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Graph John Perkins who, after a ten-year struggle with cancer, died just short of his eightieth birthday, was a prominent historian of chemistry, particularly French, and for many years a stalwart of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC). The first stage was a roundtable discussion, "Chemistry Courses and the Construction of Chemistry, 1750-1820", at the sixth International Conference on the History of Chemistry held in Leuven in 2007. As Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent puts it, Perkins was a "key actor in the renewal of historical studies in chemistry during the past decades.". [Extracted from the article]

This paper publishes the sixty-nine surviving very personal letters that Reichsgraf von Rumford wrote to Viscountess Palmerston after they met in Milan in 1793. The letters draw attention to the private domestic spaces of science and the critical importance of the aristocracy in scientific developments, topics that have both received some discussion recently. They were, however, not written with the purpose of providing historical evidence, but as part of a decade-long friendship which the letters trace, revealing, among other things, Rumford's other amours. They also describe in some detail his thoughts about his activities as a member of the governing elite in Bavaria, his scientific and engineering researches (especially the writing and publication of his Essays), as well as what he would have termed his philanthropic efforts in Bavaria, Northern Italy, Britain, and Ireland. All this is framed within the context of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that in so many ways, directly and indirectly, affected Palmerston's and Rumford's lives and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note provides the context and transcription of a short satiric article published in the Bristol Mirror on the political events of 1809. The piece used chemical metaphors to provide an understanding of the circumstances surrounding the change of ministry in Britain in the autumn of that year. The article bears a strong resemblance to early twenty-first century political satire, including its relationship, or lack thereof, to reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper publishes, for the first time, Humphry Davy's June 1798 "An Essay on Heat and the Combinations of Light" written in Penzance. It is the manuscript that he sent to Thomas Beddoes which secured for him the position of Superintendent of the Medical Pneumatic Institution in Bristol while aged only nineteen. It is thus a crucial document that increases our understanding about how Davy made that move from Cornwall to Bristol, without which it is highly unlikely that he would have followed the spectacular career trajectory that he did. The "Essay" provides new insights into Davy's very early chemical reading (especially the English translations of Antoine Fourcroy's Elémens d'histoire naturelle et de chimie), the extent to which Davy read this (and other texts) in French, the chemical apparatus he used, the experiments he made and the development and retraction of his theory of phosoxyd (later phosoxygen). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of Ambix brings together eight new studies on Humphry Davy together with an appreciation of the life and work of David Knight, much of whose scholarship was devoted to understanding Davy. Taken together they provide a much richer and more nuanced account of aspects of Davy's life, showing how he and his work fitted into the very complex and difficult social, cultural and political contexts of the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Taking as our starting point Thomas Carlyle's 1829 critique of modern science, in this introduction we weld together the themes that emerge from these papers, many of which ground their results in the project to publish Davy's Letters. This project has provided evidence that helps us critique the disciplinary boundaries that led to Davy becoming seen mostly as a chemist, while his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge has generally been categorised as a poet. Such boundaries are now breaking down fruitfully as these essays all illustrate in their different ways. A consequence of the new understandings being produced, is that we need to consider anew what constitutes chemistry and chemists, how reputations and commemorations are constructed, the role of audiences (especially women) in developing knowledge and the use of language and literature, which, among other things, are key elements linking chemistry with other parts of society and culture. Davy provides an excellent location by which to address the historical issues involved, giving us an opportunity to balance carefully these and other components (such as human agency) in understanding how knowledge is constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, which is also a contribution to the somewhat understudied area of the history of biography, discusses a couple of short accounts of Humphry Davy's life and the three major biographies published in the years following his death. These were an "anti-biography" by John Ayrton Paris (1831) and two admiring biographies by Davy's younger brother John Davy (1836, 1858). By examining the processes surrounding their writing and publication, this study illustrates how Davy's biographical reputation was constructed, how his surviving manuscripts and related documents came to be collected and preserved and so help us understand the effects they continue to exert on Davy scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The London-based scientific organization has left its mark on everything from electrochemistry and molecular biology to lighthouse design, and it has been a leading innovator in science communication for more than 200 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of the existence of two opposed cultures, one literary and one scientific, has a long pedigree going back to nineteenth century. However, it was C.P. Snow's formulation of the idea in 1959 and F.R. Leavis's 1962 critique, which brought it to the fore in cultural discourse, where it has more or less remained ever since. The papers in this special double issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews examine the debate and its legacies from a variety of perspectives, while this introduction seeks to contextualise the issues raised and draw some contemporary lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I sketch the institutional interactions between the Board of Agriculture and the Royal Institution in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This includes analysing the composition of memberships and committees of both bodies in which, inter alia, I challenge Morris Berman's account of their institutional relations. A key figure was Humphry Davy who, because of his career ambitions, occupied a slightly uncomfortable position as Professor of Chemistry to both organisations. Davy's lecture notebooks and his subsequent publication Elements of Agricultural Chemistry reveal that he drew almost all his direct knowledge of the subject from Britain and Ireland. Yet, despite such parochial shortcomings that might be expected of an infant science at time of war, the popularity of his book, particularly in North America, provided continuity between the end of the Board of Agriculture in 1822 and the start of the impact of Justus Liebig's work in the 1840s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex Langevin method is a leading candidate for solving the so-called sign problem occurring in various physical situations. Its most vexing problem is that sometimes it produces 'convergence to the wrong limit'. In this paper we carefully revisit the formal justification of the method, identifying points at which it may fail and derive a necessary and sufficient criterion for correctness. This criterion is, however, not practical, since its application requires checking an infinite tower of identities. We propose instead a practical test involving only a check of the first few of those identities; this raises the question of the 'sensitivity' of the test. This sensitivity as well as the general insights into the possible reasons of failure (the etiology) are then tested in two toy models where the correct answer is known. At least in those models the test works perfectly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An obituary and tribute is presented for British historian of science David Charles Gooding (1947-2009).

