DOCSLIB.ORG

Nautilus Magazine

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

WHAT WAR IS GOOD FOR WE DREAM TO SOLVE PROBLEMS HOW WE’LL FIND ALIENS How conflicts advanced science The science behind sleeping on it Where space research is headed The Novel Machine CAN A COMPUTER DO DICKENS? P.20 Issue 36 Science Connected NAUTIL.US The power of manyfive 5 is an impact media foundation connecting thinkers and doers to co-create a more sustainable future. Join us here: fivemedia.com Issue 36 Contents Editor’s Note 5 It’s a Wonderful Life BY KEVIN BERGER Reader Response 7 Comments and letters about stories from print issue 35 Preludes 12 The trouble with the search for ET; how an imaginary friend can help you; why fish should own the ocean; why our solar system is special; and chimpanzee and ant societies Cover Story LITERATURE 20 Why Computers Will Never Write Good Novels The power of narrative flows only from the human brain BY ANGUS FLETCHER The Last Word 108 Heidi Hammel The planetary astronomer on the enigmatic “ice giants” Neptune and Uranus INTERVIEW BY COREY S. POWELL COVER Jonathon Rosen 1 Professor Stéphanie Lacour holds the Bertarelli Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, based at Campus Biotech in Geneva. A pioneer in the fi eld of soft bioelectronic interfaces, her lab’s focus is on designing devices that have mechanical properties close to those of the host biological tissue so that wearable and implantable man-made systems become truly biointegrated. IDEAS SPARKED KNOWLEDGE SHARED RESEARCH ADVANCED THERAPIES DEVELOPED Founded in 2010, the Bertarelli Foundation’s neuroscience research programme has, as its guiding principle, a commitment to funding research that breaks down barriers across geographies, institutions and disciplines. By fostering new collaborations, the #BertarelliNeuro programme is helping to bridge the gap between basic and translational neuroscience, and its teams are addressing medical issues that, once solved, will have life-changing outcomes for patients. www.fondation-bertarelli.org Issue 36 Features LITERATURE NEUROSCIENCE 30 Literature Should Be 60 Dreaming Is Like Taking LSD Taught Like Science A new theory explains that dreaming opens our minds to unexplored possibilities This renegade professor says literature is a BY ANTONIO ZADRA & ROBERT STICKGOLD machine that accelerates the human brain BY KEVIN BERGER ENVIRONMENT LITERATURE 68 We Crush, Poison, and 36 Who Said Nobody Read Destroy Insects at Isaac Newton? Our Own Peril It’s a myth that legendary works in science Insects are escape artists. Now they face a aren’t read threat more pernicious than predation. BY CALEB SCHARF BY JOHN HAINZE HEALTH ANTHROPOLOGY 42 The Doctor Will 74 Why a Universal Society Sniff You Now Is Unattainable Step aside, Dr. House, Deep Nose will one day Our minds evolved in an Us-vs-Them be the best diagnostician in medicine universe of our own making BY LINA ZELDOVICH BY MARK W. MOFFETT SOCIOLOGY SOCIOLOGY Professor Stéphanie Lacour holds the Bertarelli Chair in 48 We Need More Feminist Dads 82 Humans Have Gotten Nicer Neuroprosthetic Technology at the École Polytechnique Fédérale It’s not easy to overcome the masculine and Better at Making War de Lausanne, based at Campus Biotech in Geneva. A pioneer in the conception of fatherhood Historian Margaret MacMillan on fi eld of soft bioelectronic interfaces, her lab’s focus is on designing BY JORDAN SHAPIRO devices that have mechanical properties close to those of the host what war reveals about human nature biological tissue so that wearable and implantable man-made BY STEVE PAULSON systems become truly biointegrated. EARTH SCIENCE 54 Digging Deeper Into ASTRONOMY IDEAS SPARKED Holocaust History 90 If Aliens Exist, Here’s How KNOWLEDGE SHARED What geoscientists are uncovering in We’ll Find Them Eastern Europe Two esteemed astrophysicists peer into the RESEARCH ADVANCED BY VIRAT MARKANDEYA future of space exploration THERAPIES DEVELOPED BY MARTIN REES & MARIO LIVIO Founded in 2010, the Bertarelli Foundation’s neuroscience research programme has, as its guiding principle, a commitment to funding research that breaks down barriers across geographies, institutions and disciplines. By fostering new collaborations, the #BertarelliNeuro programme is helping to bridge the gap between basic and translational neuroscience, and its teams are addressing medical issues that, once solved, will have life-changing outcomes for patients. www.fondation-bertarelli.org 3 EDITORIAL BOARD OF ADVISORS NautilusNext CEO David Agus Professor of Medicine and David Kaiser Germeshausen Professor Nicholas White Engineering, University of Southern of the History of Science, MIT California Publisher & Editorial Director Lisa Kaltenegger Associate Professor of John Steele Bob Bazell Adjunct Professor of Astronomy, Cornell University and Director of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental the Carl Sagan Institute Editor Biology, Yale University Kevin Berger Sep Kamvar LG Associate Professor of Media Christina Beck Head of Science & Arts and Sciences, MIT; Director of the Social Managing Editor Corporate Communications, The Max Computing Group, MIT