bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Political Knowledge Scales: Something Doesn’t Add Up
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

In 2012, a Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) survey made head­lines. The headlines questioned Fox News viewers’ intelligence. The Nation’s headline read: “It’s Official: Watching Fox Makes You Stupider.” It claimed that “[a] ccording to a new study by Farleigh Dickinson University, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all.” It concluded that Fox News “fails the fundamental test of journalism: Are you informing your audience?” The Huffington Post (2012) claimed that “people who only watch Fox News are less informed than all other news consumers.” The New York Times’ Timothy Egan (2014) repeated the assertion. Conservative-leaning publications interpreted FDU’s findings differently. The Examiner’s headline read “Democrats Use Biased ‘Study’ to Smear Fox News.” It claimed that the pollsters “abandoned all integrity to vindictively trash Fox News and peddle the partisan smear that anyone who watches ‘right-wing propaganda’ (anything that includes multiple sides of the story) is stupid.” FDU’s report on its Public Mind Poll (2012) focused not on how respondents answered individual recall questions, but on an aggregate PK scale that FDU manufactured. Like nearly all published PK scales, FDU’s scale was formed by adding the number of correct answers respondents gave to a small set of recall questions. Such scales typically range in value from zero-to-five or zero-to-seven, with the high number representing the total number of recall questions included in the scale. If a respondent answers no questions correctly, they get a score of zero. If they answer all questions correctly, they get the highest possible score. PK scales are regularly used to represent “the range of factual information about politics that is stored in long-term memory.” FDU’s report and the subsequent media reports are based on the finding that Fox News viewers scored lower on FDU’s PK scale than did viewers of other networks. In this chapter, I examine this case and other claims that are based on PK scales.
The Shack Landscape and Its Restoration: A Natural history
Authors: Leopold Estella B.
Published: November 2020

“The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism,” wrote my father in Round River. As he was hinting, we can locate many of the parts, but how these fit together in the land organism was another matter. Finding the native plant species would be a good start. To reunite some of these came next. The work of our family was creative in its own right: figuring out what conditions these species needed, including by experimentation. Essential to that is appreciating how this landscape got its form—what processes have worked on it and with what results. This much helps us with our understanding of the setting and the soils—what I would call the lay of the land. In the work to restore old habitats and old vegetation types, it is really useful and interesting to know something of the land history, ancient and recent. As Mary Austin wrote, “To understand the fashion of any life, one must know the land it is lived in and the procession of the year.” The Shack experience involved both of these elements. When you live in an area, a natural question that arises is how the landscape got the way it is. What forces shaped it, and over what periods of time? In the Shack area, two different prominent ridges (about twenty-five feet in height) are oriented perpendicular to the Wisconsin River. One is the north-south ridge just west of the Shack—the Sand Hill/Clay Hill ridge. The other is the north-south ridge downstream from Gilbert’s farm; it is the ridge on which the Leopold Center is built. At the point where the river cuts the nose of that ridge (Barrows Bluff) are a great number of large boulders and clay. The Sand Hill site also has an enormous boulder on it. Both have sand on top near the river. I wondered how ridges like these formed in the first place. Then I read the report by Robert Dott and John Attig about the history of the glacial ice lobes in Wisconsin.
The Internet and the Two Cultures
Authors: Gross Alan G. , Harmon Joseph E.
Published: November 2020

In a 1959 lecture delivered at Cambridge University, C. P. Snow famously argues that Western intellectual life is divided into two polar-opposite cultures—the sciences and the arts. In his view, most scientists are ignorant of the arts, “with the exception, an important exception, of music,” and as a whole non-scientist intellectuals—a group we will be calling “humanists”—have no conception of the “scientific edifice of the physical world … the most beautiful and wonderful collective work of the mind of man.” Moreover, Snow asserts that, besides this mutual ignorance, both sides underestimate, and even sometimes denigrate, the value of the other. He makes a telling point about the missed opportunities for intellectual advance entailed by the lack of lively commerce between the two groups: . . . There seems then to be no place where the cultures meet. I am not going to waste time saying that this is a pity. It is much worse than that. Soon I shall come to some practical consequences. But at the heart of thought and creation we are letting some of our best chances go by default. The clashing point of two subjects, two disciplines, two cultures—of two galaxies, so far as that goes—ought to produce creative chances. In the history of mental activity that has been where some of the break-throughs came. The chances are there now. But they are there, as it were, in a vacuum, because those in the two cultures can’t talk to each other. . . . Nowhere does Snow mention that, despite many cultural differences, the sciences and the humanities do have three central tasks in common: They generate knowledge, they communicate it, and they evaluate its quality. The thesis of our book is that, in both camps, the Internet has transformed and is still transforming these tasks in important and even similar ways. Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons, all based on differences between the two cultures, on their very different sets of social habits and attitudes, in the sciences the Internet revolution appears to be further along than in the humanities.
Internet Humanities Essays and Books
Authors: Gross Alan G. , Harmon Joseph E.
Published: November 2020

