bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Arsenic Life?
Authors: McFarland Ben
Published: November 2020

In December 2, 2010, at 11:16 a.m., I received the first of three emails from students in my biochemistry class, all asking if I had heard the news. A press conference at 11 a.m. had announced that scientists had discovered a bacterium that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA. Soon there was a hashtag for this: #arseniclife. We were excited and a little puzzled. I had just lectured about how phosphorus was uniquely useful to DNA. I shrugged and mumbled something about how textbooks can be rewritten. Today, the dust has settled—and the textbook reads the same as ever. DNA is made of phosphorus, never arsenic. That December press conference was followed by two full years of multiple experiments in labs around the world. It confirmed what the textbook said all along, yet the story was well worth it. The “arsenic life” story was never just about microbiology. It’s about science itself, how we know things, and the nature of natural history. Everyone should know this story. It will temper expectations when the next press-conference-induced hashtag makes its way halfway around the world while science is still lacing up its boots. More than that, it shows something deep about what kind of world we live in, something underreported because it is so intricate and comes from so many different places. There is a hidden order that makes some sense of biology and even sociology, and that hidden order is chemistry. All life, from a lakewater bacterium to the neurons firing in your brain as you read this, is hemmed in. It is free to randomly adapt to its surroundings with nearly infinite creativity, but its overall path is as constrained as if it were walking on the deck of a ship crossing the ocean. The ultimate movement, on the scale of billions of years, is shaped by chemical rules. One of these rules is that phosphorus makes good DNA, while arsenic does not. To reach this conclusion, we have to start where the arsenic life story started.
Spring
Authors: Leopold Estella B.
Published: November 2020

Spring always seemed to begin for us with spring break, when we had a whole week to be at the Shack and do the planting together. Spring is such a special time, with the buds bursting and the early flowers opening. Ever since we started planting in the spring of 1936, we always looked forward to the project, though it meant a fair amount of work, and we always had such a marvelous time. The preparations each year were considerable. Mother and Dad would sit at the dining room table in Madison with a list and plan what kind of meals we might like to have up there and what supplies would be needed. Dad would order in advance thousands of pines from the Conservation District. He ordered at least two-year-old seedlings, usually at least two thousand white pines and two thousand reds for a season, and sometimes more. As soon as we arrived at the Shack we would prepare the slurry of red clay and water (as described earlier), dip the roots of each bundle of pines in the clay to protect them, and dig a short ditch “to spud them in” (as Dad called it). The ditch was in the shade west of the Shack so the pines seedlings would not dry out. During the drive up our car was usually jam-packed with gear, and Gus or Flicky the dog. To keep things organized, we used the old chuck boxes Dad had used to lash to his packhorse when he worked in New Mexico. We generally stopped in Baraboo for a twenty-five-pound block of ice so we could keep our vittles cool. If Starker joined us he brought his little roadster to help carry the gear. We also looked forward to the guests sometimes invited to help us plant. Daddy’s sister, Marie Leopold Lord of Burlington, Iowa, fit right in. She was lots of fun, and a great botanist with a special interest in ferns. One year our visitor was a forester Dad had met in Germany, Adelbert Ebner, who was a jolly fellow perhaps fifty years of age, and quite a musician.
Two Types of Iconic Architecture
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: November 2020

The debate around iconic architecture has been undermined by the general failure to recognize that there are and probably always have been two forms of iconicity in terms of fame and symbolic/ aesthetic significance. These are (1) unique icons (buildings recognized as works of art in their own right) and (2) typical icons (buildings successfully copying elements of unique icons). My argument in this book is that the transnational capitalist class mobilizes these two distinct but related forms to promote an ideological message, identified here as the culture-ideology of consumerism. This is what I mean by the Icon Project. The rise of iconic architecture can be explained in parallel with the decline of monumental architecture. Since the end of the Second World War and the defeat of the fascist dictatorships in Europe and Japan, debate around monumentality as a public expression of architectural representation has moved on to new ground. Although it has by no means disappeared (conflating monumental with iconic is common), bombastic monumentality has become increasingly discredited as an architectural strategy for those in power. The breakup of the Soviet empire in the 1990s and the creation of new regimes in post-Soviet Eastern Europe and central Asia added some further, often contradictory, elements to the debate (Molnar 2013). Gradually, architectural iconicity began to replace monumentality as the central motif in these discussions. This chapter sets out to show how architectural iconicity has been socially produced by the corporate fraction of the transnational capitalist class in architecture and has begun to replace monumentality as a marker of the global hegemony of the dominant class. Iconicity in architecture (or indeed in any other field of endeavour) does not simply happen; it is the end result of deliberate practices created by specific people working in specific institutions. Architects often recall the local architectural icons of their childhood. Formal or informal socialization into the field of architecture appears to involve the recognition of architectural icons at all levels, brought to attention not only by teachers and mentors but also by the professional media of architecture and the general coverage of economic, political, and cultural news involving architecture and urban design in the mass media.
The Politics of Iconic Architecture
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: November 2020