Abstract: Stochastic quantization offers the opportunity to simulate field theories with a complex action. In some theories unstable trajectories are prevalent when a constant stepsize is employed. We construct algorithms for generating an adaptive stepsize in complex Langevin simulations and find that unstable trajectories are completely eliminated. To illustrate the generality of the approach, we apply it to the three-dimensional XY model at nonzero chemical potential and the heavy dense limit of QCD. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An obituary is presented for science historians A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall.

The article highlights the address delivered by Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald at the Queen's Hall in Great Britain on September 21, 1931. The speech discusses the specific events of celebrating Michael Faraday for the discovery of electromagnetic induction. September is seen by historians as one of the key months in interwar British history as it directly linked with the crises and growth of the corporate and coordinated state and the rise of modernity. Other topics tackled during the speech is included, like the Invergordon Mutiny and of Britain being forced off the gold standard.

The article examines Russian anarchism during the early Soviet period, and the role the Bolsheviks played in quelling the movement. The article discusses how anarchism rose during the early Soviet period, and how it played a critical role in the Russian Revolution. The article also analyzes the importance of anarchist leader Mikhail Bakunin in the movement.

Those who have worked in the Royal Institution of Great Britain have, since its foundation in 1799, made significant contributions to scientific knowledge, to its practical application, and to its communication to a wide variety of audiences. Such work cannot be carried out in an architectural vacuum, and in this paper we examine how the buildings of the Royal Institution, 20 and 21 Albemarle Street in central London, have shaped the work undertaken within its walls and how, on a number of occasions, the buildings have been reconfigured to take account of the evolving needs of scientific research and communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - To provide an empirical analysis of what influences police use of field citations (tickets) against citizens in nontraffic and traffic encounters. Design/methodology/approach - The research was conducted using systematic social observations of police-citizen encounters in Cincinnati, Ohio, from April 1997 to 1998. Multiple logistic regression models were used to examine the effects of legal and extralegal factors on the dependant variable (receipt of a citation) versus an officer doing nothing or arresting a citizen in nontraffic and traffic encounters. Findings - Officers appear to be more likely to issue citations, as opposed to doing nothing formal or making an arrest, in nontraffic encounters. The extant literature''s focus on citation issuance being more relevant to police behavior in traffic encounters as opposed to other routine encounters may be appropriate. When the decision rests between issuing a citation or making a full-custody arrest in traffic encounters, white officers are more likely to arrest than their black counterparts, and black suspects were significantly more likely than Caucasians to be arrested than cited. Race of the officer or the suspect exhibited no significant effect in any of the other models estimated. Research limitations/implications - The study utilized data collected on police-citizen interactions from one police agency in one jurisdiction, and the data do not come from a study designed primarily to examine citation outcomes or traffic encounters. Practical implications - This study would be useful to researchers examining police use of citations, officer behavior in traffic and nontraffic encounters, quantifying law in police-citizen encounters, and race-based policing. Originality/value - This study provides a comprehensive review of the literature, and an empirical analysis, regarding officer decision making as it pertains to the issuing of tickets relative to other police actions (i.e. arrest) in traffic and nontraffic situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lot of policewomen has been a difficult adaptation to a predominantly male-dominated organization. Being traditionally dominated by males, the police organization may become a problematic workplace for policewomen. In a patriarchal society, women are placed at a disadvantage because of gender-related workplace problems that may arise. This study involves an assessment