bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Assessment and Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder
Authors: Ellis Michael
Published: November 2020

The assessment and diagnosis phase of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a very difficult time for the parent. You will likely feel completely bewildered. You will be filled with many mixed emotions such as love for your child and fear for your child’s future. You may feel like your heart is breaking. But I can tell you, you are going to make it through this—just like I have. You will likely have to overcome significant denial to even discuss the unusual signs or symptoms that you have noticed in your young child. You may be afraid to hear the term “autism” come from your pediatrician’s mouth. However, you are about to start a very important journey with your child. You have to be strong in order to obtain for your child vital treatments and therapies that can dramatically improve your child’s life and future. Theoretically, ASD is not difficult to recognize and diagnose. However, in practice, it can be challenging. The full spectrum of symptoms included in ASD is quite wide. One child may appear quite typical with only minor eccentricities while another has significant intellectual disability, social impairment, self-injurious behavior, and aggression. No two individuals with ASD are exactly alike. In fact, individuals with autism are often more different than similar. We cannot easily pigeonhole or stereotype our children. Further complicating diagnosis, professionals often have little training in ASD, even in fields that have autism within their scope of practice. Furthermore, children with more subtle ASD symptoms or those who are “high-functioning” (more verbal and with more capabilities in general) do not always have symptoms that are evident at a very young age. At times, autism symptoms may not be identifiable until social problems become more significant as the child grows older. Primary care physicians are not typically able to spend long enough with your child during visits to pick up on the sometimes subtle signs needed to alert them to a possible ASD diagnosis.
Eurasian Bronze Age: Unsettled Climatic Times
Authors: McMichael Anthony
Published: November 2020

The Story Now Moves beyond the mid- Holocene. By around 4000 B.C.E., viable agrarian settlements had appeared in many parts of the world. Not only could larger populations be supported, but surplus food produced by toiling farmers enabled the differentiation of labour and social status. Settlements expanded, made trading connections, and formed larger collective polities. Hierarchical authority and power began to replace horizontal flows of local information and decision- making. The vagaries of climate, however, lurked on the horizon. Agrarian societies, with their increasing dependence on harvest staples, were painting themselves into a corner. Also, as populations grew and settle­ments coalesced, mutant strains of animal- hosted microbes that made a successful crossing from livestock or urban pests to humans took ad­vantage of larger, intermingling host populations. A few of these adven­turers, such as the measles virus, not only initiated new epidemics but continued circulating, between outbreaks, as endemic “crowd diseases.” Measles, a microbial success story, is still with us today. The advent of property, food stores, and occupied land in nearby populations stimulated both war and conquest, each having diverse, debilitating, and often bloody consequences for health and survival. Climatic conditions in Sumer, sitting at the meteorological crossroads of the Middle East, began changing about 3600 B.C.E., one- third of the way into the fourth millennium B.C.E. . There was a general cooling and drying in the northern hemisphere as the first phase of the Holocene Climatic Optimum waned and as the Icelandic Low and Siberian (Asiatic) High circulations intensified, funnelling colder air southwards. Rainfall declined in southern Mesopotamia, compounded by a southerly drift of the rain- bearing Inter- Tropical Convergence Zone and the regional monsoon. Further west, the Sahara was changing from green to brown, and Egyptian agriculture was faltering. As rainfall declined and arrived later in the year, farming became more difficult; farmers now needed to make a year- round effort, with double- cropping and shorter fallow periods. By extending their irrigation systems, the Sumerians compounded an­other problem: several centuries of overirrigation and deforestation had already begun to turn the soil saline.
Facing the Future
Authors: McMichael Anthony
Published: November 2020

Many Civilizations Have Come and gone over the past 6,000 years; some declined rapidly, some lingered, and a few renewed and rebuilt. These rise- and- fall cycles have been variously attributed to the typical increase in complexity of a society over time as pro­cedural solutions to successive layers of problems accumulate and eventually stifle purpose and productivity, or to heightened social stratification, inequality, and consequent uprisings. But beyond the city walls are other explanations. Many societies have overexploited and degraded their natural environmental base; in other cases, natu­ral changes in regional climates and environments have impaired harvests, caused water shortages, mobilized epidemics, or fomented political disorder. In the twenty- first century, populations around the world face un­precedented but broadly foreseeable changes in climate on a global scale, with impacts compounded by other environmental and demographic pressures. We cannot predict the consequences for human populations, but they may be dire— especially if runaway climate change occurs. The modest warming that has occurred since the mid- 1970s, associated with increased severity of weather disasters, is already affecting human health and safety, via heat waves and other extreme weather events, physical injury, child undernutrition, changes in infectious disease ranges and seasonality, mental trauma and depression, and population displace­ment and lost livelihoods. Can we find another, safer way forward? Our elaborate primate brain with its unique higher- cognition planning capacity enables us, when pushed, to imagine alternative futures and to behave flexibly and seek transformative changes. But other human foibles and frailties inter­vene. These include the widespread assumption of unlimited economic growth, an instinct to retain current social and cultural structures, and the limitations of rapid- turnover democratic government. Structural impediments also persist: the continuing poverty and illiteracy of sev­eral billion people; the heterogeneity of cultures, beliefs, and political systems; and modes of scientific research not yet well suited to studying complex environmental and social systems. These make the task ahead more complex, but not impossible. To make headway will depend on people and communities under­standing climate change in terms closer to home. Talk of emissions, trajectories, scenarios, ocean acidification, targets, and timetables does not connect with daily lives.
Political Roles: Who Needs to Know?
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