The political fraction of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) in architecture and urban design is made up of national, international, and transnational politicians and officials at all levels of administrative power and responsibility. They operate in communities, cities, states, and international and global institutions. They make decisions on what gets built where, how changes to the built environment are regulated, and on issues of urban preservation. The TCC facilitates the production of iconic architecture in the same way and for the same purposes as it does all cultural icons, by incorporating creative artists to construct meanings and aesthetics that effectively represent its power in order to maximize profits for the capitalist class. In his very widely reviewed book on megaprojects and risk, Bent Flyvbjerg (2003: 16) states, ‘Cost underestimation and overrun cannot be explained by error and seem to be best explained by strategic misrepresentation, namely lying, with a view to getting projects started.’ It seems to me sensible to bear this apparently extreme statement in mind when thinking about the relations between politicians and professionals in this field. The political fraction of the TCC in architecture divides into two over­lapping groups and two sets of institutions. First, there are globalizing state officials and politicians and their nominees in public agencies who promote, award, permit, or refuse contracts for important national or subnational (usually urban) projects. Governments and local authorities organize competitions, sometimes inviting entries from domestic or foreign architects. The selection of iconic foreign architects for prestigious national and urban projects has become a feature of the era of capitalist globalization. The second group com­prises inter-state and transnational officials and politicians who are influential for architectural projects promoted as sites or buildings with global significance. Others confer a sort of transnational political iconicity on existing buildings and places, notably through the World Heritage Site system of UNESCO (Edensor 1998: 184–7). The work of private transnational non-governmental organizations is also important. For example, the title and mission statement of the World Monuments Fund, ‘Saving the world’s architectural masterpieces and important cultural heritage sites from damage and destruction’, have a deliberately official ring.
Architecture, Cities, and Alternative Globalizations
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: November 2020

Most architects and urban designers would work as creatively to provide a built environment fit for an alternative globalization as they currently do for the system of capitalist globalization. But questions about the role that architecture might play in creating alternative non-capitalist and non-consumerist forms of human settlements are of limited use with­out a larger vision of what alternatives are possible. If these large transformations are not possible within the framework of capitalist globalization, as I believe, then a new political project for change is necessary. While it is absurd to expect architects and urbanists to design their (and our) way out of capitalism and its many dysfunctions and contradictions, the emancipatory potential of successful, radical, non-capitalist examples should never be underestimated. I mean non-capitalist rather than post-capitalist, which implies that elements of capitalism linger on and, in my view, inevitably subvert progressive changes. This is obviously a very long-term project. In itself, this is not exclusively an architectural or design issue, but it does have architectural and design implications. As Oscar Niemeyer said in 1980: ‘I see now that a social architecture without a socialist base leads to nothing—that you can’t create a class- free oasis in a capitalist society, and that to try ends up being, as Engels said, a paternalistic pose that pretends to be revolutionary’ (quoted in Holston 1989: 93). There are many imaginative schemes to pedestrianize cities, to discourage the use of private cars, to deal with the lack of affordable decent housing in rich as well as poor countries. However, as long as the transnational capitalist class provides the framework for these initiatives they will always remain marginal. While acknowledging the power of the ‘just city’ literature (notably, Fainstein 2010; Harvey 2012; Sandercock 1997), I argue that challenging capitalism on its own ground is futile and that a radical disengagement with capitalist globalization offers the best prospect of escaping from the destructive consequences of class polarization and ecological unsustainability.
Energy Basics
Authors: McElroy Michael B.
Published: November 2020

It is important to have a basic understanding of what energy is, how we use it, how we measure it, what we pay for it, and where it comes from— the ultimate sources. You don’t need a degree in physics to understand energy. You know intuitively what it is. You purchase energy when you buy gasoline or diesel oil to drive your car or truck. You use energy, most commonly in the form of either oil or natural gas, to heat your house in winter and to supply you with a source of hot water. The food you eat represents a source of energy. You may use natural gas to cook your meals. Or perhaps you do this using electricity, another essential form of energy.It is easy to lose sight of the multiple ways in which we rely on electricity— for lighting; to run our radios, television sets, refrigerators, and freezers; to power our computers, cell phones, and elevators; to pump water; to wash our dishes and our clothes; and to run our air conditioning systems in summer— the list is almost endless. Just think, if you were to take a trip back in time, as little as 50 years or so, few of these electrical conve¬niences would have been available. Nor would you have needed a source of gasoline: the automobile was a play toy for the rich when it was first introduced in the last few years of the nineteenth century; it became popular only later, after 1908 when Henry Ford (1863– 1947) introduced what became known as the people’s car, the Model T.Access to commercially available sources of energy allows us to carry out functions that would be otherwise difficult if not impossible. Exactly how should we define what we mean by energy? The language of science is very precise. The energy of a physical system is defined as the capacity of the system to do work. Work, in turn, is defined as the energy expended if a system is displaced a specified distance in opposition to an impressed force.
Was Darwin a Social Darwinist?
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