Has there been in the 21st-century humanities an Internet transformation similar to that in the sciences? A comparison of online elite journals suggests that the Internet transformation in the humanities is noticeably less far along. This generalization applies to the 10 elite humanities journals identified by Eugene Garfield: Language (journal of the Linguistic Society of America), Journal of Philosophy, American Antiquity, PMLA (journal of the Modern Language Association), Linguistic Inquiry, Past & Present, Philosophical Review, American Historical Review, Economic History Review, and Journal of Economic History. Even a journal called Music, Sound, and the Moving Image has no music, sound, or moving images. This state of affairs also applies to online journals. Within the past decade, the Open Humanities Press established 17 open-access journals in “response to the crisis in scholarly publishing in the humanities”; tellingly, of these 17, the articles in all but one are in the form of PDF or HTML files with straight text and, typically, few if any links or images. An exception is Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, which “brings together visionary scholars with cutting-edge designers and technolo­gists to propose a rethinking of the dynamic relation of form to content in academic research.” There is an obvious explanation for this state of digital affairs: the differences between the two cultures. The typical humanities essay is primarily a verbal document composed by a single author, written in a more personal style than that of the scientific article. Typically, it is designed around an argument or narrative that does not easily lend itself to nonsequential reading. One cannot imagine essays by scholars as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Jürgen Habermas, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, or Martha Nussbaum benefitting in any substantive way from the affordances of the web, aside from easier access to a global readership. In many cases, a simple web-based reproduction of the print version suffices. Still, the elite humanities journals are not entirely free of Internet innovation.
Overcoming the Obstacles to Internet Exploitation
Authors: Gross Alan G. , Harmon Joseph E.
Published: November 2020

The Internet presents an opportunity for the sciences and humanities to transform the generation, communication, and evaluation of new knowledge. Indeed, the elite scientific journals are already reinventing the traditional research article via the Internet. Its methods are being communicated by a combination of video demon­stration and verbal description, its gist, not only by verbal, but by visual abstracts, video abstracts, summaries for the general reader, and podcasts. Its contents take advantage of the computer screen; its results are communicated by multicomponent computer-generated images in color, videos of events in the laboratory or simulations of the natural world, graphs that automatically turn into tables and vice versa, maps displayed so that the viewer can zoom in and out, and 3D interactive images. Links are sending readers to a wealth of supplementary material: data, images, related readings. Community response to articles is being captured in new ways. Innovative processes for the evaluation of proposed new knowledge, before and after publica­tion, are being developed and adopted. Upon publication and even before, articles and the data in them are becoming part of virtual archives that give new meaning to “body of knowledge.” See Video 7.1 [ ]. Researchers are inviting commentary from the professional community as their data are generated; they are posting data and images online that others are free to use—with appropriate attribution, of course. Enthusiastic amateurs or the simply curious in large numbers are once again able to actively participate in scientific research projects. For the humanities, the Internet is no less promising. Film scholars are inter­posing film clips in their critique of classic films. Historians are including videos of historical events or computerized recreations, as well as reproductions of key documents of historical interest such as court testimony and reproductions of handwritten letters. Art and architectural historians are displaying interactive 3D reconstructions of sculptures and buildings and historical sites.
Human- Induced Climate Change Arguments Offered By Those Who Dissent
Authors: McElroy Michael B.
Published: November 2020

Chapter 4 presented an extensive account of current understanding of climate change. The evidence that humans are having an important impact on the global climate system is scientifically compelling. And yet there are those who disagree and refuse to accept the evidence. Some of the dissent is based on a visceral feeling that the world is too big for humans to have the capacity to change it. Some is grounded, I believe, on ideology, on an instinctive distrust of science combined with a suspicion of govern¬ment, amplified by a feeling that those in authority are trying to use the issue to advance some other agenda, to increase taxes, for example. More insidious are dissenting views expressed by scientists on the opinion pages of influential newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). If scientists disagree, the implication for the public is that there is no urgency: we can afford to wait until the dust settles before deciding to take action— or not, as the case may be. Missing in the discourse triggered by these communications is the fact that, with few exceptions, the authors of these articles are not well informed on climate science. To put it bluntly, their views reflect personal opinion and in some cases explicit prejudice rather than objective analysis. Their communications are influential, nonetheless, and demand a response. I begin by addressing some of the general sentiments expressed by those who are either on the fence as to the significance of human- induced climate change or who may already have made up their minds that the issue is part of an elaborate hoax to mislead the public. There are a number of recurrent themes: The data purporting to show that the world is warming have been manipu-lated by climate scientists to enhance their funding or for other self- serving reasons.Climate science is complicated; scientists cannot predict the weather. Why should we believe that they could tell us what is going to happen a decade or more in the future? The planet has been warmer in the past; we survived and maybe even prospered.
Coal: Abundant But Problematic
Authors: McElroy Michael B.
Published: November 2020

