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Latin America was fundamental in the intellectual formation of the founders of modern biology (e.g. Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Henry Bates and William D. Hamilton), but these pioneers directed their findings primarily to a European audience. Only later did European ethological influence reach Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. From there, the study of behaviour moved to Ecuador and Colombia; Brazilians and Mexicans were further influenced by networks of researchers from the U.S.A. Latin American contributions to ethology and animal behaviour are broadly visible, with a few important centres, especially in Brazil and Mexico. More recently, there also has been a Latin American scientific diaspora, mainly to Europe, U.S.A., Canada and Australia (among other countries), with many ethologists and behavioural scientists becoming active members of the Animal Behavior Society. Latin American scholars, both those who stayed in Latin America and those who are part of the diaspora, have made significant scientific advances, while also demonstrating an ongoing commitment to the development of science in Latin America. Information on the ethology of endemic Latin American species has provided some fundamental theoretical insights, which have also enhanced ethological knowledge.

This paper proposes an application of distorted entropy as well-known tools for non-additive expected utility theory in word ranking. Our algorithms for two books “Statistical Inference” by Casella and Berger and “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin show that our method on the distorted entropy improves the corresponding ones in the literature.

Many of the early descriptions of Characidae species are very short and mainly vague, lacking essential information for a reliable diagnosis and determination of species. That is the case of Astyanax taeniatus. In a break from his journey on board the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin wandered the interior of Rio de Janeiro State, and collected two small fishes that were briefly described in 1842 by Jenyns as Tetragonopterus taeniatus, and later transferred to Astyanax by Eigenmann. Since then, both the identity and the type-locality of the species have remained somewhat elusive, generating taxonomic confusion with other congeneric species and misidentifications. A redescription of A. taeniatus in 2001 perpetuated the problem, since the type-material was not examined and the geographic region covered by that study was relatively limited, maintaining the taxonomic uncertainty to the present day. In this study, in order to retrieve taxonomic data and to warrant an accurate identification for A. taeniatus henceforth, we integrated molecular and morphology data obtained from syntypes and new specimens collected in the type-locality. Additionally, information from Darwin's journal and from a Brazilian project to retrieve Darwin's travels in Brazil ("Caminhos de Darwin"), allowed to accurately locate the A. taeniatus type-locality at Conceicao de Macabu municipality, northern Rio de Janeiro State. The two syntypes of T. taeniatus were examined and a tissue sample was extracted from one of them to compare genetically to other Astyanax species. Then, the Cytochrome Oxidase Subunit I (COI) sequence of this syntype was included in a matrix with 30 characid species from Brazilian coastal rivers, including those collected in the Corrego das Aduelas at type-locality. The smallest values of p-distance (0.01) were found between the sequences of the syntype and specimens of Astyanax from Corrego das Aduelas, Rio Macae basin, in “Fazenda Socego”. The anatomical and meristic information of the modern specimens collected in the type-locality also agree with data from the syntypes. Integrating morphology and molecular techniques for ancient DNA, we succeeded to definitely solve the taxonomy of A. taeniatus and also identify modern topotypes in Corrego das Aduelas at Conceicao de Macabu (RJ). Based on the syntypes and on a collection of A. taeniatus, including topotypes, the species is herein redescribed and a lectotype is designated. Besides, the accurately delimitation of A. taeniatus allowed us to detect and describe a new species, Astyanax keronolepis n. sp., which has been occasionally misidentified as A. taeniatus.

It is well-established that Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne (1806–1875), and Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) were the founding fathers of Parisian and French neurology during the second half of the 19th century, although much more is known about Charcot than about his “master” Duchenne. In Britain, Thomas Clifford Allbutt (1836–1925) was Leeds’ most distinguished physician of the 19th century, eventually becoming Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. Allbutt's 1860–1861 year of postgraduate study in Paris and his friendship with Duchenne profoundly influenced his own contributions to nervous system and mental diseases , partly in collaboration with his colleague James Crichton-Browne (1840–1938) at the nearby West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, Yorkshire. The present report briefly recalls the careers of Duchenne and Allbutt, and also presents a unique account by Allbutt of Duchenne in action at the height of his powers, investigating and defining the previously uncharted field of neuromuscular diseases with the aid of his localized electrization techniques. This account is discussed in relation to: Duchenne's personality and pioneering neurological achievements; the origins of French neurology; and the development of Anglo–French neurological relationships during the 19th century. Interestingly, both Duchenne and Crichton-Browne separately made important and much-appreciated contributions to the third major book by Charles Darwin (1809–1882), The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872.

Bioaerosol is a concept that is used to describe all biological materials suspended in the air, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, pollen, and their derivatives such as allergens, endotoxin, mycotoxins and etc. In some studies, primary biological aerosol particle (PBAP) is also coined to refer to intact microbes in the air. Bioaerosol is a multidisciplinary research subject, involving many different fields such as microbiology, mechanical engineering, air pollution, medical science, epidemiology, immunological science, biochemistry, physics, nanotechnologies and etc. The bioaerosol field has undergone about 200 years' research history since 1833 when mold spores were first detected in the air by Charles Darwin on the Cape Verde Islands. In recent decades, there has been a research boom in bioaerosol field, thus triggering many outstanding research opportunities. Visible progress has already been made in understanding bioaerosol roles in human health, atmospheric and ecological impacts as well as their respective technologies: bioaerosol capture, monitoring and also inactivation. Most recently, researchers from different fields start to bridge together for solving bioaerosol challenges and addressing key scientific problems, e.g., bioaerosol spread, real-time detection, indoor microbes, human bioaerosol emissions, and bio-defense. Toward this effort, a “Bioaerosol Xiangshan Science Conference-the 600th” has been successfully held in the summer in Beijing, China. A total of 47 scientists and funding agency officials including leading bioaerosol experts from overseas were invited and two-day long extensive discussions on bioaerosol progress and problems were carried out. Future bioaerosol directions have been outlined by the attendees during the conference. Some of the participants have also contributed to this bioaerosol special issue. This special issue consists of a total of 20 bioaerosol articles from eight countries including one review, and contributes to the advances in bioaerosol emission, transmission, health effects, ambient bioaerosols, method development and instrumentation, and control. Through this special issue, the bioaerosol community has obtained a better understanding of bioaerosol health risks and developed the corresponding strategies to confront the threats. This special issue might serve as a starting point to not only link bioaerosol scientists from different continents, but also bring together people from various fields yet with an interest in bioaerosol to collectively advance the field further.