Are humans inherently selfish brutes? Skeptics and critics of evolution routinely denounce the ghastly specter of society “red in tooth and claw” as an unacceptable consequence of Darwin’s concept of natural selection. They equate Darwinism with so-called Social Darwinism, a belief in ruthless social competition and unmitigated individualism. Many evolutionists, too—even staunch defenders of Darwinism, from Thomas Henry Huxley to Michael Ruse—seem to concur that the natural history of humans leaves an ethical void. Darwin himself, by contrast, had a well-developed interpretation of the evolution of morality. Others since have deepened our biological understanding of human and cultural origins. Perhaps, then, we are ready to challenge this entrenched assumption, this sacred bovine: that belief in evolution entails forsaking any foundation for morality. Many scientists disavow any role for biology in addressing ethics. They retreat behind the shield of the fact/value distinction or invoke the threat of the fallacy of deriving values from nature. Yet morality is an observable behavior, a biological phenomenon. We might well document it in other species. For example, empathy has recently been observed in both mice and, ironically perhaps, rats. The rats will even forgo chocolate to help a cage mate escape restraint. Morality deserves a biological explanation, especially for those who wonder about the status of humans in an evolutionary context. There are important limits, of course. One does well to heed philosophers who warn that we cannot justifiably derive particular values or moral principles from mere description. Many have tried, and all have failed. “Oughts” do not arise from “ises.” Values and facts really do have different foundations. Yet why or how we can express values at all, have moral impulses, and engage in ethical arguments are all psychological or sociological realities, susceptible to analysis and interpretation. Indeed, an understanding of human evolution may well be incomplete without addressing these very important human traits. One may begin, of course, as one often does with evolutionary topics, by returning to the source: Charles Darwin. How did Darwin regard culture?
The Domesticated Gene
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

Enough of the “selfish gene,” already. It was a clever mental game, once, to imagine that genes are the ultimate units of evolution. That organisms are no more than a gene’s way of making more genes. The concept fundamentally confuses levels in biology. It implies that genes can have intent and moral perspective. The anthropomorphism is grossly misleading. Even Richard Dawkins, who originally launched the concept, now seems to acknowledge as much. When the notion was introduced, sociobiology was also new, promoting an evolutionary and genetic view of behavior. It was all too easy to consider all behavior, like genes, as “selfish.” Explanations of cooperation, “altruism,” and social reproductive behavior were reduced to genes through the concepts of inclusive fitness and kin selection. The supremacy of the individual seemed to epitomize Darwinism. These perspectives thus gradually became entrenched, and now appear as fact in virtually every textbook: another sacred bovine? Recently, however, E. O. Wilson, the prominent founder and advocate of sociobiology, has renounced kin selection in explaining societies with a single reproductive individual. The idea was that genetic relatedness could explain why some individuals did not themselves reproduce but instead helped others, their kin, reproduce similar genes. Three decades of research have shown that many cooperative breeding societies (such as termites) do not exhibit the required genetic structure of haplodiploidy. Moreover, many species that do (including sawflies and horntails) are not social. The documented cases and the explanation do not align. Rather, the societies in question—from ants and honeybees to beetles, shrimp, and naked mole rats—all seem to have nests with restricted access, guarded by just a few individuals. The social cooperation seems just an “ordinary” adaptation to certain conditions. The striking reproductive structure, Wilson now contends, is an evolutionary consequence—not a cause—of the social organization. Wilson’s dramatic turnabout illustrates a wider shift in perspective. For decades William Hamilton’s notion of kin selection largely eclipsed Robert Trivers’s concept of reciprocity as an explanation for cooperation. While the former is commonly presented in educational contexts, the latter has been nearly always absent.
Monsters and the Tyranny of Normality
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, monsters were wonders (essay 1). Anomalous forms—like conjoined twins, hermaphrodites (essay 16), hydrocephalic babies, or the extraordinarily hairy Petrus Gonsalus and his equally hairy children—amazed people. They evoked a spirit of inquiry that helped fuel the emergence of modern science. Today, however, such bodies tend to strike us as freakish or grotesque—possibly even “against nature.” How did our cultural perspective, and with it, our values and emotional responses, change so radically? The shift in cultural views, ironically, paralleled deepening scientific understanding. Exceptions and anomalies can be powerful investigative tools. In this case, human monsters eventually prompted a new science, teratology, which compared normal and abnormal development. The scientific explanations and categories seemed to support value judgments. The history of monsters helps reveal the roots of a common belief (another sacred bovine): that the “normal” course of events reflects nature’s fundamental order. Well construed, monsters can help us rethink the meanings of normality and of the concept of laws of nature. Monsters are fascinating, of course, because they do not fit customary expectations. Such exceptions can be valuable opportunities for interpreting the unexceptional. One can begin to look for the relevant differences that reflect the underlying cause in both cases. It is a classic research strategy, especially in biology. Loss or modification of a structure can highlight its function. So, for example, vitamins were discovered through vitamin deficiency diseases, such as scurvy and beriberi. Likewise, the role of proteins in gene expression emerged from studying heritable enzyme deficiencies, such as alkaptonuria and phenylketonuria. Sickle cell anemia has become a classic example for learning in part because it was important historically in understanding hemoglobin and protein structure as well as the evolutionary consequences of the multiple effects of a single gene. Similarly, diabetes provides insight into the physiology of regulating blood glucose and the hormone insulin. Slips of the tongue are clues to how the brain processes language (missed notes in playing piano, too!).
Round versus Wrinkled: Gregor Mendel as Icon
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