Up to this point in the book, we have established that educators’ ability to develop and defend claims about the benefits of conveying certain types of information depends on the logic of competence, a prospective learner’s values, and framing decisions. For the purpose of this chapter, I proceed as if an educator has developed such a defense and turn attention to an important procedural question. To increase a competence, who needs to know what? For example, citizens have opportunities to vote for other people (i.e., candidates) who then make decisions on their behalf. If an educator is seeking to increase a competence using a criterion that produces particular kinds of policy outcomes, then competence depends not only on citizens’ direct actions, but also on the subsequent actions of those whom they elect. Suppose, for example, that an educator’s goal is to increase math proficiency among second-graders in a given school district. If a citizen votes for a school board candidate who voices the same desire, this vote is not sufficient to produce the desired outcome. That candidate must actually win the election—which requires votes from other voters. If elected, the candidate must work with other school board members to write the desired policies and then must count on others, such as school district employees, to enforce the policies. If we evaluate a citizen’s school board voting competence by whether it makes increased math proficiency more likely, many decisions other than her vote affect the evaluation. As a result, the kinds of information that can increase this competence depend on how the voter can use them. Variations in political roles affect who needs to know what. By political role, I mean a person’s opportunities to affect political outcomes. Some individuals, like a president or governor, have roles with great authority. Their singular actions can change important social outcomes. Other roles carry less political authority—such as being one of several million voters in a two-candidate election whose lone vote is unlikely to affect who wins the election.
Winter
Authors: Leopold Estella B.
Published: November 2020

Winter at the Shack was always a great time, and some weekends it was a big challenge just to get in. After a good snowfall we would park near Mr. Lewis’s farmhouse and ski in the mile and a half, carrying our grub. We have a picture I especially love of Mother skiing through the woods, wearing her denim skirt and winter coat. What a great sport she was! And she would holler “Whoopeee!” while sliding down a short terrace in the woods. We were proud of her. Skis were not much in those days—just two waxed boards with a leather strap. But they were better than walking, and fun too. Passing through the snowy winter landscape was always, in Dad’s words, a “search for scats, tracks, feathers, dens, roostings, rubbings, dustings, diggings, feedings, fightings, or preyings collectively known to woodsmen as ‘reading sign.’ ” We could often see many of these signs on the snow. I can remember skiing through the woods with Nina one morning after a heavy snowfall and seeing little “bursts,” places where a partridge or two had spent the night in a snowbank and then burst out in the morning to feed. If one wonders how our songbirds survive a cold snowy winter, the answers are revealed on a fresh snow surface: the prairie plants hold their seed pods up away from the snow, and the songbirds land on these dark stalks and remove the seeds. Their dear little tracks show where they were picking up seeds. A way to make a living in winter. For our wood-gathering efforts, our tools were the two-man saw, a double-bit ax with an extra-long handle, two regular axes, a heavy sledgehammer, and two iron wedges. Some of the logs we cut in the woods, though of fireplace length, were too big to carry, so we would split them right there before loading them on the sled. Our favorite place for the cutting operation was west of the Shack, down the slough and bearing south at what we called the “branch slough” and “the fallen bee tree.” Our dog (then Flicky) was always running along with us.
Introduction
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: November 2020

Never before in the history of human society has the capacity to produce and deliver goods and services been so efficient and so enormous, thanks to the electronic revolution that started in the 1960s and the global logistics revolution made possible by the advent of the shipping container. And, paradoxically, never before in the history of human society have so many people wanted goods and services that they cannot afford to buy, largely due to the absolute increases in human populations and the relative ease of communications brought about, again, by the electronic revolution. The results are class polarization and ecological unsustainability, fatal contradictions to the promises of the capitalist system. These contradictions play out in all spheres of economic, social, and cultural life and those who have a vested interest in maintaining the ruling system are constantly attempting to distract attention from its failings. These failings are disguised by the spectacular architecture that now spans most regions of the world, from the great cities of the Global North, to the expanding megacities of the Global South, and the artificial urbanism of the oil states of the Arabian Gulf. Shopping malls, modern art museums, ever-higher skyscrapers, and urban megaprojects constitute the triumphal ‘Icon Project’ of global capitalism. On a hot, sunny day in January 2014, I was standing in a long, bustling queue for the Peak tram in Hong Kong. I started chatting with two bright young women, sisters from Guangzhou—formerly Canton, now the third-largest city in China with a population approaching 15 million. It is a short train ride from Hong Kong and sends many tourists there. My new acquaintances told me that their father was an architect, and that this was their first visit to Hong Kong, they wanted to see what the rest of the world was really like. Clearly they were excited by the prospect of visiting the famous Peak—I am not sure they were entirely prepared for the ‘Peak experience’ that starts with a dramatic entrance and culminates when you get to the top of a spectacular building.
The Internet Scientific Article
Authors: Gross Alan G. , Harmon Joseph E.
Published: November 2020

