Spirocyclic Nitroxides as Versatile Tools in Modern Natural Sciences: From Synthesis to Applications. Part I. Old and New Synthetic Approaches to Spirocyclic Nitroxyl Radicals.

Spirocyclic nitroxyl radicals (SNRs) are stable paramagnetics bearing spiro-junction at a-, b-, or g-carbon atom of the nitroxide fragment, which is part of the heterocyclic system. Despite the fact that the first representatives of SNRs were obtained about 50 years ago, the methodology of their synthesis and their usage in chemistry and biochemical applications have begun to develop rapidly only in the last two decades. Due to the presence of spiro-function in the SNRs molecules, the latter have increased stability to various reducing agents (including biogenic ones), while the structures of the biradicals (SNBRs) comprises a rigid spiro-fused core that fixes mutual position and orientation of nitroxide moieties that favors their use in dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) experiments. This first review on SNRs will give a glance at various strategies for the synthesis of spiro-substituted, mono-, and bis-nitroxides on the base of six-membered (piperidine, 1,2,3,4-tetrahydroquinoline, 9,9'(10H,10H')-spirobiacridine, piperazine, and morpholine) or five-membered (2,5-dihydro-1H-pyrrole, pyrrolidine, 2,5-dihydro-1H-imidazole, 4,5-dihydro-1H-imidazole, imidazolidine, and oxazolidine) heterocyclic cores.

Education and Outreach in Physical Sciences in Oncology.

Physical sciences are often overlooked in the field of cancer research. The Physical Sciences in Oncology Initiative was launched to integrate physics, mathematics, chemistry, and engineering with cancer research and clinical oncology through education, outreach, and collaboration. Here, we provide a framework for education and outreach in emerging transdisciplinary fields.

La filosofía natural de la ciencia en Microcirugía / The natural philosophy of science in Microsurgery

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A naturalist response to Kingma's critique of naturalist accounts of disease.

Elselijn Kingma maintains that Christopher Boorse and other naturalists in the philosophy of medicine cannot deliver the value-free account of disease that they promise. Even if disease is understood as dysfunction and that notion can be applied in a value-free manner, values still manifest themselves in the justification for picking one particular operationalization of dysfunction over a number of competing alternatives. Disease determinations depend upon comparisons within a reference class vis-à-vis reaching organism goals. Boorse considers reference classes for a species to consist in the properties of age and sex and organism goals to comprise survival and reproduction. Kingma suggests that naturalists are influenced by value judgments and may rely upon implicit assumptions about disease in their choice of reference classes and goals to determine which conditions are diseased. I argue that she is wrong to claim that these choices cannot be defended without arguing in a circular manner or making certain arbitrary or value-driven judgments.

Interdisciplinarity research based on NSFC-sponsored projects: A case study of mathematics in Chinese universities.

We investigate the interdisciplinarity of mathematics based on an analysis of projects sponsored by the NSFC (National Natural Science Foundation of China). The motivation of this study lies in obtaining an efficient method to quantify the research interdisciplinarities, revealing the research interdisciplinarity patterns of mathematics discipline, giving insights for mathematics scholars to improve their research, and providing empirical supports for policy making. Our data set includes 6147 NSFC-sponsored projects implemented by 3225 mathematics professors in 177 Chinese universities with established mathematics departments. We propose the weighted-mean DIRD (diversity of individual research disciplines) to quantify interdisciplinarity. In addition, we introduce the matrix computation method, discover several properties of such a matrix, and make the computation cost significantly lower than the bitwise computation method. Finally, we develop an automatic DIRD computing system. The results indicate that mathematics professors at top normal universities in China exhibit strong interdisciplinarity; mathematics professors are most likely to conduct interdisciplinary research involving information science (research department), computer science (research area), computer application technology (research field), and power system bifurcation and chaos (research direction).

Words by the tail: Assessing lexical diversity in scholarly titles using frequency-rank distribution tail fits.

This research assesses the evolution of lexical diversity in scholarly titles using a new indicator based on zipfian frequency-rank distribution tail fits. At the operational level, while both head and tail fits of zipfian word distributions are more independent of corpus size than other lexical diversity indicators, the latter however neatly outperforms the former in that regard. This benchmark-setting performance of zipfian distribution tails proves extremely handy in distinguishing actual patterns in lexical diversity from the statistical noise generated by other indicators due to corpus size fluctuations. From an empirical perspective, analysis of Web of Science (WoS) article titles from 1975 to 2014 shows that the lexical concentration of scholarly titles in Natural Sciences & Engineering (NSE) and Social Sciences & Humanities (SSH) articles increases by a little less than 8% over the whole period. With the exception of the lexically concentrated Mathematics, Earth & Space, and Physics, NSE article titles all increased in lexical concentration, suggesting a probable convergence of concentration levels in the near future. As regards to SSH disciplines, aggregation effects observed at the disciplinary group level suggests that, behind the stable concentration levels of SSH disciplines, a cross-disciplinary homogenization of the highest word frequency ranks may be at work. Overall, these trends suggest a progressive standardization of title wording in scientific article titles, as article titles get written using an increasingly restricted and cross-disciplinary set of words.