Media Lab Liz Greene Planck Society Associate Editor Sean Carroll Senior Research Associate, David Krakauer President, Santa Fe Institute Brian Gallagher Department of Physics, California Institute of Technology Ben Lamm Founder and CEO of HyperGiant Copy Editor Teresa Cirolia Jennifer Dunne Professor and V.P. for Barnaby Marsh Senior Advisor to the Science, Santa Fe Institute President, John Templeton Foundation Design Tasnuva Elahi Josh Empson Managing Director, Gayil Nalls Artist, Philosopher, and Writer Providence Equity Partners Elisa New Powell M. Cabot Professor of Bran Ferren Co-Chairman, American Literature, Harvard University Applied Minds, Inc. Gerry Ohrstrom Private Investor Stuart Firestein Chairman of the and Producer; Former Chairman of G.L. Department of Biological Sciences, Ohrstrom & Co. and the Ohrstrom Foundation Columbia University Jerry Sabloff External Professor and Past Jessica Flack Professor and Director, President, Santa Fe Institute Collective Computation Group, Santa Fe Institute Paula Sabloff External Professor, Santa Fe Institute Peter Galison Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics, Caleb Scharf Director of Astrobiology, Harvard University Columbia University Thomas Campbell Jackson Venture Ian Tattersall Curator Emeritus, American Partner, Easton Capital Investment Group Museum of Natural History Beth Jacobs Managing Partner, Geoffrey West Distinguished Professor and Excellentia Global Partners Past President, Santa Fe Institute Published by: Copyright © 2021. All rights reserved. 4 Editor'S Note It’s a Wonderful Life BY KEVIN BERGER E NEED WONDER in our days.” That’s Angus Fletcher, an English professor at Ohio State University, telling W Nautilus why literature matters. Why science matters. And, more provocatively, how science evolved from literature. Who can argue with him? Well, you might argue with Fletcher’s declaration that literature “is a machine designed to work in concert with another machine, our brain,” as he states in our interview, “Why Literature Should Be Taught Like Science.” And that’s just Fletcher’s opening salvo. In our cover story, “Why Computers Will Never Write Good Novels,” he writes that AI boosters who are convinced Hal will one day write beau- tiful fiction and music, are perpetrating “a hoax, a complete cheat, a total scam, a fiction of the grossest kind.” In short, Fletcher says, computers, based on their design, do not perform causal reasoning. Only the human brain does. Which is why only humans can write literature. Causal reasoning is the engine of the human brain, which generates narratives to guide us through the world. Narra- tives, in life and literature, despite how fantastical they may be, fuel “plots, characters, and nar- rators, which give us literary style and voice,” Fletcher says. “The best that computers can do is spit out word soups.” Fletcher was born in England’s Lake District, stomping ground of Romantic poets Word- sworth and Coleridge. He came to America to attend college, supported by the Marines’ ROTC program—“I came up with this fake American accent to avoid being attacked by my drill instruc- tor!”—studied neuroscience, worked in a neurophysiology lab, got a Ph.D. in literature at Yale, worked as a story consultant for films and TV, and is now settled at Ohio State as a professor of “story science.” The wide aperture of Fletcher’s intellect, focused with a unique perspective, puts him right at home in Nautilus, where science and art come into view through the same lens. In this issue’s “Who Said Nobody Read Isaac Newton,” Caleb Scharf, our favorite astrobiologist, who was inspired to study science by his parents, professors of art history, dusts off the myth that origi- nal works in science, and literature, go unread. Important works most certainly get read, Scharf writes, “or how else would we ever consider them important?” That people love to read challenging and original works is a clarion message in today’s cultural noise about shrinking attention spans. It’s a bell we ring with every issue of Nautilus. But wait, before I go, let’s get back to wonder. Heidi Hammel, whose insights close this issue, is a planetary astronomer with a long and distinguished career studying Uranus and Neptune. Why has she spent decades studying the “ice giants” of our solar system that neither other astronomers nor the public seems to care about? Because, she says, they “are enigmas.” Why do we need wonder? Because we need science. 5 OUR PLANET’S JOIN US FOR OUR OCEAN UNDERSTOOD #OZOCEANS2020 THROUGH CAMPAIGN as we live stream TECHNOLOGICAL never-before seen ADVANCEMENT, environments in INTELLIGENT Australia’s deep waters OBSERVATION, AND OPEN SHARING OF INFORMATION schmidtocean.org Readers Respond Comments and letters about stories from print issue 35. “THE SYNCHRONICITY OF Energy transforms from one form the smell inside the old Peking WOLFGANG PAULI AND CARL to another, we just may not have the Hotel when I stayed there in 1975. JUNG” perceptual savvy to understand the It smelled ancient, a mixture of I read Jung’s collected works many non-physical forms.
Recommended publications
  • Colors of Extreme Exo-Earth Environments