Leonard Horner (1785–1864) made substantial contributions to the study of loess. He made field trips with J.J. Noeggerath and Charles Lyell and published useful material on the loess near Bonn. He was an unappreciated pioneer- he was the first person to direct attention to loess as a material. He pointed out that loess was intrinsically interesting. He studied the material transported by the Rhine, and the alluvial deposits in Egypt, looking for links to loess, and the problem of loess formation. He was born in Edinburgh in 1785 and directed the thoughts of young Charles Darwin towards science when he came to Edinburgh to study medicine. Circumstances placed him in Bonn in the critical years 1831–1833; in this time Charles Lyell married his eldest daughter Mary; and both Lyell and Horner encountered the loess. Lyell made it well known via vol.3 of the Principles of Geology, Horner became a loess enthusiast. In the summer of 1833 Horner & Lyell were in the crater of the Roderberg considering the more than 20 m of loess deposited there. His major paper was published in 1836 (reporting the Roderberg excursion) and he joined Lyell’s list of loess investigators in the 5th edition of the Principles published in 1837. He was the last to join that select eleven: Bronn, Leonhard, Boue, Voltz, Steininger, Merian, Rozet, Hibbert, Noeggerath, von Meyer, Horner. Most of these were writing on the geology and landscapes of the Rhine valley, but Horner was drawing attention to the amazing nature of the loess itself, in particular the spectacular disaggregation on contact with water. He also published the first geological map of the Bonn region, including the Roderberg and the Siebengebirge, a region of loess and volcanoes.

Bioaerosol is a concept that is used to describe all biological materials suspended in the air, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, pollen, and their derivatives such as allergens, endotoxin, myctoxins and etc. In some studies, primary biological aerosol particle (PBAP) is also coined to refer to intact microbes in the air. Bioaerosol is a multidisciplinary research subject, involving many different fields such as microbiology, mechanical engineering, air pollution, medical science, epidemiology, immunological science, biochemistry, physics, nanotechnologies and etc. The bioaerosol field has undergone about 200 years' research history since 1833 when mold spores were first detected in the air by Charles Darwin on the Cape Verde Islands. In recent decades, there has been a research boom in bioaerosol field, thus triggering many outstanding collaboration opportunities. Visible progress has already been made in understanding bioaerosol roles in human health, atmospheric and ecological impacts as well as their respective technologies: bioaerosol capture, monitoring and also inactivation. Most recently, researchers from different fields start to bridge together for solving bioaerosol challenges and addressing key scientific problems, e.g., bioaerosol spread, real-time detection, indoor microbes, human bioaerosol emissions, and bio-defense. Toward this effort, a “Xiangshan Science Conference” with a bioaerosol focus has been successfully held in the summer of 2017 in Beijing, China. A total of 47 scientists and funding agency officials from diverse fields including leading bioaerosol experts from overseas were invited and two-day long extensive discussions on bioaerosol progress and problems were carried out. Future bioaerosol directions have been outlined by the attendees during the conference. Some of the participants have already contributed to this bioaersol special issue. This special issue might serve as a starting point to not only link bioaerosol scientists from different continents, but also bring together people from various fields yet with an interest in bioaerosol for collaboration, the special issue is expected to collectively advance our understanding of the bioaerosol roles in the earth system. This preface will be updated accordingly when the special issue is completed in early 2018.

This paper presents the impact of diverse aspects of Darwin's works on the practices of mammal paleontology in different moments of nineteenth-century Argentina. Starting with Darwin through the publications of Florentino Ameghino, it shows the extraordinary complexity of systematic paleontology that characterized the second half of the nineteenth century. Neither “natural selection” nor “struggle for life” seemed to have shaped the practices of vertebrate paleontology in Argentina. Darwin's earlier work as a voyageur and geologist together with later concerns about intermediate forms and variation allow for an assessment of the impact of Darwin's work on the practice of paleontology in Argentina. Fil: Podgorny, Irina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Archivo Histórico; Argentina

I argue that verbal models should be included in a philosophical account of the scientific practice of modelling. Weisberg (2013) has directly opposed this thesis on the grounds that verbal structures, if they are used in science, only merely describe models. I look at examples from Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) of verbally constructed narratives that I claim model the general phenomenon of evolution by natural selection. In each of the cases I look at, a particular scenario is described that involves at least some fictitious elements but represents the salient causal components of natural selection. I pronounce the importance of prioritising observation of scientific practice for the philosophy of modelling and I suggest that there are other likely model types that are excluded from philosophical accounts.

