scholarly journals One Day from the History of the Great Physical Auditorium: Nikolai I. Vavilov’s Report on 4 June, 1920

Author(s):  
Valery M. Anikin ◽  
◽  
Nataliya M. Panteeva ◽  

The Great Physical Auditorium of Saratov University is one of the best university lecture halls in Russia, it has a wonderful interior, large capacity and good acoustics. It also has a wonderful history. One outstanding event that took place in the Great Physical Auditorium 100 years ago is described in the article. On June 4, 1920, Nikolai I. Vavilov, professor of the agronomic faculty of Saratov University, made a presentation on «The law of homologous series in variation” to the participants of the III All-Russian Breeding Congress. The law determines the fundamental features of the evolution of plants and living organisms from a genetic standpoint. It influenced the subsequent development of biology, genetics, plant growing, breeding, biophysics and agrophysics on a global scale. The article describes the versatile activities of Nikolai I. Vavilov in 1918–1921 on the post of professor at Saratov University as a teacher, organizer of student practices and expeditions, as a deep scientist and analyst. His report was met with great enthusiasm by the participants of the Breeding congress. The law of homologous series in variation may be compared with the periodic law by Dmitry I. Mendeleev. The article was written by using the materials of the Breeding Congress, the Vavilov’s collection of the Saratov Regional Museum of Local Lore, the memoirs by the participants of the Congress, scientific publications reflecting the modern significance of the law by Nikolai I. Vavilov. More than 50 congress participants, captured in the historical photograph of June 4, 1920, are named. The article notes interesting parallels between the III All-Union Congress of Breeding in 1920 and the VI Congress of the Russian Association of Physicists in 1928, which was also held within the walls of the Great Physical Auditorium. Sergei I. Vavilov was secretary of the Physical congress. The outstanding role of the brothers Nikolai I. and Sergei I. Vavilovs by organization of scientific activity in Russia is emphasized. The topic of modern scientific conferences held at the Great Physical Auditorium is named. It is concluded that the Great Physical Auditorium of Saratov University has acquired the significance of one of the important communication scientific centers of Russia and the world.

Author(s):  
Vyacheslav P. Zemlyanoy ◽  
Badri V. Sigua ◽  
Vyacheslav A. Melnikov ◽  
Nikolay G. Lyubimov

The papaer presents a review of some publications on the history of the development, formation, functions and capabilities of scientometrics, as well as the state of Russian science and its role on the international arena. The thoughts regarding the role of scientometrics in modern scientific research are stated. To date, scientometrics provides a number of possibilities. First of all, it is a system for monitoring publication activity of scientists around the world. Obviously, the main goal is structuring scientific publications with the following improvement of scientific activity. Howewer, are modern scientometric indicators objective in relation not only to the number, but also to the quality of scientific publications? Is the notorious Hirsch index an ideal parameter for evaluating the performance of researchers? Are there any prospects for scientometrics in the modern scientific world, or is a worthy alternative to currently used methods for assessing scientific activity required? These and many other questions are raised by the authors in this article.


Author(s):  
Maren R. Niehoff

This chapter addresses Philo's refashioning of the biblical women in the Exposition of the Law, which differs significantly from his interpretation of them in Allegorical Commentary. They no longer symbolize the dangerous body with its passions, best to be left behind, but rather have become exemplary wives, mothers, and daughters who play an active role in the history of Israel. This dramatic change of perspective can be explained in terms of Philo's move from Alexandria to Rome. While gender issues were not discussed in the philosophical circles of his home city, he later encountered lively philosophical discussions in Rome on the role of women in society. His new image of the biblical women in the Exposition closely corresponds to his view of the Roman empress Livia, whose clear-sightedness, strength, and loyalty he appreciates. The biblical women likewise become real historical figures whom Philo interprets sympathetically from within.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 46-56
Author(s):  
Aleksandr V. Fedorov ◽  
◽  
Mikhail V. Krichevtsev ◽  

