bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Relative mRNA Transcript Abundance in Early Embryos by Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction
Authors: Sousa P A De , Watson A J
Published: November 2023

Over the last decade methods for the microscale isolation of mRNA coupled with re- verse transcription and cDNA amplification techniques have significantly enhanced our understanding of the genetic control of early mammalian development. In this regard, attempts to quantify changes in the relative abundance of specific gene transcripts have helped define their biological significance. Although there are many methods by which gene transcript abundance can be quantified, meaningful quantification requires an appreciation for the limitations and qualifications associated with these procedures. In this chapter our goal is to provide the context for understanding the principles and caveats of relative mRNA abundance calculations, together with a practical approach to meeting this objective by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).
Gene Subtraction and Analysis
Authors: Sirard M A , Robert C
Published: November 2023

Research focused on investigating gene expression is required to better understand the complex mechanisms that control the formation of specialized tissue and organs during development. By increasing our current knowledge of the mechanisms controlling the expression of specific genes, novel approaches to the treatment of human diseases can be developed. One of the main benefits of studying gene expression in preimplantation embryos is that the precise nutritional and metabolic needs of the embryo will be de- fined, and this will lead to greater success in the production of normal offspring following embryo culture and embryo transfer. This outcome should also result in the generation of improved media better suited for human and animal embryo production in vitro.
From the Big Chill to the Big Bang
Authors: Zee A
Published: November 2023

But looks may be deceiving: Friedmann, the great Russian cosmologist who saw the expanding universe in Einstein’s equation, had a streak of the adventurer in him. He was smitten with the notion that he could predict the weather mathematically were he able to measure the detailed physical conditions within a large volume of the atmosphere. And so he went up in a balloon. He caught a severe chill, then pneumonia, and died. He was thirty-seven.
Issues in the Early Development of Concepts and Categories: An Introduction
Authors: Oakes Lisa M , Rakison David H
Published: November 2023

William James once described infants’ earliest perceptions of the world as a “blooming, buzzing, confusion,” speculating that infants perceive the visual world as an unrelated, disorganized series of images rather than, as is the case for adults, a structured world composed of discrete objects and events. More than 40 years of research has shown that in contrast to James’s view, from the very first months of life infants develop the ability to perceive and conceptualize in ways akin to that of adults. At the core of this process, and of cognitive development in general, is the ability to categorize or classify or, more specifically, the ability to group discriminable properties, objects, or events into classes by means of some principle or rule. Thus, to categorize is to “render discriminably different things equivalent, to group objects and events and people around us into classes, and to respond to them in terms of their class membership rather than their uniqueness” (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956, . 231). Or, more informally, to categorize is “to treat a set of things as somehow equivalent: to put them in the same pile, or call them by the same name, or respond to them in the same way” (Neisser, 1987, p. 1).
Chunking Language Input to Find Patterns
Authors: Jusczyk Peter W
Published: November 2023

Prior to the first studies of infant speech perception, the primary question for researchers was: How do infants come to perceive differences between speech sounds? Knowledge of infants’ perceptual abilities, in general, was extremely limited; knowledge of their speech perception capacities was nonexistent. In a little more than 30 years, a great deal has been learned about infants’ capacities for perceiving speech. Indeed, it is fair to say that today most investigators are not so interested in the nature of infants’ perceptual capacities as they are in understanding how these capacities are used in acquiring language. Yet, although the focus in infant speech research has shifted from trying to identify perceptual capacities to understanding the use of these capacities in language acquisition, the primary goal is still to determine how infants make sense of their linguistic input. How do they discover the regularities that underlie the language spoken in their environment? Necessarily, categorization abilities are critical to infants’ efforts to apprehend the structural organization of their native language. Detecting regularities requires some means of recognizing when different instances of the same pattern occur in the input. Similarly, determining the frequency with which certain patterns appear in the input depends on a prior ability to recognize and remember these patterns.
Concepts Are Not Just for Objects
Authors: Quinn Paul C
Published: November 2023

Recent research indicates that young infants possess abilities to organize objects into perceptually based category groupings that come to have conceptual significance for adults (Quinn & Eimas, 1996b). This work challenges views that language, formal tuition, or specialized processes are necessary for the initial construction of category representations (Quinn, 2002). But categorization is not just for objects, and a question of interest is whether young infants can also form categorical representations of physical space that are defined by the positional relations of objects (Quinn, 1998, 1999). That is, can young infants form categorical representations for the spatial relations among objects, such as above versus below, between, left versus right, and inside versus outside? The ability to form categorical representations for spatial relations early in development should make it possible for infants to experience objects in organized spatial arrangements rather than as spatially disconnected entities located in unrelated positions.
The Acquisition and Use of Implicit Categories in Early Development
Authors: Mareschal Denis
Published: November 2023

The current consensus in the adult literature is that human category learning relies on multiple systems (Ashby, Alfonso-Reese, Turken, & Waldron, 1998; Ashby, & Waldron, 1999; Erikson & Kruchke, 1998; Smith, Patalano, & Jonides, 1998). This conclusion is based on two strands of evidence (see Ashby & Ells, 2001, for a recent review of this evidence). First, there are dissociable memory systems in the brain with different characteristics, and each of these systems can, in principle, store category information. Second, different kinds of categorization tasks seem to load differently on these different memory systems.

