bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Evaluation After Publication
Authors: Gross Alan G. , Harmon Joseph E.
Published: November 2020

Just how much confidence should we place in published research findings, even if peer reviewed? What should we ignore, reject, modify, incorporate, pursue? To answer these questions, the sciences and the humanities must be continually in the business of keeping the record of knowledge straight at the edge, an enterprise the Internet can fruitfully enhance. Accordingly, this chapter looks at some Internet-based possibilities concerning this postpublication process: watch­dog blogs in the sciences, blogs and discussion forums in the sciences and humanities, and book and article reviews in the humanities. For these activities, as for peer review, Habermas’s ideal speech situation provides a useful theoretical framework. The goal is the same: the achievement of rational consensus concerning the originality, significance, argumentative competence, and clarity of expression of the work in question. After reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—after the sweeping “Prologue,” the dramatic “Pardoner’s Tale,” the raucous “Miller’s Tale,” the sermon that is the “Parson’s Tale”—readers come upon what may well be the world’s first “Retraction Notice”: . . . Now I pray to all who hear or read this little treatise, that if there is anything in it that they like, they thank our Lord Jesus Christ for it, from whom proceeds all wisdom and goodness. And if there is anything that displeases them, I pray also that they attribute it to inadvertence rather than intent. I would have done better if I could. For the Bible says, “All that is written is written to support the teaching our faith” and that is what I wish to do. Therefore I beseech you meekly, for the mercy of God, that you pray for me that Christ have mercy on me and forgive my sins, especially my translations and works of worldly vanity, which I revoke in my retractions. . . . In acknowledging error, some editors of science journals lack the poet’s candor. One minced no words, responding to a request from the editors of the blog “Retraction Watch”—Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky—for reasons that a paper was retracted with the following terse comment: “It’s none of your damn business.”
Introduction
Authors: McElroy Michael B.
Published: November 2020

The risk of disruptive climate change is real and immediate. A low- pressure system forming in the tropics develops into a Category hurricane, 1 making its way slowly up the east coast of the United States. Normally a storm such as this would be expected to make a right- hand turn and move off across the Atlantic. Conditions, however, are not normal. This storm is about to encounter an intense low- pressure weather system associated with an unusual configuration of the jet stream, linked potentially to an abnormally warm condition in the Arctic. Forecasts suggest that rather than turning right, the storm is going to turn left and intensify as it moves over unseasonably warm water off the New Jersey coast. It develops into what some would describe as the storm of the century. New York and New Jersey feel the brunt of the damage. The impact extends as far north as Maine and as far south as North Carolina. Lower Manhattan is engulfed by a 14- foot storm surge, flooding the subway, plunging the city south of 39th Street into darkness. Residents of Staten Island fear for their lives as their homes are flooded, as they lose power, and as their community is effectively isolated from the rest of the world. As many as 23 people are drowned as floodwaters engulf much of the borough. Beach communities of New Jersey are devastated. As much as a week after the storm has passed, more than a million homes and businesses in New York and New Jersey are still without power. Estimates of damage range as high as $60 billion. This is the story of the devastation brought about by Hurricane Sandy in late October of 2012.The encounter with Sandy prompted a number of queries concerning a possible link to human- induced global climate change. Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, commented: “Part of the learning from this is the recognition that climate change is a reality, extreme weather is a reality.”
Vision for a Low- Carbon- Energy Future
Authors: McElroy Michael B.
Published: November 2020

This chapter discusses steps that could be taken to realize the long- term goal of reducing, if not eliminating, climate- altering emissions associated with the consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas. I choose to focus on initiatives that could be adopted over the next several decades to advance this objective in the United States. The key elements of the vision proposed for the United States should be applicable, however, also to China and to other large emitting countries. As indicated at the outset, the overall focus in this volume has been on the United States and China, the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, recognizing at the same time differences in states of development and national priorities of the two countries. The vision I outline here for a low- carbon-energy future for the United States should apply also to other countries. The time scale for implementation may differ, however, from country to country, depending on details of local conditions and priorities— economic, social, and environmental. The data presented in Chapter 3 (Figs. 3.1 and 3.2) provide a useful starting point— essential background— for discussion of potential future scenarios (US EIA 2015). They define how energy is used in the current US economy and the services responsible for the related emissions, with key data summarized in Table 16.1. Generation of electricity was responsible for emission of 2,050 million tons of CO2 in 2013, 1,580 million tons from combustion of coal, and 442 million tons from natural gas, with a minor contri-bution, 34.7 million tons, from oil. The residential, commercial, and industrial sectors accounted, respectively, for 38%, 36%, and 26% of emissions associated with economy-wide consumption of electricity. The power sector was responsible for 38% of total national emissions. Transportation contributed an additional 1,826 million tons, 34% of the national total. The bulk of the emissions from transportation (98%) was associated with consumption of petroleum products, gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel, with the balance from natural gas
Divergence, Diagnostics, and a Dichotomy of Methods
Authors: Fisher Grant
Published: November 2020

