bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Designs on the Plot
Authors: Gunn David M , Fewell Danna Nolan
Published: November 2023

Plot is the organizing force or principle through which narrative meaning is communicated. There must be events for there to be story; not random events but events that are connected, events that have design, that form a pattern—events that are in fact ‘plotted’. It is this plotting of events that allows narrative to communicate the temporal nature of its message. For the meaning of narrative is not static, like that of a painting, but something that is developed through time—the time of the characters living out the events of their narrative lives and the time of readers as they enter and ‘live out’ the lives of the characters they read.
Jonah and God: the Book of Jonah
Authors: Gunn David M , Fewell Danna Nolan
Published: November 2023

Setting the plot in motion YHWH summons Jonah to a mission. The story breaks the rules right from the start—there is virtually no exposition. Nineveh’s evil has confronted (affronted?) YHWH who has decided to do something about it by means of Jonah. Who is this Jonah? Where and when does he live? The narrator tells us nothing, though the sentence has a decidedly prophetic ring to it—reminding us perhaps of Jeremiah’s commissioning (Jeremiah 1) or Isaiah (Isaiah 6). And, indeed, a prophet of this name has appeared before, Jonah ben Amittai (‘Dove, son of Faithfulness’), in 2 Kgs. 14: 25. There he announces the restoration of (northern) Israel’s borders, in the time of King Jeroboam ben Joash, several decades before the Assyrians finally destroy the northern kingdom. So, although nowhere in the story is the term ‘prophet’ used, we may decide that Jonah is an Israelite prophet.
Readers and Responsibility
Authors: Gunn David M , Fewell Danna Nolan
Published: November 2023

This book has been about producing meaning from biblical narrative in ways that have long been familiar to literary critics of secular literature. In some cases we have seen that conventions of composition in biblical narrative are not entirely familiar. For example, Hebrew narrative is tolerant of, indeed enjoys, the repetition of key words or even scenes in ways that defy modem conventions of composition in English. And the mixture of genres—narrative, law, poetry—in Genesis—2 Kings may disturb our sense of unity. So, too, the way this story appears to be ‘strung together’ out of a seemingly heterogeneous collection of stories. Nevertheless, we have been able to speak of character and plot and point of view, of ambiguity and metaphor and allusion, in terms that connect our reading of this ancient literature with readings of literature of the modem western, especially English-speaking, world.
Stroke
Authors: Evans Grimley J
Published: November 2023

Stroke is one of the most dreaded of afflications of old age and one that puts heavy strains. on both statutory and informal caregivers. The incidence of stroke increases as a power-law function of age, in which respect it resembles most adult cancers.2 The fatality of stroke, however, also increases with age so that the rise in prevalence with age is less steep than the incidence figures might lead one to expect. Other things remaining equal, the aging of populations will have less effect on the numbers of stroke victims in the community than it will on the numbers of those suffering from some other impairments, particularly dementia—for which prevalence rises more steeply with age. For example, projections for the period 1981 to 2001 for England and Wales suggest that, although the number of people afflicted by moderate to severe dementia will increase by 20 per cent the increase in numbers of stroke victims in the community will increase by only 3 per cent. The number of acute hospital admissions for stroke, reflecting incidence rather than prevalence, will increase by 12 per cent. These projections were made on the assumption of no change taking place in the incidence of stroke or in the deployment or efficacy of treatment. This section examines these assumptions and the following section goes on to review current good practice in the treatment of acute stroke.
Falls in later life
Authors: Gibson Mary jo
Published: November 2023

Falls are the most frequent and serious home accident involving the elderly. Everyone involved with older people is familiar with their fear of falling and of the serious consequences which may result from a fall. The consequences range from the indignity and embarrassment of sprawling on the ground with torn clothes, a split shopping bag and a bruised face, to the need for prolonged hospitalization following a fracture of the femur. From the perspective of the older person, falls are painful and frightening, and may lead to loss of confidence, restrictions in mobility, depression, and death. Even if the fall does not result in physical injury, elderly victims of falls may lose confidence in their ability to engage in routine physical and social activities, resulting in isolation and withdrawal. Their families may feel guilty that they did not prevent the fall and attempt to impose limitations on their loved one’s independence.
Prevention in the aging
Authors: Davies A M
Published: November 2023

This review is based on the premise that the objective of care of the elderly ‘is to help old people remain as independent as possible for as long as possible and to offer them as much control over their lives as possible’. Preventive activities therefore must address themselves to pathological processes and to the normal frailties of old age, as well as to the social and physical environment which could enhance or ameliorate their effects. The distinction between prevention and cure becomes academic.
Introduction
Authors: Kane R L
Published: November 2023