The exact number of categorization systems remains an open question. However, it is generally agreed that one system is rule or theory based and is closely linked to the participants’ verbal abilities. It is also agreed that the other system (or systems) involves implicit learning. However, there is little consensus about the nature of the implicit category learning system or whether the system itself can be subdivided into multiple subsystems (Ashby & Ells, 2001; Ashby & Waldron, 1999). Nevertheless, the key features of the implicit system are: (1) that learning appears to be procedural, and (2) that the product of learning is not available for explicit access by the cognitive system. Much of the current debate is centered on identifying the characteristics of these systems, discovering how they interact, and mapping these systems onto functional neural systems.
The Unremembered Past Eliot’s Romola and Amnesiac Histories
Authors: Dames Nicholas
Published: November 2023

George Eliot’s attempt to recapture a distant past in all its specificity—through extensive researches, reading, and philological investigation—persists as perhaps the most “memorable” fact about her 1863 historical novel Romola.1 Accounts of the novel seem incomplete without a tum to its difficult, library-laden genesis, which is elaborately described in Eliot’s own letters and journals, where the minutiae of Florentine history become subject to an effort of recovery that can seem wearying and almost spectacularly excessive.
Prologue: Francis Galton in Perspective
Authors: Gillham Nicholas Wright
Published: November 2023

The January n, 1999, issue of Time magazine ran a series of articles entitled “The Future of Medicine,” which was devoted to the effects of the genetic revolution on mankind. One by Paul Gray was called “Cursed by Eugenics.” He wrote that the “rise and fall of the theory known as eugenics is in every respect a cautionary tale. The early eugenicists were usually well-meaning and progressive types. They had imbibed their Darwin and decided that the process of natural selection would improve if it were guided by human intelligence. They did not know they were shaping a rationale for at rocities.”
Riding High with the Royal Geographical Society Stanley Faces Off with the Geographers
Authors: Gillham Nicholas Wright
Published: November 2023

The friction between Galton and other members of the Royal Geo­ graphical Society and Henry Morton Stanley was, surprisingly enough, precipitated by Stanley’s relief of Livingstone. Galton and others came to regard Stanley as a headline-grabbing reporter with no interest in collecting quantitative geographical facts. In a sense, the whole problem could be traced to the Society’s decision to mount its own relief expedition, only dimly aware of Stanley’s existence not to mention his intentions. The story begins shortly after Murchison’s death when the accomplished Assyriologist and Indian Army veteran, Major General Sir Henry Rawlinson, opened the Society’s 1871-1872 session on November 13, 1871. He reminded the membership “of the irreparable loss” that Murchison’s recent demise was for science and the Society. Livingstone had vanished again and was keeping the Geographers “in a state of painful suspense.” 4 Kirk had reported sending a batch of supplies for Livingstone to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika and that an “American traveller, Mr. Stanley” had proceeded inland from the coast. But later Kirk wrote that a conflict in the interior had “cut off Ujiji from the coast” and it might be a long time before they knew much of Livingstone’s where­ abouts.5 Stanley had also got caught in the melee and while he had escaped was apparently no closer to rescuing Livingstone. Hence, the Council had decided to mount a relief expedition.
Weather Maps and the Anticyclone
Authors: Gillham Nicholas Wright
Published: November 2023

Francis Galton’s interest in meterological patterns derived directly from his own experience of striking climatic variations in Namibia and indirectly from his service with the Royal Geographical Society. There he would often have been reminded of the effects of the vagaries of the weather on the various far flung expeditions sponsored by the Society. Closer to home he would frequently have been made aware of the disastrous consequences of foul weather on the merchant shipping of the world’s greatest maritime nation. Among the storm-induced ship founderings reported in the press one in particular must have caught his attention.
Probing the Mind
Authors: Gillham Nicholas Wright
Published: November 2023

From 1877 until 1885 composite photography and psychological studies occupied much ofGalton’s time. Both subjects might provide him a direct entree into understanding mental ability. As always, Galtonwanted to apply quantitative techniques where possible and to determine her­ itability. Galton’s adventures in composite photography relate directly to his budding interest in personal identification and ultimately in the use of finger­ printing as a means for distinguishing different individuals.
Evolution by jumps
Authors: Gillham Nicholas Wright
Published: November 2023