Do the changes in the scientific article incident on Internet publication constitute a revolution in representation and communication? John Stewart MacKenzie Owen insists that they do not. In The Scientific Article in the Age of Digitization, he argues that contrary to claims about the impact of digitization on scientific communication, “the journal article as a communicative form for reporting on research and disseminating scientific knowledge does not seem to have been transformed by … [the Internet]: it remains a digital copy of the printed form.” Owen views the current situation as preserving and extending “existing functions and values rather than as an innovation that radically transforms a communicative practice that has evolved over the centuries.” The conclusion Owen draws cannot be faulted. We do not doubt that the articles and journals in his sample are, on average, to quote Stevan Harnad, “mere clones of paper journals, ghosts in another medium.” We do, however, question Owen’s sample of online scientific journals. While he includes such journals as the Brazilian Electronic Journal of Economics, Internet Journal of Chemistry, and Journal of Cotton Science (all three now defunct), he excludes the most highly cited scientific journals producing printed and electronic issues, like Nature, Physical Review, Journal of the American Chemical Society, or such highly successful open-access journals as those of the Public Library of Science. It is the latter set that contains the journals we need to scrutinize if we are to discover what innovations, if any, have surfaced and are likely to be widely adopted in the future. These journals have the robust readership, the prestige, the financial resources, and the technical capacity necessary to introduce web-based innovations on a large scale. It is in these that the Internet revolution is now most visible. Still, among all scientific journals today, whether print or electronic, there remains a conservative core at this revolution’s center, a still point in the turning world of knowledge generation and communication.
Power from Wind : Opportunities And Challenges
Authors: McElroy Michael B.
Published: November 2020

The key step in generating electricity from wind involves capturing and harvesting the kinetic energy of the wind (the energy presented by the directed motion of the air). The blades of a wind turbine are shaped such that the interaction with wind results in a difference in pressure between the top and bottom of the blades. It is this difference in pressure that causes the blades to rotate. And ultimately it is the rotation of the blades that results in the production of electricity. The physical principle behind the operation of a wind turbine is the same as that that allows a heavy aircraft to stay aloft. The wings of a plane are shaped so that the distance the air has to travel to traverse the underside of the wings is less than the distance it has to move to cross the top. As a result, the flow of air across the top is faster than the flow across the bottom. Bernoulli’s Principle states that the greater the speed of the flow, the lower the pressure and vice versa. The difference in pressure between the top and bottom of the wings is what allows the plane to stay aloft (the pressure below is higher, reflecting the lower wind speed). The net upward force exerted by the pressure difference across the wings compensates for the downward pull of gravity, providing the lift that offsets the weight of the plane. There is a fundamental limit to the extent to which the kinetic energy delivered by the wind can be deployed to turn the blades of the turbine. The absolute limit to the efficiency, derived first by the German physicist Albert Betz and named in his honor (the Betz limit) is 59.3%. With careful design, modern turbines have been able to achieve efficiencies ranging as high as 80% of the Betz limit. They are capable in this case of capturing and making use of as much as 48% of the kinetic energy intercepted by the blades of the turbine and to deploy this power to perform useful functions, most notably to generate electricity.
The Messy Story behind the Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

“The most beautiful experiment in biology.” That was how John Cairns described it: the 1958 experiment that showed how the genetic material, DNA, replicates. The work is still widely celebrated, sometimes in introductory biology textbooks. This esteemed experiment by Matt Meselson and Frank Stahl (described more fully below) and others like it reflect an ideal in science, one marked by an intuitive aesthetic response. The test was simple. The results were clear. The method and reasoning seemed obvious. Theory and evidence complemented each other elegantly. That seems to be how science works—or should work. However, this view of biology, so common as to be beyond question—another sacred bovine?—can be misleading. Appearances can be deceptive. Delving into the history of this now-famous experiment fosters a very different image. Behind the apparent simplicity hides extraordinary—and fascinating—complexity. A glimpse of the messy world of investigation indicates how science really happens, quite apart from the tidy scientific method that one finds in standard textbooks. Ultimately, the messy story behind the most beautiful experiment in biology offers a quite different, and deeply informative, way to appreciate science. The experiment developed from a puzzle about how DNA, the genetic molecule, replicates. In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick, building on data from Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, presented a model of DNA’s molecular structure. It was two threads that coiled around each other, they claimed. Like two intertwined strands of rope. That double helix model has since been widely celebrated and inspired much art. But how did the DNA molecule replicate? When any cell divides, each new cell receives a complete set of information. Duplicate copies of DNA are assembled. Watson and Crick had only hinted at how that might occur. The genetic information was a sequence of units, called nucleotides, that bridged the two strands. They occurred in pairs. The shapes in each pair were complementary. So the shape of one side would determine which missing base would pair on the other.
Genes R Us
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