    Colors of Extreme Exo-Earth Environments

    Colors of Extreme Exo-Earth Environments Siddharth Hegde1,* and Lisa Kaltenegger1,2 1Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany; 2Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. *E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract The search for extrasolar planets has already detected rocky planets and several planetary candidates with minimum masses that are consistent with rocky planets in the habitable zone of their host stars. A low-resolution spectrum in the form of a color-color diagram of an exoplanet is likely to be one of the first post-detection quantities to be measured for the case of direct detection. In this paper, we explore potentially detectable surface features on rocky exoplanets and their connection to, and importance as, a habitat for extremophiles, as known on Earth. Extremophiles provide us with the minimum known envelope of environmental limits for life on our planet. The color of a planet reveals information on its properties, especially for surface features of rocky planets with clear atmospheres. We use filter photometry in the visible waveband as a first step in the characterization of rocky exoplanets to prioritize targets for follow-up spectroscopy. Many surface environments on Earth have characteristic albedos and occupy a different color space in the visible waveband (0.4-0.9 !m) that can be distinguished remotely. These detectable surface features can be linked to the extreme niches that support extremophiles on Earth and provide a link between geomicrobiology and observational astronomy. This paper explores how filter photometry can serve as a first step in characterizing Earth-like exoplanets for an aerobic as well as an anaerobic atmosphere, thereby prioritizing targets to search for atmospheric biosignatures.
  • Ja Hobson's Approach to International Relations

    Ja Hobson's Approach to International Relations

    J.A. HOBSON'S APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: AN EXPOSITION AND CRITIQUE David Long Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor Of Philosophy in International Relations at the London School of Economics. UMI Number: U042878 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Disscrrlation Publishing UMI U042878 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract This thesis argues that Hobson’s approach to international relations coheres around his use of the biological analogy of society to an organism. An aspect of this ‘organic analogy’ - the theory of surplus value - is central to Hobson’s modification of liberal thinking on international relations and his reformulated ‘new liberal internationalism’. The first part outlines a theoretical framework for Hobson’s discussion of international relations. His theory of surplus value posits cooperation as a factor in the production of value understood as human welfare. The organic analogy links this theory of surplus value to Hobson’s holistic ‘sociology’. Hobson’s new liberal internationalism is an extension of his organic theory of surplus value.
  • Thea Kozakis