Care for the elderly in different settings has in common the centrality of primary care and the family. With attention to the problem of those elderly persons with dependency needs, concerns are focused on the role of the informal support systems. For the most part, this informal care is provided by family. Changing patterns of family relationships precipitated by mobility and altered family structures. raise special concerns about the future of this form of care. In developed countries. as women enter the labour force in greater numbers, they will be less available to provide such care. In developing countries, migration from rural to urban areas and changes in living and working arrangements threaten to leave the elderly with fewer family resources.
The role of the family in the care of the elderly in developing countries
Authors: Aaraba APT Nana
Published: November 2023

The global aging of nations is an inevitable consequence of development bringing about higher standards of living, better nutrition, and improved health care. There is, however, a wide range of negative situations and conditions confronting older persons in society today which are the by-products of such development processes. Conversely, the widespread achievement of old age in this century is historically acknowledged to have been the greatest human advancement.
Nursing home care for the elderly
Authors: Hirschfeld Miriam J , Fleishman Rachel
Published: November 2023

The purpose of this chapter is to ask a few basic questions about nursing homes and to shed some light on the issues involved. Hopefully, these arguments and data will prove helpful to a thoughtful consideration of social policy issues regarding long-term care in both developed and developing countries. It is not the purpose of this chapter to review the vast literature on nursing homes, which covers topics such as quality of care, over-and undersupply of beds, regulations, descriptions of life in nursing homes and personal and literary descriptions of residents’ experiences, the effect upon nursing home residents of a wide variety of nursing home characteristics as numerous accounts on the misuse of nursing homes, and other related topics.
Occupational health services for agricultural workers
Authors: Sekimpi D K
Published: November 2023

Agriculture is one of the oldest occupations; perhaps as old as human civilization. The ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, for example, flourished on agriculture. Even today, with industrialization, in the space and information ages, the security of a nation mainly depends on how much of its food needs can be produced internally. The low economic status of developing nations has had a negative influence on the pace of provision of social and welfare services, especially health care and education. Consequently, occupational health care has largely not been extended to include the majority of workers in developing countries, who work in the agricultural sector. Other reasons for the low consideration of agriculture workers for occupational health care are historical.
Multinationals and occupational health services
Authors: Tordoir W F
Published: November 2023

Occupational health services (OHS) operating in developing countries for undertakings which are part of the same multinational enterprise are in a special position when compared with other occupational health services in developing countries. In addition to be able to benefit from developing experience and expertise in occupational health in the country or region in which they are established, occupational health services operating in or for an operating company of a multinational enterprise usually have the advantage of being in contact with a central occupational health (OH) function, usually based in a developed country.
The economics of occupational health services
Authors: Phua K H
Published: November 2023

Socio-economic considerations play a major role in all aspects of developmental activities, such as agriculture, trade, industry, and health. In addition, the state and level of a country’s economic development can be shown to be a major determinant of its morbidity profile, and is associated with the standards of health services and health-related activities a country can support. Health programmes and their implementation are thus influenced by macroeconomic considerations and policies. (Lee and Mills 1983; Sorkin 1976).At the same time, the health of a population, especially of its productive working groups, can itself influence economic progress. Occupational health programmes can therefore be seen as part of a comprehensive developmental strategy aimed at improving the social and economic welfare of the working population. Such a strategy demands the selection of those programmes which improve occupational health efficiently and effectively, especially preventive health services, and the provision of other support services such as occupational hygiene, environmental sanitation, or actions aimed at improving safety and working conditions.
Endemic diseases
Authors: Levy B S , Choudhry A W
Published: November 2023

This chapter examines the relationship between endemic diseases and occupational health in developing countries, both in general and with regard to specific common endemic diseases. Before exploring this subject in detail, it is helpful to look at some of the interrelationships between work and health. In any society, work has an important impact on health and health has an important impact on work. Work also plays a critically important psychological role in the development and maintenance of self-esteem and a sense of order (WHO 1988). In addition, work can aggravate a variety of health conditions of nonoccupational origin (WHO 1988). Unemployment too can adversely affect health.
Accidents at work
Authors: Laitinen H , Vähäpassi A
Published: November 2023

Every year, throughout the world, millions of industrial accidents occur. Some of them are fatal, and others result in varying degrees of disability. Every accident causes suffering to the victim, a considerable proportion must cause anguish to their families, and many&x2013;especially those resulting in death or permanent disablement–may have a catastrophic effect on family life. Moreover, all accidents waste time and money. Accidents are still a serious problem in the developed countries; but bearing in mind the quality of working conditions in the developing countries, the control of accidents and accident prevention programmes there should be given priority.
Sources of information in occupational-health practice
Authors: Takala J , Clevenstine E , Fedotov I , Nahmias M , Obadia I , Sandi G
Published: November 2023