The article reviews the history of development of French laws on criminal liability of legal entities. The authors note that the institution of criminal liability of legal entities (collective criminal liability) dates back to the ancient times and has been forming in the French territory for a long time. Initially, it was established in the acts on collective liability residents of certain territories, in particular, in the laws of the Salian Franks. This institution was inherited from the Franks by the law of the medieval France, and got transferred from the medieval period to the French criminal law of the modern period. The article reviews the laws of King Louis XIV as an example of establishment of collective criminal liability: the Criminal Ordinance of 1670 and the Ordinances on Combating Vagrancy and Goods Smuggling of 1706 and 1711. For the first time ever, one can study the Russian translation of the collective criminal liability provisions of the said laws. The authors state that although the legal traditions of collective liability establishment were interrupted by the transformations caused by the French Revolution of 1789 to 1794, criminal liability of legal entities remained in Article 428 of the French Penal Code of 1810 as a remnant of the past and was abolished only as late as in 1957. The publication draws attention to the fact that the criminal law codification process was not finished in France, and some laws stipulating criminal liability of legal entities were in effect in addition to the French Penal Code of 1810: the Law on the Separation of Church and State of December 9, 1905; the Law of January 14, 1933; the Law on Maritime Trade of July 19, 1934; the Ordinance on Criminal Prosecution of the Press Institutions Cooperating with Enemies during World War II of May 5, 1945. The authors describe the role of the Nuremberg Trials and the documents of the Council of Europe in the establishment of the French laws on criminal liability of legal entities, in particular, Resolution (77) 28 On the Contribution of Criminal Law to the Protection of the Environment, Recommendation No. R (81) 12 On Economic Crime, the Recommendation No. R (82) 15 On the Role of Criminal Law in Consumer Protection and Recommendation No. (88) 18 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States Concerning Liability of Enterprises Having Legal Personality for Offences Committed in the Exercise of Their Activities. The authors conclude that the introduction of the institution of criminal liability of legal entities is based on objective conditions and that research of the history of establishment of the laws on collective liability is of great importance for understanding of the modern legal regulation of the issues of criminal liability of legal entities.


Author(s):  
Rodney Brazier

This chapter examines the role of the monarchy in the history of the British constitution during the twentieth century, investigating how the constitutional power enjoyed by the sovereign gave way to constitutional influence and describing the changes the Parliament made to the law relevant to the Crown. It suggests that, for most of the twentieth century, sovereigns and their closest advisers recognised the continuing need to adapt the institution of monarchy so as to reflect changes in British society, and this involved further erosions in the sovereign's power.


Author(s):  
Kate Purcell

This chapter looks at debates over whether the charted or ‘actual’ low-water line constitutes the normal baseline in commentary considering the implications of climate-related coastal change for maritime jurisdiction. It suggests that there has been some conflation of legal lines with the geographical objects by reference to which they are constructed or described. This seems to have encouraged the attribution of the natural variability of features of the coastal environment to both cartographic constructs and legal limits. The chapter revisits the text and drafting history of UNCLOS and the 1958 Conventions to explain why the identification of natural objects and qualities with either or both cartographic and legal constructs misunderstands the role of charted geographical features in the law.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kornelia Kończal

In early 2018, the Polish parliament adopted controversial legislation criminalising assertions regarding the complicity of the ‘Polish Nation’ and the ‘Polish State’ in the Holocaust. The so-called Polish Holocaust Law provoked not only a heated debate in Poland, but also serious international tensions. As a result, it was amended only five months after its adoption. The reason why it is worth taking a closer look at the socio-cultural foundations and political functions of the short-lived legislation is twofold. Empirically, the short history of the Law reveals a great deal about the long-term role of Jews in the Polish collective memory as an unmatched Significant Other. Conceptually, the short life of the Law, along with its afterlife, helps capture poll-driven, manifestly moralistic and anti-pluralist imaginings of the past, which I refer to as ‘mnemonic populism’. By exploring the relationship between popular and political images of the past in contemporary Poland, this article argues for joining memory and populism studies in order to better understand what can happen to history in illiberal surroundings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
SIMON FRITH

AbstractThis article considers the role of Marxism in the history of popular music studies. Its approach combines the sociology of knowledge with a personal memoir and its argument is that in becoming a field of scholarly interest popular music studies drew from both Marxist theoretical arguments about cultural ideology in the 1950s and 1960s and from rock writers’ arguments about the role of music in shaping socialist bohemianism in the 1960s and 1970s. To take popular music seriously academically meant taking it seriously politically. Once established as an academic subject, however, popular music studies were absorbed into both established music departments and vocational, commercial music courses. Marxist ideas and ideologues were largely irrelevant to the subsequent development of popular music studies as a scholarly field.