    Thea Kozakis

    Thea Kozakis Present Address Email: [email protected] Space Sciences Building Room 514 Phone: (908) 892-6384 Ithaca, NY 14853 Education Masters Astrophysics; Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Graduate Student in Astronomy and Space Sciences, minor in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences B.S. Physics, B.S. Astrophysics; College of Charleston, Charleston, SC Double major (B.S.) in Astrophysics and Physics, May 2013, summa cum laude Minor in Mathematics Research Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger, Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University, Spring 2015 - present Projects Studying biosignatures of habitable zone planets orbiting white dwarfs using a • coupled climate-photochemistry atmospheric model Searching the Kepler field for evolved stars using GALEX UV data • Dr. James Lloyd, Cornell University, Fall 2013 - present UV/rotation analysis of Kepler field stars • Study the age-rotation-activity relationship of 20,000 Kepler field stars using UV data from GALEX and publicly available rotation⇠ periods Dr. Joseph Carson, College of Charleston, Spring 2011 - Summer 2013 SEEDS Exoplanet Survey • Led data reduction e↵orts for the SEEDS High-Mass stars group using the Subaru Telescope’s HiCIAO adaptive optics instrument to directly image exoplanets Hubble DICE Survey • Developed data reduction pipeline for Hubble STIS data to image exoplanets and debris disks around young stars Publications Direct Imaging Discovery of a ‘Super-Jupiter’ Around the late B-Type Star • And, J. Carson, C. Thalmann, M. Janson, T. Kozakis, et al., 2013, Astro- physical Journal Letters, 763, 32
  • L. T. Hobhouse and J. A. Hobson

    L. T. Hobhouse and J. A. Hobson

    Two years before the Labour Party victory of 1997, Tony Blair made a seminal speech L. T. HOBHOUSE AND J. A. HOBSON: to the Fabian Society in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary ThE NEW LIBERAL INFLUENCE ON ThiRD WAY idEAS of the 1945 Labour election victory. The speech was a major media event because it was a defining moment for New Labour ‘modernisers’. They were seeking to move the party from its socialist history on to ‘new’ political and ideological ground – as well as reap the tactical electoral benefits they felt could be gained by such a shift. Blair used the speech to pronounce himself ‘proud’ to be a ‘democratic socialist’ while redefining socialism to create ‘social-ism’. More relevant here, as seen above, was Blair’s reiteration of British political history from this revised New Labour position. Dr Alison Holmes examines New Liberal influences on Blair’s ‘Third Way’. 16 Journal of Liberal History 55 Summer 2007 L. T. HOBHOUSE AND J. A. HOBSON: ThE NEW LIBERAL INFLUENCE ON ThiRD WAY idEAS lair listed both L. T exercise it. So they argued for the New Liberal ideas of writers Hobhouse and J. A. collective action, including such as Hobhouse and Hobson Hobson amongst the state action, to achieve positive that were to carry through to intellectual corner- freedom, even if it infringed the modern interpretation of the stones of both New traditional laissez-faire liberal Third Way. BLiberalism and New Labour – orthodoxy … They did not call later termed the Third Way: themselves socialists, though Hobhouse coined the term J.
  • Ethics Content

