bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Pishpek
Authors: Nazaroff Paul 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
BY nightfall I came to Aulie-Ata, which means the Tomb of the Holy Father. Like the majority of the new Russian towns, it sprawls over a disproportionately wide area. One would think it had been designed as a rival to Petrograd or Paris itself. The market-place was bigger than the Place de la Concorde, and very tiring it was, too, walking across it. Of course, there was no attempt at planning. On the other hand, every house was a complete homestead, with a huge farmyard and garden. All the houses are built of raw bricks. There was no pavement nor footpath nor water supply. All buildings of any pretence and the workshops of the postal station were in an abandoned half-ruined condition. Horses and carriages were in a shocking condition of neglect and collapse. The management of the posts for the district had been taken out of the hands of the original contractor and passed into those of the “ Proletariat of Workers and Peasants.” The whole day long there were carriages with pairs and troikas dashing about with halfdrunken workmen and cabbies, cursing and swearing horribly and flogging the poor horses mercilessly. The wretched animals were covered with sweat and foam, all their tormented bodies quivering, with wild looks in their starting eyes, trying to bolt in terror. The air was filled with the din of mad yells and wild cries. “ Why don’t you stop torturing the poor brutes ? “ I asked the manager of the station.
HIding In The Hills
Authors: Nazaroff Paul 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
From the Kegat I was obliged to go back to Ivanovka. The road leads from the mouth of the valley down an even slope facing north ; the slope seems barely noticeable when you are driving down it, but steep enough when you look up it from the River Chu. For a good long time you drive along at the edge of a deep ravine, along the flank of which there runs a good big irrigation canal. The line of the canal forms an acute angle with the plane of the road, the result of which is a curious optical illusion. It looks exactly as though water in the canal is flowing uphill. The illusion is so strong that men will quarrel about it. A similar effect is produced in several places in Turkestan, and the belief is widely spread among the Russians that the Sarts, who laid out the canals, have the secret of making water flow uphill. It is even difficult to persuade people to the contrary. “ I have seen it with my own eyes,” they are sure to say, a good instance of the doubtful value of the evidence of eyewitnesses.
Safety Insight
Authors: Nazaroff Paul 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
ALL the post-houses along this road were in ruins, a result of the Kirghiz rising; the one nearest to Issyk Kul, Kutemaldy, was the scene of a very gallent defence by a handful of Russians against an immense horde of Kirghiz, who attacked from all sides. We stopped the night here. The place was kept by a single caretaker, a genial Kirghiz who turned out to be a friend of Azamat Bek. He had once been a water-carrier in Pishpek. He complained that a comrade of Azamat Bek had enticed his only wife away from him. “The next time we come here,0 said Azamat, consoling the unfortunate husband, “ we will bring your wife back to you.”
“Khop djaksi,” “Splendid t” cried this Menelaus of Pishpek, and to show his gratitude he charged us only one hundred roubles for food for the horses instead of two. After passing through the gorge of Ortakui, the road comes out on to the broad level plain of Kachkorka, rich in pasture-land and formerly crowded with wandering Kirghiz with their flocks and herds. Now Kachkorka, the centre of the cattle trade, is almost entirely in ruins ; all trees and orchards have been felled. On the two sides of the village there are numerous mazary-that is to say, tombs-like regular mausolea, of varying and original architecture, some recalling motives in the Moorish style. It is in fact a veritable necropolis.
One Last Effort
Authors: Nazaroff Paul 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
A GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR turned up one day in At Bashi representing the Workmen’s and Peasants’ Government, a certain Venedik.toff. He forced the rich Kirghiz who had not yet been completely despoiled by the Bolsheviks to pay him a ‘contribution’ of several million roubles and a hundred sheep. The precious Venediktoff, however, was not a Bolshevik, nor even a “ sympathiser with Communism.” “ I’ve got to live too,” he admitted openly and cynically. “ I must make hay while the sun ‘Shines as long as this freedom lasts. What does it matter that I was only a shoemaker under the old regime ? I shall be a shoemaker again before long, when all this has come to an end. Meanwhile I’m out for a good time.” That is what he said himself, this disciple of Lenin’s great slogan, “ Help yourselves.” He said it to my friend the forester, whom he had come to see to ask where the Kirghiz had wandered off with their flocks.