Round versus Wrinkled. It’s like a coded message. Every biology student learns it. Pea seeds have one of these two shapes. The great botanist Gregor Mendel investigated how they are inherited, along with six other pairs of traits. In each case, traits do not blend. One is dominant, the other recessive. This is how genetics works. Mendel was smart. He chose the right organism. He chose the right traits. He counted. This is how science works. Foundational lessons in both genetics and the nature of science seem to emerge from this one simple case. Yet the common lessons—a set of sacred bovines—are misinformed. Traits are not found mostly in Mendelian either-or pairs. Dominance is not a representative genetic model. Nor does scientific progress depend solely on genius and special insight. Mendel’s method, like much research today, involved a bit of loose, open-ended searching. One can learn a lot about Mendel beyond the common, often-ritualistic retelling by focusing just on this one trait in peas. The widespread errors allow us to reflect on how we create our sacred bovines—and perpetuate them. The traits themselves are nice examples of how genes work. Round and Wrinkled, we now know, result from the activity or inactivity of an enzyme in the pea seeds, starch-branching enzyme (SBE1, or SBEA). SBE1 turns the pea’s sugars into long-chained polymers of starch. That means fewer molecules. That in turn means the peas do not absorb much water (the process that biology textbooks duly label osmosis). Later, when the seeds dry, they also lose little water: hence, Round (or Smooth). When SBE1 is absent or not fully functional, sugars accumulate. More water is absorbed. Later, more water is lost and the seed coat shrivels: hence, Wrinkled. Because of the higher concentration of sugars, the wrinkled peas are also sweeter. By focusing on the sugars in the cell, rather than seed shape, we might alternatively label Mendel’s Round versus Wrinkled as Starchy versus Sweet.
Mathematical Chemistry, a New Discipline
Authors: Restrepo Guillermo
Published: November 2020

THE AIM OF THIS chapter is to ponder and discuss the relationship between chemistry and mathematics, taking into account some early research we have performed on the subject (Restrepo and Schummer 2014; Restrepo and Villaveces 2012, 2013; Restrepo 2013). In those works we have discussed some criticism and some support throughout history regarding the relationship. We analyzed the opinions of scholars ranging from Venel and Denis Diderot (eighteenth century) to Pierre Laszlo (twentieth century), all of whom are critical of mathematical chemistry. We also analyzed opinions by Brown and Paul Dirac (nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively), who sought a fruitful relationship between mathematics and chemistry. We discussed Kant and his double opinion regarding such a relationship as well. (In summary, Kant initially did not consider chemistry to be a science because of its apparent lack of mathematization, an idea Kant supported in the apparent a priori background of mathematics and in the a posteriori one of chemistry. Kant’s revised opinion about the relationship between mathematics and chemistry is totally different, Kant now thinks chemistry contains elements of mathematics.) We have also analyzed Comte’s opinions on the necessity of mathematics for chemistry and for the advancement of the latter (Restrepo 2013). Our work on the philosophy and history of the relationship between mathematics and chemistry is driven by the attention research on the field has gained between the 1960s and the present. A wealth of knowledge in the border between the two sciences has been generated but little attention has been paid to the philosophy and history of the subject (Restrepo and Schummer 2012). Thus in recent years scholars (Balaban 2005, 2013; Basak 2013; Deltete 2012; Gavroglu and Simões 2012; Restrepo and Villaveces 2012, 2013; Restrepo 2013; Schummer 2012; Hosoya 2013; Klein 2013), including the author of the present chapter, have decided to study such a relationship from both a historical and a philosophical viewpoint. One example of the increased interest are the special issues of Hyle, which were dedicated to mathematical chemistry.
Musings about Teaching and Learning
Authors: Fox Raymond
Published: November 2020