Quantitative description of the role of soil fauna in soil organic matter (SOM) formation and dynamics is necessary for further development of SOM modelling. This is especially true for the role of anecic earthworms in SOM formation, which was first observed in the classical investigations of Charles Darwin in 1881. Despite the large number of earthworm studies available in the literature, more attention has been paid to the role of these organisms in loss of carbon through decomposition and nutrient release than to their role in SOM formation. A set of anecic earthworm parameters were compiled or developed for ease of incorporation as a module into the SOM dynamics model Romul_Hum, which also represents the SOM forming activities of soil micro- and meso-biota. An approach was developed for initialization of earthworm biomass in the absence of measured biomass, and parameters were developed for food palatability, ingestion and egestion. The eco-physiological parameters of food consumption, excretion efficiency, assimilation efficiency, lifespan, and mortality for anecic earthworms were developed using an approach similar to that for food web mesofauna in the Romul_Hum. Parameters for processes unique to freshly excreted casts were developed to include rapid mineralization of SOM and nitrogen, SOM formation, and high nitrogen fixation rates. The addition of the earthworm module to the Romul_Hum model allows assessment of the combined effects of earthworms cast production, and micro- and meso-faunal food web activity within the casts, on the formation of stable SOM.

A number of psychologists have concluded that creativity is primarily the domain of the young. Recent research has shown that this is wrong. Conceptual innovators make sudden radical innovative leaps, early in their careers. But experimental innovators work incrementally to develop new methods based on extended observation, and their innovations emerge late in their careers. The psychologists who contended that creativity diminishes with age failed to perceive that virtually every intellectual activity has had important older experimental innovators as well as their young conceptual rivals. Their error poses a barrier to understanding creativity, and makes a damaging contribution to ageism. This paper briefly examines the achievements of a number of great experimental innovators, including Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Paul Cezanne, and Elizabeth Bishop, and uses their work as the basis for an understanding of the specific mechanisms that connect age with experimental creativity.

As a primary expositor of the work of Lynn Margulis collaborating with her over thirty years on over thirty books and forty articles, scientific and popular, I attempt here to summarize her unique and lasting influence on evolutionary biology. Describing life on Earth as the multi-billion-year evolution of microbial communities, from prokaryotes maintaining Earth's atmosphere away from thermodynamic equilibrium to all eukaryotes as polygenomic beings, Margulis's interdisciplinary work has deeply influenced multiple fields including systematics, theories of the evolution of metabolism, paleobiology, and biogeochemistry. Overturning the neo-Darwinist narrative that speciation almost always occurs by the gradual accumulation of random mutations, Margulis's work revives a discarded philosophical speculation of the pre-Socratic Empedocles, who suggested that Earth's early beings both merged and differentially reproduced (were naturally selected); a speculation that was rejected by Aristotle probably because it smacked of mythological chimeras that had no place in observational biology, and later by Charles Darwin, who mentioned Aristotle's rejection of Empedocles to show that he knew of but did not accept natural selection, thus helping lay his own claim to its own proper scientific presentation in a Victorian culture whose thinking of origins was dominated not by Greek mythology but Christian special creation. Margulis's curiosity-driven science, collaborative work ethic, status as a woman, embrace of novelty, philosophical stance, current status of her theories, and the proposal for a new science of symbiogenetics are among the topics examined.

[Extract] Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911), a cousin of Charles Darwin, was a man of many talents and immense curiosity. As a statistician, he developed measures of tendency, normal distribution, standard devia-tion, correlation and other procedures. His interest in eugenics lead to work on fingerprint identification, twin-studies and blood transfusions. Meticulous research in many other fields included tropical exploration. The Art of Travel is a collection of travel advice based on personal experience after finding no valuable information for his journey to South-West Africa, as well as advice, hints and tips from other travellers of his time. Importantly, Galton verified most of the second-hand advice before entering it in his compendium, which became the standard guide for the serious English traveller to ‘uncivilized’ places, predominantly in Africa. Although there were further editions, this fifth edition (1872) is the most comprehensive. Several publishers have reprinted the book in recent years, including a free eBook, the latter, unfortunately, without the indispensable illustrative images, sketches, plans and tables.

Introduction We sought to understand the effects of Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) on vascular surgery practices as related to the VASCON scale. Methods All members of the Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Society (VESS) were surveyed on the effects of COVID-19 in their practices, educational programs, and self-reported grading of their surgical acuity level using the VASCON scale. Results Total response rate was 28% (206/731). Most respondents (99.5%) reported an effect of COVID-19 on their practice, and most were VASCON3 or lower level. Most reported a decrease in clinic referrals, inpatient/ ER consults, and case volume (p

This article examines six main elements in the modern story of the impact of Alfred Russel Wallace's 1855 Sarawak Law paper, particularly in the many accounts of Charles Darwin's life and work. These elements are: 1 It was Wallace's first avowal of evolution. 2 Wallace laid out the theory of evolution minus only a “mechanism”. 3 Darwin failed to see how close Wallace was approaching. 4 Lyell did see how close Wallace was approaching. 5 Lyell urged Darwin to publish because of Wallace. 6 Darwin wrote to Wallace to warn him off his patch. Each of these are very frequently repeated as straightforward facts in the popular and scholarly literature. It is here argued that each of these is erroneous and that the role of the Sarawak Law paper in the historiography of Darwin and Wallace needs to be revised.

Teleology—what Aristotle called “final cause”—is trying to understand things in terms of the future, as when we ask about the plates on the back of the dinosaur, stegosaurus, and suggest that they might sometime be used to control the internal temperature of the brute. Recently the philosopher Thomas Nagel has argued for a wholesale embrace of teleological thinking in the sciences, particularly the life sciences. I argue that Nagel's thinking is shoddy and ill-informed, but that in some sense biologists do (with reason) seem drawn to teleological understanding, and so the correct response is not outright rejection of the very idea but a more informed and sympathetic approach to those aspects of nature that seem to call for final cause thinking.