Galton genuinely disagreed with Darwin over whether evolution occurred in small incremental steps. In Natural Inheritance he acknowledged that whenever intermediates were sought “between widely divergent varieties ... a long and orderly series can usually be made out, each member of which differs in an almost imperceptible degree from adjacent specimens.” But he discounted these intermediates as “unstable varieties” whose descendants eventually reverted. Instead, he argued that “sports” occurred frequently and were genetically stable, implying that these were the stuff of evolution. For the young British biologist William Bateson (Fig. 20-1), Galton was preaching to the converted. The son of William Henry Bateson, the master of St.John’s College, Cambridge, he attended the Rugby School and matriculated at St. John’s in 1879. By his own admission “mathematics were my difficulty. Being destined for Cambridge I was specially coached, but failed. Coached once more I passed, having wasted, not one, but several hundred hours on that study.” Weldon was Bateson’s closest friend at Cambridge and, like Weldon, he came under Balfour’s influence. Balfour encouraged Bateson to work on a strange marine organism called Balanoglossus that was perceived to be allied to the vertebrates and was abundant in Chesapeake Bay.
Introduction: Hughes in Our Time
Authors: Tracy Steven C
Published: November 2023

“So what are you going to do the other twelve weeks of the semester?” cracked one of my colleagues ten years ago with hearty laughs all around, in response to my announced intention to teach a fourteen-week course on the works of Langston Hughes. The remark and the response to it revealed not only an ignorance of the extent of Hughes’s work—his output was voluminous— but also something more insidious and troublesome. There is the notion among some literary academics that Hughes is, well, too simple, too obvious, too shallow.
Hughes and Twentieth-Century Genderracial Issues
Authors: Joyce Joyce A
Published: November 2023

In an essay on Langston Hughes in Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture, George Kent, I believe, offers useful insight into the timelessness of Hughes’s literary contributions and thus answers the questions not only why Hughes was referred to during his time as the “Shakespeare of Harlem” but also why his poems and fiction continue to stimulate oral and written dialogues at the forefront of African American literature. Although Kent’s comments refer primarily to Hughes’s autobiographies, they also characterize what I refer to as Langston Hughes’s sensibility. Kent writes, “Hughes is consistent with what I have called the is-ness of folk vision and tradition—life is lived from day to day and confronted by plans whose going astray may evoke the face twisted in pain or the mouth open in laughter.
Ancient Fractions
Authors: Benson Donald C
Published: November 2023

Positive Whole Numbers-the natural numbers -fill the fundamental human need for counting, but, additionally, a civilized society requires fractional numbers for the orderly division of land and goods -artificial numbers that fill in the gaps between the natural numbers. Getting fractions right is the first slippery step in the mathematical education of many schoolchildren, a place where many fall. So it was also in the history of mathematics. The ancient Egyptians took a wrong tum. Only after thousands of years did others find the right path. This detour is now all but forgotten, and there is no danger that we will repeat this mistake. Since fractions were not easy for the Egyptians, we can be more understanding of the difficulties that our schoolchildren experience. Furthermore, Egyptian fractions are a source of curious problems, interesting in their own right.
Algebra Rules
Authors: Benson Donald C
Published: November 2023

The Eloquent Seduction of the above epigraph is difficult to resist. But remember that these are words of an agent of darkness - an adviser with questionable motives. Mephistopheles certainly includes algebra when he speaks of theory. However, it is not he who moves many of our schoolchildren to say, “I hate algebra.” We will not discuss the many and complex sources of the fear and hatred of algebra and mathematics in general; instead, we do hope to show that algebra is a useful and powerful human accomplishment. Algebra, far from being fearsome, is a comfortable place where we can confidently bring our most puzzling quantitative problems-a safe harbor for the mind.
The Origin of Natural Kinds
Authors: Hey Jody
Published: November 2023

Suppose that we would like to overcome our categorical bias toward understanding organismal diversity. How should we proceed? We cannot simply give up our category-filled language about organisms. The final chapter lays out some suggestions for how to deal with the species problem, so as to better promote our understanding of biological diversity, but they are not radical. Even if it were desirable, a self-imposed right-think code of speech and thought about species is probably impossible. It is hard to even imagine what such a code would look like. For this reason, and for those outlined in this chapter, I suspect that our mental functions of conceiving and interpreting the world are grounded in very basic mental tasks. But why might this be the case? Is there any Particular reason, either psychological or biological, to suppose that our reliance on categories is old and deep? I think there is. The purpose of this chapter is to show how the representational men tal method, that gives rise to prototype effects and that seems to be be hind the categories of out thoughts and language, could have arisen. It describes the hypothesis that typological categorical thinking arose as a necessary by product of the way adaptation happens in a world of limited recurrence. If roughly true, then our reliance on categories, and our prototype effects may be both ancient and fundamental to the way we organize our thoughts.
Bedtime Stories
Authors: Ferraro Joanne M
Published: November 2023

a marriage not consummated, according to canon law, was not valid. Sexual impotence that prevented consummation was legitimate grounds for dissolving the union, and was thus an important component of some annulment cases.1 In the Venetian ecclesiastical investigations the term “impotence” was applied to women as well as men. It signified the incapability to have the sexual relations necessary for reproduction, in a woman’s case because her vaginal opening was too narrow to accommodate the insertion of a penis. Impotent men reputedly suffered from erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation. Because it offered hope of breaking marriage ties, provided the presiding adjudicators could be persuaded by a credible story, impotence, like the discourse on forced unions, was another trope in the ecclesiastical investigations conducted in the Patriarchal Court.
A Diplomatic Revolution
Authors: Connelly Matthew
Published: November 2023

