copeia 2006(2): 176.
. . . It was not just that science was monoparadigmatic; its monoculturalism extended beyond the surveillance of the gaze to the fact that the creation of the object had to deny the subjective self and its knowledge. In relating to the other, modern western science either eliminated, assimilated, ghettoized or museumized them. Science had no place for defeated knowledges; the idea of an alternative science arose as a charter to challenge the current politics of knowledge. It was that great dissenting scientist Alfred Wallace who formulated the problem long before Thomas Kuhn. In his Wonderful Century (Wallace, 1898), a portrait of the achievements of 19th-century science, Wallace begins with a celebration of western science and then observes that a science at its moment of dominance tends to be coercive and to ignore competing theories and hypotheses. Wallace believed that the success of science made it ethically and cognitively imperative for the scientist to invent and explore alternatives . . . --Shiv Visvanathan, March-May 2006. Theory, Culture & Society 23(2-3): 166.
Wallace's field practices fit best into the survey tradition, which flourished during the shift from the 19th-century armchair to intensive ethnographic fieldwork in the early 20th century . . . Both survey and intensive ethnography were attempts to shift knowledge production into the field. Long before researchers gave field ethnography rather than armchair theorizing the highest prestige, Wallace was developing a greater role for regional survey work . . . --Jeremy Vetter, March 2006. Journal of the History of Biology 39(1): 98.
For more than a century, a debate has raged as to whether death constitutes an intentional ontogenetic program, the so-called Wallace-Weismann hypothesis, or the passive result of an inexorable accumulation of defects. By accounting for benefits to kin, the former assertion becomes more plausible. The inability to identify definable discreet mechanistic pathways for programmed death has provided a major source for criticism of this theory. Although evolutionary dynamics and pluralism may both contribute to the Darwinian value of phenoptosis, intuitive appeal persists in the notion of an oligarchy of functional hubs underpinning the many proximate mechanisms of phenoptosis. Indeed, given its processes' central roles in apoptosis, the mitochondrion may represent an ideal candidate to serve as one such hub on the level of the organelle. The induction of cellular damage by reactive oxygen species has been noted to be a mechanism of self-termination that encompasses all scales of biology. However, we believe that identification of hubs that operate on the level of systems as opposed to that of subcellular components may afford greater potential utility for modification and correction. Endocrine pathways, particularly those involving reproduction and circadian rhythms, have already been implicated in this regard . . . --Anthony J. Yun, Patrick Y. Lee & John Doux, 2006. Medical Hypotheses 67(5): 1082.
Whewell (1853) was the first to propose that the Solar System has a habitable region comparable to the modern conception of the CHZ [Circumstellar Habitable Zone]. He termed it the "Temperate Zone." In an impressive treatise for the period, Wallace (1903) enumerated several planetary habitability factors, including obliquity, mass, distance from the Sun, atmospheric composition, and proportion of water to land . . . --Guillermo Gonzalez, December 2005. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 35(6): 556.
. . . In this paper, we describe individual-based evolutionary model of aposematism and defense in spiny and poisonous species. We show that with spines, aposematism is easy to explain by a route in which predator biases are not out of sequence. Thus, aposematism evolves in our simulations if predators: (1) can recognize spines as dangerous (because they are common in prey populations anyway), (2) can use conspicuous markings to better notice and evaluate the significance of spines (resulting in cautious handling), and (3) can use conspicuousness as a cue for distinctiveness such that animals with colourful spines are less easily confused with nonspiny edible prey (as Wallace, , originally suggested for the general function of aposematism). . . --Michael P. Speed & Graeme D. Ruxton, December 2005. Evolution 59(12): 2501.
. . . In the past, applying the logic of adaptationism to such central and seemingly unique human capacities has often triggered strong resistance. Wallace himself, although the co-creator of natural selection theory, considered self-consciousness as too complex to be one of its outcomes (Wallace, 1889). Note that his main argument was that the sense of self seemed to constitute a radical departure from other forms of phenomenal awareness. But this argument itself relied on the assumption that there is an integral self-system. Given that assumption, it seems indeed difficult to consider the self as the result of a slow, incremental process of natural selection, each step of which is conducive to better reproductive potential. It is by contrast more tractable to evaluate the potential evolutionary background of separate self-relevant systems . . . --Pascal Boyer, Philip Robbins & Anthony I. Jack, December 2005. Consciousness and Cognition 14(4): 653.
As is often the case in evolutionary ecology, mathematical models have outpaced empirical data and the theoretical basis of the Wallace Effect has been established in more than 100 mathematical models. Supporting field data are less common, however, and are rarely unambiguous. Part of the problem is in not knowing the origin of the supposedly split populations: the only way properly to test the basis for sympatric speciation would be to experimentally manipulate a population, but the timescales of speciation are too long for such a study to observe incipient speciation within the lifespan of a single research project . . . --Jeff Ollerton, 3 August 2005. Heredity 95: 181.
In between Mill and Edgeworth, the classical economists' notion of sympathy was attacked, and was largely overcome. The co-discover of the Law of Natural Selection, A. R. Wallace, had argued in 1864 that the doctrine of natural selection did not apply to humans because of ethical concerns generated by human sympathy. Our morals do not allow us to let the infirm perish (Wallace, 1864, clxii). In response, the co-founder (with Francis Galton) of eugenics, W. R. Greg, insisted that if sympathy blocked the 'salutary' effects of the survival of the fittest, such sentiments should be suppressed. So, when the 'law' of 'natural selection' failed for humans--because of sympathy and ethics--the eugenic thinkers who so influence post-classical economics proposed to rid humanity of sympathy. --Sandra J. Peart & David M. Levy, August 2005. Canadian Journal of Economics 38(3): 950.
Another English socialist of a very different temper, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder of the theory of natural selection, took a different tack. The humane Wallace was a reformer but also a stout defender of Darwinian inheritance. So, although he believed that English society was increasingly dysgenic, Wallace rejected compulsory eugenics as elitist and barbarous. Wallace proposed that eugenic ends could be realized by an expansion of women's education and their political and economic freedom. Like Mill, he believed that the law could reduce women's economic dependency, which, he argued, would work to reduce the incentive for women to make dysgenic marriages. "Progress is still possible, nay, is certain," said Wallace, "by . . . that mode of selection which will inevitably come into action through the ever-increasing freedom, joined with the higher education of women" (1892). He envisioned selection as "effected through the agency of female choice in marriage" (1890). In leaving "the improvement of the race to the cultivated minds and pure instincts of the Women of the Future" (1890), the idealistic Wallace partly anticipates the eugenic feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman . . . --Thomas C. Leonard, July 2005. American Journal of Economics and Sociology 64(3): 782.
. . . At present, this genus of tropical and subtropical America, distributed from the central part of Mexico to the north of Argentina, including the West Indies, consists of ca. 350 species and is confined mainly to humid forests or grows along the edges of rivers. Its accumulated species diversity may be explained by gradual addition through geological time. This process was proposed by Wallace (1878) and turned out to result in greater accrual of species in tropical zones than in temperate regions. This, as explained by the "museum model," suggests that a stable tropical climate permitted the buildup of species through time . . . --L. Calvillo-Canadell & S. R. S. Cevallos-Ferriz, July 2005. International Journal of Plant Sciences 166(4): 688.
Wallace (1878) was among the first to argue that the low diversity of the polar regions is largely a reflection of past episodes of glaciations and climatic change that repeatedly drove many high-latitude taxa to extinction, leaving little opportunity for diversity to recover, and this idea has had subsequent proponents . . . --Emma E. Goldberg et al., June 2005. American Naturalist 165(6): 628.
The conditions under which aposematism, the conspicuous coloration of unpalatable or otherwise defended prey, could evolve have long been a topic of speculation (Wallace 1867; Poulton 1890). A perceived roadblock to the initial establishment of rare, aposematic mutants is the intense predation to which they would be subjected by naive predators. Conspicuous prey, albeit defended, are much more likely to be seen by predators, and if predators are unaware of their defence (and do not show neophobia), then such prey are more likely to be attacked on encounter. This means that rare conspicuous mutants of defended prey should, on average, be attacked more frequently than their cryptic conspecifics. A possible solution to this problem, first suggested by Fisher (1930), is that gregariousness could facilitate the evolution of distastefulness (and hence aposematism). Thus, if prey are warningly coloured and aggregated, then an attack on one individual by a naive predator could lead to subsequent avoidance of others in the group, often relatives, that share the same trait (this proposal was the initial inspiration for Hamilton's (1963) theory of kin selection) . . . --Christopher D. Beatty, Roderick S. Bain & Thomas N. Sherratt, 23 May 2005. Animal Behaviour 70: 199.
The Darwinian theory and Wallace's original theory can be formalized in terms of what is called today the carrying capacity of the environment, usually denoted by K; in Wallace's words, this is the level at which "the population must have reached its limits, and have become stationary." Suppose that the carrying capacity of the parental form on its own is K, and that the carrying capacities of the parental form and the advantageous variation when they coexist are K1 and K2 respectively. Under Darwin's theory K1Z0, whereas K2 is equal to or perhaps slightly greater than K, so that the parental form eventually becomes extinct even in a constant environment. Under Wallace's theory both carrying capacities are greater than zero, with K1!K2, so that both forms can coexist; if the environment deteriorates, both carrying capacities decrease, and if the deterioration is severe K1 becomes 0, so that the parental form becomes extinct. When the environment recovers, the carrying capacities return to their original values so that both types can again coexist . . . --Michael Bulmer, 22 May 2005. Notes & Records of the Royal Society 59(2): 130.
It was Wallace (1855) who was the first to recognize the correlation between geographic distribution and evolutionary relationship. Wallace (1855) in fact described how a process akin to what is now called vicariance might have produced modern faunal differences in the Galapagos Islands if these now distinct islands were once joined. In effect, Wallace (1855) was arguing that one way the geological world impinges on the biological world is through the mechanism we now refer to as allopatric speciation. If speciation is allopatric, species can disperse over geographic barriers (that have geological or climatic causes) and become isolated, or geological or climatic changes can cause populations of species to become isolated from one another by creating barriers within formerly continuous ranges; the latter is termed vicariance. In either case, the isolated populations diverge and eventually speciate . . . --Bruce S. Lieberman, 11 April 2005. Palaeogeography, Palaeocimatology, Palaeoecology 219: 25.
Although these definitions vary, the common emphasis is on the provision of a more stimulating environment. Historically Alfred Russel Wallace may have been one of the first individuals to provide enrichment to captive animals (Wallace 1869). Upon receipt of an orphan orangutan in his camp, he fashioned an artificial mother from a buffalo skin that appeared to comfort the animal, served as a surrogate mother, and thereby enriched the animal's environment. Shortly afterward, Wallace received another animal in camp, a cynomolgus monkey, and the two animals were successfully paired. Thus Wallace's earliest attempts at enriching the animal's environment included the provision of both inanimate and animate exemplars of enrichment . . . --James L. Weed & James M. Raber, March 2005. ILAR Journal 46(2): 118.
A. R. Wallace originally invented the concept now known as aposematism to describe prey that combine warning displays with secondary defences (Wallace 1867, 1889). More than a century later, the evolution of aposematism remains a remarkably fertile and controversial area of research. Warning displays are still of interest to researchers, in part, because the proximate mechanisms by which they operate tell us much about predator behaviour and predator-prey coevolution. As originally envisaged by Wallace (1867) and Poulton (1890), warning displays function to enhance discrimination, to accelerate learning and perhaps slow down forgetting . . . --Michael P. Speed & Graeme D. Ruxton, 21 February 2005. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 272: 431.
. . . aposematic displays remain the focus of considerable attention because, for many researchers, their initial origins contain at least two important evolutionary paradoxes. First, it is generally assumed that before the first aposematic traits evolved, prey were both highly cryptic and had effective secondary defences. If secondary defences are costly (and they often are), then their presence in prey already highly protected by crypsis is paradoxical: why pay for repellent secondary defences if your enemy rarely finds you? Second, there is a better-known paradox of warning signals, which also emerges from commonly held assumptions about initial conditions. Ever since the seminal theoretical model of Harvey et al. (1982), it is widely taken that aposematic mutants must emerge from defended cryptic species. When this is the case, new aposematic forms suffer combined and highly effective barriers to survival because of their rarity and their conspicuousness . . . --Michael P. Speed & Graeme D. Ruxton, 21 February 2005. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 272: 431.
. . . as Wallace originally envisaged, warning displays might be conspicuous so as to be "very distinct from the protective tints of the defenceless animals allied to them" (Wallace 1889, p. 232). Hence a good reason that aposematism may evolve initially is to prevent confusion with undefended prey. On its own, behavioural conspicuousness itself may not be a sufficiently reliable signal of non-profitability to function as an aposematic display. As we found . . . prey can evolve some heightened levels of behavioural conspicuousness even when they do not evolve adaptive secondary defences. Hence, some additional discriminative cue may be necessary for defended prey to minimize erroneous attacks by educated predators . . . --Michael P. Speed & Graeme D. Ruxton, 21 February 2005. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 272: 436.
The language faculty is one component of what the co-founder of modern evolutionary theory, Alfred Russel Wallace, called "man's intellectual and moral nature": the human capacities for creative imagination, language and symbolism generally, mathematics, interpretation and recording of natural phenomena, intricate social practices, and the like, a complex of capacities that seem to have crystallized fairly recently, perhaps a little over 50,000 years ago, among a small breeding group of which we are all descendants--a complex that sets humans apart rather sharply from other animals, including other hominids, judging by traces they have left in the archaeological record. The nature of the "human capacity," as some researchers now call it, remains a considerable mystery. It was one element of a famous disagreement between the two founders of the theory of evolution, with Wallace holding, contrary to Darwin, that evolution of these faculties cannot be accounted for in terms of variation and natural selection alone, but requires "some other influence, law, or agency," some principle of nature alongside gravitation, cohesion, and other forces without which the material universe could not exist. Although the issues are framed differently today within the core biological sciences, they have not disappeared . . . --Noam Chomsky, Winter 2005. Linguistic Inquiry 36(1): 3.
. . . Rohde (1978, 1992) expanded earlier suggestions that high-energy levels may increase speciation rates (Wallace, 1878). Relationships between speciation/extinction rates and energy may arise directly through the influence of solar energy on mutation rates, and most literature on the diversification rate mechanism focuses on this relationship. Alternatively, both solar and productive energy availability may influence speciation/extinction rates indirectly through variables such as body size and reproductive rates . . . --Karl L. Evans, Philip H. Warren & Kevin J. Gaston, February 2005. Biological Reviews 80(1): 14.
. . . adaptationism is usually traced back to Alfred R. Wallace, one of the two great biological revolutionaries, who was also one of the forefathers of modern astrobiology with his intriguing and remarkably prescient 1903 book Man's Place in the Universe. This view is the scientific foundation of Schroeder's solution to Fermi's paradox. Intelligence is an adaptive trait, like any other. Adaptive traits are bound to disappear once the environment changes sufficiently for any selective advantage which existed previously to disappear. In the long run, the intelligence is bound to disappear, as its selective advantage is temporally limited by ever-changing physical and ecological conditions . . . --Milan M. Cirkovic, January-February 2005. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS) 58(1-2): 65.
The first report of a tool-using parrot in the wild was in 1869, by Wallace (2000). He described a black palm cockatoo (Probosciger aterrimus) in New Guinea using a piece of leaf as a wedge while feeding from kanary nuts (Canarium commune). According to the author, after starting to groove the nut with its lower mandible, the bird held it in its foot and bit off a piece of leaf. This was retained in the deep notch of the upper mandible while the bird started to seize the nut once again, fixing the edge of the lower mandible in the notch and braking off a piece of shell by a powerful nip. Wallace suggested that the nut was prevented from slipping by the elastic tissue of the leaf (Wallace 2000) . . . --Andressa Borsari & Eduardo B. Ottoni, January 2005. Animal Cognition 8(1): 48.
. . . the Wakatobi Marine National Park includes all coral reefs, islands, and communities within its boundaries and is centered around the main islands in the Wakatobi archipelago. The area is considered "a geological and biological anomaly" and is located at a zone of transition between the two distinct faunas associated with the Asian and Australian continents. Wallace (1869) postulated that the islands of Sulawesi had been isolated far longer than the surrounding islands, giving evolution a much greater opportunity to shape a unique fauna . . . --Benjamin P. Horton et al., January 2005. Journal of Foraminiferal Research 35(1): 4.
Wallace's rhetorical world was as remote from Darwin's as their social worlds--they wrote up their theories differently. Although a colonial infrastructure made much of Wallace's fieldwork possible, the solitary English collector, living alongside natives and dependent on their knowledge and skills, eschewed the rich imperial language in which Darwin depicted evolving life. Wallace thought spatially and described his theories in ways appropriate to the Welsh mapmaking enterprise from which he first learned about native habitats. He wrote with artless clarity. One searches in vain for conquering colonial imagery in his major theoretical essays between 1855 and 1864. Here "organic beings" are continually "peopling" the earth and making it a "theatre of life." New species evolve under changed "physical conditions" in "an unbroken and harmonious system." The faunas of "neighboring countries" testify to their geological past, showing that new species were "gradually introduced" as the regions became isolated. The arrival of "chance immigrants" is often followed by "natural extinction and renewal of species," and those organisms with "greater powers of dispersion" and "a greater plasticity of organization" have "extended themselves" over continents. The "regular and unceasing extinction of species, and their replacement by allied forms" is an "established fact," contingent in every case on the quantity and quality of available food . . . --James Moore, 2005. In David N. Livingstone & Charles W. J. Withers, eds., Geography and Revolution (University of Chicago Press): 121-122.
In The Malay Archipelago, Wallace's most popular and widely read book, the only "empire" is Austrian, "imperial" is a common species name, and only the Dutch, the Portuguese, and ants have "colonies." "Aborigines" are always human, "natives" are established residents (also marsupials in the Moluccas and flowers in the Himalayas), and people wage "war," "conquer," and "exterminate" one another (also the flying opossum). "Competition" too is a human prerogative, but no "invasion" crops up, nor any of its cognates. Districts may be "overrun" and indigenous populations "supplanted"; "inhabitants" and "enemies" of different species may "struggle" and "migrate." Yet Wallace is remarkably consistent--startlingly so compared to Darwin in the Origin of Species--in omitting to cast living organisms in imperial Britain's image. . . . James Moore, 2005. In David N. Livingstone & Charles W. J. Withers, eds., Geography and Revolution (University of Chicago Press): 124.
What role, if any, natural selection itself plays in reproductive isolation in the earliest stages of speciation when populations first begin to diverge has been a contentious issue since the late 19th century when Alfred Russel Wallace (1889) advocated the idea that the low fitness of hybrids should select for reproductive isolation between diverging populations. This selective mechanism has been called the Wallace effect or (more frequently) reinforcement. Support for reinforcement waxed and waned throughout the 20th century, enjoying increasing popularity after Dobzhansky elaborated the theory in the 1940s, going out of favor in the 1980s when theory discounted it, only to recover more recently when new theoretical models turned in its favour. Prezygotic isolating mechanisms have now been investigated in over 100 mathematical models, firmly establishing a theoretical basis for the evolution of reinforcement under the right conditions . . . --J. Silvertown et al., 2005. Heredity 95: 198.
Accordingly, we summarize four macroevolutionary patterns exhibited by venomous snake mimicry as the Savage-Wallace Effects: First, mimicry is more likely among closely related organisms that share a common body plan (e.g., among lepidopterans, among fishes, and thus their specific similarities (e.g., wing color patterns in butterflies) are representative of evolutionary parallelism . . . Second, mimicry spanning distantly related organisms, representative of evolutionary convergence, is more likely to involve planarians, myriapods, fishes, snakes, and other groups with relatively simple body forms . . . Third, among vertebrates, snake mimicry is unusually widespread because of (1) and (2), and because venomous species can severely injure or kill predators . . . Fourth, the origin of noxious attributes can markedly increase diversity within a clade beyond that encompassed by unpalatable species; dangerous models thereby make otherwise "unprotected niches" possible for harmless relatives, and even for lifestyles not used by the models themselves . . . --Harry W. Greene & Roy McDiarmid, 2005. In Maureen Donnelly et al., eds., Ecology and Evolution in the Tropics: A Herpetological Perspective (University of Chicago Press): 205-206.
Proposed originally by A. R. Wallace in the mid 19th century (Wallace 1852), the riverine barrier hypothesis states that major Amazonian rivers significantly reduce or prevent gene flow between populations inhabiting opposite river banks, hence promoting speciation. In a phylogeographic framework, the main prediction of the riverine barrier hypothesis is that sister intraspecific clades and species will exist across major rivers rather than within major Amazonian interfluves; furthermore, phylogeographic and population genetics data can distinguish between primary divergence across rivers (predicted by the riverine barrier hypothesis) versus secondary contact along rivers between nonsister taxa that diversified elsewhere. A second prediction of the riverine barrier hypothesis comes from the observation that the upper reaches of all major Amazonian rivers are narrower than the lower reaches; therefore, a gradual reduction of the "river-barrier effect" is expected to take place from the lower to the upper part of the river's course . . . --Alexandre Aleixo, June 2004. Evolution 58(6): 1303.
. . . the possibility that at least some instances of similarity among distasteful species may have evolved through selection to deceive predators has been frequently raised. Even before the publication of the theory of Mullerian mimicry, Wallace (1871) proposed that "distasteful secretion is not produced alike by all members of the family and that where it is deficient, protective imitation comes into play" . . . -- Thomas N. Sherratt, Michael P. Speed & Graeme D. Ruxton, May 2004. Journal of Theoretical Biology 228: 217-218.
Alfred Russel Wallace was the first to suggest that aging and death might be evolved traits. In the 1860s, he suggested that individuals are programmed to die so that they do not compete with their offspring. His idea had some early support, notably from the influential German biologist August Weismann, but by the 1920s it had been dismissed as a "perverse extension of the theory of natural selection". By the middle of the last century, the focus of evolutionary theory on senescence had shifted to other theories such as mutation accumulation and antagonistic prejotropy . . . Recent discoveries in nematodes, insects, and mammals of genes that, when mutated, increase life span, have increased interest in the evolution of aging. In this article, I show that within a spatially structured population, programmed death does evolve and suggest that it is time to reconsider the "perverse" theories of Wallace and Weismann . . . --Justin Travis, April 2004. Journal of Gerontology A: Biological Sciences 59(4): 301.
Conspicuous and simple color patterns (often red, yellow, or white in combination with black) are common among animals that are distasteful, noxious, or otherwise potentially dangerous to their predators ( . . . Wallace, 1867). The common view is that conspicuousness has evolved because it constitutes a strong visual signal that is easy for receiving predators to detect, learn, and associate with unpalatability. However, conspicuous coloration may provide protection against predators even if the prey lacks chemical or structural defense mechanisms, because coloration may elicit spontaneous avoidance behaviors in naive predators. It has been suggested that bilateral asymmetry also may play a role in communication, but this has been studied primarily within the context of mate choice . . . --Anders Forsman & Joakim Herrström, January-February 2004. Behavioral Ecology 15(1): 141.
Although we have many species from most of the major species groups and subgroups related to D. melanogaster in our analysis, speciation patterns for independent species groups and subgroups need to be examined with a number of genes to generalize these inferences. Nevertheless, if the observed correspondence between the time of species divergences and paleoclimate changes is true, it supports Wallace's hypothesis for a rapid species change resulting from climatic change (Wallace 1870a, b). In the present case, the factor is postulated to be climatic cooling in the Cenozoic. A major consequence of this cooling was an extensive increase in aridification in the middle to low latitude regions, which lead to expansions of savannas and grasslands as well as the fragmentation of forests that were primary habitats of ancestral fruit fly species and populations. The adaptation to the newly arisen dry environment and the allopatry caused by the forest fragmentation are potential causes for stimulating fruit fly speciation. The former adaptation is supported by the distribution patterns of D. teissieri and D. yakuba, which are adapted to forests and savannas, respectively . . . --Koichiro Tamura, Sankar Subranmanian & Sudhir Sumar, January 2004. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21(1): 42.
For Wallace, the mind overarched natural selection. He believed there was a more daring, vertical movement that boosts life toward higher levels of complexity and consciousness. After all, if evolution were merely a matter of survival by adaptation, we might still be a planet of hearty bacteria. Those bacteria would have their history, an eons-long series of variations and adaptations, all responsive to selection, but without movement toward greater complexity. For that matter, if complexity beyond the unicellular level were rare and episodic, coming and going over the eons, we would still have evolution as Darwin explained it. But in the only example we have of evolving life--our own Earth--we see something more dramatic. We see a steady undeterred thrust toward a net gain in complexity. The microbes continue, but life has branched out into an amazing array of new species. It has been building itself up into ever more delicate, sentient forms. To ignore that fact would be to ignore the defining feature of evolution. . . . --Theodore Roszak, 2004. In David Rothenburg & Wandee J. Pryor, eds., Writing the Future: Progress and Evolution (MIT Press): 3-4.
Steven Pinker (How the Mind Works) and Daniel Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea) speak for mainstream evolutionary theory when they insist that the mind was built up incrementally by way of small, selective advantages in the same way as a bird's wing. They see the growth of intelligence as wholly a matter of problem solving and toolmaking--practical talents to which natural selection easily applies. They simply ignore Wallace's dilemma, offering no reason why the mind should ever have developed beyond simple counting, toolmaking, and enough verbal ability to coordinate a hunting expedition . . . --Theodore Roszak, 2004. In David Rothenburg & Wandee J. Pryor, eds., Writing the Future: Progress and Evolution (MIT Press): 5.
One could argue that males can survive better by being smaller and more cryptic than females. The importance of predation to the evolution of sexual dimorphism was first stressed by Wallace (1889), who suggested that crypsis in females is favoured because bright colours potentially attract nest predators. Recent comparative studies, such as that undertaken by Martin & Badyaev (1996), seem to confirm this point. In tinamous, reversed sexual roles and predation risks incurred by incubating males may explain why they are less colourful than their conspecific females. Small size and cryptic coloration are probably complementary strategies to avoid predators . . . --P. L. Tubaro & S. Bertelli, November 2003. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 80(3): 526.
To understand why small monitor species have radiated so dramatically through Australia, New Guinea, and their adjacent islands, but not elsewhere, we examined the possible role of Wallace's Line . . . In contrast to its influence on the mammals, Wallace's Line is not a barrier to monitors--or is it? That depends on the adult size of the species . . . Large monitor species (in which adults are greater than four feet long) are just as diverse on lands east of Wallace's Line as they are to the west, or for that matter in mainland Asia and Africa. Small monitor species, however, occur only to the east of the line . . . --Samuel S. Sweet & Eric R. Pianka, November 2003. Natural History 112(9): 44.
It has long been recognized that prey that possess significant defenses against predators tend to be conspicuous in some way (Wallace 1867; Darwin 1871; Poulton 1890). The contemporary explanation for this phenomenon, termed "aposematism" (Poulton 1890), is that there is "something special" about the educational properties of conspicuous traits as a signal of defense. For example, it has been repeatedly shown that predators learn to avoid unpalatable prey more quickly when they are conspicuous than when they are cryptic. This theory for the evolution of aposematism is plausible, but there is an important caveat. Whatever the underlying cause of aposematism, it is likely that predators would evolve an enhanced psychological predisposition to learn to avoid conspicuous prey precisely because such prey tend to be defended . . . --Thomas N. Sherratt & Christopher D. Beatty, October 2003. The American Naturalist 162(4): 377.
'The Darwinian theory is wrong because random variations tend to worsen performance'. Thus wrote Fred Hoyle in his famous book 'The intelligent universe'. Hoyle pointed out three important things in this book. First, that the idea of natural selection had been around for several decades before Darwin wrote The Origin. Secondly, that it was Wallace's clear letter of 1858 that really clarified Darwin's mind on the matter. Thirdly, and more important, natural selection as conceived by Darwin and Wallace just won't work mathematically. The odds are stacked hugely against random change producing even one new protein . . . --Anthony K. Campbell, July 2003. Astrophysics and Space Science 285(2): 571.
With respect to the theory of sexual selection, Darwin (1859, 1872) developed this novel concept but did not describe the function of this behaviour (for instance, the role of the male peacock's tale). As Dawkins has pointed out, it was Wallace who speculated that a male with brightly coloured tail feathers is showing that he is a high-quality individual. Subsequent studies have shown that this idea is supported by experimental evidence. Hence, with respect to the second mode of selection in nature, Wallace developed the concept originally proposed by Darwin (1859, 1872) and did draw the correct conclusions . . . --U. Kutschera, 1 May 2003. Theory in Biosciences 122(4): 357-358.
Why do we believe Wallace when he writes about evolution yet ignore him when he turns to spiritualism? Part of the reason is the context in which we receive his writings today. Spiritualism is now out of fashion, hoaxes have been exposed, and there is no longer a social context for the idea of spiritualism. The experiments, while repeatable in Wallace's day, are no longer repeatable, and thus they fail one of the hallmarks of the scientific method. But they were repeatable then! When one reads Wallace's works, one is struck by how he acted with complete warrant in exploring spiritualism scientifically. As Kuhn has demonstrated, Wallace was operating under the social constructs of his day . . . --Steven L. Peck, March 2003. Zygon 38(1): 11.
As we shall show, the concept of the diorama emerged from the construction of biogeographical zones. Moreover, the concept of biogeographical zones not only triggered the vision of the diorama as its "musee imaginaire" but, from the very beginning, theorizing on biogeographical zones was captured by visual means such as maps and illustrations. These images had a strong impact on the emergence of dioramic displays by providing two-dimensional forerunners for what were later implemented as three-dimensional museum installations. As we show in this paper, the new mode of illustration introduced by Wallace in 1876 formed a crucial influence. In The Geographical Distribution of Animals Wallace elected to illustrate different biogeographical zones by the simultaneous display of animals from different taxa against an ecologically appropriate background. By and large, each animal was itself in some way unique to its zone and could potentially have been used as a surrogate for the zone . . . --Julia Voss & Sahotra Sarkar, February 2003. Philosophy & Geography 6(1): 61.
Wallace insisted that none of these suggestions went to the heart of the problem. None of these people had suggested anything more than some 'force'--but force is a cause of motion, not a cause of organization. There must be something more than merely a force. There must be some agency that guides and coordinates the process which builds up that infinitely complex machine, the living organism. Wallace thought of the cell as being not only self-repairing, but also self-renewing, self-multiplying, self-adapting to its ever-changing environment, so as to be, potentially, everlasting . . . --Roger Steer, 2003. In his Letter to an Influential Atheist (Authentic Lifestyle): 27.
The co-inventor of evolutionary theory, Alfred Russel Wallace, was aware of the significance of Darwin's views. In his book, Darwinism, (originally published in 1890) Wallace took pains to distance himself from Darwin on the question of human capacities. He pointed to the mistake that someone might make by conjecturing that all geological changes are due to factors such as flooding, volcanic activity, the action of the wind and the sun, and so on while overlooking the special contribution made by glaciation. Glaciation is an important cause of change, but is radically different from the other causes of geological change. By analogy, Wallace argues, "Because man's physical structure has been developed from an animal form by natural selection, it does not necessarily follow that his mental nature . . . has been developed by the same causes only (Wallace 1897: xx)." Our mental capacities and our morality, Wallace suggests, may be due to something quite different from natural selection . . . --Andrew Brennan, 2003. Worldviews 7(3): 276-277.
In the second edition of Primitive Culture, Tylor's doubts about psychic phenomena were suppressed and Spiritualism roundly denounced as a survival of animistic beliefs (Tylor 1873). Yet, even the formulations used in Primitive Culture betray an ambivalence within its scheme of mental evolution that seems fundamental to contemporary scientific politics. Tylor felt forced to class modern Spiritualism with "primitive" animism--the kind of arbitrary classification that Wallace was up against in his critique of Primitive Culture and in his earliest writings on botany. But Tylor also had to acknowledge that Spiritualism was not just a survival but an extraordinary revival of animism. He even went as far as to recognize the anomalous status of Spiritualism within his progressionist scheme, because the former "is a truly remarkable case of degeneration" (1873), the possibility of which Primitive Culture was originally intended to argue out of existence . . . --Peter Pels, 2003. In Birgit Meyer & Peter Pels, eds., Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revolution and Concealment (Stanford Univ. Press): 258.
. . . In Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, the argument about perception was developed after Wallace denounced the theoretical fallacy of assuming that because Spiritualist phenomena ran counter to our knowledge of the laws of nature, they cannot exist. He argued that the physical phenomena that occur during a seance, can only be explained by presuming invisible intelligences, which was only "another and more striking illustration than any we have yet received of how small a portion of the great cosmos our senses give us cognisance" (1874). He compared the force exerted by these intelligences with light, heat, electricity, and magnetism (ala "modes of motion" of a space-filling "ether") to show how these "diffuse and subtle" forms of matter can act upon "ponderable bodies" and become known to us only by their effects. The fact that we do not know this higher sense is no argument, Wallace wrote, because likewise the "faculty of vision" would be "inconceivable" to a race of blind men. "It is possible and even probably that there may be modes of sensation as superior to all ours as is sight to that of touch and hearing" (1874). The subject of divination, in particular, allowed Wallace to elaborate on this? The clairvoyance that is at the basis of divination led him to suppose a "new sense" that amounts to "a kind of rudimentary perception, which can only get at the truth by degrees." . . . --Peter Pels, 2003. In Birgit Meyer & Peter Pels, eds., Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revolution and Concealment (Stanford Univ. Press): 262.
. . . The lesson seems to be: if you think hard about species origins, then it does not matter how you travel, you will reach the theory of natural selection in the end. On closer inspection, however, the Wallace case offers at least a few openings to those sceptical about the independence of the theory from its history. One move would be to deny that Wallace did, in fact, 'co-discover' the theory of natural selection. Rather, he came up with a theory quite different from Darwin's, and Darwin's overreaction in 1858 has misled historians ever since . . . --Gregory Radick, 2003. In Jonathan Hodge & Gregory Radick, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (Cambridge Univ. Press): 150.