coal accounted for 30.3% of total global energy consumption in 2011, the highest share since 1969 (BP 2012a). Since coal on a per unit energy basis is the most prolific of the fossil fuels in terms of CO2 emissions, this fact alone underscores the magnitude of the challenge we face in addressing the climate issue. Emissions of CO2 from oil and natural gas, expressed on a per unit energy basis, amount to approximately 78% and 54% of those from coal. In 2010, 43% of global CO2 emissions were derived from coal, 36% from oil, and 20% from natural gas. China was responsible for 49.3% of total coal consumed worldwide in 2011. The United States (13.5%), India (7.9%), and Japan (3.2%) ranked 2 through 4. Consumption in the Asian Pacific region amounted to 71.2% of the global total in 2011, as compared to 14.3% in North America (the United States, Canada, and Mexico) and 13.4% in Europe and Eurasia (including the Russian Federation and Ukraine). Coal accounted for 70% of total energy use in China in 2011 (65.5% in 2013), as compared to 22% in the United States. Use of coal increased in China by 9.7% in 2011 relative to 2010. In contrast, consumption in the United States declined by 0.46% over the same period. BP (2012b) projects that demand for coal in OECD countries will decrease by 0.8% per year between 2011 and 2030. The projected falloff in OECD countries is offset by growth of 1.9% per year over the same time interval in non- OECD countries. China, in the BP projection, remains the world’s largest consumer of coal in 2030 (52% of total global consumption). The growth rate in China is expected to drop, though, from 9% per year over the decade 2000 to 2010, to 3.5% between 2010 and 2020, falling further to 0.4% between 2020 and 2030. The trend, as indicated in the BP analysis, reflects the assumption of a shift to less coal- intensive economic activities, combined with an improvement in overall energy efficiency. India is projected to surpass the United States in terms of total demand for coal by 2024.
Plant Biomass as a Substitute for Oil in Transportation
Authors: McElroy Michael B.
Published: November 2020

As discussed in Chapter 3, the transportation sector accounts for approximately a third of total emissions of CO2 in the United States, with a smaller fraction but a rapidly growing total in China. Combustion of oil, either as gasoline or diesel, is primarily responsible for the transportation- related emissions of both countries. Strategies to curtail overall emissions of CO2 must include plans for a major reduction in the use of oil in the transportation sector. This could be accomplished (1) by reducing demand for trans¬portation services; (2) by increasing the energy efficiency of the sector; or (3) by transitioning to an energy system less reliant on carbon- emitting sources of energy. Assuming continuing growth in the economies of both countries, option 1 is unlikely, certainly for China. Significant success has been achieved already in the United States under option 2, prompted by the application of increasingly more stringent corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards. And the technological advances achieved under this program are likely to find application in China and elsewhere, given the global nature of the automobile/ truck industry. The topic for discussion in this chapter is whether switching from oil to a plant- or animal- based fuel could contribute to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions from the transportation sector of either or both countries, indeed from the globe as a whole. The question is whether plant- based ethanol can substitute for gasoline and whether additional plant- and animal- derived products can cut back on demand for diesel. The related issue is whether this substitution can contribute at acceptable social and economic cost to a net reduction in overall CO2 emissions when account is taken of the entire lifecycle for production of the nonfossil alternatives. There is an extensive history to the use of ethanol as a motor fuel. Nicolas Otto, cred¬ited with the development of the internal combustion engine, used ethanol as the energy source for one of his early vehicle inventions in 1860. Henry Ford designed his first auto¬mobile, the quadricycle, to run on pure ethanol in 1896.
Monsters and Marvels
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

Four-leaf clovers are traditional emblems of good luck. Two-headed sheep, five-legged frogs, or persons with six-fingered hands, by contrast, are more likely to be considered repugnant monsters, or “freaks of nature.” Such alienation was not always the case. In sixteenth-century Europe, such “monsters,” like the four-leaf clover today, mostly elicited wonder and respect. People were fascinated with natural phenomena just beyond the edge of the familiar. Indeed, that emotional response—at that juncture in history—helped foster the emergence of modern science. Wonder fostered investigation and, with it, deeper understanding of nature. One might thus well question a widespread but generally unchallenged belief about biology—what one might call a sacred bovine: that emotions can only contaminate science with subjective values. Indeed, delving into how “monsters” once evoked wonder might open a deeper appreciation of how science works today. Consider the case of Petrus Gonsalus, born in 1556 (Figure 1.1). As one might guess from his portrait, Gonsalus (also known as Gonzales or Gonsalvus) became renowned for his exceptional hairiness. He was a “monster”: someone—like dwarves, giants, or conjoined twins—with a body form conspicuously outside the ordinary. But, as his courtly robe might equally indicate, Gonsalus was also special. Gonsalus was born on Tenerife, a small island off the west coast of Africa. But he found a home in the court of King Henry II. Once there, he became educated. “Like a second mother France nourished me from boyhood to manhood,” he recollected, “and taught me to give up my wild manners, and the liberal arts, and to speak Latin.” Gonsalus’s journey from the periphery of civilization to a center of power occurred because he could evoke a sense of wonder. Eventually, he moved to other courts across Europe. Wonder was widely esteemed. For us, Gonsalus may be emblematic of an era when wonder flourished. In earlier centuries monsters were typically viewed as divine portents, or prodigies. Not that they were miracles. The course of nature seemed wide enough to include them.
Chemistry and “The Theoretician’s Dilemma”
Authors: Hettema Hinne
Published: November 2020