Algeria sits at the crossroads of the Atlantic, European, Arab and African worlds. Yet, unlike the colonial wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Algerian war for independence has rarely been viewed as a primarily international conflict. Rather, prevailing accounts of the war interpret it as a domestic French crisis that was resolved when Charles de Gaulle granted Algeria independence. Yet, as Matthew Connelly here demonstrates, from the very start of the bloody eight year struggle, the Front de Liberation Nationale pursued self-rule on the world stage. Exploiting Cold War competition and regional rivalries, the spread of mass communications, and international and non-governmental organisations, such as human rights groups, foreign press conferences, and the United Nations, the rebels harnessed international forces to bring pressure to bear on the French government, which became obsessed with the conflict’s impact on its reputation. By winning rights and recognition from the global community, the rebels helped break up the French colonial empire and rewrite the rules of international relations. In narrating the Algerian war for independence, Connelly analyses how the United States and other states influenced the war and were, in turn, influenced by it. He interprets it in a global and comparative context, arguing for a reconceptualisation of diplomatic history as international history. Based on research on three continents and, for the first time, the rebels’ own archives, this study of the Algerian war for independence offers a landmark reevaluation of the conflict forty years after its conclusion and a model for the writing of international history.
Introduction
Authors: Connelly Matthew
Published: November 2023

At ten o’clock one May morning in 1961, three Swiss Army helicopters skimmed across the waters of Lake Geneva toward the French resort town of Evian. One after the other, each landed by the water’s edge, disgorged three passengers, and then lifted off to make room for the next. Stooped under the swooping blades, the assembled men smoothed their suits before making their way to a group of French officials awaiting them. Just out of sight, anti-aircraft guns were positioned along a defensive perimeter, while armed patrols and road blocks covered the countryside beyond. Even the lake, the only thing that seemed pacific about the place, concealed frogmen swimming beneath the surface.
The Failure of Progress: Algeria and the Crisis of the Colonial World
Authors: Connelly Matthew
Published: November 2023

In 1952 the French government of Algeria commissioned a study of local conditions based on a questionnaire given to the heads of every commune—the smallest administrative unit. The responses came back over the following two years and covered a broad array of issues, ranging from Islamic reformism to immigration, from population growth to nationalist parties. As they compiled these answers, the authors of' “Algeria at Mid-Century” were mainly concerned with the perennial question of political reform: whether it was possible to assimilate Muslims as citizens, in this case by abolishing the odd system of' “mixed communes,” which subjected them to military administration. But this report leads one to to question whether any reform could have kept Algeria French. Quire unconsciusly, its authors had cataloged all the main causes of the coming revolt.
Confronting the Empire of Islam
Authors: Connelly Matthew
Published: November 2023

Like George Bernard Shaw’s quip about Anglo Saxons, the French and the Americans were two peoples separated by a common language: they came to share the same discourse concerning the danger of civilizational conflict and the development of “Eurafrica” while differing over the timing, means, and manner of achivving their aims. Thus, like their French counterparts, Eisenhower and Dulles approached decolonization in terms of demographics and pittmed Thud Wotid Peoples a force of nature, but they did not believe this was a force to be fought or even confronteds Thus, in urging Churchill to make decolonization his crowning achievement, Eisenhower wrote that “there is abroad in the world a fierce and growing spirit of nationalisms”.
Form and Function in Cells of the Brain
Authors: B.Levitan Irwin , Kaczmarek Leonard K
Published: November 2023

In the first chapter we focused exclusively on neurons, and particularly on those aspects of neuronal structure that specialize them for intra-and intercellular signaling. We will now consider some features of the structure and function of the various classes of glial cells that comprise by far the majority of cells in the brain. We will then emphasize that neurons share many structural features with other kinds of cells, including the glial cells. Finally, we will conclude with a discussion of the cytoskeleton, and its role in the formation and maintenance of the structure of neurons.
Ion Channels Are Membrane Proteins
Authors: B.Levitan Irwin , Kaczmarek Leonard K
Published: November 2023

In the last chapter we described methods of measuring the activity of single ion channels and the macroscopic membrane currents resulting from the activity of populations of ion channels, and discussed some of the key functional properties of channels that can be deduced from such measurements. Let us now consider ion channels as protein molecules, the amino acid sequences of which are known from molecular cloning techniques. The powerful combination of electrophysiological, molecular biological, and direct structural approaches has provided novel insights into ion channel structure and function in recent years.
Synaptic Release of Neurotransmitters
Authors: B.Levitan Irwin , Kaczmarek Leonard K
Published: November 2023