For thirty years, from the early 1840s, Charles Darwin documented the disappearance of flints in the grounds of Down House in Kent, at a location originally known as the “Stony Field”. This site (Great Pucklands Meadow – GPM) was visited in 2007 and an experiment set up in this ungrazed grassland. Locally-sourced flints (either large – 12 cm, or small – 5 cm dia.) were deposited at two densities within sixteen 1 m2 plots in a randomised factorial design. The area selected was distant from public access routes and remained unmown throughout the duration here reported. Fixed point photographs were taken at the outset to enable later photogrammetric analysis. After 6 years, the site was re-examined. The flints had generally been incorporated into the soil. Photographs were re-taken, proportion of buried flints recorded and measurements made of burial depth from a quarter of each plot. Results showed that large flints were more deeply incorporated than smaller (p = 0.025), but more of the latter were below the soil surface. A controlled laboratory experiment was also conducted using Aporrectodea longa (the dominant earthworm species in GPM) to assess effects of casting in the absence of other biota. Results suggested that this species has a major influence on flint burial through surface casting. Combined with a long term, but small scale collection of A. longa casts from an area close to GPM, all results were consistent with those provided by Darwin and showed that rate of flint burial was within the range of 0.21–0.96 cm y−1.

Evolution is the most revolutionary concept in the history of science. Nothing else has more radically changed human understanding of the natural world and ourselves. The work of Charles Darwin showed, irrefutably, that humans are lust another animal occupying a small branch on a vast tree of life. No divine spark is needed to explain our existence and traits. Here, van Wyhe discusses the story of how one of science's greatest ideas came into being is both remarkable and riddled with myths.

For decades creationists have claimed that Charles Darwin sought the skulls of full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian people when only four were left alive. It is said that Darwin letters survive which reveal this startling and distasteful truth. Tracing these claims back to their origins, however, reveals a different, if not unfamiliar story.

This paper reviews the classical theories that attempted to explain the influences on the sex ratio at birth (M/F). These included notions pertaining to the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) and to laterality i.e. from which side of the body (in both parents) the conceptual principle arose. This narrative will also outline the initial physical measurements of male and female births and speculations by John Graunt (1620–1674), John Arbuthnott (1667–1735) and Johann Sussmilch (1707–1767), as well as the conundrums that M/F presented to Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and the theories of Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) who expanded on concepts first promulgated by Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794). Fortunately, the thousands of papers generated on topic, especially the more recent work pertaining to direct and measurable influences (such as exogenous stress periconceptually and during pregnancy) have begun to yield some concrete findings, indeed, “among this welter of evidence, it is possible to pin down a few facts” such that “we have found ourselves following Ariadne's thread to a series of clues that bind the calculation of the proportion of boys and girls at birth”.

Spanish Abstract: Charles Darwin menciona las islas Galapagos en dos secciones de su libro El Origen de las Especies. En comparacion con otras fuentes de informacion, los datos recopilados en este archipielago no son los protagonistas de su gran obra. Este hecho contrasta con la historiografia contemporanea y la cultura popular que otorgan un papel central a estas islas en su pensamiento. Como y cuando Darwin resolvio el “Gran misterio de los misterios” y, en particular, el papel que desempeno su visita a las islas Galapagos en este sentido, se han convertido en objeto de una considerable leyenda en la historia de la ciencia. Este articulo se basa en un analisis de El Origen de las Especies para entender el rol que cumplieron las impresiones y los datos recopilados en las islas Galapagos en el desarrollo de la teoria de la seleccion natural. Esta informacion fue claramente una fuente importante de inspiracion, pero Darwin no descubrio la evolucion en las islas. Los ejemplares recolectados en Galapagos no fueron la clave singular de su teoria de la evolucion, tal como a menudo se lo presenta hoy en dia. Decadas de experimentacion sobre especies domesticas en Gran Bretana proporcionaron la mayor parte de la evidencia para el desarrollo de su teoria. English Abstract: Charles Darwin mentions the Galapagos Islands in two sections of his book The Origin of Species. Compared with other sources of information, data collected in this archipelago are not the leading character of his great work. This fact contrasts with contemporary historiography and popular culture, which bestow a central role on these islands in Darwin’s thinking. How and when Darwin solved the “great mystery of mysteries” and, in particular, the role played by his visit to the Galapagos Islands in this regard have become the subjects of a remarkable legend in the history of science. This article, which is based on an analysis of The Origin of Species, aims to understand the role played by the impressions and data collected in the Galapagos Islands in the development of the theory of natural selection. This information was clearly an important source of inspiration, but Darwin did not discover evolution on the islands. The specimens collected in the Galapagos were not the singular key to his theory of evolution as is often portrayed today. Decades of experimentation on domestic species in Britain provided most of the evidence for the development of his theory.

