Sigmund Freud's contribution to the history of the neuronal cytoskeleton

In the summers of 1879 and 1881, while Freud was a research student in Ernst von Brücke's laboratory at the Institute of Physiology at the University of Vienna, he carried out an important though seldom remembered investigation on the internal structure of nerve fibers and cells. His contribution to this field is here examined in the context of the 19th-century debate regarding the existence of neurofibrils and of present views on the cytoskeleton. Freud was able to discern separate fine fibrils following straight courses within the nerve fibers, as well as concentric loops of striae surrounding the nuclei and converging towards the processes of the cell bodies in crayfish nervous tissue. He thus confirmed and extended observations made by Robert Remak almost 40 years earlier, which had remained controversial. Electron microscopy of the crustacean nervous system confirmed Freud's main points, which in turn vindicated those of Remak. Both researchers were looking at small bundles of microtubules, and thus they were among the first to picture the lacy intracellular framework that future cell biologists would call the cytoskeleton.     

Sigmund Freud's Contribution to the History of the Neuronal Cytoskeleton

In the summers of 1879 and 1881, while Freud was a research student in Ernst von Brücke's laboratory at the Institute of Physiology at the University of Vienna, he carried out an important though seldom remembered investigation on the internal structure of nerve fibers and cells. His contribution to this field is here examined in the context of the 19th-century debate regarding the existence of neurofibrils and of present views on the cytoskeleton. Freud was able to discern separate fine fibrils following straight courses within the nerve fibers, as well as concentric loops of striae surrounding the nuclei and converging towards the processes of the cell bodies in crayfish nervous tissue. He thus confirmed and extended observations made by Robert Remak almost 40 years earlier, which had remained controversial. Electron microscopy of the crustacean nervous system confirmed Freud's main points, which in turn vindicated those of Remak. Both researchers were looking at small bundles of microtubules, and thus they were among the first to picture the lacy intracellular framework that future cell biologists would call the cytoskeleton.     

With the face to the future: The kibbutz in recent literary works

The kibbutz, which was considered one of the greatest successes of the socialist dream, failed to survive history, which replaced socialism with both capitalism and globalization. Numerous texts, literary, documentary, and scholarly, have tried to comprehend the social developments that took place in the kibbutz during the period of its demise, especially over the 1980s and the 1990s. This article focuses on two works – Habayta (Home, Assaf Inbari, 2009) and Bein haverim (Between friends, Amos Oz, 2012) – both of which refrain from solely addressing the rift that the kibbutz underwent, but rather attempt to see in the moment of the kibbutz's disintegration a stage in a historical process that will ultimately enable creation of new values on the ruins of the old ones. Both works triggered powerful response from literary critics and from the general public, and contributed to shaping a new perspective on the history of the kibbutz.     

George Horton: the literary diplomat

Abstract

George Horton was a man of letters and United States Consul in Greece and Turkey at a time of social and political change. He writes of the re-taking of Smyrna by the Turkish army in September 1922. His account, however, goes beyond the blame and events to a demonization of Muslims, in general, and of Turks, in particular. In several of his novels, written more than two decades before the events of September 1922, he had already identified the Turk as the stock-in-trade villain of Western civilization. In his account of Smyrna, he writes not as historian, but as publicist.     

专刊导言

本期专刊围绕着文学文献问题刊发十四篇文章,研究对象从北宋西湖莲社到现代鲁迅、陈寅恪的著作,时间跨度很大。从选题类型看,这十四篇文章大致可以分为三类。其一是对新见文献的考辨。近年从韩国流归国内的《杭州西湖昭庆寺结莲社集》是宋刻孤本,根据这个本子,陈斐对西湖莲社的社集编纂情况做了稽考。中国国家图书馆藏元刻孤本《秋堂邵先生文集》,由于作者不详,所收二百馀首诗亦为《全元诗》失收。罗鹭考出该书作者是元人王旭的友人,名不详,字伯诚,号秋堂,山西泽州人,解决了长期悬而未决的问题。黄成蔚《彭宗孟〈侍御公诗集〉考论》,从版本信息、交游唱和入手,通过明末彭宗孟《侍御公诗集》考察了晚明党争的复杂情况。澹归是一位诗僧,在明末清初江浙及岭南文坛有一定影响。其著述丰富,可惜在乾隆年间遭遇禁毁。     

Europe in the nineteenth-century American mind: The literary perspectives

This article evaluates Karl Popper's contribution to analytic philosophy, and outlines some of the contradictions in his work which make it difficult to locate in any particular tradition. In particular, the article investigates Popper's own claims to be a member of the rationalist tradition. Although Popper described himself as a member of this tradition, his definition of it diverged quite radically from that offered by other supporters of rationalism, like, for example, Mach, Carnap, and the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. The reason for this was that Popper believed the rationalist tradition, if it were to remain coherent and relevant, needed to overcome the dilemma posed by Hume's problem of induction. Popper believed that this problem rendered conventional understandings of rationalism, science, and inductive reasoning incoherent. This article suggests that Popper's principal contribution to modern philosophy was to reconfigure the rationalist tradition in such a way as to circumvent the problem of induction while preserving the rationalist commitment to reason, rational debate, and objective knowledge. Popper's reconfiguration of the epistemological bases of the rationalist tradition challenged dominant understandings of rationalist and analytic philosophy, and may be appropriately understood as part of a wider move among philosophers like Quine and Putnam to challenge conventional understandings of analytic philosophy, and of what philosophy itself could and could not achieve. It also informed a vision of social and political life (and of the social and political sciences) as rooted in principles of freedom, equality, and rational debate, but which cannot be fit within the traditional ideological landscape.     

Clarifying the critical in critical heritage studies

This paper considers the term critical in the unfolding formulation of critical heritage studies. It argues for a shift in emphasis from the subject of our effort to the object of attention, in other words focusing primarily on the critical issues that face the world today, the larger issues that bear upon and extend outwards from heritage. To that end, the paper presents two key directions. It suggests much is to be gained from tackling the uneasy relationship that currently exists between social science and humanities-based approaches to heritage and the professional conservation sector oriented by a scientistic materialism. Second, there is a need for heritage studies to account for its relationship to today’s regional and global transformations by developing post-western understandings of culture, history and heritage and the socio-political forces that actualise them.     

1912－1924年留日士官生与中国军事现代化成败

清末民初,积弱不振的中国在内忧外患的冲击下,接连向日本派遣了大批留学生,专习陆军,这些留日士官生学成归国后,被充实到各个军事部门。他们无论在主持军事教育,还是在充任现役军官方面,均做出了不同程度的贡献。但囿于时代的限制,他们纷纷卷入了军阀混战的旋涡,从而在中国军事现代化进程中留下了败笔。     

Children's daily travel to school in Johannesburg-Soweto,South Africa: geography and school choice in the Birth to Twenty cohort study

This paper has two aims: to explore approaches to the measurement of children's daily travel to school in a context of limited geospatial data availability and to provide data regarding school choice and distance travelled to school in Soweto-Johannesburg, South Africa. The paper makes use of data from the Birth to Twenty cohort study (n?=?1428) to explore three different approaches to estimating school choice and travel to school. First, straight-line distance between home and school is calculated. Second, census geography is used to determine whether a child's home and school fall in the same area. Third, distance data are used to determine whether a child attends the nearest school. Each of these approaches highlights a different aspect of mobility, and all provide valuable data. Overall, primary-school-aged children in Soweto-Johannesburg are shown to be travelling substantial distances to school on a daily basis. Over a third travel more than 3 km one way to school, 60% attend schools outside of the suburb in which they live, and only 18% attend their nearest school. These data provide evidence for high levels of school choice in Johannesburg-Soweto, and that families and children are making substantial investments in pursuit of high-quality educational opportunities. Additionally, these data suggest that two patterns of school choice are evident: one pattern involving travel of substantial distances and requiring a higher level of financial investment and a second pattern involving choice between more local schools, requiring less travel and a more limited financial investment.