scholarly journals Editorial: theme issue on coronavirus and surfaces

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohan Edirisinghe OBE
Keyword(s):  
Metal Forming ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Surface Interactions ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Material Surfaces ◽  
Scientific Issue

Since the publication of the headline review on ‘Surface interactions and viability of coronaviruses' in Journal of the Royal Society Interface in January 2021 ( https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2020.0798 ), it has been my earnest desire to focus the minds of the scientific community on the role played by surfaces in the spread of COVID-19, especially the input physical sciences and engineering can impart to decelerate the spread of this disease worldwide. In fact, fig. 4 of the above-mentioned review clearly illustrated how persistence and viability of different coronavirus strains were dependent on widely used material surfaces. I thought the best way to achieve this goal on this rather complex and novel scientific issue was to put together a concise theme issue in Interface Focus where we bring together the opinions of a few internationally leading researchers on this important topic to collectively reduce the burden of COVID-19. Coronavirus and surfaces, the theme of this issue, is of utmost importance to many commercially significant industries such as packaging, textiles and metal forming. As the virus mutates and alters its anchoring and survival capabilities, this theme on coronavirus and surfaces will become more important, so we need to focus on this theme scientifically and methodically, with utmost urgency.

"Plain and Vulgarly Express'd": Margaret Cavendish and the Discourse of the New Science

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Nate
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Woman Writer ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
New Science ◽  
Plain Style ◽  
Thomas Sprat

Although Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), did not belong to the scientific community which after 1660 formed itself around the Royal Society, several of the philosophical issues discussed there are reflected in her writings. Lengthy reflections on language and style which run through her philosophical worksprovide evidence that the linguistic and rhetorical debates of the early Royal Society also left their mark. The isolation which Cavendish faced as a woman writer obliged her to discuss problems of terminology and style even more intensively, thereby adhering to the rhetorical principle of perspicuity which Thomas Sprat demanded in his proposal for a scientific plain style. The influence of the New Science on Cavendish's work becomes obvious when her later writings are compared to her earlier ones where traces of a courtly and more elitist understanding of style can still be found. In this paper the development of Cavendish's stylistic attitudes is traced in several of her works, including her Utopian narrative The Blazing World (1666).

scholarly journals When science mirrors life: on the origins of the Price equation

2020 ◽  
Vol 375 (1797) ◽  
pp. 20190352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oren Harman
Keyword(s):  
Population Genetics ◽  
Genetic Relatedness ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Price Equation ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Mother And Daughter ◽  
Different Levels

The Price equation was a piece of abstract mathematics. What kind of a connection could it possibly have had to George Price's personal life and biography? Here, I will argue that the initial impetus for Price's foray into mathematical population genetics stemmed from a preoccupation with the origins of family, one that was born following a divorce from his wife and the abandonment of their two young girls. What is special about the Price equation is the way in which it associates statistically between two groups, a ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’ population. The association need not mean genetic relatedness in the narrow sense of direct descent, and it allows us to see selection working at different levels simultaneously, a fact that was not lost on William Hamilton. Hamilton was one of the few friends who desperately tried to save Price from falling into the abyss of depression and homelessness in the period following the publication of ‘Selection and covariance’ (Price 1928 Nature 227 , 520–521 ( doi:10.1038/227520a0 )). Viewed in this light, the Price equation assumes new meaning. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Fifty years of the Price equation’.

scholarly journals Stokes at 200: a celebration of the remarkable achievements of Sir George Gabriel Stokes two hundred years after his birth

2020 ◽  
Vol 378 (2174) ◽  
pp. 20190505
Author(s):  
Silvana S. S. Cardoso ◽  
Julyan H. E. Cartwright ◽  
Herbert E. Huppert ◽  
Christopher Ness
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
The State ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Research Fields ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Mathematics

Sir George Gabriel Stokes PRS was for 30 years an inimitable Secretary of the Royal Society and its President from 1885 to 1890. Two hundred years after his birth, Stokes is a towering figure in physics and applied mathematics; fluids, asymptotics, optics, acoustics among many other fields. At the Stokes 200 meeting, held at Pembroke College, Cambridge from 15–18th September 2019, an invited audience of about 100 discussed the state of the art in all the modern research fields that have sprung from his work in physics and mathematics, along with the history of how we have got from Stokes’ contributions to where we are now. This theme issue is based on work presented at the Stokes 200 meeting. In bringing together people whose work today is based upon Stokes’ own, we aim to emphasize his influence and legacy at 200 to the community as a whole. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Stokes at 200 (Part 1)’.

scholarly journals Observing the skies of Lisbon. Isaac de Sequeira Samuda, an estrangeirado in the Royal Society

2014 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Costa Vieira
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Made In

Elected in 1723, Isaac de Sequeira Samuda (1681–1729) was the first Jewish Fellow of the Royal Society. He had arrived in London just a few years earlier, escaping from the Portuguese Inquisition. Despite his past, he had no difficulty in establishing links with his country's diplomatic representatives in London. A physician and adviser on scientific subjects, he became a conduit between the emerging world of Portuguese astronomy and the British scientific community. He reported to the Royal Society on astronomical observations made in the new observatories in Lisbon and helped with the acquisition of scientific instruments and books destined for Portugal. These activities were facets of Samuda's unusual career and the diverse though often converging associations that he established until his death. As the member of a network active in the diffusion of new ideas and in the modernization of Portuguese science, Samuda can be regarded as an estrangeirado , as this term has come to be used in the modern literature.