DNA fingerprints are not prints of fingers. So why the name? The “fingerprint” label, of course, conveys far more than some pattern of swirls, whorls, and arches on the skin. As celebrated in detective lore, fingerprints are emblems of uniqueness. DNA can thus form a “fingerprint” by establishing personal identity. Genes are often characterized as “information.” Thus, DNA “codes for” an organism’s unique traits. In terms of uniqueness and developmental causality, then, genes seem to underlie human identity. Yet with deeper reflection, one might find this commonplace association spurious and misleading: another sacred bovine. Ironically, perhaps, DNA fingerprinting reveals very little about an individual’s DNA, or genome. The technique does not exhaustively profile every form of every gene, as many imagine. Nor does it even sequence the DNA. Rather, it focuses on a rather incidental feature of chromosome structure: differences in noncoding sections of DNA. There, short “nonsense” segments are repeated. The number of repeats, however, varies widely among individuals. Thus, they are convenient markers, or indicators, for identifying a particular organism—or a potential criminal suspect. Each person’s DNA may well be unique, but only a small and physiologically insignificant fragment of it is needed to identify a particular individual. Other biological features function as identifiers, as well. Forensic scientists have long relied on fingerprints and “mug shots,” both introduced into criminology by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton. They also use hair, skin tone, blood and tissue type, and voice sonograms. Some high-tech security systems—including ones adopted by US immigration—use eye scans. These record the unique pattern of the eye’s iris. (Blood vessel patterns on the retina work as well.) In all these cases, the aim is unambiguous identification. What matters is diagnostically unique properties. So these particular features are effective indicators. At the same time, their functional role is trivial. They are biologically insignificant. They hardly profile someone’s sense of self. Nor do they fully characterize who they are (personally, culturally, or even biologically). Identification and identity are distinct. A unique feature is not necessarily an important feature.
Introduction
Authors: Scerri Eric , Fisher Grant
Published: November 2020

The Philosophy of Chemistry emerged in Europe during the 1990s—or to be more precise, in the year 1994. Since that time, the field has grown in stature and importance, offering a unique perspective on chemistry and its place within the natural sciences. For example, the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC) was formally established in 1997, following some earlier gatherings among the early enthusiasts of the field, and has held meetings every year since. The journal of the society, Foundations of Chemistry, began appearing in 1999 and is now in its sixteenth year of publication, with full recognition from the Science Citation Index. But the emergence of the philosophy of chemistry has hardly been an easy process. As Joachim Schummer points out in his editorial for the journal Hyle, the other journal dedicated to the philosophy of chemistry, the philosophy of chemistry had been mostly ignored as a field, in contrast to that of physics and, later, biology. This seems to have been due to a rather conservative, and at times implicitly reductionist, philosophy of physics whose voice seemed to speak for the general philosophy of science. It has taken an enormous effort by dedicated scholars around the globe to get beyond the idea that chemistry merely provides case studies for established metaphysical and epistemological doctrines in the philosophy of physics. These efforts have resulted in both definitive declarations of the philosophy of chemistry to be an autonomous field of inquiry and a number of edited volumes and monographs. Philosophy of chemistry, like any other field of inquiry, has a historical and social context. But from a broad conceptual perspective, its birth pains seem difficult to reconcile with a rather obvious property of chemistry: Within the natural sciences, chemistry’s domain borders both physics and biology. In this regard, philosophy of chemistry is potentially unrivalled in its philosophical importance within the philosophy of natural sciences. Since it shares it boundaries with both physics and biology, no other discipline has the capacity to do more to edify the complex interactions between the life and physical sciences.
Robert Boyle’s Corpuscular Chemistry: Atomism before Its Time
Authors: Chalmers Alan
Published: November 2020