This contribution addresses Hempel’s well-known “The Theoretician’s Dilemma” from the viewpoint of philosophy of chemistry. While from the viewpoint of mainstream philosophy of science it might appear that the issues raised by this paper, published in 1958, are well settled, philosophy of chemistry has the potential to reopen the debate on theoretical terms in an interesting way. In this contribution I will reopen the debate and approach the problem of theoretical terms in a fashion which may be instructive to the wider philosophy of science. In “The Theoretician’s Dilemma” the argument hinges on the purpose of theoretical terms. Theoretical terms either serve their purpose (that is, they form part of a deductive chain that establishes definite connections between observables), or they don’t. Hempel then mounts an argument to show that if theoretical terms serve their purpose, they can be dispensed with. On the other hand, of course, if the theoretical terms don’t serve their purpose, they should be dispensed with. Hence the dilemma shows that theoretical terms are unnecessary. Hempel’s way out of the dilemma is to attack its premise. Hempel argues that theoretical terms do more than just establish a convenient shorthand to describe observations. Theoretical terms, argues Hempel, serve an ontological function in addition to theoretical systematization. Theoretical terms pick out some essential feature of nature such that they allow theories to “track truth” (in the words of Psillos 1999). From the viewpoint of philosophy of chemistry, the issue is this. Chemical theories frequently refer to entities, such as “atoms,” “chemical elements,” “electrons,” and “orbitals” that have some counterpart of the same name in theories of physics. Such chemical theories, as per the quote from Nagel above, are generally formulated with great care, as are their counterparts in physics. Yet is also the case that the use of such terms in the theories of chemistry is in many cases inconsistent with how these same terms are conceived in physics.
Writing for Insightful Reflection
Authors: Fox Raymond
Published: November 2020

Nin makes a strong point: gifts accrue from delving into one’s innermost core through writing. When I first wrote about the power of words and writing in the helping professions, I was criticized. Many believed that writing diluted the therapeutic process because it disengaged the writer from the immediate experience. But, of course, that’s the point. Writing provides a resource for gaining perspective, developing self-awareness, and integrating knowledge. It involves an array of senses—sight, touch, perhaps even the sound of a pencil scratch or the smell of wet ink. The very act of writing allows you to manipulate and wrestle with thoughts in special ways because it makes thoughts visible and tangible. It makes intentional and systematic your own as well as students’ inquiry into learning and practice. Writing is a vehicle for self-study, self-reflection, and self-discovery. It is a valuable supplement to the teaching process, stimulating self-observation. You and some of your students may be intimidated by the idea of putting thoughts down in black and white; it takes courage. Multiple benefits, however, accrue from the effort. This chapter highlights the multifaceted merits and flexible use of a few different platforms of writing for you as well as students. It offers an assortment of strategies to highlight its efficacy. Jung advocated writing as a tool to make sense of our experiences, of cause-and-effect relationships, of what is happening and why. It does so because representations of the right hemisphere are integrated with interpreting ones of the left. Writing helps us to figure out our own minds as well as access others’. Pulling back from the immediate situation, writing as self-study puts Dewey’s and Schon’s ideas of reflective thinking into concrete terms. In all its forms, writing is an effective tool for observation and disclosure. It is not a substitute for, but rather an enhancement to interactive, person-to-person learning transactions. It is complementary and supplementary. It gives voice to students’ and your own ideas, feelings, and patterns. It adds coherence to memories, thoughts, and inuitions. It facilitates communication, since sharing one’s writing reduces the distance between students and each other, and between students and faculty.
Making Education Work for the Poor
Authors: Elliott Willliam , Lewis Melinda
Published: November 2020

Making Education Work for the Poor identifies wealth inequality as the gravest threat to the endangered American Dream. Though studies have clearly illustrated that education is the primary path to upward mobility, today, educational outcomes are more directly determined by wealth than innate ability and exerted effort. This accounting directly contradicts Americans' understanding of the promise the American Dream is supposed to offer: a level playing field and a path towards a more profitable future. In this book, the authors share their own stories of their journeys through the unequal U.S. education system. One started from relative privilege and had her way to prosperity paved and her individual efforts augmented by institutional and structural support. The other grew up in poverty and had to fight against currents to complete higher education, only to find his ability to profit from that degree compromised by student debt. To directly counter wealth inequality and make education the 'great equalizer' that Americans believe it to be, this book calls for a revolution in financial aid policy, from debt dependence to asset empowerment. The book examines the evidence base supporting Children's Savings Accounts, including CSAs' demonstrated potential to improve children's outcomes all along the 'opportunity pipeline': early education, school achievement, college access and completion, and post-college financial health. It then outlines a policy that builds on CSAs to incorporate a sizable, progressive wealth transfer. This new policy, Opportunity Investment Accounts, is framed as the cornerstone of the wealth-building agenda the nation needs in order to salvage the American Dream. Written by leading CSA researchers, the book includes overviews of the major children's savings legislation proposed in Congress and the key features of prominent CSA programs in operation around the country today, as well as new qualitative and quantitative CSA research. The book ultimately presents a critical development of the theories that, together, explain how universal, progressive, asset-based education financing could make education work equitably for all American children.
Conclusion:The American Dream Needs a Wealth Agenda
Authors: Elliott Willliam , Lewis Melinda
Published: November 2020