article i nfo Charles Darwin and Vasily Dokuchaev made early and important, but quite different, contributions to pedogenic theory. Their major contributions were bothwritten asbooks —Darwin's,1881TheFormationofVegetableMould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observation on Their Habits, and Dokuchaev's, 1883 Russian Chernozem. Although most soil scientists are familiar with Dokuchaev's legacy and lasting impact, far fewer know about or value equally Darwin's "worm book." Dokuchaev's factorial approach to soil science, drawn from observations across the Eurasian steppe, helped map, classify, and place economic value on soils, while also providing key insight into their formation. This approach gained visibility in the 1930s and 1940s, when personnel at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and some aca- demic pedologists, recognized its utility for soil survey and for interpreting pedogenesis. Jenny's (1941) book, Factors of Soil Formation, helped the model to gain acceptance, and it eventually became entrenched as the core ped- ogenic model for North America, if not the world. Dokuchaev's legacy is tied to this model. Alternatively, Darwin's main contribution to the field was to shed light on soil processes, particularly faunal mixing (bioturbation) and the textural sorting itcan produce. Although Darwin's findingsfosteredanarray of multidisciplinary studiesonpedogenicprocesses during the ensuing 50 years, his work languished in the broad shadow cast by Dokuchaev's model. In 1975, Darwin's ideas reappeared inSoil Taxonomy —associated with rudimentary biomantle concepts. Recently, empowered with new concepts and language, bioturbation concepts have gained considerable traction. We briefly summarize the backgrounds of Darwin and Dokuchaev, and compare their fundamentally different approaches to pedogenesis. But insofar as Dokuchaev's approach is more mainstream, we emphasize Darwin's, for balance. We show how Darwin's model, updated with current understandings of biomantle formation, is allowing new questions to be asked about pedogenesis and landscape evolution, and formerly intractable ones to be answered. We stress the profound role of conceptual models in guiding explanatory thought, and end by positing that both Darwin's and Dokuchaev's approaches, while different in their basic structure and goals, provide together a more complete view of pedogenesis than either can do singly.

“I sometimes think that general and popular treatises are almost as important for the progress of science as original work.” - Charles Darwin, 1865. As the largest encyclopedia in the world, it is not surprising that Wikipedia reflects the state of scientific knowledge. However, Wikipedia is also one of the most accessed websites in the world, including by scientists, which suggests that it also has the potential to shape science. This paper shows that it does. Incorporating ideas into Wikipedia leads to those ideas being used more in the scientific literature. We provide correlational evidence of this across thousands of Wikipedia articles and causal evidence of it through a randomized control trial where we add new scientific content to Wikipedia. In the months after uploading it, an average new Wikipedia article in Chemistry is read tens of thousands of times and causes changes to hundreds of related scientific journal articles. Patterns in these changes suggest that Wikipedia articles are used as review articles, summarizing an area of science and highlighting the research contributions to it. Consistent with this reference article view, we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations. Our findings speak not only to the influence of Wikipedia, but more broadly to the influence of repositories of knowledge and the role that they play in science.

Charles Darwin and Augustus Earle were close companions for a year both on ship and shore during the Beagle's second expedition to South America under Captain Robert FitzRoy. The discoveries that Darwin, then a young, inexperienced naturalist, made during the voyage were integral to the evolution of his thought, and provided crucial evidence for the theories he formulated in his On the Origin of Species (1859). Earle, a professional artist and experienced and independent global traveller, was presumably chosen as artist for the voyage by FitzRoy because of his reputation, his earlier travels and the resultant works. In a broad sense Earle's travel art has affinities with methods of scientific investigation and modes of thought associated with Darwin's experiences on the Beagle expedition. Both are characterised by close and critical observation of natural phenomena and the people they encountered. Both men's practices went beyond the accumulation of factual information. They were notable for their questionings of previously-held beliefs and the formulation of new views of the world and the relationships of humans within it. This essay explores the parallels and differences between Earle's and Darwin's responses to places and people in Brazil and New Zealand. It considers whether the dynamics of inquiry, as well as the imaginative capacities, that marked the artist and his work could have informed the development of those qualities, so necessary for his later paradigm-shifting scientific work, in the young inexperienced naturalist. While any evidence is largely circumstantial, clearly evident are the transformative effects that exploratory voyaging had on the observations and practices of both men.

This paper proposes a new metric to evaluate and rank the relevance of words in a text. The method uses the Shannon’s entropy difference between the intrinsic and extrinsic mode, which refers to the fact that relevant words significantly reflect the author’s writing intention, i.e., their occurrences are modulated by the author’s purpose, while the irrelevant words are distributed randomly in the text. By using The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin as a representative text sample, the performance of our detector is demonstrated and compared to previous proposals. Since a reference text “corpus” is all of an author’s writings, books, papers, etc. his collected works is not needed. Our approach is especially suitable for single documents of which there is no a priori information available.

For decades historians of science and science writers in general have maintained that Charles Darwin was not the ‘naturalist’ or ‘official naturalist’ during the 1831–1836 surveying voyage of HMS Beagle but instead Captain Robert FitzRoy’s ‘companion’, ‘gentleman companion’ or ‘dining companion’. That is, Darwin was primarily the captain’s social companion and only secondarily and unofficially naturalist. Instead, it is usually maintained, the ship’s surgeon Robert McCormick was the official naturalist because this was the default or official practice at the time. Although these views have been repeated in countless accounts of Darwin’s life, this essay aims to show that they are incorrect.

During the preparation of an exhibition in Pavia dedicated to the centennial anniversary of the death of the Italian Pathologist Paolo Mantegazza, a strange cheratinic horn was found at the Museum for the History of the University of Pavia labelled as 'spur of a cock transplanted into an ear of a cow.' After some historical investigation, we found this strange object was at the centre of a scientific correspondence between Mantegazza and Charles Darwin, who made reference to it in his book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.

Charles Darwin is one of the most widely revered and enduringly controversial figures in the history of science. Both are exceptional feats for such a mild-­mannered gentleman. Much of the controversy surrounding Darwin concerns the presumptive truthfulness of his evolutionary theory. Darwin's ideas about evolution were so ground-breaking that, more than one hundred and fifty years after the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859), many people still refuse to accept Darwin's basic precepts (McGettigan, 2010).