Three features of Wallace's account of the evolution of human mind and morals stand out. First, he conceived the selective environment to be other proto-human groups--which would have an accelerating effect on the evolutionary process, since social environments would rapidly change through responsive competition. Second, he proposed that selection worked on the group, rather than the individual--which allowed him to explain the rise of altruistic behaviour, that is, behaviour perhaps harmful to the individual but beneficial to the group. In his original essay on the transmutation of species (1858), Wallace conceived of the struggle for existence as occurring among varieties instead of individuals. He continued to think in such group terms when considering the evolution of moral behaviour. Finally, in a note to the published version of his talk to the Anthropological Society, he mentioned that he was inspired to develop his thesis by reading Herbert Spencer's Social Statics. Spencer's own early brand of socialism had pulled Wallace to his side. In Social Statics, (1851), Spencer had envisioned a gradual and continual adjustment of human beings to the requirements of civil society, with individuals accommodating themselves to the needs of their fellows, so that eventually a classless society would emerge in which the greatest happiness for the greatest number would be realised. Spencer assumed that the inheritance of useful habits would be the means by which such evolutionary progress would occur, while Wallace believed natural selection to be the agent of that progress . . . --Robert J. Richards, 2003. In Jonathan Hodge & Gregory Radick, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (Cambridge Univ. Press): 102-103.
On the basis of personal experiments and reliable reports from other scientists, Wallace concluded that the universe is populated with a hierarchy of spirit beings, some of whom are in contact with the human population on earth, usually through mediums. According to Wallace, the spirit beings lower in the hierarchy, acting through mediums, were responsible for a variety of paranormal phenomena, including clairvoyance, miraculous healings, communications from the dead, apparitions, materializations of physical objects, levitations, etc. More powerful spirit beings may have played a role in the process of evolution, guiding it in certain directions . . . --Michael A. Cremo, 2003. In his Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory. (Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing Inc.): 102.
. . . Hume appealed to uniform human experience in his refutation of miracles. For example, Hume observed "it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age of any country" Wallace noted two flaws in this argument. First, the appeal to uniform human experience, granting the truly uniform nature of the experience, insures that no really new fact could ever be established. Second, Wallace questioned the veracity of Hume's version of uniform human experience. "Reputed miracles abound in all periods of history," wrote Wallace (1896, p. 8). And they continued up to the present, thus nullifying Hume's assumption. . . --Michael A. Cremo, 2003. In his Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory. (Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing Inc.): 116.
. . . The space-filling ether of nineteenth century physics is no longer with us. But there are modern scientific concepts that would allow Wallace's basic system to operate. According to deterministic chaos theorists, immeasurably small random perturbances of matter can rapidly propagate into large-scale effects that are not easily predictable. Scientists sometimes give the example of a Caribbean butterfly that by its wings sets off motions of air molecules. These movements might eventually amplify to steer a hurricane from open sea into the American coast. If the butterfly had flapped its wings slightly differently, the hurricane might not have hit land. According to this idea, Wallace's spirit beings might make infinitesimal adjustments on the subatomic level that would quickly propagate into observable spiritualist effects. One might also propose that they are somehow capable of manipulating the curvature of Einstein's space-time continuum. They could thus produce gravitational effects, for gravity is said to be the result of curvature in the continuum. Or one might propose that the spirit beings induce slight changes in the quantum mechanical vacuum, which in some ways resembles an ether. Of course, this approach is limiting, and rather than straining to find ways to explain spiritualist phenomena in conformity with currently accepted physical laws, it may make more sense to come up with a new theoretical system that more naturally incorporates both the normal and paranormal phenomena . . . --Michael A. Cremo, 2003. In his Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory. (Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing Inc.): 128.
. . . Wallace favored the latter course, but his system has certain puzzling features. Although a dualist, he does not appear to accept the existence of individual conscious entities before their earthly embodiment. According to Wallace, there is an original spiritual mind from which matter is generated. Individual spiritual minds, associated with spiritual bodies (souls), are only developed from and in material bodies, as they come into existence (Wallace 1885; in Smith 1991, p. 100). After death, the individual minds, as above stated, go to "the first grade of spirit life," where they experience progress or the lack of it based on their earthly habits. But if individual spirit souls can exist after earthly embodiment, why not before? And why is there any need at all for earthly embodiment, which is not an altogether pleasant experience? Why not skip that and go directly to the highest grade of spiritual life? . . . --Michael A. Cremo, 2003. In his Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory. (Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing Inc.): 129.
. . . Here is another problem with Wallace's system. In his works, Wallace details reports of varied spiritualistic phenomena, such as levitation, apparitions, and clairvoyance, from his own time and throughout history. But he ignores reports of transmigration of souls, which occur widely in almost all times and places. The reports of transmigration are just as credible as any other category of evidence he considers. The existence of this phenomena requires, however, certain modifications in Wallace's system. At death, souls would pass not necessarily into the first phase of spiritual existence but perhaps into new material bodies. According to religious systems that incorporate transmigration, such as the Vedic system, some souls, because of their strong attachment to their last embodiment, do not attain new material bodies, but remain for some time as ghosts. This actually fits in quite well with the observations of Wallace and other spiritualists, who found that the spirits they contacted often desired to communicate with living friends and relatives . . . --Michael A. Cremo, 2003. In his Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory. (Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing Inc.): 129.
Instead of unthinkingly placing English society at the top of the evolutionary tree, he argued that the evolutionary process had gone awry. In Wallace's hands evolutionary theory ceased to act as a rationalization of what was and became a promise of what could be. The key here was to hold up so-called savage societies as occasionally more civilized and more advanced than the West. Thus towards the end of his popular travel book The Malay Archipelago (1869), Wallace favourably contrasted primitive morality with the 'social barbarism' of Victorian England. If a savage society could attain a higher level of morality, then something must have disturbed England's evolutionary progression. The villain was laissez-faire individualism. Human evolution--the development of man's moral and intellectual faculties--depended upon the extent to which man was exempted from an individualist, physical struggle. Yet Victorian society celebrated individualism . . . --David A. Stack, 2003. In his The First Darwinian Left: Socialism and Darwinism 1859-1914 (New Clarion Press): 28.
Historians of science have raised the suggestion that Wallace's version of natural selection was not quite so Darwinian as Darwin himself believed. Wallace persistently used the word 'variety' as the level of entity at which natural selection acts. You heard an example in the long passage I have just read out. And some have suggested that Wallace, unlike Darwin who clearly saw selection as choosing among individuals, was proposing what modern theorists rightly denigrate as 'group selection'. This would be true if, by 'varieties', Wallace meant geographically separated groups or races of individuals. At first I wondered about this myself. But I believe a careful reading of Wallace's paper rules it out. I think that by 'variety' Wallace meant what we would nowadays call 'genetic type', even what a modern writer might mean by a gene. I think that, to Wallace in this paper, variety meant not local race of eagles, for example, but 'that set of individual eagles whose talons were hereditarily sharper than usual.' . . . --Richard Dawkins, October 2002. The Linnean 18(4): 20.
. . . Modern Wallaceans accept that peacocks' tails and similar bright organs are advertisements to females. But they want the males to be advertising genuine quality. A male with bright coloured tail feathers is showing that he is a high quality male . . . The late W. D. Hamilton, of Oxford University, was a prime example of a Wallacean in this sense. He believed that sexually selected ornaments were badges of good health, selected for their capacity to advertise the health of a male--bad health as well as good. One way to express Hamilton's Wallacean idea is to say that selection favours females who become skilled veterinary diagnosticians. At the same time, selection favours males who make it easy for them by, in effect, growing the equivalent of conspicuous thermometers and blood-pressure metres. The long tail of a Bird of Paradise, for Hamilton, is an adaptation to make it easy for females to diagnose the male's health, good or bad. An example of a good general diagnostic is a susceptibility to diarrhoea. A long dirty tail is a give-away of ill-health. A long clean tail is the opposite. The longer the tail, the more unmistakeable the badge of health, whether good health or poor . . . --Richard Dawkins, October 2002. The Linnean 18(4): 22-23.
. . . A significant positive correlation between the proportion of range area above 100 m and total range size for each species is used to suggest that past sea-level rises may explain smaller range sizes in low-lying regions and that riverine barriers have been important in shaping the current distribution of C. cleonus group species . . . Unfortunately, it is not clear exactly how important rivers have been or continue to be in the current distribution of C. cleonus group species because some of the central and lower Amazonian material is historical and the label data probably generalized; in such cases, uncertainty remains as to which bank specimens were really collected from, especially with the possibility of subsequent shifts in river course. Having said this, several lines of evidence do suggest that rivers have been influential in shaping the current distributions of C. cleonus group species . . . --Jason P. W. Hall & Donald J. Harvey, July 2002. Evolution 56(7): 1489, 1493-1494.
Some cosmologists, including Alfred Russel Wallace, Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies, have formed the opinion that, in the words of Fred Hoyle, "the universe is a put-up job". They are expressing their marvel that the values of its constants and the forms of its laws are just those which allow such phenomena as the formation of planets, complex chemistry, life and intelligence. Some of them--including Paul Davies--go further than this. They argue that the laws of the universe were somehow legislated with purpose so that planets, chemistry and life could develop . . . Wallace, Hoyle, Dyson and others have made the point that even slight changes in some values of fundamental or cosmological constants, or even in the laws of physics themselves, would imply a universe in which life as we know it would not exist. Here are a few examples: If the Universe were much less dense, then stars and planets might not form. If the universe were much more dense, then it would have stopped expanding and contracted back into a hot big crunch long ago, possibly before any supernovae had had time to generate the elements needed for life. What if the laws of physics were different? If the strong nuclear force were much weaker than it is, then the electrostatic repulsion between protons would prevent the formation of large nuclei--hydrogen might be the only element. If gravity were different, or if the geometry of space-time were different, then stars might not form or planets might not have stable orbits . . . --Joe Wolfe, http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/danish.html (accessed 3 March 2002).
The check that 'human nature' placed upon hopes of social improvement is illustrated by Malthusianism. This was popularly conceived of as an argument about the limits human nature--in particular the impulse to procreation--placed upon progress. Thus the transformation sought by Owen in social relations was predicated upon the malleability and educability of the individual. Human nature can be improved beyond the limits set by present-day social relations, and education and environmental reform both play a role in this. Did these ideas influence Wallace's views on nature? In one important respect they did. Wallace's views on instinct and its role in animal and human behaviour are different from those of Darwin and contradict much of what passed for Darwinian psychology after the publication of the Origin. When Wallace talks about instinct in nature, whilst not denying its existence, he tends to discount the role of preformed, inherited behaviour and to talk up the notion of learning. Moreover, he returns throughout his life to the same proposition: the role of instinctive behaviour is small, that of learning relatively greater . . . --Greta Jones, March 2002. British Journal for the History of Science 35(1): 81.
. . . Wallace saw many instances of mismatch between existing faculties and the environment. The natural world, like the social, was a site of dissonance between wants and the environment. The wants were relatively fixed points--the need for food and so on--but the behavioural responses to these were malleable. He noted a species of bird which in Africa and India 'eat only insects' whilst those in South America 'in great measure live upon fruits which they capture on the wing as they do insects. There is no difference in their structure but being in different countries surrounded by different circumstances they are led to adopt different habits'. In downgrading instinct Wallace introduced the idea there was always space for change, a potential for specialization or variability in behaviour even among individuals from the same species. Nature was not filled up with all that was possible for its full exploitation. The potential spaces in it were not necessarily occupied nor all the forms of behaviour found in natural organisms perfectly matched to their environment. Wallace constantly repeated this. In the case of the anatomy of birds wants and habits were limited by their structure, not structure by wants and habits, but even with the same structure behaviour differed. There is always room for modification and change. This contributes to the unsettled and evolving natural world . . . --Greta Jones, March 2002. British Journal for the History of Science 35(1): 83.
. . .The difference in approach between Darwin's and Wallace's views on population is discernible in their respective contributions to the Linnean Society in 1858. Darwin introduces Malthus almost immediately and proceeds to litter his text with phrases and analogies from the Essay on Population. For Darwin, nature at war is 'the doctrine of Malthus applied in most cases with tenfold force'. Along with the struggle for mates introduced in his closing paragraphs, death is a major selective factor and death is the consequence of this 'enormous multiplying power'. In contrast Wallace begins with the question of varieties and the instability of species. He does not mention Malthus in his paper but he does quickly turn to the 'struggle for existence' and to population. However, in Wallace's hands the force of population increase loses that all-encompassing ontological character it displays in Darwin's first public exegesis of his theory. Malthus is certainly present in Wallace's paper but it is Malthus read by an Owenite . . . --Greta Jones, March 2002. British Journal for the History of Science 35(1): 93.
Selection in favour of individuals that resemble the background has been invoked as the probable cause of cryptic coloration in prey species for over a century and there have been numerous demonstrations that predators preferentially feed on more conspicuous prey items. Our study is, however, the only work other than Endler's research on colour-pattern selection in guppies that has shown significant directional selection by predators over multiple successive prey generations when compared with a non-select control . . . --Alan B. Bond & Alan C. Kamil, February 2002. Nature 415(6872): 612.
The evolutionism of Darwin (1859) and Wallace (1875) is radically different from all previous lines of thought in that it uses the notion of contingency applied to living beings. Francois Jacob writing about this issue stated: "with the theory of evolution, as with statistical thermodynamics, the notion of contingency became established in the very heart of nature. Since Newton (1934), physics had been based on a rigid determinism, which extended to all sciences. Evolutionary theory and statistical thermodynamics completely transformed the way of looking at nature, mainly because they brought together and gave the same status of related and measurable quantities to order and chance--two concepts which until then had been incompatible." . . . --Bernardo Dubvrovsky, January 2002. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry 26(1): 2.
The theories he worked out during and after his travels in the East Indies dwelled essentially on spatial relationships, the reason to consider Wallace as being, fundamentally, a geographer. Consequently, geographical information was instrumental for Wallace both for his biogeographical as well as evolutionary contributions to biology. In several seminal papers and books he developed innovations in the historical reconstructions of faunas and, thus, implemented zoological geography as a biological discipline within the framework of evolutionary theory. It is, as Smith correctly stated, usually little appreciated how strongly natural processes are constrained by the necessity of having to take place in a three-dimensional space, and Wallace's skill at spatial analysis is best illustrated by his contribution to the biogeography of the Australasian region . . . --Matthias Glaubrecht, 2002. Verhandlungen zur Geschichte und Theorie der Biologie 9(2): 265.
From Darwin's publication of Origin of Species until Wallace's publication of his autobiography in 1905, Wallace was perhaps the most influential critic of the idea that the bright coloration of animals could be the outcome of female mate choice. Wallace saw no reason to invoke what to him was an unsubstantiated assumption that females of non-human animals were capable of and inclined to discriminate among males based on the quality of their ornaments (Wallace 1878, 1889). Instead, Wallace searched for explanations of colorful plumage that would allow such traits to be understood as utilitarian, not ornamental and extravagant. In his studies of bird coloration, Wallace did not focus exclusively or even primarily on gaudy plumages. Rather Wallace focused much of his research on the subtle differences among species and individuals in explicitly non-ornamental traits like the buff, brown, gray, and green plumage of birds (Wallace 1878, 1889) . . . --Geoffrey E. Hill, 2002. In his A Red Bird in a Brown Bag: The Function and Evolution of Colorful Plumage in the House Finch (Oxford University Press): 7.
. . . Far more convincingly than Darwin, Wallace showed how most plumage coloration supported the theory of evolution by natural selection. Most species, most of the time, are colored in ways that appear to enhance their survival and fecundity. Wallace provided an explanation for sexual dichromatism and drab female plumage that stands today as a triumph of the power of the comparative method in addressing evolutionary questions. Through his knowledge of the nesting biology of birds, Wallace showed that species with exposed nests in which the female alone incubates almost invariably have drab female plumage whether the male is colorful or not. Retesting and confirmation of this idea have only lately occurred. Wallace also was the first to set forth the idea that colorful plumage functions as a signal of species recognition. This became the most widespread explanation for colorful plumage for over seventy years, and it remains a too-often-ignored hypothesis in modern treatments of plumage coloration. Wallace also foreshadowed the now popular and well-supported idea that ornamental plumage could serve as a reliable signal of condition in his discussions of vital energy (Wallace 1878, 1889) . . . --Geoffrey E. Hill, 2002. In his A Red Bird in a Brown Bag: The Function and Evolution of Colorful Plumage in the House Finch (Oxford University Press): 10.
Wallace never seems to have suffered from the abstract doctrine of Philosophical Necessity. Charting his intellectual progress toward science, he notes that Robert Owen provided his introduction to "advanced views." Owen's "fundamental principle, on which all his teaching and all his practice were founded, was that the character of every individual is formed for and not by himself, first by heredity . . . and second by environment." Here, as with Martineau, Mill, Galton, and Darwin, philosophy intersects moral vocation, for this view requires restructuring the moral and legal system, which is based on the view that "all men could be good if they liked." In a determinist system, people cannot be "deterred from future aggression" unless the conditions in which they develop are changed. Hence Owen's "successful" New Lanark. For Wallace, implicitly, the vocation of science and, one might hazard, the nature of his theory, grow from this insight into hereditary and environmental determinism . . . --George Levine, 2002. In his Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England (University of Chicago Press): 110.
. . . While Wallace defers to chance in amusing ways and exhibits a Darwinian modesty in relation to his career, he sees a pattern of happy accident that implies something other than mere material causation. For himself, he can argue that: "many of the conditions and circumstances that constitute our environment, though at the time they may seem unfortunate or even unjust, yet are often more truly beneficial than those which we should consider more favourable. Sometimes they only aid in the formation of character; sometimes they also lead to action which gives scope for the use of what might have been dormant or unused faculties (as, I think has occurred in my own case)." But often, he says, those circumstances are not favorable, and if they consistently lead to bad consequences, "the system of society" is at fault. Wallace's willingness to accept inconsistency, to refuse the totalizations of a system making, marks his autobiography and his scientific life, and surely was consistent with--either as cause or effect--his own strong leanings toward socialism . . . --George Levine, 2002. In his Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England (University of Chicago Press): 111.
Abstract: An annotated facsimile of those pages of Alfred Russel Wallace's notebook recording his consignments from the Malay Archipelago to his London agent, Samuel Stevens, is provided. Records of individual consignments are linked with the stages of Wallace's and Charles Allen's itineraries to which they relate and are amplified from data provided by Wallace elsewhere; wherever possible, dates and places of the despatch of consignments and of the dates of their receipt in London are noted; and the dates of material becoming available for study are established, chiefly from British Museum accessions registers. It is intended that this should provide readier access to scattered collection data and should in particular assist in determining what specimens may properly be regarded as types or syntypes of the many taxa described by numerous contemporary authors from Wallace's material . . . --Daniel B. Baker, December 2001. Zoologische Mededelingen 75(16-25): 251.
It was precisely this latter characteristic, and the way in which Wallace's radical positions intertwined--his faith that some kind of willpower or spirit, lying outside or beyond natural selection, was responsible for moral evolution in the human species; his rejection of the more crude, social Darwinian deductions from biological theory; and his attack on the wastage of nature caused by rampant industrialism--that make him a valuable exponent of both the potentialities and the limitations of evolutionism as a philosophy. I am particularly interested here, of course, in Wallace as a tropicalist, especially the concern he articulated for the despoliation of tropical nature, a theme that emerged in his mature consideration of his tropical experiences and which, though connected to the new evolutionary outlook, was not a necessary outcome of it (Darwin, for example, did not share Wallace's concerns about the consequences of tropical destruction). This is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of Wallace's multifaceted contributions (most histories of environmentalism make no mention of him). In this chapter, then, I approach Wallace as arguably the most interesting student of tropical nature in the second half of the nineteenth century, a writer of popular natural-history books who was also a philosopher of nature, someone whose evolving representations of tropical nature take us into the post-Humboldtian, evolutionary era, and into the beginnings of the ecological era properly speaking . . . --Nancy Leys Stepan, 2001. In her Picturing Tropical Nature (Cornell University Press): 59.
. . . It was in the tropics, especially the islands of the East Indies, that Wallace first became aware of the ambiguities of the human presence in nature, the fragility of the evolutionary balance and the threat posed to it by overweening domination for purposes of commerce and gain. In his mature writings, he expressed the ideas that nature had not, in fact, been created just for human appreciation or consumption; that plants, animals and human beings formed a network of mutual interdependence; and that it was Europeans' actions that had the most profoundly negative effects on nature and culture, effects which could not be repaired easily . . . --Nancy Leys Stepan, 2001. In her Picturing Tropical Nature (Cornell University Press): 80.
Wallace's Line, essentially based on information about birds and larger mammals, with later attempts to delimit the Oriental from the Australian realm, has had enormous heuristic value and may even have triggered much of the biogeographic research which has been carried out in the region. Even today, as exemplified by the conference from which this volume arose, interest in the Wallacean region persists and may even have increased. With the availability of new data in geology and new methods, in particular for phylogeny reconstruction and for the measurement of genetic distinctiveness, the area has become even more interesting for biogeographers . . . --W. R. Erdelen, 2001. In Ian Metcalfe et al., eds., Faunal and Floral Migrations and Evolution in SE Asia-Australia (A. A. Balkema Publishers): 129.
. . . there was undeniably an 'individualist' accent to Wallace's program of interventionist egalitarianism. Wallace was not a collectivist. His socialism was never an attraction to a great and organising state. "Socialism" was to Wallace 'the use by everyone of his faculties for the common good, and the voluntary organisation of labour for the equal benefit of all' (Wallace, 1905). The use of the word 'voluntary' in his definition of socialism is surely significant. Under Wallace's socialism industry would be run by enterprises composed of capital-owning workers. Land nationalisation would not amount to a system of state farms or agricultural collectives. Rather, the state would be the sole owner of land, and would rent out its land to a throng of individual tenants . . . --William Coleman, 2001. In John Laurent & John Nightingale, eds., Darwinism and Evolutionary Economics (Edward Elgar): 42.
. . . The previous sections have used the case of Alfred Russel Wallace to scrutinise the proposition that natural selection was a projection onto nature of a political economy apologetic for a dominant class interest. This proposition is just one manifestation of a general and familiar vision of science . . . Alfred Wallace's scientific achievement, we have argued, makes for a jarring disconfirmation of this theory. Rather than seeking to inscribe norms justifying the dominance of one class, one race, one genera, Wallace sought to overturn such conventional dominance: of the wealthy, of the white race and (we may add here) of men. And, rather than being 'organically connected' to science's ruling elite, few could be less connected than Wallace to the elite and its social formations . . . --William Coleman, 2001. In John Laurent & John Nightingale, eds., Darwinism and Evolutionary Economics (Edward Elgar): 44.
Our results find that Wallace's Line is supported by the data he collected in the field and suggest that Wallace's Line does indeed demarcate a major faunal break. These results are in keeping with modern geological evidence on the origins of the region, and hence with Wallace's original contention. Wallace's data conform with his suggestion that the modern distribution of species reflects the geological history of the land masses. Modern geological knowledge indicates that the islands west of Wallace's Line comprised the single land mass of Sundaland connected to mainland Asia until the Eocene. Similarly, many islands on the Sahul shelf were also connected to New Guinea/Australia. The central islands, however, have a far more complex and isolated history. Sulawesi, for example, seems to be an amalgam of a number of different islands with different biogeographic origins. Similarly, the northern Moluccan islands seem to have been very recent arrivals for the eastern Pacific Arc which may have had closer contact with Australia and New Guinea than their present location suggests . . . --D. Clode & R. O'Brien, 2001. In Ian Metcalfe et al., eds., Faunal and Floral Migrations and Evolution in SE Asia-Australia (A. A. Balkema Publishers): 118.
. . . With the complex geological history of this region increasingly being understood, we now stand a far better chance of assessing Wallace's real legacy--the extent to which species distributions are limited by underlying geological history. This is a far more interesting question than arguing over the placement of arbitrary and illustrative lines. Different taxonomic groups (with different histories and different dispersal abilities) will undoubtedly differ in the extent to which they adhere to different biogeographic boundaries (as foreshadowed in Wallace, 1877) including Wallace's Line. Such variations merely reflect our expanding knowledge of both the species and the effect their geographical history has had on them . . . --D. Clode & R. O'Brien, 2001. In Ian Metcalfe et al., eds., Faunal and Floral Migrations and Evolution in SE Asia-Australia (A. A. Balkema Publishers): 119.
The Amazonian tropical rainforest harbors a species diversity that is vastly disproportionate to its geographic area. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed to account for this, tending to emphasize aspects of the maintenance or origins of the megadiversity. The oldest such hypothesis has its roots in the works of Alfred Russel Wallace, who observed that the ranges of some closely related neotropical vertebrate species (primates, birds) abut at major rivers. Indeed, Wallace defined distinct areas within South America, bounded by major Amazonian rivers like the Negro, Madeira, and Amazon, which differed in species composition of communities. These and similar observations have prompted the suggestion that lowland Amazonian rivers, of which there are many, may function as effective barriers to the dispersal of organisms. This may have a variety of consequences for patterns of species diversity on the Amazonian landscape. First, major Amazonian rivers may have played a significant role in species generation by impeding gene flow between populations with the eventual evolution of sister species on opposite banks. Second the expansion of species from their centers of origin may be halted by the presence of large watercourses; therefore, they may be restricted to only one bank. Finally, compared with a species distributed across landscapes without barriers, the probability of subsequent recolonization of a species that has gone locally extinct on one bank will be lower because immigration from the opposite bank is less likely . . . All of these factors might be expected to accentuate differences in species composition of opposite-bank communities . . . --Claude Gascon et al., 5 December 2000. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97(25): 13672.
Whether the great rivers of Amazonia have something to do with species origins or are simply biogeographic sutures, the biotas of opposite banks ought to differ if the riverine barrier hypothesis is correct. Characteristically, in Wallace's monkey paper, he not only presented his data on primate distributions in relation to major rivers in the Amazon basin, but also suggested a testable, quantitative hypothesis: that the composition of species assemblages would differ in relation to the width of the river, the difference thus increasing from headwaters toward the mouth . . . --Robert K. Colwell, 5 December 2000. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97(25): 13470.
The part that natural selection plays in the origin of species has long been debated. It is easy to see that if two populations are kept separate--by mountains or ocean, for example--they will eventually become so different that they can no longer interbreed successfully. Their differences may have evolved by natural selection, but their reproductive isolation is merely a side effect of changes that emerged for other reasons. This view seems unsatisfactory to those who emphasize the positive aspect of selection in evolution. Both Alfred Russel Wallace and Theodosius Dobzhansky argued that natural selection would reinforce reproductive barriers between diverging populations. There has been little evidence, however, that selection has in fact contributed directly to the formation of new species (speciation) in this way. Reports by Higgie et al. and Hendry et al., on pages 519 and 516 of this issue, provide examples from fruit fly and sockeye salmon populations showing that selection can produce the kind of isolation that separates species in the wild, and moreover, that it can do so within a very short time (a dozen or so generations) . . . --Nick Barton, 20 October 2000. Science 290(5491): 462.
What is less explicable is why the differences between Wallace and Darwin over the origin of distributional patterns have been confounded. Apart from a single chapter in The Origin of Species, Darwin wrote little on biogeography, yet his views on the efficacy of dispersal dominated biogeographical theory until relatively recently. I think the answer lies in Wallace being too far ahead of his time. I have often wondered what Wallace would have thought about modern geological evidence concerning the origin of Indonesia, and I am convinced it would have given him the key to understanding the distributional patterns he described in Malay Archipelago. The problem, of course, was that this evidence was not available until a century later. Given the lack of credible alternative explanations and the pressure from Darwin to conform to accepted ideas, Wallace was unable to develop his own theory fully. Over time his original thoughts were lost and his name became associated with Darwin's idea of dispersal. A reappraisal of Wallace's work on its own terms seems long overdue and would be a fitting millennial tribute to an outstanding scientist . . . --B. Michaux, January 2000. Journal of Biogeography 27(1): 221-222.
. . . Florence Clemens was the first to show how Conrad made use of Wallace's work in his fiction. She demonstrated how, in Lord Jim, Conrad used Wallace's account of his visit to the Rajah of Goa as the basis of his description of Doramin's household; how he used Wallace's account of his friend, Mr. Mesman, in describing Stein; how he drew on Wallace's own experiences for his presentation of Stein's activities as a naturalist. She argued that Conrad used The Malay Archipelago, in particular, 'for backgrounds with which he was unfamiliar'. Conrad, for example, had never visited Bali or Timor: 'all the information which Dain Maroola of Almayer's Folly gave Nina Almayer about his country on Bali could have been gleaned' from Wallace; similarly, 'all that is told in Victory of the Timor scene and government' in the account of Morrison's experiences in Delli derives from Wallace also. The Malay Archipelago was acknowledged by Conrad as one of the sources for his Malay fiction . . . --Robert Hampson, 2000. In his Cross-Cultural Encounters in Joseph Conrad's Malay Fiction (Palgrave): 73.
The lowland forests of the Amazon Basin contain a disproportionately large fraction of global species diversity. A number of vicariant speciation mechanisms have been presented to explain this high diversity. These hypotheses share the idea that historical and geographically pervasive barriers to gene flow have facilitated speciation in allopatry across much of Amazonia, but obviously differ with respect to the identity, location and duration of these barriers. The oldest of these, the riverine barrier hypothesis, derives from observations of animal distributions made by Wallace (1849, 1876). It posits a role for major Amazonian water courses in impeding gene flow between populations on opposite banks. The predictions for this hypothesis include that (i) many recently evolved sister taxa occupy opposite banks of large rivers, (ii) levels of genetic differentiation between populations on opposite river banks increases with increasing river width and flow rate and (iii) taxa of the upland terra firme forest show higher levels of differentiation across rivers than taxa of the seasonally flooded varzea forests found adjacent to the river. This last prediction assumes that the strength of the barrier to gene flow is greater for exclusively terra firme species because it consists of both the river itself plus the varzea forests of both river banks . . . --S. C. Lougheed et al., September 1999. Proceedings of The Royal Society of London B 266: 1829.
. . .the "pan-selectionist" view that variation is potentially available in all directions from any given phyletic starting-point, and that selection determines which subset of variants prevails. The alternative is the "developmental constraint" view that many of the gaps we observe between different morphologies do not arise from the non-adaptiveness of the absent forms but rather from the difficulty of making them through an ontogenetic process. The pan-selectionist view can be traced back to Wallace (1870), who considered variation to be omnipresent and available in all phenotypic directions imaginable, apparently without even a quantitative bias in any direction. He refers to "Universal variability--small in amount but in every direction", and Mayo (1983) boldly states that "The major constraint on natural selection as an agent of change is natural selection as a stabilizing force", apparently relegating any kind of developmental constraint to a minor role at best . . . --Wallace Arthur & Malcolm Farrow, June 1999. Journal of Theoretical Biology 200: 183-184.
Under Wallace's scheme, the event that concerns Romanes--the initiation of the speciation process--already has taken place. Wallace deals with events subsequent to the process of reproductive isolation. The idea that the infertility he notes might relate to what Romanes proposed does not occur to Wallace. In a separate section of his book he describes physiological selection as "another form of infertility," and then proceeds to attack the theory . . . --Donald R. Forsdyke, Spring 1999. Queen's Quarterly 106(1): 121.
Wallace's first essay on the origin of the colour sense was published simultaneously with, but independently of, Gladstone's paper. He had presented a possible evolutionary route for animal colour vision, starting with perception of degrees of brightness, ending with perception of colours according to wave length. In his view, green and blue would have been the first colours to which the eye became specially adapted, in accord with their universal presence in foliage and sky, as well as their soothing influence. Reds, yellows and violets would follow, as present in small amounts, offering great contrast, and useful to animals hunting for food and mates. This essay was revised and republished a year later, with specific response to Gladstone (and through him, to Magnus and Geiger). 'These curious facts' wrote Wallace, with regard to Gladstone's Homeric data, 'can not, however, be held to prove so recent an origin for colour-sensations as they would at first sight appear to do'. He pictured brightly coloured structures as having evolved in response to an already present and well-developed ability of animals, especially birds, to see colour, long before the arrival of man. Wallace concluded that 'Man's perception of colour in the time of Homer was little if any inferior to what it is now . . . owing to a variety of causes, no precise nomenclature of colours had become established . . . --Elizabeth Henry Bellmer, 1 January 1999. Annals of Science 56(1): 38.
As the new century ripened and imperialist rivalries increased, Wallace became convinced that a vast civilizational crisis was at hand and that the very survival of the human species demanded the rapid overthrow of capitalism. A few months before his death in 1913, he wrote (The Revolt of Democracy), "There must be no further compromise, no mere talking. To allow the present state of things to continue is a crime against humanity." How ironic to recall his warnings today when billionaire arsonists have set almost the entirety of Wallace's Malay Archipelago ablaze with their greed . . . --Mike Davis, March 1998. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 9(1): 77.
Wallace's major contribution to the literature of reform is his corrosive criticism of nineteenth-century society, through which he offered a human vision of social reformation. He advocated recognizing racial equality, nationalizing land, giving women equal opportunity for education and employment, decreasing military expenditure, and saving the environment. His friend James Marchant wrote in Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (1916) that "his greatest ambition was to improve the cruel conditions under which thousands of his fellow-creatures suffered and died, and to make their lives sweeter and happier." . . . --Charles Blinderman, 1998. Alfred Russel Wallace. In Gary Kelly & Edd Applegate, eds., British Reform Writers, 1832-1914 (Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 190; Gale Research): 326-327.