Introduction
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
There was once a cleric in rural England, who used to enliven his sermons with dramatic asides, prefaced by the following appeal to the Almighty: ‘And (oh Lord, this lesson be not clear, permit thy servant to illustrate it with an anecdote ... ‘ A better-known divine, the genial Reverend Sydney Smith, was once heard to conclude his evening prayer, which he always spoke out loud, with ‘Kaw Lord, I’ll tell you an anecdote’. Well, if the Lord could be supposed to relish a ripe reminiscence, why not the rest of us? An American diplomat, John Hay, moreover, opined that true history could best be sought ‘in the personal anecdotes and private letters of those who make history’. Dr Johnson, too, pro claimed the value of the revealing biographical morsel. Writing in his magazine, The Rambler, he observed: ‘More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real Character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.’
An ill wind
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
At 7.30 in the evening of 3 December 1943, German bombers converged on the port of Bari in the heel of Italy. Their target was the harbour, which was full of ships unloading supplies for the Allied armies, fighting their way up Italy. The air-raid warnings had failed to sound and few people had taken cover. One bomb struck the CSS Liberty, which was loaded with high explosives and 100 tons of mustard gas. Although neither side deployed chemical weapons during the war, both came close and neither trusted the other to abstain from their use. At all events, the Liberty exploded and a cloud of mustard gas engulfed the harbour area. The gas alarm was sounded, but it was too late for many soldiers and civilians. Stationed in Bari as a medical officer with the US Army was Dr Cornelius Rhoads, who had already made a name for himself in medical research before his country entered the war. He was now called upon to treat the victims of mustard-gas poisoning.
Marie Curie and the lmmortals
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The discovery of radium, for which Marie and Pierre Curie shared the Nobel Prize in 1903 with Henri Becquerel (who had made the accidental discovery of radioactivity [36]), was the most notable achievement of its time for French science. Marie Curie, born Maria Skfodowska in Poland in 1867, attracted opprobrium from the xenophobic right-wing press, inflamed by her well publicized affair, years after Pierre’s death in a street accident, with the celebrated physicist Paul Langevin, trapped in an unhappy marriage to a termagent wife. Marie Curie craved recognition by her adopted country and sought election to the Academic des Sciences. She was supported by several of the leading luminaries of French science, including the greatest of all, Henri Poincaré. But the Academic was an exclusively male body, which had repulsed earlier assaults from female aspirants. One of the five academies created after the Revolution, it was steeped in tradition and ritual. Still today the members wear a gold- embroidered green uniform and on their election honour their friends by inviting them to contribute to the (considerable) cost of their ceremonial sword.
Cats and dogmas
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Like animals on the theatrical stage, those in behavioural experiments all too often get the better of their trainers. Lewis Thomas [160], researcher and essayist, tells of such an embarrassing episode in one of his amiable essays. He alludes first to Clever Hans, the arithmetically gifted German horse, which its master, Herr von Osten, displayed as a prodigy in 1903. The animal appeared to perform mental calculations, giving the answer to questions by tapping its hoof on the ground the correct number of times. A decade or so before, a similar phenomenon had been reported in England: a horse called Mahomet could tell the time from a watch displayed before its eyes. When a commission of psychologists examined Clever Hans it emerged that the horse was responding to minute, and as agreed by all, unconscious, movements by its master, which indicated to the sagacious animal when it was time to stop tapping.
To discern a tme vocation
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The doings of students in the laboratory have been a source of many treasured tales of Grand Guignol. The following was recorded by John Nelson (1876-1965), Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University in New York for close on half a century.
Like many of his generation Nelson mistrusted women in the laboratory, so when a young graduate of a women’s college applied for a place as a research student, he invited her to demonstrate her practical competence by performing a simple organic synthesis, following the instructions of the laboratory manual. She was to prepare bromobenzene from benzene and bromine. After an hour Nelson entered the laboratory and asked how she was progressing. Not well, it seemed, for the reaction was refusing to proceed as the manual foreshadowed. Nelson looked at the apparatus—a flask, in which liquid was vigorously boiling under a reflux condenser (in essence a water-cooled tube that allows the vapour to condense and the liquid to run back into the flask and continue boiling). The flask contained benzene, but, Nelson asked, where was the bromine (which would have imparted a yellow tinge to the liquid)? In the flask, was the reply, floating in the liquid. Nelson peered more closely, and observed white solid matter churning in the boiling liquid. Looking around, he found a tin, labelled bromine, and further questioning elicited the explanation: the student had thrown the white packing material into the flask, having never discovered the vial of liquid bromine buried within. Nelson urged her to seek a different career. (It’s only fair to add that there have always been talented and successful theoreticians whose presence in the laboratory spelled death to all apparatus and disaster to their colleagues’ experiments.)
