Perspectives
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Blessed Nicholas Steno
BLESSEDThe Scientist NICHOLAS and STENO (IN DANISH, NIELS STEENSEN) 1638-1686 After a youth spent in studying and then in scientific research, Nicolas Steno at age St. Nicholas of Flue, better known as “Brother Klaus,” was declared patron saint of Switzerland by Pope Pius XII in 1947. He was born 28 converted to the Catholic of a farmer's family in 1417 in Flueli, in the Alpine foothills above Sachseln, in the region of Obwald. He married, had ten children, Church while watching the Portrait of Blessed and conducted a normal life until he was 50. Then he felt a very Nicholas Steno strong call from God to leave everything and follow Him. He therefore asked for three graces: to obtain the consent of his wife Corpus Christi procession, Dorothy and their older children; to never feel the temptation to turn back, and finally, God willing, to be able to live without drinking or eating. All his requests were granted. He lived for twenty years in the thus realizing the greatness forest as a hermit with no food except for the Eucharist, as many witnesses testified. and magnificence of the Eucharist; the Real Presence of Jesus in the Host. He then decided to become a priest and missionary in his own country. In Belgium, at Bois-d’Haine, the Servant of God Anne-Louise Lateau lived for twelve years without eating or drinking, and without sleeping, starting on March 26, 1871. On January 11, 1868, she received stigmata at her feet, hands, head, the left side of her chest and at her right shoulder. -
The Early History of Medical Genetics in Canada William Leeming OCAD University [email protected]
OCAD University Open Research Repository Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies 2004 The Early History of Medical Genetics in Canada William Leeming OCAD University [email protected] © Oxford University Press. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. Original source at DOI: 10.1093/shm/17.3.481. Recommended citation: Leeming, W. “The Early History of Medical Genetics in Canada.” Social History of Medicine 17.3 (2004): 481–500. Web. Leeming, W. (2004). The early history of medical genetics in Canada. Social History of Medicine, 17(3), 481-500. Pre-Publication Draft The Early History of Medical Genetics in Canada Abstract: This article shows that the intellectual and specialist movements that supported the growth of medical genetics in Canada between 1947 and 1990 were emergent phenomena, created, split, and reattached to different groups of actors, and reconfigured numerous times over the course of four decades. In each instance, new kinds of working relationships appeared; sets of diverse actors in local university- hospital settings coalesced into a new collectivity; and, as a collectivity, actors defined and/or redefined occupational roles and work rules. In its beginnings, medical genetics appears to be the object of a serious institutional manoeuver: a movement in support of the creation of examining and teaching positions in human genetics in North American medical schools. With time, the institutionalization of ‘medical genetics’ took hold, spurred on by changes in the rate and direction of service delivery associated with genetic consultation and laboratory services in clinical settings. -
Tema Del Día
TEMA DEL DÍA LAS RAÍCES DE LA GEOLOGÍA. NICOLAS STENO, LOS ESTRATOS Y EL DILUVIO UNIVERSAL The roots of the Geology. Nicolaus Steno, the strata and the Deluge Leandro Sequeiros * RESUMEN El De Solido intra solido naturaliter contento dissertatinis prodromus, uno de los libros más importan- tes para los inicios de la geología, fue publicado en Florencia en 1669. Su autor, Niels Steensen (también conocido por su nombre latinizado de Nicolaus Steno), fue un anatomista y naturalista danés nacido en Copenhague (Dinamarca) el 11 de enero de 1638. Estudió primero medicina en su ciudad y anatomía en Holanda y París. En 1660, visitó Roma y en 1666 se había establecido en Florencia donde fue acogido por el Gran Duque de Toscana Fernando II. En Florencia, estudiando los dientes puntiagudos que formaban diversas coronas en las mandíbulas de los tiburones, se sorprendió por su gran número, y sus semejanzas con las llamadas Glossopetrae, ob- jetos de piedra traídos de Malta. Steno pensó que ellos pertenecían a partes anatómicas de animales que habían vivido en otro tiempo, y que habían podido transformarse con facilidad mediante procesos quími- cos que no habían afectado a la forma. Los resultados llevaron a Steno a extender sus hipótesis a amplios estudios sobre las conchas de los moluscos antiguos, de los que describe su estructura y su origen orgáni- co, llegando a conclusiones muy cercanas a las aceptadas hoy día. ABSTRACT The De Solido intra solido naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus, one of the most important bo- ok in the beginning of geology, was published at Florence in 1669. -
The Geohistorical Time Arrow: from Steno's Stratigraphic Principles To