The pre-history of health psychology in the United Kingdom: From natural science and psychoanalysis to social science, social cognition and beyond.

Health psychology formally came of age in the United Kingdom in the 1980s, but it was prefigured by much discussion about challenges to the dominance of biomedicine in healthcare and debates. This articles focuses on what could be termed the pre-history of health psychology in the UK. This was the period in the earlier 20th century when psychological approaches were dominated by psychoanalysis which was followed by behaviourism and then cognitivism. Review of this pre-history provides the backdrop for the rise of health psychology in the UK and also reveals the tensions between the different theoretical perspectives.

The self and responding to the Own's Behavior. Implications of coherence and hierarchical framing

The analysis of human behavior is a difficult endeavour, because of its variability, its generativity, and because of the influence of private events in our own acting. Behavior Analysis provided the first experimental bases to study these difficulties from a functional philosophy of behavior and, in 70', unexpected research findings opened the door towards an excellent avenue for the analysis of complex human behavior. Then, Relational Frame Theory began to be rooted and language, as a relational behavior, as framing, was experimentally approached. Several relational behaviors were identified, among others, deictic and hierarchical framing. As well coherence emerged as a historically established function of the behavior of framing. This presentation is focused on coherence and hierarchical framing as the key points of self/one's behavior and responding to the one's own behavior. Its implications extend to a wide range of scientific fields where a contextual human behavior approach is helpful (AU)

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The physics of development 100years after D'Arcy Thompson's "On Growth and Form".

By applying methods and principles from the physical sciences to biological problems, D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form demonstrated how mathematical reasoning reveals elegant, simple explanations for seemingly complex processes. This has had a profound influence on subsequent generations of developmental biologists. We discuss how this influence can be traced through twentieth century morphologists, embryologists and theoreticians to current research that explores the molecular and cellular mechanisms of tissue growth and patterning, including our own studies of the vertebrate neural tube.

Beyond D'Arcy Thompson: Future challenges for quantitative biology.

The centennial of "On Growth and Form" is a good opportunity to reflect on the progress of the quantitative study of living systems and where we would like to see it heading. The era of the physical sciences being a mere vehicle for tool building for biological investigations is over. The approaches taken nowadays are analogous to those that physical scientists have taken within their respective fields for centuries, only that now they ask them about biological phenomena and function. Here I give a brief reflection on where we are and where we should direct our focus next, both from the perspective of the research endeavor as a whole, but also with respect to teaching the next generation of scientists joining the field.

Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761) on the scope of physica ad its place within philosophia / Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761) en el ámbito de la physica y su lugar en la filosofía

As a supplement to John L. Heilbron’s account, I will argue that, although the label ‘experimental physics’ can be rightfully used to describe aspects of Petrus van Musschenbroek’s (1692-1761) work, the latter’s understanding of ‘physica’ is to be situated within a broader framework in which theological, philosophical and teleological considerations continued to play an important role. First, I will draw attention to Musschenbroek’s views on the scope of physica and especially to his conception of a law of nature. It will be shown that by radicalizing certain aspects of Isaac Newton’s methodological ideas van Musschenbroek no longer considered physics as the discipline that uncovered causes from effects, as Newton did, but as the discipline that studies the effects of unknown causes. In addition, I will show that van Musschenbroek endorsed the view that the laws of nature are contingent on God’s free will and that they are knowable due to his goodness. Second, it will be argued that for van Musschenbroek physics, alongside with teleology, had clear physico-theological repercussions. Along the way, van Musschenbroek’s views on the principle of sufficient reason will be discussed for the first time (AU)

Como complemento al relato de John L. Heilbron, argumentaré que aunque la etiqueta ‘física experimental’ se puede usar legítimamente para describir algunos aspectos de la obra de Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761), la comprensión de la ‘physica’ de este último se ha de entender dentro de un marco más amplio en el que las consideraciones teológicas, filosóficas, y teleológicas continuaron desempeñando una función importante. En primer lugar, me centraré en la concepción de van Musschenbroek en el ámbito de la ‘physica’ y en especial en su concepto de una ley de la naturaleza. Se verá que, al radicalizar algunos aspectos de las ideas metodológicas de Isaac Newton, van Musschenbroek ya no se considera la física como la disciplina que descubre las causas de efectos, como hizo Newton, sino como la disciplina que estudia los efectos de causas desconocidas. Además, se verá que van Musschenbroek pensaba que las leyes de la naturaleza están supeditadas a la libre voluntad de Dios y que son cognoscibles debido a la bondad de Dios. En segundo lugar, argumentaré que para van Musschenbroek la física, junto con la teleología, tenía claras repercusiones físico-teológicas. En el camino, por primera vez discutirá su posición en relación con el principio de razón suficiente (AU)

Naturalizing phenomenology - A philosophical imperative.