The information activities of any unit dealing with occupational health at the enterprise, industry, national, or international level consist of information collection, processing, storage, and dissemination. The basic purpose of a library is to collect books, periodicals, and other documents, and make them available for convenient use. General libraries of a certain importance, such as national and academic libraries, are usually divided into different sections. The information concerning safety and health at the workplace will mostly have to be located in the section devoted to science and technology literature, and will represent only one part of the information stored in that particular section.
Leptospirosis
Authors: Ellis W A
Published: November 2023

Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease caused by members of the genus Leptospira. The pathogenic leptospires are morphologically identical: they are thin, helical, motile, Gram-negative bacteria, which are often hooked at one or both ends.
mycobac1’erial diseases
Authors: Gallagher J , Jenkins P A
Published: November 2023

Tuberculosis is a chronic granulomatous disease resulting from infection with either Mycobacterium tuberculosis, M. bovis, or M. avium. Man is the natural host for M. tuberculosis and birds for M. avium. Mycobacterium bovis is the cause of tuberculosis in cattle but is also highly infectious for man and can pose a serious lifethreatening zoonotic risk. World Health Organization data for 1990 (Anon 1993) indicated that just over 3 million people worldwide died from tuberculosis, more than all other infectious diseases combined. Over 8.5 million cases of tuberculosis were diagnosed that year. Although the very great majority of these cases were associated with infection due to M. tuberculosis, a very small, largely undetermined portion of these enormous totals resulted from M. bovis infections. Where data have been available, approximately 1-5 per cent of isolates from cases have proved to be Al bovis, implying that this zoonosis still produces a considerable toll of disease and death in man.
Microsporidiosis
Authors: Canning Elizabeth U
Published: November 2023

Four microsporidia have been reported from mammals other than man. These are: Encephalitozoon cuniculi, causing disseminated infections in a wide range of rodents, lagomorphs, carnivores, and primates; Thelohania apodemi, giving rise to cysts in the brain of field mice, Apodemus sylvaticus; Microsporidium buyukmichii in the cornea of a cat; and Microsporidium simiae in the jejunal enterocytes of a Callicebus monkey, Callicebus moloch cuprous. Of these only E. cuniculi has also been reported from humans.
Introduction
Authors: Owen Nicholas
Published: November 2023

Estimates of progress in the field of human rights over the last few decades vary greatly. Some point to the positive developments: the widening acceptance of human rights claims by governments that had hitherto ignored them, and the emergence of advocacy groups, including Amnesty International itself, dedicated to monitoring and publicizing human rights abuses, and lobbying for action to end them. We might note too the growth of a network of human rights conventions and instruments, of international systems for scrutinizing the extent to which they are observed, and of the increasing use of human rights conditions in trade negotiations, aid programmes and arms sales, where they formerly had no place. Others point out how far there still is to go. The seeming international consensus about human rights is largely a product of Western hegemony, not of genuinely secured agreement. Indeed, there is considerable dispute over the extent and status of human rights, seen most clearly in the argument that social duties, such as respect for community standards, may sometimes take precedence over individual rights, such as the right to free expression. Monitoring of human rights abuse remains very patchy, redress very partial, while prevention hardly happens at all.
Introduction to Peter Singer
Authors: Broome John
Published: November 2023

Peter Singer is probably the world’s best-known living philosopher. This is not just because he is an excellent philosopher. Of course, he is that, and his work includes a great deal of important, perceptive, tightly argued, analytical writing about many of the difficult theoretical problems of moral philosophy. This part of his work engages with the concerns of professional philosophers. It has contributed to and stimulated a great deal of intellectual debate within the philosophy departments of universities. However, I am not thinking of Singer’s recognition within the profession of philosophy, but of his recognition amongst the public at large. More ordinary people around the world know of Singer’s work than any other philosopher’s.
Introduction to Susan Sontag
Authors: Lee Hermione
Published: November 2023

I am proud and delighted to be introducing Susan Sontag’s Amnesty lecture, since for me, as for many women of my generation and younger, she has been for many years an intellectual heroine and example, for her brilliance, her ardor, her intellectual courage, her toughness and her voracious energies. Novelist, critic and historian, champion of human rights, commentator and interpreter on an astounding range of cultural issues, from politics and illness to photography, opera, film, drama and painting, there seems to be nothing she hasn’t read, nothing she wouldn’t be able to write about, and nothing she can’t do.
Response to George
Authors: Likosky Michael B
Published: November 2023

