Modes and Composite Material Things According to Descartes and Locke

This chapter deals with the ontology of bodies in Locke’s Essay. In Descartes’s ontology, a created substance, or its principal attribute, unifies the many modes that belong to that substance; by contrast, Locke’s ontology includes not only substances and their qualities, but also composite entities which contain substances but are unified by modes. Locke, it is argued, seeks to adapt the apparent unity of living things, e.g. oaks, horses, and human beings, to the (Cartesian) mechanistic doctrine that matter is a substance. His concepts of inner constitution and identity are designed to give a metaphysical account of the unity of the ordinary entities that are salient in our experience. There is nothing corresponding to this in the Cartesian texts. They purport to explain the unity among qualities of mercury, salt, etc., and the processes carried on by plants and animals on the basis of physical theory, not metaphysics.

Studies on hyperaccumulation of Mercury by Jussiaea repens under laboratory condition

Phytoremediation ability of plants has been a well known fact in the field of environmental toxicology. The present investigation reports the hyperaccumulating ability of aquatic plant Jussiaea repens under laboratory condition. Initiation of growth of roots of the plants in mercury contaminated water is a good morphological indication of the utilization of the mercury salt by the plant for its growth. To test the purifying potentiality of Jussiaea repens, mercury contaminated water and treated mercury contaminated water with Jussiaea repens were separately checked by in vitro pollen grain germination test. It was found that Jussiaea treated mercury-contaminated water significantly gives the higher percentage of pollen grain germination in comparison to pure mercury-contaminated water of the same concentration. Hence, Jussiaea repens can be effectively utilized for detoxification of heavy metals.

A heterogeneous mercury salt catalyst stabilized by m-carbaborane

A novel hetergeneous mercury salt catalyst stabilized by m-carbaborane can be used and reused for various chemical reactions without leaching the metal.