. . . With other socialists Wallace believed that neither genetic endowment nor divine prescription was responsible for the behavior of men and women, that instead the prime agent of social discord was bad government. He argued that the state ought to provide equality of opportunity and that no one should get a head start through inheritance: "To secure equality of opportunity there must be no inequality of initial wealth. To allow one child to be born a millionaire and another a pauper is a crime against humanity." Andrew Carnegie would later share this view on the inheritance of wealth. Wallace further argued that the state ought to own and manage railways and pay the doctors. He envisioned a Ministry of Public Health, its doctors acting as servants of the state, that is, of people--and he added, perhaps mischievously, "they should be paid according as they keep people well and not ill." . . . --Charles Blinderman, 1998. Alfred Russel Wallace. In Gary Kelly & Edd Applegate, eds., British Reform Writers, 1832-1914 (Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 190; Gale Research): 330.
It is possible that the initial condition in the pheasant was plumage monomorphism, with the cryptic female-type plumage subsequently having evolved under natural selection from predators. In fact, this hypothesis, formerly defended by Wallace (1889), is generally applicable to those birds, like pheasants, with a polygynous mating system without male parental care, that nest on the ground in open habitats, and are sexually dimorphic in plumage throughout the year. Also, it has not yet been proven that maintaining a colourful and bright plumage is costly, nor that it is a handicap for survival . . . --Concha Mateos & Juan Carranza, November 1997. Animal Behaviour 54(5): 1211.
The approach taken by Gregorius for modelling and analyzing the population genetic basis of Wallace's theory of speciation will be extended to allow analysis of the opposite case, where speciation is prevented by the reinforcement of genetic coherence. In this approach, a mutant gene modifies the current mating preferences without implying any advantage or disadvantage in fitness (including mating success). The latter assumption is indispensable in order to avoid confusion of the secondary effects of mating systems on fitness with their primary recombinational effects. It also reduces the analytical problems resulting from having to disentangle effects of fitness and mating preference on the evolution of mating behaviour . . . --Wilfried Steiner & Hans-Rolf Gregorius, November 1997. BioSystems 43(2): 139.
In 1881 Wallace took the lead. He formed The Land Nationalization Society on his own lines, with himself as President. In Land Nationalization (1882) he laid out his program. The state was to assume title to all land. To meet a conservative debating ploy, he would compensate present landowners. However, he ingeniously minimized the amount in a manner that tells us he knew the nuts and bolts of his subject. Compensation was to be an annuity limited to the duration of lives in being. It was to be based only on the net income actually being derived from the land before nationalization--i.e. not from the highest and best use, and not from future higher uses. All men and women (Wallace, like Mill, was also a feminist) could bid to lease parcels from the state for actual use. In the socio-biological terms in which he thought, this would consummate the natural relation of man to nature. It would also let men alternate between industry and agriculture as Wallace, a loving gardener, himself did. Wallace's Land Nationalization was individualist, not collectivist. Individual lessees were to have secure tenure, and tenant-rights to improvements. Rents to the state would be used, not to engross the state, but to obviate taxes. These rents would be based on the assessed "inherent value" of land, dependent only on natural and social conditions. As a surveyor and a biogeographer, Wallace readily distinguished "inherent value" from man's improvements to land, which he saw as transitory. Tax assessors in most American states and other former English colonies distinguish land and improvements routinely today, and many did then, too, although in England itself the concept was somewhat novel . . . --Mason Gaffney, October 1997. American Journal of Economics & Sociology 56(4:): 613.
Wallace, on the other hand, explained evolution not in terms of competitive struggles between species and the environment, but in terms of the governor that regulates the speed of a steam engine by maintaining constancy in the angular velocity of a flywheel. As Bateson puts it, building on Wallace's idea, the job of evolution is to maintain the constancy of something--specifically, the survival of the entire system comprised of all species and the environment. Darwin, according to Bateson, focused on the wrong subject--the individual species--when in fact the real subject of evolution is the species plus environment. In fact, the species and the environment co-evolve, to use a term that is popular among management writers today. Moreover, if you add the remarkable findings reached in the past thirty years by biologist Lynn Margulis, this process of co-evolution sustains the total system through cooperative symbiotic relationships, not competitive knock-outs . . . --H. Thomas Johnson, 11 October 1997. Keynote Presentation, The Deming Institute Fall 1997 Meeting, Washington, D.C.
Perhaps the effect of Wallace's line most relevant to us is its possible role in a decisive step of human evolution. Paleontologists tend to stress Africa as the cradle of humanity, to view Cro-Magnon Europe as the site where late ice age human culture flowered, and to neglect Australia as a remote outpost occupied by supposedly primitive Aborigines. Human behavior took a Great Leap Forward sometime between 100,000 years ago, where there were still no signs of art or complex tools anywhere in the world, and the period around 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, when great art and complex tools began to abound in Europe. Paleontologists usually assume that this development began among humans in Africa or the Mideast, then spread to Europe and finally (in diluted form) to our poorer cousins in aboriginal Australia. But anatomically modern humans appeared in Australia before they did in Europe--probably by 60,000 years ago and possibly even earlier. To reach Australia, the protohumans who had reached Asia from Africa around one million years ago (as attested by the famous Java Man fossils) had to cross a dozen straits separating Australia from Asia. . . .Each next strait would have been a stimulus to improve our nascent watercraft technology; each new island, a stimulus to adapt to a new environment and to invent new technologies; each island's untapped rich resources, the basis for a new human population explosion . . . --Jared M. Diamond, August 1997. Discover 18(8): 83.
Wallace's writings of this period make free use of the contrast between 'savage' and 'civilized', he talks often of 'higher' and 'lower' races, and was clearly committed to a notion of long-run progressive change in organic evolution and in human history. Yet there is no easy or simple mapping of the higher and lower, civilized and savage onto the progressive evolutionary narrative. Social, moral and intellectual progress are differentiated from one another, and lack of harmony between them can be catastrophic in its consequences. The hierarchical ordering 'higher' and 'lower' is sometimes used by Wallace to refer to inherited differences between peoples, but is also sometimes used to denote levels of civilization, and to do so in ways which do not carry any obvious value connotation. The word 'civilization' carries a negative as often as a positive valuation in Wallace's writing. Whilst the civilized nations remain in a state of social and moral 'barbarism', uncivilized savages approach a 'perfect social state'. . . --Ted Benton, Spring 1997. Studies in Travel Writing No. 1: 109-110.
. . . It is here that we encounter the central intellectual and moral tension in Wallace's thought, a tension which was to bring about a growing gulf between his and Darwin's views on human origins and nature and which may, indeed, go some way towards explaining Wallace's later involvement in spiritualist activities. Wallace's radical political philosophy and his capacity to admire and respect the achievements, customs and social solidarity of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon and the Malay Archipelago were increasingly at odds with his version of evolutionary naturalism . . . --Ted Benton, Spring 1997. Studies in Travel Writing No. 1: 110.
It is not just Darwin's opponents who regard the analogy as evidence against the causal efficacy of selection. A. R. Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, addresses the analogy in his opening comments of the Darwin-Wallace paper of 1858. "One of the strongest arguments which have been adduced to prove the original and permanent distinctness of species is, that varieties produced in a state of domesticity are more or less unstable, and often have a tendency, if left to themselves, to return to the normal form of the parent species; and this instability is considered to be a distinctive peculiarity of all varieties." For Wallace, modification by artificial selection is limited and temporary, and therefore causally inefficacious in the production of new species. If natural and artificial selection were truly similar, then the analogy suggests that natural selection is incapable of forming new species. Consequently, Wallace argues against the analogy by emphasizing the differences between domestic breeding and nature. "It will be observed that this argument rests entirely on the assumption, that varieties occurring in a state of nature are in all respects analogous to or even identical with those of domestic animals . . . But it is the object of the present paper to show that this assumption is altogether false" (emphasis added). Wallace's vow to argue against the analogy is inexplicable unless he has embraced the view that artificial selection is inefficacious in the formation of new species. Surely Darwin was aware of Wallace's views, expressed so forcefully in the Darwin-Wallace paper, as he wrote the Origin . . . --Richard A. Richards, March 1997. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 28(1): 76-77.
. . . Darwin recognized some important distinction between domestic and natural varieties, and happily agrees with Wallace on the distinction. Wallace, in the preface to his Darwinism, likewise emphasizes his agreement with Darwin, describing his views as complementary. "I have endeavoured, by means of a series of diagrams, to exhibit to the eye the actual variations as they are found to exist in a sufficient number of species . . . It will be found that, throughout the work, I have frequently to appeal to these diagrams and the facts they illustrate, just as Darwin was accustomed to appeal to the facts of variation among dogs and pigeons" (emphasis added). Wallace certainly seems to regard himself as doing something very similar to what Darwin is doing. That would be surprising if he had thought Darwin to be making an analogical argument--given his earlier rejection of the argument. Wallace argues against the analogical argument by emphasizing the negative analogy between domestic breeding and nature. Unlike natural selection, artificial selection does not maintain fitness. Consequently, domestic varieties are unfit. Wallace makes this point in the 1858 Darwin-Wallace paper . . . --Richard A. Richards, March 1997. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 28(1): 81.
One reference point, however, must be marked if Wallace's future path--to the Malthusian moment and beyond--is to be mapped. He embarked on a scientific career less a naturalist than a surveyor, less a biologist than a biogeographer, less an evolutionist than an ethnographer. For seven formative years his job had been prescriptive economic geography. Parish upon parish, field upon field, he had set limits to human livelihoods, marking boundaries, drawing lines. In later years he would become an exemplary naturalist, but always boundaries and borders, habits and habitats, concerned him. Once he even likened the "System of Nature" to a "dissected map," the pieces of which could be assembled in a "mosaic." The picture is of a crowded tithe map, where field presses on field, niche upon niche, until "all gaps have been filled". Such was a surveyor's view of evolution . . . --James Moore, 1997. In Bernard Lightman, ed., Victorian Science in Context (University of Chicago Press): 304.
To validate his inclusion of plants formerly excluded from bedded-out gardens, Robinson turned to the writings of the late nineteenth-century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace collaborated with Darwin on his theory of evolution and published his own Contribution to the Theory of Natural Selection in 1870. Robinson was intrigued by Wallace's 1869 account of his extensive travels in the Amazon region and the Malay Archipelago, especially Wallace's statement that "during the twelve years spent amidst tropical vegetation, I have nothing comparable to the effect produced on our landscapes by Gorse, Broom, Heather, Wild Hyacinths, Hawthorn, and Buttercups." Wallace's nationalistic preference for English scenery reportedly led Robinson to plant such flowers as asters and heather, formerly considered too coarse for fashionable gardens . . . --Anne L. Helmreich, 1997, in Nature and Ideology; Natural Garden Design in the Twentieth Century (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection).
The principles regarding relations between organisms and their environment set forth by Wallace clearly informed Robinson's gardening practices. In an early essay, "On the Law which has regulated the introduction of new species," Wallace first developed his theory governing the distribution of organisms. His fourth stipulation--that "in countries of a similar climate, but separated by a wide sea of lofty mountains, the families, genera, and species of the one are often represented by closely allied families, genera and species peculiar to the other"--underlies Robinson's theory that plants from climates similar to England's could be naturalized in the wild garden . . . --Anne L. Helmreich, 1997, in Nature and Ideology; Natural Garden Design in the Twentieth Century (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection).
It is evident that Conrad read and assimilated Wallace's observations of the Malay natural environment. Wallace as anthropologist seems to have had an equivalent influence. In terms of religious practices, Wallace describes how 'the old juragan repeated some prayers' just before one of his more successful voyages; on the Patna voyage, the leading Arab recites a prayer in similar fashion as they cast off. In The Rescue, Lingard's dead lacar is 'wrapped up decently in a white sheet, according to Mohammedan usage', in a way highly reminiscent of Wallace's response to the death of one of his Malay men: 'As my men were all Mohammedans, I let them bury him in their own fashion, giving them some new cotton cloth for a shroud" . . . --Amy Houston, 1997. In Gene M. Moore et al., eds., Conrad: Intertexts and Appropriations: Essays in Memory of Yves Hervouet (Rodopi): 37.
Bates, Wallace and Spruce belonged to a new breed of scientist. They were not sponsored directly by the government, like Huxley or Darwin, attached to Royal Naval survey ships; they were not salaried, like the plant-hunters employed by the nurserymen, or even promised a reward on their safe return, like Richard Lander. They were scientific entrepreneurs, trading in beetles and birds and monkeys and dried plants, who needed to collect extensively even to pay their expenses, let alone secure a possible income for the future, when they might hope to work up their private collections and live off a store of knowledge and fieldwork rich enough to last the rest of their lives. The British Museum assured them there would be a good market for their collections. They made arrangements with a London agent and dealer, Samuel Stevens, who had premises in Bedford Street, just round the corner from the British Museum--an excellent choice, as it turned out . . . --Peter Raby, 1997. In his Bright Paradise: Victorian Scientific Travellers (Princeton University Press): 79.
Wallace's earlier suggestion that a connection may exist between the perennial woody habit of island species and reproductive strategy deserves closer inspection. He argued that the perennial insular woody growth form primarily reflects selection for longevity (rather than for woodiness per se) of insect-pollinated species in an environment where insects initially should be expected to be rare, noting that the resulting increase in size may have provided additional advantage in niche competition among initial colonizers. Bramwell's studies of breeding behavior are generally compatible with that view, since in Echium species studied, the woody island forms were found to be outbreeding, setting only 0-11% fertile seed in selfings, whereas their continental sisters as well as the herbaceous island inhabitant E. bonnetii were preferentially inbreeding . . . --Uta-Regina Böhle, Hartmut H. Hilger & William F. Martin, October 1996. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 93(21): 11744.
. . . If outbreeding is the primary selective factor in island colonization, pollination pressure will subsequently favor rare, large, conspicuous inflorescences among outbreeders and, as a consequence, select perennial (and therefore woody) habits capable of producing them, in agreement with Wallace's salient arguments. Under this view, diversity of contemporary woody Echium forms reflects a multiplicity of selectable developmental pathways toward longevity, rather than selection for specifically environment-adapted variants of such woody perennial habits as schematically depicted in Fig. 3. In other words, insular woodiness in Echium might simply betray "survival of the founders," and many differences between perennial woody habits could be nonadaptive . . . --Uta-Regina Böhle, Hartmut H. Hilger & William F. Martin, October 1996. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 93(21): 11744-11745.
Alfred Russel Wallace foreshadowed much of the current thinking on adaptive mate choice. To Wallace colour was merely a correlate of 'vigour', by which he implied health. A female should choose a mate adaptively by picking the most vigorous male, and it would just so happen that he would also be the most colourful. We too found colour to correlate with a variable, plasma proteins, that may be indicative of vigour. In addition, female kestrels in our colony in mate choice experiments have consistently preferred males with high display rates (vigour?), irrespective of the degree of genetic relatedness or experimentally induced parasite infection . . . --Gary R. Bortolotti et al., September 1996. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 263: 1175.
. . . The hypothesis that sexual dichromatism was nonfunctional and incidental to inherent 'physiological' differences between the sexes was proposed by Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace (1895) recognized that whereas males of many birds are more brightly coloured than their mates, the degree of dimorphism varied greatly, with the most common case being for males 'to have the same general hue as the females, but deeper and more intensified'. Although it may be difficult to discount the role of sexual selection for extreme cases, such as house finches, the common, subtle patterns of colour variation between the sexes may be more difficult to explain except as non-functional consequences of other biochemical processes. If such processes are fundamental to avian physiology, it may explain why sexual dichromatism is so common in birds, and why reds, yellows and oranges are so pervasive . . . --Gary R. Bortolotti et al., September 1996. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 263: 1175.
A final argument, "An Additional Argument Dependent on the Theory of Evolution," was added to the 1904 edition of Wallace's book. Especially interesting because Wallace was so closely involved with the evolution arguments of his day, it is independent of the three connected scientific arguments and may be seen as another aspect leading to the same conclusion. Wallace argued that since humanity is the result of a long chain of modifications in organic life, since these modifications occur only under certain circumstances, and since the chances of the same conditions and modifications occurring elsewhere in the universe were very small, the chances of beings in human form existing on other planets was very small. Moreover, since no other animal on Earth, despite the great variety of diversity of forms, approaches the intelligent or moral nature of humanity, Wallace concluded that intelligence in any other form was also highly improbable . . . --Steven J. Dick, 1996. In his The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (Cambridge University Press): 48-49.
. . . In conjunction with Barrow and Tipler's use of the Anthropic Principle, at the end of the century one could therefore choose from the full spectrum of possibilities in the context of the extra-terrestrial life debate: a positive argument, a negative argument, and the extraterrestrially neutral argument from design. But it is remarkable that just when anthropocentrism seemed irretrievably banished from the repertoire of reputable worldviews, it returned in a more sophisticated but remarkably similar form to that of A. R. Wallace, who in arguing against the plurality of worlds at the beginning of the century concluded that "the supreme end and purpose of this vast universe was the production and development of the living soul in the perishable body of man." . . . --Steven J. Dick, 1996. In his The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (Cambridge University Press): 535.
. . . male-male competition was obvious to those who watched animals behaving in the field, and it coincided with the Victorian notion of how animals should behave, thus never becoming controversial. Female choice, on the other hand, was far from obvious in the field, and Darwin's contemporary, A. R. Wallace (1891), in particular, was unconvinced by it. He felt that the power of discrimination by females was too weak to distinguish subtle differences between males, and he also doubted whether female choice could be sufficiently constant over time to select for male attributes. As Geddes and Thompson (1889) put it, consistency of female taste was "scarcely verifiable in human experience." Female choice continued to be contentious until relatively recently, and although there is now abundant evidence that females often choose their partners, the way that female choice has evolved still remains a controversial area of sexual selection theory . . . --T. R. Birkhead, 1996. Current Topics in Developmental Biology 33: 104.
The colors of the Amazon brought Wallace to investigate the sediment and substrata. He found the "almost perfect flatness" of the Amazon Valley its single most striking geological fact. No mountains or even slightly elevated plateaus rise from the plain until you reach the abrupt peaks of the Andes. Wallace's impression was that "here we see the last stage of a process that has been going on, during the whole period of the elevation of the Andes"--the gradual filling in of what was once the granite bottom of the sea with sediment brought down by rivers from the Andes Mountains . . . --Jonathan Maslow, 1996. In his Footsteps in the Jungle: Adventures in the Scientific Exploration of the American Tropics (Ivan R. Dee): 99-100.
In 1873, Alfred Russel Wallace posed a fundamental, and as yet unresolved, biogeographic puzzle: why should the tropics contain a disproportionately large amount of the Earth's biodiversity? Wallace (1873) suggested that the explanation for latitudinal variation of the diversity of plant species was directly related to climate. Wallace (1873) wrote "As we approach towards regions of polar cold and desert aridity the variety of groups and species [of plants] regularly diminishes; more and more are unable to sustain the extreme climatical conditions". However, in the case of animal distributions, Wallace (1873) believed that climatic change associated with glaciation was responsible for the impoverishment of the temperate faunas. In modern terms, Wallace proposed an 'equilibrium' hypothesis for vegetation, and an 'historical' hypothesis for faunal patterns. In the latter half of this century, these two schools of thought have diverged and undergone substantial specialisation, although no consensus has emerged . . . --D. M. J. S. Bowman, 1996. Australian Journal of Botany 44(5): 571.
Borrowing a line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," there is "nor any drop to drink" anywhere today on the surface of Mars. Not so clear is whether there has ever been water, water everywhere. As was first demonstrated by Alfred Wallace (who concurrently with, but independently of, Charles Darwin proposed the idea of evolution by natural selection), the lifetime for liquid water under present Martian atmospheric conditions is measured in minutes. The former existence of Martian rivers or seas would then imply that the planet had a warmer, more Earth-like climate in its geologic past. Interest in Martian water also stems from the fact that we, like that famous canal enthusiast Percival Lowell, cannot envision any form of life existing without it. The red planet appears lifeless now, but evidence for a warmer, wetter planet in the past might make a search for Martian fossils plausible . . . --Harry Y. McSween Jr., December 1995. Sky & Telescope 90(6): 18.
. . . the nature of information conveyed by secondary sexual traits in mate selection has been hotly debated. Darwin (1871) believed that mate choice was solely based on arbitrarily chosen features that were aesthetically appealing to the members of opposite sex, although such chosen features did not confer any survival advantage to the animal. Wallace (1889), on the other hand, argued that natural selection would not allow the selection of merely ornamental features "unless the most ornamental always coincide with the 'fittest' in every other respect". The modern interpretation of the utilitarian view of Wallace, or the so-called good gene hypothesis, has commonly been invoked to explain human mate selection. Briefly, it is proposed that women, as a rule, can assess the "mate quality" of a man by attending to his resources or high status because these are usually achieved through competition with other members of the social and economical hierarchy . . . --Devendra Singh & Robert K. Young, November 1995. Ethology and Sociobiology 16(6): 483-484.
The theory of sexual selection by female choice, on the other hand, was greeted with interest mixed with skepticism (Wallace 1889; Huxley 1938). Wallace fully accepted intermale sexual selection but had serious doubts about the efficacy of female-choice sexual selection. His doubt concerned the adequacy of the proposed mechanism. Can female choice exert a selective pressure that is consistent and strong enough to produce secondary sexual characters of adornment and display in males? The status of sexual selection by female choice is still unsettled. Modern studies have confirmed the process for some types of male characters, but legitimate questions remain as regards other types of male characters . . . --Verne Grant, October-November-December 1995. Biologisches Zentralblatt 114(4): 320.
Wallace presented a very clear interbreeding species definition, then immediately dismissed it in his treatise on speciation of the Papilionidae of Indonesia. 'Species are merely those strongly marked races or local forms which, when in contact, do not intermix, and when inhabiting distinct areas are incapable of producing a fertile hybrid offspring. But as the test of hybridity cannot be applied in one case in ten thousand, and even if it could be applied, would prove nothing, since it is founded on an assumption of the very question to be decided . . . it will be evident that we have no means whatever of distinguishing so-called "true species" from the several modes of [subspecies] variation here pointed out, and into which they so often pass by an insensible gradation'. Wallace is first saying that it is practically impossible to make all the necessary crosses to test genetic compatibility. Second, since theories of speciation involve a reduction in ability or tendency to interbreed, species cannot themselves be defined by interbreeding without confusing cause and effect . . . --James Mallet, July 1995. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 10(7): 295.
The adaptive significance of cryptic female coloration in birds is an old and hotly debated issue in animal behavior, being a source of great disagreement between A. R. Wallace and C. Darwin, the co-founders of Natural Selection Theory . . . Darwin (1871) believed that dull female coloration was a non-adaptive consequence of sex-limited inheritance. Wallace (1889) proposed the hypothesis that cryptic female coloration functions to reduce predation risk at the nest. Wallace's evidence included the observation that in many cavity-nesting species females are brightly colored, and males are more cryptic than females in species with sex role reversal. However, these results are also consistent with sexual selection theory. Field tests of the nest predation hypothesis are rare, perhaps because extensive color variation among females within a sexually dimorphic species is uncommon . . . --Bridget J. Stutchbury & Joan S. Howlett, May 1995. The Condor 97(2): 559.
Aging is notoriously hard to explain in evolutionary terms. An early insight is due to Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-founder of evolutionary theory. The gist of his argument is contained in the following quotation (Wallace, 1865): "When one or more individuals have provided a sufficient number of successors, they themselves--as consumers of nourishment in a constantly increasing degree--are an injury to those successors. Natural selection therefore weeds them out." In the following it will be shown that this basic idea allows one to arrive at a quantitative prediction of species-specific aging. It also enables a qualitatively correct prediction of sex-specific differential aging in two species. The slower aging of human females becomes understandable in evolutionary terms . . . --Reimara Rossler, Peter E. Kloeden & Otto E. Rossler, May 1995. BioSystems 36(3): 179.
In Frank Tipler's newly published book (1994), The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead, for example, the author claims "modern physics requires the God principle." By this Tipler means that the universe is structured in such a way that the laws of nature must give rise to intelligent life; and once formed, the resurrection of all intelligence--immortality--is inevitable. "Science now tells us," Tipler concludes, "how to go to heaven." While Tipler's science is modern, his argument is not. It is Wallace's argument for the necessity of a higher intelligence clothed in modern physics . . . --Michael Shermer, December 1994. Skeptic 3(1): 70.
. . . With the primary evidence missing in this historical mystery, we can only speculate on what really happened at Down. The extreme interpretation of a conspiratorial cover-up is not supported by the evidence. If Darwin were going to rig (or allow to be rigged) the editorial presentation of the papers to award him priority; or worse, plagiarize from Wallace certain needed ideas (such as the divergence of species, as Brooks suggests), why announce the arrival of Wallace's essay and submit it for publication in the first place? Why not either just take what was needed, or, if Wallace's essay added nothing new to the theory, just destroy the essay and letter and blame the loss on an inefficient postal service, or the mishandling of his mail at Down, or whatever? If one is going to accuse Darwin of such devious finagling as delicate arrangements or plagiarization, then would not the same guileful and scheming personality think of complete elimination of Wallace's essay as a successful strategy? . . . --Michael Shermer, March 1995. Skeptic 3(2): 83-84.
Several alternative explanations exist for the occurrence of symmetrical signals and symmetry preferences in nature. It has been suggested that some morphological symmetries arise inevitably from developmental processes. However, as Wallace (1889) observed, the symmetrical body markings of wild animals are often lost or degraded in their domesticated descendants. This suggests that certain symmetries are not inescapable consequences of development, but are maintained by other selection pressures in nature . . . --Magnus Enquist & Anthony Arak, 10 November 1994. Nature 372: 172.
The naturalists' concept of species as distinct reproductive units was carried over into the post-Darwin period. It was stated by Wallace (1889), Eimer (1889), and others. I will present Wallace's characterization of species in a paraphrased form. A species is an assemblage of individuals which: (1) are modified in structure, form, and constitution so as to be adapted to their particular conditions of life; (2) are differentiated from other allied assemblages; (3) reproduce their like: and (4) usually breed together (Wallace, 1889). Some students of species in the early post-Darwin period began to characterize species, not only as reproductive units, but as units of interbreeding. We see this in Wallace's fourth point above: species are individuals "which usually breed together" (Wallace, 1889). According to Poulton (1903) a species is "an interbreeding community". Karl Jordan (1905) stated that the individuals of a species occur together in an area and form an interbreeding community ("eine Paarungsgemeinschaft"). Wallace's first point listed above puts adaptation into the set of characteristics of species. This was an innovation at the time and one which did not become generally accepted until much later . . . --Verne Grant, October-November-December 1994. Biologisches Zentralblatt 113(4): 406.
In their recent TREE article, Polak and Trivers say that the study of symmetry and its fluctuations in biology was largely restricted to morphology and systematics until 1953. However, in 1889 A.R. Wallace remarked that coloration patterns of wild animals are more symmetrical than those of their domesticated descendants; he thought that symmetry would help specific recognition. In one respect Wallace's observation seems paradoxical. Domestic animals have less need to be cryptic than their wild counterparts, but, at least for humans, the presence of symmetry is a major failing of camouflage. Symmetrical patterning gives away animals that are otherwise superbly concealed. The few cryptic animals that are asymmetrically patterned maybe the exceptions that prove this rule, one example is the wryneck (Jynx torquilla), an unusual woodpecker . . . --D. Osorio, September 1994. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 9(9): 346.
. . . the Riverine Barrier Hypothesis was first advanced by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1849, when he argued that primate distributions were affected by river barriers and showed that the Basin was divisible into four major geographic areas bounded by the Amazon, Negro, and Madeira rivers. This hypothesis, although not mutually exclusive from others, has received recent attention and support. Ayres (1986) and Ayres and Clutton-Brock (1992) have confirmed Wallace's original observation by documenting the correlation between the degree of private community similarity on opposite banks of Amazonian rivers and river width, or flow rate. Additionally, Capparella has shown that the degree of genetic divergence among samples of understory bird species is related to river width. One explicit expectation of the Riverine Barrier Hypothesis is that increasing divergence should relate positively to river size (width, flow rate, etc.). Hence, differentiation should increase along both sides of a green river, from its headwaters to the mouth, as the barrier widens and the potential for cross-river gene flow diminishes. However, the expectation for any given taxon is likely to be complicated by the dynamic nature of floodplain rivers, because populations have the potential for passive transfer from one side to the other by river-bend cutoffs, or oxbow lake formation, through time . . . Consequently expectations of the potential force of riverine barriers are likely to vary among taxa that occur in the river floodplain (the seasonal flooded forest, or "várzea" of the Amazon Basin) as opposed to those that are limited to upland, nonflooded forest, or terra firme. The pattern and degree of divergence may also depend on other ecological characteristics . . . --James L. Patton et al., August 1994. Evolution 48(4): 1314.
. . . the argument has been made that aesthetic criteria in general are secondary and essentially in the service of a more fundamental process. Thus, Wallace has disputed Darwin's claim that female choices of maters reflect strictly aesthetic tastes, that is, beauty for beauty's sake (Wallace, 1889, 1892). Rather, Wallace insisted that beauty is likely to be associated with good health and vigor, which are deemed the primary bases for choice. The theoretical advantage that accrues to Wallace's position is that sexual and natural selection are parsimoniously working in unison. Within the classical Darwinian perspective, female choice of the most flamboyantly adorned or colored male can imply choice of a mate vulnerable to predators and likely to produce offspring with similar vulnerabilities. None of this is intended to imply that either Darwin or Wallace is right or wrong. After the passage of more than a century, the issue is still under debate, although new experimental studies testing predictions from the two theories offer hope of an eventual resolution of the issue . . . --Nathan Kogan, Spring 1994. Social Research 61(1): 143.
. . . in short, there are on every hand the most striking and conclusive evidences that the production and consumption of wealth have increased with even greater rapidity than the increase of population, and that, if any class obtains less, it is solely because of the greater inequality of distribution. What [Henry] George had done with this argument, Helfand argues, was to establish an economic equivalent of Wallace's theory that the human brain changed the nature of the evolutionary process by its ability to create tools and alter the environment. George had argued that labor is the source of wealth, on grounds that "the richest countries are not those where nature is the most prolific; but those where labor is the most efficient." . . . --Lamar B. Jones, April 1994. American Journal of Economics and Sociology 53(2): 252.
The earliest discovery of avian visual mimicry was Wallace's account of another case involving large aggressive models and smaller mimics that would otherwise have been expected to be among the models' victims. The models are friarbirds of the Philemon [moluccensis] superspecies which are among the largest members of a family (Meliphagidae or honey-eaters) notorious for pugnacious behavior; the models are orioles of the Oriolus [bouroensis] superspecies (family Oriolidae). Wallace was struck by parallel geographical variation in plumage between friarbirds and orioles on two Indonesian islands. Subsequent study expanded Wallace's observations in three respects . . . --Jared M. Diamond, 24 February 1994. Nature 367: 684.
The common idea that Darwin behaved like a perfect gentleman throughout the Wallace episode rests partly on the myth that he had some option other than those outlined above--that he could have rushed his theory to press without so much as mentioning Wallace. But unless Wallace was even more saintly than he seems to have been, this would have brought a scandal that left Darwin's name tainted, even to the point of endangering its connection to his theory. In other words: this option was not an option. The biographer who admiringly observes that Darwin "hated losing his priority, but he hated even more the chance of being suspected of ungentlemanly or nonsporting conduct" is creating a distinction where none existed; to have been thought unsporting would have threatened his priority . . . --Robert Wright, 1994. In his The Moral Animal (Pantheon Books): 306.
A major stumbling block for Darwinians was the absence of any fossil remains of humans in Europe during the Tertiary period. From this Wallace had argued a priori that the human species had not spread widely upon the earth and was of recent origin. Since fossil remains had been located only in the tropics, Wallace concluded that these warm climes had been the cradle of human evolution . . . --Nancy J. Christie, 1994. In Roy MacLeod & Philip J. Rehbock, eds., Darwin's Laboratory: Evolutionary Theory and Natural History in the Pacific (University of Hawai'i Press): 445.
Wallace is less well known for his lifelong insistence on the necessity for precise species distribution maps than he is for his much-disputed line. Detailed knowledge of species distribution was the basis for Wallace's efforts to formulate a general scheme of faunal regions. In one image, Wallace's map redefined and unified the various notions of biological regions current in the first half of the nineteenth century, embodied the evolutionary history of the diverse biota of the East Indian Archipelago, and participated in a genre of visual representation extending into the contemporary culture . . . Jane R. Camerini, December 1993. Isis 84(4): 727.
Fisher (1920) explains that the "essential difference" between plans such as those of Wallace and his own "is that between redeemability and irredeemability." But is there really an essential difference between always being able to "redeem" a gold certificate for a possibly varying quantity of gold, on the one hand, and always being able to purchase with irredeemable money a given quantity of gold at a possibly varying market price, on the other? So as an outsider to economics, Wallace was free from the attachment to gold and thus advocated a stabilization policy that was more in the spirit of the quantity theory. He was also explicit about what Fisher (in his definite-reserve system) left unspecified; namely, the role of the Treasury in injecting or withdrawing quantities of money from circulation. Here was a true anticipator of the Chicago School of the 1930s . . . --Don Patinkin, Summer 1993. Economic Quarterly 79(3): 18.
The second story is that the thin Martian atmosphere is but a remnant of a once much thicker atmosphere, most of which long ago escaped to space [cf., Wallace, 1907]. Other things being equal, because it is smaller, escape is easier from Mars than from Earth or Venus. Several escape mechanisms have been suggested, including some that could be operative today. A possibly important example of the latter is the nonthermal escape of nitrogen. Hydrodynamic escape and impact erosion of the atmosphere (a.k.a. atmospheric cratering) are two potentially much more effective escape mechanisms that should have been operative early . . . --Kevin J. Zahnle, 25 June 1993. Journal of Geophysical Research E 98(6): 10,889.