The American dream is imperiled. Nearly half of Americans who report having once believed that Americans who work hard will get ahead are no longer convinced that is the case. Many doubt that their children’s generation will be better off financially than theirs. Even more alarming, new research suggests that such fears are well-founded. As Americans take stock of their chances to “make it” and find that their realities lag behind their aspirations, the dream withers. Some scholars have even linked recent declines in life expectancy of middle- aged Whites to the hollowing of the American dream, attributing rising mortality rates to “deaths of despair.” Dimming prospects for climbing the economic ladder may threaten the survival of the American experiment. If the verdict was already rendered and the American dream beyond any possible repair, this would be a very different book. Certainly, there are no guarantees that narratives, even broadly shared, endure forever. However, we believe that the American dream is not only salvageable but eminently worth saving. It still holds considerable sway over personal ambitions and collective aspirations in the United States and around the world. In 1931, Adams credited the dream with having “lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores”; today, immigrants and their descendants are the most optimistic about the central premise of the dream: that all who work hard have a fair chance to succeed. Admittedly, the idea that working hard should help people get ahead is not peculiarly “American.” What makes the American Dream uniquely ours is (a) the contention that institutions should aim to create conditions that roughly equalize opportunity and (b) the confidence born of generations’ experiences seeing the dream materialize, albeit unequally. We see the American dream as worth a fight because it defines not only how Americans see themselves and their possible tomorrows but also how they see their nation and the opportunities they believe that nation should extend.
Soil Minerals
Authors: Sposito Garrison
Published: November 2020

The chemical elements in soil minerals occur typically as charged species arranged in spatial configurations held together by ionic bonds. Ionic bonds involve atoms that retain their unique “electron clouds” and, therefore, they are weaker than covalent bonds, which involve significant mixing of the electron clouds of the bonding atoms, leading to the electron sharing that makes covalent bonds stronger. However, ionic and covalent bonds are idealizations that real chemical bonds only approximate. A real chemical bond shows some degree of ionic character, which maintains the electronic identity of the bonding partners, and some degree of electron sharing, which blurs their electronic identity. The Si—O bond, for example, is said to be an even partition between ionic and covalent character, and the Al—O bond is thought to be about 40% covalent and 60% ionic. Aluminum, however, is exceptional. Almost all the metal–oxygen bonds that occur in soil minerals are ionic. For example, Mg—O and Ca—O bonds are considered to be 75% to 80% ionic whereas Na—O and K—O bonds are 80% to 85% ionic. Covalence thus plays a minor role in determining the atomic structures of soil minerals, aside from the important feature that Si—O bonds, being 50% covalent, impart mineral resistance to weathering, as discussed in Section 1.3. Given this perspective on bonding, the two most important properties of the chemical elements in soil minerals should be their ionic valence and radius. Valence is the ratio of the electric charge on an ionic species to the charge on the proton. Ionic radius is a less direct concept, because the radius of a single ion cannot be measured. Accordingly, ionic radius is a defined quantity based on the following three assumptions: (1) the radius of the bivalent oxygen ion (O2-)in all minerals is 0.140 nm, (2) the sum of radii of the cation and anion participating in a chemical bond equals the measured interatomic distance between the two, and (3) the ionic radius has the same value in all mineral structures containing an ion with a given coordination number (CN).
Lisa Randall: The Technological Sublime
Authors: Gross Alan G.
Published: November 2020

In 2008 a rap video by Kate McAlpine went viral (nearly eight million views at present). Not your typical rap video, it takes place in the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider and on the grounds 100 feet above. During the performance, the computer-generated voice of Stephen Hawking chimes in as part of a periodic call and response. Throughout, the lyrics are replete with technical terms like “protons,” “lead ions,” “antimatter,” “black holes,” “dark matter,” “Higgs boson,” “Standard Model,” “graviton,” “top quark,” and acronyms like “ALICE,” “ATLAS,” and “CMS.” Here is the central refrain: . . . The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head. The Higgs boson, that’s the one that everybody talks about And it’s the one sure thing that this machine will sort out. . . . McAlpine’s was a prophesy that proved right on target. In 2016, François Englert and Peter Higgs won the Nobel Prize in physics for a conjecture they had made over a half century earlier, a mathematically driven leap of faith that became a scientific fact when the Higgs boson was detected—a hitherto mysterious but absolutely central member of the particle zoo. It was a discovery that confirmed the otherwise highly confirmed Standard Model, the explanatory centerpiece of the quantum world. At five billion dollars, the detector of the Higgs, the Large Hadron Collider, is the most expensive scientific apparatus ever built. It is a Mount Everest of machines, the apotheosis of the technological sublime. This form of sublimity is near the center of Lisa Randall’s professional life, the only means by which her deepest conjectures about the universe can be demonstrated. Hers is a flight into the scientific stratosphere tethered to events that she hopes will be observed by two incarnations of the technological sublime: the Large Hadron Collider or the GAIA satellite. When the UK funding for the Large Hadron Collider was still in question, Science Minister William Waldegrave challenged British physicists, telling them “that if anyone could explain what all the fuss was about, in plain English, on one sheet of paper, then he would reward that person with a bottle of vintage champagne.”
Rachel Carson: The Ethical Sublime
Authors: Gross Alan G.
Published: November 2020