Jn the previous chapter we saw that secretion of proteins occurs through the exocytosis of membranous vesicles. This is a process that has been elaborated throughout evolution in endocrine, exocrine, and neuronal cells. It allows cells to send specific chemical signals that diffuse to, and act on, recipient cells. In many cases, the properties of neurons are very much like those of endocrine cells, whose business is chemical communication. Some neurons release peptides directly into the blood, just as an endocrine cell does. Other neurons release their transmitters locally into the extracellular space, where the transmitter diffuses slowly over some distance and influences many other neurons. Many neurons, however, differ from these other cell types in that they have been under evolutionary pressure to develop very rapid chemical communication with specific target neurons and muscle cells. To this end they have developed long axons that bring the source of the messenger substance right up to the membrane of their target cell. In addition, neurons often use small chemical transmitters that can be synthesized directly at the terminal rather than being transported from the soma, as is the case with peptide transmitters. The characteristics of the release of such transmitters at synaptic terminals differ from those of many other secretory cells. In this chapter we give an account of transmitter release at two thoroughly studied synaptic junctions, the vertebrate neuromuscular junction and the giant synapse of the squid.
Sensory Receptors
Authors: B.Levitan Irwin , Kaczmarek Leonard K
Published: November 2023

Although most neurons receive input from other neurons, the business of the brain is to act on information from the outside world. Specialized cells have evolved for the receipt of such information. These include cells that are responsible for sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, as well as those that signal to the brain the state of internal organs. Most external and internal stimuli are received by three classes of sensory cells: (1) those that respond to mechanical stimulation, (2) those that are influenced by light, and (3) those that sense changes in their chemical environment. In addition, some cells respond to other signals such as changes in temperature. In all cases, the stimulus alters the activity of ion channels, sometimes through the agency of second messengers. Sensory cells therefore provide clear examples of the principles encountered in previous chapters. We will now discuss briefly a few of the varied transduction mechanisms that have been found in each of the major classes of sensory cells.
Formation, Maintenance, and Plasticity of Chemical Synapses
Authors: B.Levitan Irwin , Kaczmarek Leonard K
Published: November 2023

Following’ cellular determination and neurite elongation, developing neurons form the specific synaptic connections that are essential for brain function (Fig. 15-1). One particularly striking aspect of the formation of synapses is its extraordinary sensitivity to patterns of electrical activity in the developing pathways. We will now describe synaptogenesis during development and its guidance by the pattern of electrical stimulation to which an immature neuron is exposed. Synaptogenesis is not, however, restricted to the developing nervous system. We have hinted that reorganization of neuronal form and function occurs in the adult nervous system, and in fact mature neurons retain most of the machinery necessary for restructuring their synaptic connections by mechanisms similar to those operating in development. We will therefore provide some examples of synaptic plasticity in adult neurons. Finally, we will describe some of the changes that occur in the properties of cells once synaptic contacts have been established.
Postindustrial Discourses
Authors: Feenberg Andrew
Published: November 2023

Early commentaries on the computerization of society projected either optimistic scenarios of social salvation or nightmares of impending dystopia. The optimists argued that computers would eliminate routine and painful work and democratize industrial society. The pessimists argued, on the contrary, that computers would put millions out of work and bring universal surveillance and control.
Beyond the Dilemma of Development
Authors: Feenberg Andrew
Published: November 2023

According to an ancient tradition of Western political theory, societies cannot achieve both civic virtue and material prosperity. For centuries the rise and fall of the Roman Republic served as a cautionary tale illustrating pessimistic maxims. “Roman liberty,” said Saint-Just, “was drowned in gold and delights” (Saint-Just, 1963: 63). There is a flaw in human nature: released by riches from a common struggle with nature, men grow soft and lose the spirit of self-sacrifice required for life in a free society. This is the dilemma Mandeville mockingly formulated in his famous doggerel (Mandeville, 1970: 76): To make a Great an honest Hive ... Bare Vertue can’t make Nations live In Splendour; they, that would revive A Golden Age, must be as free, For Acorns, as for Honesty.
Aesthetics and Cultural Studies
Authors: Fluck Winfried
Published: November 2023

It has become one of the starting moves of recent revisionist scholarship in literary and cultural studies to emphasize the historical relativity of all aesthetic judgments and to stress their function not only as cultural but also as political acts. This argument can be traced back to one of the founding texts, if not the founding text, of cultural studies, Raymond Williams’s Culture and Society.
The Resistance to Cultural Studies
Authors: Rowe John Carlos
Published: November 2023