In her important and pioneering work on Robert Boyle’s contributions to chemistry Marie Boas Hall (Boas 1958; and Hall 1965, 81–93) portrayed Boyle’s advances as being tied up with and facilitated by his adoption of the new world view, the mechanical or corpuscular philosophy, as opposed to Aristotelian or Paracelsian philosophies or world views. In recent decades such a reading has been challenged. Historians of chemistry such as Frederic L. Holmes (1989), Ursula Klein (1994, 1995, 1996) and Mi Gyung Kim (2003) have portrayed modern chemistry as emerging in the seventeenth century by way of a path closely tied to technological and experimental practice and relatively independent of overarching philosophies or world views. Such a perspective raises questions about how productive Boyle’s attempts to wed chemistry and the mechanical philosopher were as far as the emergence of modern chemistry is concerned. This is the issue I will investigate. In recent work on Boyle’s chemistry William Newman (2006) has also taken issue with what he calls the “traditional accounts,” especially that of Hall. Newman’s quarrel with the traditional accounts is the extent to which they read Boyle’s corpuscular chemistry as emerging out of the atomism of Democritus and Lucretius and its reincarnations in the hands of early mechanical philosophers such as Descartes and Gassendi, neglecting a corpuscular tradition that has its origins in Aristotle’s Meteorology. In a range of detailed and pioneering studies Newman (1991, 1996, 2001, 2006) has documented the elaboration of the latter tradition in the works of the thirteenth century author known as Geber and its passage to Boyle, especially via Daniel Sennert, a Wittenburg professor of medicine in the early seventeenth century. While Newman’s work has led to a substantial and significant re-evaluation of the sources of Boyle’s corpuscular chemistry there is a sense in which he does not break from the “traditional” view insofar as he reads the revolutionary aspects of Boyle’s chemistry in terms of a change from an Aristotelian to a mechanical matter theory.
Case/Critical Incident
Authors: Fox Raymond
Published: November 2020

The core of teaching is the serious obligation to ‘‘touch’’ students. Providing more than the mere rudiments of knowledge is essential. Involvement is critical. Case study and critical incident examination are means to that end. To become competent practitioners, students need to develop the ability to incorporate knowledge, and, more important, to apply it in their practice. At the end of the day, student/practitioners will have clients in front of them for whom they need to decide what action to take. Prerequisite know-how and skill involve understanding clients’ motivation, background, thinking, behavior, affects, and concerns, combined with external forces affecting their lives. It includes the disciplined ability to select strategies and techniques appropriate to clients’ conditions and circumstances. Lead by example. Students pick up what they observe you do. Just as you endeavor to provide a rationale for what you do with students, so students gather how to provide a rationale for what they do with clients. Disciplined practice demands that practitioners continually monitor and evaluate their efforts to assure consonance with professional values and ethics. The case method encompasses all of these facets. Before entering the workforce to face flesh-and-bone clients, the case method provides students with an impressionistic chunk of reality. They become stakeholders in credible dilemmas. While certainly not perfect recreations of true situations, case studies, compared to other methods, bring students closer to what they need to keep in mind when dealing with real people. The case can be the lesson. As mentioned throughout this book, a parallel exists between what happens in the classroom and what happens in clinical practice. Cases—particularly in the manner in which you draw upon them interactively—exemplifies for students how they might deal with similar client situations. To use it to its best advantage, consider that the very manner you respond and interact with students as you ponder cases demonstrates for them ways to respond and interact with clients. The case method is predicated on three key notions of instruction.
The Composition of Soils
Authors: Sposito Garrison
Published: November 2020

Soils are porous media created at the land surface through weathering processes mediated by biological, geological, and hydrological phenomena. From the point of view of chemistry, soils are open biogeochemical systems containing reactive solids, liquids, and gases. That they are open systems means they exchange both matter and energy with the surrounding atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere. That they are biogeochemical systems means their development over time is a result of chemical transformations of earth materials linked to the life cycles of the soil biota and plant roots. Soils are the central feature of the life-supporting Critical Zone, which extends from the top of the vegetation canopy to the bottom of the groundwater aquifer in a terrestrial ecosystem. The Critical Zone provides essential ecosystem services (outputs of food, fiber, fuel, and water, including their quality) that sustain the biosphere. Other earth materials than soil may occur in the Critical Zone (for example, weathered rock [saprolite]), but soils are unique in showing a distinctive vertical stratification, the soil profile (Fig. 1.1), created by percolating water under the combined influence of parent material, topography, climate, living organisms, and pedogenic time—the five factors of soil formation. Analogous to biomes, which classify terrestrial ecosystems according to similar climate and vegetative cover, orders classify soils according to similar climate, parent material, or pedogenic time. With respect to climate, for example, Oxisols reflect tropical conditions, whereas Mollisols reflect temperate conditions. Spodosols and Gelisols reflect mainly boreal conditions (Table 1.1). Andisols, Histosols, and Vertisols, on the other hand, are not defined by climatic region, but instead by parent material (volcanic ash, organic litter, or swelling clay, respectively), whereas Entisols and Inceptisols reflect pedogenic time being insufficiently long for significant A or B horizon development, respectively. Biomes are basic classification units of the aboveground biosphere useful for characterizing its ecosystem services, whereas orders are basic classification units of the pedosphere useful for the same purpose. The natural capitalof soils is the set of assets that allows them to function beneficially as providers of ecosystem services.
Soil Salinity
Authors: Sposito Garrison
Published: November 2020