. . . the value of living organisms as an intellectual resource is another compelling reason for preserving biotic diversity. It provides the materials that allow us to understand the living world, whatever our reasons for doing so. Extinction is depriving us of much of the crucial evidence. Among the measures that Wallace advocated was the establishment of a system of strategically located forest reserves where a representative sample of the biota could be preserved and studied by naturalists . . . --Michael T. Ghiselin, Spring 1993. Pacific Discovery 46(2): 23.
Selection for genetic isolation has been called the Wallace Effect by Grant, in honor of A. R. Wallace who first suggested it (Wallace 1889). Control of a species' altitudinal boundary by a pathogen-environment interaction may provide an appropriate arena for the Wallace Effect. The scenario for speciation suggested above begins with a very unlikely event: establishment of a new disease-resistant population outside the normal habitat of the parent species. Though unlikely, such speciation across a "pathological barrier" requires no changes of climate, elevation of mountain chains, or other large scale phenomena. It suggests that the potential for the establishment of peripheral isolates in new ecological settings may exist at the margin of a great many species. This scenario is similar to the concept of the "upstart species" of Harper or of new species "budding off' from older species . . . --William Burger, December 1992. Biotropica 24(4): 569.
For both monochromatic and polychromatic species, pelage pigmentation would be helpful for identifying conspecifics, especially at distances where odor and vocalizations would be unreliable cues. In polychromatic species it would also narrow the range of choices within a herd when looking for the mother, particularly when her head cannot be seen clearly. Alfred Russel Wallace recognized the significance of body pigmentation when he wrote in 1889, under the subject of "Colour as a means of recognition": "If we consider the habits and life-histories of those animals which are more or less gregarious, comprising a large proportion of the herbivora, . . . we shall see that a means of ready recognition of its own kind, at a distance or during rapid motion, in dusk of twilight or in partial cover, must be of the greatest advantage and often lead to the preservation of life." Within a colour category, the young would have to rely on other cues, be they visual, auditory, or olfactory. For example, the length of pelage was one of the cues eliminated in this study by cutting the does' hair, because in a previous study I noticed that the offspring of long-haired females tended to solicit females with long hair like that of their mothers. Although cues present in the head are probably important for individual recognition, at a distance the fine detail of facial characteristics might not be as discernable as markings on parts of the body with more surface area. The specific visual cues used for recognition should depend on the characteristics of the group or species, the habitat in which the species is found, and the perceptual capabilities of the developing individuals . . . --Carlos R. Ruiz-Miranda, November 1992. Behaviour 123(1-2): 136-137.
For Paley, the epiglottis could not evolve in this manner; hence, some form of causality other than change origin is called for. Paley's answer was "an intelligent and designing Creator." Soon other thinkers followed Paley's lead concerning the impact of the argument from perfection. In one of the most amazing shifts in the history of ideas, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) employed what may be considered an indirect use of the argument from perfection on an a fortiori basis against the very theory of natural selection that he had founded with Charles Darwin . . . --John T. Baldwin, April 1992. Harvard Theological Review 85(1): 112.
. . . On the one hand, motivated by the biological evidence discussed, but restricting themselves to a one-dimensional model of world reality, Goldschmidt and Gould (themselves standing outside the argument from perfection tradition) of necessity turn for an alternative model of origins to a refined concept of the "hopeful monster" theory wholly explainable by empirical principles within a materialistic framework. On the other hand, Paley, Wallace, Mivart, Bergson, Taylor, Kenny, Plantinga, and Polkinghorne, prompted by similar biological evidence but remaining open to a wider model of reality (one that can include a trans-empirical dimension) and to a dynamic relationship between God and the world, conclude that the evidence points more convincingly to some kind of originating causality that in the final analysis lies beyond the reach of "methodological naturalism." . . . --John T. Baldwin, April 1992. Harvard Theological Review 85(1): 119.
Alfred Russel Wallace developed a theory of evolution by natural selection at the same time that Charles Darwin did. He applied his theory to one of the earliest scenarios of human evolution. He related the split between the first human beings and the apes to the habitats in which they lived. Wallace proposed that hominids, our bipedally walking ancestors, arose on the great plains and high plateaus of Eurasia, isolated there by shrinking forests. His deduction was based on the fact that apes today live in dense forested areas. Wallace thought, therefore, that bipedally striding humans must have evolved in open, flat areas. Darwin disagreed on the geography, believing that a tropical environment with abundant fruit was our ancestral hominids' environment. He preferred an African origin for the human lineage. The chimpanzee and gorilla, he pointed out, were both African and the closest living primate relatives to humans . . . --Noel T. Boaz, March 1992. Earth 1(2): 37.
These findings show that Wallace's hypothesis can be verified for a broad category of population genetic models and that, therefore, the Wallace effect indeed deserves a central position in speciation theory. By outlining the effects of gametic phase imbalance, the findings also point at the forces which could possibly set up barriers to speciation: asymmetric gene flow between parapatric populations, and asymmetric cross-incompatibility in both parapatric and sympatric (sub-)populations. Asymmetry in cross-incompatibility describes the situation where in one population the rejection of cross-matings is markedly stronger than in the other population. However, whether these conditions actually suffice to inhibit speciation must be proven in each special case . . . --Hans-Rolf Gregorius, February 1992. Journal of Theoretical Biology 154(3): 397.
. . . Wallace's narrative eye, like Darwin's, allows him to transcend time through visual analogy, but it is the European model of cultural progress rather than biological history that flashes before the reader. The narrative motion of the European mind searching backward through its own memory is obscured, and the narrative motion of the tropical landscape advancing into the European landscape is foregrounded. Wallace's representation suggests than in looking at the trees he is not simply experiencing perceptual confusion; he is perceiving future forms in present ones. The link between trees and pillars, between tropical and European, is thus seen as a historical inevitability rather than an optical illusion or perceptual accident. Where Darwin's illusions increase formal variety, however, Wallace's limit it. Rather than a single form blossoming into multiple analogous forms, Wallace's eye perceives several different species in terms of a single European form. The distinction between Darwin's and Wallace's representational strategies roughly correlates to the differences in their evolutionary theories. Darwin believed in random competitive evolution while Wallace believed in adaptive, environmental evolution . . . --James Krasner, 1992. In his The Entangled Eye: Visual Perception and the Representation of Nature in Post-Darwinian Narrative (Oxford University Press): 114.
. . . In Wallace's nature all selection is purposeful and relatively precise; nature tends toward utility, and clears way all forms that are not useful. James's theory of vision can be seen as the perceptual corollary to Wallace's evolutionary theory. The Jamesian mind, like Wallace's evolutionary nature, establishes a formal standard that must be met, and all those forms that fail to meet that standard are eliminated; in Wallace's nature they die off, in James's vision they go unperceived. It is therefore appropriate that Wallace should use a Jamesian representational model. Where Darwin portrays visual forms mutating and multiplying as they compete for space in the reader's perceptual field, Wallace portrays the selection of forms according to an imageable standard of reference. Moreover, because this formal standard is European, the forms of nature are selected according to the standard of reference of European experience--the viewer perceives trees as pillars, and those trees that look less like pillars are ignored. Wallace's representation of evolution thus involves the reader in a more and more familiar world . . . --James Krasner, 1992. In his The Entangled Eye: Visual Perception and the Representation of Nature in Post-Darwinian Narrative (Oxford University Press): 115.
Until just before 1880 Wallace had firmly believed "that vaccination was a scientific procedure, and that Jenner was one of the great benefactors of mankind." As a young man he had voluntarily undergone vaccination and subsequent revaccination, just before leaving for South America on a naturalistic trip. He had never questioned the effectiveness of the operation until reading several anti-vaccination texts and meeting William Tebb, the 1870 successor of John and Richard Gibbs as leader of the Anti-vaccination League and founder of the Anti-vaccination Society of America. Convinced by Tebb's arguments, Wallace joined him in the battle for the new cause. Aware of his ignorance on medical matters, Wallace always based his arguments on statistic figures rather than on strictly sanitary aspects. Harry Clements, his biographer, writes: "no one was apparently able seriously to challenge him on the figures." . . . --Giacomo Scarpelli, 1992. Nuncius (Italy) 7(1): 115-116.
. . . These moral principles were also applied to another field of study, that of the so-called "Psychical Research" which caught Wallace's interest very early, in fact earlier than we might possibly think. Spiritism, in Wallace's mind, had a eudaemonist socratic meaning: ghosts were seen as moral and spiritual guides to man. Wallace then developed the idea of man as center of a pre-ordained universe, in which the pain which man is subject to being the most sensitive creature, and the evil which he must fight since he is capable of discerning, are seen as necessary steps towards the completion of moral rather than organic developments, necessary to enter into a superior spiritual sphere. We can now truly understand this sentence: "the whole purpose, the only raison d'être of the world [ . . . ] was the development of human spirit in association with the human body" . . . This conception of a pre-existing order and a synchronicity can explain the logic which backed Wallace's opinions and attitudes . . . --Giacomo Scarpelli, 1992. Nuncius (Italy) 7(1): 120-121.
. . . Wallace . . . brought forth an alternative explanation which involved totally different powers. Man has the faculty of artificially selecting vegetable and animal species; similarly a Higher Intelligence could have controlled and directed Natural Selection in the human development process, in a particular and highly ethical aim . . . Effectively, Wallace, induced by the moral ideal earlier mentioned, was trying to find a solution that would not clash with his vision of harmonia naturae and undermine the theory of Natural Selection with whatsoever extension or correction. His was not a denial of the theory but, paradoxically, the result of his excessively rigourous attitude. Wallace, the hyperselectivist, preferred to involve a Superior Intellect, in other words a deus ex machina, rather than admit that his primary theory might possibly have been less absolute . . . --Giacomo Scarpelli, 1992. Nuncius (Italy) 7(1): 126.
. . . Wallace was driven in his crusade by ethical and social issues, as well as the intention of preventing the disruption of the biological balance. This was altogether a kind of civil protest aimed towards a general reform of society, freed from imposition. Wallace believed that an improvement of the population's economic conditions would have resulted in higher hygienic standards and a richer diet, and consequently, in a decreased spread of diseases, smallpox included. He also envisaged the creation of a Ministry of Health employing teams of Doctors. These purposes, which seem so obvious today, were in his time little less than revolutionary. It can be said that Wallace foresaw the creation of National Health Service . . . --Giacomo Scarpelli, 1992. Nuncius (Italy) 7(1): 128.
Man's Place in the Universe. A. R. Wallace (McClure, Phillips, New York, 1903). A famous coauthor of Darwin's discovery anticipated in the last chapter of his book almost all versions of modern AP [the Anthropic Principle] . . . --Yuri V. Balashov, December 1991. American Journal of Physics 59(12): 1072.
Wallace did not try to explain distribution patterns by invoking the occurrence of unique events but rather by recourse to general principles. For Wallace that general principle was geological change. There are numerous passages in Wallace (1880) that confirm his appreciation of the importance of geological change in understanding distribution patterns in Indonesia. His discussion of the faunal relationship between the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Borneo, Sumatra, and Java is detailed and provides a clear statement of his position. Having noted the overall similarity of this area's flora and fauna to that of India, he continued on the greater similarity of the mammals and birds of Borneo and Sumatra than those of Borneo and Java, and on the high degree of endemism of the Javan fauna . . . --B. Michaux, September 1991. Australian Systematic Botany 4(1): 26.
. . . Although this is a rather brief summary of the distribution patterns that Wallace recognised in Indonesia, it does, I believe, accurately reflect the major patterns he observed. His interpretations of these patterns, based as they were on an incomplete understanding of the dynamic nature of the earth's surface, are only really of historical interest. Wallace's attempt to understand distributional patterns in terms of geological change was doomed from the start because neither he nor anyone else at the time realised that land could move laterally as well as vertically . . . --B. Michaux, September 1991. Australian Systematic Botany 4(1): 27.
Discrimination involves recognition in the signal receiver that a stimulus, or configuration of stimuli, belongs to some discrete category. The importance of design for discriminability has been recognized since Wallace (1867) suggested that distasteful insect larvae '. . . required some distinctive mark, something by which they may be contrasted with and separated from the agreeable larvae, in order that they might be freed from the attacks of birds' and that 'Brilliant colouration would be such a distinction as was required'. Warning colours and patterns should therefore look different from those of the prey for which predators normally hunt . . . --Tim Guilford & Marian Stamp Dawkins, July 1991. Animal Behaviour 42(1): 5.
Successive generations of evolutionary biologists, beginning with August Weismann and Alfred R. Wallace, have refined our understanding of the evolution of senescence to the point where we now have pretty good reason to believe that in a species like our own aging occurs because natural selection places higher priority on turning out progeny to carry our genes forward than on keeping individuals going; in effect, late survival is sacrificed for reproduction. Extending through a more diverse range of reproductive patterns, the burgeoning discipline of evolutionary life-history theory provides us with the intellectual framework to approach questions like why some species get only a single shot at reproduction (semelparity) while other get more (iteroparity) and why species differ in their longevities . . . --Caleb E. Finch, 28 June 1991. Science 252(5014): 1864.
. . . In Wallace there was support for the nationalization of land and for the economic emancipation of women. The latter reform he actually justified in evolutionary terms, thereby giving rise to a form of social Wallaceism. His point was that women were currently prevented, by their social and economic disadvantages, from fully exercising their selective role in the choice of mate. Although he sometimes felt that Darwin attached too great an importance to sexual selection in the mechanics of evolution, Wallace was nevertheless convinced that female emancipation could only benefit posterity . . . --John Hedley Brooke, 1991. In his Science and Religion; Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press): 294-295.
. . . The sheer improbability of the emergence of man deeply impressed Alfred Russel Wallace. Contingency had piled upon contingency with each critical stage in evolutionary divergence. In a book written late in life, Man's Place in the Universe (1903), he turned the argument against physicists and astronomers who were scouring the heavens for planets having a physical environment comparable with that of the earth and on which intelligent life might be presumed to have evolved. Properly understood, Wallace argued, the theory of evolution told against such a possibility--certainly against the emergence of intelligence akin to human. However close the physico-chemical environment to that on earth, it was inconceivable that the evolutionary process on other worlds could have followed the same nuanced path as on earth. One minor deviation at an early stage and the whole process would take an entirely different course . . . --John Hedley Brooke, 1991. In his Science and Religion; Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press): 315.
Wallace's scientific case rested on his conclusion that the human brain, including that of the most primitive peoples, was more powerful than was necessary for survival. For a large part of his early life Wallace had lived among primitive peoples in South America and Southeast Asia, an experience that convinced him that these people, simple as they have appeared in mind and action, were equal in intelligence to Europeans. As the modern anthropologist Loren Eiseley remarked, Wallace displayed "scarcely a trace of the racial superiority so frequently manifested in nineteenth-century scientific circles," in which were included Darwin and Thomas Huxley. If human beings possessed brain capacities beyond what was needed for survival, Wallace reasoned, then how could natural selection bring about its evolution? Where was the "survival value" of that capacity if that capacity was not fully used? After all, natural selection improved an organ only through its adaptation to the pressure of environment. In the case of the human brain, however, the capacity was greater than human beings really required or that the pressure of environment could account for. Wallace logically concluded on those grounds that "some higher intelligence directed the process by which the human race was developed." . . . --Carl N. Degler, 1991. In his In Search of Human Nature; The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (Oxford University Press): 60.
. . . It will be recalled that Darwin could find no useful value in the physical (racial) differences among human groups. Thus he could not account for those differences through the operation of natural selection. He did, however, accept the common anthropological view of the time that the differences in levels of culture or civilization which occurred among the diverse peoples of the world derived from differences in their biological capacities. Some cultures were higher than others because the people in those societies were biologically superior. That was the opening in his theory of human evolution through which racism entered. It was that opening which Wallace closed with his conception of the intellectual equality and therefore the equal cultural capacity of all peoples. As things turned out, Wallace looked to other ways and matters in his effort to make evolution less competitive and threatening. He did not develop any further his assertion of the mental equality of all peoples, or at least few took notice of its relevance. Yet that was the precise argument, elaborated and tirelessly defended, that undermined in time the concept of racism in America. Its elaboration and defense underpinned the concept of culture, an idea that in the twentieth century became not only an alternative to a racial explanation for human behavioral differences but also a central concept in social science . . . --Carl N. Degler, 1991. In his In Search of Human Nature; The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (Oxford University Press): 61.
. . . Wallace's supernatural explanation gained few followers among social scientists in the second half of the twentieth century, but his assertion of the special, indeed unique, nature of man, because of his brain, continued to influence many, directly or indirectly. The eminent modern American anthropologist Loren Eiseley, for example was among them. His sympathetic response to Wallace reflects the views of many other American social scientists today. Eiseley did not doubt that Wallace has a better understanding of the roots of human nature than Darwin. In his book Darwin's Century, Eiseley contrasted Darwin's conception with that of Wallace. "The mind of man, by indetermination, by the power of choice and cultural communication," he wrote, "is on the verge of escape from the blind control of that deterministic world with which the Darwinists had unconsciously shackled man. The inborn characteristics laid upon him by the biological extremists have crumbled away," he was relieved to report. In Eiseley's judgement, Wallace stood out among evolutionists of his own time because he recognized even then that human beings had escaped from biological evolution. "Wallace saw and saw correctly, that with the rise of man the evolution of parts was to a marked degree outmoded, that mind was now the arbiter of human destiny." . . . --Carl N. Degler, 1991. In his In Search of Human Nature; The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (Oxford University Press): 330.
Wallace (1865) hypothesized that sex-limited mimicry, in which palatable females are the only sex to mimic unpalatable butterflies, arises because females fly more slowly than males and hence are more vulnerable to predation. Our results from the within-lineage analyses are in agreement with Wallace's hypothesis. Evolutionarily, palatable males have larger thoraces, maximizing flight muscle, and smaller abdomens, minimizing load on the wings, probably to maximize flight speed; whereas females have retained large abdomens, probably to maximize egg load. Counter-selection for fecundity may operate against faster flight speeds, and females may be reproductively constrained to evolve alternative means of avoiding predation, such as mimicry. If females fly more slowly, they may be predisposed to fly like an unpalatable model . . . --Robert Srygley & Peng Chai, 11 October 1990. Oecologia 84(4): 498.
. . . there simply weren't any lists of Darwinian tenets that would have been accepted by all the leading Darwinians and rejected by all the main non-Darwinians in the first decade or so following the publication of the Origin. Both the Darwinians Charles Lyell and Asa Gray and the non-Darwinians the Duke of Argyll and St. George Mivart, for example, thought that natural selection must be supplemented by some sort of "directing force" in order to account for the relevant phenomena, while Darwin consistently denied the need for such an additional mechanism (Argyll 1877; Gray 1884; Mivart 1871). Conversely, neither the Darwinians Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Lyell nor the non-Darwinians St. George Mivart and William Whewell thought that human beings could be included under the same explanatory scheme (whatever this might be) that was used to account for the history and behavior of "lower" animals, while Darwin maintained that they could . . . --Doren Recker, September 1990. Philosophy of Science 57(3): 463.
The efforts to denigrate Darwin serve only to conceal the real differences between the two naturalists' approach to transmutation. Careful reading of Wallace's paper reveals that in several important respects his theory failed to duplicate the essence of Darwin's thinking. Wallace had no interest in artificial selection and refused to treat it as analogous to the natural process even in later years. His mechanism did not even address the basic question of how selection acts on individual differences to change a population, because he was interested in how one well-marked variety (what we now call a subspecies) could replace others. Once it is recognized that in writing of natural selection acting on varieties Wallace was thinking of subspecies rather than individual variations, it can be seen that his paper does not contain a description of what Darwin saw as the basic mechanism of change. Wallace simply assumed that species split into varieties--he did not seek to explain how this all-important first step occurs. It has also been suggested that Wallace failed to appreciate the full power of selection because he treated the varieties as struggling against nature, not struggling against each other . . . --Peter J. Bowler, 1990. In his Charles Darwin; The Man and His Influence (Basil Blackwell): 113.
. . . Wallace's Darwinism of 1889 provided a clear and comprehensive survey of the theory and of the relevant areas of biology. Except in the case of the origin of the human mind, Wallace was an extreme selectionist; unlike Darwin, he would have nothing to do with any other mechanism of evolution. This position soon became known as 'neo-Darwinism' to distinguish it from the more flexible form of the theory which Darwin himself had advocated and which had gained support precisely because it allowed selection to be relegated to the status of a secondary mechanism . . . --Peter J. Bowler, 1990. In his Charles Darwin; The Man and His Influence (Basil Blackwell): 210.
The good parent process is a mechanism for the evolution of epigamic traits that is distinct from the Fisherian process and the good genes process. In the good parent process, direct selection on females to discriminate among males on the basis of male parental quality leads to the evolution of a trait that provides female with honest (accurate and precise) information regarding the non-heritable component of parental quality in a potential mate. Wallace (1891, 1901) recognized the potential of such a mechanism, but he had no way to consider rigorously the effects of inheritance. The good parent process is also different from Darwinian sexual selection (Darwin 1871), because females are not necessarily attracted by a good parent trait. A trait that evolves via the good parent process only enhances the attractiveness of high-quality males . . . --Guy A. Hoelzer, December 1989. Animal Behaviour 38(6): 1075.
Since Wallace (1889), a number of authors have argued that isolating barriers could be positively selected for their isolating property to prevent the formation of hybrids and to actively promote divergence and speciation. However, being a second order effect, the selective forces are likely to be weak, and, as Levin points out, in practice it is going to be very difficult to distinguish this effect from other forms of competition and selection . . . --Mark R. Macnair, February 1989. Genome 31(1): 204-205.
Wallace, on the other hand, insisted on the validity of the "uniform and consistent testimony of our senses". It is complete fallacy, so he argued, that only propositions could be demonstrated and phenomena could not be. "The direct testimony of the educated senses guided by reason was of higher validity than any complex results of reason alone." According to Wallace, testimony was trustworthy if the witness was in full possession of the senses and in agreement with the reports of other witnesses. Was it really true, asked Wallace rhetorically, that a member of the House of Peers like Lord Lyndsay--who had recently converted to spiritualism--"can not be trusted as a faithful witness?" If the witness were insane or deluded, Wallace argued, they would also be unable to use Carpenter's mathematical reasoning . . . --Roy J. DeCarvalho, January 1989. Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 12(1): 22.
The modern Darwinian theory of evolution is defective in that it does not even recognize the extraordinary problem that is presented by living organisms acquiring mental experiences of a non-material kind that are in another world from the world of matter-energy, which formerly was globally comprehensive. The Cartesian solution is not generally acceptable, namely, that human beings have conscious experiences that are attributable to the Divine creation of souls, and that higher animals are merely machine-like automata devoid of mental experiences. Likewise the panpsychist evasion of the problem is not acceptable. It is disturbing that evolutionists have largely ignored the tremendous enigma that is presented to their materialistic theory by the emergence of mentality in the animal evolution . . . I believe that the emergence of consciousness is a skeleton in the cupboard of orthodox evolutionism. At the same time it is recognized that, although the holistic concept gives meaning to the emergence of consciousness, it provides no explanation of this emergence. It remains just as enigmatic as it is to an orthodox evolutionist as long as it is regarded as an exclusively natural process in an exclusively materialist world . . . --John C. Eccles, 1989. In his Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self (Routledge): 176.
. . . Nature still presented a gory spectacle; and people of faith still had to wonder at the divine power that would use such means. Hence, Wallace comes to repeat the position Darwin flirted with above: denial of pain and suffering as a means of vindicating the goodness of nature. In his 1911 chapter "Is Nature Cruel?" he offers again the answer that nature is not cruel because most animals simply do not suffer. Wallace cautions that one must not read one's own sensations into the animal world: that "anything approaching to what we term 'pain' was unknown" to most animals. They "probably suffer nothing at all when being devoured." He goes further to assert (very strongly) that "birds, mice, squirrels, and the like, do not get limbs broken by falls, as we do," and that, in sum, "whatever pain exists is not long-continued" (Wallace 1911, 404-405) . . . --David Oates, December 1988. Zygon 23(4): 445.
Darwin's response is, on the face of it, rather puzzling. Why did he not protest Wallace's assertion that selection works principally through the elimination of unfavorable variants? Historians generally agree that the acknowledgment of selection as a negative force--removing inferior variants and thus maintaining the "type"--long predated Darwin. In this perspective, Darwin's achievement lay in his recognition that selection was "a creative process and not merely a sieve." But there is no evidence that his dissents from Wallace's essentially negative view. Perhaps historians' radical distinction between natural selection as a creative force and as executioner of the unfit--that is, as "nature's broom"--was not recognized by Darwin . . . --Diane B. Paul, Fall 1988. Journal of the History of Biology 21(3): 417-418.
The Great American Interchange was first recognized by Wallace (1876), but it has taken another hundred years of intense paleontological study by Ameghino, Matthew, Scott, Patterson, Simpson, Webb, and others to clarify patterns of dispersal. It is only during the last decade, moreover, that greater precision in dating the sediments containing interchange taxa has provided a firm time frame for various aspects of the event. It is now possible to assess the interchange in detail, and to analyze the tempo and mode of dispersal and the rates of extinction and origination in successive faunas through time. As a result, the Great American Interchange represents the best-documented example in the fossil record of the intermingling of two long-separated continental faunas . . . --Larry G. Marshall, July-August 1988. American Scientist 76(4): 380.
. . . "I should be extremely glad now to publish a sketch of general views in about a dozen pages or so; but I cannot persuade myself that I can do so honourably. Wallace says nothing about publication, and I enclose his letter. But as I had not intended to publish any sketch, can I do so honourably, because Wallace has sent me an outline of his doctrine? I would far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any other man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit. Do you not think his having sent me this sketch ties my hands? I do not in least believe that that [sic] he originated his views from anything which I wrote to him" [Darwin's words] . . . --Barbara G. Beddall, Spring 1988. Journal of the History of Biology 21(1): 52.
. . . In the narrow focus espoused both by the participants in the events leading up to and including the "joint papers," and by their successors, priority in this case has been treated as a "single event," a zero-sum game with winners and losers, an occasion when "editorial manipulation" and "delicate arrangements" could be invoked. But, as seen above, the matter is far more complex than this approach would indicate. It requires a broader perspective in which the enormous contributions made by both Darwin and Wallace can be recognized. In game theory this would be a non-zero-sum game, where both Darwin and Wallace benefited from the work of the other, thus becoming codiscoverers of the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. If this interpretation of the events is rejected, the status of the matter reverts to a zero-sum game, which brings back with it not only its winners and losers, but also the problems of "editorial manipulation" and "delicate arrangements," as posed by Kohn and Nelson . . . --Barbara G. Beddall, Spring 1988. Journal of the History of Biology 21(1): 62.
Strangely enough, it was A. R. Wallace, not Darwin, who suggested an explicit associative hypothesis integrating learning theory with natural selection. In a paper entitled "On the Origin of Food Aversion Paradigms," Garcia and Hankins present the case for a Darwin-Wallace conditioning theory initiated in 1866 and experimentally verified by 1887. Their theory was actively generating research 2 decades before Pavlov began his studies in classical conditioning, and 3 decades before Thorndike presented his thesis on instrumental conditioning. This pioneer effort culminated in today's research area, narrowly labeled "conditioned taste aversion." More broadly considered, this paradigm is representative of homeostatic conditioning which Tolman (1949) called "cathexis"; when responding to survival needs, organisms come to cherish one particular type of food and drink, or one given type of mate, and to abhor others . . . --Robert C. Bolles & Michael D. Beecher, eds., 1988. In their Evolution and Learning (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates): 29.
. . . Wallace had traveled widely in South America and the South Pacific as a naturalist and collector of exotic specimens. His observations of native peoples had convinced him that the intellectual and moral faculties required by the aboriginal way of life were not markedly different from those needed by mammals generally to survive in their respective ecological situations. Yet aborigines brought to England and educated there had the capacity to acquire the behavioral sophistication of modern Europeans. Thus, aborigines had moral and intellectual capacities far exceeding the immediate requirements of the environments in which they had evolved. Therefore the intellectual capacities of primitive man, and by implication modern man, could not be the result of natural selection . . . --Robert C. Bolles & Michael D. Beecher, 1988. In their Evolution and Learning (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates): 41.
The adaptive nature of warning, or 'aposematic' colour patterns seemed clear a century ago (Wallace, 1867, 1878; Poulton, 1890), but recently it has been debated whether 'individual' natural selection may explain their initial evolution. Fisher (1930) had earlier suggested a similar problem with the evolution of unpalatability. Previous explanations depend purely on selection to explain the evolution of warning colours. Here we propose that drift, combined with natural selection, may also be important . . . --James Mallet & Michael C. Singer, December 1987. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 32(4): 338.
. . . Although mimicry strongly suggests that colour patterns are used as warning signals, there is only anecdotal evidence that warning colours are easier to learn than non-warning colours. Traditionally, it has been assumed that the bright colours of unpalatable insects are more efficient signals (Wallace, 1867, 1878). Birds seem to learn to avoid conspicuous prey more easily, and humans use bright colours in warning signs. However unpalatable insects could be brightly coloured for other reasons . . . --James Mallet & Michael C. Singer, December 1987. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 32(4): 338.
. . . In the pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica, over several editions, Alfred Russel Wallace argued the case for acclimatization. He was more careful than most, at that stage, in distinguishing between domestication, naturalization and acclimatization. And yet arguing from first evolutionary principles and from plant and animal biogeography, he urged that "numerous facts in the distribution of races show that man must, in remote ages at least, have been capable of constitutional adaptation to climate". In more recent times, the migrations of the Jews, and the settlement of the Dutch in South Africa, the English-speaking peoples in America and Australia, and the Spanish in South America all demonstrated that complete acclimatization was entirely possible . . . --David N. Livingstone, December 1987. History of Science 25(4): 381.
. . . But now that the monogenist thesis had triumphed, acclimatization followed as a natural consequence. Similar deductions were drawn by A.R. Wallace: "numerous facts in the distribution of races show that man must, in remote ages at least, have been capable of constitutional adaptation to climate" he urged. Hence, "if the human race constitutes a single species, then the mere fact that man now inhabits every region, and is in each case constitutionally adapted to the climate, proves that acclimatization has occurred." . . . --David N. Livingstone, December 1987. History of Science 25(4): 386.
Wallace's view was kindred in spirit to Henry George's Progress and Poverty (1879), although Wallace had less regard for the market. Both saw man as needing land. Their mutual disapproval of Parnellism brought them together, and both submerged methodological differences to further their common concept. Wallace gave him a platform when George toured Britain. Wallace cast George as a theorist who confirmed Wallace's inductive argument, perhaps underrating George's journalistic background. For many years single tax and land nationalization were closely linked by friend and foe . . . --Mason Gaffney, 1987. In John Eatwell, Murray Milgate & Peter Newman, eds., The New Palgraves: A Dictionary of Economics (Macmillan), Volume 4: 850.
According to both Spencer and Wallace, a natural principle of evolution inexorably led to the moral perfection of man. Wallace, of course, had a different principle in mind than Spencer's device of adaptation through the inherited effects of habit. He nonetheless believed that the principle of natural selection would add further support to Spencer's primary vision, the view that man's moral character was not only a goal of evolution, but also a chief means of progress toward the perfection of human nature . . . --Robert J. Richards, 1987. In his Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (University of Chicago Press): 165-166.
. . . Evolutionary theory, as Darwin himself admitted in the Origin, remained mute concerning how life and consciousness first arose in the universe; it could only account for subsequent transformations. Just so, Wallace now proclaimed, natural selection brought no clear perception of the origins of specifically human intellect and moral feeling. He was persuaded that these distinctive capacities must have originated under the influence of higher powers, intelligences who shepherded the progressive development of mind through the ages . . . --Robert J. Richards, 1987. In his Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (University of Chicago Press): 178.
. . . Contemporary primitives and our ancestors thus had latent mental qualities that could not be explained by natural selection, which demanded that selected traits confer immediate advantage, not simply promise it. Wallace's contacts with the spirit world convinced him that higher intelligences rather than natural selection controlled human evolution. Wallace forthrightly claimed that a conversion to spiritualism proximately caused his rejection of natural selection as an adequate principle to explain human evolution; and virtually all historians have taken him at his word. But we need not. For after all, Wallace might well have chosen to regard natural selection as the disposing instrument of higher spiritual powers and to have held survival of the fittest as a secondary cause . . . --Robert J. Richards, 1987. In his Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (University of Chicago Press): 181.
. . . Huxley tarried only a short while over Wallace's demur about natural selection in the case of man. He derived from Wallace's own writings about savage life descriptions of the extraordinary mental feats such life actually required--knowledge of a vast territory, reading signs of game or enemies, discovery of properties of plants and habits of animals, and so forth. "In complexity and difficulty," Huxley estimated, "the intellectual labour of a 'good hunter or warrior' considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman." Wallace had simply miscalculated the brain power the savage actually needed for survival; thus neither primitive man nor modern native likely had in excess what could be delivered by natural selection or augmented by entering into civilized life. On the question of the moral sense, Huxley could "find nothing in Mr. Wallace's reasonings which has not already been met by Mr. Mill, Mr. Spencer, or Mr. Darwin." . . . --Robert J. Richards, 1987. In his Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (University of Chicago Press): 227.
And in The Growth of Biological Thought Ernst Mayr comments: "In his letter, Wallace said that if Darwin thought his paper sufficiently novel and interesting, he should send it to Lyell and, presumably, submit it for publication (the original Wallace letter is no longer in existence)." But it is clear that Wallace did not ask Darwin to arrange for publication. Unfortunately, as Mayr notes, the letter that accompanied Wallace'1s paper is lost. However, we have Darwin's word for it that there was no such instruction. On the same day that Wallace's paper arrived, Darwin wrote an anguished letter to Lyell, in which he refers to Wallace's "MS, which he does not say he wishes me to publish". Then, a week later, he wrote to Lyell again, to express his misgivings about Lyell's and Hooker's plan. One of his reasons for worrying was that "Wallace says nothing about publication". Why should such distinguished writers as Ruse and Mayr make this particular mistake? This is the kind of error that might perhaps follow from a moral presumption. It seems wrong to publish someone's work, without consulting him, in a forum he has not approved. Thus, if we are assuming that Darwin and his friends acted properly, it will be natural to assume that Wallace must have asked that his paper be published. But in fact he did not . . . --James Rachels, Summer 1986. National Forum 66(3): 24.