We have done a great deal over the past thirty years to establish the theoretical and practical contexts for exciting multidisciplinary work in the humanities and social sciences, then denounced these aims by reducing them to a single school or movement that many fear threatens accepted epistemologies.
Doing Justice to C.L.R. James’s Mariners, Renegades and Castaways
Authors: Pease Donald E
Published: November 2023

William E. Cain contributed an essay to the 1995 volume C. L. R. James: His Intellectual Legacies entitled “The Triumph of the Will and the Failure of Resistance: C. L. R. James’s Readings of Moby-Dick and Othello.
Aesthetics Again? The Pleasures and the Dangers
Authors: Lauter Paul
Published: November 2023

I begin with a portrait of beauty by Tsimshian artist Robert Jackson (figure r), and with two recent shows of Native American (and Canadian) art. One, Native Visions: Northwest Coast Art, Eighteenth Century to the Present, was organized by the Seattle Art Museum; it traveled to the New York State Historical Association museum in Cooperstown, New York, the Anchorage (Alaska) Museum of History and Art, and the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis.
Ordinal Measurement
Authors: Falmagne Jean-Claude
Published: November 2023

These three variations illustrate the so-called yes-no-paradigm, the importance of which is fundamental in psychophysical research—both in view of the considerable amount of data collected, and of the theoretical developments that it inspired. This chapter discusses this paradigm from the viewpoint of theories involving only ordinal constraints on the data. For the subject, the adjective “heavy” (for example) unambigously refers to a category of sensory impressions. He or she may hesitate before answering (1) for some objects a,b. But the subject’s hesitation will be due to the unreliability of his or her nervous system, not to the ambiguity of the question.
Sensitivity Functions—Weber’s Law
Authors: Falmagne Jean-Claude
Published: November 2023

What is the smallest increment on a stimulus continuum, which is just detectable by a subject? In other terms: given a stimulus intensity equal to a, what is the smallest increment ∆(a) such that a + ∆(a) “just noticeably” exceeds a? This was one of the earlier questions raised by psychophysicists. This minimal increment is often referred to as the just noticeable difference, or Jnd for short.1 A variant—or rather, a special case—of this question is: What is the minimum value of a stimulus that is “just detectable” by a subject? This is called the absolute threshold.
Psychophysical Methods
Authors: Falmagne Jean-Claude
Published: November 2023

From a theoretical viewpoint, the sensitivity function contains exactly the same information as the family of psychometric function. There is a consensus, however, that, at least for some purposes, the sensitivity function is a more useful measure of the subject performance, a position that was argued in detail in Chapter 8.
Homogeneity Laws
Authors: Falmagne Jean-Claude
Published: November 2023

There is a class of empirical laws that deserves a serious consideration by the psychophysicist.1 Examples of such laws are provided by the two forms of Weber’s law encountered in Chapter 8.
Scaling and the Measurement of Sensation
Authors: Falmagne Jean-Claude
Published: November 2023

This chapter covers a collection of models, procedures, and empirical analyses purporting to provide a representation of some data in terms of one or more numerical scales. Such is also the aim of measurement theory, a field in which (as we have seen in Chapters 1 and 2) axioms systems are given justifying specific methods of scale construction. In the work usually classified under “scaling,” however, acquiring the scales is typically considered as an end in itself, and the theoretical underpinnings are of secondary importance.1
Differentiating Pathological Narcissism
Authors: Ronningstam Elsa
Published: November 2023

While it has been vital to identify discriminating features for each personality disorder, including NPD, to be able to differentiate them from each other and from other mental illnesses, it has also proved to be of increasing clinical importance to identify the presence of pathological narcissism in other mental conditions and disorders. Co-occurring narcissistic features can have major implications for course and prognosis, as well as for the overall and in-depth understanding of the patient. Pathological narcissism can also have a major impact on the individual’s experiences of and attitudes toward treatment, and influence his or her motivation to engage in a treatment alliance and comply with treatment recommendations, even when the primary diagnosis is not a narcissistic disorder. The role of major psychiatric symptoms, such as bulimia or anorexia, in narcissistic self-esteem regulation is a relatively new avenue of inquiry (Steinbergb & Shaw, 1997). In addition, narcissistic symptoms in other disorders may be overshadowed or erroneously attributed to other more predominant symptoms (Simon, 2001). This chapter provides an overview of the clinical and empirical observations that can describe and explain some of the specific interactions between NPD/pathological narcissism and near-neighbor disorders and other major mental conditions.
Human Kinship: A Continuation of Politics by Other Means?
Authors: Rodseth Lars , Wrangham Richard
Published: November 2023

Our aim in this chapter is to describe and analyze the most common patterns of human kinship. In the anthropological literature, these patterns are often overshadowed by the enormous diversity of ethnographic cases. Human societies vary widely in the terms by which kin are classified, the rules that govern behavior toward kin in different categories, prohibitions on (or preferences for) marriage between kin, norms of residence, succession, and inheritance, and the treatment that kin are actually afforded. Our challenge is to capture the central tendencies of human kinship without forcing cultural variation into a single mold.
Residence Groups Among Hunter-Gatherers: A View of the Claims and Evidence for Patrilocal Bands
Authors: Alvarez Helen Perich
Published: November 2023