The professor remembers
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The American mathematician Norbert Wiener (\894-1964) was noted for his coruscating intellect, his childlike vanity and legendary unworldliness, and absence of mind. Wiener passed most of his life at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where tales of his strange behaviour still circulate. Among the stories often told of his abstraction was his confusion one evening when trying to find his way home after he and his family had moved house. Accosting a small girl who was approaching in the opposite direction, he inquired whether she might not be able to direct him towards Brattle Street. The child giggled: ‘Yes, daddy’, she said, TU take you home.’
Another oft-related instance was an encounter with a student who sought him out with a problem. Finding the professor in a deep reverie, he waited, but after an interval decided to intrude: ‘Hello, Professor Wiener’, he began. Wiener jumped: ‘That’s it!’, he cried, ‘Wiener!’ More convincing perhaps is the image of Wiener slouching along the corridor, his nose in a book. It was his practice to keep to his course by sliding a finger along the wall. On one such occasion the finger led him through an open door, around the walls of a lecture room, in which a lecture was in progress, back to the door and out into the corridor again.
Pendant professor
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic in 1908 was accompanied by two intrepid geologists, who aimed to determine the position of the south magnetic pole. They were Edgeworth David, Professor at the University of Sydney, and Douglas Mawson, later Professor of Geology in Adelaide. In pursuit of their quarry they traversed glaciers and made observations of the local formations. Here is how Mawson described what happened one day, after they had pitched tent. David took his sketchbook and went to record the outline of a range of hills, while Mawson sat in the tent changing the photographic plates in the plate-holder of his camera.
Feud
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Public brawls between scientists are rare today; animosities are conducted by way of a little discreet disparagement in the committee room when the rival’s grant comes up for discussion. In more uninhibited times learned disputes could make newspaper headlines. So it was with the two most prominent American palaeontologists of their time, Edward Drinker Cope (1840-97) and Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99).
The late nineteenth century was the high noon of the fossil hunters; Cope, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Marsh, a professor at Yale and President of the National Academy of Sciences, were of their number. The excitement stemmed partly from the debate ignited some years before by the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which provoked a search for evidences of evolution from fossils, and partly from the discovery of dinosaur remains in increasing abundance. A violent animus developed between Marsh and Cope, who had started out close professional allies. The origins are unclear, but the sincerity of the opinions that they held of each others’ characters and abilities is not in doubt. One of his associates recorded the following rumination by Cope: ‘One day... he slyly opened the lower righthand drawer of his study table and said to me: “Osborn, here is my accumulated store of Marshiana. In these papers I have a full record of Marsh’s errors from the very beginning, which at some future time I may be tempted to publish.” ‘ The quarrel became public; accusations of poaching and downright theft of specimens, of plagiarism and other forms of skulduggery flew, and broke surface in the press in 1890. The following account details some examples of what the two professors got up to:
The man of few words
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-84) was one of the giants of twentiethcentury physics. ‘There is no God and Dirac is his prophet’, Wolfgang Pauli used to say. He was venerated as a theoretician of incomparable insight. Elegance wassaid to lurk in his equations. When Emilio Segre and Enrico Fermi [29] were teasing each other about their accomplishments, Segre challenged his illustrious colleague like this: ‘I bet you would exchange all your life’s work for one paper of Dirac’s’. Fermi thought for a moment, and then answered, ‘yes’.
Dirac occupied the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics in Cambridge, once graced by Isaac Newton, and many legends sprang up around him. He was a kind man, noted for his extreme economy with words. His vocabulary in conversation was in general limited to ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘I don’t know’. On one famous occasion, in the discussion after one of Dirac’s seminars, a questioner began: ‘Professor Dirac, I did not quite understand your derivation of...’ When he had finished his question a long silence ensued. Would the lecturer answer the question, the chairman finally asked. ‘It wasn’t a question’, was Dirac’s rejoinder, ‘it was a statement.’ This was no deliberate discourtesy, but rather a reflection of an unconventional directness of mind. The astrophysicist Dennis Sciama has told how, as a research student in 1950, he entered Dirac’s office, flushed with the exhilaration of a deep insight. ‘Professor Dirac’, he burst out, ‘I’ve just thought of a way of relating the formation of stars to cosmological questions. Shall I tell you about it?’ ‘No’, said Dirac.
The problem solver
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Freeman Dyson, one of the most admired theoretical physicists and applied mathematicians of our time, has described himself as ‘a problem solver’, implying probably, with much modesty, that his strength lies in resolving, rather than conceiving, the deep questions of physics. (He has also written widely and lucidly about the progress of science and the future of our species; he paints with a broad brush, believing, for instance, that, faced with eventual extinction by ‘heat death’, we should think about moving our planet into a more hospitable orbit and perhaps even breaking through into a ‘parallel universe’-assuming such exists; for confinement within the universe we know, says Dyson, gives him claustrophobia.)