JOURNAL OF GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION 62, 691–700 (2014) The Geohistorical Time Arrow: From Steno’s Stratigraphic Principles to Boltzmann’s Past Hypothesis Gadi Kravitz1,a ABSTRACT Geologists have always embraced the time arrow in order to reconstruct the past geology of Earth, thus turning geology into a historical science. The covert assumption regarding the direction of time from past to present appears in Nicolas Steno’s principles of stratigraphy. The intuitive–metaphysical nature of Steno’s assumption was based on a biblical narrative; therefore, he never attempted to justify it in any way. In this article, I intend to show that contrary to Steno’s principles, the theoretical status of modern geohistory is much better from a scientific point of view. The uniformity principle enables modern geohistory to establish the time arrow on the basis of the second law of thermodynamics, i.e., on a physical law, on the one hand, and on a historical law, on the other. In other words, we can say that modern actualism is based on the uniformity principle. This principle is essentially based on the principle of causality, which in turn obtains its justification from the second law of thermodynamics. I will argue that despite this advantage, the shadow that metaphysics has cast on geohistory has not disappeared completely, since the thermodynamic time arrow is based on a metaphysical assumption—Boltzmann’s past hypothesis. All professors engaged in geological education should know these philosophical–theoretical arguments and include them in the curriculum of studies dealing with the basic assumptions of geoscience in general and the uniformity principle and deep time in particular. -
Jan Kochanowski University Press
Jan Kochanowski University Press This is a contribution from Token: A Journal of English Linguistics Volume 8/2019. Edited by John G. Newman, Marina Dossena and Sylwester Łodej. Special Editors for volume 8: Giovanni Iamartino and Irma Taavitsainen. © 2019 Jan Kochanowski University Press. Token: A Journal of English Linguistics 8, 2019 Italy and the Royal Society: Medical papers in the early Philosophical Transactions Lucia Berti University of Milan ABSTRACT During the first years of the Royal Society’s existence, a whole network of natural philosophical exchanges was set up between the Fellows and foreign gentlemen interested in the study of nature. From the exchanges with Italy, medicine appears to be one of the major topics of interest; and a series of medical papers based on Italian researches appear in the Society’s journal, the Philosophical Transactions (PT). This article is a linguistic and socio-historical analysis of 25 medical papers published in the PT in the first fifty years of its existence. The selected articles were either translations of Italian writings or reports of Italian research. The purpose of the study is: (1) to illustrate from a linguistic and socio-cultural point of view the nature of Italian medical contributions to the early PT; and (2) to investigate Anglo-Italian relations through the Royal Society’s medical interaction with Italians by analysing the PT articles and further contextual resources from a critical perspective. Keywords: Anglo-Italian relations, medical writing, Philosophical Transactions, Royal Society, seventeenth century. And your own intelligence will spur you on, without the urging of others, to inform yourself about these matters; in the same way you will be led, without doubt, to encourage all the keen minds of Italy to employ their talents in advancing the sciences and the arts by observations and experiments faithfully and diligently performed. -
Elements of Genetics
GENETICS AND PLANT BREEDING Elements of Genetics Dr. B. M. Prasanna National Fellow Division of Genetics Indian Agricultural Research Institute New Delhi-110012 (12-06- 2007) CONTENTS Introduction History Cell Cell Division Special Chromosomes Dominance Relationships Gene Interactions Multiple Alleles Sex Determination Sex Linkage Linkage and Crossing Over Genetic Mapping Structural Changes in Chromosomes Numerical Changes in Chromosomes Nature of the Genetic Material Gene Regulation Operon Concept Gene Concept Mutation Polygenic and Quantitative Inheritance Extrachromosomal Inheritance Plant Tissue Culture Keywords Mitosis, Meiosis 1 Introduction In biology, heredity is the passing on of characteristics from one generation to the next. It is the reason why offspring look like their parents. It also explains why cats always give birth to kittens and never puppies. The process of heredity occurs among all living organisms, including animals, plants, bacteria, protists and fungi. Genetic variation refers to the variation in a population or species. Genetics is the study of heredity and variation in living organisms. Two research approaches were historically important in helping investigators understand the biological basis of heredity. The first of these approaches, ‘transmission genetics’, involved crossing organisms and studying the offsprings' traits to develop hypotheses about the mechanisms of inheritance. The second approach involved using cytological techniques to study the machinery and processes of cellular reproduction. This approach laid a solid foundation for the more conceptual understanding of inheritance that developed as a result of transmission genetics. Ever since 1970s, with the advent of molecular tools and techniques, geneticists are able to intensively analyze genetic basis of trait variation in various organisms, including plants, animals and humans. -