    Ethics Content

    Ethics Content I Introduction to Ethics Unit-1 Nature and Scope of Ethics Unit-2 Importance and Challenges of Ethics Unit-3 Ethics in the History of Indian Philosophy Unit-4 Ethics in the History of Western Philosophy II Ethical Foundations Unit-1 Human Values Unit-2 Human Virtues Unit-3 Human Rights Unit-4 Human Duties III Applied Ethics Unit-1 International Ethics Unit-2 Bioethics Unit-3 Environmental Ethics Unit-4 Media Ethics IV Current Ethical Debates Unit-1 Natural Moral Law Unit-2 Deontology and Moral Responsibility Unit-3 Discourse Ethics Unit-4 Social Institutions UNIT 1 NATURE AND SCOPE OF ETHICS Nature and Scope of Ethics Contents 1.0 Objectives 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Moral Intuitionism 1.3 Human Person in Search of Himself/Herself 1.4 Love and the Moral Precepts 1.5 The Dynamics of Morality 1.6 The Constant and the Variable in Morality 1.7 Let Us Sum Up 1.8 Key Words 1.9 Further Readings and References 1.0 OBJECTIVES This unit aims at introducing the students to the philosophical need for Ethics starting from a brief discussion of Moral law and how the human person in his or her process of growth intuits the ethical principles. Discussions pertaining to the dynamics of morality is undertaken to show how on the one hand new situations call for new responses from moral point of view and on the other hand certain fundamentals of ethics remain the same in so far as there is something of a common human nature adequately understood.
  • High-Resolution Spectra and Biosignatures of Earth-Like Planets Transiting White Dwarfs

    High-Resolution Spectra and Biosignatures of Earth-Like Planets Transiting White Dwarfs

    High-resolution Spectra and Biosignatures of Earth-like Planets Transiting White Dwarfs Thea Kozakis, Zifan Lin, Lisa Kaltenegger Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA ABSTRACT With the first observations of debris disks as well as proposed planets around white dwarfs, the question of how rocky planets around such stellar remnants can be char- acterized and probed for signs of life becomes tangible. White dwarfs are similar in size to Earth and have relatively stable environments for billions of years after initial cooling, making them intriguing targets for exoplanet searches and terrestrial planet atmospheric characterization. Their small size and the resulting large planet transit signal allows observations with next generation telescopes to probe the atmosphere of such rocky planets, if they exist. We model high-resolution transmission spectra for planets orbiting white dwarfs from as they cool from 6,000-4,000 K, for i) planets re- ceiving equivalent irradiation to modern Earth, and ii) planets orbiting at the distance around a cooling white dwarf which allows for the longest continuous time in the hab- itable zone. All high-resolution transmission spectra will be publicly available online upon publication of this study and can be used as a tool to prepare and interpret up- coming observations with JWST, the Extremely Large Telescopes as well as mission concepts like Origins, HabEx, and LUVOIR. Subject headings: White dwarf stars, Habitable zone, Habitable planets, Stellar evolution, Exoplanet atmospheres, Astrobiology, Biosignatures, Transmission spectroscopy, Extrasolar rocky planets 1. Introduction Zwart 2016; Malamud & Perets 2016) indi- cate debris disks or planets around a high The first discovery of a planetestimal or- percentage of WDs of up to 50% (Schreiber arXiv:2001.00049v3 [astro-ph.EP] 17 Jan 2020 biting a white dwarf (WD) in 2015 (Van- et al.
  • Model Spectra of the First Potentially Habitable Super-Earth - Gl581d

    Model Spectra of the First Potentially Habitable Super-Earth - Gl581d

    Model Spectra of the First Potentially Habitable Super-Earth - Gl581d Lisa Kaltenegger Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden st., 02138 MA Cambridge, USA also MPIA, Koenigstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany [email protected] Antígona Segura Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México Subhanjoy Mohanty Imperial College London, 1010 Blackett Lab., Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK Abstract Gl581d has a minimum mass of 7 MEarth and is the first detected potentially habitable rocky Super-Earth. Our models confirm that a habitable atmosphere can exist on Gl581d. We derive spectroscopic features for atmospheres, assuming an Earth-like composition for this planet, from high oxygen atmosphere analogous to Earth’s to high CO2 atmospheres with and without biotic oxygen concentrations. We find that a minimum CO2 partial pressure of about 7 bar, in an atmosphere with a total surface pressure of 7.6 bar, are needed to maintain a mean surface temperature above freezing on Gl581d. We model transmission and emergent synthetic spectra from 0.4µm to 40µm and show where indicators of biological activities in such a planet’s atmosphere could be observed by future ground- and space-based telescopes. The model we present here only represents one possible nature – an Earth-like composition - of a planet like Gl581d in a wide parameter space. Future observations of atmospheric features can be used to examine if our concept of habitability and its dependence on the carbonate-silicate cycle is correct, and assess whether Gl581d is indeed a habitable super-Earth. Subject headings: astrobiology, Planets and satellites: atmospheres, composition, detection, individual: Gl581d, Earth, Instrumentation: spectrographs 1.
  • A Record of Events and Trends in American and World Jewish Life

