The Growth Cone as Seen Through Cajal's Original Histological Preparations and Publications

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) was first presented in a clinical setting in 1838. In this paper the presentation and treatment of a transient hemiparesis in a drummer in 1789 is discussed. This may have been an early case of MS and presents evidence against the theory that MS is an infectious disease beginning in the 19th century.     

Between Large-N and Small-N Analyses: Historical Comparison of Thirty Insurgency Case Studies

Abstract

The authors study the 30 insurgencies occurring between 1978 and 2008 using four methods crossing the qualitative/quantitative divide. The four approaches are narrative, bivariate comparison, comparative qualitative analysis, and K-medoids clustering. The quantification of qualitative data allows the authors to compare more cases than they could “hold in their heads” under a traditional small-n qualitative approach, improving the quality of the overall narrative and helping to ensure that the quantitative analyses respected the nuance of the detailed case histories. Structured data-mining reduces the dimensionality of possible explanatory factors relative to the available observations to expose patterns in the data in ways more common in large-n studies. The four analytic approaches produced similar and mutually supporting findings, leading to robust conclusions.     

Machiavelli's scientific method: a common understanding of his novelty in the sixteenth century

This paper argues that Machiavelli's method, his inductive and comparative use of history and experience for political analysis, and his fashioning of historical-political analysis as ‘science’, played an important and still unrecognised role in his reception in the sixteenth century. It makes the case that Machiavelli's inductive reasoning and stress on historia and experientia offered a model for scientific method that open-minded sixteenth-century scholars, eager to understand, organise and augment human knowledge (scientia), could fit to their own epistemology. By focusing on the question of method—a crucial issue for sixteenth-century contemporaries—the paper offers more than a key to the understanding of Machiavelli's positive reception. It also helps in apprehending the crucial importance of Lucretius to Machiavelli's scholarship; the role of the late Renaissance fascination with historia in his reception; and the breadth of appropriation of his method exactly in the decades when anti-Machiavellianism became official politics all over Europe. These claims are sustained through the cases of Machiavelli's early translators and promulgators; the French legal humanists and historiographers; the Swiss, Italian and French scholars engaging with medicine, Paracelsism and astronomy; the authors of political maxims from all over Europe; and finally Francis Bacon.     

A Once and Future Greatness: Raymond Aron,Charles de Gaulle andthe Politics of Grandeur

Charles de Gaulle devoted his life to cultivating French grandeur, a politics that attempted to carve out an equal and independent role for France among the great powers of the world. One who frequently criticized de Gaulle's ideas of grandeur was the eminent social theorist, Raymond Aron. Although Aron was generally supportive of de Gaulle and supported him ‘every time there was a crisis’, he never hesitated to criticize de Gaulle, sometimes quite sharply. Aron's lifelong friendship with de Gaulle was thus marked by alternating bouts of mutual irritation and respect: Aron worried that de Gaulle's theatrics were sometimes detrimental to French national interests while de Gaulle fretted that Aron's commitment to French greatness was less enthusiastic than it should havebeen.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Aron's reaction to de Gaulle's politics of grandeur. Despite his reputation for ‘lucidity’, Aron was often ambivalent about de Gaulle's ambitions for France. We argue that Aron's ambivalence stemmed from his political creed, or from his commitment to a political philosophy that - as de Gaulle sensed - allowed for few settled convictions. This paper reviews Aron's assessment of two issues at the heart of de Gaulle's politics of grandeur, namely, the effort to promote a sense of national unity and the effort to create a nuclear force. In both areas, we witness a remarkably ambivalent Aron, one who struggled to soften the harsher edges of the excesses of what he considered to be the excesses of grandeur and find his way to a more moderate and coherent position.     

The Golgi Stain: Invention,Diffusion and Impact on Neurosciences

The black reaction, invented in 1873 by Camillo Golgi (1843-1926), was the first technique to reveal neurons in their entirety, i.e. with all their processes. This important development passed unnoticed at first and only received wide international attention after a long delay. The Golgi stain was widely employed for almost thirty years and was directly responsible for major advances in our knowledge of the microscopic anatomy of the nervous system, as well as in other fields of study. In the hands of other researchers, the black reaction provided vital evidence that helped to establish the neuron theory. The Golgi stain was almost forgotten in the period between the two World Wars, but the introduction of the electron microscope to neurocytological research revived its use around the middle of the twentieth century. Today, the black reaction is still used extensively not only in combination with electron microscopy, but also as an autonomous technique in studies on the evolution, ontogeny, and organization of the nervous system.     

ON THE RESOLUTION OF H/V MEASUREMENTS TO DETERMINE SEDIMENT THICKNESS,A CASE STUDY ACROSS A NORMAL FAULT IN THE LOWER RHINE EMBAYMENT,GERMANY

In recent years, H/V measurements have been increasingly used to map the thickness of sediment fill in sedimentary basins in the context of seismic hazard assessment. This parameter is believed to be an important proxy for the site effects in sedimentary basins (e.g. in the Los Angeles basin). Here we present the results of a test using this approach across an active normal fault in a structurally well known situation. Measurements on a 50 km long profile with 1 km station spacing clearly show a change in the frequency of the fundamental peak of H/V ratios with increasing thickness of the sediment layer in the eastern part of the Lower Rhine Embayment. Subsequently, a section of 10 km length across the Erft-Sprung system, a normal fault with ca. 750 m vertical offset, was measured with a station distance of 100 m. Frequencies of the first and second peaks and the first trough in the H/V spectra are used in a simple resonance model to estimate depths of the bedrock. While the frequency of the first peak shows a large scatter for sediment depths larger than ca. 500 m, the frequency of the first trough follows the changing thickness of the sediments across the fault. The lateral resolution is in the range of the station distance of 100 m. A power law for the depth dependence of the S-wave velocity derived from down hole measurements in an earlier study [Budny, 1984] and power laws inverted from dispersion analysis of micro array measurements [Scherbaum et aL, 2002] agree with the results from the H/V ratios of this study.     

福建省投资环境竞争力空间过程与驱动因素分析

构建福建省地级市投资环境竞争力评价指标体系,为GIS环境地级市多边形的主要属性,以2000-2007年福建统计年鉴为主要数据源,建立时态空间数据库。通过"时空同时归一"的指标变换方法定义投资环境相对竞争力,使不同指标"等价"与引入时空统一标准,选择时间序列、截面权变显著的经因子分析确定权矩阵,进行变权法三维评价,利用序列快照模型表达、逼近福建省投资环境竞争力空间过程,通过基于数据的空间过程因子识别技术,进行驱动因素分析,为优化福建省投资环境提供调控依据。