of the gender-related problems experienced by the policewomen of the Philippine National Police in the central region of the Philippines. Likewise, the study provides analyses of the relationships of these gender-related problems to the job performance of women officers. Using a survey questionnaire, gender-related problems of policewomen are identified and related to their performance using both objective and subjective measures. The data indicate that women officers experience gender-related problems. However, these problems do not seem to relate significantly to their job performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determining the impact of civilian review board on the police is a challenging process. The task is complicated due to the absence of baseline data that will account for observed changes in citizen complaints, especially if the concept is a novelty in a particular jurisdiction. Likewise, using traditional measures of impact such as the number of complaints or conviction rates is problematic due to a variety of confounding factors. This study examines the perceptions of complainants and officers concerning the impact of civilian review boards. Using data collected through surveys of police officers and complainants in a metropolitan area in the Philippines, the study focuses on "learning" as a viable construct to measure the impact of civilian review boards and the perceived deterrent effects of these boards. The research found that civilian review boards have a significant impact on police officer perceptions as well as on the police department. The study also shows that learning may be a viable measure for studying the impact of civilian review boards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the Nobel Prize winners in X-ray crystallography, the role of physicists William Bragg and his son Lawrence Bragg in scientific discoveries, and the artistic skill of Lawrence Bragg.

Examines the context in which the explosion occurred at Haswell colliery in County Durham, the inquest process, and subsequent reports of scientists Michael Faraday and Charles Lyell in Durham, England. Mining background of Haswell; Role of Faraday and Lyell at the inquest; Impact of the subsequent report on the government.

A response from the author of the article "A Novel ‘Dilute-and-Shoot' Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry Method for the Screening of Antihypertensive Drugs in Urine" in the 2016 issue is presented.

This document is a letter published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that discusses the use of anti-hypertensive medication among individuals with and without substance use disorders (SUDs). The letter highlights the barriers that people with SUDs face in accessing SUD care and how this may lead to missed opportunities for treating co-existing chronic conditions, such as hypertension. The study analyzes data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and finds that individuals with SUDs are less likely to receive and use anti-hypertensive medication compared to those without SUDs. The letter suggests that societal-level barriers may contribute to these disparities. [Extracted from the article]

Profiles Gerald James Whitrow, vice president of the Royal Astronomical Society in Great Britain. Contributions of the scientist as a pioneer in the study of time; Span of the disciplinary interests in science; Accomplishments of Whitrow as a lecturer in mathematics and cosmology.

Shaping and monitoring the behavior of street-level officers has continued to be a difficult task for police managers, and this task may prove to be more difficult as modern departments increasingly rely on proactive law enforcement for the delivery of police services. A popular method to shape police behavior is holding officers, departments and municipalities civilly liable for street-level behavior. While it may be assumed fear of civil litigation influences the manner in which the police interact with the public, there is little empirical evidence for this claim; in fact, the frequent use of civil liability claims is poised to have an unanticipated side effect on contemporary policing. Officers may engage in fewer proactive law enforcement activities as a way to insulate them from litigation. This study examines whether experience with and attitudes toward civil liability influence the behavior of police officers, with particular attention on officer propensity to make arrests, use force, conduct searches and initiate encounters with suspects. Multivariate results indicate attitudes toward civil liability are weak and inconsistent predictors of behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]