COMPUTATIONAL MODELING IN ORGANIC chemistry employs multiple methods of approximation and idealization. Coordinating and integrating methods can be challenging because even if a common theoretical basis is assumed, the computational result can depend on the choice of method. This can result in epistemic dissent as practitioners draw incompatible inferences about the mechanisms of organic reactions. These problems arose in the latter part of the twentieth century as quantum chemists attempted to extend their models and methods to the study of pericyclic reactions. The Woodward-Hoffmann rules were introduced in the mid-1960s to rationalize and predict the energetic requirements of a number of reactions of considerable synthetic significance. Soon after, quantitative quantum chemical approaches developed apace. But alternative methods of approximation yielded divergent quantitative predictions of transition state geometries and energies. This chapter explores the difficulties facing quantum chemists in the late twentieth century as they attempted to construct computational models of pericyclic reactions. Divergent model predictions resulted in the methods used to construct computational models becoming the focus of epistemic scrutiny and dissent. The failure to achieve robust quantitative results across quantitative methods prompted practitioners to scrutinize the consequences of pragmatic tradeoffs between computational manageability and predictive accuracy. I call the strategies employed to probe pragmatic tradeoffs diagnostics. Diagnostics provides the means to probe manageability—accuracy tradeoffs for sources of predictive divergence and to determine the reliability and applicability of approximation procedures, idealizations, and even techniques of parametrization. Furthermore, although technological developments in computing power continues to increase, and indeed that there is now a general consensus on the veracity of high level ab initio and density functional methods applied to pericyclic reactions, diagnostics imposes non-contingent pragmatic constraints on computational modelling. What counts as a “manageable” model is characterized by two dimensions: computational tractability and cognitive accessibility. While the former is a contingent feature of technological development the latter is not because cognitive skills are an ineliminable feature of computational modelling in organic chemistry.
Life After Tenure Denial in Academia
Authors: Brown Jeannette E.
Published: November 2020

The year 2014 was absolutely devastating for me professionally and personally; I was denied tenure and I lost both my maternal and paternal grandmothers. Reflecting back on that time in my life, I am certain that I would not have been able to survive the experience without the support of my close family and friends. I truly believe that the story of my journey will help others experiencing difficult challenges in their careers. After graduating from Henry Ford High School in Detroit, MI, in 1988, I enrolled at Highland Park Community College (HPCC) in nearby Highland Park. My mother was working as a secretary in the nursing department at the time, so I was able to take advantage of the tuition benefit offered to the college’s employees. I enrolled in a chemistry course for non-science majors, which I absolutely loved! Needless to say, after earning my associate’s degree in 1990, I decided to pursue chemistry as a major. I enrolled at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and attended two semesters before transferring to Wayne State University (WSU), in Detroit. My experiences as an undergraduate chemistry major at WSU led me on the path to pursue a doctorate in chemistry. In the fall of 1992, I was awarded an NIH-MARC (National Institutes of Health-Minority Access to Research Careers) Fellowship. This fellowship provided me not only funding support, but hands-on research training in the laboratory of Professor Regina Zibuck, a synthetic organic chemist. The environment in the Zibuck laboratory was very supportive and due to this mentoring experience, I wanted to earn a doctorate in chemistry. As a MARC Fellow, I was engaged in research and presented a poster on my research efforts at a national conference for the first time. Thus, I was developing fundamental laboratory and communication skills as an undergraduate researcher. Also during this time at WSU, I became involved in the WSU-NOBCChE chapter, where I found a supportive network of African American students pursuing undergraduate degrees in chemistry. The chapter adviser was Dr. Keith Williams, Director of Minority Student Initiatives in the chemistry department.
Organizing the Transition Metals
Authors: Rayner-Canham Geoff
Published: November 2020