The idea that patrilocal, exogamous bands are the simplest and oldest human social system was elaborated in influential detail in the early 1900s. Although challenges emerged, tallies of the residence rules among modern hunter-gatherers (Ember 1975, 1978) showing most to be patrilocal seemed convincing support. When evidence of female natal dispersal in chimpanzees and gorillas began to accumulate, the similarities between the male philopatry of African apes and the patrilocal bands of human huntergatherers stimulated influential hypotheses about phylogenetic features of the clade we share. On the grounds that features shared by living descendants were likely present in their common ancestor, researchers hypothesized that the ancestors of the African ape clade and all hominids were characterized by female natal dispersal, male philopatry, and defense of female ranges by male kin coalitions (Ghiglieri 1987, Wrangham 1987, Foley & Lee 1989, Rodseth et al. 1991). If true, this pattern places strong constraints on hypotheses about what happened in human evolution and the evolution of other hominoids.
Lavenham to London
Authors: Bremer Francis J
Published: November 2023

OCTOBER 1498. Adam Winthrop was carrying his infant son, the next Adam, from his home to the church of Saints Peter and Paul sitting on the hill overlooking the prosperous town of Lavenham. There he would present the baby to the parish priest, Thomas Appleton, to be baptized according to the rites of the Catholic Church. Accompanying Adam were some of his friends from the parish, perhaps including members of the prominent Lavenham families, the Springs, the Risbys, and the Ponders. Jane Burton Winthrop, young Adam ‘s mother, was left lying in at home, denied entry into the holy precincts of the church until she was purified in a rite that usually came about a month after the childbirth. A booming regional economy, a strong sense of piety, and a desire to create monuments to that piety that would stand them in good stead when they went to their last judgment had recently prompted the Christians of Suffolk to expand and beautify the churches of the region, and nowhere was that more evident than in Lavenham. Just four years earlier the base of a new church tower had been laid, and plans were also under way to add a new chapel, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, on the north side of the chancel. Building supplies cluttered the church precincts, and the dust of construction floated in the air as the senior Winthrop and the friends he had chosen as sponsors, or godparents, met the priest at the south door of the church.
Youth
Authors: Bremer Francis J
Published: November 2023

With A Little Imagination we can see the young John Winthrop, aged eight, on a hot August morning in 1596, climbing Pitches Mount, the ancient earthwork about a half mile from his home. Together with some friends he was pretending to be living in a time when Saxon warriors built such fortifications to defend their settlements. On the Mount, away from the view of their parents, the youngsters could transport themselves back into those distant days and engage in playful recreations of battles, just as boys seem to have always done. On this day they approached the Mount from the east, having earlier in the day explored Groton Wood, the dense forest that brooded over the open fields of the region. Carrying bows and arrows, they were always alert for hares, a common feature of the land- scape. But John also kept track of the passing of time, as marked by the sun ‘s journey across the clear Suffolk sky. His father was expecting a visit from John Knewstub, the pastor of nearby Cockfield, and young John— fashioning himself in his mind as a clergyman—tried never to miss a chance to observe and listen to his father ‘s clerical friends.
The Godly Embattled
Authors: Bremer Francis J
Published: November 2023

It Is 1628, And John Winthrop was considering purchasing a London home. He held a much coveted position as attorney of the Court of Wards and Liveries, an office that could well make him rich were he to bow to the importunities of friends and temper his high moral standards. John had achieved far more success than he would have expected in the days when he was a young guest at Rochford Hall, but with success came new demands and new temptations. He was troubled, for he needed a larger in- come. Not only was he burdened with the costs of a long-running lawsuit in the nearby Court of Chancery, but his family continued to grow, and providing for his children was increasingly costly. His eldest son, John, had recently run up bills on a tour of the Levant. His son Henry was begging for parental help to rescue a struggling venture growing tobacco in Barbados. Forth Winthrop was a student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and had written more than once to gently remind his father that college fees hadn ‘t been paid. Then there was his daughter, Mary, for whom he would have to provide a dowry. In addition, the post he held came with expectations that he live in a manner seen as appropriate for such an official. He had been urged to give up his practice of living with his Downing or Fones kin or in his law chambers and to buy a London house where he could live and entertain during the court sessions.
The Best of Them Was But an Attorney
Authors: Bremer Francis J
Published: November 2023