It is popular to view the post-Second World War period as an era of growth and prosperity. Free enterprise has produced untold wealth and opportunity and, for those persons either permanently or temporarily unable to compete, the welfare state ensured that none would be left behind. With the end of the Cold War, so the narrative typically proceeds, the last impediment to state intervention in the market was overcome. Globalization and privatization thus represent a natural progression to a higher economic order. The free market system has at last come of age and the desirability and need for planned economies such as the welfare state have outworn their use and outstayed their welcome. Opportunity abounds and individual rather than structural impediments are all that stand in the way of creating one’s own piece in the everexpanding pie of global capitalism.
Response to Shiva
Authors: Sikand Yogi
Published: November 2023

The mantra of globalization, Vandana Shiva tells us in her essay entitled ‘Food Rights, Free Trade, and Fascism’, spells doom and destruction for millions of people in the so-called’ Contrary to what the global media insist on our hearing, she argues that, far from helping to usher in more freedom and democracy for people who need them most, viz. the poor and the marginalized, the globalization project is actually calculated to further enrich ruling elites and Western corporations. Economic liberalization, she says, is further adding to the misery of peasants and workers in ‘Third World’ countries, and, this being the case, it is imperative for human rights advocates to take a strong stand against it.
Response to Stiglitz
Authors: Chimni B S
Published: November 2023

It is improbable that any democrat will argue against the Stiglitz thesis that ‘there should be a strong presumption in favour of transparency and openness in government’. As he rightly observes, ‘in today’s world, no one argues against openness, only against excessive openness’. Albeit, most of the arguments which public officials use to justify excessive openness ‘are simply self-serving rationalizations’. In the words of Weber, ‘the pure interest of the bureaucracy in power . . . is efficacious far beyond those areas where purely functional interests make for secrecy.’ Indeed, ‘nothing is so fantastically defended by the bureaucracy’ as the concept of the ‘official secret’. The concept has been ‘enriched’ in the Third World, the subject of my comment, by the colonial experience; the bureaucracy here considers it its right and privilege to deny citizens any information with regard to the workings of the government. Unfortunately, the elected representatives are no less prone to abuse power and to enrich themselves behind the veil of ‘official secrecy’.
Introduction
Authors: Wolff Jonathan
Published: November 2023

My answer is: more than one might think. In recent years we could be forgiven for assuming that Marx has nothing left to say to us. Marxist regimes have failed miserably, and with them, it seemed, all reason to take Marx seriously. The fall of the Berlin Wall had enormous symbolic resonance: it was often taken to be the fall of Marxism as such, as well as of Marxist politics and economics.
Days of Wrath
Authors: Nazaroff Paul
Published: November 2023

EARLY on the second morning rifle fire was heard and the roar of a gun. Workmen who had joined the Whites changed their coat and went over to the Soviets. On the third the town was again in the hands of the mob, led by Communists. They were taking their revenge. Looting was in full swing and murder unbridled. I had no horse and could not follow the retreating handful of Whites. Before my eyes I saw the head of the Swedish Red Cross killed and a sister of mercy. The Bolsheviks took off an unfortunate girl I knew, with her mother, to the railway shops, from which no one returned alive. More than five thousand educated people were arrested. They were ordered to dig a common grave, stripped naked and all shot. A little earth was hurriedly scratched over them. Many were buried still breathing. Young Prince C., only a lad, not mortally wounded, fell on top of a pile of corpses ; he lay unconscious for many hours on this fearful bed and at night managed to crawl out and make his way home. His father was already killed, and his mother, when she saw her boy standing there. naked and blood-bespattered, went out of her mind on the spot. His sister washed and bandaged his wounds, put him to bed and tended him; but the next day, on the reports of their neigh bours, Bolsheviks came and shot them both.
Persecution And Alarms
Authors: Nazaroff Paul
Published: November 2023

PRESENTL Y the weather turned warm. In April the apricots and peaches were in full blossom, but it was only through the chinks of the old wall that I could spy bits of blue sky and the twigs of trees, and only at night that I could come out into the open and inhale their fragrance. Spring and the warmth combined awoke some stirring in my veins, and life seemed somehow easier. though I had no plans at all for the future. Sometimes Akbar and I would debate how I could best make my way through the mountains to Ferghana, the greater part of which was still in the hands of native guerillas who were keeping up the battle with the Bolsheviks. Besides, there were many friends of mine among their leaders. But the news Akbar brought in from his friends among the Sarts and Kirghiz in the bazaar were the reverse of encouraging : Bolshevik patrols were out on the roads everywhere, and there was a pair quite near us. I must wait on. Yuldash came back from the mountains and brought a few small pieces of serpentine, with the news that a White detachment had successfully repulsed Bolshevik attacks. inflicting severe losses on them, and then retired towards. Ferghana, making their way over almost inaccessible passes through the snows. Meanwhile the movement of motors, lorries and mounted troops along the road became rarer and rarer.
The Road To Semirechie
Authors: Nazaroff Paul
Published: November 2023