Though the Periodic table has been a centerpiece of chemistry since the 1870s, it is in recent years that a more detailed study of patterns and trends has become of interest. In part, this study reflects the accumulated wealth of data on comparative formulas, structures, and properties of compounds across the periodic table. Traditionally, patterns in the periodic table have been examined through defined criteria of groups and periods. Such a mindset immediately obscures other linkages. I have previously critically analyzed and extended nontraditional connections. Such connections have been . . . Isoelectronic: similarities between species (molecules or ions) which have the same total number of electrons and of valence electrons together with the same structure (number and connectivity of atoms); Isodiagonal: similarities between an element of group (n) and period (m) with an element of group (n+1) and period (m+1). Knight’s move: similarities between an element of group (n) and period (m) with the element in group (n+2) and period (m+1) in the same oxidation state (in the lower-right of the periodic table); Group (n) and (n+10): similarities between elements of Group (n) with elements of Group (n+10) in the same highest oxidation state. . . . It is such other, less-obvious patterns that enrich the study of the elements and lead to additional possibilities for exploration. Here, we will deconstruct the monolithic block of transition metals and see how assigning an element to a specific cluster provides a more flexible approach to appreciating the complexity of the transition series than simple use of group or period assignment. The first task is to define the transition metals, which is not quite as obvious as it may seem. The main group elements are always identified as the members of groups 1–2, and 13–18. In addition, about half of sources include group 12. One might justifiably conclude, therefore that groups 3–11 or 3–12 would be the transition metals. However, identifying a “transition metal” is not simply a question of location in the periodic table, but also one of chemical behavior.
Harvesting the Light
Authors: Dalton David R.
Published: November 2020

Products of reactions are separated from reactants by a barrier or barriers. if this were not so we could not have any reactants—everything would already be products! In order for the grapevine to grow beyond the materials provided in the seed, the rootstock, or the cutting, it is necessary for the reactants obtained from the environment (i.e., nutrients in the soil and air) to be converted to plant material. The energy for this conversion comes from the sun, and it is the chloroplasts that take the light and, using the aforementioned materials, convert it to useful energy in the plant. So, overall, for processes to occur within the plant, a high energy species must be formed and then used. Subsequent regeneration of the high energy species can use more sunlight. The currency of energy is adenosine triphosphate (ATP). When it is used, it is converted to adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and inorganic phosphate (Pi), and in that conversion (or those conversions as more than one can be used to accomplish the same end) the barrier between reactant and product can be overcome (Figure 10.1). Additionally, for moving electrons and protons around where simple solvation (the use of—and interactions with—solvents) will not work, a cofactor (a “factor” that needs to be present in addition to an enzyme to enable the catalyzed reaction to occur) is often needed. These movements of electrons and protons are simply oxidations and reductions (see Appendix 1), and it is common to find oxidation and reduction being effected by using, as cofactors, either the oxidized or reduced forms of the phosphate ester of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADP+) to/ from (NADPH) and/ or the related conversion of the oxidized/ reduced forms of flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD)/ (FADH2) (Figure 10.2). A cartoon representation of the chloroplast wall, with the stroma (the colorless fluid filling the chloroplast through which materials move) shown on the top and the lumen of the thylakoid body (where the light- dependent photochemistry occurs) on the bottom is provided in Figure 10.3. The working agents in the membrane are shown.
Specialized Wines
Authors: Dalton David R.
Published: November 2020

Specialized wines will have often have passed through similar sequences of grape maturation, harvest, and fermentation (which may or may not be carried to completion) typical of more normal wines but are, nonetheless, treated somewhat differently. Wines developed for shipment, such as Port, Madeira, and Sherry, discussed here, and wines developed from grapes infected with the fungal ascomycete known as Botrytis cinerea (aka the Noble Rot), wines produced from frozen grapes (Ice wine), and wines produced from grapes similar to those grown in the Champagne region of France and destined to become “sparkling wines,” to be discussed subsequently, are all slightly different from the general types already described. And yet, because the compounds initially found in the grapes enjoy the same precursors and are doubtlessly very similar save for their terroir and their individual genomic and epig¬enomic differences, all but the final treatments they undergo are somewhat similar. Indeed, in that vein, Port and Madeira wines apparently originated in Portugal and Sherry in Spain, and the preferred grapes from which the preferred beverages are made continue to grow in and or near the initial locations. Other growing regions do try, with greater or lesser success, to create similar beverages. Port, Sherry, and Madeira wines are all called “fortified” beverages. They are generally higher in alcohol content and other flavorings than those produced by typical fermentation processes and have one or two additional steps that are associated with their processing. The first step involves producing a “distilled beverage.” In this process a portion of the wine produced in the usual way by fermentation is subjected to the process of distillation in the presence of air. In that process the wine is heated above the temperature at which it vaporizes (different components vaporizing at different temperatures) and then the vapors produced are removed, condensed, and separated from the residue. Low- boiling materials such as water (H2O, the major constituent of wine), methyl alcohol (methanol [CH3OH] of which there are traces), acetaldehyde (ethanal [CH3CHO] produced by oxidation of ethanol), and perhaps surprisingly, ethyl alcohol (ethanol [CH3CH2OH]), as well as other low-boiling components (e.g., some esters) are removed.
On the Origin of the Spices (and Other Foodstuffs)
Authors: Kelly Alan
Published: November 2020

