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Contemporary interdisciplinary research is often described as bringing some important changes in the structure and aims of the scientific enterprise. Sometimes, it is even characterized as a sort of Kuhnian scientific revolution. In this paper, the analogy between interdisciplinarity and scientific revolutions will be analysed. It will be suggested that the way in which interdisciplinarity is promoted looks similar to how new paradigms were described and defended in some episodes of revolutionary scientific change. However, contrary to what happens during some scientific revolutions, the rhetoric with which interdisciplinarity is promoted does not seem to be accompanied by a strong agreement about what interdisciplinarity actually is. In the end, contemporary interdisciplinarity could be defined as being in a 'pre-paradigmatic' phase, with the very talk promoting interdisciplinarity being a possible obstacle to its maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the institutionalization of Victorian anthropology was marked, to a large extent, by the debates held between the Ethnological Society of London (ESL) and the Anthropological Society of London (ASL), and the way in which such battles were resolved, apparently, was with the foundation --in 1871-- of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI). However, previous accounts have ignored the fact that the emergence of the RAI was only possible thanks to the sustained interaction between the ESL and the ASL throughout the 1860s, at the annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), which were held in Britain; this involved several groups specializing in the development of the sciences. Such meetings were held in many other public spaces with regard to what took place at the Ethnological Society, or at the Anthropological Society of London. This paper is based on the media/literature of the time, archival materials, and other primary sources not previously studied, thus reconstructing the consolidation process regarding Victorian anthropology through the examination of debates on the sciences, with a special focus on the annual meetings of the BAAS, from 1863 to 1870. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The association of hyperparathyroidism due to parathyroid adenoma with differentiated thyroid cancer is not often considered because of its low incidence, and the presence of a parathyroid adenoma in an intrathyroidal position is rare. We report a case in which both conditions coexisted. Case Report: The case is of a 53 years old female patient who was diagnosed to have primary hyperparathyroidism due to a parathyroid adenoma in the right lower parathyroid gland as confirmed by biochemical and radiological investigations. During surgery the adenoma was found to be intrathyroidal in the lower part of the right thyroid lobe. Right lobectomy and isthemectomy were performed. Histology of the removed thyroid revealed the presence of an associated incidental papillary thyroid carcinoma in addition to the intrathyroidal parathyroid adenoma. The case is substantiated with published case reviews. Conclusion: This case illustrates the need for clinical awareness of concomitant hyperparathyroidism and nonmedullary thyroid carcinoma and the possible presence of a parathyroid adenoma in an intrathyroidal position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobility has been promoted as a positive in a researcher's career, but how do researchers perceive it? How important is it? What are its costs and benefits? Based on the testimony of 24 young Mexican researchers who have graduated from doctoral programs, with the highest recognition conferred by the National Council for Science and Technology (Conacyt) in the fields of biochemistry, physics, and the social sciences, the authors analyze the personal conditions and importance of international mobility for those who have graduated less than five years ago from these programs. Their aim is to clarify the meaning, the decision, and the importance of the experience in their early careers as researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In celebration of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 's 50th anniversary, we present a bibliometric analysis of nonprofit research published between 1999 and 2019, within and outside of three core nonprofit journals— NVSQ, NML, and Voluntas. We seek to understand which journals, across scientific domains and social science disciplines, inform nonprofit research in one of three ways, by (a) publishing articles, (b) citing the three core journals, or being cited in these core journals. We found that nonprofit research published in economics and social sciences journals has kept pace with a large increase in indexed research. Meanwhile, though the core nonprofit journals robustly cite and are increasingly cited by business and management and public administration journals, they are less engaged with other social science disciplines. We discuss ways that the core journals could increase their visibility and penetration into these other disciplines and highlight perspectives potentially missing from the core journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most recent studies of dual use research have focused on the life sciences, although some researchers have suggested that dual use research occurs across many disciplines. This research is an initial investigation into the prevalence of dual use research in other scientific disciplines by surveying senior editors of scientific journals, drawn from Journal Citation Reports. The survey was emailed to 7,500 journal editors with a response rate of 10.1 %. Approximately 4.8 % of life science editors reported they had to consider whether to publish dual use research and 38.9 % said they decided to not publish the research in question. In disciplines other than the life sciences, 7.2 % of editors from other science disciplines reported that they had to consider whether to publish dual use research, and 48.4 % declined to publish it. The survey investigated relationships between dual use and the journal's source of funding and place of publication, but no