IT was not long before B. arrived and brought me all the documents necessary for my journey into Semirechie, together with some money. I was now armed with papers stating that I., Nikolai Ivanovich Novikoff, civil engineer, was sent on duty into Semirechie on ‘hydrotechnical investigations,’ a rather artful term which would be incomprehensible to the half-educated Bolsheviks and place me in a position of superiority. Special ‘ mandates ‘ required the Soviet authorities to afford me every possible co-operation in my work, and to forward me on my road by the mailcarts and horses. Nevertheless, ordinary caution demanded that, for the time at least, I should avoid the main roads and make my way over the mountain footpaths past the district and town of Chimkend, where I might easily be recognised or merely detained ‘ pending orders,• as was the custom with the proletarian authorities in their dealings with educated people. The evening before my departure a Sart arrived with a small donkey for my baggage, and on the next day, 19th August, before sunrise we started. I was sorry to leave the peaceful secluded spot where for three months I had lived alone amid the beauties of nature ; where I had become so used to my surroundings that I had become part and parcel of them myself. I felt sad at heart. I was teari myself away from well-tried friends and going into the unknown, an unknown full of dangers and alarms.
Back On The Trail
Authors: Nazaroff Paul
Published: November 2023

A FRIEND of mine arrived from Tashkend. He warned me that the Soviet authorities had found out that I was somewhere in Semirechie, and that orders had been given to the local Che-Ka to spare no effort to find me. For this reason it was vital to get away from Pishpek as soon as possible. To put their agents off the scent and to mask my tracks, I managed to get official orders to start on an expedition to the neighbourhood of Lake Balkash to prospect for useful minerals, while as a matter of fact I set off in exactly the opposite direction, to the south, making for Naryn on the Chinese frontier near Kashgar. I drove out of Pishpek on r8th May in a light cart drawn by a troika of horses. I intended to ride one of these animals from the frontier to Kashgar, and to send back the cart with the remaining pair. This time my driver was a smart young Kirghiz, Azamat Bek, a resourceful fellow of proved trustworthiness. Formerly he had been extremely rich, but now be was totally ruined, as after the rising of 1916 the Russians had stolen all his property and stock, although both he and his old father, who was killed, were loyal to the Russians, and he himself had done a great deal to help those who had suffered in the rising : he had saved from captivity among the Kirghiz seventeen Russian women and girls whom the rebels had taken off to Chinese territory.
Desolation
Authors: Nazaroff Paul
Published: November 2023

A FEELING of intense relief. of real joy and freedom, came over me when this last post of Soviet Russia was left behind and my cart continued its road up to the lofty plateaux of Arpa and Chatyr Kul. Snow lay about the place in patches still, and in it I saw the tracks of wild sheep, foxes and wolves. In the valley of Arpa, which looks like a real steppe in the Orenburg district, the thawing snow gave rise to.rivulets all over the place. We stopped to bivouac at the entrance to the valley of Kara Su (Black Water), at the foot of some rocky hills. The next morning I was a o used by the ringing cries of ruddy sheldrake (Casarca rutila), a flock of which was busy among the stones on top of the hill, behaving just like chukar. These duck nest in holes in absolutely waterless spots, and obviously they had found a suitable site up here. I have found their nests even in fresh Kirghiz graves, and as they often feed on carrion, joining in with vultures and crows, it is better to cut them out of the list of edible game, especially as the meat is tough and stringy. The road kept mounting. High up on the right above the hills there rose a column of cloud, just as though out of the crater of some volcano, black and threatening. This was the steam rising from the Lake of Chatyr Kul (the Lake of the Tent).
Despair
Authors: Nazaroff Paul
Published: November 2023

MY situation was now about as hopeless as it could be ; neither horse nor other means of transport of getting away anywhere, and, to crown my misfortunes, my financial resources had almost come to an end. I could, in fact, not see any way out of my desperate situation. The great altitude, which makes movement an effort and always has a lowering effect upon the nervous system, also acted upon me, and I was reduced to the depths of melancholy and gloom. External conditions, too, seemed as though they had been specially designed to drive a man into despair. In the morning the sun would occasionally show his face for a brief moment and there would be a respite from the snow, but in the afternoon the storm would begin again and the blizzard rage the whole night long. The horizon was all the time covered with lowering leaden clouds. Below, from the basin of Chatyr Kul, as though out of an enormous crater, there arose a column of black evil-looking clouds, which crept over towards us and enveloped us in a blanket of hurricane and snow, till my very soul seemed blotted out in blackness and despair.
At last !
Authors: Nazaroff Paul
Published: November 2023