This book underscores two deep-seated convictions about teaching. The first abandons the idea that learning simply amounts to filling students’ blank minds with missing supplies of theories, perspectives, statistics, and research reports. The second accepts the ideas that personal presence is the sine qua non of both professional practice and professional education. Learning necessarily involves action and interaction. You, your students, and the context produced by your exchange is crucial. The single most important catalyst in this matrix is you—your self. Your personhood affects this exchange in a most significant way. Flowing from this overarching conviction are yet other intermingled building blocks of professional education. Among these are that professional education needs to be learner-focused, not content-centered; it needs to be active, collaborative, emotionally tinged, and tailored to students’ styles. In addition, professional education rests upon certain fundamental beliefs: learning accrues from facilitation; content and its conveyance should mesh; knowledge mastery is but one aspect of learning; thinking and feeling are inseparable; and effective teaching emanates from questioning, responding, and, most important of all, listening. The chief vehicle for advancing professional education is initiating and sustaining a solid and positive relationship. Within a relational milieu, students feel free to examine assumptions, test values, share mistakes, experiment with alternative theories, try out new behaviors, and ultimately make strides toward professional development as self-aware, disciplined practitioners. Teaching involves more than delivery. It stimulates discovery, elicits wonder. Your role mandates your understanding of how students learn and work, and your ability to enable them to draw upon your wisdom and talent as well as the resources you make available. It requires your finding out what they need to know and generating ways to convey it. Your challenge is to make your art so powerful that it appeals at the same time to the intellectual as well as to the emotional lives of students in a visceral way.
Reflection and Self-awareness
Authors: Fox Raymond
Published: November 2020

‘‘Know thyself,’’ advises Socrates. ‘‘To thine own self be true,’’ recommends Shakespeare. Being cognizant of your attributes, limitations, and style heightens your ability to draw selectively upon your own resources and fuels students’ strengths. It kindles expanding levels of awareness, competence, and confidence in all of you. Awareness of self as person, practitioner, and as teacher is critical. Competencies distinguishing the best from the worst in the helping professions have little to do with theory and technical acumen. They have everything to do with emotional and social know-how. Such know-how is cultivated though an intensive reflective process, the cornerstone of which exceeds abstract theoretical or technical knowledge. Experience and tacit knowledge upon which you rely everyday, almost automatically, when raised to the conscious level, is even more important. As a teacher, reflection goes well beyond improving performance in one particular course. It concentrates as well on consideration about your teaching in general and awareness of your own reflective processes. Practitioners, as well as teachers, include understanding, as contrasted with explanation, as essential to their work. Understanding entails the discipline of attending, noticing, and appreciating others as human subjects. It is very different from explaining and can emerge only gradually when it is tended and nurtured by reflection. Understanding transcends translating or reducing experience to interpretation. As you teach, engage the left hemisphere, chiefly responsible for explanation of data, in tandem with the right hemisphere, chiefly responsible for overall representation, to engender context-rich understanding. All this is not to say that practitioners and teachers are not scientists and do not think critically, but rather that their unique stance concentrates on their heart as well as their head. Talented practitioners think critically and systematically about client needs, practice tasks, and service outcomes. They possess the ability to incorporate knowledge and skills into their work. That is, they understand client behaviors and concerns, the forces and factors that affect clients’ lives, and are able to select strategies and techniques appropriate to their clients’ conditions.
Intersecting Styles: Teaching to Strengths
Authors: Fox Raymond
Published: November 2020