A soil is salineif the electrical conductivity of its soil solution as obtained by extraction from a water-saturated soil paste (ECe) exceeds 4 dS m-1. (The measurement of electrical conductivity for a soil saturation extract is discussed in Methods of Soil Analysis,listed under For Further Reading at the end of this chapter.) According to this definition, about a quarter of the agricultural soils worldwide are saline, but values of ECe > 1 dS m-1 are encountered typically in arid-zone soils, which cover almost one-third of the global ice-free land area. Ions released into the soil solution by mineral weathering, or introduced there by the intrusion of saline surface water or groundwater, tend to accumulate in the secondary minerals formed as the soils dry. These secondary minerals typically include clay minerals (Section 2.3), carbonates and sulfates (Section 2.5), and chlorides. Because Na, K, Ca, and Mg are brought into the soil solution relatively easily—either as displaced exchangeable cations or as cations dissolved from carbonates, sulfates, and chlorides—it is this set of four metals that contributes most to soil salinity. The corresponding set of anions that contributes to salinity is CO3, SO4, and Cl. Thus, arid-zone soil solutions are essentially electrolyte solutions containing chloride, sulfate, and carbonate salts of four metal cations. According to Eq. 4.21, an electrical conductivity of 4 dS m-1 corresponds to an ionic strength of 58 mM (log I = -1.841 + 1.009 log4 = 0.0584). This level of salinity is less than 10% of that of seawater (EC = 46.21 dS m-1), but high enough that only crops that are relatively salt tolerant can withstand it. Moderately salt-sensitive crops are affected when the electrical conductivity of a soil saturation extract approaches 2 dS m-1, corresponding to an ionic strength of 29 mM, and salt-sensitive crops are affected at 1 dS m-1 (I = 14 mM). Thus, with respect to crop salinity tolerance, a soil can be judged saline at any saturation extract ionic strength greater than 15 mM if crops are stressed.
C–H Functionalization: The Snyder Synthesis of (+)-Scholarisine A
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

Thomas R. Hoye of the University of Minnesota devised (Nature 2013, 501, 531) the reagent 2, that cyclized to a benzyne that in turn dehydrogenated the alkane 1 to the alkene 3, and 4. Abigail G. Doyle of Princeton University developed (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 12990) a reagent combination for the allylic fluorination of a terminal alkene 5 to the branched product 6. Yan Zhang and Jianbo Wang of Peking University oxidized (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 10573) the methyl group of 7 to give the nitrile 8. Hanmin Huang of the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics found (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 3370) conditions for the carbonylation of the benzylic site of 9, leading to coupling with 10 to form the amide 11. Yu Rao of Tsinghua University effected (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 13606) the direct methoxylation of 12, to give 13. Pd-mediated methoxylation had previously been described (Chem. Sci. 2013, 4, 4187) by Bing-Feng Shi of Zhejiang University. M. Christina White of the University of Illinois, Urbana found (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 14052) that with variant ligands on the Fe catalyst, the oxidation of 14 could be directed selectively to either 15 or 16. C–H bonds can also be converted to C–N bonds. Sukbok Chang of KAIST oxi­dized (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 12861) the unsaturated ester 17 with 18 to form the enamide 18. Gong Chen of Pennsylvania State University cyclized (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 11124) the amide 20 to the γ-lactam 21. Professor Shi reported (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 13588) a related approach to β-lactams. Ethers are easily oxidized. Taking advantage of this, Yun Liang of Hunan Normal University coupled (Synthesis 2013, 45, 3137) the bromoalkyne 23 with tetrahydro­furan 22 to give 24. Guangbin Dong of the University of Texas, Austin devised (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 17747) a protocol for the β-arylation of ketones, includ­ing the preparation of 27 by the coupling of 25 with 26.
Heteroaromatics: The Zhou/Li Synthesis of Goniomitine
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

Xin-Yan Wu of East China University of Science and Technology and Jun Yang of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry added (Tetrahedron Lett. 2014, 55, 4071) the Grignard reagent 1 to propargyl alcohol 2 to give an intermediate that could be bory­lated, then coupled under Pd catalysis with an anhydride, leading to the furan 3. Fuwei Li of the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics constructed (Org. Lett. 2014, 16, 5992) the furan 6 by oxidizing the keto ester 4 in the presence of the enamide 5. Yuanhong Liu of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry prepared (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 11596) the pyrrole 9 by reducing the azadiene 7 with the Negishi reagent, then adding the nitrile 8. Yefeng Tang of Tsinghua University found (Tetrahedron Lett. 2014, 55, 6455) that the Rh carbene derived from 11 could be added to an enol silyl ether 10 to give the pyrrole 12. Pazhamalai Anbarasan of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras reported (J. Org. Chem. 2014, 79, 8428) related results. Zheng Huang of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry established (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 1390) a connection between substituted piperidines and pyridines by dehydrogenating 13 to 15, with 14 as the acceptor. Joseph P. A. Harrity of the University of Sheffield conceived (Chem. Eur. J. 2014, 20, 12889) the cascade assembly of the pyridine 18 by cycloaddition of 16 with 17 followed by Pd-catalyzed coupling. Teck-Peng Loh of Nanyang Technological University converted (Org. Lett. 2014, 16, 3432) the keto ester 19 into the azirine, then eliminated it to form an aza­triene that cyclized to the pyridine 20. En route to a cholesteryl ester transfer protein inhibitor, Zhengxu S. Han of Boehringer Ingelheim combined (Org. Lett. 2014, 16, 4142) 21 with 22 to give an intermediate that could be oxidized to 23. Magnus Rueping of RWTH Aachen used (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 13264) an Ir photoredox catalyst in conjunction with a Pd catalyst to cyclize the enamine 24 to the indole 25. Yingming Yao and Yingsheng Zhao of Soochow University effected (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 9884) oxidative cyclization of 26 to 27.
Diels–Alder Cycloaddition: Nicolaioidesin B (Coster), Lycorine (Cho), Bucidirasin A (Nakada), Maoecrystal V (Thomson), Kuwanon J (Wulff/Lei), Vinigrol (Kaliappan)
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