This paper debunks three persistent myths: that creativity is greatest in youth, that wisdom hinders creativity, and that every discipline has a single peak age of creativity. These myths systematically neglect the achievements of experimental innovators – including such figures as Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Paul Cezanne, Robert Frost, Virginia Woolf, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Alfred Hitchcock – who develop their work gradually over long periods to arrive at major contributions. Recent research has shown that experimental innovators are greatest late in life, that their wisdom increases their creativity, and that virtually every intellectual domain has great experimental old masters as well as conceptual young geniuses. In a society that devotes as much effort as ours to eliminating such pernicious forms of discrimination as racism and sexism, it is past time to recognize that these myths about creativity make a damaging contribution to ageism.

Ten years after his return to England on board ‘The Beagle’ in 1836, Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) started collecting, dissecting, describing and interpreting both extant and fossil acorn and goose barnacles (cirripedes). In all, he spent eight years on this animal group and, between 1851 and 1855, published four authoritative and admirably illustrated volumes on these sessile crustaceans; a highly valuable source of information, even to the present day. The Maastricht pharmacist, Joseph Augustin Hubert de Bosquet (1814–1880), who also was a well-versed collector and student of Late Cretaceous fossils from the nearby St Pietersberg, corresponded with Darwin on the subject of cirripedes between 17 December 1852 and early November 1856. In addition, these gentlemen exchanged monographs, manuscripts, engravings and specimens. At a time when Darwin was finally trying to come to terms with his ‘wretched’ barnacles, he much appreciated the support and understanding coming from Maastricht and his letters clearly show the respect he had for his fellow barnacle worker. In fact, Darwin’s barnacle work strengthened his resolve to publish his 1859 masterpiece, On the Origin of Species . Current studies of cirripedes in the Maastricht area seek to complement de Bosquet’s pioneering work and document in more detail the stratigraphic ranges of the various taxa as well as their relationships with species elsewhere in Europe as well as overseas.

The issue of inherited disorders in pedigree dogs is not a recent phenomenon and reports of suspected genetic defects associated with breeding practices date back to Charles Darwin's time. In recent years, much information on the array of inherited defects has been assimilated and the true extent of the problem has come to light. Historically, the direction of research funding in the field of canine genetic disease has been largely influenced by the potential transferability of findings to human medicine, economic benefit and importance of dogs for working purposes. More recently, the argument for a more canine welfare-orientated approach has been made, targeting research efforts at the alleviation of the most suffering in the greatest number of animals. A method of welfare risk assessment was initially developed as a means of objectively comparing, and thus setting priorities for, different welfare problems. The method has been applied to inherited disorders in pedigree dogs to investigate which disorders have the greatest welfare impact and which breeds are most affected. Work in this field has identified 396 inherited disorders in the top 50 most popular breeds in the UK. This article discusses how the results of welfare risk assessment for inherited disorders can be used to develop strategies for improving the health and welfare of dogs in the long term. A new risk assessment criterion, the Breed-Disorder Welfare Impact Score (BDWIS), which takes into account the proportion of life affected by a disorder, is introduced. A set of health and welfare goals is proposed and strategies for achieving these goals are highlighted, along with potential rate-determining factors at each step.

Faced with writing Alfred Russel Wallace’s obituary for Science in 1913, Theodore Cockerell identified the challenge posed by Wallace: “It is impossible for any man to discuss adequately the life work of Alfred Russel Wallace. His activities covered such a long period, and were so varied, that no one living is in a position to critically appreciate more than a part of them.” Wallace is best known for his discovery, with Charles Darwin, of evolution by natural selection, but Cockerell recognized that this was just one chapter in the sprawling Wallace epic.

The theories of John Hughlings Jackson (1835–1911) on brain structure and function will be discussed in the light of earlier theories of the frontal lobes that influenced him. These included the works of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). Hughlings Jackson's Four Principles of Nervous Action were: – evolution of nervous functions; – hierarchy of those functions; – negative and positive symptoms of dissolution; – local and uniform dissolution. Important principles were the hierarchical organisation of the central nervous system, with interactions between levels. The highest level was the prefrontal cortex . His ideas were better applied to the motor than the sensory system . Further he was concerned with movements rather than muscles. Of considerable significance were ideas of inhibition and release, and that clinical signs of neurological injury involved both processes simultaneously. This led to concepts of positive and negative symptoms, which he opined were present in every case; lesions could never localise a function, but only degrade a system, and the clinical effects were a reflection of the continued level of activity of parts of the brain spared by the lesion. His interests in philosophy led him to state there was no physiology of the mind any more than there was a psychology of the nervous system; he advocated the Doctrine of Concomitance and parallelism of mental and neural states. Hughlings Jackson disagreed with the cerebral laterality ideas of Pierre Paul Broca (1824–1880). He was impressed by the work of the French anatomist and zoologist Luis Pierre Gratiolet (1815–1865) and advocated an important role for the right hemisphere in language. For Hughlings Jackson mentation was a “dual process, played out between the two hemispheres of the brain”. Finally, in the presentation there will be a brief note on the relationship between Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) and Hughlings Jackson [1] , [2] , [3] .

In this essay, I discuss the origin of Charles Darwin's interest in cirripedes (barnacles). Indeed, he worked intensively on cirripedes during the years in which he was developing the theory that eventually led to the publication of The Origin of Species. In the light of our present knowledge, I present Darwin's achievements in the morphology, systematics and biology of these small marine invertebrates, and also his mistakes. I suggest that the word that sheds the most light here is homology, and that his mistakes were due to following Richard Owen's method of determining homologies by reference to an ideal archetype. I discuss the ways in which his studies on cirripedes influenced the writing of The Origin.

This essay considers Charles Darwin's late work, "Cross- and Self-Fertilization of Plants," locating it in the overall context of Darwin's thought and ideas. It is shown how it is part of a long-term interest in the purpose of sexuality, and how it complements Darwin's earlier book on the fertilization of orchids. It is concluded, however, that Darwin had no full solution to his problem.

Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) is a very different kind of work from On the Origin of Species (1859). This "otherness" is most extreme in the character of the explanations that Darwin offers in the Expression. Far from promoting his theory of natural selection, the Expression barely mentions that theory, instead drawing on explanatory principles which recall less Darwinian than Lamarckian and structuralist biological theorizing. Over the years, historians have offered a range of solutions to the puzzle of why the Expression is so "non-Darwinian". Close examination shows that none of these meets the case. However, recent research on Darwin's lifelong engagement with the controversies in his day over the unity of the human races makes possible a promising new solution. For Darwin, emotional expression served the cause of defending human unity precisely to the extent that natural selection theory did not apply.

As we observe the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, microbiologists interested in the application of Darwin's ideas to the microscopic world have a lot to celebrate: an emerging picture of the (mostly microbial) Tree of Life at ever-increasing resolution, an understanding of horizontal gene transfer as a driving force in the evolution of microbes, and thousands of complete genome sequences to help formulate and refine our theories. At the same time, quantitative models of the microevolutionary processes shaping microbial populations remain just out of reach, a point that is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the lack of consensus on how (or even whether) to define bacterial species. Here, we summarize progress and prospects in bacterial population genetics, with an emphasis on detecting the footprint of positive Darwinian selection in microbial genomes.

A widely assumed but largely untested hypothesis central to ecology and evolutionary biology has been Charles Darwin's suggestion that closely related species will be more ecologically similar, and thus will compete more strongly with each other than they will with more distantly related species. We provide one of the first direct tests of the “competition-relatedness hypothesis” by combining two data sets: the relative competitive ability of 50 vascular plant species competing against 92 competitor species measured in five multi-species experiments, and measures of the phylogenetic relatedness of these species. In contrast to Darwin's assertion, there were weak relationships between the strength of competition and phylogenetic relatedness. Across all species studied, the competition-relatedness relationship was weak and not significant. This overall lack of pattern masked different responses of monocot and eudicot focal (phytometer) species. When monocots served as the focal (phytometer) species, the intensity of competition increased with the phylogenetic distance separating species, while competition decreased with phylogenetic distance for eudicot phytometers. These results were driven by the monocot-eudicot evolutionary split, such that monocots were poor competitors against eudicots, while eudicots are most strongly suppressed by other eudicots. There was no relationship between relatedness and competition for eudicots competing with other eudicots, while monocots did compete more intensely with closely related monocots than with distantly related monocots. Overall, the relationships between competition intensity and relatedness were weak compared to the strong and consistent relationships between competitive ability and functional traits such as plant size that have been reported by other studies. We suggest that Darwin's assertion that competition will be strongest among closely related species is not supported by empirical data, at least for the 142 vascular plant species in this study.

Charles Darwin, James Clerk Maxwell, and Francis Galton were all aware, by various means, of Aldolphe Quetelet's pioneering work in statistics. Darwin, Maxwell, and Galton all had reason to be interested in Quetelet's work: they were all working on some instance of how large-scale regularities emerge from individual events that vary from one another; all were rejecting the divine interventionistic theories of their contemporaries; and Quetelet's techniques provided them with a way forward. Maxwell and Galton all explicitly endorse Quetelet's techniques in their work; Darwin does not incorporate any of the statistical ideas of Quetelet, although natural selection post-twentieth century synthesis has. Why not Darwin? My answer is that by the time Darwin encountered Malthus's law of excess reproduction he had all he needed to answer about large scale regularities in extinctions, speciation, and adaptation. He didn't need Quetelet.

To Charles Darwin, it was obvious that animals are sentient, so why should the idea not be now universally accepted? I review the difficulties and issues with animal sentience with a view to answering some of the critics. Sentience is ‘the hard problem' and it is important we acknowledge the difficulties and do not claim too much for the evidence we have. Two sorts of evidence are examined: evidence from animal cognition and evidence from animal emotion, including the ways we now have of ‘asking' animals what they want, behaviour, brain imaging and parallels with our own emotions. Despite the problems, the study of animal sentience is one of the most important areas of biology. Although conclusive evidence that animals are sentient may elude us, evidence of what they want and how they see the world is increasingly open to us and it is important that it is used. There is a danger that well-meaning people define animal welfare in terms of what they think animals want or what pleases them. But if we take animal sentience seriously, we must ensure that the animal voice is heard.

There are two main senses of 'mechanism', both deriving from the metaphor of nature as a machine. One sense refers to contrivance or design, as in 'the plant's mechanism of attracting butterflies'. The other sense refers to cause or law process, as in 'the mechanism of heredity'. In his work on evolution, Charles Darwin showed that organisms are produced by a mechanism (natural selection) in the second sense, although he never used this language. He also discussed contrivance, where he did use the language of mechanism. This discussion relates metaphor in general and Darwin's use of the machine metaphor in particular to the problem of the nature of science, concluding that one use of the metaphor reinforces the objective nature of science and the other use reinforces the subjective nature of science.