Phenomenology since Husserl has always had a problematic relationship with empirical science. In its early articulations, there was Husserl's rejection of 'the scientific attitude', Merleau-Ponty's distancing of the scientifically-objectified self, and Heidegger's critique of modern science. These suggest an antipathy to science and to its methods of explaining the natural world. Recent developments in neuroscience have opened new opportunities for an engagement between phenomenology and cognitive science and through this, a re-thinking of science and its hidden assumptions more generally. This is so partly because of the shortcomings of conventional mechanistically-conceived science in dealing with complex and dynamic phenomena such as climate change, brain plasticity, the behaviour of collectives, the dynamics of various microbiological processes, etc. But it is also due to recent phenomenological scholarship focussed on the 'embodied' phenomenology of Husserl's Ideen II and Merleau Ponty's later ontology of nature which have helped to extend the insights of phenomenology beyond the narrowly 'human' to an understanding of nature (which includes the human) more generally. Thus re-contextualised, phenomenology is well placed to examine some of the assumptions that give rise to the reductionism and associated scientism which has characterised conventional science in its approach to the study of natural processes. In light of this, it might be suggested that the 'anti-science' of early articulations of phenomenology is more a hostility to the underlying assumptions of science as conventionally understood than to science itself - that it is scientism rather than science that is targeted. In this paper, I aim to show how a phenomenological naturalism might be seen as a necessary step towards the development of a non-reductionist and non-scientistic approach to scientific inquiry. A key to this is a reconceptualization of nature as inclusive of meanings and of mind. It is a conception developed by Merleau-Ponty, especially in his later ontology of nature, and one that is shared by American pragmatist philosopher of science, C.S. Peirce (1839-1914). For both philosophers, meaning must be understood in terms of an ontology which is relational rather than atomistic, and dynamic or processual rather than static and substance-based. For Merleau-Ponty this is an experientially-derived ontology; for Peirce it is a more conceptually-based one. In this paper, I explore this connection between these two philosophers in two stages. The first is by reference to Peirce's theory of signs or semiotics. More specifically, I look at the application of this theory to the study of biological processes as developed in Peirce-inspired biosemiotics. In the light of this, I suggest that Merleau-Ponty's account of intentional relations in nature might be articulated as semiotic relations, and can serve as a philosophical basis for a non-reductive biological science. I then turn to questions relating to the ontology of nature. I explore Merleau-Ponty's experientially-based "ontology of flesh" and Peirce's distinctive form of naturalism to show affinities at this ontological level. These affinities consist in commitments to a reality that includes possibility, meaning, temporality, and final causation - that is, an ontology which is far more inclusive than that of conventional positivistic science. Peirce's broader scientific metaphysics enables us to extend Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological naturalism beyond the biological to the physical sciences. Whilst Merleau-Ponty's ontology of nature provides the experiential basis necessary for a critique of scientism, Peirce establishes the relevance of that ontology for a re-conceived empirical science.

Can biosemiotics be a "science" if its purpose is to be a bridge between the natural, social and human sciences?

Central to the attempt to develop a biosemiotics has been the discussion of what it means to be scientific. In Marcello Barbieri's latest argument for leaving Peircean biosemiotics and creating an alternative code-biology the definition of what it means to be scientific plays a major role. For Barbieri "scientific knowledge is obtained by building machine-like models of what we observe in nature". Barbieri interestingly claims that - in combination with the empirical and experimental basis - mechanism is virtually equivalent to the scientific method. The consequences of this statement seem to be that the optimal type of knowledge science can produce about living system is to model them as machines. But the explicit goal of a Peircean semiotically based biosemiotics is (also) to model living systems as cognitive and communicative systems working on the basis of meaning and signification. These two concepts are not part of the mechanistic models of natural science today, not even of cognitive science. Barbieri tries to solve this problem by introducing a new concept of biological meaning that is separate from the Peircean biosemiotics and then add Peirce's semiotics on top. This article argues why this view is inconsistent on the grounds that Peirce's semiotic paradigm only gives meaning in its pragmaticist conception of a fallibilist view of science, which again is intrinsic connected to its non-mechanistic metaphysics of Tychism, Synechism and Agapism. The core of the biosemiotic enterprise is to establish another type of trans- and interdisciplinary wissenschaft than the received view of "science".

Why natural science needs phenomenological philosophy.