The concept of r- and K-selection is intuitively reasonable and indeed there is much circumstantial evidence from both macroecology and microbial ecology that it exists. The seminal ideas were contributed largely by Dobzhansky (1950), who compared evolution in the tropics and temperate latitudes. Actually, it is usually overlooked that the great naturalist Wallace (1878), in his remarks on tropical plant and animal life, anticipated many of Dobzhansky's conclusions. Dobzhansky surmised that adaptation in the species-rich tropics is primarily to a harsh biological environment, while the fewer species in colder realms have to contend mainly with the physical environment. Put simplistically, the outcome of different evolutionary pressures between the two regions is competitiveness (high K) or productivity (high r), respectively . . . --John H. Andrews & Robin F. Harris, 1986. Advances in Microbial Ecology 9: 104.
. . . there even continued to be one or two plebeians who became recognised leaders in a field. Most famously, though A. R. Wallace . . . was of impoverished gentle family, he had something of a craftsmanly formation, during which he became a life-long Owenite (he died in 1913). Had his fellow-FRSs borne this in mind, they might have been less puzzled by his left-wing politics, his anti-vaccinationism and his plebeian-type spiritualism. A recent historian has plausibly treated him as an import into the later nineteenth century from the 1840s, and we might also see him as an import into prestigious scientific circles from the world of self-taught scientists. His particular route to eminence involved much specimen-hunting but no diploma-hunting, much jungle-fever but no exam-fever . . . --Logie Barrow, 1986. In his Independent Spirits; Spiritualism and English Plebeians, 1850-1910 (Routledge & Kegan Paul): 153.
. . . Darwin and Wallace defended a programme of theoretical research by appeal to the superior coherence and fecundity of their programme. The appeal to superior coherence took place on two levels. At a substantive level they argued that their programme promised the discovery of relevantly similar natural forces for the explanation of relevantly similar natural phenomena. At an epistemic level they claimed coherence in their use of biogeographical and geological evidence and coherence in the application of the epistemic desideratum of scrutability. As Wallace had suggested, the appeal to coherence at substantive and epistemic levels is justified by the overall aim of science to construe its subject matter as maximally accessible to investigation and as maximally decidable by acceptable argument. The appeal to superior fecundity can also be justified as instrumental to the achievement of these aims . . . --Scott A. Kleiner, December 1985. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36(4): 391.
The allopatric model of speciation proposes that populations diverge genetically during a period of isolation either by drift, differential selection or different responses to similar selection pressures. When the barrier to dispersal is removed, this divergence may have led to premating reproductive isolation, post-mating isolation or both. Only if there is complete assortative mating, hybrid inviability or hybrid infertility will the two new taxa be able to coexist without exchanging genes and only if there is at least some premating reproductive isolation will they be able to invade on another's territory. Otherwise a hybrid zone is expected to form. Premating isolation may evolve, or be strengthened, in the hybrid zone because heterogametic matings produce unfit offspring--as first proposed by Wallace (1889) and subsequently incorporated into speciation theory by Dobzhansky (1940). However, this 'reinforcement' of premating isolating mechanisms is a contentious idea . . . --R. K. Butlin & G. M. Hewitt, November 1985. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 26(3): 269-270.
In contrast, Alfred Russel Wallace (1864), the co-discoverer of natural selection, stressed that group selection (i.e. selection not between individuals, but between groups) played an important role, at least among human beings. Describing the process of human evolution, he wrote: "In proportion as physical characteristics become of less importance, mental and moral qualities will have increasing importance to the well-being of a race. Capacity for acting in concern for the protection of food and shelter; sympathy, which leads all in turn to assist each other; the sense of right, which checks depredation upon our fellows . . . are all qualities that from earliest appearance must have been for the benefit of each community, and would therefore have become objects of natural selection." . . . --Umberto Melotti, Summer 1985. The Mankind Quarterly 25(4): 324.
This is not meant to demean Darwin. In addition to his genius, Darwin was a warm, liberal man for his times: opposed to slavery, in favor of electoral reform, and concerned for the oppressed. But he was, in some areas, of his times and not very far ahead of them. For many scientists of the day, the existent native peoples were virtual "missing links." It was only through work in Wallace's tradition that "the Negro's skull is no longer placed on the lecturer's table between that of the gorilla and the Caucasian". At the time, Wallace's belief in the ultimate intellectual potential of native peoples must have seemed bizarre beyond reason . . . --Stephen E. Glickman, 1985/1992. In Sigmund Koch & David E. Leary, eds., A Century of Psychology as Science (American Psychological Association): 750.
. . . Less than a year later he wrote the first of two papers that together presented, in brief but complete form, a theory of evolution by natural selection. While the second paper, written three years later, postulated natural selection in variable populations as the mechanism by which species originated, the first paper (Wallace 1855) analyzed the significance of extinction within evolving lineages in producing all of the known patterns of organic distribution in time and space. It must be emphasized that this paper was the first published statement to appreciate the importance of the extinction of intermediates in a species lineage in creating the oft-observed gaps in taxonomic affinities, as well as those in distribution in both space and time. This meant that the observed placement of organisms in the regions of the globe was not the result of supernatural forces and divine objectives, but of the natural phenomena of extinction and species transmutation (or evolution.) . . . --John L. Brooks, 1985. Earth Sciences History 4(2): 115.
In his discussion of the debate between Darwin and Wallace, Mayr has claimed, "they used the term 'sterility' where we would use the term 'isolating mechanisms'." If this were the case, then Darwin advocated the incidental origin of reproductive isolation mechanisms, Wallace their origin by natural selection. Grant has gone on to suggest that it would be "fitting and desirable" to call the selective origin of reproductive isolation mechanisms the "Wallace effect". There can be no question that some late nineteenth-century naturalists did use the word "sterility" where evolutionists now use "reproductive isolation mechanisms". But I would argue that in their debate Darwin and Wallace meant what we do by "sterility". The distinction Wallace drew in point 6 of his 1 March 1868 letter between "disinclination to cross-unions" and "sterility" certainly supports his view. Consequently Wallace was not proposing the selective origin of reproductive isolation mechanisms in general, but rather the selective origin of the particular post-mating mechanisms of cross- and hybrid sterility. Since, according to current theory, these forms of sterility are precisely the types of reproductive isolation that cannot be produced by selection, the Darwin-Wallace debate provides little historical justification for the term "Wallace effect". The present view on the origin of sterility is essentially Darwin's view of an incidental origin. Furthermore, during the debate it was Darwin not Wallace who recognized the possibility of the selective origin of pre-mating reproductive isolation ("disinclination to cross"), while rejecting the selective origin of cross- and hybrid sterility . . . --Malcolm Jay Kottler, 1985. In David Kohn, ed., The Darwinian Heritage (Princeton University Press): 416-417.
Our idea--and the support for it we have found thus far--points to the need for renewed examination of the effects of avian parasites and diseases on their hosts. If females are indeed choosing males that appear to be advertising their freedom from parasites, and if showy plumes and melodious voices have evolved from such a prosaic and down-to-earth cause, perhaps even Alfred Wallace might be mollified . . . --Marlene Zuk, April 1984. Natural History 93(4): 34.
"That excellent results may be obtained from a consideration of the habits and characters of the living bird is, we think, shown in Mr. Wallace's arrangement of the order Passeres. His remarks were published in 1856; but, if we mistake not, many of his suggestions have been more or less adopted in that part of Professor Owen's classification which relates to the same group. His conclusions, moreover, generally harmonize with the improvements proposed by Eyton and Nitzsch before him, and Blanchard and others after him, on anatomical groups; as also with what we consider to be the best features in Bonaparte's scheme" [passage quoted from an anonymous author] . . . --John L. Brooks, 1984. In his Before the Origin (Columbia University Press): 124.
. . .The explanation of the virtual faunal identity was revealed by the discovery of clear physiographic evidence that the sea between Aru and New Guinea had been created by recent subsidence--recent in geological time. This discovery provided Wallace with a geographic situation of the kind he had sought since his Amazonian days. According to his theory, only a slight change in the organic world should be manifest following a recent physiographic change. The species of birds, mammals, and insects he found in Aru were identical to those described for New Guinea, with the sole exception of the Ornithoptera. The Aru form was distinct, but minimally so, from O. poseidon, described from New Guinea. Observation thus confirmed the theory . . . --John L. Brooks, 1984. In his Before the Origin (Columbia University Press): 172.
Wallace's demonstration that man's tools (including language) removed his body from the realm of evolutionary specialization that operates inexorably elsewhere was recognized immediately as a turning point in the scientific study of man. His paper was intended as a vehicle for applying natural selection to a wide range of concerns--the antiquity of man, racial superiority, man's taxonomic rank--with the clear implication that human mental and moral attributes would also be subsumed under a strict evolutionary naturalism . . . --Martin Fichman, 1984. In Everett Mendelsohn, ed., Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences; Essays in Honor of I. Bernard Cohen (Cambridge University Press): 475.
A final, important difference separates Wallace from Dyson and most modern supporters of the anthropic principle. Our contemporary advocates develop their arguments and then present their conclusion--that mind designed the universe, in part so that intelligent life might evolve within it--as a necessary and logical inference. Wallace was far too good a historical scientist to indulge in such fatuous certainty; he understood only too well that ordered and complex outcomes can arise from accumulated improbabilities . . . --Stephen Jay Gould, May 1983. Natural History 92(5): 38.
Avian selection on females might be stronger than that on males for a variety of reasons. First, birds might preferentially select females if they were larger, more valuable (e.g. because they contain eggs or embryos), or more easily captured than males. Wallace originally proposed a version of this hypothesis to account for female-biased polymorphisms in butterflies. He suggested that female butterflies might be more vulnerable to predators because they are laden with eggs and fly more slowly. Recently, it has been shown that birds do preferentially select female cicadas, which are less vagile and more nutritious than males. Even if birds did not discriminate between the sexes in prey species, selection on females might still be more intense if avian predators encountered or noticed more females than males. Female-biased encounter rates could result if the sex ratios of adult prey were heavily skewed towards females, if females occurred more often in microhabitats frequented by predators, or if females engaged in behaviors that made them more conspicuous than males. The differential predation hypothesis would be supported if birds ate females more frequently than males; it can be refuted if males completely lack protective patterns but are still eaten by birds . . . --J. A. Stamps & S. M. Gon III, 1983. Annual Review of Ecology & Systematics 14: 233-234.
After collecting briefly near Singapore, Wallace went to Sarawak to meet its celebrated White Rajah, Sir James Brooke. St. John, Brooke's secretary and biographer, has written: "We had at this time the famous naturalist, traveller and philosopher, Alfred Russel Wallace, who was then elaborating in his mind the theory that was simultaneously worked out by Darwin--the theory of the origin of species; if he could not convince us that our ugly neighbours, the orang-utans, were our ancestors, he pleased, instructed and delighted us by his clever and inexhaustible flow of talk--really good talk" (Life of Sir James Brooke, 1890). So much for the quiet, shy man . . . --Ralph E. Bernstein, 3 June 1982. New Scientist 94: 653.
I believe that study of specimens and field observations in New Guinea presently warrant two conclusions. First, orioles are indeed mimics of friarbirds, as Wallace postulated over a century ago. The case for mimicry is much stronger than Wallace realized: he had seen only two of the eight sets of populations that we now know . . . --Jared M. Diamond, April 1982. The Auk 99(2): 193.
. . . Spencer, wrote Wallace, was misconceiving natural selection. It does not work by favouring 'any special bone, or muscle, or limb . . . but by the selection of the capacities or qualities.' By 'capacities or qualities' Wallace meant things like strength or speed. Wallace maintained that artificial selection works in the same way. The breeder selects for qualities such as quickness, not for particular variations of bones. 'The two modes of selection are thus strictly analogous and strictly comparable.' He further insisted that natural selection is not limited by the supply of variation because 'as a matter of fact, there is a sufficiency of useful variation always present in each succeeding generation to increase any required life-preserving quality, all theoretical objections to the contrary notwithstanding.' Artificial selection is not the 'point after point' improvement of organs; both modes of selection transform structures as a whole, by selecting for a capacity. Each step in the selection of a capacity would produce an improvement so Romanes' and Spencer's criticism would not apply . . . --Mark Ridley, March 1982. British Journal for the History of Science 15(1): 61.
Careful consideration of both theories shows quite readily their differences in emphasis. Darwin was theorizing as to why males were brightly coloured. All Wallace (1891) could offer that pertained directly to this point was the vitalistic argument that male colour was due to "great vigour and health and generally higher vitality". Wallace in his Theory of Bird's Nests, had a perfectly reasonable hypothesis as to why females are dull--not the same question Darwin was trying to answer . . . --R. B. Aiken, 1982. Quaestiones Entomologicae 18(1-4): 8.
. . . But what of Wallace? He was not as involved in the question of aesthetic taste of females as he was in the question of animal colouration. Interestingly enough, criticisms from Wallace focused on ambiguity in the argument about female aesthetic sense. The process by which female choice was effected was not made clear. Most discussion revolved around the issue of whether females were exercising some conscious choice or were being excited by and yielding to a male. Was it selecting or succumbing? Darwin (1871) originally thought it was selection. He states: "No doubt this implies powers of discrimination and taste on the part of the female . . ." Wallace (1891, 1901) objected to this notion of conscious choice, returning again and again to the admonition that female choice could not be shown in nature. Wallace stated that while female birds may be excited by a display of decorative plumage, there was no reason to suppose that this conferred a mating advantage. It is difficult to understand Wallace's reasoning in the light of his own ideas. He stated that colour and ornament are concomitant with vigour and general health and that it is the most healthy, persistent males that will mate. Differences between Darwin and Wallace seem to be a matter of mechanism rather than basic principles . . . --R. B. Aiken, 1982. Quaestiones Entomologicae 18(1-4): 10.
To Wallace, Victorian scientists' failure to consider the implications their work held for moral behavior indicated severely misplaced priorities. In Spiritualism's demonstration of the reality of the soul, he himself found a basis for belief in moral as well as material evolution. Scientists' refusal to address so important a matter, Wallace believed, revealed an amoral materialism and, as such, outright dereliction of scientific duty . . . --John J. Cerullo, 1982. In his The Secularization of the Soul; Psychical Research in Modern Britain (Institute for the Study of Human Issues): 28.
Wallace states his thesis with extraordinary clarity: "There is a general principle in nature which will cause many varieties to survive the parent species, and to give rise to successive variations, departing further and further from the original type. The language in which this observation is presented is rather typological; Wallace's conclusion, however, clearly contradicts Lyell's claim that "varieties have strict limits, and can never vary more than a small amount away from the original type." The most important aspect of Wallace's analysis is that he carefully stayed away from the quagmire of the morphological controversy on species and varieties but based his conclusion on a rather strictly ecological argument. He concluded that population size of a species is not at all determined by fertility but by natural checks on potential population increase. An enormous number of animals must die each year to keep the number constant, and "those that die must be the weakest--the very young, the aged, and the diseased--while those that prolong their existence can only be the most perfect in health and vigour--those who are best able to obtain food regularly and avoid their numerous enemies." . . . --Ernst Mayr, 1982. In his The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press): 495.
Wallace couched his new argument about evolution and man in 1869 not in terms of spiritualism, in which he was unable to interest seriously the majority of his fellow evolutionists, but in terms of utility. He used the essential principle of evolution to deny the evolution of man. To recapitulate, natural selection is a theory of usefulness--traits are selected in individuals because they confer some use to the individual in the struggle for survival. Wallace rejected sexual selection in the name of this principle. But applying now the same principle to man, Wallace argued that many of the traits characteristic of man were in fact of no use when they first arose, and therefore could not have been developed by natural selection . . . --Nancy Stepan, 1982. In her The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800-1960 (Archon Books): 71.
Interestingly, issues like these must have been a preoccupation of Alfred Russel Wallace a century ago. Wallace, the coauthor of the theory of evolution, reneged on the theory in excluding man from his rightful place on the evolutionary tree. He did so because he could not reconcile (see especially Wallace 1891) the incredible capacity for humans to process information (as evidenced by the accomplishments of a learned man of society in Victorian times) with the fact that such capacity went largely unused throughout the entire period of human evolution (extrapolation based on his observations of "primitive" peoples in what is today Eastern Indonesia.) Wallace's dilemma has never been completely resolved. . . --David F. Lancy & Andrew J. Strathern, December 1981. American Anthropologist 83(4): 790.
Lowell's books about life on Mars provoked Alfred R. Wallace, with Darwin the discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, into analysing the likelihood of the evolution of an intelligent species elsewhere in the Universe. He concluded that it was essentially zero, and thus we are alone in the Universe. His arguments are worth repeating in detail, because although published in 1905 they are exactly the same as those given by modern evolutionists such as Dobzhansky, Simpson, and Mayr. Thus the biological arguments against the evolution of intelligence have not changed in 75 years. The great evolutionists have always been united against ETI. The biologists who have supported ETI have generally been biologists with the viewpoint of a physicist, and lacking the historical sense of the evolutionist. Such men often err in questions about evolutionary biology; in particular they err about questions concerning the probability of the evolution of a species with specified properties, as the recent recombinant DNA debate shows . . . --Frank J. Tipler, June 1981. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 22(2): 140.
Wallace does not show a concern for Darwin's problem with the 'swamping effect', i.e., the dilution and loss of variants from crossing back into the unvaried population. Accordingly we don't find in Wallace's writings Darwin's attempt to explain speciation by isolation. Possibly Wallace concluded swamping could be ignored because by observation permanent varieties/species exist in nature. Thus he might have concluded backcrossing is in fact not significant in nature. Also, as he viewed the line between species as something other than a barrier preventing intermixing, he would not have felt the need to explain how such barriers are effective. Another consideration that subsequently supports Wallace's attitude is implicit in his approach to the theory of natural selection. Unlike Darwin, Wallace used the knowledge of domestic animals against the claim that species are permanent and not to support evolution, as did Darwin. In domestic animals, natural selection tends to favor reversion to original unvaried forms . . . --Scott A. Kleiner, April 1981. Synthese 47(1): 146-147.
. . . To consider now the main problem of concern to Darwin and Wallace, the origin problem, not only is there lacking a decision procedure for determining whether the goal state is reached, but also, as we have argued above, the goal state for why-questions cannot be fully described in advance without actually answering the question. Although Darwin cannot and does not specify in advance the kind of explanatory mechanism he is seeking he is able to say what kind of causal process he does not want, viz., the agent--teleological process of the creationist theories. His goal state can be described only in terms of a few desiderata, viz., a theory consisting of universal laws applicable to all organisms including humans and bringing together a wide variety of previously unconnected facts, and one in which the process of evolution is "gradual" in the sense that it is in conformity with Lyellian uniformitarianism applied to living organisms. Specifically, all large evolutionary changes are to be explained in terms of persistant small incremental changes occurring over a long time, and the law governing these changes are the same throughout geological time even though varying local conditions may produce happenings in the past that are not presently occurring or rather sudden and calamitous effects on local biota . . . --Scott A. Kleiner, April 1981. Synthese 47(1): 154.
A key process in speciation among sexual organisms is the evolution of reproductive isolation. There are essentially two views on the origin of isolating mechanisms . . . The first view, championed by Darwin (1872), holds that isolating mechanisms originate as an incidental by-product of genetic divergence in geographically isolated populations. The second view, argued by Wallace (1889), holds that isolating mechanisms are established by means of natural selection in zones of overlap between incipient species . . . The contemporary view, which holds that premating reproductive barriers (often behavioral) are built up by natural selection in areas of sympatry in order to supercede postmating barriers that arose allopatrically, has come to be known as the Wallace effect. The plausibility of the Wallace effect has been demonstrated by Knight et al. (1956) and by Kessler (1966), who showed that artificial selection could be successful in enhancing premating reproductive isolation in Drosophila. In light of the important role of the Wallace effect in modern speciation theory, it is surprising that the phenomenon has not been studied quantitatively . . . --Stanley Sawyer & Daniel Hartl, April 1981. Theoretical Population Biology 19(2): 261-262.
Some zoologists, like Raven in 1935, considered the validity of Wallace's line on the basis of the proportion of mammals that had crossed the line going east compared with those that had not and came to the conclusion that Wallace's line marked a boundary which was the eastern limit of the great majority of East Indian mammals, like rhinoceroses and elephants. Others made their assessment on the proportion of western and eastern elements to be found on each island in Wallacea. Thus, Rensch in 1935, following Mertens (1934), calculated that 88 per cent of the butterflies were of western origin which was a similar proportion to that found on Lombok and more than twice as high as for the Kai Islands. Following the same line of argument for Austral-Malayan birds, Ernst Mayr calculated that 67.6 per cent of the passerines were from the west and decided that 'there is no doubt, Celebes must be included with the Oriental region' (Mayr, 1944) . . . --Wilma George, 1981. In T. C. Whitmore, ed., Wallace's Line and Plate Tectonics (Oxford University Press): 5.
The notion that islands are somehow different stems from the concerns of naturalists. The observations by Darwin and others that the existence of islands permitted the development of significant variations in plant and animal life formed an important part of the intellectual underpinning of theories of evolution. Thus Wallace, in his study of island life (1880), points out that 'some of the most remarkable and interesting facts in the distribution and affinities of organic forms are presented by islands in relation to each other and to the surrounding continents'. He refers to 'the unexpected relations or singular anomalies which are so often found to characterize the fauna and flora of islands'. More recently, there has been a growing interest in the total ecological balance of islands (already hinted at in Wallace's work) . . . --Percy Selwyn, December 1980. World Development 8(12): 945.
. . . it is interesting to note that in this disagreement there are faint echoes of the other matter which separated Darwin and Wallace at this time: sexual selection through female choice. Darwin wanted to argue that the beauty of, say, the peacock as opposed to the peahen, is a function of the females choosing beautiful males. Wallace argued that the difference is essentially a function of the females being more drab than the males, this drabness coming through the female's need for camouflage from predators as they incubate their eggs and care for their young. In arguing this way, Wallace was certainly not invoking group selection. However, unlike Darwin, who was emphasizing the individual nature of selection by seeing the main competition (at this point) as coming from within the species, Wallace was deemphasizing competition within the group by seeing the threat coming from without . . . --Michael Ruse, November 1980. Annals of Science 37(6): 625.
. . . let us offer solace to the opponents of human sociobiology. If one uncomfortable with a rather extreme individual selectionism, particularly as applied to man, and if one yet wants historical precedent to legitimize one's yearnings, then no less than the sociobiologists can one find the most respectable of intellectual ancestors. One may not be able to claim one of the fathers of evolutionism, but one can claim the other: Alfred Russel Wallace. He was a group selectionist, and moreover he was not prepared to see man treated on a par with other organisms. I certainly do not want to pretend that today's biologists would find convincing the details of Wallace's doubts about the all-sufficiency of individual selection, or that those who criticize human sociobiology grind the same metaphysical axe as did Wallace (although interestingly, politically Wallace was fairly left-wing, as are many of today's critics). But, given Wallace's conclusions, it does seem true to say that the critics of human sociobiology are no less part of the evolutionary tradition than those they criticize! . . . --Michael Ruse, November 1980. Annals of Science 37(6): 630.
. . . this letter . . . reveals in clearer outline the professional relationship between Spruce and Wallace and their mutual but competitive interests in the Palmae: their meeting in the Amazon, the discovery that they had made similar collections in this important family, Spruce's offer to collaborate on the book and Wallace's subsequent refusal. It appears that Spruce was discouraged on learning that Wallace had discovered and intended to name and describe the same palms, primarily those along the Rio Negro, that he had studied. He writes of "relaxing" his study of the palms, in view of the fact that Wallace would return to England and publish his results before Spruce left South America. Clearly, in this instance, Spruce felt botanically somewhat overshadowed by Wallace, whom he considered a distinguished zoologist and friend . . . --Michael J. Balick, September 1980. Botanical Museum Leaflets 28(3): 265.
A major misconception about this debate has become fairly widespread. According to this misconception, Darwin was for sexual selection, while Wallace was against it and for natural selection instead. It is true that from 1876 on, Wallace gave up sexual selection--he rejected female choice completely and interpreted male combat as just a form of natural selection. But the debate between Darwin and Wallace took place in 1867 and 1868, with a brief resumption in 1871 after publication of the Descent of Man. During this earlier period, Wallace fully accepted female choice and male choice, at least in birds. Wherever Darwin invoked female choice or male choice in birds, Wallace invoked it too. In other words, Darwin and Wallace agreed that, in birds, sexual selection was the cause of the coloration of the more brilliantly colored sex. Thus the debate did not come down to all sexual selection on one side and all natural selection on the other. The disagreement with respect to birds centered on the cause of the coloration of the less conspicuous sex . . . --Malcolm Jay Kottler, June 1980. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124(3): 203-204.
. . . The basic reason for their divergence was Darwin's belief that, although the most common form of inheritance was equal inheritance by both sexes, variations first appearing in one sex were fairly often sex-limited in inheritance from the first. Thus female choice alone, in conjunction with sex-limited inheritance from the first of the variations sexually selected in the male, would produce a conspicuous male and an inconspicuous female; in such cases, natural selection for the sake of protection of the sex in greater danger was unnecessary . . . --Malcolm Jay Kottler, June 1980. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124(3): 204.
I cannot analyze Wallace's psyche and will not comment on his deeper motives for hewing to the unbridgeable gap between human intellect and the behavior of mere animals. But I can assess the logic of his argument and recognize that the traditional account is not only incorrect, but precisely backward. Wallace did not abandon natural selection at the human threshold. Rather, it was his peculiarly rigid view of natural selection that led him, quite consistently, to reject it for the human mind. His position never varied--natural selection is the only cause of major evolutionary change. His two major debates with Darwin--sexual selection and the origin of human intellect--represent the same argument, not an inconsistent Wallace championing selection in one case and running from it in the other . . . --Stephen Jay Gould, January 1980. Natural History 89(1): 35-36.
. . . Wallace's anthropology closely paralleled his interest in natural ecology. He asked very similar questions about the peoples he encountered to those he asked about other organic forms. These were questions on how well a region could support a population; what were the natural checks on its expansion; the relationship between subsistence and size of population. His other preoccupation was with the geographical distribution of peoples. He put much greater emphasis than Darwin upon the role of geographical isolation in the evolution of species and varieties. Similarly he attributed many of the human racial differences in the Malay area to geographical isolation. Wallace was also interested in the effect on human evolution of that other major plank of natural ecology--migration. He spent some time in the classification of the languages of the Malay region partly for the clues they might reveal about the migration patterns of the peoples in the area . . . --Greta Jones, 1980. In her Social Darwinism and English Thought; The Interaction Between Biological and Social Theory (Humanities Press): 26-27.
[William] James first anticipated some of his mature opinions on race and nationality in an 1865 review of A. R. Wallace's article, "The Origins of the Human Race." Agreeing with Wallace, James held that the races of humanity developed from a common ancestor through natural selection. Race differentiation antedated all but the most rudimentary forms of social organization. But soon every race evolved more elaborate social systems. Natural selection then became more complicated. The environment supported whichever groups acted together; each group protected whichever individuals it valued. Such social selection allowed physically weak people to survive and reproduce so long as they served community ideals. Survival of the weak checked physical evolution. Further progress then had to be mental and moral . . . --Larry C. Miller, Fall 1979. American Quarterly 31(4): 539.
A widely held generalization about tropical tree species is that most occur at very low adult densities and are of relatively uniform dispersion, such that adult individuals of the tree species are thinly and evenly distributed in space. If true, this generalization has potentially profound consequences for the reproductive biology, population structure, and evolution of tropical tree species. In this article the adequacy of this generalization is judged with respect to a particular tropical forest, a large tract of which has been mapped in detail. The origins of this generalization can be traced back at least to Wallace . . . --Stephen P. Hubbell, 30 March 1979. Science 203(4387): 1299.
This distinction reflected a general tendency of Spencer and his contemporaries to distinguish higher and lower stages in all development: barbarism and civilization, status and contract, militarism and industrialism. In this instance, he also joined the controversy that developed in the late sixties between Darwin and A. Russel Wallace as to whether natural selection altered bodily structure at all stages of evolution. Darwin believed it did. Wallace maintained that, with the attainment of a certain level of intelligence, mental changes superceded physical ones. Spencer preferred the thrust of Wallace's view. He himself had earlier identified the importance of cerebral development among the races of man. But he rejected Wallace's view that such cerebral development within societies resulted from the natural selection of spontaneous variations in the brain . . . --Robert C. Bannister, 1979. In his Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Temple University Press): 47.
. . . Fiske's philosophy was inherently conservative in that he stressed the slowness of change, which he neither wanted nor urged. However, the context was also usually religious. His system would bring no religious revolution, no attacks on existing churches, he assured readers in the conclusion of the Cosmic Philosophy. In the one section in which he discussed social evolution--published earlier in the North American Review under the title "From Brute to Man"--Fiske differed little from the speculations of A. R. Wallace, whose work he described as "one of the most brilliant contributions ever yet made to the Doctrine of Evolution." Like Wallace, he believed that natural selection ceased operating on bodily factors with the appearance of the human brain. "And hence in the future as in the recent past," he told readers of the North American Review, "the dominant fact in the career of humanity is not physical modification but civilization." . . . --Robert C. Bannister, 1979. In his Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Temple University Press): 65.
. . . Darwinism upset such happy assumptions. Throughout his career [Henry] George harbored suspicion of the theory, a suspicion that colored his thought no less than Carey's and Bowen's. In Progress and Poverty he attempted to evade the issue. How men had originated was not his concern: "all we know of him is as man." But his hostility was plain. During the 1880s he mellowed somewhat, comforted by the views of the British biologist A. R. Wallace (who early preached the "limits of evolution as applied to man," and who also befriended George during his English crusade), and of St. George Mivart, a leading Christian evolutionist who, more firmly than Wallace, denied that natural selection has shaped human faculties. By the 1890s George could manage grudging acceptance . . . --Robert C. Bannister, 1979. In his Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Temple University Press): 120.
. . . His view of "mental and moral progress" (which sociologists would later call cultural evolution) also led to the conclusion "that the higher--the more intellectual and moral--must displace the lower and degraded races." But his process was again not analogous to struggle and selection in nature. Certain that improvement would come, Wallace would not attribute it to survival of the fittest. Following a popular usage of the day, he equated such survival with the success of "the mediocre, if not the low, both as regards morality and intelligence." Rather, as with mind itself, mysterious forces were at work. The "glorious qualities" of men were the "surest proof" of "higher existences than ourselves." The goal was not racial imperialism but the brotherhood of man: "a single nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior to the noblest specimens of existing humanity." . . . --Robert C. Bannister, 1979. In his Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Temple University Press): 185-186.
But, of course, it does matter who starts the trend. If it had been Wallace instead of Darwin, we would have had a very different theory of evolution today. The whole cybernetics movement might have occurred 100 years earlier as a result of Wallace's comparison between the steam engine with a governor and the process of natural selection . . . --Gregory Bateson, 1979. In his Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (E. P. Dutton): 43.
. . . It was Alfred Russel Wallace who remarked in 1866 that the principle of natural selection is like that of the steam engine with a governor. I shall assume that this is indeed so and that both the process of individual learning and the process of population shift under natural selection can exhibit the pathologies of all cybernetic circuits: excessive oscillation and runaway. In sum, I shall assume that evolutionary change and somatic change (including learning and thought) are fundamentally similar, that both are stochastic in nature, although surely the ideas (injunctions, descriptive propositions, and so on) on which each process works are of totally different logical typing from the typing of ideas in the other process . . . --Gregory Bateson, 1979. In his Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (E. P. Dutton): 148.
. . . [W. R.] Greg represented those who saw competitive individualism as the logical outcome of the operation in society of the law of natural selection; for him, naturalism in sociology was equivalent to the Hobbesian vision of a continual 'war of all against all'. But equally, Wallace was representative of a considerable number of people who claimed that man was unique in nature precisely because of his ability to transcend this state of affairs; by stressing the biological advantages of intelligent cooperation, he attempted to reconcile Darwinian principles with a very different moral and political vision. Thus, the dispute involved a fundamental conflict of ideologies, even though it was fought out almost wholly within a naturalistic framework. This conflict was to be a recurrent feature of Wallace's thought; and indeed it is still with us today in 'sociobiological' discussions of the legitimacy of the theory of 'group selection.' . . . --John R. Durant, 1979. British Journal for the History of Science 12(40): 45.
Wallace, who unfortunately never wrote a book on the subject, probed deeper into the nature of man than any of the circle immediately around Darwin. Because in the end science has so thoroughly accepted them, we have not only forgotten their source but also forgotten how heretical some of his views were at the time they were uttered. First Wallace postulated an erect, small-brained bipedal stage of human development, followed by a second phase in which the human brain and cranium assumed their present size and form. Only with the present-day discovery of the Australopithecine man-apes is the early stage beginning to be documented. Second, he quickly saw that the complete fossil history of man might well be prolonged far beyond Pleistocene times, and that the big-brained men of the upper Pleistocene, who were at that time troubling the evolutionists, need not be regarded as an effective argument against the reality of the human transformation. Rather, the scientists must cease confusing living races with grades or levels on the evolutionary scale of the past--something which was at that time exceedingly common . . . --Loren Eiseley, 1979. In his Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X; New Light on the Evolutionists (E. P. Dutton): 197.
