Tracing Russell’s Views on the Relationship between Culture and Science as Intrinsically Linked through the Method of Analysis

Bertrand Russell, while expressing his deep concern for a prevailing negligence about an intrinsic aspect of science, which he terms culture, opines that culture is not to be understood as something divorced from science. His demarcation of old culture from young culture; and his claim that it is the young culture which is responsible for valuing science for its usefulness rather than its intrinsic aspect, i.e., prepares the stage for arguing in favour of endorsement of cultural intrinsicality of science. The paper argues that viewed from Russell’s perspective, understanding culture as something unrelated to science will be a mistake, because it will carry a message to the mankind which is detrimental to the entire fabric of social cohesion. The paper focuses on the inculcation of scientific habit, an intrinsic aspect of science, as culture. While doing so, the paper intends to stress on the point that the scientific habit, which is linked to the Russellian method of analysis, common to both science and philosophy, plays a significant role in enabling one to focus on the cultural aspect of science. Analysis, in the province of philosophy, is used by Russell primarily to analyze language.

A Thematic-Analytical Review of Knowledge Production Culture in Architectural Design

Architectural design, whether as a knowledge production process or as a ‘means’ for producing knowledge, has been the hot topic of theoretical debates since the late 1990s. Despite the developments, it requires more clarity as a young culture in the discipline. This research aims at deciphering the theoretical body to identify and bring the central themes into sight and provide a legible interpretation of knowledge production in architectural design. To this end, a unique methodology, adopted form content analysis, has been utilized. In this paper, a piece of the relevant literature was analysed by a computer application namely NVivo. The analysis has revealed a set of words from which the central themes are extracted. Out of thirty emphatic words, ten central themes are generated. According to the findings, ‘design and research’, ‘design process and methods’, and ‘newness and novelty’ appeared to be the key themes when knowledge production in architecture matters. The remaining seven themes are mainly included in the key themes. The findings show that knowledge production in architectural design is much more influenced by the field of design studies rather than architecture. This study remarks that the objective and generic aspect of architecture is investigated for knowledge production, however, taking architecture-specific dimensions into account could bring new insights into the discipline.Az építészeti tervezés a tudástermelés folyamataként és „eszközeként” is az elméleti viták központi témája az 1990-es évek vége óta. Bár még fejlődésben van, a tudomány fiatal területeként szükség van arra, hogy fogalmait egyértelműbbé tegyék. E kutatás célja egy elméleti törzsanyag meghatározása, hogy a tudástermelés területe jól körülhatárolható legyen, célkitűzései láthatóvá, és fogalma értelmezhetővé váljon az építészeti tervezésben is. Ennek érdekében egyedülálló módszertan, formai tartalomelemzés alkalmazására került sor. A tanulmányban a vonatkozó szakirodalom egy részét az NVivo elnevezésű számítógépes alkalmazás segítségével elemeztük. Az elemzés gyakran ismételt szóhalmazokat gyűjtött, majd ezek alapján kivonatolta a szövegekben leggyakrabban előforduló témákat. A program harminc hangsúlyos szóból tíz központi témát generált. Az építészetre vonatkozó tudástermelés vizsgálata során a leggyakoribb találatok a „tervezés és kutatás”, a „tervezési folyamat és módszerek”, valamint az „újdonság és újszerűség” voltak. A többi hét témát nagyrészt magukba foglalták ezek a kulcstémák. A további eredmények azt mutatják, hogy az építészeti tervezésben megjelenő tudástermelésre nagyobb mértékben hatnak a tervezéselméleti stúdiumok, mint az építészeti gyakorlat. Noha jelen tanulmányunk az építészet objektív és általános aspektusát vizsgálja a tudástermelés szempontjából, e tudományágban később új fejezetet nyithatnak a kifejezetten építészeti szempontú megközelítések is.

Mature school cultures and new leadership practices—An analysis of leadership for learning in German comprehensive schools

In international school improvement research, a long-standing theme is that school improvement is shaped to a great extent by principals and their leadership for learning. In contrast to that, this role is comparatively new in German-speaking countries. Since the leadership practices associated with this new role differ from old role expectations, it is reasonable to assume that “mature” school cultures might prevent principals from adopting these practices. In this paper, we examine the difference in leadership practice between principals of “mature” and “young” culture schools in socially disadvantaged areas using a standardized teacher survey. The results suggest that while schools with a mature school culture founded during the old principal role were less likely to have such leadership practices that are more proximal to teachers’ instruction and pedagogical practice, this result could largely be explained by other characteristics of the school culture and professional community.

Clostridium nitrophenolicum sp. nov., a novel anaerobic p-nitrophenol-degrading bacterium, isolated from a subsurface soil sample

An obligate anaerobic, mesophilic, motile and endospore-forming bacterium, designated 1DT, was isolated from a subsurface soil sample. The young culture of strain 1DT was Gram-positive and formed oval spores that were central in position. Based on the biochemical, chemotaxonomic and physiological data, strain 1DT appears to be a member of the genus Clostridium. Strain 1DT was found to be capable of degrading p-nitrophenol (pNP) at a concentration of 0.5 mM under anaerobic conditions as revealed by HPLC analysis. The major fatty acids were C16 : 0 (28.02 %), iso-C17 : 1 I/anteiso B (23.05 %) and C14 : 0 (10.02 %). The major polar lipid content was diphosphatidylglycerol. Strain 1DT showed highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to Clostridium aciditolerans JW/YJL-B3T (98.2 %) and similarity was less for Clostridium scatologenes ATCC 25775T (95.1 %), Clostridium drakei SL1T (95.0 %) and Clostridium carboxidivorans P7T (95.0 %). Phylogenetic analysis showed that it formed a coherent cluster with the species belonging to cluster I of the genus Clostridium. The DNA G+C content was 35.5 mol%. DNA–DNA hybridization analysis indicated a mean value of 36.4 % between strain 1DT and its closest relative C. aciditolerans. Several phenotypic differences from the closely related species were also revealed. On the basis of the polyphasic characteristics, strain 1DT represents a novel species of the genus Clostridium, for which the name Clostridium nitrophenolicum sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is 1DT (=MTCC 7832T=JCM 14030T).

Involvement of Native Abscisic Acid in the Regulation of Onset of Dormancy in Spirodela polyrrhiza

The medium in which an old culture of S. polyvrhiza was growing aseptically decelerated frond multiplication and promoted turion (= dormant propagule) formation in a young culture of this plant. The effect is attributed to abscisic acid (ABA) which had been released by the old culture into the medium. The time of appearance of the released ABA in the solution was correlated with the beginning of turion formation in the old culture. Native ABA is probably involved in the regulation of onset of dormancy in S. polyrvhiza.

Photosynthesis and nitrogenase activity in the blue-green alga Gloeocapsa

In a young culture, photosynthetic-oxygen evolution by Gloeocapsa is at a low level while nitrogenase activity is at its greatest. When the culture ages, there is a rapid increase in photosynthetic pigments and oxygen evolution, and nitrogenase activity decreases. The temporal separation of nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis may serve to protect nitrogenase from oxygen denaturation.

Studies on the adsorption of certain medium proteins to Mycoplasma gallisepticum and their influence on agglutination and haemagglutination reactions

SUMMARYSerum proteins from Mycoplasma gallisepticum culture medium could be detected on the organisms as a result of incubation at low pH. Only certain of the serum proteins, including IgG and IgM, were found, and the adsorption appears to depress the haemagglutinating activity of the organisms. There was no obvious effect on slide agglutination (SA) sensitivity but an incidental finding was that brief acid treatment enhanced the SA sensitivity of an antigen prepared from a young culture.