Rachel Carson has become Saint Rachel, canonized time and again by the environmental movement. May 27, 2007, marked the 100th anniversary of her birth. In that year, the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster, Massachusetts, hosted a major Rachel Carson centennial exhibition. The show was a partnership project of the museum and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and it featured artifacts, writings, photographs, and artwork from Carson’s life and career. In 2012, the 50th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring was commemorated by a Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens event and exhibit. From September 7 through October 23, the exhibit presented artwork, photos, and interpretive panels in the visitor center. Canonization, and the posthumous fame it bestows, comes at a price: the disappearance of the Rachel Carson whose work was driven by two forces. The first was the love of nature. A perceptive review of The Sea Around Us compares Carson with great science writers who share with her a love of nature: . . . It is not an accident of history that Gilbert White and Charles Darwin described flora and fauna with genius, nor that the great mariners and voyagers in distant lands can re-create their experiences as part of our own. They wrote as they saw and their honest, questing eye, their care for detail is raised to the power of art by a deep-felt love of nature, and respect for all things that live and move and have their being. . . . The second force was the love of a woman, Dorothy Freeman, a person who in Carson’s view made her later life endurable and her later work possible: . . . All I am certain of is this: that it is quite necessary for me to know that there is someone who is deeply devoted to me as a person, and who also has the capacity and the depth of understanding to share, vicariously, the sometimes crushing burden of creative effort, recognizing the heartache, the great weariness of mind and body, the occasional black despair it may involve—someone who cherishes me and what I am trying to create, as well. . . .
C–C Bond Construction: The Galano Synthesis of 8-F3t-Isoprostane
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

Nobuaki Kambe of Osaka University devised (Synthesis 2014, 46, 1583) simple con­ditions for coupling an alkyl halide 1 with a Grignard reagent 2, leading to 3. Michael J. Chetcuti and Vincent Ritleng of the Université de Strasbourg arylated (Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 4624) the ketone 4 with 5 to give 6. Ilhyong Ryu of Osaka Prefecture University effected (J. Org. Chem. 2014, 79, 3999) net conjugate acylation of the enone 8 to give 9 by reducing 7 in the presence of carbon monoxide. Yasushi Obora of Kansai University employed (Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 2491) a borrowed hydrogen strategy to effect the net methylation of 10 to 11. There have been many examples of the alkylation of ketones using variations on this strategy. Robert H. Grubbs and Brian M. Stoltz of Caltech decarboxylated (Adv. Synth. Catal. 2014, 356, 130) an acid 12 to the corresponding alpha olefin 13. Lindsey O. Davis of Berry College combined (Tetrahedron Lett. 2014, 55, 3100) the imine 14 with the aldehyde 15 in the presence of 16 to give the enone 17. Masahiro Miyazawa of the University of Toyoma maintained (Synlett 2014, 25, 531) the geometric purity of 18 while coupling it with Me₃Al to give the diene 19. Naoki Kanoh of Tohoku University used (Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2014, 1376) the Micalizio protocol to add 22 with 21 to 20 to give the triene 23. Xile Hu of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne coupled (Org. Lett. 2014, 16, 2566) 25 with the iodide 24 to give the alkyne 26. Keiji Tanino of Hokkaido University prepared (Tetrahedron Lett. 2014, 55, 1097) the α-quaternary alkyne 29 by 1,2-addition of 28 to the ketone 27 followed by pinacol rearrangement. Zhaoguo Zhang of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Tahar Ayad and Virginie Ratovelomanana-Vidal of Chimie ParisTech coupled (ACS Catal. 2014, 4, 44) 31 with the dienyl bromide 30 to deliver the disubstituted allene 32 in high ee. Amir H. Hoveyda of Boston College developed (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 7694) a procedure for the preparation of alkynes such as 33 in substantial ee.
Enantioselective Synthesis of Alcohols and Amines: The Kim Synthesis of (+)-Frontalin
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