WHEN it was light we rode out on to a broad desert. On both sides there were rows of small hills. By daylight I could see that the water in the river was full of dirt, and in spite of my raging thirst, I should have to bold out longer, until we came to a brook where, though muddy, it was fresh and cold. Here Tursum Bai filled his tursuk, a leather bottle made of smoked skins, in which he had a few drops of sour milk. We then turned towards the east, between the rows of hills, where we chose a suitable secluded spot to stop and rest.
Light on sweetness: the discovery of aspartame
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

Aspartame, or Nutrasweet, must have relieved a corpulent population of many tons of excess weight. It is a sweetener devoid of the disagreeable aftertaste of saccharine and seems to have no pathological side-effects. Its discovery arose by pure accident, like indeed those of most other ‘artificial’ sweeteners, including the very first: saccharine was synthesized in 1879 by Constantine Fahlberg, a student of the foremost American organic chemist of the time, Ira Remsen, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Fahlberg, struck by a curious sweet taste on his fingers while eating his dinner, realized that it came from something he had spilled on his hand during the day. It was ort/m-sulphobenzoic acid imide. He took out a patent on the substance, from which he excluded his mentor, and became rich, a lapse that Remsen never forgave him.
Winter in Paris: Becquerel and the discovery of radioactivity
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

Henri Becquerel (1852-1908) was a member of an august scientific dynasty, the third of his line to hold the Chair of Physics at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris (in which his son, Jean, later succeeded him).

In 1896, Becquerel was busy pursuing a mirage. Like all physicists he had been shaken and impressed by R6ntgen’s discovery of X-rays [4]. If cathode rays striking glass could elicit a secondary radiation, might not visible light do the same when it fell on a phosphorescent material? To test this wholly incorrect conjecture Becquerel chose a crystal of a uranium compound as a phosphor. He placed a cross made of copper on a photographic plate, enclosed the whole in black paper, laid the crystal on top, and allowed sunlight to fall on it. And, indeed, when the plate was developed it revealed an exposed area, on which the white outline of the cross could be plainly discerned.
Two hundred monks aleaping and the devil in the bottle
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

The discovery of electricity in the eighteenth century caused great excitement, and attracted not only scholars, but the public and a swarm of charlatans. An appetite grew for spectacular scientific entertainments. So Stephen Gray, for instance, who expounded his work on conductors and insulators before the Royal Society of London in I 720, took to performing demonstrations on human subjeds, and especially the boys in the Charterhouse charitable founda tion. He ‘caught an urchin, hung him up with insulating cords, electrified him by contact with rubbed glass, and drew sparks from his nose’.

Such public diversions became all the rage, and led in due course to the belief that electrical discharges might have therapeutic properties and might even revive the recently dead (as in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein). Considerable voltages were generated by rapidly revolving glass cylinders, and then Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692-1761) in Holland invented the famous Leyden jar. This was a water-filled vessel, coated with conducting material on both the inside and outside. A wire poked through a stopper in a hole at the top and when this was brought into contact with a charged object (a rubbed glass rod, for example) charge would be conducted down the wire to accumulate in the jar. Discharges from such jars could attain considerable power. Indeed, van Musschenbroek warned against the danger after he had himself experienced a traumatic shock.
Loving an enzyme
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

Arthur Kornberg is one of the great biochemists of our time. His Nobel Prize in 1959 came for his work on the synthesis of DNA. The hallmark of his approach to his science has ever been the isolation of highly pure materials from biological tissues, and the analysis of their functions in minute and fastidious detail. He called his memoirs For the Love of Enzymes. Here is an episode that he has related from his apprenticeship in the New York laboratory of his mentor, the Spanish biochemist Severo Ochoa.

The purification of an enzyme was (and often still is) an arduous undertaking, involving generally a long succession of treatments that, for instance, rendered some components (generally the unwanted proteins extracted from the tissue) insoluble, while other material remained in solution. The presence of the enzyme was recognized by its activity in the reaction that it catalysed in the cell, so as more and more of the contaminating components were eliminated the activity relative to the total protein in the preparation increased.
Drowning the telephone
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

R. V. Jones [106] was a physicist, latterly Professor of Physics at the University of Aberdeen, who made notable contributions to operational research during the Second World War, and was celebrated for his ingenious hoaxes on his colleagues. The following jape was conceived in Oxford in the years before the war with the connivance of two friends. Here is fones’s own description of what occurred.