The beginning of the story of food is what is termed food production. This might sound logically like the process of making food, such as a chef or food company might, but this term is rather generally used in food science to refer to the so-called primary production of food, from growth of crops to harvesting of fish and minding and milking of cows. Primary production is, for example, what farmers do, producing the food that is brought to the farm-gate, from where the processors take over. So the food chain runs, according to your preference for a snappy soundbite, from grass to glass (for milk), farm to fork, slurry to curry, or (taking the food chain to its logical conclusion, and including the role of the human gut charmingly but appropriately in the chain) from farm to flush. But where do these raw materials that are yielded by primary production actually come from? It is often said that all things found on earth can be divided into categories of animal, vegetable, and mineral. To these could perhaps be added two more categories, microbial and synthetic (man-made). Within these five groups can essentially be placed everything we know as food, so using this classification to consider where our food comes from seems like a good starting point for this book. Perhaps the simplest group to start with is minerals, which might intuitively seem an unlikely source of foodstuffs (do we eat metal or rock?), until we consider where salt comes from and how much of it we add to our food (in other words, probably too much). Our bodies, however, absolutely need for us to consume certain metals and other chemical elements to survive, beyond the sodium and chloride we get from salt, and so many extracted minerals find their way from deposits in the earth into food products. This is particularly important where their biological effects are a desirable outcome (such as in carefully formulated nutritional products). In addition, products such as milk contain minerals like calcium, magnesium, zinc, and more, because the infant or calf needs them to thrive.
The Experience of Eating
Authors: Kelly Alan
Published: November 2020

We think perhaps instinctively of our tongues as supersensitive tasting machines, laden with taste buds that detect and analyze core flavors such as sweet, sour, and salty, from which we build up a picture of what the food tastes like. However, before the food gets there, it has to pass two arguably even more sensitive sensors, the impact of which on what we think the food tastes like is immense. The first is the eyes, and the second is the nose. Controlling the whole system, but perhaps more infallibly than it might think it does, is the brain. Let’s think about the eyes first. We all make automatic judgments about food based on observation, and these first impressions can be incredibly difficult to bypass. Appearance can make complete fools of us, if we let it. I have seen experienced food specialists taste bright orange sweets that comprised apple-flavored jellies with a strong orange dye added and, when asked to describe the flavor, voted verbally for orange, except a few lone and somewhat confused voices claiming for apple. Famously, even one of the best-known color/character differences in the food world can be hacked by playing with appearances and expectations. Red and white wine can be confused for each other when the taster cannot see the color, and obvious cues such as the temperature at which the wine is tasted are manipulated. This has been demonstrated repeatedly in experiments involving so-called experts in France and the United States, where completely different flavor profiles have been reported on tasting one glass of white wine and one of the exact same wine to which a flavorless red dye had been added. In addition, the flavor profile of wine has been shown to differ depending on factors such as the label placed on the bottle (and apparent perceived “fanciness” as a result), and there has frequently been shown to be no correlation whatsoever between price on the bottle and the results of sensory evaluation of flavor or desirability.
How big is a cloud?
Authors: Lovejoy Shaun
Published: November 2020

We have discussed two extreme views of atmospheric variability: the scalebound view, in which every factor of 10 or so involves some new mechanism or law; and the opposing self- similar scaling view, in which zooming gives us something essentially the same— a single mechanism or law that could hold over ranges of thousands or more. By considering time series and spatial transects, we saw that, over various ranges of scale in space and in time, atmospheric scaling seemed to work quite well. We looked at a complication: Interesting geophysical quantities are not simply black or white (geometric sets of points), but have gray shades; they have numerical values everywhere. To deal with the associated extreme variability and intermit­tency, we saw that we had to go beyond fractal sets to multifractal fields (Box 2.2). Understanding multifractals turned out to be important. Failure to appre­ciate their importance led to numerous deleterious consequences.1 In this chapter, I want to consider something quite different: the morphologies of shapes in two or three dimensions. Up until now, we have identified scaling with self- similarity, the property that, following a usual isotropic zoom (one that is the same in all directions), small parts resemble the whole in some way. Yet in Chapter 1 (Fig. 1.8A, B), we saw that zooming into lidar vertical sections uncovered morphologies that changed with scale. As we zoomed into flat, stratified layers, structures became visibly more “roundish” (compare Fig. 1.8A with Fig. 1.8B). Vertical sections are thus not self- similar. Their degree of stratification— anisotropy— changes systematically with scale. But the vertical isn’t the only place where self- similarity is unrealistic. Although it is not as obvious, the same difficulty arises if we zoom into clouds in the hori­zontal. We criticized Orlanski’s powers of ten classification as being arbitrary and in contradiction with the scaling area– perimeter relation, but Orlanski was only trying to update an older phenomenological classification scheme, some of which predated the twentieth century.
Epilogue
Authors: Rohling Eelco J.
Published: November 2020