When a midwife is working as a midwife that is what she is. A midwife who is also a nurse is not working as a nurse when she cares for women with complex maternity care needs she is working as a midwife, an honour afforded to her by her midwifery education, registration and regulation. We would like to respond to the Editorial published in the previous edition of the Collegian (2012) 19 ‘Meeting the needs of rural and regional families: Educating midwives’ (pp. 187—188) and share some of our very positive experiences of Direct Entry Bachelor of Midwifery (BMid) Graduates working in some of Australia’s most remote areas in the Northern Territory (NT). A little bit about us: Rachael Lockey is a graduate of a BMid education. For the past 5 years she has worked in the NT, first for an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, Congress Alukura, and then as NT Department of Health (DH) Co-Director of Maternity Services, an NT wide role with responsibility for midwifery workforce development. Currently she is employed as a Technical Midwifery Advisor for the International Confederation of Midwives. Sue Kildea is a midwife and a nurse who has spent a large part of her career in rural and remote areas and has spent nine years as Vice President of CRANAPlus the remote health organisation. Most recently she holds a clinical chair position as the Professor of Midwifery which is a joint appointment with the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and Mater Health Service. In this role she was instrumental in developing the partnership with the NT DH and Congress Alukura to commence the first cohort of students in the ACU Away from Base BMid (Indigenous) course. Her previous position was a joint appointment between Charles Darwin University (CDU) and the NT DH. The authors to whom we respond describe themselves as ‘nurses, midwives and academics practising in regional Australia’ and challenge the notion that an undergraduate BMid degree ‘alone’ will meet the health workforce needs of regional, rural and remote Australia. We agree with the authors on this point, no single profession can meet the workforce needs of regional, rural and remote Australia. However, midwives can go a long way to meet the maternity care needs of families in these areas. P i

The legal, political, and social meaning of the work of Charles Darwin has been claimed as resident to conservative and liberal homes alike. Peter Singer’s unique admixture of per

The Origin of species is often seen as a turning point in nineteenth-century biology, but arguments that commenced before its publication were not immediately resolved by its publication. In this paper, I examine the debate about bee cell construction; whether bees built hexagonal cells or not, and how this instinct could evolve. Bees were of particular importance to natural theologians as examples of God’s design in nature. Other naturalists sought to explain their complex behaviour without invoking design, but there was still no agreement on how bees were able to make their cells so perfect. The work of Charles Darwin and William Tegetmeier on this subject sought to settle the controversy; yet their experiments and arguments did not convince everyone in the apiarian world.

Frank Balfour was regarded by his colleagues as one of the greatest biologists of his day and Charles Darwin’s successor, yet the young aristocrat died in a climbing accident before his thirty-first birthday. Reactions to his death reveal much about the image of science and scientists in late-Victorian Britain. In this paper I examine the development of the Cambridge school of animal morphology, headed by Balfour, and the interdependence of his research reputation and his charisma. Contemporaries praised his gentlemanly qualities, making his aristocratic background a part of his scientific character. Yet his reputation for good judgement and his abilities as a leader were severely tested when it began to emerge that the accident that killed Balfour and his guide might have been prevented. Nonetheless, the image of Balfour that emerges from his obituaries is that of a noble hero and outstanding scientist, who lived on in the memories of all who knew him.

Ernst Mayr’s typological/population distinction is a conceptual thread that runs throughout much of his work in systematics, evolutionary biology, and the history and philosophy of biology. Mayr himself claims that typological thinking originated in the philosophy of Plato and that population thinking was first introduced by Charles Darwin and field naturalists. A more proximate origin of the typological/population thinking, however, is found in Mayr’s own work on species. This paper traces the antecedents of the typological/population distinction by detailing Mayr’s changing views of species between 1942 and 1955. During this period, Mayr struggles to refine the biological species concept in the face of tensions that exist between studying species locally and studying them as geographically distributed collections of variable populations. The typological/population distinction is first formulated in 1955, when Mayr generalizes from the type concept versus the population concept in taxonomy to typological versus population thinking in biology more generally. Mayr’s appeal to the more general distinction between typological and population thinking coincides with the waning status of natural history and evolutionary biology that occurs in the early 1950s and the distinction plays an important role in Mayr’s efforts to legitimate the natural historical sciences.

It is unnecessary to describe the horror of surgery prior to the demonstration of ether anaesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846. It was clearly a nightmare for patients and must have been little better for the medical personnel involved in so terrifying an undertaking. What is less obvious is that the introduction of anaesthesia accomplished far more than the abolition of intraoperative pain. The solution of the problem of pain enabled the evolution of virtually all of modern surgical therapeutics. Prior to this development, the major characteristic of a technically brilliant surgeon was speed the ability to do a below-the-knee amputation in less than a minute made or unmade reputations. Intra-cavitary surgery; operations in the chest, abdomen or skull were largly unthinkable and when attempted, commonly led to the death of the patient, not because of pain per se, but because the surgeon had no time in which to think and take deliberate action. So practical were the properties of anaesthetics, that their clinical use spread rapidly throughout the medical world without the least understanding of the mechanisms by which the agents worked. The drugs obviously produced unconsciousness and freedom from the perception of noxious stimuli. It was also desirable that they did so as rapidly as possible, and that such effects were completely reversible with few physiological side effects. We would not dispute these requirements today. Within the context of thencurrent chemical knowledge, three agents appeared to fit all or some of this description. Diethyl ether, as used by Morton, became the standard for generations. Nitrous oxide provided all the correct attributes but one sufficient potency to cause unconsciousness and surgical anaesthesia. Chloroform also provided the requisite analgesia and unconsciousness and was used for decades, despite its potentially lethal side effects. The early lack of understanding and, indeed, concern about anaesthetic mechanisms of action should not be too surprising. Very few of the drugs then in use were understood in any detail. Drugs were found largely by trial and error in animals and humans. That they worked and were relatively safe was all that was required. In the context of this pragmatic medical world, Ernest Overton was a fascinating exception. Bom in Cheshire, England, in 1865, Overton was a distant relative of Charles Darwin. His maternal grandfather, Reverend W. Darwin Fox was an entomologist, second cousin and close friend of Darwin. With his family, Overton moved to Switzerland at the age of seventeen and there completed his education. He received