I telephoned Gerald Touch’s digs. Before anyone could answer I rang off again, and repeated the procedure several times to create rhe impression that someone was trying to ring the number but that something must be wrong. After this spell of induction, I dialled the number again, and heard a voice which I recognized as belonging to a very able research student in chemistry—in fact he had won the Senior Scholarship in Chemistry in the whole University that year. Reverting to the tongue that was my second language, the Cockney that came from my early schooling, I explained that I was the telephone engineer and had just received a complaint from a subscriber who was trying to dial the number and who had failed to get through. From the symptoms that he described I would say that either his dial was running a bit too fast or there was a leak to earth somewhere at the receiving end. 1 added that we would send a man round in the morning to check the insulation* but it was just possible the fault could be cleared from the telephone exchange if only we could be quite sure what it was. A few simple tests would check whether this were so, and if the victim would be good enough to help us with these tests, whoever it was who wanted to get through might be able to do so the same evening. Would the victim therefore help with the tests? Immediately, of course, he expressed a readiness to do so, and I explained that I would have to keep him waiting while I got out the appropriate manual so that we could go through the correct test sequence.
Trouble at t’lab
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

When judged by its impact on human life and happiness, the discovery of insulin was perhaps the most momentous event in the history of modern science. Up to the third decade of the twentieth century a diagnosis of dia betesߞwhich an alert doctor could often make from the white spots of dried sugar that bespattered a male patient’s shoes or trouser bottomsߞpresaged an early and miserable death. This could be delayed only by a starvation diet, no less agonizing for most patients than the disease.

The road to insulin was beset by misadventure, rancour, and deceit. The award of a Nobel Prize in 1923 to two of the principal actors, Frederick Banting (1891-1941) and John Macleod (1876-1935), inflamed several others, who felt (with some justice) that their efforts had been disparaged or forgotten. One of these was Nicolas Paulesco, a Romanian physiologist, who made the critical observation that linked diabetes to the dearth of an active component in the pancreas: he discovered that high levels of sugar in the blood and urine of dogs, rendered diabetic by extirpation of the pancreas, fell when the animals were injected with pancreatic extracts. Paulesco’s work was interrupted for four years by the Austro-Hungarian invasion of his country before the end of the First World War, and by the time he returned to the problem Banting, Macleod, Best, and Collip in Toronto were closing in on their quarry.
Following by example
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

Benjamin Silliman was a noted scholar, a professor at Yale Cniversity during the first half of the nineteenth century. He created the university’s chemistry laboratories and became one of the country’s foremost chemists of his time. Here he describes an exasperating incident, which occurred when he ordered from the local instrument manufacturer a dozen retorts. Having only a broken specimen, he sent both pieces to indicate exactly what was needed:

In due course my dozen green glass retorts, of East Haverford manufacture, arrived, carefully boxed and all sound, except that all were cracked off at the neck exactly where the pattern was fractured: and the broken neck and ball lay in state like decapitated kings in their coffins. The more than Chinese imitation afforded a curious illustration of the state of manufacture of chemical glass in this country, or rather in Connecticut; the same blunder would probably not have been made in Philadelphia or Boston.
Solving the insoluble
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff stand out as giants in the history of chemistry. Bunsen’s most important monument is the science of spectroscopy—the analysis of lines or bands at characteristic wavelengths making up the light emitted or absorbed by chemical elements and compounds (for one of its later practical applications see [45]). He devised the famous burner that bears his name to generate a pale, almost colourless flame in which the colours of spectra could be viewed. Bunsen (born in Gottingen in 1811) was a much-loved, affable bachelor of slovenly habits; the wife of one of his colleagues at Heidelberg University declared that she wanted to kiss him, but first she would need to wash him. Kirchhoff, Bunsen’s friend and collaborator, shared in much of the great work on spectral analysis and went on to contribute to many branches of physical chemistry. Bunsen and Kirchhoff occupied neighbouring laboratories in the physics building, the Friedrichsbau.
Phlogiston consigned to flames
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94), ‘d’immortelle memoire’, is generally seen as the founder of modern chemistry. He introduced the principle of accurate measurement, especially by weighing, of the reagents and products of chemical reactions; it was this fastidious adherence to quantitative evaluation, rather than mere observation, that led him to most of his great discoveries. He was a man of conspicuous vanity, hauteur, and no little concupiscence. Rich by birth, he had married an even richer and intelligent and beautiful wife, but it was his membership of the rapacious Ferntiers G&itraux, the association of tax-tenants, who levied tributes on a wide range of goods, that brought him eventually to the scaffold.