β-Ocimene 2 is an inexpensive Diels–Alder diene. En route to nicolaioidesin B 4, Mark J. Coster of Griffith University showed (Tetrahedron Lett. 2014, 55, 6864) that the Weinreb amide 1 added to the E isomer of 2 with high selectivity, to give 3. The alkaloid lycorine 8 is found throughout the Amaryllidaceae. Cheon-Gyu Cho of Hanyang University developed (Org. Lett. 2014, 16, 5718) a succinct route to 8 based on the use of the boryl styrene 5 as a Diels–Alder dienophile. Masahisa Nakada of Waseda University (Org. Lett. 2014, 16, 4734) prepared the enantiomerically-pure enone 9 by way of a baker’s yeast reduction of a prochiral dik­etone. Diels–Alder addition to 10 led to 11, that was carried on to bucidirasin A 12. Regan J. Thomson of Northwestern University prepared (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, 136, 17750) the triene 13 by asymmetric epoxidation of a prochiral enone. Diels–Alder addition of the very reactive nitroethylene to give 14 completed the carbon skel­eton of maoecrystal V 15. William D. Wulff of Michigan State University and Xiaoguang Lei of Peking University optimized (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 9257) the organocatalyzed Diels–Alder cycloaddition of 17 to the diene 16. Deprotection then completed the synthesis of the prenylflavonoid kuwanon J 18. In 2012, Barriault described (OHL 20121224) the conversion of 20 to the com­plex diterpene vinigrol 21. Krishna P. Paliappan of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay showed (Org. Lett. 2014, 16, 5540) that the triene precursor to 20 could be prepared by ring-closing metathesis of 19. In the absence of ethylene, a different product was formed.
The Wrong Parent Died
Authors: Rosenstein Donald L. , Yopp Justin M.
Published: November 2020

“Absolutely. One-hundred percent,” Neill answered without hesitation. Karl repeated his question. “Do you really believe your children would be better off if you had died instead of your wife?” “It’s not even close,” Neill said. He quickly counted off all the things Deanna had done for their family, detailing her involvement in just about every aspect of their children’s lives. She was simply a much more important cog in the family wheel. “You guys helped me out with my daughter and the hockey game situation, but Deanna would have handled it on her own.” Neill concluded, “So, yes, for my children’s sake, there’s no question that the wrong parent died.” The discussion leading up to the exchange between Neill and Karl had coalesced around the familiar topic of parental competence—or, as the men often saw it, parental incompetence. Karl had shared his latest blunder, which occurred when he took his two children on a family trip to Connecticut for a wedding. As they were leaving their hotel room for the ceremony, Karl noticed for the first time how his children were dressed. “So, there’s my ten-year-old son wearing this pair of khakis that don’t come close to fitting him. The pant legs stopped about three inches above his ankles and he couldn’t even button the pants because the waistband was so tight. He looked ridiculous, but they were the only pair of pants I’d brought for him to wear.” Yet another instance of being unprepared, something Karl hated. “I’m standing there looking at my son in the hallway of this hotel and I think to myself, ‘No way this happens if Susan were still here.’ ” “I know just what you mean,” Neill said. “Deanna did so many things better than I’m doing them now. I feel like I’m screwing up pretty much all the time.” Then he said the words that caught Karl by surprise: “The wrong parent died.” Neill had never been comfortable opening up about his feelings. He joined the support group only for his children’s sake.
Dating 2.0
Authors: Rosenstein Donald L. , Yopp Justin M.
Published: November 2020