There can be no doubt that the discovery and widespread use of fossil fuels has driven massive economical and societal developments. It started with coal. Although oil and gas became important thereafter, coal never really lost its position of prominence, although the tide may have turned in very recent years (Figure 1.2). The use of fossil fuels is familiar to virtually everybody on the planet, and a massive global corporate infrastructure exists to ensure its supply and distribution. In addition, petrochemical products are essential base materials for much of the manufacturing industry (e.g., plastics, synthetics, solvents, etc.). Virtually all of humanity has thus become thoroughly dependent on fossil fuels and other petrochemical products. We feel in our comfort zone with them. The very closely interwoven relationship between the modern way of life and fossil fuels and other petrochemicals, the emotive comfort- zone issue, and direct financial interests are key to the strong reactions that commonly follow whenever external carbon emissions are identified as an urgent problem. I hope that this book has provided you with a deeper understanding of the concepts and observations behind the concerns expressed by researchers. The role of CO2 in climate could perhaps be defined a little more sharply in the fine details, but the big lines are clear. And the big lines are all we need to appreciate where we stand today. Using just a few simple numbers about the potential consequences of the modern CO2 levels, with examples from the past, and equally simple numbers about the sheer quantities of carbon involved, everyone can get their heads around the scale of the problem. By similarly working out the scale of the required remedial measures in basic terms, we have seen that our most advisable course of action is to create a zero emissions society at the very soonest. Because there has been inaction for so long already, positive action on a truly global scale has now become a matter of the greatest urgency. This zero emission society is critical for stopping the unnaturally rapid rise in CO2 levels and stabilizing them to a level as close to today’s 400 ppm as we can.
Mercury poisons us all
Authors: Emsley John
Published: November 2020

Mercury is everywhere and we cannot avoid it. The average adult contains around 6 mg of mercury – assuming they have no mercury amalgam fillings in their teeth – and this is something we have to live with because we can do almost nothing to reduce it. Our average intake of mercury is about 3 mg/day for adults, and about 1 μg for babies and young children. At these levels the amount we consume in a lifetime is less than a tenth of a gram, although in previous centuries people would consume more than this in a day in the form of medication, generally for embarrassing diseases, such as the unspeakable syphilis or, even worse, the unmentionable constipation. We shed mercury from our body through our urine, faeces, and even our hair. We could excrete mercury via our saliva glands, which are greatly stimulated by mercury, but the mercury in saliva tends to return to the stomach. So where does it all come from? The answer is mainly from the food we eat, although a little comes from the air we breathe and the water we drink, and some may even come from our own body if we have mercury amalgam fillings in our teeth. Agricultural soils may hold as much as 0.2 ppm of mercury and this finds its way into plants and food crops. Grass contains relatively little mercury, around 0.004 ppm, which explains why grazing animals are not really contaminated, and meat and dairy products have low levels. Seawater contains even less mercury than the cleanest soil and has only 0.00004 ppm, yet some fish absorb mercury to the extent of concentrating it in excess of 1 ppm. Are we harmed by this amount of mercury? Probably not. In December 1997, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a seven-volume report on mercury and announced a safe daily dose of 0.1 μg/kg body weight, which for an ordinary adult would be 7 μg. Were this limit to be acted upon then it would outlaw the sale of all swordfish, shark, and most tuna, whereas the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), which has a more pragmatic view of mercury, bans their sale only if their mercury content exceeds 1 ppm.
Arsenic is everywhere
Authors: Emsley John
Published: November 2020

Arsenic has a long historical and disreputable pedigree; its very name seems to condemn it as something unspeakable. It appears to have been first isolated by Albertus the Great (1206–80) although it was not identified as an element until several centuries later. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the first recorded use of the English word arsenic was in 1310, and certainly it must have been widely known by the end of that century because it was mentioned by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, written in 1386. The canon yeoman’s tale has the words: …No need to reckon up the lot, Rubeficated water, bull’s gall, Arsenic, sal ammoniac, and brimstone: And if I wanted to waste your time I could recite any number of herbs…. Rubeficated means red, sal ammoniac is ammonium chloride, and brimstone is sulphur. Later in the tale he mentions orpiment (arsenic sulphide, As2S3) as one of the four spirits of alchemy. And arsenic was known to be deadly, as the following poem supposedly written by the mythical Basil Valentine (see page 23) in 1604 shows: …I am an evil, poisonous snake, But when from poison I am freed, Through art and sleight of hand I can cure both man and beast. From dire disease I can direct them, But prepare me correctly, and take great care That you keep watchful guard over me, Or else I am poison, and so will be To pierce the heart of many a person…. The Romans knew of arsenic materials, as did the contemporary civilizations of China and India. The Chinese used them to kill flies and rodents, and the Indians used them to preserve paper from attack by insects. The Roman writer Dioscorides (40–90) wrote De Materia Medica [Medical Matters] in which he listed scores of remedies, mainly of the herbal kind, but also of the mineral variety and among these he mentioned orpiment and realgar, both of which are natural arsenic sulphides. The former he called arsenikon, which he said could be used to repress ‘excrescencies’, in other words warts and other skin eruptions, although he did warn that using it might cause the hair to fall out.
Malevolent arsenic
Authors: Emsley John
Published: November 2020