A Brief History of Genetics
A Brief History of Genetics A Brief History of Genetics By Chris Rider A Brief History of Genetics By Chris Rider This book first published 2020 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2020 by Chris Rider All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-5885-1 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-5885-4 Cover A cartoon of the double-stranded helix structure of DNA overlies the sequence of the gene encoding the A protein chain of human haemoglobin. Top left is a portrait of Gregor Mendel, the founding father of genetics, and bottom right is a portrait of Thomas Hunt Morgan, the first winner of a Nobel Prize for genetics. To my wife for her many years of love, support, patience and sound advice TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures.......................................................................................... viii List of Text Boxes and Tables .................................................................... x Foreword .................................................................................................. xi Acknowledgements ................................................................................. xiii Chapter 1 ................................................................................................... -
The Third Base
Appendix The Third Base Donald Forsdyke If I thought that by learning more and more I should ever arrive at the knowledge of absolute truth, I would leave off studying. But I believe I am pretty safe. Samuel Butler, Notebooks Darwin’s mentor, the geologist Charles Lyell, and Darwin himself, both con- sidered the relationship between the evolution of biological species and the evolution of languages [1]. But neither took the subject to the deep informa- tional level of Butler and Hering. In the twentieth century the emergence of a new science – Evolutionary Bioinformatics (EB) – was heralded by two dis- coveries. First, that DNA – a linear polymer of four base units – was the chromosomal component conveying hereditary information. Second, that much of this information was “a phenomenon of arrangement” – determined by the sequence of the four bases. We conclude with a brief sketch of the new work as it relates to William Bateson’s evolutionary ideas. However, imbued with true Batesonian caution (“I will believe when I must”), it is relegated to an Appendix to indicate its provisional nature. Modern languages have similarities that indicate branching evolution from common ancestral languages [2]. We recognize early variations within a language as dialects or accents. When accents are incompatible, communi- cation is impaired. As accents get more disparate, mutual comprehension de- creases and at some point, when comprehension is largely lost, we declare that there are two languages where there was initially one. The origin of lan- guage begins with differences in accent. If we understand how differences in accent arise, then we may come to understand something fundamental about the origin of language (and hence of a text written in that language). -
Chromosomes in the Clinic: the Visual Localization and Analysis of Genetic Disease in the Human Genome
University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Chromosomes in the Clinic: The Visual Localization and Analysis of Genetic Disease in the Human Genome Andrew Joseph Hogan University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons Recommended Citation Hogan, Andrew Joseph, "Chromosomes in the Clinic: The Visual Localization and Analysis of Genetic Disease in the Human Genome" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 873. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/873 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/873 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Chromosomes in the Clinic: The Visual Localization and Analysis of Genetic Disease in the Human Genome Abstract This dissertation examines the visual cultures of postwar biomedicine, with a particular focus on how various techniques, conventions, and professional norms have shaped the `look', classification, diagnosis, and understanding of genetic diseases. Many scholars have previously highlighted the `informational' approaches of postwar genetics, which treat the human genome as an expansive data set comprised of three billion DNA nucleotides. Since the 1950s however, clinicians and genetics researchers have largely interacted with the human genome at the microscopically visible level of chromosomes. Mindful of this, my dissertation examines -