Vlada B. Urlacher of the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf showed (Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 4089) that the P450 monooxygenase CYP154A8 from Nocardia farcinica could monohydroxylate n-octane 1 to 2 with high regioselectivity and ee. Fener Chen of Fudan University used (J. Org. Chem. 2014, 79, 2723) an organocatalyst to open the prochiral anhydride 3 to the monoester 4. Amir H. Hoveyda of Boston College added (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 3387) (pinacolato)borane to the enone 5 to give 6, that was readily oxidized to the tertiary alcohol. Matthias Breuning of the University of Bayreuth designed (Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 6623) a Cu catalyst for the enantioselective Henry addition of nitromethane to the aldehyde 7 to give 8. Benjamin List of the Max-Planck-Institute für Kohlenforschung optimized (Synlett 2014, 25, 932) the proline-catalyzed formation of the aldol prod­uct 10 from the aldehyde 9. Christian Wolf of Georgetown University devised (Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 3151) the alkyne 12, that could be added to the aldehyde 11 to give 13 in high ee. Keiji Maruoka of Kyoto University developed (Org. Lett. 2014, 16, 1530) practical conditions for the organocatalyzed addition of an aldehyde 14 to an in situ- generated nitroso urethane, leading, after reduction, to the alcohol 15. Satoko Kezuka of Tokai University added (Tetrahedron Lett. 2014, 55, 2818) the benzyloxyamine 17 to the nitro alkene 16 to give the coupled product 18 in high ee. Xiaohua Liu and Xiaoming Feng of Sichuan University developed (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 1636) a Pd catalyst for the preparation of 20 by the enantioselective amination of the diazo ester 19. Shou-Fei Zhu and Qi-Lin Zhou of Nankai University described (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 2978) related work, not illustrated, on the enantioselective aryloxylation of an α-diazo ester. Alan Armstrong of Imperial College London, taking advantage (J. Org. Chem. 2014, 79, 3895) of the ready availability of enantiomerically secondary selenides such as 21, showed that it could be combined with 22 to give the α-chiral amine 23.
Construction of Multiple Stereocenters
Authors: Benkoski Léa , Lambert Tristan H.
Published: November 2020

Erick M. Carreira at ETH Zürich reported (Science 2013, 340, 1065) the enantiose­lective α-allylation of aldehyde 1 with alcohol 2 to produce 3 using a dual catalytic system involving a chiral iridium complex and amine 5. This stereodivergent method allows access to all of the possible stereoisomers of 3. In a conceptually related proc­ess, John F. Hartwig at the University of California, Berkeley reported (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 2068) the highly stereoselective allylic alkylation of azlactone 6 with allylic carbonate 7 catalyzed by a combination of Ir(cod)Cl₂, ligand 9, and racemic silver phosphate 10. An enantioselective three-component Mannich-type reaction of tert-butyl diazo­acetate, aniline, and imine 11 to produce α,β-bis(arylamino) acid derivative 13 under dual catalysis with Rh₂(OAc)₄ and acid 12 was developed (Synthesis 2013, 45, 452) by Wenhao Hu at the Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Molecular Therapeutics and New Drug Development. Keiji Maruoka at Kyoto University reported (Chem. Commun. 2013, 49, 1118) a one-pot cross double-Mannich reaction of acetylalde­hyde 14, and imines 16 and 17 using axially chiral amino sulfonamide 15 to obtain densely functionalized 1,3-diamine 18 as a single stereoisomer. Jeffrey S. Johnson at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 2446) the asymmetric synthesis of enantioenriched anti-α-hydroxy-β-amino acid derivative 21 from 19 by treatment with oxone followed by catalytic hydrogenation using Ru(II) complex 20. Naoya Kumagai and Masakatsu Shibasaki at the Institute of Microbial Chemistry found (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 2632) that a sil­ver complex of bisphosphine 24 effected a syn-selective and highly enantioselective Mannich-type reaction of aldimine 22 and α-sulfanyl lactone 23 to furnish the stereo­diad 25 with very high ee. The enantioselective homocrotylation of octanal 26 with cyclopropylcarbinylbo­ronate 27 to produce alcohol 28 with high ee was disclosed (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 82) by Isaac J. Krauss at Brandeis University with computational studies pro­vided by Kendall N. Houk at UCLA. Benjamin List at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung reported (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 6677) the enantioselective epoxidation of cyclohexenone 29 utilizing cinchona alkaloid- derived catalyst 30.
Arrays of Stereogenic Centers: The Yadav Synthesis of Nhatrangin A
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