We can never know who committed the first murder with arsenic or even who discovered the deadly nature of arsenical compounds. Although the natural arsenic minerals orpiment and realgar are poisonous, they are not particularly effective as murder weapons because they are insoluble and highly coloured, so that feeding them undetected to the intended victim would not be easy. The most reliable form in which to administer arsenic, knowing that it would succeed in killing someone, would have to be as the oxide. This is not a naturally occurring substance but it was easily obtained. When copper ores that had arsenic as an impurity were smelted, the arsenic was oxidized and emitted as white smoke, some of which sublimed (changed directly from a solid to a vapour) onto the walls of flues and chimneys of the smelter, from where it could be gathered. When people talk of ‘arsenic’ they are almost invariably referring to its oxide, whose chemical formula is As2O3, with arsenic atoms bonded to oxygen atoms. Over the centuries this has had many names such as white arsenic, arsenious oxide, arsenious acid (because it dissolves in water to form an acidic solution), arsenic trioxide, and its proper chemical name, arsenic(III) oxide. I shall call it by the name which is still in common use even among chemists: arsenic trioxide. Some murderers used solid arsenic trioxide, stirring it into foods like stews, porridge, or rice pudding to disguise it, but the more usual method was to dissolve it in something that the victim would drink. Not only is arsenic trioxide soluble, but the solution in which it is dissolved does not betray its presence because it is colourless and almost tasteless; if anything it imparts a slightly sweetish taste to the water. Yet even with such advantages favouring the would-be poisoner, it was still possible to fail to kill, either by not understanding arsenic trioxide’s simple chemistry or misjudging the dose required. Sometimes the ignorance and incompetence of murderers worked in their favour because repeated small doses of the poison gave the impression that the victim was suffering from some deep-seated illness, so that when a final fatal dose was administered the end was not unexpected.
Graham Young
Authors: Emsley John
Published: November 2020

The one multiple murderer whose name will for ever be linked to thallium is that of Graham Young. As we saw in the previous chapter, victims of thallium poisoning were generally thought to be suffering from some other condition and treated accordingly, so there was little in the way of evidence that we can use to follow the effect this metal had on them. In Young’s case there were several victims whose illnesses were carefully recorded and we can reconstruct the way that Young administered the poison, although it is difficult to deduce why he chose one person to die and not another. Young used two metal poisons: antimony and thallium, the former to punish, the latter to kill. With thallium acetate he murdered his stepmother, Molly Young, when he was a boy of 14, and later he murdered workmates Bob Egle and Fred Briggs. He fed antimony sodium tartrate or antimony potassium tartrate to all and sundry and thallium acetate in sub-lethal doses to some people. Altogether 13 people, and maybe more, felt the repressed wrath of Graham Young. Graham Young was born in the less-than-fashionable London suburb of Neasden on 7 September 1947 and his mother, Margaret, died of tuberculosis 15 weeks later on 23 December. His father, Fred Young, was obviously not capable of managing a single parent family and Graham was passed to Fred’s sister and her husband who lived nearby at 768 North Circular Road. Graham’s 8-year-old sister Winifred went to live with her grandmother. Despite the care of his aunt, baby Graham was already displaying a common outward sign of the emotionally disturbed child: excessive rocking to-and-fro in his cot. Whether his aunt could ever have supplied all the love of a mother is unlikely, especially as Graham taxed her patience by being a poor sleeper. Whatever chance of emotional stability he had was upset by his having to go to hospital for an operation on his ears. When his father found a new wife both Winifred and 3-year-old Graham went to live back home. By now Graham was a very withdrawn little boy and his childhood years were made even more miserable by his stepmother, whom he openly resented, and who returned his animosity.
Introduction
Authors: Beerling David
Published: November 2020