INTRODUCTION to GENETICS Table of Contents Heredity, Historical
INTRODUCTION TO GENETICS Table of Contents Heredity, historical perspectives | The Monk and his peas | Principle of segregation Dihybrid Crosses | Mutations | Genetic Terms | Links Heredity, Historical Perspective | Back to Top For much of human history people were unaware of the scientific details of how babies were conceived and how heredity worked. Clearly they were conceived, and clearly there was some hereditary connection between parents and children, but the mechanisms were not readily apparent. The Greek philosophers had a variety of ideas: Theophrastus proposed that male flowers caused female flowers to ripen; Hippocrates speculated that "seeds" were produced by various body parts and transmitted to offspring at the time of conception, and Aristotle thought that male and female semen mixed at conception. Aeschylus, in 458 BC, proposed the male as the parent, with the female as a "nurse for the young life sown within her". During the 1700s, Dutch microscopist Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) discovered "animalcules" in the sperm of humans and other animals. Some scientists speculated they saw a "little man" (homunculus) inside each sperm. These scientists formed a school of thought known as the "spermists". They contended the only contributions of the female to the next generation were the womb in which the homunculus grew, and prenatal influences of the womb. An opposing school of thought, the ovists, believed that the future human was in the egg, and that sperm merely stimulated the growth of the egg. Ovists thought women carried eggs containing boy and girl children, and that the gender of the offspring was determined well before conception. -
Building Saint and Bio. Science 'S' Block Blessed Nicolas Steno
Building Saint and bio. Science Blessed Nicolas Steno (Niels Stenson) (1638-1686) was a convert to ‘S’ block Catholicism, a bishop, a pioneer in anatomy and geology, and the father of palaeontology because he discovered what fossils were. His laws of stratigraphy are still in use. And he managed all this before dying at the age of 48! Saint Servulus of Rome Saint Servulus was a perfect model of submission to the divine Will; it would be difficult to offer a more consoling example to persons afflicted by poverty, illnesses and the other miseries of life. He was deprived of all the goods of this world; a long illness had reduced him to a pitiful state. From his youth he was paralyzed in all his limbs. Not only could he not stand up, but he was unable to rise from his bed; he could neither sit down nor turn himself from one side to the other, nor bring his hand to his mouth. This unfortunate man, who had learned the mysteries of religion, meditated unceasingly on the sufferings of the Saviour, and never did he complain. He was surrounded by the loving care of his mother and brother. Neither the mother nor the children had ever studied, yet he had pious books bought for himself, in particular the Psalms and the Holy Gospels, and he would ask the religious who came to visit him on his cot to read from them to him. In this way he learned these books by heart; he spent days and part of the nights in singing or reciting them, and meditating them, and he constantly thanked the Lord for having taken him to be a victim associated with the pains and sufferings of Jesus Christ. -
"The Business Solution to the Problem of Climate Change"
SPEECH/09/258 José Manuel Durão Barroso President of the European Commission "The business solution to the problem of climate change" World Business Summit on Climate Change Copenhagen, 25 May 2009 Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen, Let me start by thanking the organisers, especially Tim Flannery and Erik Rasmussen, for inviting me to speak to you today. [I'd also like to thank Anders Eldrup for his very kind introduction.] Business input is going to be very important to the success of the other climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, so I very much welcome this timely initiative to hold a World Business Summit. If you allow me, I'd like to take you back to Copenhagen in the 17th century. From the beginning of recorded history, humans wondered why seashells and shark teeth could be found at the top of mountains. For many, the explanation was obvious, and could be found in the Bible: the maritime remains were left behind by Noah's Flood! It took a young Danish scientist, Nicolas Steno – or Niels Stensen, to give him his original name – to discover that the teeth and shells were in fact fossils, deposited millions of years ago when the land was beneath the sea. He realised that the layers of rock in which the fossils were embedded told the story of Earth. And that story was a violent and ever-changing one. He didn't know it at the time, but his work would unlock the door to a great deal of what we know today about plate tectonics, dinosaurs, geology and, of course, climate change.