relationships were found. Further research is needed to better understand the occurrence of dual use research in other science disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first Fellows of the Royal Society with connections to New Zealand were James Cook, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, all of whom came to the South Pacific in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus. They subsequently made contact with New Zealand Māori, mapped the islands of New Zealand, and made many scientific observations. Since 1879, 42 New Zealand-born Fellows have been elected. The backgrounds to and accomplishments of these 42 Fellows of the Royal Society are outlined and discussed in the order of their dates of election and scientific disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discovery by Hans Spemann of the 'organizer' tissue and its ability to induce the formation of the amphibian embryo's neural tube inspired leading embryologists to attempt to elucidate embryonic inductions' underlying mechanism. Joseph Needham, who during the 1930s conducted research in biochemical embryology, proposed that embryonic induction is mediated by a specific chemical entity embedded in the inducing tissue, surmising that chemical to be a hormone of sterol-like structure. Along with embryologist Conrad H. Waddington, they conducted research aimed at the isolation and functional characterization of the underlying agent. As historians clearly pointed out, embryologists came to question Needham's biochemical approach; he failed to locate the hormone he sought and eventually abandoned his quest. Yet, this study finds that the difficulties he ran into resulted primarily from the limited conditions for conducting his experiments at his institute. In addition, Needham's research reflected the interests of leading biochemists in hormone and cancer research, because it offered novel theoretical models and experimental methods for engaging with the function of the hormones and carcinogens they isolated. Needham and Waddington were deterred neither by the mounting challenges nor by the limited experimental infrastructure. Like their colleagues in hormone and cancer research, they anticipated difficulties in attempting to establish causal links between complex biological phenomena and simple chemical triggering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific collaboration can only be understood along the epistemic and cognitive grounding of scientific disciplines. New scientific discoveries in astrophysics led to a major restructuring of the elite network of astrophysics. To study the interplay of the epistemic grounding and the social network structure of a discipline, a mixed-methods approach is necessary. It combines scientometrics, quantitative network analysis and visualization tools with a qualitative network analysis approach. The centre of the international collaboration network of astrophysics is demarcated by identifying the 225 most productive astrophysicists. For the years 1998-1999 and 2001-2006 four co-authorship networks are constructed comprehending each a two year period. A visualization of the longitudinal network data gives first hints on the structural development of the network. The network of 2005-2006 is analyzed in depth. Based on cohesion analysis tools for network analysis, two main cores and three smaller ones are identified. Scientists in each core and additionally in structurally interesting positions are identified and 17 qualitative expert interviews are conducted with them. The visualization of the network of 2005-2006 is used in the interviews as a stimulus for the interviewees. An analysis of the three most often used keywords of the 225 astrophysicists is included and combined with the other data. The triangulation of these approaches shows that major epistemic changes in astrophysics, e.g. the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, together with technical and organizational innovations, leads to a restructuring of the network of the discipline. The importance of a combination of qualitative and quantitative network analysis tools for the understanding of the interplay of cognitive and social structure in the sociology of science is substantiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Astrobiology's goal of promoting interdisciplinary research is an attempt to reverse a trend that began two centuries ago with the formation of the first specialized scientific disciplines. We have examined this era of discipline formation in order to make a comparison with the situation today in astrobiology. Will astrobiology remain interdisciplinary or is it becoming yet another specialty ? As a case study, we have investigated effects on the scientific literature when a specialized community is formed by analyzing the citations within papers published during 1802-1856 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Phil. Trans.), the most important 'generalist ' journal of its day, and Transactions of the Geological Society of London (Trans. Geol. Soc.), the first important disciplinary journal in the sciences. We find that these two journals rarely cited each other, and papers published in Trans. Geol. Soc. cited fewer interdisciplinary sources than did geology papers in Phil. Trans. After geology had become established as a successful specialized discipline, geologists returned to publishing papers in Phil. Trans., but they wrote in the new, highly specialized style developed in Trans. Geol. Soc. They had succeeded in not only creating a new scientific discipline, but also a new way of doing science with its own modes of research and communication. A similar citation analysis was applied to papers published over the period 2001-2008 in the contemporary journals Astrobiology and the International Journal of Astrobiology to test the hypothesis that astrobiologists are in the early stages of creating their own specialized community. Although still too early to reliably detect any but the largest trends, there is no evidence yet that astrobiologists are drifting into their own isolated discipline. Instead, to date they appear to remain interdisciplinary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]