Healed injuries in Early Cambrian trilobites from South Australia

Examples of an undescribed species of the trilobite Redlichia from the Emu Bay Shale (Early Cambrian), Kangaroo Island, South Australia, show damage to the exoskeleton attributed to the action of predators. Injury was probably not lethal. The identity of the predators is unresolved, notwithstanding soft-part preservation within the fossil assemblage. Possible culprits include either a rare and presumably large animal such as an arthropod or conceivably cannibalism by Redlichia itself. This report provides new data on the occurrence of Cambrian predators, and casts further doubt on earlier suggestions that macrophagous predation was insignificant at this time. Aspects of trilobite predation during the Palaeozoic are reviewed, with emphasis placed on their ability to withstand substantial injuries and the possible repair mechanisms that promoted wound healing and survival.     

Neosecoptera,a new insect suborder based on specimen discovered in the Late Carboniferous of Tasmania

Psychroptilus burrettae gen. et sp. nov., from the Late Carboniferous of Tasmania, combines characters of the insect orders Palaeodictyoptera and Megasecoptera. Psychroptilus is referred to the Megasecoptera because it lacks paratergal processes on the pronotum, and because its wing venation is simple, with reduced cross veins. However, its wings are not narrowed at their bases, but are as broad as those of the Palaeodictyoptera. It is placed in a new suborder of the Megasecoptera, the Neosecoptera. This suborder differs from the Suborders Eumegasecoptera and Protohymenoptera in having: 1, broad wings that are not narrowed at base; 2, the hind wing slightly broader than the fore wing; and 3, anal veins that all arise from close to the wing base. The insect is possibly the oldest recorded in the southern hemisphere although age determinations of this and the only other known probable Late Carboniferous species, Hadentomoides dwykensis Riek, are not precise. The inclusion of the insect fossil in varve-like sediments and the very few associated fossil species, are indicative of a very cold habitat either at or adjacent to the area producing the sediments. The great majority of insect fossils are associated with abundant plant remains or other fossils indicative of warm conditions in the area of sedimentation. None is recorded from an area apparently as cold as that under which Psychroptilus burrettae was preserved.     

Macedonia and the Coming of Rome

EUGENE N. BORZA. In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Pp. xvii, 333.

N.G.L. HAMMOND and F.W. WALBANK. A History of Macedonia: Volume III: 336-167 BC. New York: The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp. xxx, 654.

PETER GREEN. Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Pp. xxiii, 970.     

Review Article: The Perils of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Relations

JAMES J. BARNES and PATIENCE P. BARNES. Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67. Selinsgrove, NJ: Susquehanna University Press, 1993. Pp. 475. $55.00 (US)

IAN F. W. BECKETT. The War Correspondents: The American Civil War. Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton, 1993. Pp. 198. £17.99

ROBERT M. BROWNING, JR. From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1993. Pp. xi, 453. $44-95 (US)

GEORGE E. BUKER. Blockaders, Refugees, and Contrabands: Civil War on Florida's Gulf Coast, 1861–1865. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1993. Pp. ix, 235. $29-95 (US)

HOWARD JONES. Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1992; Pp. xiii, 300. $50.95 (US).     

Structural ways to embed a research laboratory into the company: A comparison between Philips and General Electric 1900-1940

This paper compares the Philips Research Department and the Research Laboratory of the American company General Electric (GE). 1 It argues that it is, above all, the issue of the organization of industrial research, appropriate leadership and the embeddedness of a research department in the company as a whole that is important for an historical analysis of an industrial research department. The complex structures that Gilles Holst (the first Philips research director) and Willis Whitney (the GE research director during the first decades of the twentieth century) set up in their organizations enabled scientists to keep in touch with the resources provided by the universities, and made it possible for them to come up with articles, patents and devices for their respective companies. It enabled them also to strengthen their contacts inside and outside the laboratory's walls. However, more than his colleague Whitney at GE, Holst at Philips intended to integrate the research laboratory into the company as a whole. Holst's policy as a research director will be illustrated using the case of Philips' radio research. A comparative discussion of industrial research in the 1930s within both companies shows that the "successful" integration of research activities is context-dependent.     

Security and the shaping of identity for nuclear specialists

Atomic energy developed from 1940 as a subject shrouded in secrecy. Identified successively as a crucial element in military strategy, national status and export aspirations, the research and development of atomic piles (nuclear chain-reactors) were nurtured at isolated installations. Like monastic orders, new national laboratories managed their specialist workers in occupational environments that were simultaneously cosseted and constrained, defining regional variants of a new state-managed discipline: reactor technology. This paper discusses the significance of security in defining the new subject in the USA, UK and Canada – wartime allies with similar political traditions distinct but trajectories in this field during the Cold War. The intellectual borders and content of the subject developed differently in each country, shaped under the umbrella of secrecy by disparate clusters of expertise, industrial traditions, and national goals. The nascent cadre was contained until the mid 1950s by classified publications and state-sponsored specialist courses. The early context of high security filtered its members and capped enduringly both their professional aspirations and public engagement.