Power and bring all the Assistants under his subjection.” The meeting broke up without any resolution, but in the following month the ministers evidently succeeded in calming the passions of the two, with Winthrop making a contribution toward establishing a minister in Newtown, which Dudley graciously returned. And, according to Winthrop, “notwithstanding the heat of contention which had been between the Governor and Deputy, yet they usually met about their affairs without any appearance of any breach or discontent.”36 Both men being loving fathers, the marriage around this time of Winthrop ‘s daughter, Mary, to Dudley ‘s son Samuel must have helped to bring the two together, though Winthrop would comment a year later that “some differences fell out still now and then between the Governor and the Deputy,” which were always soon healed. The stability of the colony was still fragile, however. Though resembling the forms of English government, the institutions of the Bay colony were not enhanced by long tradition, and none of the colony ‘s leaders came from the highest levels of English society to which the settlers had been taught to defer. One critic of the Court of Assistants, Thomas Dexter, complained that it was a “captious government [that] will bring all to nought” and further observed, speaking of Winthrop, “that the best of them was but an attorney.” Dexter had migrated in 1630 and had a history of challenging authority and suing his neighbors.
Struggling to Hold the Center
Authors: Bremer Francis J
Published: November 2023

The Sun Had Yet To Burn the morning mists off the marshes along the Charles River as the first colonists began to gather on Newtown ‘s grazing common. The occasion was the election meeting of the freemen of Massachusetts Bay on May 17, 1637, which had been moved to Newtown from Boston by the March General Court. Some had crossed the Charles on ferries and walked north along creek lane until crossing a bridge near the town spring. Passing the burying ground, they came to the common and its ancient oak. Others traveled by road the entire way from Charlestown to the east and Watertown to the west. All who came overland entered through gates in the wooden palisade that surrounded most of the town. John Endecott had sailed from Salem to Boston, and then up the Charles to the Newtown dock, bringing with him some of his townsmen. As in elections for county members of Parliament in England, the size of the expected electorate made it essential that the vote be conducted outdoors. The cows and goats moved to the further stretches of the common as the number of men began to grow. Some freemen stretched out on the grass; others sheltered from the sun under the oak or other trees which still dotted the grassland. More than a few gathered around the public house recently opened by Thomas Chesholme as they waited for the election to be called. Most freemen tended to cluster with neighbors who had traveled with them. It was a lengthy journey for many, but the important issues facing the colony seemed to require it.
Miami, 1926
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

In the summer of 1926, Miami, Florida, was beginning to suffer the economic and social hangover that often follows periods of rapid economic expansion and land speculation. According to legend, the city was founded after Julia Tuttle, a divorcée from Chicago and early settler, sent a bouquet of orange blossoms to the great railway tycoon Henry Flagler, to show him that south Florida had not suffered the devastating frost that had just affected the northern part of the state. Flagler had resisted earlier entreaties to extend his Florida East Coast Railway south from West Palm Beach, but the prospect of year-round good weather finally decided him. He extended his railroad, and the city of Miami was incorporated on July 18, 1896. The lure of warm weather, beautiful beaches, and cheap land drew many settlers to south Florida, which, by 1926, boasted a population of nearly three hundred thousand. In the three years between 1920 and 1923, the population of Miami itself doubled. During 1925 alone, more than $60 million worth of buildings were erected in the city. But by early 1926, the boom began to fizzle. Credit became scarce as stories of scams and corruption began to circulate, scaring away potential settlers and investors alike.
Hurricanes and Climate
Authors: Emanuel Kerry
Published: November 2023

Two Louisiana State University graduate students balance precariously in a rubber dinghy, trying to lower an ungainly piece of equipment to the bottom of a marshy lake in coastal Alabama. They and their supervisor, Professor Kam-Biu Liu, are using the equipment to obtain long, cylindrical cores of sediments from the bottom of the lake. Back at the lab, their hopes are confirmed: interspersed among the thick layers of black, organic muck laid down when dead plants settled to the lake bottom are several thin layers of sand (Figure 32.1). Professor Liu and his student, Miriam Fearn, had hypothesized that when violent hurricanes make landfall near this lake, storm surges wash over the dunes separating the lake from the Gulf of Mexico, depositing sand in the lake bottom. Liu’s team carefully sections the core, sending the black organic layers to a laboratory for radiocarbon dating. High in the atmosphere, cosmic rays collide with isotopes of nitrogen and form an isotope of carbon, 14C, which rapidly oxidizes into an isotope of carbon dioxide, 14CO2. This gas makes its way down to the surface, where it is incorporated into plants in proportion to the amount in the atmosphere. But when the plants die, this carbon isotope is no longer exchanged with the atmosphere and decays radioactively.
Bodily Representations, Behavior, and the Brain
Authors: Schulkin Jay
Published: November 2023

The great biological revolution beginning in the 19th century demythologized the body and placed it in nature: Adaptive, diverse, majestic in shape, these are all appropriate descriptions of the phenomenal body in nature. Intelligence could only mean, from Darwin’s perspective, adaptation. According to Darwin, intelligence takes on many forms and shapes, including that of the body serving as a vessel for problem solving. All those millennia and generations of evolving produced animals with internal as well as external adaptations to their environment that promote their survival.