Charles Darwin (1809–82), the greatest naturalist of all, was fascinated by them, Richard Dawkins all but ignored them. The world, it seems, is divided about the charms of the plant kingdom. The opening quotation of this chapter is from the American popular science author Tom Weller’s witty and provocative 1985 book Science made stupid, and sums up the malaise afflicting those on one side of the great divide. To these folk, plants have an unexceptional evolutionary trajectory leading up to the emergence of our modern floras and play no appreciable role in unravelling Earth’s history. Too often, this view is reiterated, reinforced, in Earth science textbooks, where it is palmed off on the unwary reader as received wisdom. Many such scholarly tomes devote a few pages to Earth’s first green spring, that decisive moment of our past when terrestrial plants turned the continents green. A few graciously give more space—an entire chapter, perhaps—to the progression of plants up the evolutionary ladder from their earliest beginnings through to the appearance of the first forests, the emergence of seed plants, and the blooming of the Earth with the rise of flowering plants. Fewer still recognize plants as important players in the game of life. In this book I argue that Weller’s viewpoint, and the conventional view of textbooks, is now outdated, redundant even, and misguided. The scientific investigation of fossil plants is on the threshold of an exciting new era, a grand synthesis illuminating new chapters in the inseparable stories of plant evolution and Earth’s environmental history. This book is about that new science. It is an endeavour that has emerged unnoticed in the last two decades but which is proving a powerful tool for clearing a path through the dense, sterile thicket of entrenched orthodoxy. It advocates fossils not as the disarticulated remains of ancient plant life gathering dust deep within the basements of museums, but as exciting, dynamic entities brought to life in new ways by the scientific investigation of their living counterparts. The Emerald planet is not a textbook, nor an attempt at describing, blow-by-blow, the detailed evolutionary history of plant life over the ages in a manner accessible to the general reader.
Nature’s green revolution
Authors: Beerling David
Published: November 2020

The scientific revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, if indeed it can be recognized as such, saw the foundations of modern science established. Developments by iconic figures, notably Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Galilei Galileo (1564–1642), Robert Boyle (1627–91), and Isaac Newton (1642–1727), among others, advanced the study of the natural world by moving it away from mystical concepts and grounding it firmly in the rational. Bacon outraged his intellectual contemporaries with the belief that scientific knowledge should be built on empirical observation and experimentation, and pursuing this theme is alleged to have done for him in the end, at the age of 65. According to Bacon’s former secretary, the legend goes that Bacon was travelling in a coach towards London with one of the King’s physicians on a snowy day in April 1626 when he decided to investigate whether meat could be preserved by ice. Seizing the opportunity for an experiment, Bacon purchased a chicken in Highgate, then a small village outside London, gutted it, and proceeded to stuff the carcass with snow to see if it delayed putrefaction. In his excitement he became oblivious to the cold, caught a chill, and took refuge in the Earl of Arundel’s nearby house in Highgate, the Earl being away serving time in the Tower of London. Bacon died a few days later, probably from pneumonia, after being put up in a guest room with a damp bed disused for over a year, but not before penning a letter to the Earl communicating the success of the experiment. This delightful story of Bacon’s ultimate demise would have been fitting for his contribution to modern science, but is probably apocryphal. Surviving records indicate Bacon was already ill before the end of 1625, and inclined to inhale opiates and the vapours of chemical saltpetre (potassium nitrate) to improve his spirits and strengthen his ageing body. In those days, the saltpetre was impure, a mixture of potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate, and other compounds that may have given off toxic vapours. It seems possible, likely even, that Bacon overdosed on his inhalation of remedial substances to compensate for his ill health.
Gödel’s Proof Based on ω-Consistency
Authors: Smullyan Raymond M.
Published: November 2020

The proof that we have just given of the incompleteness of Peano Arithmetic was based on the underlying assumption that Peano Arithmetic is correct—i.e., that every sentence provable in P.A. is a true sentence. Gödel’s original incompleteness proof involved a much weaker assumption—that of ω-consistency to which we now turn. We consider an arbitrary axiom system S whose formulas are those of Peano Arithmetic, whose axioms include all those of Groups I and II (or alternatively, any set of axioms for first-order logic with identity such that all logically valid formulas are provable from them), and whose inference rules are modus ponens and generalization. (It is also possible to axiomatize first-order logic in such a way that modus ponens is the only inference rule—cf. Quine [1940].) In place of the axioms of Groups III and IV, however, we can take a completely arbitrary set of axioms. Such a system S is an example of what is termed a first-order theory, and we will consider several such theories other than Peano Arithmetic. (For the more general notion of a first-order theory, the key difference is that we do not necessarily start with + and × as the undefined function symbols, nor do we necessarily take ≤ as the undefined predicate symbol. Arbitrary function symbols and predicate symbols can be taken, however, as the undefined function and predicate symbols—cf. Tarski [1953] for details. However, the only theories (or “systems”, as we will call them) that we will have occasion to consider are those whose formulas are those of P.A.) S is called simply consistent (or just “consistent” for short) if no sentence is both provable and refutable in S.
Whose Culture? Whose Literacy?
Authors: Lauter Paul
Published: November 2020