    A Record of Events and Trends in American and World Jewish Life

    American Jewish Year Book 1960 A Record of Events and Trends in American and World Jewish Life AMERICAN JFAVISH COMMITTEE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA $6.00 N ITS 61 YEARS OF PUBLICATION, the AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK has provided a unique chronicle of Jewish life in the United States and throughout the world. Appearing at a time when anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism have shocked the world, when tensions and antagonisms in the Middle East are flaring anew and the Jewish commu- nities of North Africa are faced with a rising tide of Arab nationalism, this lat- est volume once again colors in the in- dispensable background for an intelhV gent reading of today's headlines. The present volume also offers inten- sive examination of key issues in the United States and summaries of major programs in American Jewish life. An article based on the first National Study of Jewish Education describes the achievements and failures of Jewish edu- cation in America, gives statistical data, and analyzes its many problems. Another article reports the first find- ings of the National Jewish Cultural Study — which includes surveys of ar- chives, scholarships, research, publica- tions and Jewish studies in secular insti- tutions of higher learning. In addition, there are incisive analyses of civil rights and civil liberties in the United States; recent developments in church-state relationships; anti-Jewish agitation; Jewish education, fund rais- ing, the Jewish center movement, Jew- ish social welfare, and other communal programs. The present volume also answers basic questions about Jews in America; popu- (Continued on back flap) 4198 * * • * * * * * * jI AMERICAN JEWISH I YEAR BOOK * * •I* >j» AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK ADVISORY COMMITTEE Oscar Handlin, Chairman Salo W.
  • 1 Philosophy at University College London

    1 Philosophy at University College London

    1 Philosophy at University College London: Part 1: From Jeremy Bentham to the Second World War Talk to Academic Staff Common Room Society, April 2006 Jonathan Wolff I’m quite often asked to give talks but I’m rarely asked to talk about the philosophy department. In fact I can only remember being asked to do this once before: to College Council very soon after Malcolm Grant was appointed as Provost. On that occasion I decided to tell a cautionary tale: painting a picture of the brilliance of the department in the late 1970s – second in the country only to the very much larger department at Oxford; how it was all ruined in the early 1980s by a wave of cost- cutting measures in which all the then internationally known members of the department left; and how it has taken twenty-five years to come close to recovery. This seemed to go down well on the day, but I can’t say that I won the longer term argument about the imprudence of cost-cutting. For this talk I was, at first, at a bit of a loss to know what to talk about. One possibility would be to try to describe the research that currently takes place in the department. But this idea didn’t appeal. Philosophers tend to work on their own, and so we don’t have research groups, as such, or collective projects. We have 15 members of the department, each engaged on their own research. Also, every time I try to summarize their work my colleagues tell me that I have misunderstood it.
  • CONTENTS Proposed Electoral Reform in Israel a Brief Survey Of