Miquel Costas of the Universitat de Girona developed (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 14871) an iron catalyst for the enantioselective epoxidation of the Z-ester 1 to 2. Although the α-chloro aldehyde derived from 3 epimerized under the reaction conditions, Robert Britton of Simon Fraser University showed (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 3554) that the subsequent aldol condensation with 4 favored one enantiomer, leading to 5 in high ee. Other selective aldol condensations of 4 (not illustrated) have been reported by Zorona Ferjancic and Radomir N. Saicic of the University of Belgrade (Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2013, 5555) and by Tomoya Machinami of Meisei University (Synlett 2013, 24, 1501). Motomu Kanai of the University of Tokyo condensed (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 4130) D-arabinose 6 with diallyl amine and the alkyne 7 to give the amine 8 as a mixture of diastereomers. Naoya Kumagai and Masakatsu Shibasaki of the Institute of Microbial Chemistry combined (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 7310) 9 and 10 to prepare the α-chiral amine 11. Tomoya Miura and Masahiro Murakami of Kyoto University used (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 11497) an Ir catalyst to migrate the alkene of 13 to the E allyl boro­nate, that then added to 12 to give 14. Gong Chen of Pennsylvania State University alkylated (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 12135) the β-H of 15 with 16 to give selec­tively the diastereomer 17. Geoffrey W. Coates of Cornell University devised (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 10930) catalysts for the carbonylation of the epoxide 18 to either regioisomer of the β-lactone 19. Yujiro Hayashi of Tohoku University combined (Chem. Lett. 2013, 42, 1294) the inexpensive succinaldehyde 20 and ethyl glyoxylate 21 to give the versatile aldehyde 22. Nuno Maulide of the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung Mülheim effected (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 14968) Claisen rearrangement of 23 to give, after reduc­tion and hydrolysis, the aldehyde 24. Stephen G. Davies of the University of Oxford reported (Chem. Commun. 2013, 49, 7037) a related Claisen rearrangement (not illustrated). Ying-Chun Chen of Sichuan University devised (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 4786) the cascade combination of 25 and 26 to give 27.
Alkaloid Synthesis: (−)-α-Kainic Acid (Ohshima), Serpentine (Scheidt), (−)-Galanthamine ( Jia), (+)-Trigolutes B (Gong), Sarain A (Yokoshima/Fukuyama), DZ-2384 (Harran)
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

(−)-α-Kainic acid 3 is widely used in neuropharmacological studies. En route to 3, Takashi Ohshima of Kyushu University found (Chem. Eur. J. 2015, 21, 3937) that the intramolecular ene cyclization of 1 delivered 2 with high diastereocontrol. Karl A. Scheidt of Northwestern University set (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 6900) the absolute configuration of 5 and so of serpentine 6 by the organocatalyzed cyclization of 4. This is the first total synthesis of that alkaloid. Yanxing Jia of Peking University prepared (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 6255) the benzofuran 8 by the Pd-mediated cyclization of the alkyne 7. An organo­catalyzed intermolecular Michael addition set the absolute configuration of (−)-galanthamine 9. Liu-Zhu Gong of the University of Science and Technology of China assem­bled (Chem. Eur. J. 2015, 21, 8389) (+)-trigolutes B 13 by the organocatalyzed addition of 10 to 11 to give 12. Barry M. Trost of Stanford University employed (Chem. Sci. 2015, 6, 349) a similar strategy in a synthesis of (−)-perophoramidine (not illustrated). Satoshi Yokoshima and Tohru Fukuyama of Nagoya University showed (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 7367) that on deprotection, 14 was converted to an eight-membered cyclic nitrone, that further cyclized to 15. This set the stage for the synthesis of sarain A 16. Patrick G. Harran of UCLA has extensively studied the complex alkaloid (−)-diazonamide A (not illustrated). Structural simplification and optimization of antimitotic activity led to the macrolactam DZ-2384 18. It is exciting that 18 could be prepared (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 4818) on a multigram scale by selective electrochemical oxidation of the much simpler precursor 17.
The Inoue Synthesis of 19-Hydroxysarmentogenin
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

With the continual improvement in synthetic methods, even highly oxidized ste­roids such as the cardenolide aglycone 19-hydroxysarmentogenin 3 are accessible. A key step in the preparation of 3 described (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 5300) by Masayuki Inoue of the University of Tokyo was the free radical cyclization of the acetal-tethered bromo enone 1 to 2. The cyclopentane component of 1 was prepared from the dione 4. Diastereoselective reduction followed by protection led to 5, that was carried on to the enol ether 6. The preparation of 13 began with the Diels–Alder addition of enantiomerically-pure perillaldehyde 7 to the diene 8. Hydrolysis gave the enone 9, that was converted to the enone 10. Oxidative cleavage of the isopropenyl group gave 11, that was carried on via 12 to 13. Addition of Br2 to 6 gave an unstable dibromide, that was coupled with 13 to give 1 as a mixture of diastereomers. Free radical cyclization proceeded with high diastereo­control, delivering 14. Elimination of methanol followed by reprotection completed the preparation of 2. The intramolecular aldol condensation of the intermediate trione proceeded with a 8.6:1 preference for 15. The minor diastereomer was readily converted to an even more favorable 12:1 mixture on re-exposure to KHMDS. After the unnecessary carbonyl was removed, leading to 16, oxidative cleavage exposed the C-11 ketone. Selective protection, to 17, followed by reduction to 18 and iodin­ation completed the preparation of 19. Pd-mediated coupling with the known stannane 20 led to 21. Direct hydrogenation of 21 gave the wrong C-17 diaste­reomer, but hydrogenation of the derived silyl ether was successful, leading to 19-hydroxysarmentogenin 3. The availability of such highly substituted steroids by total synthesis will reinvigor­ate structure–activity studies.