Wallace and many later biogeographers have proposed that tropical areas support more species than temperate zones simply because they have not been glaciated and are thus ecologically older. Although evidence is very scant, under this interpretation the observed high tropical diversity is a result of long-term undisturbed speciation. If so, the latitudinal trend in species numbers is partially attributable to a strictly geographic factor (latitude) . . . --Joseph J. Schall & Eric R. Pianka, 25 August 1978. Science 201 (4357): 681.
It is likely, for instance, that Wilde would have sympathized with Grant Allen's and A. R. Wallace's eugenic plans. Allen argued in his essays for free love as part of a eugenic proposal which encouraged women to choose for child-bearing purposes temporary mates from among the finest, healthiest, and most intelligent men. Wallace, in an essay which appeared in The Fortnightly Review, four months before "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," also outlined a nonauthoritarian socialist scheme for human improvement through sexual selection. Stating that education could not lead to permanent cultural improvement, Wallace suggested that once removed from economic competition, and totally free to choose a mate, women would be attracted to men who embodied what Victorians called "the higher qualities," and the cumulative hereditary impact of that sexual selection would therefore improve the culture of the race. In February 1891, when Wilde published "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," in The Fortnightly Review, he argued that marriage and family should be abolished in favor of a freer and more beautiful love relationship between man and woman. His suggestion can be understood as one of his proposals for a socialist utopia and, indeed, as his contribution to the debate among socialists and cultural critics over the eugenic role of sexual selection in cultural improvement . . . --Michael S. Helfand & Philip E. Smith II, Summer 1978. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 20(2): 211.
Must fantasy inevitably accompany speculation on the plurality of worlds? Fortunately not, for even the history of the question contains a few indications of sober deliberation. In this respect, two nineteenth-century dissenters on plurality, William Whewell and Alfred Russel Wallace, stand out as the first post-Copernican thinkers to rein in imagination by proposing sensible rules for thinking about such a provocative but thorny issue. When Whewell's Of the Plurality of Worlds was published in 1853, it challenged what had become, since the sixteenth century, a traditional belief in the existence of life elsewhere. Fifty years later, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection and later Percival Lowell's most tenacious opponent, extended the dissenting tradition by writing the first study that successfully synthesized biological and astronomical perspectives on life in a plurality of worlds . . . --William C. Heffernan, January-March 1978. Journal of the History of Ideas 39(1): 82-83.
. . . However unkind it became, most criticism of Man's Place in the Universe was kept within the confines of the dissenters' strictures on reasoning. There was a gratifying irony in this, for while most of Wallace's peers found fault with the book, they unwittingly based their comments on the rules which Whewell and Wallace considered necessary for careful speculation on plurality. For instance, H. H. Turner, the Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford, captured the thrust of the many unfavorable reviews of Man's Place when he insisted that the universe is probably not bounded in the sense of having an edge; that even if it were, there would be no center; and that even if the sun were at the center, such a position would not be uniquely stable. Like other critics, Turner was able to seize on the flaws in the argument of life beyond the solar system and thus ignore the strengths of Wallace's overall position--the banishment of theology when considerations of probability were at stake, the introduction of an explicitly evolutionary perspective, and the low likelihood of life within the solar system. Wallace had created a grand and only somewhat flawed synthesis, although few people remarked on this . . . --William C. Heffernan, January-March 1978. Journal of the History of Ideas 39(1): 92-93.
. . . And what about the climate itself? Lowell had claimed that although Mars receives only half the earth's heat, the absence of an atmosphere would actually mean that the sun's radiation would have a more direct effect on it than on the earth. Wallace was appalled that a respected scientist could be responsible for such an hypothesis. The opposite would have to be the case, as Wallace showed: because of its lack of sufficient atmosphere, Mars must retain heat more poorly than the earth. There would also have to be greater variations in temperature between the ground and the air a few feet above it, and Wallace pointed out that these would impede the development of advanced organisms . . . --William C. Heffernan, January-March 1978. Journal of the History of Ideas 39(1): 95.
. . . Since both the dissenters and their "majoritarian" opponents were moved by extra-scientific convictions, could it be said that the two traditions were methodologically indistinguishable? Certainly not. Precisely because they were dissenters, Whewell and Wallace had been forced to articulate their position with a degree of care that no pluralist had ever shown. Because they were inspired by different and unusual convictions about man's status, the dissenters had to take the scientific road to plurality; for their case would not otherwise have been heard. In this way, discussion of the possibility of life in other worlds was transformed; for in later years, the metaphysical context of the debate would fall away, leaving a core of scientifically grounded speculation for which Whewell and Wallace had prepared the way . . . --William C. Heffernan, January-March 1978. Journal of the History of Ideas 39(1): 100.
The idea of surplusage seems most directly traceable to Alfred Russel Wallace (1870). His belief that savages possessed brains far in excess of their requirements was the germinal idea of surplusage; consider, he would argue, that civilized humans use the same brain as that of savages to accomplish higher mental feats such as mathematical reasoning, a kind of reasoning never required of our primitive ancestors. If the potential for higher mental processes appeared before it was evolutionarily adaptive, what caused its presence? This is the dilemma posed by the notion of surplusage. As naive as the arguments about savages might seem today, surplusage remains an interesting consideration for psychologists studying animal intelligence in the laboratory . . . --Robert Boice, June 1977. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 9(6): 452.
Crolls' work played a critical role in the biologists' attempts to obviate the threats posed to evolutionary theory by Kelvin's argument for a shortened history of the earth. But Croll's ideas had an even broader significance for Wallace: they functioned as a catalyst for his magisterial formulation of zoogeography. The explanatory potential of glacial theory with respect to the question of the migration and distribution of animals and plants was considerably enhanced by Croll's speculations, and Wallace was alert to their implications for his work on geographical distribution . . . --Martin Fichman, Spring 1977. Journal of the History of Biology 10(1): 60-61.
. . . Wallace and Huxley disagreed about how humans evolved because they had different perceptions of non-western people and the working class. Those perceptions were informed by different social experiences. Wallace's was an unusual experience in the nineteenth century, and it led him to an interpretation of human development with which modern anthropologists generally agree, that the artifice of culture informs our perceptions. How our opinions and experiences can remain unaffected or uninvolved in a holistic theory like human evolution remains a mystery. Yet that is the working assumption of most scientists and bureaucrats of science . . . --Michael S. Helfand, Winter 1977. Victorian Studies, 20(2): 176-177.
A. R. Wallace's hypothesis that visual stimuli provided by the insect become a conditioned signal for predatory animals through association with its noxious taste was formulated 24 years before I. P. Pavlov was elected Professor of Pharmacology at the Military Medical Academy of St. Petersburg. Several years later, Pavlov was to begin his studies there on "psychic" reflexes, employing visual and auditory stimuli to signal the taste of acid or meat powder in the mouth of dogs. Poulton's summary of two decades of comparative animal research upon the positive effects of satisfying foods and the negative effects of annoying tastes was presented eleven years before E. L. Thorndike's (1897) doctoral thesis on animal intelligence and the law of effect. Pavlov and Thorndike went on to investigate conditioned responses more rigorously, and ultimately their students operationally defined a series of methodological "laws" . . . --John Garcia & Walter G. Hankins, 1977. In Lewis M. Barker et al., eds., Learning Mechanisms in Food Selection (Baylor University Press): 6.
. . . I want to suggest that the first step in any study of his contribution must be a careful analysis of how he actually presented his idea in the 1858 paper, concentrating especially on the kind of variation that was the basis of natural selection. Strangely enough, such a detailed analysis is provided neither by Beddall nor McKinney, both of whom simply assume that what Wallace eventually discovered was a straightforward equivalent of the Darwinian theory. This assumption is common to most general accounts of the history of evolutionism, and was shared by Darwin himself. But there are good reasons for suggesting that Wallace's initial concept of selection differed considerably from Darwin's, or at least was expressed in very different terms . . . --Peter J. Bowler, January 1976. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 31(1): 18.
. . . It was only at a later stage in his thought--after he had discovered the principle of divergence--that Darwin actually came to realize that varieties would at some stage have to compete with one another. The essence of Wallace's mechanism was for Darwin a secondary insight gained some time after he had worked out the primary mechanism of selection acting on individual differences. Furthermore, when Darwin discussed varieties coming into conflict, he pictured this as a geographical effect caused by one form's invading and conquering the territory of the other. Wallace on the other hand, simply wrote of species splitting into varieties as though this occurred across the whole geographical range, with members of each variety in face-to-face conflict at all points. Wallace's failure to appreciate the role of geographical factors in the formation of varieties again suggests that he may not at first have recognized natural selection as the agency that created the varieties out of individual differences. Or, if he did recognize the action of natural selection on individual differences, he had certainly failed to work out its full implications for his own theory of selection acting among the varieties . . . --Peter J. Bowler, January 1976. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 31(1): 22-23.
. . . It is clear that in the later stages of his career Wallace was fully aware of the importance of individual variation to selection. He was able to exploit both modes of representation employed by Darwin, using especially the range concept to make a notable contribution to the measurement of variation among wild populations. But all of this occurred after he had read the Origin of Species, with its clear descriptions of Darwin's primary conception of selection's acting on the individual differences first to form varieties and then species. His own first paper on natural selection had side-stepped this level of the mechanism and developed a theory of competition among the varieties after they had been formed. This was a valid Darwinian mechanism, but one which to Darwin himself represented a second level of selection which utilized the varieties formed from the selection of individual variations. It may be that from the beginning Wallace also recognized the primary action of selection upon individual differences, and simply preferred to describe the mechanism acting at the second level because he was more familiar with what he called permanent varieties. But even if this were so, there are certain points in the 1858 paper which suggest that he had at least failed to work out the consequences of the first level of selection for his own theory . . . --Peter J. Bowler, January 1976. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 31(1): 28.
At one point Wallace reasoned logically and with telling effect that even if martians existed they could not have the high intelligence with which Lowell credited them. For the "canals" they were supposed to have built in many instances ran for thousands of miles across arid deserts and beneath clear cloudless skies, thus "losing enormously from evaporation, if we assume them to contain water. The mere attempt to use open canals for irrigation purposes would argue ignorance and stupidity. Long before half of them were completed, their failure to be of any use would have led any rational being to cease constructing them." . . . --William Graves Hoyt, 1976. In his Lowell and Mars (University of Arizona Press): 215.
Many suggestions have been formulated over the years to explain the evolution of vertebrate color vision. Most have dealt with possible modifications of photoreceptors and neuronal layers of the retina (see especially Edridge-Green, 1920; Ladd-Franklin, 1929; Willmer, 1949; Pickford, 1951) and have hardly considered function. Only Wallace (1891, p. 411) and Walls (1942, p. 463) appear to have seriously asked the question, "Why color vision?" Each suggested that color detection originated to provide for the strongest contrast and, therefore, to enhance the visibility of objects against the background. We believe that this simple and prescient suggestion is correct . . . --W. N. McFarland & F. W. Munz, October 1975. Vision Research 15: 1071.
. . . a major aim of Vestiges is to show that as good Newtonians we much accept a biological evolutionary theory. Wallace, I think, whilst rejecting as inadequate Chambers' own evolutionary theory, entirely accepted Chambers' research programme, to find the biological analogue of Newtonian astronomy. Thus I would suggest that Wallace like Darwin, may have reacted favourably to Malthus' ideas because he could then start to see his way towards a biological equivalent of Newtonian astronomy. Hence, I think that Darwin and Wallace quite possibly started from similar philosophical positions, although I have no reason to believe that they drew on exactly the same immediate sources for the philosophies . . . --Michael Ruse, June 1975. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 6(2): 172-173.
. . . By combining what he considered to be the reliable features of both the calculations, the more recent date for the ice age and a consequently accelerated rate of species change, Wallace arrived at a figure of 24 million years for the time since the beginning of the Cambrian. This estimate, he concluded happily, would fit easily within Kelvin's limits and still leave a period three times as long for the slow operation of natural selection during the Precambrian. Wallace was not finished, however, for it was in the application of Croll's hypothesis to biology that he showed the true measure of his ingenuity. Neither he nor Darwin had ever completely escaped from the Lamarckian dependence upon environment as a causal factor in species change. And now he saw in the radical changes of climate a mechanism whereby the continuously "altered physical conditions would induce variation." Furthermore, in alternating from one hemisphere to the other, the successive cycles of glaciation would stimulate a constant migration of plant and animal types, thus continually bringing allied species into competition and accelerating the process of extinction . . . --Joe D. Burchfield, September 1974. Isis 65(228): 317.
. . . As early as 1876, the naturalist and zoogeographer Alfred Wallace noted that "we live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all of the hugest, and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared." He remarked especially on the "sudden dying out of so many large Mammalia, not in only one place but over half the land surface of the globe" (Wallace 1876). At the end of the Pleistocene in North America, there was a loss of 33 genera of large mammals (>50 kg), while only 13 genera had become extinct in the preceding 1 or 2 million years. Smaller mammals (<50 kg) were not similarly affected, nor were marine mammals, which we might also expect to show high extinction rates if the cause were environmental catastrophes. Wallace (1911) observed that these sudden extinctions were not correlated with major environmental changes, such as those responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but seemed to coincide with the arrival, on different continents at different times, of Stone Age man . . . --Richard S. Miller & Daniel B. Botkin, March-April 1974. American Scientist 62(2): 172.
This concept of the separation of the human personality from the human body meant that Wallace considered man and the relation of science to man in a context wholly different from that of the advocates of scientific naturalism. As William Irvine once described the evolution of Huxley's mind, "He became interested in man as a physical mechanism, as an anthropoid ape, as a social unit and a citizen, as a delicate machine for the discovery of scientific truth, but never to any appreciable extent in man as a personality and a human being." Wallace's development was exactly the reverse. He was originally interested in the physical mechanism of man for the sake of the moral personality encased therein. He studied the anthropoid ape because it resembled man. He wrote on social questions in the hope that society might be so organized as to allow the moral faculties to flourish. Throughout his long and varied scientific career, Wallace was primarily concerned with what Koestler has dubbed "the ghost in the machine" rather than with the machine itself . . . --Frank M. Turner, 1974. In his Between Science and Religion; The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (Yale University Press): 82.
. . . In the London Anthropological Society address of March 1864, Wallace continued to discuss, though in a very different kind of forum, matters that had weighted upon his mind for over twenty years. He brought into the professional scientific sphere the scientific concepts and goals that he had learned in the provincial mechanics institutes. The address was his single most important comment on man and contained the latent seeds for all his later departures from scientific naturalism. The American evolutionist John Fiske recalled that the address "seemed to open up an entirely new world of speculation." Such speculation was indeed new to men who had known little or nothing of "physical puritanism" or the "belated rationalism" of the working-class culture in which Wallace had come to maturity. For Wallace the paper was simply a continuation of his earlier thought . . . --Frank M. Turner, 1974. In his Between Science and Religion; The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (Yale University Press): 83-84.
. . . Spiritualism furnished Wallace with a scientific explanation for the development of man's moral nature and brought man's total being under the rule of rational cosmic law. In a curious manner, the theory of spiritualism provided a law for the moral world analogous to that provided by natural selection for the organic world. Natural selection removed the necessity for an arbitrary and interfering God of Special Creation. Spiritualism banished the arbitrary God of predestination and replaced Him with a uniform law of individual moral progress and of personal moral responsibility. . . --Frank M. Turner, 1974. In his Between Science and Religion; The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (Yale University Press): 88.
. . . "Consistency," the tract by Robert Dale Owen, Robert Owen's son, particularly interested Wallace. The younger Owen, who himself also later converted to spiritualism, argued that the doctrine of predestination led to immoral living because it rendered one's eternal reward a matter of chance rather than a function of the virtue of one's life. Concurring in these arguments, Wallace moved very quietly and painlessly from faith to skepticism. His loss of faith grew directly out of a situation succinctly described by a writer later in the century: "God, and immortality, and the Bible have been so taught as to make scepticism the only refuge for morality to flee to." Wallace later identified this rational skepticism with agnosticism. His skepticism, however, more nearly resembled deism. He did not deny the possibility of religious knowledge or of pure religion but rather the validity and morality of the Christian religion. Most important, Wallace and the Owenites did not dismiss the moral significance of the questions that Christianity had addressed. The questions of religion remained valid even if the Christian answers were false. The Owenite criticism of Christianity made Wallace, as well as genuine Owenites, highly susceptible to a rational religion, such as spiritualism, that was based on empirical evidence and that emphasized social cooperation and benevolent individualism . . . --Frank M. Turner, 1974. In his Between Science and Religion; The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (Yale University Press): 89-90.
The notion that man's first language was primarily gestural, carried on with hand and arm signals rather than vocal sounds, has been supported by a distinguished line of scholars: Condillac (1746), Tylor (1868, 1871), Morgan (1877), Wallace (1881, 1895), Romanes (1888), Wundt (1912), Paget (1944, 1963), and Johannesson (1949, 1950). The gestural theory seems to be the most attractive of the many glottogonic hypotheses advanced so far, and receives support from recent studies of chimpanzees and other primates, such as Gardner and Gardner (1969, 1971), Premack (1970a, b, 1971), and Menzel (1971), as well as from other sources. The fact that this evidence was unavailable to earlier proponents of the gestural theory explains some of the weaknesses in its former formulations . . . --Gordon W. Hewes, February-April 1973. Current Anthropology 14(1-2): 5.
Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-founder of the theory of natural selection and one of its most tenacious defenders. It is therefore of great interest that Wallace emphatically opposed a demarcation between ethical and scientific ideas and that he also resisted the breakdown of the common intellectual milieu with his own unified world-view. He endeavoured to combine notions of value with his scientific theory of evolution, particularly in relation to man. British biologists in the first half of the nineteenth century characteristically analysed their data in terms of the teleological framework of Natural Theology. Evolutionary theory supposedly demolished this framework. Nevertheless, Wallace incorporated a fundamental teleology into all his theories. He considered that he had thereby reconciled the tensions of scientific and ethical demands in his contribution to the evolutionary debate on man's place in nature . . . --Roger Smith, December 1972. British Journal for the History of Science 6(22): 177-178.
. . . Wallace traced the 'action of some unknown higher law' in the evolution of man and also in the origin of consciousness. As he commented, 'no physiologist or philosopher has yet ventured to propound an intelligible theory of how sensation may possibly be a product of organization; while many have declared the passage from matter to mind to be inconceivable'. While other biologists tended to avoid this question, Wallace believed in a spiritual purpose behind the phenomenon of consciousness. It was not clear to him that conscious actions could have any biological utility if they were merely parallel, or epiphenomenal, to automatic physiological actions. In particular, he believed that it was not possible to assign utility to the consciousness of volition if this consciousness was deceptive . . . --Roger Smith, December 1972. British Journal for the History of Science 6(22): 183.
For Lyell the challenge was to develop the continuous process, the gradual extinction and creation of species. The intermittent process was available in the fortuitous nature of the circumstances favorable for the preservation of fossil remains. Wallace on the other hand had for some years been attempting to validate the hypothesis of gradual species transformation. Although he had been examining the relationships between geographical distribution and affinity within affinity groups (general, families), there is no evidence that he had given any thought to the question of the origin of discontinuities within such groups until a few months before he wrote the 1855 essay. During that brief period several quite unexpected patterns of distribution and affinity came to his attention. Soon thereafter grew the appreciation that extinction, interacting with species transformation, could give rise to all known patterns of organic discontinuities . . . --John L. Brooks, December 1972. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 44: 26.
. . . A contemporary reader of Wallace's "Attempts at a natural arrangement of birds", should he be unaware of its date of publication, would probably find little to criticize in its presentation of the role of extinction in the genesis of observed patterns of diversity. So completely do we share Wallace's faith that "all gaps between species, genera, or larger groups are the result of extinctions of species during former epochs of the world's history" that this statement seems nothing unusual. It is only when it is clearly understood that this statement was published in 1856, three years before Darwin published the Origin of Species, that we appreciate that this essay carries the proclamation of a prophet's faith . . . --John L. Brooks, December 1972. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 44: 45.
"What think you of Wallace's paper in the Ann. N. Hist.? Good! Upon the whole! But how about such forms as the Giraffe, which has typical representatives in the Siwalik tertiary deposits? Or the true Elk (= Moose)? Can we suppose a lost series of gradations connecting these general with the Deer type, & ramifying off to them paulatim [gradually]? Wallace has, I think, put the matter well; and according to his theory, the various domestic races of animals have been fairly developed into species" [quotation from Edward Blyth letter to Darwin] . . . --Barbara G. Beddall, Spring 1972. Journal of the History of Biology 5(1): 155.
Wallace, in fact, proposed the first cybernetic model. Nowadays cybernetics deals with much more complex systems of the general kind; and we know that when we talk about the processes of civilization, or evaluate human behavior, human organization, or any biological system, we are concerned with self-corrective systems. Basically these systems are always conservative of something. As in the engine with a governor, the fuel supply is changed to conserve--to keep constant--the speed of the flywheel, so always in such systems changes occur to conserve the truth of some descriptive statement, some component of the status quo. Wallace saw the matter correctly, and natural selection acts primarily to keep the species unvarying; but it may act at higher levels to keep constant that complex variable which we call "survival." . . . --Gregory Bateson, 1972. In his Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chandler Publishing Company): 435.
The importance of larval dispersal was already recognized by Alfred Russel Wallace in his work on The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876). Wallace knew that the univalve and bivalve Mollusca have free-swimming larval stages and recognized that "they thus have a powerful means of dispersal, and are carried by tides and currents so as ultimately to spread over every shore and shoal that offers conditions favorable for development." . . . --Rudolf S. Scheltema, April 1971. Biological Bulletin 140: 285.
. . . Darwin (1859) and later evolutionists (especially Muller 1940, 1942) proposed that reproductive isolating mechanisms develop as by-products of divergent evolution and are purely incidental features of adaptive differentiation which confer no advantage to populations at the time they develop. Conversely, Wallace (1889), Fisher (1930), and Dobzhansky (1941, 1951) contended that isolating mechanisms could arise from selection against hybrids and hybridizers. Selection for reproductive isolation in areas of sympatry would reinforce previously existing barriers and thereby reduce gametic wastage, hybridization, and disruptive gene flow. Grant (1966) has suggested the term "Wallace effect" for this process . . . --Donald A. Levin, November-December 1970. The American Naturalist 104(940): 571.
The basic answer to the question--"Why does man occupy this worldwide and universally dominant niche?"--also given by Wallace, is that by the use of his greatly superior mind, man has continually modified the environment to meet his needs, so that "he would cease to be influenced by natural selection in his physical form and structure." As Dobzhansky (1962, 1967) has pointed out, this statement is an exaggeration. Nevertheless, the general conclusion of Wallace, that in early man the action of natural selection was largely transferred from the bodily structure to the mind, is still valid . . . --George Ledyard Stebbins, March-April 1970. The American Naturalist 104(936): 112.
The next questioner said the lecturer had termed Mr. [Henry] George a poet. He then called attention to the fact that Mr. George advocated nationalisation of the land as a remedy for poverty, and asked how it was that Mr. A. Wallace, an able man, came to the same conclusion. Professor Marshall said that Mr. Wallace's proposal was much more reasonable than that of Mr. George. He did not call Mr. George a poet because he said erroneous things. He was a poet because he was poetic, and he was not a man of science because he said erroneous things [report on a lecture by Alfred Marshall] . . . --Ronald H. Coase, April 1969. Journal of Law and Economics 12(1): 199.
. . . We next come to Mr. Wallace's plan. It proposed that the inherent value of the soil should become the property of the State, but that the buildings and other improvements on it should remain private property. He would give to the landowner an annuity equal to that part of the rent which corresponds to its present inherent value, for his life and the life of any descendants born in his lifetime, or in failure of such, for the life of anyone nominated by the landlord. He calls this full compensation, but of course it is only partial compensation; the State would confiscate, independently of any rise in its inherent value, the reversion of this inherent value some years hence. If we put the probable duration of the lives at forty years, this is equal to an immediate confiscation of 30 per cent of the inherent value, if we take interest at 3 per cent, or a confiscation of 20 percent if we take interest at 4 per cent. The question whether this is just or not must be looked at straight in the face [from the words of Alfred Marshall] . . . --Ronald H. Coase, April 1969. Journal of Law and Economics 12(1): 206.
. . . The principle may be extended to the generalization that a proportionately small percentage of any fauna will be fit as invaders, since any intervening barrier, however slight, will act as a kind of "filter" to at least some of them. Simpson has developed and supplemented this argument, demonstrating that Wallace's interpretation was essentially correct. The precise differences in approach between Darwin and Wallace need some additional study, but it would seem that Darwin tended to concentrate on the effects of different dispersal mechanisms on patterns of distribution, Wallace more on the influence of barriers in restricting faunas conceived of as units. Thus, Wallace was more orientated toward historical explanation for classes of phenomena, Darwin toward reasoning from the effects of the properties of individuals upon the overall pattern of distribution . . . --Michael T. Ghiselin, 1969. In his The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (University of California Press): 41.
. . . Darwin and Wallace merit particular respect for having developed the theory of natural selection through a process of "retroduction": that is, they were aware of a phenomenon, and successfully sought out an explanation in superficially unconnected processes. The method through which this insight was obtained would seem to have been orderly and rational . . . --Michael T. Ghiselin, 1969. In his The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (University of California Press): 77.
In a modification of the quinarian system of William Sharpe Macleay, Swainson divided the earth into five regions according to what he believed to be the five major races of mankind; animal groups were likewise divided into fives. The divisions were mathematical, the reasons not only unknown but unknowable. But Wallace questioned Swainson from the first, noting that "there appears not to be the slightest reason for believing a priori that all groups of animals are divided into the same number of types of forms or divisions" . . . --Barbara G. Beddall, September 1968. Journal of the History of Biology 1(2): 270.
. . . Lamarck had interpreted them in his own light, believing them to be the result of "the permanent disuse of an organ, arising from a change of habits, [which caused] a gradual shrinkage of ultimately the disappearance and even extinction of that organ." Wallace, like Chambers, thought that rudimentary organs showed relationships, but he misinterpreted them, confusing vestigial with nascent organs. He did, however, ask the right question: "If each species has been created independently, and without any necessary relations with pre-existing species, what do these rudiments, these apparent imperfections mean?" . . . --Barbara G. Beddall, September 1968. Journal of the History of Biology 1(2): 280.
. . . The argument from design was teleological, presuming that a contrivance existed in accordance with a preconceived plan. Adaptation between structure and function was recognized, but it was thought that a structure was provided simply because a function required it. Wallace wondered, however, how an animal could have necessities before it came into existence? And how could it "continue to exist unless its structure enabled it to obtain food? He thought that the arguments brought forward as proofs of design were absurd; not only were they insulting to the intelligence of a Supreme Being, but they also placed narrow limits on His power . . .Barbara G. Beddall, September 1968. Journal of the History of Biology 1(2): 282.
. . . Looking back, it is interesting that Wallace, in 1880, thought that enough information was already at hand to make further expeditions and collecting redundant. What was needed, he said, was intensive study of selected islands, and since Britain owned most of the world's islands, the government should post naturalists on some of them to make such studies. Wallace's suggestion was good, though naturally nothing came of it, but his major premise was wrong. We still need to know a great deal more than we do about the species that make up island biotas, not merely for the sake of naming and cataloguing them, but because knowledge of the identities, relationships, distribution, behavior, and ecological roles and requirements of the species is essential for understanding both the evolution of the island biotas and the evolution and functioning of the island ecosystems . . . --Theodore H. Hubbell, May 1968. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 60(1): 22.
The hypothesis of a secondary and supplementary process of selection for reproductive isolation, considered as an advantageous situation in its own right for the species concerned, was advanced in the early period of evolutionary biology by Wallace (1889), who tried unsuccessfully to convince Darwin. It seems fitting and desirable to designate the process of selection for reproductive isolation as the Wallace effect. The Wallace hypothesis was proposed again in the modern period by Fisher (1930), Dobzhansky (1941; 1951), and Huxley (1943). The subject has been reviewed recently by Mayr (1963) and Grant (1963). It is argued that the individuals of two sympatric species populations which produce inviable or sterile hybrids will contribute fewer offspring to future generations than will sister individuals in the same parental populations which do not hybridize. Consequently the genetic factors determining some block or aversion to hybridization will tend to increase in frequency within each species over the course of generations. This process of selection is expected to lead to a reinforcement of the reproductive isolation which had developed as a by-product of divergence . . . --Verne Grant, March-April 1966. American Naturalist 100(911): 99.
Species of animals living on islands may have morphological characteristics not possessed by their mainland counterparts, a fact which was recognized by Wallace (1881). He remarked that in the Celebes: "Nearly thirty species of butterflies, belonging to three different families, have a common modification in the shape of their wings by which they can be distinguished at a glance from their allies in any other island or country whatever, and all these are larger than the representative forms inhabiting most of the adjacent islands." . . . --P. R. Grant, September 1965. Evolution 19: 355.
Wallace was one of the first to suggest that birds might build their nests on the basis of their previous experience. Although it now seems that nest building in birds is not solely a function of memory, the extent to which experience plays a role has not been determined . . . --Theodore D. Sargent, January 1965. The Auk 82(1): 48.
Wallace (1889), after summarizing the findings of Bates and Müller, proposed AN EXTENSION OF MÜLLERIAN MIMICRY WHEREBY SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THE SAME UNPALATABLE GENUS LOOK ALIKE IN THE SAME LOCALITY (e.g., 4 or 5 Heliconius having a yellow-banded forewing and radiating red stripes on the hindwing.) This really is somewhat different from Müller's case of convergence of widely unrelated species. Modern speciation theory predicts that closely related species when sympatric will diverge in appearance, habits, and season due to rigorous selection for the two main speciation sequelae: anti-hybridization mechanisms and niche diversification (anti-competition). Wallace's Müllerian extension explains an important deviant. He also suggested the possibility of a still different sort of mimicry, in which A SCARCE EDIBLE SPECIES CAN MINGLE WITH AND CLOSELY RESEMBLE AN ABUNDANT EDIBLE SPECIES AND THUS GAIN SOME FREEDOM FROM PREDATION . . . --Charles L. Remington, 1963. In Proceedings of the XVI International Congress of Zoology (The Congress), Volume 4: 148.
The general patterns of the distribution of mollusks in the Pacific, particularly those of the terrestrial forms, aroused attention because of the difficulties involved in transporting such forms to small and widely scattered islands. Suggested dispersal agents have included land connections, drifting vegetation, typhoons and migratory birds. The use of islands as stepping stones, including those now buried beneath the sea, was suggested by Wallace in 1881. In Wallace's time there was little geological evidence to support the idea of submerged islands. As late as 1950 it was pointed out that complete proof for island distribution was "hopelessly buried in the geological past." . . . --Harry S. Ladd, 1960. American Journal of Science 258-A: 140.
The occurrence of a number of river-like channels running across the group and dividing it into islands is beyond doubt the most remarkable geomorphic phenomenon of the Aru Islands. Numerous branch channels are also encountered. There are several theories concerning the genesis of these channels. Wallace (1857, 1869) tried to explain them as the remainders of the Pleistocene lower courses of New Guinea rivers preserved here by subsequent uparching of the Aru region, whereas elsewhere the river courses gradually disappeared during the transgression of the shelf associated with the postglacial rise in sea level . . . --Herman Verstappen, Summer 1959. American Journal of Science 257(7): 493.
The difficulty inherent in attempting to rid biology of normative concepts incapable of definition in purely biological terms became even more evident when Darwin and others tried to find a substitute for the term natural selection. Asa Gray and Alfred Russel Wallace objected to the expression because it seemed to imply an intelligent agent selecting according to pre-established standards . . . --John C. Greene, 1959. In his The Death of Adam (Iowa State University Press): 300.
Alfred Russel Wallace had lived for many years in tropical regions, first in the Amazon basin and later in the East Indies, where he had been especially impressed by the phenomena of animal distribution. He thus had a broader and more direct and intimate acquaintance with the subject than any other naturalist traveller of his century. He was continually at work on this subject from 1860 until 1876, the date of publication of his two volumes on The Geographical Distribution of Animals. He somewhat modestly refers to this work as an extension and amplification of the two chapters on the subject in the Origin of Species, comparing it with Darwin's own two-volume expansion of the chapters on animals and plants under domestication. The two principal sections of Wallace's work on contrasted as "zoological geography," a descriptive discussion of the land animals of the different zoogeographic regions, and "geographical zoology," a review of the distribution of vertebrates and certain invertebrates, group by group. Whatever their fate in a reclassification of regions and subregions, Wallace's scheme and nomenclature are the ones that appear most widely in zoological literature . . . --Karl Patterson Schmidt, December 1954. The Quarterly Review of Biology 29(4): 323.
After Dr J. Rae, the most notable contribution to the Gesture Theory came from Charles Darwin's rival, Dr Alfred Russel Wallace, who in 1895 pointed out, in Fortnightly Review, that, in English speech, it is common to produce words by an appropriate gesture of the tongue, lips or jaw, so as 'to bring sense and sound into unison'. Thus, in UP, the jaw makes an upward movement, while in DOWN, the jaw moves down. Continuing consonants, such as F, L, M, N, etc., symbolize continuing motions, such as fly, run, swim, move. On the other hand, words for abrupt motions end with a stopped consonant--e.g., B, D, G, K, P, T, in stop, hop, pat, stab, kick, etc. Dr Wallace considered it in the highest degree probable that the pantomimic use of the various parts of the mouth constitute 'a fundamental principle which has always been at work, both in the origin and in the successive modifications of human speech'. Dr Wallace did not recognize Dickens' observation of hand and mouth as exemplified by Sam Weller; but he was, I believe, the first to point out that the pantomimic principle may be still active in man's unconscious development of his spoken language, and that modern languages may be just as gestural as the older ones . . . --R. A. S. Paget, 1951. Science News (England) 20: 87.