    CONTENTS Proposed Electoral Reform in Israel a Brief Survey Of

    VOLUME XXXIII NUMBER 2 DECEMBER 1991 CONTENTS Proposed Electoral Reform in Israel AVRAHAM BRICHTA A Brief Survey of Present-Day Karaite Communities in Europe EMANUELA TREVISAN SEMI Synagogue Marriages in Britain in the 1g8os MARLENA SCHMOOL Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism GEOFFREY ALDERMAN Book Reviews Chronicle Editor: J udith Freedman OBJECTS. AN:b SPONSORSHIP C>F THE JEWISH JOURNAL OF SOCI.OLOGY The Jewish Journal ofSociology was spon~rired by the Cultural Department of the World Jewish Congress from its inception in 1959 until the end of 1980. Thereafter, from the first issue of 1981 (volume 23, no. 1), the Journal has been sponsored by Maurice Freedman Research Trust Limited, which is registered as an educational charity and has as its main purposes the encouragement of· research in the sociology of the Jews and the publication ofTheJewishJournal of Sociology. The objects of the Journal remain as stated in the Editorial of the first issue in 1959: 'This Journal has been brought into being in order to provide an international vehicle for serious writing on Jewish social affairs ... Academically we address ourselves not only to sociologists, but to social scientists in general, to historians, to philosophers, and to students of comparative religion .... We should like to stress both that the Journal is editorially independent and that the opinions expressed by authors are their own responsibility.' The founding Editor of the JJS was Morris Ginsberg, and the founding Managing Editor was Maurice Freedman. Morris Ginsberg, who had been Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, died in 1970. Maurice Freedman, who had been Professor of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and later at the University of Oxford, succeeded to the title of Editor in 1971, when Or Judith Freedman (who had been Assistant Editor since 1963) became Managing Editor.
  • Social Citizenship and Social Rights in an Age of Extremes: T. H. Marshall's

    Social Citizenship and Social Rights in an Age of Extremes: T. H. Marshall's

    Modern Intellectual History, 16, 1 (2019), pp. 155–184 C Cambridge University Press 2017. ThisisanOpenAccess article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1017/S1479244317000178 social citizenship and social rights in an age of extremes: t. h. marshall’s social philosophy in the longue duree´ ∗ julia moses Department of History, University of Sheffield E-mail: j.moses@sheffield.ac.uk This article demonstrates how T. H. Marshall’s conceptualization of sociology—its subject, key questions and methodology—was embedded within broader moments in twentieth-century political history, including two world wars, the economic crisis of the interwar era, the onset of the Cold War and the rise of decolonization. In doing so, it brings intellectual history and the history of academic disciplines (particularly sociology) together with more recent trends in the historiography of twentieth-century Europe, including research on postwar democratization, reconstruction and the global spread of human rights discourses. Marshall was a sociological thinker in what Eric Hobsbawm has called the “age of extremes,” whose understanding of social citizenship not only played a role in theorizing the welfare state in postwar Britain, but also helped shape reconstruction within Europe and international development efforts following decolonization. In this respect, Marshall was part of a transnational and global movement to recast key concepts such as democracy, human rights and citizenship after the Second World War. This broader perspective illuminates how his work straddles traditions of pluralism and idealism, liberalism and social democracy, rather than being simply representative of any one of these schools of thought.
  • Earth's Own Evolution Used As Guide to Hunt Exoplanets 26 March 2020, by Blaine Friedlander

    Earth's Own Evolution Used As Guide to Hunt Exoplanets 26 March 2020, by Blaine Friedlander

    Earth's own evolution used as guide to hunt exoplanets 26 March 2020, by Blaine Friedlander "Using our own Earth as the key, we modeled five distinct Earth epochs to provide a template for how we can characterize a potential exo-Earth—from a young, prebiotic Earth to our modern world," she said. "The models also allow us to explore at what point in Earth's evolution a distant observer could identify life on the universe's 'pale blue dots' and other worlds like them." Kaltenegger and her team created atmospheric models that match the Earth of 3.9 billion years ago, a prebiotic Earth, when carbon dioxide densely cloaked the young planet. A second This artistic depiction shows exoplanet Kepler-62f, a throwback model chemically depicts a planet free of rocky super-Earth size planet, located about 1,200 light- oxygen, an anoxic Earth, going back 3.5 billion years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. Kepler-62f years. Three other models reveal the rise of oxygen may be what a prebiotic Earth may have looked like. in the atmosphere from a 0.2% concentration to Other exoplanets may look similar. Credit: NASA modern-day levels of 21%. Ames/JPL-Caltech "Our Earth and the air we breathe have changed drastically since Earth formed 4.5 billions years ago," Kaltenegger said, "and for the first time, this Cornell astronomers have created five models paper addresses how astronomers trying to find representing key points from our planet's evolution, worlds like ours, could spot young to modern Earth- like chemical snapshots through Earth's own like planets in transit, using our own Earth's history geologic epochs.