scholarly journals Quantitative plant biology—Old and new

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Morris ◽  
Kirsten H. ten Tusscher

Abstract Quantitative approaches in plant biology have a long history that have led to several ground-breaking discoveries and given rise to new principles, new paradigms and new methodologies. We take a short historical trip into the past to explore some of the many great scientists and influences that have led to the development of quantitative plant biology. We have not been constrained by historical fact, although we have tried not to deviate too much. We end with a forward look, expressing our hopes and ambitions for this exciting interdisciplinary field.

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (S278) ◽  
pp. 408-413
Author(s):  
Johanna Broda

AbstractThe purpose of this invited commentary is to present some general closing remarks on the global content of the ‘Oxford IX’ International Symposium on Archaeoastronomy, taking into account how we evaluate the course archaeoastronomy has taken over the past few years. It is significant that the interdisciplinary field of archaeoastronomy has already, by common consent, changed its name into ‘astronomy in culture’ (or ‘cultural astronomy’). This happened several years ago, although it is still the case that the cultural aspect (cosmovision, or vision of the world) is not always taken sufficiently into account. The keynote presentations by Ruggles, Iwaniszewski and McCluskey addressed fundamental issues of method and theoretical concepts that should guide archaeoastronomical studies. The rest of the sessions as well as the posters were dedicated to case studies from different cultural regions of the world. This commentary synthesizes several common themes that were addressed in the many interesting papers from all over the world that were presented in the meeting. Finally I take up the proposition of Gary Urton that future efforts should be concentrated on the study of the production and maintenance of systems of knowledge in complex state societies as well as in more egalitarian rural communities. In my opinion it is an urgent task to begin discourse about the history of pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas, a discipline of which the history of science and astronomy forms a fundamental part. The ‘Oxford’ International Conferences are a key forum for exchange and encounter regarding comparative studies with other ancient civilizations as well as indigenous traditions from all over the world.


Author(s):  
Benjamin F. Trump ◽  
Irene K. Berezesky ◽  
Raymond T. Jones

The role of electron microscopy and associated techniques is assured in diagnostic pathology. At the present time, most of the progress has been made on tissues examined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and correlated with light microscopy (LM) and by cytochemistry using both plastic and paraffin-embedded materials. As mentioned elsewhere in this symposium, this has revolutionized many fields of pathology including diagnostic, anatomic and clinical pathology. It began with the kidney; however, it has now been extended to most other organ systems and to tumor diagnosis in general. The results of the past few years tend to indicate the future directions and needs of this expanding field. Now, in addition to routine EM, pathologists have access to the many newly developed methods and instruments mentioned below which should aid considerably not only in diagnostic pathology but in investigative pathology as well.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard

Purpose The current “specific language impairment” and “developmental language disorder” discussion might lead to important changes in how we refer to children with language disorders of unknown origin. The field has seen other changes in terminology. This article reviews many of these changes. Method A literature review of previous clinical labels was conducted, and possible reasons for the changes in labels were identified. Results References to children with significant yet unexplained deficits in language ability have been part of the scientific literature since, at least, the early 1800s. Terms have changed from those with a neurological emphasis to those that do not imply a cause for the language disorder. Diagnostic criteria have become more explicit but have become, at certain points, too narrow to represent the wider range of children with language disorders of unknown origin. Conclusions The field was not well served by the many changes in terminology that have transpired in the past. A new label at this point must be accompanied by strong efforts to recruit its adoption by clinical speech-language pathologists and the general public.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Thomas Leitch

Building on Tzvetan Todorov's observation that the detective novel ‘contains not one but two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the investigation’, this essay argues that detective novels display a remarkably wide range of attitudes toward the several pasts they represent: the pasts of the crime, the community, the criminal, the detective, and public history. It traces a series of defining shifts in these attitudes through the evolution of five distinct subgenres of detective fiction: exploits of a Great Detective like Sherlock Holmes, Golden Age whodunits that pose as intellectual puzzles to be solved, hardboiled stories that invoke a distant past that the present both breaks with and echoes, police procedurals that unfold in an indefinitely extended present, and historical mysteries that nostalgically fetishize the past. It concludes with a brief consideration of genre readers’ own ambivalent phenomenological investment in the past, present, and future each detective story projects.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-82
Author(s):  
Ken Ishihara ◽  
Takehiro Noda ◽  
Hiroyuki Sakurai

ABSTRACT In contrast to the finite element method (FEM), which is widely used in the tire industry nowadays, some alternative methods have been proposed by academic communities over the past decade or so. The meshfree method is one of those new methodologies. Originally intended to remove the burden of creating the mesh that is inherent in FEM, the meshfree method relies on the point data rather than the mesh, which makes it much easier to discretize the geometry. In addition to those modeling issues, it has been found that the meshfree method has several advantages over FEM in handling geometrical nonlinearities, continuities, and so forth. In accordance with those emerging possibilities, the authors have been conducting research on the matter. This article describes the results of the authors' preliminary research on the applicability of the meshfree method to tire analyses, which include the theoretical outline, the strategy of tire modeling, numerical results, comparisons with results of FEM, and conclusions.