The Resonance Bridge
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Hendrik Casimir, a distinguished Dutch physicist and for many years director of research at the Philips company in Eindhoven, did the circuit in his formative years of the great European centres of theoretical physics. Like all who worked with him, Casimir became devoted to Niels Bohr [79]. Here he recalls an example of the great man’s pawky sense of humour.
Close to Bohr’s Institute there is a body of water—I hesitate to call it a lake or pond—about three kilometers long and between 150 and 200 meters wide, the Sortedamso. It is crossed by several bridges. One day Bohr took me on a stroll along that lake and across one of the bridges, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll show you a curious resonance phenomenon.’ The parapet of that bridge was built in the following way. Stone pillars, about four feet high and ten feet apart, were linked near their tops by stout iron bars (or rather more likely, tubes) let into the stone. Halfway between each two pillars an iron ring was anchored to the stonework of the bridge, and two heavy chains, one on each side, were suspended between shackles welded to the top bar close to the stone pillars and that ring. Bohr grasped one chain near the top bar and set it swinging, and to my surprise the chain at the other end of the top bar began to swing too. ‘A remarkable example of resonance’, Bohr said. I was much impressed, but suddenly Bohr began to laugh. Of course, resonance was quite out of the question; the coupling forces were extremely small and the oscillations were strongly damped. What happened was that Bohr, when moving the chain, was rotating the top bar, which was let into, but not fastened to, the stone pillars, and in that way he had moved the two chains simultaneously. I was crestfallen that I had shown so little practical sense, but Bohr consoled me, saying that Heisenberg had also been taken in; he had even given a whole lecture on resonance.
Raising the dead
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The discovery of electricity implanted in the minds of some biologists the notion that it was somehow involved in life processes. This was why Luigi Galvani (1737-98), professor in the medical school in Bologna, was trying to induce a physiological preparation of frogs’ legs, with their attached sciatic nerves and part of the spinal cord, to react to an electrical stimulus.
As he was setting up such an experiment an assistant accidentally touched the nerve with a scalpel blade and was startled to see the muscle respond with a convulsive contraction. The effect, it soon transpired, occurred only when the assistant’s fingers (presumably wet) touched the iron nails that secured the blade to the bone handle, so as to close a circuit between nerve and earth. Galvani then decided to look into the effects of atmospheric electricity, which Benjamin Franklin and others had used during thunderstorms to charge a Leyden jar [38]. Galvani strung a row of frogs’ legs along an iron railing in his garden with brass hooks, and was astonished to see them twitch with no external stimulus. (The story took root that the experiment was a by-product of Galvani’s intent to prepare a nourishing frogs’-leg broth for his invalid wife; she, indeed, was the daughter of an eminent physiologist and probably participated in her husband’s researches.) Galvani leapt to the conclusion that he had discovered an ‘electric fluid’, analogous perhaps to the source of the ‘animal magnetism’ that Franz-Anton Messmer (who gave his name to mesmerism) and other quacks were purporting to demonstrate in France.
Know your adversary
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
J. G. Crowther (1899-1983) was a science journalist and popularizes who seemed during his life to have met every scientist of any note. In his memoir of his life among scientists he tells stories of encounters during the two World Wars. The following, he thought, could be apocryphal but was at all events fully in character. E. A. Milne (1896-1960), the Oxford mathematician and cosmologist,
offered his services to the War Office, and received some cyclostyled document informing him that his services would be called upon, if necessary. Milne, in view of his services in the First World War, and his eminence since, was infuriated by what he regarded as a discourteous reply. He used his connections to have his disapproval brought to the attention of the higher ranks of the War Office. He thereupon received an invitation, signed by a brigadier-general, to call at the Office. Milne arrived fulminating with criticism. He told the brigadier, who listened quietly to his harangue, that the War Office ought to know’ that the war would be a scientific one. In that case, was the way they had treated him rhe way to make the best use of science and eminent scientists?
Science for survival
Authors: Gratzer Walter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Science, some rational, some a ludicrous travesty, went on in the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, and saved some lives. In Auschwitz, chemists among the prisoners were recruited to work in the laboratories of the Buna-rubber factory, the Polymerization Department. They included a man who was to become a great writer and chronicler of endurance in the camp, Primo Levi. When the Kapo, the prisoner in charge of Levi’s barracks, announced that a call was out for chemists to volunteer for laboratory work, Levi, already half-dead from starvation and toil, was one who responded. He was marched into the presence of Herr Doktor lngenieur Pannwitz: