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The focus of this paper is one of James Prescott Joule's scientific contributions: the laws of heat production by electric currents in conductors. In 1841, the 22 years old Joule published a paper with the title "On the heat evolved by metallic conductors of electricity, and in the cells of a battery during electrolysis" where he presented an experimental study of that phenomenon and proposed two laws that were allegedly supported by his trials. On closer inspection, both his laboratory work and his inferences can be challenged. The emphasis of this article is an attempt to understand Joule's experimental undertaking, its highpoints and shortcomings, by a detailed analysis of this specific episode and by studying the precedents of his work and subsequent advancements. It is possible to point out several serious deficiencies of that investigation, and Joule's contemporaries, such as Edmond Becquerel and Heinrich Lenz, did criticize some of his flaws and undertook new experiments to provide a sound basis for those laws. Besides providing a historical examination of that specific episode, this article uses this case study to tackle some features of the nature of science that may contribute to scientific education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nobel Prize has acted as a surrogate record of invention and discovery throughout the twentieth century. Based on this surrogacy, many claims are made regarding both trends in research and claims for places of research excellence. In this paper I propose that any analysis should be weighted by the 'prize share' made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to each recipient. In addition, I argue for a focus on the organization and period when the prize-winning research was carried out, rather than when the award was made and the often quoted 'affiliated organization at the time of award'. I use this to briefly examine types of invention and discovery for all Nobel Prizes in Physics awarded to date (1901–2019). I then use this 'place' lens to briefly explore trends in invention and discovery in the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Physics. I conclude by drawing attention to the difference between institutions claiming Nobel Laureates and institutions where Nobel Prize-winning discoveries and inventions have been made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of exploratory modeling constitutes a powerful heuristic tool for historical-epistemological analysis and especially for studying concept formation. I will show this by means of a case study from the history of particle physics: the formation of the concept of "strangeness" in the early 1950s at the interface of theory and experiment. Strangeness emerged from a broad space of possibilities opened up by exploratory modeling by authors working in communication and competition, and constructing both new questions and new answers. A systematic focus on exploratory modeling also helps compensate a bias towards the "right" developments still often present in historical investigations of theoretical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Galaxies are the basic structural element of the universe; galaxy formation theory seeks to explain how these structures came to be. I trace some of the foundational ideas in galaxy formation, with emphasis on the need for non-baryonic cold dark matter. Many elements of early theory did not survive contact with observations of low surface brightness galaxies, leading to the need for auxiliary hypotheses like feedback. The failure points often trace to the surprising predictive successes of an alternative to dark matter, the Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). While dark matter models are flexible in accommodating observations, they do not provide the predictive capacity of MOND. If the universe is made of cold dark matter, why does MOND get any predictions right? • Low surface brightness galaxies provide critical tests of galaxy formation theory. • Dark matter-based galaxy formation theory failed to predict the observed properties of low surface brightness galaxies. • The observed properties of low surface brightness galaxies were correctly predicted by the Modified Newtonian Dynamics. • Fine-tuning problems in the dark matter paradigm stem from trying to mimic the predictions of Modified Newtonian Dynamics. • There is an analogy between feedback in dark matter models with eccentrics in the time of Copernicus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of particle physics can be considered nothing less than a huge triumph for science. Over the course of a little more than a century of effort, our understanding of the world of atomic and subatomic physics went from a vague understanding of atoms, to one that is much more detailed. Early in this hundred-year-long period, we learned about electrons (1897), then how they circle a dense nucleus (1911), followed by the discovery of the protons (1917) and neutrons (1932) that form the nucleus. From the 1930s onward, researchers used both cosmic rays and particle accelerators to discover antimatter (1932), and particles that don't exist in atoms (e.g., the muon [1936] and neutrino [1956], as well as a huge number of others). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science took on several distinct uses and meanings under Francoism. It was exhibited as a token of intellectual prowess, deployed as a mighty diplomatic tool, applied as a resource for industry, and invoked in support of National Catholicism. However, in order to successfully fulfill all these roles, science had first to be cleansed and purified, for it was historically bound to materialism, atheism, and positivism. Physics had developed a mechanical worldview that precluded spiritual agency, and the theory of evolution had deprived man of his privileged place in nature. Could these developments be reversed? Classical physics would not easily serve the needs of the new National Catholic state, but modern physics might do, acting as a model and a tool for biological reasoning. In this paper we describe the various attempts by Spanish scientists, philosophers, and intellectuals to enlist modern physics and a revised version of evolution in the construction of the new regime. They strove to show their spiritual value, to sever them from a soul-less modernity, and to reinstate them within a grand universal Catholic tradition. We discuss the import of their arguments for the simultaneous debates about time, space, matter, life, and evolution, exploring the affinities and tensions between the inert and the living world.

Argument: The aim of this article is to make a case for the pertinence of a biographical approach to the history of scientific objects. I first lay out the rationale of that approach by revisiting and extending my earlier work on the topic. I consider the characteristics of scientific objects that motivate the biographical metaphor, and I indicate its virtues and limitations by bringing out the positive and negative analogies between biographies of scientific objects and ordinary biographies. I then point out various ways in which scientific objects may pass away and argue that their demise should be conceptualized as a process. Finally, I sketch the history of the concept of "ether" in nineteenth and early twentieth century physics and suggest that it lends itself particularly well to a biographical treatment. To that effect, I discuss the identity, heuristic character, and recalcitrance of the ether and examine the reasons that may have led to its passing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "end" here refers to physical objects, considered either individually or as compilations, and their changing meanings - from scientific objects in use, to items about science in the past worth preserving, to potentially destroyed or redundant objects. In other words, writing about the demise of scientific objects can turn into a process of object formation that perfectly demarcates the properties of the dead objects in new ways, and thus regards as non-existent an object that, as clearly defined I a posteriori i , can hardly be said to have ever existed. The death, demise or termination, addressed here refers to the histories of how scientific objects end, either by disappearing from the scientific stage or by their transformation in such a substantial way so as to give birth to a new object. [Extracted from the article]

Books without an author may give rise to several problems in bibliography. I describe three such cases, where Hungarian scholarship supposed Hungarian authors. These authors are Ferenc Weiss, Elek Horányi and Kristóf Akai. In the cases of Weiss and Akai we can clearly tell the real authors, while we can only say that the theses attributed to Horányi were quite likely not written by him, but probably by an Italian piarist professor [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a comprehensive outlook on the history of physics in the Czech lands in the era of Enlightenment and its heritage in the first half of the 19th century. Enlightenment in the Czech lands was a process of reforms directed from the imperial court, whose part was also the directive to teach experimental physics at the universities in Prague and Olomouc. After overcoming the Aristotelianism of Jesuit physics, it was dominated by Joseph Stepling, later the new research of electrical phenomena with the personality of the autodidact Prokop Diviš and at its end the influence of the professors František Petřina and Christian Doppler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

mRNA translation is a crucial process that leads to protein synthesis in living cells. Therefore, it is a process that needs to work optimally for a cell to stay healthy and alive. With advancements in microscopy and novel experimental techniques, a lot of the intricate details about the translation mechanism are now known. However, the why and how of this mechanism are still ill understood, and therefore, is an active area of research. Theoretical studies of mRNA translation typically view it in terms of the Totally Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process or TASEP. Various works have used the TASEP model in order to study a wide range of phenomena and factors affecting translation, such as ribosome traffic on an mRNA under noisy (codon-dependent or otherwise) conditions, ribosome stalling, premature termination, ribosome reinitiation and dropoff, codon-dependent elongation and competition among mRNA for ribosomes, among others. In this review, we relay the history and physics of the translation process in terms of the TASEP framework. In particular, we discuss the viability and evolution of this model and its limitations while also formulating the reasons behind its success. Finally, we also identify gaps in the existing literature and suggest possible extensions and applications that will lead to a better understanding of ribosome traffic on the mRNA. • Explanation of the translation mechanism and similarities with TASEP. • Details of TASEP and the various aspects of translation it can explain. • Application of TASEP to transcription, motor transport and fungal growth. • Survey of the experiments that uncovered details of the translation mechanism. • How the large scale experimental data have been used in TASEP. • Limitations and future perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black holes entered scientific literature as early as at the end of eighteenth century. They had been known at that time as dark stars, but their concept did not find its way to physics or astronomy, and had been abandoned for more than one hundred years. I shall sketch historical developments and discuss present mathematical and observational status of black holes.

Building on my previous writings on presentism, pluralism, and "complementary science", I develop an activist view of historiography. I begin by recognizing the inevitability of presentism. Our own purposes and perspectives do and should guide the production of our accounts of the past; like funerals, history-writing is for the living. There are different kinds of presentist history, depending on the historians' purposes and perspectives. My particular inclination is pluralist. Science remembers its own history from a particular perspective ("whiggism"), which views the past as imperfect versions of the present; if professional historians of science shared this perspective, our work would be redundant. Instead, we can make it our task to illuminate the aspects of the past of science that scientists themselves tend to ignore and forget. History of science can also take a more productive role in the creation and improvement of scientific knowledge. Scientific progress as we know it tends to involve the shutting down of alternative paths of inquiry, resulting in a loss of potential and actual knowledge. A critical and sympathetic engagement with the past allows us to recover the lost paths, which can also suggest new paths. These points will be illustrated by a number of examples, especially from the history of chemistry and physics, including the recovery and extension of past experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric radiation measurements use a Kipp and Zonen CNR1 radiometer for down- and up-welling longwave (LW) and shortwave (SW) radiation. The UK's first mountain weather station was established at its highest point, Ben Nevis (1345m), in 1883 and was operational until 1904. Shortwave radiation is important for assessing the potential for solar power in the UK's uplands, with the LW and energetic particle measurements initially motivated by research into the atmospheric effects of ionisation (e.g. Aplin and Lockwood, 2013). (b) The number of years of Sgdata available for each day of the year from 2004-2006, 2009-2011 (Marchlyn), 2012, 2014 and 2017-2019. gl There are very little data at altitude within the UK with which to compare the Snowdonia measurements, but a short (5 day) time series from Cairn Gorm (57.0607°N, 3.6066°W, 1245m) in 1970 (Harding, 1979), is also shown in Figure 3(a). [Extracted from the article]

This paper highlights the significance of sensory studies and psychophysical investigations of the relations between psychic and physical phenomena for our understanding of the development of the physics discipline, by examining aspects of research on sense perception, physiology, esthetics, and psychology in the work of Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, and Ernst Mach between 1860 and 1871. It complements previous approaches oriented around research on vision, Fechner's psychophysics, or the founding of experimental psychology, by charting Mach's engagement with psychophysical experiments in particular. Examining Mach's study of the senses and esthetics, his changing attitudes toward the mechanical worldview and atomism, and his articulation of comparative understandings of sensual, geometrical, and physical spaces helps set Mach's emerging epistemological views in the context of his teaching and research. Mach complemented an analytic strategy focused on parallel psychic and physical dimensions of sensation, with a synthetic comparative approach – building analogies between the retina, the individual, and social life, and moving between abstract and sensual spaces. An examination of the broadly based critique that Mach articulated in his 1871 lecture on the conservation of work shows how his historical approach helped Mach cast what he now saw as a narrowly limiting emphasis on mechanics as a phase yet to be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mindful of a stated Project 2061 goal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, emphasizing that "scientific literacy includes seeing the scientific endeavor in the light of cultural and intellectual history," and in the continuing spirit of narrowing the gap between the "two cultures" by enhancing STEAM awareness and education, this essay illustrates, quite literally through well-known works of Western art, the striking parallels between fundamental themes in physics and the visual arts through history. These connections include: the identification of microcosm–macrocosm analogies in prehistoric proto-science; the beginning of the appreciation in pre-classical antiquity of the lawfulness of nature under the aegis of a Divine Lawgiver; the rise of rationalism and the first theories of the architecture of matter during the so-called "Greek miracle"; the overlapping role of theology's "handmaiden" during the emblematic medieval Age of Faith; Renaissance renovations and the triumph of the "mechanical universe" as the capstone of the scientific revolution in the early modern period; the influence on physics of the Romantic notion of an underlying unity in all of nature, and the increasing abstraction in both art and physics during the nineteenth century; and, finally, the parallels between twentieth-century art and the physics of relativity and quantum theory, concluding with examples from modern cosmology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To integrate traditional classical mechanics topics into a broader view, that some authors associate to drawing from I the theory of complex systems i [[13]], would be a great contribution to new generations of physics students. The new book constitutes a new modern approach to teaching mechanics, in particular under the context of facing classical mechanics versus quantum mechanics, and showing connections to quantum mechanics, classical field theory, gravitation and current ideas on astrophysics. And finally, how classical mechanics is related to modern physics, especially quantum mechanics and general relativity. A modern approach to teaching classical mechanics: A review of Modern classical mechanics by T. M. Helliwell and V. V. Sahakian, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020, 704 pp., £56.00, (hardback), ISBN 978-1-10-883497-1. [Extracted from the article]

In its early stages, oral history proposed a new technique of knowledge production for the humanities: the interview. Today, oral history is understood as a way of collecting the voices of those people who might otherwise have had no say in the writing of history. In the 1940s and 1950s United States, however, oral history was regarded primarily as a method of giving voice to social and political elites. Most often, those who conducted the interviews did not listen to the sound recordings, which were immediately transcribed by colleagues, research assistants, or secretaries, as a supplement to the written record that could enable a fuller, more comprehensive, and better history. Why, then, conduct interviews—why not simply ask the protagonists to write down their memories? I seek to answer that question by examining one particular project of elite interviewing in the early 1960s, Sources for History of Quantum Physics, initiated by American physicists and carried out by three historians of science, Thomas S. Kuhn, John L. Heilbron, and Paul Forman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenological relations such as Ohm's or Fourier's law have a venerable history in physics but are still scarce in biology. This situation restrains predictive theory. Here, we build on bacterial "growth laws," which capture physiological feedback between translation and cell growth, to construct a minimal biophysical model for the combined action of ribosome-targeting antibiotics. Our model predicts drug interactions like antagonism or synergy solely from responses to individual drugs. We provide analytical results for limiting cases, which agree well with numerical results. We systematically refine the model by including direct physical interactions of different antibiotics on the ribosome. In a limiting case, our model provides a mechanistic underpinning for recent predictions of higher-order interactions that were derived using entropy maximization. We further refine the model to include the effects of antibiotics that mimic starvation and the presence of resistance genes. We describe the impact of a starvation-mimicking antibiotic on drug interactions analytically and verify it experimentally. Our extended model suggests a change in the type of drug interaction that depends on the strength of resistance, which challenges established rescaling paradigms. We experimentally show that the presence of unregulated resistance genes can lead to altered drug interaction, which agrees with the prediction of the model. While minimal, the model is readily adaptable and opens the door to predicting interactions of second and higher-order in a broad range of biological systems. Author summary: Applying multiple antibiotics simultaneously can boost treatment effectiveness and aid against rampant antibiotic resistance. Because of the impractically large number of possible combinations of drugs, those that are effective are found by trial and error. Hence, a predictive theory to characterize drug cocktails would be of enormous value. Recently identified phenomenological laws ease the construction of predictive models of bacterial growth. Here, we build a model of the effects of antibiotic combinations on bacteria and show that it makes reliable predictions for experimental outcomes. Our model takes responses to individual drugs as inputs and predicts their combined effect. This output determines the type of drug interaction, which can range from antagonistic (the combined effect is weaker) to synergistic (the combined effect is stronger). We broaden the model by including the direct physical interaction on the target, drug resistance genes that alter the drug interaction, and drugs that mimic poor growth environments by choking the supply of growth-essential components, which we test experimentally. Our results prove how biophysical models that use empirical laws can predict responses to drug combinations. Importantly, such models can successfully predict mechanisms underlying interactions of drug combinations. This approach is extensible to combinations of more than two drugs and diverse biological systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mathematization of physics became something intrinsic to this branch of natural philosophy throughout the 18th century, after its great influence in Newtonian mechanics. The mathematization of electrostatics is commonly associated with Charles-Augustin Coulomb, who uses the Newtonian notion of action at a distance. However, attempts to mathematize electrical theories occurred before Coulomb, using conceptual approaches other than action at a distance. One example is the work Recherches sur la Cause Physique de l'Electricité by Johann Albrecht Euler. In it, Johann Euler builds - using concepts common to hydrodynamics and calculus - equations that relate the density and the velocity of the ether moving within the pores of a body, thereby explaining electrostatic phenomena such as attraction and repulsion. The debate on what would be the best way to understand physical interactions (whether by forces at a distance or by the existence of ether) goes into the 19th century and influences the development of electromagnetism and relativity. In this article, we bring a historical study centered on Johann Euler's work embraced by the scientific context of the period. In addition, we present a commented translation to Portuguese of the work Recherches sur la Cause Physique de l'Electricité, published in 1759. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many researchers argue that it is not possible to teach Quantum Physics without teaching at least a little of history of Quantum Physics. The literature, however, points out that the textbook narratives differ in different directions from the primary sources, and they reduce the complexity of the nature of science to a mythological view of scientific practice. On the other hand, reading the original texts without any direction, or even reading the historiographical books, can be very difficult. We argue that a possibility to enrich the teaching of Quantum Physics is to provide the student with contact with the original works, as long as we do not lose sight of the didactic purpose of such a meeting. Seeking to contribute to this proposal, we present a didactic text, aimed to be presented to undergraduate students, on the wave-particle duality, composed of a selection of excerpts from primary sources of Quantum Physics and a set of questions to guide the reading. Throughout the article, we present the theoretical frameworks that guided the construction of the didactic material and, in the body of the text, we comment on the proposed questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eighty years have passed since the establishment of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at University of Latvia. The article deals with the history of studies in physics and mathematics, and the establishment of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics during the first Soviet occupation in the academic year, 1940/41, its transformations during the German Nazi occupation, the rebuilding of the faculty after the war, and its development until 1958 during the second Soviet occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Historiae Scientiarum is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Outras Fronteiras is the property of Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Outras Fronteiras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

During the second half of the nineteenth century, physics go through a noiseless but deep review of its foundations. Despite of the importance for the upcoming developments, the historical and philosophical studies about that time are scarce in comparison to the first decades of the twentieth century. This paper rebuilds some aspects of physics of this time using two conceptual tools: The Controversy Spaces of Oscar Nudler and the Styles of Scientific Reasoning of Ian Hacking. The aim is showing the elements that led to the controversy about determinism during the second half of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gold nanoparticles have demonstrated significant radiosensitization of cancer treatment with x-ray radiotherapy. To understand the mechanisms at the basis of nanoparticle radiosensitization, Monte Carlo simulations are used to investigate the dose enhancement, given a certain nanoparticle concentration and distribution in the biological medium. Earlier studies have ordinarily used condensed history physics models to predict nanoscale dose enhancement with nanoparticles. This study uses Geant4-DNA complemented with novel track structure physics models to accurately describe electron interactions in gold and to calculate the dose surrounding gold nanoparticle structures at nanoscale level. The computed dose in silico due to a clinical kilovoltage beam and the presence of gold nanoparticles was related to in vitro brain cancer cell survival using the local effect model. The comparison of the simulation results with radiobiological experimental measurements shows that Geant4-DNA and local effect model can be used to predict cell survival in silico in the case of x-ray kilovoltage beams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the courses we had in the 4th year at the Physics faculty in Magurele was "Experimental Methods", presented to us by Professor Mihai Vasile. It was at that time when I first met Professor Mihai Popescu, who was an associate professor to the faculty as senior researcher at the Institute of Materials Physics and Technology (IMPT), which is in the nearby building. Professor Mihai Popescu served as Editor in Chief of I JOAM i until 2016, when he passed this baton to Professor Adrian Petris from the National Institute of Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics (NILPRP). [Extracted from the article]

The past is always with us, not only the physics history that we revere and try to put into our classroom presentations. Two hundred years of teaching natural philosophy (physics) have left us a significant amount of physics history in the form of early apparatus. In this article, I will tell stories about how I have become involved in the study of early physics apparatus. Because of my website on Historical Physics Teaching Apparatus, I have fielded a series of queries since the year 2000: I have inherited this apparatus, what is it and how much is it worth? My students turned up this interesting piece of apparatus and think that they might use it in an experiment—what is it and tell me how it can be put into the curriculum? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lise Meitner has become a feminist icon both because of her successful career as a “woman in science” and because of the extensive discrimination she faced, discrimination that was multi-faceted but based primarily on her gender and Jewish ancestry. Through her research on radioactivity and nuclear physics, Meitner was familiar with the frustration of being close to a discovery but overlooking a crucial observation or being unable to interpret key experimental results. Before identifying nuclear fission as the cause of the radioactivity they were studying, she and her Berlin team had been confident that their results were evidence of an entirely different phenomenon. Meitner felt their reluctance to look at a substance assumed to be unremarkable and the limits of their experimental techniques together delayed the discovery of nuclear fission by more than a year. This paper argues that gender assignment, gender identity and sexual orientation have been similarly overlooked in biographical studies of Lise Meitner, despite being crucial to the study of identity.