"He [Conrad] loved old memoirs and travels--and I think Wallace's Malay Archipelago was his favorite bedside book." Again Mr. Curle wrote that Conrad read The Malay Archipelago "over and over again . . . It was his favorite bedside companion. He had an intense admiration for those pioneer explorers--'profoundly inspired men' as he called them--who have left us a record of their work; and of Wallace, above all, he never ceased to speak in terms of enthusiasm. Even in conversation he would amplify some remark by observing, 'Wallace says so-and-so,' and The Malay Archipelago had been his intimate friend for many years." [comments by Richard Curle] . . . --Florence Clemens, July 1939. South Atlantic Quarterly 38: 305.
Though born and bred in England, no snobbishness had ever touched him, he felt that the peasant's life, being richer in experience, was more interesting than the lord's. Yet he was of the finest courtesy, kindness and generosity; he loved to relieve any want or alleviate any misery; he said once: "The sole value of riches is the joy of giving." I knew him for more than a quarter of a century and can recall no fault in him--no flaw even. His temper was as patient and quiet and fair as his mind, and his health was almost perfect even in extreme age. In writing thus of him, I feel as if I were ladling out treacle to my readers; but I can't help it; I can't go outside the Truth. Looking back, I'm inclined to think he was the wisest and best man I've ever known. Fortunately this word may be added, I've met dozens of bad men who were incomparably more interesting . . . --Frank Harris, 1920. In his Contemporary Portraits (Third Series) (published by the author): 105.
. . . The illustrious names of Myers, Sidgwick, Gurney, Wallace, Crookes, Zoellner and many other prominent men, are associated with the rebirth and the rehabilitation of the ancient belief in spirits. Even if the real nature of the observed facts be disputed, even if the explorers may be accused of errors, and sometimes of self-deception, there still belongs to them the immortal merit of having thrown the whole of their authority on to the side of non-material facts, regardlesss of public disapproval. They faced academic prejudices, and did not shrink from the cheap derision of their contemporaries; even at a time when the intellect of the educated classes was spellbound by the new dogma of materialism, they drew public attention to phenomena of an irrational nature, contrary to accepted convictions. These men typify the reaction of the human mind against the senseless and desolating materialistic view . . . --Carl Jung, May 1920. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 31(79): 76.
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Underwater mountain of Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary is haven for sea life
Published: Saturday, February 9, 2013 at 3:05 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, February 9, 2013 at 3:29 p.m.
About 25 miles southwest of Bodega Bay, just beyond the horizon on a clear day, a huge rocky mountain rises from the muddy ocean floor to within 120 feet of the blue Pacific surface.
The 93 million-year-old formation, once a chunk of the southern Sierra Nevada, sheared off and slowly edged along the San Andreas fault to the North Coast. It lay undiscovered until the 1850s and wasn't seen by human eyes until 1978.
But the 26-square-mile granite mass known as Cordell Bank is a smorgasbord for scores of species of seabirds and whales that fly and swim thousands of miles to feast on an abundance of food procured by the wind, the Earth's rotation and a southbound current that sweeps along the California coast.
Nutrients drawn from the ocean's frigid depths provide the base of a food chain that sustains life forms ranging from microscopic plankton to the world's largest creature, the blue whale, with a profusion of finned, feathered and furred animals in between.
On Cordell Bank's rocky ridges and pinnacles closest to the surface, a dazzling array of sponges, corals, sea squirts and sea stars are layered one on top of the other, while vast schools of groundfish swim close by.
The organisms at Cordell Bank are served by one of the world's most productive ecosystems, known as an upwelling system, that literally manufactures food and delivers it all year long.
“They just sit there and gobble as the food floats by,” said John Largier, an oceanographer at the Bodega Marine Laboratory who describes the upwelling as “a perennial fountain of youth.”
Bob Schmieder of Walnut Creek, who says he is the first person to see Cordell Bank through a scuba diver's mask, said “the place just grows like a Sunset magazine garden ... complicated, colorful and alive.”
Cordell Bank, a place unknown to most people who aren't fishermen or scientists, is in the news because of the 529-square mile marine sanctuary that surrounds and protects it from harm, such as overfishing and energy development.
(On Google Earth, the bank is labeled and its underwater contours are visible, with depth below the surface shown wherever the cursor rests.)
When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced plans in December to more than double the size of the Cordell Bank and adjacent Gulf of the Farallones national marine sanctuaries, North Coast environmentalists and public officials hailed it as the long-sought salvation from the threat of offshore oil drilling.
Moving the sanctuaries' boundary from Bodega Bay about 60 miles north to just beyond Point Arena in southern Mendocino County will protect the entire marine food system that makes Cordell Bank — and the area stretching south to the Farallon Islands — a natural wonder.
Less than half of the system currently is protected, and an oil spill at Point Arena — an area targeted for drilling as recently as 2009 — would ride the upwelling system south to foul rather than feed the Cordell Bank coastal region.
Such a prospect provides a “strong scientific justification” for expanding the sanctuaries to Point Arena, said Dan Howard, superintendent of the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
Upwellings occur in thin bands along the west coast of four continents — North and South America, Europe and Africa — where wind drives what's known as a boundary current.
The upwellings cover only 5 percent of the world's oceans, but account for about one-fourth of the global fish harvest.
The California Current, which extends south from British Columbia to the tip of Baja California, provides the locomotion for the Point Arena upwelling.
Persistent north winds, strongest along the North Coast in May and June but prevailing year-round, catch the top 100 feet of the ocean's water, Largier said. The Earth's rotation contributes a force — the Coriolis effect — that pushes the water out to sea, drawing an upwelling of cold, clear water from depths up to 1,000 feet to replace it.
The upwelling carries nutrients, primarily nitrate and phosphate, that are the product of natural composting of dead organic material at depth and on the ocean floor. “As it comes to the surface, the ocean is being fertilized,” Largier said.
Sunlight strikes the nutrients about 100 feet down, igniting a massive bloom of phytoplankton, microscopic plants that turn the water green, like “grass in a springtime meadow,” he said.
Tiny animals, mostly copepods and krill, devour the plants, filling the ocean with a moveable feast.
The headlands at Point Arena accelerate the wind and current, the coast range of mountains channels the wind and the Point Reyes Peninsula bounces the current over Cordell Bank.
It takes five days for the upwelling waters to get there, the same time it takes phytoplankton to bloom, resulting in a blast of food-rich water over Cordell Bank.
Continuing south, the upwelling eddies off the Marin coast, washing over the Farallon Islands, another important feeding and breeding ground.
Point Arena's system is the “strongest, most persistent” upwelling in North America, Largier said.
Like tourists flocking to the North Coast for fine food and wine, birds, mammals and at least one reptile make fantastic voyages to Cordell Bank. Humpback whales swim 1,380 miles from from Baja; gigantic blue whales more than 3,000 miles from Costa Rica.
Sooty shearwaters fly by the thousands from New Zealand, 6,600 miles away, while leatherback sea turtles swim 8,670 miles from Indonesia to dine on jellyfish.
From their nests in the sand on tiny atolls in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Black-footed albatross fly 2,400 miles to eat and immediately return, regurgitating food for the chicks.
Harbor seals, elephant seals, sea lions, porpoises and dolphins are among the more than 20 marine mammal species that frequent Cordell Bank.
It is a limited feeding ground for humans, however.
Most of the Cordell Bank sanctuary is closed to commercial and recreational groundfish catching, a rule implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service to help rebuild a diminished fish population.
Salmon, crab and albacore fishing are allowed in the sanctuary. But Chris Lawson, a Bodega Bay commercial fisherman, said the distance from shore to the bank is a disincentive, adding time and fuel costs to a trip.
“You want to keep as close to the shore as possible,” he said.
Cordell Bank is “a remarkable ecosystem,” Lawson said, recalling party boat excursions there in the late 1960s, when rock cod were so abundant they were “finning the surface,” he said.
Lawson also recalls the Russian fishing vessels that frequented Cordell Bank back then when it was in international waters, raking the soft sea bottom around the bank with trawls.
He also knows the importance of brisk springtime winds that can pin Bodega Bay fishing boats in the harbor and frustrate anglers by causing the fish to temporarily scatter.
“We cuss the wind all the time, but without it there would be no upwelling,” Lawson said.
(You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or [email protected].)
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:352f600b-bfb9-4265-9e17-7b24b73fdf6a> | {
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Elephants We’ll Never Forget
In 1919 a Major Pretorius was given the task to shoot all the remaining elephants in the Addo area of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. By 1920 only 16 elephants remained and these were given sanctuary on the land of a farmer named J.T. Harvey. The elephants were viewed both as a nuisance and potential profit. Citrus farmers in this region battled them for water resources. Opportunists saw cash in their tusks. Initial efforts to fence elephants were unsuccessful and farmers were aggravated when elephants trampled through in search of food. But by 1954, thanks in part to improvements in elephant-proof fencing, the Addo Elephant National Park was thriving. Elephant population was improving and farmers had their irrigation and crops intact. Now this national park is roughly 50,000 acres (the 3rd largest national park in SA) and is home to 450 elephants and a host of other wildlife. From our limited experience of the place it seems like a beneficial situation for the wildlife, the environment, the local community, and farming. For us it was a thrilling two days driving around the park in search of animal and plant life. Here's some of what we saw. | <urn:uuid:91c100dc-67dc-4fc3-b4cb-e17ba0f6d6cf> | {
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From identifying Osama bin Laden to proving someone guilty of rape or murder, DNA analysis has become an essential scientific tool for police and criminal justice.
Unique genetic markers could play a crucial role in the trial of ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York.
Various media reports, citing sources close to the investigation, have said that DNA from Strauss-Kahn -- believed to be traces of semen -- was found on the shirt of the 32-year-old woman, who has alleged that the French political heavyweight tried to rape her in his hotel suite on May 14.
"The DNA technique, the nuclear DNA, is the one and only technique, if properly conducted, that has an extraordinarily high odds against a misidentification," said University of Arizona professor of chemistry and geoscience Bonner Denton.
"It's very close to 100 percent... It's a much better technique than many other forensic identification techniques, even finger prints."
Thanks to DNA analysis and other tests, US officials were able to say they were certain bin Laden was dead, with just a one in 11.8 quadrillion chance of mistaken identity.
CIA specialists first compared photographs of the Al-Qaeda leader's corpse to photographs of bin Laden and then reviewed a DNA sample against a "comprehensive profile" derived from some of his many family members.
As a result, an intelligence official said there was no doubt that a team of US Navy SEALs that raided a compound in Pakistan on May 1 had killed the Al-Qaeda founder.
Denton was part of a National Research Council team that wrote a key report about DNA analysis in 2009 for the US Congress.
"Nuclear DNA analysis has been subjected to more scrutiny than any other forensic discipline, with extensive experimentation and validation performed prior to its use in investigations," the report said.
It concluded that the US medical-legal system needed to be revamped because forensics labs were backlogged and understaffed.
More than half of the first 250 people released from prison thanks to a DNA test exonerating them had been initially found guilty based on erroneous medical analysis.
DNA analysis entered the US criminal system in 1987 when a serial rapist in Florida became the first person whose guilt was proven using the technique.
Federal authorities, including the US military and all 50 states, now archive DNA samples.
The FBI has developed the powerful Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which catalogs millions of samples.
Every Monday morning, the FBI launches a CODIS search automatically comparing millions of DNA profiles of people who were arrested or found guilty with samples collected in cold cases.
The methodology has allowed CODIS to confirm the guilt of 140,000 criminals since 1994 and to prove 269 people innocent since 1989, according to University of Virginia School of Law professor Brandon Garrett.
Each year, DNA analysis clears thousands of suspects, even early on in police investigations.
A federal investigation in the 1990s found that 25 percent of principal suspects had been cleared of all suspicion thanks to DNA tests.
The reliability of the technique can also establish the identity of a child's parents at low cost.
And it shed new light on the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and the third US president's black slave Sally Hemings, finding that he likely fathered several children with her.
Explore further: Don't lose the organism in the excitement over its genes, biologists urge | <urn:uuid:cc06db44-5bc0-4abc-8368-d26e37cf0cf4> | {
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Traditionally if scientists wanted to look at something small they would put a sample under a microscope but now researchers have managed to shrink the microscope itself to the size of a single human cell. An interdisciplinary research team, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have developed optical biochips no larger than a single cell that could lead to faster development of new drugs and quicker medical tests.
The research team moved away from the idea that a microscope is something you have to look through to create optical biochips onto which scientists can place biological samples. Special fluorescent chemicals are then used together with tiny light emitting lasers to allow the scientists to analyse the cells or targets within the cells. Researchers can use this capability to examine cellular conditions for certain diseases or to develop new treatments by studying the way cells react to a drug.
The biochips also raise the possibility of a micro-laboratory, the size of a credit card, which would be able to perform medical diagnostics, improving patient treatment by reducing the number of hospital visits needed for tests.
The initial research has led to the creation of a spin-out company, BioStatus Ltd, supported by a BBSRC Small Business Research Initiative grant. BioStatus has developed the research to refine the fluorescent probe technology and also to make the analysis of biological samples more sophisticated.
Professor Paul Smith, the research group leader, said, "Our research and the outcomes from the spin-out company could help to revolutionise how we examine biological samples. Our next step will be to develop simple, small diagnostic devices. Future generations may be able to use these as the basis for hand-held systems that will be able to perform diagnostic functions in the field that currently require a laboratory test."
Professor Julia Goodfellow, Chief Executive of BBSRC, said, "The success of the research into biochips and the development of the science through the spin-out company shows how cutting edge research in the biosciences can meet real world challenges. Bochips have the potential to make a real difference in medical diagnostics and drug development."
The research is being carried out at the Wales College of Medicine and involves researchers at Cardiff University, University of Bangor, the Gray Cancer Institute in London and collaboration with the University of Warwick and laboratories in the United States.
Source: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Explore further: Allosaurus fed more like a falcon than a crocodile, new study finds | <urn:uuid:9589c28b-2538-4b91-9003-b9d62163e8ab> | {
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June is Cataract Awareness Month. Did you know that cataracts are the leading cause of vision loss among adults 55 and older? In fact, more than half the people over age 65 have some degree of cataract development. A cataract is a clouding of the lens in the eye, the part of the eye that focuses light and produces clear images. Inside of the eye, the lens is contained in a sealed bag or capsule. As old cells die they become trapped within the capsule. Over time, more cells die and accumulate causing the lens to cloud, making images look blurred or fuzzy. (Eye America.org)
Cataracts are caused by the breakdown of proteins within the clear lens of the eye that cause it to become cloudy and difficult to see through, effecting vision. Some of this protein breakdown is associated with oxidative stress. It is believed that the majority of oxidative stress is generated in the eye via photochemical reactions caused by exposure to sunlight although oxidative stress can be caused by neuronal dysfunction in certain conditions.
Antioxidants fight free radicals and reactive oxygen species by neutralizing them and thus causing them to lose the ability to cause oxidative stress. Antioxidants can be found in many different foods. Some examples are blueberries, raspberries and olive oil. The regular intake of these foods can be beneficial to your health and can combat oxidative stress. However, science is finding that more concentrated doses of antioxidants can be even more beneficial in combating eye disease than diet alone. The use of antioxidant supplementation may protect the eye from oxidative-stress induced damage and disease.
Hydroxytyrosol, a powerful antioxidant derived from olive byproducts, has a chemoprotective effect on retinal cells, the type of cell that is damaged by the progression of macular degeneration and possibly other eye diseases.
Pinnaclife’s Supplement Olivamine Essential, is a blend of Antioxidants, and if used in association with a healthy lifestyle can help to reduce the effects eye disease. Our supplements are available at most Hy-Vee locations. Start your journey towards good health today! | <urn:uuid:63980197-2e57-4e31-98e8-cf30f68cd6e8> | {
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Avian flu, also known as “bird flu,” is caused by influenza viruses that occur naturally among wild birds. Normally, wild birds across the globe are carriers of a harmless form of these viruses, which don’t sicken them. But recently, a new strain of the virus, H5N1 (named for the proteins on the surface of the virus), has killed birds of more than 80 wild species and flocks of domestic fowl, in Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Some human cases, primarily in Asia, have developed from contact with these birds, or their saliva or feces. More than half of the human victims have died after suffering fever, cough, muscle aches, and pneumonia. The disease has not appeared in the United States in either humans or birds.
At this time, avian flu is not easily transmitted from human to human, although experts are considering whether prolonged and intimate contact with a sick person may indeed make a caregiver vulnerable, since family clusters have been found in Indonesia. Still, human cases are rare and have been confirmed only in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam.
But because viruses often mutate, it is feared that H5N1 may some day turn into one that will quickly spread from human to human, perhaps around the globe. Such a pandemic is expected to be widespread and deadly.
Medical researchers are working on preparing a vaccine, but because the exact nature and virulence of the virus that may mutate into the human-to-human form isn’t known, the effectiveness of a vaccine prepared in advance isn’t known either. Typically, it takes six months to develop a vaccine, once the pathogen is known.
Many international agencies, as well as the federal government, local and state governments, businesses, schools, and hospitals are readying plans to deal with the possibility of an avian flu pandemic. The University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are making plans as well. These plans primarily deal with how to efficiently treat the sick and limit exposure to the well.
In this country at this time, the only precautions to take are to observe wildlife from a distance and avoid touching wildlife. If contact occurs, wash hands with soap and water before you rub your eyes, eat, drink, or smoke.
Although there are no international travel restrictions as a result of avian flu, public health officials urge travelers to higher-risk areas of the world to avoid contact with live animal markets and poultry farms, and any free-ranging or caged poultry. In addition, visitors to affected areas should not consume under-cooked poultry and egg products.
Upon their return, travelers should monitor their health for 10 days. If illness is present (including fever plus cough, sore throat, or trouble breathing) during the 10-day period, a doctor should be consulted and informed of symptoms, location of travel, and whether there was direct contact with poultry or close contact with a severely ill person.
While health officials are watching the course of avian flu and making plans to deal with it, even though it may not happen, they are also preparing for the yearly occurrence of seasonal flu, usually between December and May.
Seasonal flu can also cause serious illness and death in the young, the elderly, or those with impaired resistance. But, in contrast to avian flu, vaccines do exist, and are offered at campus sites.
Seasonal flu is transmitted by coughing and sneezing or other close contact, or from contact with an object contaminated by flu viruses, which can live on surfaces for as long as two hours. Health officials are advising that everyone get a flu shot this year and be meticulous about hand-washing. | <urn:uuid:88ebe6e7-8490-4047-9655-e502312d6cb8> | {
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Sequences of numbers can have limits. For example, the sequence 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, ... has the limit 0 and the sequence 0, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, ... has the limit 1.
But not all number sequences behave so nicely. For example, the sequence 1/2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/4, 3/4, 1/5, 4/5, ... keeps jumping up and down, rather than getting closer and closer to one particular number. We can, however, discern some sort of limiting behaviour as we move along the sequence: the numbers never become larger than 1 or smaller than 0. And what's more, moving far enough along the sequence, you can find numbers that get as close as you like to both 1 and 0. So both 0 and 1 have some right to be considered limits of the sequence — and indeed they are: 1 is the limit superior and 0 is the limit inferior, so-called for obvious reasons.
But can you define these limits superior and inferior for a general sequence , for example the one shown in the picture? Here’s how to do it for the limit superior. First look at the whole sequence and find its least upper bound: that’s the smallest number that’s bigger than all the numbers in the sequence. Then chop off the first number in the sequence, and again find the least upper bound for the new sequence. This might be smaller than the previous least upper bound (if that was equal to ), but not bigger. Then chop off the first two numbers and again find the least upper bound.
Keep going, chopping off the first three, four, five, etc numbers, to get a sequence of least upper bounds (indicated by the red curve in the picture). In this sequence every number is either equal to or smaller than the number before. The limit superior is defined to be the limit of these least upper bounds. It always exists: since the sequence of least upper bounds is either constant or decreasing, it will either approach minus infinity or some other finite limit. The limit superior could also be equal to plus infinity, if there are numbers in the sequence that get arbitrarily large.
The limit inferior is defined in a similar way, only that you look at the sequence of greatest lower bounds and then take the limit of that.
You can read more about the limits inferior and superior in the Plus article The Abel Prize 2012. | <urn:uuid:50a0f930-4294-406e-939b-83ec24b275fd> | {
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Benjamin Franklin: the Many Talents of an American Patriot
Birth to a humble life let him see how the world worked from the bottom,
Entering the world of high society let him see the view from above,
Nevertheless, he could always see the right path.
Joining the world of press at only fifteen,
Advising the world behind a mask
Marking himself from there.
Inspired to achieve more
Never giving up.
From Boston to Philadelphia, he continued to work for change
Ringing the bells of change in the ears of the country.
A few simple words were all he used to inspire,
Needing only wit and a pen to play the sage.
Kindling American values in our hearts,
Lighting them into an internal flame.
Inspiring others with his words,
Never truly forgotten.
Written by my son, age 16, for an AP English II course. The assignment was pre-assigned in relationship with a DAR competition.
My kid rocks. | <urn:uuid:336e68f9-a55f-4065-ba13-30172dae80de> | {
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With the use of wind power continuing to grow, it’s no surprise that the tri-bladed turbines peppering an increasing swath of the American landscape have become the supermodels of green growth – the sky-swept arms and glistening towers appear tailor made for the camera’s lens.
But seldom is attention given to the green cutting edge’s more hidden inner workings, and the tools and technologies that make it all possible.
Take the dual wind turbine system recently put online in Gloucester, Massachusetts just a few months back. For all its outward grace and power – and at roughly 400 feet tall and 4-megawatts, there are plenty of both – the system wouldn’t have been possible without a high-tech data communications system provided by Portsmouth’s own TVC Systems.
TVC, which specializes in high-tech information control systems designed to bolster energy efficiency and overall performance, provided what project manager Adam Sargent calls “communication architecture,” or the mechanisms necessary to tie the dual turbine into an electrical grid.
“We were brought on fairly late in the process when it became clear that a key data monitoring component was needed,” recalls Sargent. “We’d recently worked for Sustainable New Energy on a cogen project and when they came to us with the opportunity to work on our first wind turbine, we jumped at the chance.”
Sargent says the new data control system will allow Gloucester to monitor turbine performance in real time, while also helping the city keep track of renewable energy credits (RECs), which track how many megawatts of power emanate from particular entities.
“The system wasn’t enormously expensive in terms of up front cost, but it is visible and interesting and will help the town save money in the long runs,” notes Sargent. “It’s new territory for us, but it’s exciting territory, too.”
According to representatives from Gloucester Engineering, the city’s principal partner on the project, the system became the first in the state of Massachusetts capable of generating the equivalent of the city’s municipal electric load solely by way of wind power.
The system will henceforth allow the city power all of its buildings – from City Hall to the local high school – at a subsidized rate, saving Gloucester an estimated $500,000 annually over the next 25 years.
About 30 percent of the turbine’s $8 million cost will be subsidized through a federal program, allowing the company to save about $1 million in power costs per year.
The city was able to garner public support for the system thanks in part to findings in a 2012 state-sponsored study which concluded that noise from wind turbines doesn’t pose near the threat to human health and well-being often posited by critics.
Support was also bolstered by the unique location of the system – in an industrial park near Route 128, but far enough away from residential enclaves to make noise and light flickering non-issues.
“What really helped us was location, location, location. It’s properly sited,” says Paul McGeary, a Gloucester city councilor who helped organize public meetings about the turbines over the past year.
According to McGeary, more than 2,000 local citizens turned out to sign the turbine blades, now spinning upwards of 400 feet in the air.
“It had to make financial sense for the city and clearly it does.” noted Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who plans to propose using the savings to help fund a new joint police and fire station that could cost between $10 and $15 million. “But they also represent our city’s desire to protect our natural environment.”
Kirk also noted that the project dovetails perfectly with the city’s effort to fill up much of its long-vacant harbor-front lots with businesses ranging from ocean researchers and scientists to “green” boat-builders.
“We are trying to become a leader in marine biology and marine biotechnology,” noted McGeary. “To do that, you need to have a certain image about being a cutting-edge place, being a place where we’re willing to experiment, being a place where new things are tried and implemented and not just talked about.”
Taken together, the size and scope of – and support for – the project make it a game-changer in Massachusetts, and as clear a sign as any that a steadily improving economy will mean more opportunities for the Bay State to expand its green portfolio.
But it’s also been a coup for TVC Systems. While the company has long been at the forefront of efficiency innovation (they are recognized annually by the EPA for their continued spearheading of projects in the field of CHP, wherein differing systems can be connected in order to enhance efficiency), seldom has their work enjoyed a more visible, visceral exposure than with the new Gloucester turbines.
For once, the curtain is being pulled back to reveal the wizard behind the work.
“We were pretty enthused to have this be our first wind turbine project, and we certainly hope there are more to come,” says Sargent. “I think it goes to show how dynamic our company is, and how we have a role to play in the future of energy efficiency.”
TVC is a corporate partner of Green Alliance, a Portsmouth-based organization which seeks to connect sustainability-minded businesses and consumers throughout the Seacoast region.
Learn more about TVC Systems at www.tvcsystems.com
For more information on Green Alliance, visit www.greenalliance.biz | <urn:uuid:257cc2dc-4ce9-4667-8eff-9c7975fa3442> | {
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Welcome Stephen Tremp with an awesome summary of what's at stake as we explore further into space ... enjoy:
|Dr Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)|
"The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.
From it we have learned most of what we know.
Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles.
The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.”
— Dr. Carl Sagan
Space. The final frontier. We remember this line from Star Trek, set in the 23rd century under the “United Federation of Planets.” The key word here is united. We have to ask, will space offer the possibility of mankind living together peaceably? Or is bloodshed inevitable as we explore and colonize our solar system as we did here on Earth? Currently, there are at least fourteen agencies with a stake in space exploration and possible exploitation.
NASA: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research. Mission Statement: pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.
|International Space Station|
ESA: The European Space Agency is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission: shape the development of Europe’s space capability and deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Russia and China (the only other two countries besides the U.S. to independently send men into space), Japan, Iran, Israel, India, Mexico. Korea, Indoneisia, Pakistan, and Vietnam all have space agencies with a range of capabilities from astronaut training, to satellite operations, to sounding rockets (designed to take measurements and perform scientific research during sub-orbital flight), and recoverable biological sounding rockets.
Then there is the military, private sector, and educational institutions that have a growing stake in space exploration. With the Space Shuttle Program mothballed, many are calling for a government and private sector partnership in space exploration. The GOP candidates have also jumped on this topic.
It’s Already Begun: The International Space Station (ISS) is an artificial low-earth orbiting satellite and the ninth space station to be inhabited. The ISS has hosted a rotating international crew since November 2000. Crew members from around the world use the ISS as a research laboratory and conduct experiments in biology, physics, astronomy and other fields. It’s also used to test spacecraft systems and equipment for future use to missions to the Moon and Mars. Ready or not, here we go!
What’s Next: Human and robotic explorations of the moon, Mars, and near earth asteroids. Mining asteroids, planetoids, and spent comets could provide raw minerals such as iron, nickel, and titanium to help construct space stations right there in space. Pretty cool, huhn? Resources like water and oxygen could help sustain life. And water and hydrogen could be extracted for rocket fuel. Perhaps, platinum and cobalt could be returned for earth for profit. Both governments and private industry will be involved in this potentially lucrative business.
Question: Should we set up residence in space or on planets and moons? Will space exploration provide social, intellectual, and economic benefits to everyone, or is this another black hole for our hard-earned tax dollars.
Thanks Hilary for hosting me on my Grand OPENING Blog Tour. And thanks everyone for stopping by and saying hello! Please visit me AT MY BLOG for more information on my novels BREAKTHROUGH and the recently released OPENING!
Breakthrough and Opening can be downloaded at:
Kindle for $1.99
Smashwords for $1.99
Image Credits: NASA
Congratulations Stephen on completing the second book of your trilogy - a wonderful achievement; I highly recommend your first book Breakthrough and cannot wait to find out how the good, bad and the ugly develop in this sequel ...
Space is an interesting 'arena' - and as each year passes we seem to learn more - it is fascinating and I'm delighted to have some subject matter on my blog - space does inspire people.
Stephen writes about science, space exploration - his interests, while interspersing with articles about publishing, self-publishing and useful tips and tricks he has found - there's a great deal of interaction and knowledge exchange over at his blog: Stephen Tremp - Author ... so please visit and join him along his trilogy journey.
Stephen's Grand Opening Tour continues: upcoming dates -
February 14 Rachna Chhabria Rachna’s Scriptorium
February 15 Melissa Bradley Melissa’s Imaginarium
February 17 Lydia Kang The Word is my Oyster
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories | <urn:uuid:05e85e3b-5916-4e4d-9301-291b8f56953a> | {
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PAS (Potato Aligning System)
The cutting of potato slices is very important for final product quality and to maximize product yield. It is important that potato slices are uniform in thickness to ensure the same treatment of each slice in further processes such as washing, blanching and frying.
The PPM Technologies PAS (Potato Aligning System) ensures that potatoes are fed one by one to the slicer. Potatoes are singulated along the length of the feeder. Two screw augers mounted parallel ensure potato separation and single feed into the slicer. This unit includes adjustments that tune the feeder to the required characteristic for the slicer. The discharge chute and augers are adjustable to suit the needed infeed position for the slicer.
FEATURES AND BENEFITS
- Effective individual slicing of potatoes
- Minimize small and broken product pieces
- Maximize Product Yield | <urn:uuid:b73f22a4-ab9a-4f62-b3c4-6c7c5a067853> | {
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As if creaking joints and hardening of the arteries weren't bad enough, a research team from the University of Delaware and the Christiana Care Health System in Newark has now confirmed that even our veins stiffen as we age.
"When you are young, your veins are nice and elastic--like rubber bands," William Farquhar, a cardiovascular physiologist in UD's College of Health Sciences, said. "But as you grow older, we've found that your veins become more like lead pipes."
And that physiological change may be an important factor in the development of high blood pressure, or hypertension, which currently affects an estimated 65 million Americans, most of them older adults, according to Farquhar.
The study, which was conducted over the past two years, was led by Farquhar and Colin Young from the University of Delaware and Michael Stillabower and Angela Disabatino at Christiana Care Health System. The results are published in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Young recently completed his bachelor's and master's degrees at UD, with Farquhar as his adviser, and is now pursuing a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology at the University of Missouri. Stillabower is a cardiologist and director of cardiovascular research at Christiana Care Health System, as well as a clinical associate professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. DiSabatino is the nurse manager at Christiana Care's cardiovascular research office.
While the arterial side of the human circulatory system has been studied extensively, Farquhar said much less research has been conducted on the venous system. Yet the veins contain approximately 70 percent of your body's total blood volume when you are at rest, and the flexibility of these blood vessels is a major factor in how much blood gets returned to your heart during the vital fluid's journey through your circulatory system.
Every minute, the steady beating of that amazing living pump--your heart--sends about five quarts of blood through the 60,000-mile network of arteries, capillaries and veins in your body. The muscular arteries carry blood away from the heart and out to your organs and limbs. Microscopic capillaries connect the arteries to the veins. The veins then transport the blood back to the heart.
The veins are equipped with valves to prevent any backflow of blood caused by gravity as blood is returned to the heart from the lower extremities. The walls of the veins are made of collagen and elastin, two proteins that give the tube-like blood vessels flexibility and help them to maintain your blood pressure.
To determine if there are age-related differences in how our veins work, the research team recruited 24 people for their study--12 healthy young adults between the ages of 18 and 30, and 12 healthy older adults between 60 and 70 years old. Each individual underwent medical screening at Christiana Hospital, which included a lipid profile, blood pressure monitoring, electrocardiogram and several other tests to ensure overall good health.
Then each participant was involved in a series of research trials at UD's Human Performance Lab on the Newark campus. While each subject lay resting on a gurney, various gauges, connected to computers, were placed on their arms and legs. An arterial cuff was attached to an upper arm to monitor blood pressure, and venous cuffs were placed around the upper thigh and upper arm to measure the blood flow to the limbs.
As the cuffs were inflated over an eight-minute period, and then slowly deflated to let blood escape from the limbs, the blood volume was measured, recorded, and graphed. The consistently lower blood volume under pressure pointed to the less springy veins of the older participants.
Graphic courtesy of the American Medical Association "
Based on previous research, we suspected that the veins of the older adults would be less flexible than those of the younger adults," Farquhar said. "But we didn't know if that might be due to a functional process, such as a chronic constriction of the muscles around the veins, or if this decreased flexibility was due to some change in the structure of the veins themselves."
To find the answer, the researchers monitored the blood flow through each participant's veins in different scenarios that might constrict the veins, such as having one foot immersed in cold water, or while squeezing a handgrip. They also administered a nitroglycerin pill under the tongue of each participant to relax the veins. In each case, they found that the tests had no effect on the response of the veins in either age group.
"Thus, we think that the stiffening of our veins as we age is probably due to structural changes, such as a thickening of the vein walls," Farquhar said. "Hardening of the arteries is a good analogy for what is happening in our veins as we grow older."
So can we do anything to keep our veins limber as time marches on?
"While there have been no longitudinal studies of this yet, it's possible that regular exercise training may blunt age-related increases in vein stiffness," Farquhar notes.
In the second phase of the UD study, now under way, the research team wants to find out if the veins of people with high pressure are stiffer than the veins of people with normal blood pressure. Two doctoral students, Erin Delaney and Megan Wenner, are assisting with this portion of the research, which will examine both young and older adults with high blood pressure.
While high blood pressure is all too common among older adults, Farquhar said it can be harder to find young adults who already have the disease. However, several individuals already have been identified for the study, and the team hopes to have data to report in the next six months.
This research is both literally and figuratively "close to the heart" for Farquhar. He said he has always had an interest in cardiology and helping people.