When Lisa created her family rules shortly before her death, she wrote them for her three daughters. She wanted the girls to remain close and look out for each other during the difficult days that would lie ahead. However, Bruce realized immediately that Lisa’s rules were meant for his benefit as well. The last rule was unambiguous: . . . Support Dad when he is ready to date. He is going to need it. . . . Lisa wanted Bruce to find happiness again and did her part to make that possible. Early on, Bruce had no interest in dating and felt disloyal to Lisa for even wanting companionship. After the one-year anniversary of her death, and with Lisa’s explicit approval, Bruce reached out to an old friend who had offered to set him up. A lunch date was scheduled for the following week. As the date approached, Bruce began to doubt himself. That morning, he tried to stay busy around the office, but as lunchtime neared, he panicked. He hurried down the hallway toward the office of a co-worker with whom he had become close since Lisa’s death. “I can’t go through with it!” Bruce said as he burst through the door. “Whoa, what’s going on?” his friend asked. “I’m not ready for this. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. To go on an actual date!?! It’s too soon.” “Okay, just calm down. Have a seat and we’ll figure it out.” Bruce continued to pace around the room. “Seriously, how can I have lunch with another woman and act like it’s okay. It isn’t. I was with Lisa for almost twenty years. I don’t want to be with anyone else.” “I thought that she wanted you to date again.” “I know, I know. But how am I supposed to act … what am I supposed to talk about the whole time? That’s it. I’m not doing it.” Grabbing Bruce by the shoulders, his friend looked him in the eyes. “Get yourself together, man! I know this is hard, but you’ve got to calm down.
A Boy and His Whale
Authors: Colby Jason M.
Published: November 2020

It was february 1966, and Richard Stroud had seal sex on his mind. A recent graduate of Oregon State University, the Portland-born Stroud had taken a job at the Marine Mammal Biological Laboratory in Seattle. For one of his first field assignments, he had come to Morro Bay to study the reproduction of northern fur seals in their wintering area off the California coast. The primary focus of the lab, which was still administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, remained the fur seal harvest on the Pribilof Islands, and its scientists retained close ties to US whaling firms, often chartering their vessels for research. For this seventy-day expedition, Stroud and his colleagues hired the 136-foot whaler Lynnann for the purpose of shooting and dissecting five hundred fur seals under the terms of the 1957 treaty. Stroud also had instructions to kill and examine killer whales when possible. So when the Lynnann passed six orcas off Morro Bay just before noon on February 12, he asked Captain Roy J. “Bud” Newton to follow them. Ordinarily, Newton wouldn’t have bothered with killers. His employer, the Del Monte Fishing Company, focused on fin, sperm, and humpback whales. Located in Richmond, a short drive from Berkeley, the station processed nearly two hundred whales per year. But the whaling season was months away, and the US government was paying for this voyage. Newton wheeled the Lynnann around, and after an hour-long chase, his crew harpooned and killed a large male killer whale. Measuring just under twenty-one feet, it was a healthy specimen, though its teeth seemed unusually worn. Stroud planned to examine the orca’s stomach contents and send its skull and organs to the Seattle lab. Yet he chose not to dissect the carcass in port. Instead, as one reporter explained, Stroud and his fellow researchers “planned to butcher their killer whale Sunday while far out at sea.” The reasons for this decision are unclear. Perhaps they hoped to spare Morro Bay residents the stench of orca innards.
The Penn Cove Roundup
Authors: Colby Jason M.
Published: November 2020

Ted griffin awoke with a start, but he wasn’t sure why. It was a warm night in August 1970, and all seemed calm and quiet. Water lapped against the boat’s hull as the lights of Coupeville flickered a mile and a half away. Yet something wasn’t right. The breathing of the whales behind the capture nets sounded clipped and nervous. “How long have they been blowing that way?” he asked the two men on watch. “Blowing? What way?” they answered. “All night I guess.” Straining his eyes in the dark, Griffin scanned the enormous pen, anchored just off the old Standard Oil dock. Everything seemed to be in order—except on the north side. The marker lights there were too far apart. He roused Goldsberry, and the partners jumped into a skiff to investigate. When they reached the floating lights, Griffin stared down at a loose cork line, puzzled. The net looked split. “Not split—cut!” yelled Goldsberry. “And in more than one place.” Griffin couldn’t believe it. Suddenly the orcas’ anxious breathing made sense. During the night, someone had slashed a section of the net. Large portions of loose mesh now drifted in the current, threatening to drown any whales nearby. Griffin and Goldsberry shouted for their crew, and in the following hours everyone worked feverishly in the dark—reattaching lines, mending mesh, anchoring nets. Had they reacted in time? Had the animals managed to avoid danger? Griffin needed to find out. Donning his wetsuit, he slipped over the cork line and into Penn Cove’s murky waters. At first, he was hopeful. All the whales seemed to be swimming near the surface. But a moment later, his eye caught a shimmer of white—perhaps a shark caught in the net? No, it was a tiny orca calf, no more than eight feet long. Ensnared in a floating portion of mesh, the little whale hung lifeless, head down. Other divers found two more, also calves. Initially, Griffin felt only nausea, but that soon gave way to rage. He wanted to lash out at those responsible.