While there may be ‘‘born teachers’’ with superb potential, no one is born a teacher ready simply to walk into a classroom and shine. They are born as persons who become teachers shaped by life, which influences the style they bring to the classroom to empower students. It makes sense as well to ensure that students learn in ways that are relevant to their preferred learning styles. It ensures learning that is meaningful, exciting, and challenging. No two people learn in the same way. No two people teach or practice the same way. Research on personality, left/right brain functioning, and on learning suggest that learning and teaching is a uniquely personal process. Each of you has a different speed, rhythm, and attention span. While we possess a variety of common characteristics as learners and as teachers, you also have discrete differences. These individual patterns are referred to as styles. Style is a pattern of preferences displayed for associating information with other stored experiences. Each of you as well as each of your students has a uniquely personal style. Style refers to how learning occurs, rather than how well it occurs. How do these styles intersect? Can they be matched? We know that when an alien speed, rhythm, or attention span is imposed on us, little or no learning occurs. Resistance and fatigue result. Teaching style consists of your personal conduct and preferences for the content and the way you transmit it. It depends as well on your conception of education. People learn in different ways, and your own style makes demands on learners and influences your use of materials and structure. Stretching your style and using different methods, observing and discussing students’ styles, and becoming acquainted with techniques that appeal to both right and left brain functions intensify learning. Aligning these factors places considerable demands on you. Teachers well-versed in their disciplines are naturally concerned about covering the topics in syllabi. Too often, however, they over-rely on packaged lectures to do so.
Storytelling
Authors: Fox Raymond
Published: November 2020

Stories are the inspired fields of our brains. Elie Wiesel once commented, ‘‘God made man because He loves stories.’’ The outstanding virtue of stories is that they are archetypical in nature and inspire, when shared, a relational partnership in teaching and in learning. Relish the story! Humans have been referred to as storytelling machines. Why? Because of our profound hunger for narrative. It is instinctive. And because, even when delivered in plain language, stories are crammed full of undercurrents and subtle nuances. Our lives are filled and revealed in stories. Their allure resides in their transcendent quality—transcending person, place, culture, ideologies, and academic disciplines. Although cousins of case studies, critical incidents, and role playing, stories are a fresh and unique breed. They draw us out, lead us beyond ourselves and our immediate situation in special ways. Stories rise above a totally logical and straightforward approach to learning and shuttle back and forth between facts and feelings. They echo Schon’s (1983) assertion that stories trigger reflection in a context that presents material differently. We think in terms of stories. New events and experiences are cast in stories that are linked to previously understood stories and experiences. Knowing them, finding them, reflecting on and reconsidering them—massaging them, as it were—help students to understand and operate in the world of professional practice. Students easily apprehend their meaning and adapt them to their own purposes, eventually capturing or inventing their own. Our ability to tell stories in novel ways is a hallmark of wisdom, maturity, and careful judgment. Stories from our own practice, from students, even from folklore, movies, and mythology can be usefully employed to build motivation in learning environments. Verisimilitude is the stuff of stories. They cannot be reduced to facts. Stories tell so much more. Words turn into pictures, providing a kaleidoscope of human nature—the ordinary and the extraordinary—about fallibility, about changing the human condition. Stories are a triumph of ordinary and extraordinary humanity and fallibility. What is a story? Bruner (1996) deems a story as a mode of thinking, a means of organizing experience and knowledge.
Role Playing
Authors: Fox Raymond
Published: November 2020

Playing a role often provides an authentic way to learn truths about the real world. Suiting the action, as Hamlet says, by teaching with an experience simulation method such as role playing, effectively stimulates students toward their own learning. Role plays make students sit up and take notice. A variant of or an adjunct to the case method, role plays arouse students’ interest because they resemble real practice experiences. Role players speak in the first person. Rather than commenting indirectly on what they think clients might say, they speak as if they actually were the clients. Key is having students immerse themselves in a realistic situation and then imagine themselves as the person in that situation. In other words, engage fully, intellectually and emotionally, in assuming a part in the play. Effective role plays simulate reality as they stimulate learning. They support knowledge and skill attainment along the four axes identified by Kolb (1984)—concretely experiencing, observing and reflecting, abstract reasoning, and actively experimenting. At the same time, they involve learning by doing with the fundamental five-step, problem-solving paradigm proposed by Dewey—feeling a need, analyzing the difficulty, proposing alternative solutions, experimenting with various solutions, and applying the solutions to new and different settings. Role plays likewise meet Knowles’ (1980) requisites for adult learning—empowering students to take responsibility for their own learning, drawing upon their unique experiences and strengths, making learning closely parallel practice, providing opportunities for students to reflect on their work, and engaging students in critical thinking. A plastic and fluid method, role play constantly expands students’ involvement and allows them to test knowledge and skill by repeated and rehearsed use. It subsequently has educational and practice relevance. By assuming various roles in a contrived yet nevertheless authentically represented situation, students reframe their understanding and develop alternative definitions of themselves and others. Role play therefore addresses four broad categories of professional practice objectives: it assists students to implement new information, sensitizes them to their own attitudes and beliefs, enlightens them to the motives and behaviors of others, and focuses on why.
Screen Trauma
Authors: Pinchevski Amit
Published: November 2020