Lavoisier was not above laying claim to the work of others and he seldom acknowledged the efforts of his contemporaries. Nevertheless, it was he who (among many other achievements) defined the difference between elements and compounds and understood (even if he shared the discovery with Joseph Priestley in England and Karl Wilhelm Scheele in Sweden) the significance of oxygen—which he named from the Greek, meaning ‘acid generator’ (a misnomer, of course, perpetuated in current German usage as Sauerstoff, or sour substance). Lavoisier formulated the principle of conservation of matter and put paid to the phlogiston theory, which had dominated chemistry for a half century.
Cook knows best
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

We owe the concept of radiocarbon dating to the chemist Willard Libby (1908-80). Carbon, which is a constituent of all the compounds that participate in the processes of life, contains a small proportion of a radioactive isotope [149]. When an organism dies, metabolism ceases and there is no more turnover of all these carbon compounds; so the radioactive isotope is not replenished and decays away. Consequently the amount of radioactivity detected in the substance of the deceased animal or plant (wood or cotton, for instance) gives a measure of how long it has been dead. This technique revolutionized the practice of archaeology and won Libby the Nobel Prize in 1960. The following recollection comes from the American biochemist, Daniel Koshland, at the time a research student.
The sound of physics
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

Richard Feynman [89] is one of the few scientists since Einstein to have impressed himself on the public consciousness. This is in large measure the result of the two books of transcribed reminiscences and obiter dicta, which caught the popular imagination. Here is an extract from one of them, which gives a hint of the ebullient spirit that informed his science and his life.

Feynman was always careless with engagements and seldom wrote down addresses or telephone numbers. In 1957, he had been invited to take part in a conference on gravity, to be held at the University of North Carolina.

1 landed at the airport a day late for the conference (I couldn’t make it the first day), and 1 went out to where the taxis were. 1 said to the dispatcher, ‘I’d like to go to the University of North Carolina.’
The mathematical wallpaper
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

Sophie (or Sofya) Kovalevsky was a mathematician of genius. Her name crops up in today’s textbooks in the Cauchy-Kovalevsky theorem of differential equations, and she also made notable contributions to mechanics and to physics, especially to the theory of light propagation through crystalline solids. Her life is the stuff of romantic fiction.

Sophie Kovalevsky was born in 1850 into the Russian nobility, the daughter of General of Artillery Korvin-Krukovsky. It was an uncle who first sparked her interest in mathematics:

more than anything else he loved to communicate the things he had succeeded in reading and learning in the course of his long life.
Hoax!
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

The Piltdown skull is probably the most famous and successful hoax in the history of science. It broke upon the turbulent and divided sodality of anthropologists on eighteenth December 1912 at a meeting in London of the Geological Society. The affair had been incubating for nearly four years, ever since a prominent amateur archaeologist, Charles Dawson, had come by some fragments of a human skull. They had been unearthed by workmen in a gravel pit at Piltdown in Sussex. Dawson, who had always hoped that the Sussex Downs would yield up prehistoric human remains, eagerly sifted through the spoil at the pit and found more fragments of ancient, deeply stained bone, together with worked flints and animal remains. Excited, he alerted his friend, Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum (then still an arm of the British Museum) in London, and a young Frenchman, whom he had befriended while digging in Sussex. This was none other than Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was to become a cult figure 50 years on, through his mystical conceptions of the noosphere and the omega point, elaborated in his book The Phenomenon of Man, which sought to reconcile biblical teaching with evolution.
Shocking experiment
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was born into the Prussian nobility, a milieu in which a military career was all but foreordained. But the young Alexander developed an unaccountable and to his family wholly aberrant interest in science. Persisting in the face of stern disapproval, he entered the Mining Academy in Freiburg and returned to Prussia as an Inspector of Mines. He developed modified versions of Humphry Davy’s famous safety lamp and invented a breathing apparatus for miners. At the same time he was summoned to undertake diplomatic missions in an unsettled Europe. He somehow found time to establish his own Free Royal Mining School, where miners were taught about such subjects as geology. But Humboldt had set his heart all along on a life of science and exploration. He became possessed by a consuming fascination with geology, the Earth’s magnetic field and, above all, ‘animal magnetism’, for Galvani’s work on twitching frog muscles [58] had recently appeared. Humboldt developed a theory of his own: the metal electrodes, he decided, were not the cause of the twitches, they merely intensified an innate property of the muscle. He began a series of experiments on animal muscles and plants and then proceeded to test his ideas on himself.
Calton surpassed
Authors: Gratzer Walter
Published: November 2023

The erratic genius Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, conjectured that no two humans had the same fingerprint, and that fingerprints could be rigorously measured and compared. Fingerprints had in fact been used in the mid-nineteenth century by a scientifically informed administrator in British India for ‘preventing personation and putting an end to disputes about the authenticity of deeds’. (They were introduced by a local governor, Sir William Herschel, grandson and great-grandson of eminent astronomers [156].) By 1905, Nature could report that the fingerprint department of Scotland Yard was in possession of 80,000-90,000 specimens. The fingerprint remained for another 80 years the principal instrument of forensic detection, until, in 1984, a discovery at the University of Leicester supplanted it.