Zora Neale Hurston, the black writer and anthropologist, liked to tell a story about how she was arrested for crossing against a red light. But, she laughed, she had gotten off. “I told the policeman,” she would say, “that I had seen white folks pass on the green and so assumed the red light was for me.” That story has always held a particular appeal to me, since my father was color blind and could not tell red from green. He knew them apart in traffic lights, he once told me, only because one was always on top and the other on bottom. signs, particularly: Which are on top and which on bottom; which command you to stop, and which invite you to proceed, and how that might differ, depending who “you” are. After all, schools, whatever else they do, help establish and transmit our society’s cultural signals, those determinative red and green lights. Indeed, one way of understanding the curriculum is as an elaborate set of signals directing students onto the various tracks they will likely follow throughout their lives. However that might be, it is certainly true that educational institutions always seem to be caught between two prepositions, “in” and “to.” Part of our mission is to instruct students in various disciplines, in history, in literature, in physics. But at the same time, we are expected to orient students to the world outside the classroom, to its creation and recreation in the work they will perform and the ideas they will evolve. find a tension in these prepositions between the voices of the past and the visions of the future. The dilemma may seem familiar, yet another chapter in the honored debate between the Ancients and the Moderns, between those who say “set the students’ eyes firmly upon the ‘monuments of unaging intellect,’ “ and those who say “educere, lead them forth, help them dream, let their ‘thought be mother to the deed.’ ”
The Politics of School Reform and the Kulturkampf
Authors: Lamberti Marjorie
Published: November 2020

Bismarck’s struggle against political Catholicism and dissatisfaction with the supervision of the schools in the Polish-speaking areas of Prussia propelled the school administration on to a new course after 1870. His choice of Adalbert Falk brought to the head of the Ministry of Education on January 22, 1872 a judicial official who was philosophically close to the National Liberal party. During his seven years in office, Falk broke with the practices followed by his predecessors and introduced measures to dissolve the traditional bonds between the church and the school. The objectives of the school reforms were to professionalize school supervision by the appointment of full-time school inspectors in place of the clergy, to weaken the church’s influence in the school system by curtailing its right to direct the instruction of religion, and to merge Catholic and Protestant public schools into interconfessional schools, providing an education that would dissolve religious particularism and cultivate German national consciousness and patriotic feeling. These innovations thrust school politics into the foreground of the Kulturkampf in Prussia. School affairs became a matter of high politics for Bismarck when groups whom he regarded as enemies of the German Empire coalesced into a Catholic political party in 1870. Opposition in the Catholic Rhineland to Prussia’s aggressive war against Austria in 1866 led him to question the political loyalty of the Catholics, and the political behavior of the Catholics after the founding of the North German Confederation confirmed his suspicion. While the Polish faction in the Reichstag of 1867 protested the absorption of Polish Prussia into a German confederation, other Catholic deputies took up the defense of federalism and criticized those articles in Bismarck’s draft of the constitution that created too strong a central government. In the final vote the Catholics formed part of the minority that rejected the constitution. This act reinforced his image of political Catholicism as an intransigent and unpatriotic opposition. The organization of the Center party was a defensive response to the vulnerable position of the Catholic minority in the new empire, which had a political climate of liberal anticlericalism and Protestant nationalist euphoria that seemed to threaten the rights and interests of the Catholic church.
Confessional Particularism in Prussian Society and the Making of the School Law
Authors: Lamberti Marjorie
Published: November 2020

More than half a century passed before the promise of a school law contained in the Prussian constitution of 1850 was fulfilled. The dissatisfaction of the Catholic bishops with Adalbert von Ladenberg’s draft of a school law in 1850 and the unhappy fate of Heinrich von Mühler’s school bills of 1868 and 1869 revealed the deep division of opinion within Prussian society on the school question and the conflicting interpretations that state officials, church leaders, and the liberal parties gave to those articles in the constitution that provided the fundamental principles for a school law. The experience of the Kulturkampf engendered in the Catholics an enduring distrust of the school administration, and in the following years a school law was always one of the prime concessions that the Center party sought as a quid pro quo for their support of government bills in the Reichstag. Catholic politicians looked to a school law to provide a secure foundation for a confessional public school system and solid protection for the rights of the church and confessional minorities in school districts. The possibilities of winning such a concession were enhanced after 1890 when the massive electoral vote of the Social Democrats increased the strategic value of the Center party’s seats in the Reichstag, which now held the balance between the Left and the Right. Assuming that this pivotal position gave the Center party more political power than it actually had, historians have generally seen the School Law of July 28, 1906 as a reactionary, Clerical measure, which was introduced by the government as a concession to the Center party and passed by a coalition of parties strongly motivated by antisocialism.1 An examination of the making of the school law from 1890 to 1906 produces a more detailed and complete picture of what happened and a more profound view of the society of imperial Germany. No progress was made in putting the school system on a modern legal foundation during the 1880s because of Bismarck’s political objections to the reform of school maintenance.