Shortly after the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster in Sheffield, England, sixteen people brought actions claiming to suffer a “nervous shock” as a result of learning from the media about the fatal human crush that occurred during a soccer match. The plaintiffs, most of whom were relatives of the victims, demanded compensations as secondary victims, arguing that their injury was within the “immediate aftermath”—a category recognized by British law as having been involved in the consequences of a tragic event. The court rejected the claim, but not before speculating on the hypothetical possibility of a traumatic live broadcast. Numerous claims for psychiatric injury had been filed prior to this case, yet this is probably one of the first to consider whether media could cause trauma to viewers, and consequently be compensable by law. Were such a case to be heard today, however, it might find support from recent developments in psychiatric research. For there is now a growing acceptance among mental health experts that trauma could transfer, under certain conditions, through visual media. Referring to notions such as “distant trauma,” “traumatic media exposure,” and “vicarious traumatization,” clinicians and researchers are now willing to acknowledge that witnessing disastrous events through the media could cause a reaction that complies with existing PTSD clinical criteria. How did this development come about? How does such mediated trauma manifest itself? What are its social, legal, and moral consequences? And what are the implications for our understanding of both media and trauma? These are the questions this chapter sets out to explore. Psychiatry has long been in the business of understanding how external violence affects mental processes. While operating under various nomenclatures, modern conceptions of trauma have dovetailed with modern developments in technology and warfare. As already noted earlier in this book, trauma is a central theme in the grand narrative of the shock of modernity.
Soil Particle Surface Charge
Authors: Sposito Garrison
Published: November 2020

Structural charge arises on the surfaces of soil mineral particles in which either cation vacancies or isomorphic substitutions of cations by cations of lower valence occur. The principal minerals bearing structural charge are therefore the micas (Section 2.2), the 2:1 clay minerals (Section 2.3), or the Mn(IV) oxide, birnessite (Section 2.4). These three classes of mineral are all layer type and the cleavage surface on which their structural charge is manifest is a plane of O ions. The plane of O ions on the cleavage surface of a layer-type aluminosilicate is called a siloxane surface.This plane is characterized by hexagonal symmetry in the configuration of its constituent O ions, as shown at the top of Fig. 2.3 and, more explicitly, on the right side of Fig. 2.4, where a portion of the siloxane surface of the micas is depicted. Reactive molecular units on the surfaces of soil particles are termed surface functional groups. The functional group associated with the siloxane surface is the roughly hexagonal (strictly speaking, ditrigonalbecause the hexagonal symmetry is distorted when the tetrahedral sheet is fused to an octahedral sheet to form a layer) cavity formed by six corner-sharing silica tetrahedra. This cavity has a diameter of about 0.26 nm. The reactivity of the siloxane cavity depends on the nature of the electronic charge distribution in the layer structure. If there are no nearby isomorphic cations substitutions to create a negative charge, the O ions bordering the siloxane cavity function as an electron cloud donor that can bind molecules weakly through the van der Waals interaction. These interactions are akin to those underlying the hydrophobic interaction, discussed in Section 3.5, because the O in the siloxane surface can form only very weak hydrogen bonds with water molecules. Therefore, uncharged patches on siloxane surfaces may be considered hydrophobic regions to a certain degree, with, accordingly, an attraction for hydrophobic organic molecules. However, if isomorphic substitution of Al3+ by either Fe2+ or Mg2+ occurs in the octahedral sheet, the resulting structural charge is manifest on the siloxane cavities, as discussed in Section 2.3.
Exchangeable Ions
Authors: Sposito Garrison
Published: November 2020

In Section 3.4, the cation exchange capacity, or CEC, of particulate soil humus is defined as the maximum number of moles of proton charge per kilogram that can be desorbed by a metal cation under prescribed conditions. Thus, CEC for particulate humus is equal to the maximum absolute value of the negative net proton charge. Operationally, this maximum value is measured typically as the surface excess of Ba2+ adsorbed by humus at pH 8.2 (Eq. 3.5). Extending this concept to soils, one can define the CEC as the maximum number of moles of readily exchangeablemetal cation charge per unit mass of dry soil that can be extracted under prescribed conditions. In this more general context, CEC refers to metal cations that adsorb on soil particles in either outer sphere surface complexes or the diffuse ion swarm (Fig. 7.2). In alkaline soils, the common readily exchangeable cations are Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+, and K+, whereas in acidic soils, this group expands to include Al3+, and its complexes AlOH2+, Al(OH)2+, and AlSO+4. Following the operational paradigm for soil humus, one concludes that the measurement of soil CEC involves not only the desorption of protons, but also the replacement of the population of readily exchangeable adsorbed metal cations at a selected pH value (usually pH 7–8) by a chosen cation. Laboratory procedures for measuring CEC are described in Methods of Soil Analysis, listed in For Further Reading at the end of this chapter. In alkaline soils, the replacing cation chosen is often Na+ or Ca2+, whereas in acidic soils and for soil humus, the replacing cation of choice is Ba2+. These cations, in turn, are typically displaced from soil particle surfaces by Mg2+ to measure the surface excess. A conceptual definition of CEC can be developed in terms of the surface charge balance concepts introduced in Chapter 7. Consider first a soil in which a net positive surface excess of anions does not occur, such as the Mollisol example discussed in Section 8.1. In this case, the only adsorbed ions are Ca2+ and Cl-. The CEC of this soil may be defined by a special case of the charge-balance condition in Eq. 7.3a: ∆qex (max) ≡ CEC
Steven Pinker: The Polymath Sublime
Authors: Gross Alan G.
Published: November 2020