Before his UD career, he worked with cardiac patients in a rehabilitation setting, where he provided patients with information about the risk factors affecting heart disease and the benefits of exercise. Then, during his postdoctoral training at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he worked with patients who were unable to stand without getting dizzy. And that began his research on veins.
Today, he's busy working to find out what role these less-studied blood vessels may play in high blood pressure.
"Lots of people have high blood pressure, but we still don't know the underlying cause of this disease," Farquhar said. "That's why we're pushing forward with these studies."
The UD research is supported by a $151,000 grant from the National Institute on Aging, which is one of 27 institutes and centers that compose the National Institutes of Health.
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:584bd6f1-d89e-42ef-88f4-51480eb3ba66> | {
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27. Jacobson JL, Jacobson SW, Sokol RJ, Martier SS, Ager JW, Kaplan-Estrin MG. Teratogenic effects of alcohol on infant development. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 1993;17(1):174–183. [PubMed] 28. Jacobson SW, Jacobson JL, Sokol RJ, Martier SS, Ager JW. Prenatal alcohol exposure and infant information processing ability. Child Dev. 1993;64(6):1706–1721. [PubMed]
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40. MacKinnon DP, Lockwood CM, Hoffman JM, West SG, Sheets V. A comparison of methods to test mediation and other intervening variable effects. Psychol Methods. 2002;7(1):83–104. [PMC free article] [PubMed] 41. McClelland GH, Judd CM. Statistical difficulties of detecting interactions and moderator effects. Psychol Bull. 1993;114(2):376–390. [PubMed] 42. Lozoff B, Klein NK, Nelson EC, McClish DK, Manuel M, Chacon ME. Behavior of infants with iron-deficiency anemia. Child Dev. 1998;69(1):24–36. [PubMed]
43. Coe CL, Lubach GR, Schneider ML. Neuromotor and socio-emotional behavior in the young monkey are presaged by prenatal conditions. In: Lewis M, Ramsey D, editors. Stress and Soothing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; 1999. pp. 19–38.
44. Golub MS, Hogrefe CE, Widaman KF, Capitanio JP. Iron deficiency anemia and affective response in rhesus monkey infants. Dev Psychobiol. 2009;51(1):47–59. [PMC free article] [PubMed] | <urn:uuid:0af22b9a-ebde-4e58-bdc1-f4f92762eab5> | {
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In contrast to animals and lower plants such as mosses and ferns, sperm cells of flowering plants (angiosperms) are immobile and require transportation to the female gametes via the vegetative pollen tube cell to achieve double fertilization. The path of the pollen tube towards the female gametophyte (embryo sac) has been intensively studied in many intra- and interspecific crossing experiments with the aim of increasing the gene pool of crop plants for greater yield, improved biotic and abiotic stress resistance, and for introducing new agronomic traits. Many attempts to hybridize different species or genotypes failed due to the difficulty for the pollen tubes in reaching the female gametophyte. Detailed studies showed that these processes are controlled by various self-incompatible (intraspecific) and cross-incompatible (interspecific) hybridization mechanisms.
Understanding the molecular mechanisms of crossing barriers is therefore of great interest in plant reproduction, evolution and breeding research. In particular, pre-zygotic hybridization barriers related to pollen tube germination, growth, guidance and sperm delivery, which are considered the major hybridization controls in nature and thus also contribute to species isolation and speciation, have been intensively investigated. Despite this general interest, surprisingly little is known about these processes in the most important agronomic plant family, the Gramineae, Poaceae or grasses. Small polymorphic proteins and their receptors, degradation of sterility locus proteins and general compounds such as calcium, γ-aminobutyric acid or nitric oxide have been shown to be involved in progamic pollen germination, adhesion, tube growth and guidance, as well as sperm release. Most advances have been made in the Brassicaceae, Papaveraceae, Linderniaceae and Solanaceae families including their well-understood self-incompatibility (SI) systems. Grass species evolved similar mechanisms to control the penetration and growth of self-pollen to promote intraspecific outcrossing and to prevent fertilization by alien sperm cells. However, in the Poaceae, the underlying molecular mechanisms are still largely unknown.
We propose to develop maize (Zea mays) as a model to investigate the above-described processes to understand the associated intra- and interspecific crossing barriers in grasses. Many genetic, cellular and biotechnological tools including the completion of a reference genome (inbred line B73) have been established in the last decade and many more maize inbred genomes are expected to be available soon. Moreover, a cellular marker line database as well as large transposon insertion collections and improved Agrobacterium transformation protocols are now available. Additionally, the processes described above are well studied at the morphological level and a number of mutants have been described already, awaiting disclosure of the relevant genes. The identification of the first key players in pollen tube growth, guidance and burst show maize to be an excellent grass model to investigate these processes in more detail. Here we provide an overview of our current understanding of these processes in Poaceae with a focus on maize, and also include relevant discoveries in eudicot model species. | <urn:uuid:4f172805-873c-47d3-bf85-15bd888fb441> | {
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By: Yusuf Kaba Imhotep, The MoundBuilder
The concept of what a man is continues to be greatly debated. These days the dominant idea of men are, Bread winners, Head of Household, dogs, enemies, or Mates, to name a few. The question oft-times remains, “What are the qualities that truly define a man?” Our ancient cultures have dealt with this question in Rites of Passage programs and ceremonies.
Rites of Passage is a system or ceremony that recognizes transition from one stage of life to the next. Comprised within this process is the knowledge needed to successfully function at that next level of life. A man was not recognized as such until successful completion of that community’s Rites of Passage. Today, the entire world suffers because of the absence of this process. Men today remain inadequate or unable to fulfill their proper places because they have not yet accessed the proper tools. The proof is in the results.
Statistics show that men suffering from a variety of health issues including heart disease, cancer, depression, aids, diabetes, and suicide. These conditions are worst in urban communities and among people of color. It is also clear that the concepts of father and husband are not seen in the best light. There is little respect for fathers and the divorce rate is constantly increasing. Men have lost the idea of self-respect. This falls very short of men being, “The crown of creation.”
There is no question in the mind of rationally thinking people that a Rites of Passage program is essential right now. We have poorly developed children because of underdeveloped men. We have fractured homes because of broken men. Our entire society and world suffers because of the state of our men. A properly constructed Rites of Passages program develops men into their very best selves. It is a place of repair for the extensive damage done. It both builds and instills the qualities that produce the best examples of Fatherhood, Husband, and community Elder.
A Rites of Passage program provides a place for men to benefit from the wisdom of those who have dealt with challenges men face. Men need to learn what to eat, how to eat, and what to store in their homes. Men also learn the value of a good woman and how to treat her well. Men must learn how to care for and nurture himself. Men can benefit from wisdom on how to express themselves in the best way. It is also where men must learn how to mine the buried treasures out of themselves and most importantly, have fun doing it.
I encourage you to begin this process and change the course of your life for the better. Time has ushered in the need to return to this great and ancient process. The call for Rites of Passage to a higher level has reached you. Will you answer?
Joseph L Jones Jr / Yusuf Kaba Imhotep is a Wholistic life Consultant and Divine Life Realization Facilitator. He is the Vision Holder for the emerging MoundBuilder’s Development Center. Within the Earth SonSpirit Community, Yusuf serves as Site Administrator, Program Coordinator of Path Of Becoming A Man (an online Rites of Passage Program for men), and Host of ESS Council Fire – a monthly BlogTalk Radio Broadcast. His website is: http://www.moundbuilders.ws | <urn:uuid:7b0c5fd0-3851-4ad0-899d-276eb2cccdc7> | {
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Remotes via IP
Putting it all together
So let me summarize the problems with Internet transmission of audio and the techniques used to minimize them. First, there is network congestion, or plain lack of bandwidth. That issue is tackled by minimizing the necessary bandwidth, by using a lossy codec (or in the case of APT, making use of ADPCM) and striking a correct balance between bandwidth and packet size. Loss of packets is addressed to the extent practicable by FEC. Packet jitter is addressed with a jitter buffer.
All that said, network security is yet another issue. Your LAN is likely attached to a router that allows users on your network to access the Internet. The connections made through this router originate behind it - on the LAN side. The router will allow access to the Internet, and in turn it expects a response from the far end. But think about it: If you are in the field, and trying to connect to an IP codec connected to your network, and the router serves as a firewall, the connection will be refused. As far as that router is concerned, an intrusion is being attempted.
There are several ways around this. The first is to inform the network administrator that for the new IP codec to work, certain ports need to be open on the firewall, so the IP codec in the field can set up communication between itself and the studio codec. If your network architecture includes a DMZ, your network admin may allow you to place the IP codec on that subnet instead.
The second way is a bit more complicated; consider this if your network administer doesn't want to play ball with you. A proxy server can be used as an intermediary. This proxy server is located outside the firewall. A session can be initiated by the studio codec to this proxy server; the proxy records the IP address (among other things) of the studio codec and actually maintains the connection thereafter. From the field, you connect to the proxy server, and it redirects the packet data to the studio codec, through the same connection it has kept open.
And there is a final way to do this, which may be the easiest way. Have an Internet connection put into the studio (like DSL or cable) and reserve its use for just the IP codec. Leave it completely isolated from the LAN, so you can forsake those network security issues. One problem with this method is that your Internet provider may not provide you with a static IP address. Either pick one that does, or make sure you know if and when the IP address has changed before you head out into the field.
Making use of the Internet for remotes can be looked at as a double-edged sword; while one has to take the time to learn about a whole new technology (and undoubtedly be tripped up a few times along the way), the universe of locations from which remotes can be done opens up dramatically. I for one believe that good remotes can make for good radio; and I'm quite sure that, 5 to 10 years out, the trepidation experienced in going out to do an IP remote for the first time will have long since evaporated.
|Codec||Connectivity||Size||Audio I/O||User Access||Supported Encoding Algorithms||Max Audio Freq.||Variable Packet Size||FEC||Packet Jitter Buffer|
|MPEG 1/2 layer 2/3||AAC||G.722||Linear||Apt-x||other/
|APT Worldcast Eclipse aptx.com||IP, ISDN, X.21/V.35||1RU||analog or AES-3||GUI||Y||Y||Y||Y||Y||-||24kHz||Y||N||Y|
|Musicam Suprima musicamusa.com||IP, ISDN X.21/V.35||1RU||analog or AES-3||Web Browser||Y||Y||Y||Y||Y||-||24kHz||Y||N||Y|
|AEQ Phoenix aeqbroadcast.com||IP, ISDN X.21/V.35||1RU||analog or AES-3||Front Panel, USB||Y||Y||Y||Y||N||-||20kHz||Y during setup||N||Y|
|Audio TX STL-IP www.audiotx.com||IP||1RU||analog or AES-3||Web Browser||Y||Y||Y||Y||N||-||48kHz||N||Y||Y|
|Telos Iport telos-systems.com||IP||2RU||analog or AES-3||Web Browser||Y||Y||N||N||N||-||20kHz||N||N||N|
|Comrex Access comrex.com||IP||1RU||analog or AES-3||Web Browser||N||optional||N||N||N||BRIC HQ1, HQ2||15kHz||Y||Y||Y|
|Tieline IP tieline.com||IP, optional ISDN, X.21/V.35, POTS, GSM||1RU and 2RU||analog and AES-3||Front Panel, USB, Web Browser, RJ-45||Layer 2||N||Y||Y||N||Tieline Voice, Tieline Music, Tieline Music Plus, Raw Audio||23kHz||Y||Y||Y|
Irwin is the chief engineer of WKTU-FM, New York City.
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Today in Radio History
The history of radio broadcasting extends beyond the work of a few famous inventors.
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This high-visibility and high-traffic area got the full acoustic treatment.
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- 20 Years of Radio magazine: May 1994 | <urn:uuid:8398bcff-03a1-4a07-8ce5-46956807caed> | {
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The Brood X bugs, red-eyed cousins of the larger annual black-eyed late-summer "Dog Day" green cicadas, will begin emerging from their underground holes in western North Carolina later this month. They don't devour vegetation the way locusts do, and they don't bite or sting. But they sure do sing.
Like many human adolescents, periodical cicadas spend umpteen years in their dirty rooms, indulging in sweet stuff and oblivious to much of the world outside themselves. Then, suddenly, as if a hormone switch were flipped, they emerge with a single-minded commitment to find favor with whatever peer they deem sexually appealing.
The bug nymphs live all that time on tender hardwood tree roots until they finally get the hots. Well, it's more like the "warms," because their signal to go forth and mate is a rise in the soil temperature to 64 degrees Fahrenheit.
Once in heat, millions of them push their way to the surface and climb onto new branch growth on nearby trees and shrubs, according to entomologist Stephen Bambara, who works with the N.C. State Cooperative Extension Service in Raleigh.
The males get together in choruses and harmonize in a unique doo-wop that strikes humans as a decidedly un-sexy metallic screeching. But cicada females respond to it with abandon, making clicking sounds and wing flips -- their version of an air kiss and a toss of the hair.
After 13 or 17 years of underground obscurity, periodical cicadas emerge to a multi-week Mardi Gras, a party thrown by nature solely to ensure that what goes around comes around, generation after generation. Like most such reveries, it's noisy, it's not pretty, and many participants meet violent fates from predators. But in this case, it gets the job done, according to Bambara, because the weird life cycle itself offers a form of protection for the species.
"Cicadas go 13 or 17 years between life cycles because it's to their advantage," said Bambara. "It throws possible predators off track. Seventeen years is a long time to wait between meals if that were your prey. So I think that's where they got their niche. A lot of them are consumed and die when they come out. But their sheer numbers also help ensure their survival. Even if a lot of them get eaten, a lot of others are still left to reproduce."
Birds are periodical cicadas' main predators, he said, plus other omnivorous ground-dwelling animals such as opossums, skunks, raccoons and foxes. Fish, too, eat cicadas that fall into the water. | <urn:uuid:9cbffc24-c8a8-43b2-b973-95ab596e083b> | {
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By driving your SUV, are you sentencing the planet to environmental devastation? Recently, the Clinton Administration released its National Assessment on Climate Change and America, a catalogue of potential disasters resulting from global warming. With admirable understatement, a headline in the news section of the Wall Street Journal noted that the study, "May Overplay Dire Side". Yeah, just maybe. Floods, droughts, disappearing coasts and killer microbes all run wild in the study, which somehow manages to preview possible harm resulting from both too much rain and too little.
The report has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but it's sure to help shame Americans into accepting limits on our economic growth. Well, before you abandon your Jeep Cherokee, you might want to learn about another study which did appear in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. And its message is a little different.
Perhaps the most important -- yet most politically inconvenient -- study in the history of the global warming debate is the one generated by Princeton University's Carbon Modeling Consortium and published in Science magazine in 1998. A team of researchers led by Princeton's Jorge Sarmiento identified a "carbon sink" in North America. In other words, the land in North America was absorbing a surprisingly large amount of the carbon dioxide that would otherwise become greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The technical term is "terrestrial uptake" but the message is clear: Increases in greenhouse gases are coming from outside North America.
Dr. Sarmiento told us this week, "According to our results, for the 1988 to 1992 period we analyzed, North America was a net emitter of about 0." That's right, zero. As close as these scientists from Princeton, Columbia and the government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) can guess, the grass and trees on our continent are consuming all the CO2 emitted by our cars and factories. So the North American continent on its own is not increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. All of us industrialized, SUV-driving, big house-heating, spoiled Americans add up to a wash, in terms of carbon emissions.
How is this possible? In 1998, the Princeton team offered this explanation: "there are a number of possible mechanisms that could be responsible for the sink. Forest regrowth in areas where generations of pioneers leveled trees to create farmland almost certainly plays an important role. Millions of acres east of the Mississippi have returned to forest.
"Forest regrowth, and carbon absorption, in North America may be enhanced by some side effects of industrialization. Nitrogen deposition (a dilute form of acid rain) caused by combustion processes in automobiles and power plants can act as a fertilizer, as can the higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the air. Global warming can contribute to longer growing seasons, which have been observed in studies of satellite measurements cited by the team."
So, thanks to robust forest growth, all our CO2-munching trees can absorb the greenhouse gases from our energy use. Does this mean there isn't a potential problem due to global warming? No. But it does mean that the current political solution embodied in the Kyoto agreement, in which the United States accepts strict limits on its energy use, while most of the world is free to continue emitting increasing amounts of CO2, has no justification in science. The scientific threat has been used as a pretext to cut a political deal, and it's a bad one for America -- a redistribution of wealth from the United States to the rest of the world. I understand why this sounds like a great idea in less developed countries, but why anyone in the US would endorse it is beyond me.
Instead of putting the brakes on our growth, and punishing the one region of the planet that's not making a net contribution to greenhouse gases, perhaps other countries should follow our lead in creating a high-tech economy. With all our industry, we manage to live in a carbon sink because we have abundant, growing forests. In other words, we are very efficient in our use of land, so there are plenty of plants and trees to absorb our CO2. We favor energy sources that leave a tiny footprint on the land oil and gas -- as opposed to low-tech energy sources that require us to clear more land wood burning, solar panels, windmills and coal. Of course, the most land-efficient, non-polluting energy source of all is nuclear power. Nuclear plants don't emit greenhouse gases and they leave a tiny footprint on the land. Until politicians are ready to go nuclear, it's hard to take their predictions of doom seriously or to buy into their alleged solutions. | <urn:uuid:f6726d47-fefc-4b6d-bfb5-e2877824c6bc> | {
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If you visit the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney, take a few minutes to look for a small bridge over a stream near the Wollemi Pine, ‘Australia’s homegrown Christmas tree’, close to the information booth.
This is Macquarie Culvert.
The two brick arches were built as part of the construction of Mrs Macquarie’s Road, which Nicholas Delaney and his gang finished on her birthday in June 1816. They had a double purpose: a drain for the creek’s water, and a bridge.
Built from sandstock brick, the culvert is both typical of early 19th-century drain construction and historically significant, the historian Anna Wong says. But at the end of the 20th century it was in a state of disrepair, with most of the mortar gone and a rare giant fern’s roots threatening to damage it further.
And the original road was covered with two centuries’ worth of sediment. “It is one of the oldest-known sections of road in Sydney, but its existence surprised archaeologists and heritage architects from the Department of Public Works and Services when they began to dig,” says the Sydney Morning Herald.
A joint team from the department and the RBG set out to conserve and restore Macquarie Culvert and the surface of the road Nicholas and his men laid nearly 200 years ago. Then the road was re-covered to preserve it for the future.
Of course, it’s exciting for me as a descendant of Nicholas Delaney to know that his brick bridge still exists and has been restored, but how important is it as part of Australian history?
As Anna Wong points out, “The age and material used within its historical context makes it a significant item. Other culverts and bridges were built during the early nineteenth century, but most have collapsed or were dismantled due to poor construction and inadequate knowledge.
“This brick culvert appears to be the only brick example from this period.”
So – did Nicholas build the oldest bridge in Australia?
But Macquarie Culvert beats them both. True, it’s not so big or so well-known, but at a date of 1816 at the very latest, it is certainly the oldest surviving bridge in Australia.
Not a bad achievement for an illiterate peasant and transported convict.
When we were writing our book, A Rebel Hand: Nicholas Delaney of 1798, the reconstruction was still to take place and several of Nicholas’s descendants were lobbying for the preservation of the stretches of his original road that still existed. It exciting to think that this part is safe for at least the next 100 years, according to the Public Works and Services department.
“The best thing is that the culvert is not high and dry in a museum,” the Gardens’ acting curator, Ian Innes, said at the time. “This is still working as a culvert.”
I haven’t got a picture of Macquarie Culvert to show you, unfortunately. A few weeks ago I emailed the Royal Botanic Gardens to ask if they would let me use one of their photos but I haven’t heard back from them and I haven’t found one under Creative Commons on the net.
I found useful information about early nineteenth-century drains in Anna Wong’s paper in Australasian Historical Archaeology, 17, 1999 and about the restoration of Macquarie Culvert in James Woodford’s article in the Sydney Morning Herald of June 24, 2002.
The AHA article also has an old photo of Macquarie Culvert before restoration. As I can’t give a hyperlink to it (it’s a PDF) here’s a screenshot. You can find the article on Google. | <urn:uuid:39de3c1a-9d14-4bcf-aa86-2d81c2bf3899> | {
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I am going to compare the two books because although there is overlapping information, each offers readers a different perspective. Both books describes the sensory systems and subtypes of Sensory Processing Disorders (SPD)- which are as follows:
· Sensory Modulation Disorder
o sensory over-responsivity
o sensory under-responsivity
o sensory craving
· Sensory-Based Motor disorder
o postural disorder
· Sensory discrimination DisorderBoth books do an excellent job of explaining red flags and symptoms of SPD and how the concepts that make up the acronym “A SECRET” are used to problem solve solutions. The elements of A SECRET are:
· A- Attention
· E-Emotional Regulation
· C- Culture, Context or Current Conditions
· R- Relationships
· E- Environment
· T- TaskSensational Kids provides very detailed and lengthy case studies of sensational children, their family dynamics and how a child’s coping abilities are reflective of his or her specific neurological make-up. Case-studies include:
· a typically developing first-grader
· an over-responsive kindergartner
· an under-responsive second grader
· a sensory-seeking preschooler
· a dyspraxic third- graderReaders of Sensational Kids learn about basic intervention techniques, special education laws that impact services, the prevalence of SPD and co-existing conditions such as attention deficit disorder or autism and what the future holds for these children.
Now No Longer A SECRET delves further into problem-solving a child’s emotional, social and sensorimotor challenges by carefully differentiating the subtypes of SPD in order to individualize treatment and avoid cookie cutter “sensory diets”. Short case-studies are used to illustrate a child’s challenged area and then a chart is created with each element of “A SECRET” filled in. For example, one child who had melt downs during soccer games was supported in the areas of
· Attention- by giving him the job of calling out sports moves
· Sensation by jumping, wrestling, jumping or doing heavy work before sports
· Emotional regulation –by listening to positive, uplifting music on the way to the game
· Culture- being picked up early from school to do some self-esteem boosting before the soccer games.
· Relationships-parents positive attitude influenced how he felt
· Environment- visual cues used to help him better judge where he was on field
· Task- play with smaller group of playersParents might find the information in this book overwhelming, but I think that it will be worthwhile to plug along and reread the sections that pertain to their child. Then share strategy ideas with the occupational therapist (who will hopefully, also read this book).
This is a great read also for experienced therapists. There are descriptions of many simple, low cost, easy to implement adaptations that are variations of what OT’s typically have in their bag of tricks. For example, sitting on a readily available folded sweater can be used instead of a cushion and a pen cap might be an ideal fidget tool because it doesn’t have any distracting moving parts (….not to mention it looks “normal”).
After writing this lengthy book review, I hope that it is no secret that I highly recommend No Longer A SECRET. Parents, teachers and therapists will find this an important resource when planning strategies for children challenged by sensory processing disorders.
Purchase at Future Horizons
Use code "PEDIA" to receive 15% discount
or purchase on Amazon | <urn:uuid:926082b4-8ffc-4d9a-abe6-f32aad19ebb0> | {
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Bittacus striatus Issiki, 1927
Diagnosis: This species has wings with dark shading along gradate series and at the origin of radial sector and branches of cubital vein. The male epiandrial lobes are about the same size as the basistyles and the base of the aedeagus is gradually widened until abruptly constricted to narrow stalk.
Distribution – Geographical: This species is known from Kobayashi, Rato (=Kobayash =Hsiaolin = Hsiaolin, Jiaxian Township, Kaohsiung County, 23.1724°N, 120.654°E), 29 July 1923, Professor T. Shiraki, 1♂ (TARI); Taipin (=Taping City, Taichung County, 24°07’08.15”N, 120°46’53.27”E), 23 July 1918, J. Sonan, 1♀ (TARI).
Distribution – Temporal: The two known collections of this species are from mid-summer in July.
Ecology: This species is found at relatively low elevations in west-central Taiwan.
Biology: Nothing is known of immature stages or life history.
Notes: This species appears to be quite closely related to Bittacus maculatus, but can be separated from that species by the more tapered base of the aedeagus and the elongate band that goes through the first fork of the anterior cubitus (CuA) of the hindwing of B. striatus.
Issiki, S. 1927. New and Rare Species of Mecoptera from Corea, Formosa and Japan. Insecta Matsumurana, 2:1-12. | <urn:uuid:80635c93-95ba-4d2e-bf2c-f5f23c544b0b> | {
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21 September 2011
Researchers used satellite tracking to monitor the movements of the whales to discover that in 2010 they travelled between the Atlantic and Pacific seas via the famously ice-bound passage. Bones found on beaches in the region suggest that the last time the whales occupied this area was around 10,000 years ago.
While Bowheads are adept at moving through ice-bound Arctic seas, it was previously thought that the sea ice in the Northwest Passage was too impenetrable even for these Arctic specialists. However, the new observations show Bowheads travelling through the passage in both directions, suggesting that the rapidly diminishing Arctic sea ice has allowed them to pass from one ocean to another.
The findings have huge implications for the ecology of marine life in the region, with the authors stating that their findings “are perhaps an early sign that other marine organisms have begun exchanges between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans across the Arctic. Some of these exchanges may be harder to detect than bowhead whales, but the ecological impacts could be more significant should the ice-free Arctic become a dispersion corridor between the two oceans.”
Read the full paper for free on the Biology Letters webpage.
Learn about our mission to expand the frontiers of knowledge.
Explore our annual science exhibition
The Government’s spending decisions for the financial year 2015-16 provide an important opportunity to strengthen the role of research and innovation as drivers of UK growth and competitiveness, according to the UK’s four national academies, including the Royal Society.
A paper published in Biology Letters today reveals a new species of ichthyosaur (a dolphin-like marine reptile from the age of dinosaurs) which revolutionises our understanding of their evolution and extinction.
Pioneers of the Internet, computing, climate modelling and virtual surgery are just some of the experts who have been announced as new Fellows of the Royal Society today (3 May 2013).
For a full archive please see the news pages.
Latest press releases about our activities.
Announcements about articles in our journals.
There are about 1,450 Fellows and Foreign Members.
We have had 350 years at the heart of scientific progress.
Contact the Society's press team. | <urn:uuid:51f13114-c865-4664-8bbe-81fef4087051> | {
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The third bi-annual Asia Sanitation and Hygiene Practitioners’ workshop, held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from 31 January to 2 February 2012, reported notable progress in implementing menstrual hygiene into WASH programmes.
In 2008, menstrual hygiene management was signalled as a neglected area in WASH programmes. In 2010 the workshop participants pushed ahead and discussed necessary provisions for menstrual hygiene management in toilet design (washing facilities, sufficient space, incinerators) as well as issues of availability and affordability of menstrual hygiene materials.
A major hurdle remains the lack of awareness and lack of recognition that menstrual hygiene is a human right and health issue. In 2012, participants concluded that menstrual hygiene programmes are now usually linked to school WASH, but efforts are needed to reach girls who are not in schools. Advocacy and hygiene promotion have to improve the awareness of both men and women about menstruation and menstrual hygiene management.
Progress on menstrual hygiene management since 2008
WaterAid is developing a resource guide on menstrual hygiene management. BRAC has integrated Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) in their WASH programme, especially in schools.
Menstrual hygiene has been taken up by IRSP in Pakistan as part of their post-emergency response and conducts hygiene sessions for men and for women on menstrual hygiene management. Wickramasinghe (2012) provides a checklist of necessary inputs, which could form the basis for programming in post-emergency situations.
The following menstrual hygiene management (MHM) needs have identified:
- understanding indigenous MHM practices
- capacity building and promotion/awareness raising materials
- inclusion of MHM in monitoring frameworks and national educational curricula
- approaches for targeting girls who are not in school
- innovation in low cost sanitary napkins
Some more resources:
- Menstrual hygiene discussed openly in cluster meetings for adolescent girls in Bangladesh (photostory)
- Paper on interventions of BRAC WASH relating to menstrual hygiene management
- BRAC presentation from the Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene held in Mumbai in 2011
Read the full version of this article on the IRC web site at: www.irc.nl/page/72510 | <urn:uuid:3d9aaa4e-d048-4cbe-9e13-3d9c227a81d0> | {
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|Course||Course Title||Credit Hours|
|CIS 235||Managing and Troubleshooting PCs||(3-0) 3 Cr. Hrs.|
Personal computer servicing and support will be covered within the following topics: physical and electrical concepts of motherboards, power supplies, BIOS and expansion buses; definitions and uses of microprocessors (CPUs), memory system resources and input/output devices; data storage devices and interfaces; cables, connectors and ports; basic networking fundamentals; operating system fundamentals; and DOS.
(A requirement that must be completed before taking this course.)
- Windows experience highly recommended.
Upon successful completion of the course, the student should be able to:
- Explain the physical concepts of a motherboard in a personal computer.
- Explain the electrical properties found in the motherboard of a personal computer.
- Examine the electrical properties of the power supply.
- Explore the computer BIOS.
- Explain the types of microprocessors.
- Explain input/output devices.
- Explain data storage devices.
- Explain basic networking fundamentals.
- Examine operating system fundamentals.
Note: This course may not be offered every semester.
Please check the CIS section of the current course schedule for availability. | <urn:uuid:3cf06009-a22e-47db-a4e4-dbb8dfddf8e0> | {
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Focus Areas for STEREO
Plasmas and their embedded magnetic fields affect the formation, evolution and destiny of planets and planetary systems. The heliosphere shields the solar system from galactic cosmic radiation. Our habitable planet is shielded by its magnetic fi eld, protecting it from solar and cosmic particle radiation and from erosion of the atmosphere by the solar wind. Planets without a shielding magnetic field, such as Mars and Venus, are exposed to those processes and evolve differently. And on Earth, the magnetic field changes strength and configuration during its occasional polarity reversals, altering the shielding of the planet from external radiation sources.
Understand the causes and subsequent evolution of solar activity that affects Earth's space climate and environment. The climate and space environment of Earth are significantly determined by the impact of plasma, particle, and radiative outputs from the Sun. Therefore, it is essential to understand the Sun, determine how predictable solar activity truly is, and develop the capability to forecast solar activity and the evolution of disturbances as they propagate to Earth. | <urn:uuid:e6f7aa6f-0d69-4896-a04a-4a3d8e7fcfd3> | {
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In the case of residential lighting, new types of light bulbs, compact fluorescent lights or CFLs, are becoming popular. Wikipedia says the following about CFLs.
A compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), also called compact fluorescent light, energy-saving light, and compact fluorescent tube, is a fluorescent lamp designed to replace an incandescent lamp; some types fit into light fixtures formerly used for incandescent lamps. The lamps use a tube which is curved or folded to fit into the space of an incandescent bulb, and a compact electronic ballast in the base of the lamp.
Compared to general-service incandescent lamps giving the same amount of visible light, CFLs use one-fifth to one-third the electric power, and last eight to fifteen times longer. A CFL has a higher purchase price than an incandescent lamp, but can save over five times its purchase price in electricity costs over the lamp's lifetime. Like all fluorescent lamps, CFLs contain mercury, which complicates their disposal. In many countries, governments have established recycling schemes for CFLs and glass generally.
CFLs radiate a spectral power distribution that is different from that of incandescent lamps. Improved phosphor formulations have improved the perceived colour of the light emitted by CFLs, such that some sources rate the best "soft white" CFLs as subjectively similar in colour to standard incandescent lamps.Because CFLs consume significantly less power than traditional tungsten bulbs, they are one of the primary devices suggested by government and industry for reducing our dependance on fossil fuels. We have been assured that the amount of mercury in CFL bulbs and the amount of radiation given off by those bulbs is low enough that we can ignore those factors. However, scientists are learning that CFLs may be more harmful to us that we suspected.
I am listing light bulbs as a disaster, because the use of the bulbs is so widespread over the earth. Here are links to scientific research about light bulbs and mercury pollution.
In a new analysis of thousands of U.S. women of childbearing age, Brown University researchers found that most exceeded the median blood level for two or more of three environmental pollutants that could harm brain development of fetuses and babies: lead, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects approximately ten percent of children worldwide, yet its causes are not well understood. Now, a study led by Susan Korrick, MD, MPH, of Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), and Sharon Sagiv, PhD, MPH, of Boston University School of Public Health, and published in the online version of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine on October 8, 2012, links low-level prenatal mercury exposure with a greater risk of ADHD-related behaviors.
But LEDs do have a dark side. A study published in late 2010 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology found that LEDs contain lead, arsenic and a dozen other potentially dangerous substances. LEDs are touted as the next generation of lighting,” says Oladele Ogunseitan, one of the researchers behind the study and chair of the University of California (UC)-Irvine’s Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention. “But as we try to find better products that do not deplete energy resources or contribute to global warming, we have to be vigilant [about] toxicity hazards….”
The researchers, led by Miriam Rafailovich, PhD, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and the Director of the Garcia Center for Polymers at Engineered Interfaces at Stony Brook, conducted similar research to a European study on Light Sensitivity. Stony Brook researchers collected CFL bulbs purchased from different locations across Suffolk and Nassau counties, and then measured the amount of UV emissions and the integrity of each bulb's phosphor coatings. Results revealed significant levels of UVC and UVA, which appeared to originate from cracks in the phosphor coatings, present in all CFL bulbs studied. | <urn:uuid:072f89c7-dfb9-439f-baf5-96d373ad7ed1> | {
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This is a coloring book that will introduce you to all the basic arithmetic facts using The Human Calculator Matrix.
- You will need 10 colored pencils for the exercises. Suggested colors are black, red, blue, pink, green, orange, violet, yellow, brown, and gray.
Discover all the patterns that will make you feel like a mathlete and a human calculator. The Turn on The Human Calculator in You Answer Guide is available at the link on this page.
Turn on The Human Calculator in You
The Human Calculator will make math fun and easy, by helping you to visualize patterns in numbers by looking at them on a matrix grid. | <urn:uuid:20ec1cbf-0b36-46f1-897d-9f8ad8418da6> | {
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