1998 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Estes

Our knowledge of Melanchthon's thought on the role of godly magistrates in the church is surprisingly incomplete, despite the generally acknowledged importance of that thought. Most Reformation scholars are familiar with Melanchthon's argument that the Christian magistrate is, as custodian of both tables of the Law and as foremost member of the church, the incumbent of an office established for the sake of the church and thus burdened with responsibility for the establishment and maintenance of true religion. Most know too that this argument became the standard Lutheran justification for what is called the cura religionis of the magistrate. Few, however, are aware that it took Melanchthon a good decade to arrive at that doctrine, that he spent a further decade or so refining and developing it, and that during all that time there was an intimate connection between the content of his thought and the course of public events. The reason for this gap in our knowledge is that the history of the development of Melanchthon's thought on the religious duties of secular rulers has not yet been written.


1998 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 209-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe

This article explores some textual dimensions of what I argue is a crucial moment in the history of the Anglo-Saxon subject. For purposes of temporal triangulation, I would locate this moment between roughly 970 and 1035, though these dates function merely as crude, if potent, signposts: the years 970×973 mark the adoption of the Regularis concordia, the ecclesiastical agreement on the practice of a reformed (and markedly continental) monasticism, and 1035 marks the death of Cnut, the Danish king of England, whose laws encode a change in the understanding of the individual before the law. These dates bracket a rich and chaotic time in England: the apex of the project of reform, a flourishing monastic culture, efflorescence of both Latin and vernacular literatures, remarkable manuscript production, but also the renewal of the Viking wars that seemed at times to be signs of the apocalypse and that ultimately would put a Dane on the throne of England. These dates point to two powerful and continuing sets of interests in late Anglo-Saxon England, ecclesiastical and secular, monastic and royal, whose relationships were never simple. This exploration of the subject in Anglo-Saxon England as it is illuminated by the law draws on texts associated with each of these interests and argues their interconnection. Its point of departure will be the body – the way it is configured, regarded, regulated and read in late Anglo-Saxon England. It focuses in particular on the use to which the body is put in juridical discourse: both the increasing role of the body in schemes of inquiry and of punishment and the ways in which the body comes to be used to know and control the subject.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samet Keserci ◽  
Eric B. Livingston ◽  
Lingtian Wan ◽  
Alexander R. Pico ◽  
George Chacko

AbstractDrug discovery and subsequent availability of a new breakthrough therapeutic or ‘cure’ is a compelling example of societal benefit from research advances. These advances are invariably collaborative, involving the contributions of many scientists to a discovery network in which theory and experiment are built upon. To understand such scientific advances, data mining of public and commercial data sources coupled with network analysis can be used as a digital methodology to assemble and analyze component events in the history of a therapeutic. This methodology is extensible beyond the history of therapeutics and its use more generally supports (i) efficiency in exploring the scientific history of a research advance (ii) documenting and understanding collaboration (iii) portfolio analysis, planning and optimization (iv) communication of the societal value of research. As a proof of principle, we have conducted a case study of five anti-cancer therapeutics. We have linked the work of roughly 237,000 authors in 106,000 scientific publications that capture the research crucial for the development of these five therapeutics. We have enriched the content of networks of these therapeutics by annotating them with information on research awards as well as peer review that preceded these awards. Applying retrospective citation discovery, we have identified a core set of publications cited in the networks of all five therapeutics and additional intersections in combinations of networks as well as awards from the National Institutes of Health that supported this research. Lastly, we have mapped these awards to their cognate peer review panels, identifying another layer of collaborative scientific activity that influenced the research represented in these networks.


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