Already famous at 40, Josef Haydn was searching for new means of expression. The result was his six Opus 20 string quartets, a dazzling set whose new directions put their stamp on every composer who has since attempted the form. For those accustomed to previous quartets, including Haydn’s own, every minor turn was a major surprise, each new direction conveying a sense of the composer’s joy as he reveled in his mastery of his medium. At 40, already a well-respected cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Steven Pinker came suddenly to the world’s attention with his first book of popular science, the bestselling Language Instinct, an embodiment of the linguistic sublime. Emboldened by instant fame, he followed this achievement by following Francis Bacon, making all knowledge his province, telling us how the mind works, why it isn’t a blank slate, and why violence has declined. Not many professors are interviewed by Stephen Colbert; not many can be described as a brilliant lecturer who looks like a rock star: “His curly shoulder-length mane and Cuban heels give him the air of a prog rocker on his third comeback tour. He has a superbly defined jaw, glittering blue eyes and a kilowatt smile which he beams at his class as he switches on the microphone.” Not many professors find themselves on a poster that updates Raphael’s famous painting The School of Athens, a gathering of ancient worthies. Figure 10.1 is a depiction easily identified by the caricature’s flowing locks. Raised by middle-class Jewish parents in Montreal, Pinker first distinguished himself as the graduate student of the prominent Harvard psychologist Steven Kosslyn, who said of him: “He was officially my student, but almost from the start we were colleagues.” After studying with Kosslyn, Pinker went on to carve out a successful academic career as an experimental psychologist, first at MIT, then at Harvard, specializing in language acquisition in children. But he was not satisfied as a mere academic star, much sought-after, much honored, destined to shine brightly but not to dazzle.
Oxidation
Authors: Nacsa Eric D. , Lambert Tristan H.
Published: November 2020

Huanfeng Jiang at the South China University of Technology developed (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 5286) the palladium-catalyzed dehydrogenative aminohalogenation of methyl acrylate with aniline 1. A 1,3-hydrogen shift/ chlorination catalyzed by an iridium complex was reported (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 6273) by Belén Martín- Matute at Stockholm University. Robert M. Waymouth discovered (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 7593) the chemoselective oxidation of polyol 5 by a cationic palladium species. A ruthenium(II) hydride was found to catalyze the conversion of alcohols such as 7 to carboxylic acids using water as the oxygen source as disclosed (Nature Chem. 2013, 5, 122) by David Milstein at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Susan K. Hanson at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico reported (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 650) the acceptorless dehydrogenation of alcohols catalyzed by cobalt complex 12 to form imines such as 13 upon reaction with an amine. A collabo­ration led by Pedro J. Pérez at the University of Huelva in Spain studied (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 3887) the oxidation of alkanes under catalysis with copper complex 15, primarily yielding alcohols and ketones, such as in the conversion of cyclohexane (14) to cyclohexanol (16) and cyclohexanone (17). A remarkable symmetry-breaking Wacker oxidation of diene 18 to produce 19 was the key step in the total synthesis of (+)-obolactone reported (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 1294) by Reinhard Brückner at the University of Freiburg in Germany. Kiyotomi Kaneda at the University of Osaka found (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 5961) that a palladium salt catalyzes the conversion of electron-deficient internal olefin 20 to ketone 21. As part of a program to develop environmentally sustainable procedures, Caterina Fusco at the University of Bari in Italy described (Tetrahedron Lett. 2013, 54, 515) the oxidative cleavage of lactam 22 by methyl(trifluoromethyl)dioxirane in water to pro­duce ω-nitro acid 24. Motomu Kanai at the University of Tokyo reported (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 1918) the β-functionalization of tertiary aromatic amine 25 with nitroolefin 26 to produce 27 by iron catalysis.