The admission of the first women to the Royal Society of London

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-300 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Chemical Society ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Solicitor General ◽  
Learned Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Government ◽  
Legal Barriers

An early skirmish in the history of women and the Royal Society was the proposal for the Fellowship of the physicist and engineer Hertha Ayrton, in 1902. This was not accepted, following Counsel’s opinion that she could not be a Fellow because she was a married woman (and the position of unmarried women was very doubtful). If the Society wished to admit women it should apply for a supplemental charter, which would be granted, given the support of a sufficient proportion of the Fellows. In 1906 Hertha Ayrton received the Hughes medal for original discovery in the physical sciences, 50 years ahead of the Society’s next award of a medal to a woman. In 1919 the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act removed legal barriers to the admission of women by bodies governed by charter. In the debate on the Bill, Martin Conway, Member of Parliament for the United Universities and a Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, raised an amendment specifying membership of the learned societies. This was opposed by the Solicitor-General, who declared that learned societies refusing to elect qualified women members would be acting in opposition to the will of the House of Commons and the intentions of the Government, and could be dealt with when their subsidies came before Parliament under the Civil Service Vote (not that they were). The Antiquaries elected women Fellows from 1920, as did the Chemical Society. At the Royal Society, no woman was proposed again until 1943.

Address of the President, Sir Michael Atiyah, O. M., given at the Anniversary Meeting on 30 November 1995

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-113
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Political World ◽  
External Events ◽  
Scientific Ethos

The President’s Anniversary Address to the Society provides an occasion for reflection on matters of importance to science, particularly those of the previous year. The address is a personal one, not a collective statement of Royal Society policy, but the restraints of office have to be borne in mind. The President has to face his fellow Officers and Council during the next year, and he has to retain the confidence of the Fellowship. But these restrictions do not apply at his farewell address, his swan song which terminates his role before the evening is out. In other words, as an outgoing President, I can speak more freely and not weigh up my words with too much diplomatic tact. This is my last chance to emphasize the things I think are really important and to provide some food for thought for my successors. Too often we have to react to external events, to short-term crises, to financial cuts or to ministerial changes. In this semi-political world in which the scientific community has to operate we are in danger of losing our way and our identity. The scientific ethos becomes increasingly hard to discern. So today I would like to discuss some of the major issues of principle that we face.

scholarly journals Interpreting signals from astrophysical transient experiments

2013 ◽  
Vol 371 (1992) ◽  
pp. 20120498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul T. O’Brien ◽  
Stephen J. Smartt
Keyword(s):  
Gravitational Waves ◽  
Time Domain ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Electromagnetic Spectrum ◽  
New Science ◽  
Transient Experiments ◽  
Efficient Communication ◽  
The Universe ◽  
High Cadence

Time-domain astronomy has come of age with astronomers now able to monitor the sky at high cadence, both across the electromagnetic spectrum and using neutrinos and gravitational waves. The advent of new observing facilities permits new science, but the ever-increasing throughput of facilities demands efficient communication of coincident detections and better subsequent coordination among the scientific community so as to turn detections into scientific discoveries. To discuss the revolution occurring in our ability to monitor the Universe and the challenges it brings, on 25–26 April 2012, a group of scientists from observational and theoretical teams studying transients met with representatives of the major international transient observing facilities at the Kavli Royal Society International Centre, UK. This immediately followed the Royal Society Discussion Meeting ‘New windows on transients across the Universe’ held in London. Here, we present a summary of the Kavli meeting at which the participants discussed the science goals common to the transient astronomy community and analysed how to better meet the challenges ahead as ever more powerful observational facilities come on stream.

scholarly journals Why developmental psychology is incomplete without comparative and cross-cultural perspectives

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1686) ◽  
pp. 20150071 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Nielsen ◽  
Daniel Haun
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Animal Models ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Link Type ◽  
History Of

As a discipline, developmental psychology has a long history of relying on animal models and data collected among distinct cultural groups to enrich and inform theories of the ways social and cognitive processes unfold through the lifespan. However, approaches that draw together developmental, cross-cultural and comparative perspectives remain rare. The need for such an approach is reflected in the papers by Heyes (2015 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 371, 20150069. ( doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0069 )), Schmelz & Call (2015 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 371, 20150067. ( doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0067 )) and Keller (2015 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 371, 20150070. ( doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0070 )) in this theme issue. Here, we incorporate these papers into a review of recent research endeavours covering a range of core aspects of social cognition, including social learning, cooperation and collaboration, prosociality, and theory of mind. In so doing, we aim to highlight how input from comparative and cross-cultural empiricism has altered our perspectives of human development and, in particular, led to a deeper understanding of the evolution of the human cultural mind.

scholarly journals Changing the light environment: chloroplast signalling and response mechanisms

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1640) ◽  
pp. 20130220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Spetea ◽  
Eevi Rintamäki ◽  
Benoît Schoefs
Keyword(s):  
Plant Development ◽  
Biotic Stress ◽  
Cell Biology ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Control Plant ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Response Network ◽  
Signalling Cascades ◽  
Molecular Cell Biology

Light is an essential environmental factor required for photosynthesis, but it also mediates signals to control plant development and growth and induces stress tolerance. The photosynthetic organelle (chloroplast) is a key component in the signalling and response network in plants. This theme issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biology provides updates, highlights and summaries of the most recent findings on chloroplast-initiated signalling cascades and responses to environmental changes, including light and biotic stress. Besides plant molecular cell biology and physiology, the theme issue includes aspects from the cross-disciplinary fields of environmental adaptation, ecology and agronomy.

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