Author(s):  
Andrea Gamberini

As it had been in the communal age, so, in the Visconti-Sforza era, law was the instrument that the public authority relied upon in order to subordinate the many actors present and to subjugate their political cultures. There is, therefore, the attempt to tighten a vice around competing powers—a vice that is at the same time legislative, doctrinal, and judicial. And yet, it is difficult to escape the impression of an effort whose outcomes were somewhat more uncertain than had been the case in the past. The chapter focuses on all these aspects of the deployment of legal and other stratagems to consolidate or to wrest power.


Author(s):  
John Hunsley ◽  
Eric J. Mash

Evidence-based assessment relies on research and theory to inform the selection of constructs to be assessed for a specific assessment purpose, the methods and measures to be used in the assessment, and the manner in which the assessment process unfolds. An evidence-based approach to clinical assessment necessitates the recognition that, even when evidence-based instruments are used, the assessment process is a decision-making task in which hypotheses must be iteratively formulated and tested. In this chapter, we review (a) the progress that has been made in developing an evidence-based approach to clinical assessment in the past decade and (b) the many challenges that lie ahead if clinical assessment is to be truly evidence-based.


2021 ◽  
pp. 875529302199636
Author(s):  
Mertcan Geyin ◽  
Brett W Maurer ◽  
Brendon A Bradley ◽  
Russell A Green ◽  
Sjoerd van Ballegooy

Earthquakes occurring over the past decade in the Canterbury region of New Zealand have resulted in liquefaction case-history data of unprecedented quantity. This provides the profession with a unique opportunity to advance the prediction of liquefaction occurrence and consequences. Toward that end, this article presents a curated dataset containing ∼15,000 cone-penetration-test-based liquefaction case histories compiled from three earthquakes in Canterbury. The compiled, post-processed data are presented in a dense array structure, allowing researchers to easily access and analyze a wealth of information pertinent to free-field liquefaction response (i.e. triggering and surface manifestation). Research opportunities using these data include, but are not limited to, the training or testing of new and existing liquefaction-prediction models. The many methods used to obtain and process the case-history data are detailed herein, as is the structure of the compiled digital file. Finally, recommendations for analyzing the data are outlined, including nuances and limitations that users should carefully consider.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026858092110053
Author(s):  
Koichi Hiraoka

This article reviews the research trends in welfare sociology (sociological studies on social security and welfare), one of the many subfields of active research in sociology in Japan. For this purpose, several research streams formed from the 1970s to the 2000s are described, and some of the most important research results produced within these in the past two decades are introduced. In the latter part of this article, a broad overview of the research trends in Japanese welfare sociology is attempted by focusing on the contents of the journal published by the Japan Welfare Sociology Association (JWSA).


1972 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-28
Author(s):  
Llewellyn Ligocki

After Sir Walter Scott made the historical novel popular with his Waverley novels, many other writers, including the major novelists Dickens and Thackeray and the minor novelists Ainsworth, G. P. R. James, Bulwer-Lytton, and Reade, took up the form. But while the major novelists are credited with artistry in their use of history, the minor ones are generally regarded as hacks who used history indiscriminately in any way they wished in order to “make saleable novels.” The disparaging criticism of William Harrison Ainsworth's use of history exemplifies this unreflective critical tendency.For several probable reasons, critics have not been inclined to credit Ainsworth with using history responsibly; however, none of the reasons is based on an examination of his sources: his rapid ascension and decline as an important literary figure, his popularity with the common reading public, and his failure to progress artistically after his first few good novels. His artistic growth seems to have ended in 1840, forty-one years before the publication of his last novel. These critics have seen him as a “manufacturer of fiction,” and therefore not responsible in his treatment of historical fact and his use of historical documents, even though time and place are of crucial importance to Ainsworth. One could hardly regard Ainsworth more incorrectly. A close reading of Ainsworth's historical sources demonstrates that Ainsworth's history is extremely reliable in both generalities and particulars; his alterations, usually minor, serve only to adumbrate his concept of history as cycle. Thus, even though he is a novelist and not a historian, the faithful revelation of the past is central to his work. He examines history carefully in order to present truths about life and in order to demonstrate how history reveals these truths.


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