Through an exploration of theoretical physics, this paper suggests the need for regrounding natural science in phenomenological philosophy. To begin, the philosophical roots of the prevailing scientific paradigm are traced to the thinking of Plato, Descartes, and Newton. The crisis in modern science is then investigated, tracking developments in physics, science's premier discipline. Einsteinian special relativity is interpreted as a response to the threat of discontinuity implied by the Michelson-Morley experiment, a challenge to classical objectivism that Einstein sought to counteract. We see that Einstein's efforts to banish discontinuity ultimately fall into the "black hole" predicted in his general theory of relativity. The unavoidable discontinuity that haunts Einstein's theory is also central to quantum mechanics. Here too the attempt has been made to manage discontinuity, only to have this strategy thwarted in the end by the intractable problem of quantum gravity. The irrepressible discontinuity manifested in the phenomena of modern physics proves to be linked to a merging of subject and object that flies in the face of Cartesian philosophy. To accommodate these radically non-classical phenomena, a new philosophical foundation is called for: phenomenology. Phenomenological philosophy is elaborated through Merleau-Ponty's concept of depth and is then brought into focus for use in theoretical physics via qualitative work with topology and hypercomplex numbers. In the final part of this paper, a detailed summary is offered of the specific application of topological phenomenology to quantum gravity that was systematically articulated in The Self-Evolving Cosmos (Rosen, 2008a).

On disciplinary fragmentation and scientific progress.

Why are some scientific disciplines, such as sociology and psychology, more fragmented into conflicting schools of thought than other fields, such as physics and biology? Furthermore, why does high fragmentation tend to coincide with limited scientific progress? We analyzed a formal model where scientists seek to identify the correct answer to a research question. Each scientist is influenced by three forces: (i) signals received from the correct answer to the question; (ii) peer influence; and (iii) noise. We observed the emergence of different macroscopic patterns of collective exploration, and studied how the three forces affect the degree to which disciplines fall apart into divergent fragments, or so-called "schools of thought". We conducted two simulation experiments where we tested (A) whether the three forces foster or hamper progress, and (B) whether disciplinary fragmentation causally affects scientific progress and vice versa. We found that fragmentation critically limits scientific progress. Strikingly, there is no effect in the opposite causal direction. What is more, our results shows that at the heart of the mechanisms driving scientific progress we find (i) social interactions, and (ii) peer disagreement. In fact, fragmentation is increased and progress limited if the simulated scientists are open to influence only by peers with very similar views, or when within-school diversity is lost. Finally, disciplines where the scientists received strong signals from the correct answer were less fragmented and experienced faster progress. We discuss model's implications for the design of social institutions fostering interdisciplinarity and participation in science.

Ojos de pollo: nuevo estado de la materia / Chicken eyes: New state of matter

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Social and natural sciences differ in their research strategies, adapted to work for different knowledge landscapes.

Do different fields of knowledge require different research strategies? A numerical model exploring different virtual knowledge landscapes, revealed two diverging optimal search strategies. Trend following is maximized when the popularity of new discoveries determine the number of individuals researching it. This strategy works best when many researchers explore few large areas of knowledge. In contrast, individuals or small groups of researchers are better in discovering small bits of information in dispersed knowledge landscapes. Bibliometric data of scientific publications showed a continuous bipolar distribution of these strategies, ranging from natural sciences, with highly cited publications in journals containing a large number of articles, to the social sciences, with rarely cited publications in many journals containing a small number of articles. The natural sciences seem to adapt their research strategies to landscapes with large concentrated knowledge clusters, whereas social sciences seem to have adapted to search in landscapes with many small isolated knowledge clusters. Similar bipolar distributions were obtained when comparing levels of insularity estimated by indicators of international collaboration and levels of country-self citations: researchers in academic areas with many journals such as social sciences, arts and humanities, were the most isolated, and that was true in different regions of the world. The work shows that quantitative measures estimating differences between academic disciplines improve our understanding of different research strategies, eventually helping interdisciplinary research and may be also help improve science policies worldwide.

Wilhelm y Alexander von Humboldt y la cultura española / Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt and the Spanish culture

Análisis de las relaciones de los hermanos Alexander y Wilhelm von Humboldt con la cultura y la ciencia españolas, con las que entraron en contacto en sus estudios científicos. El tema, escasamente valorado, ayuda a comprender su visión sobre España, los resultados de dichos estudios, en ocasiones discutibles, y la apreciación de los mismos desde la mentalidad española

Analysis of the relationship of Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt with Spanish culture and science. The theme, poorly valued, help to understand their vision of the Spain culture. The results of these studies, sometimes controversial, help to understand the appreciation of their researches in the Spanish cultural tradition

A imagem da ciência e as imagens visuais na formação superior e as pesquisas sobre o ensino de física / The image of science and visual images in higher education and research on physics teaching

Nesse estudo apresentamos, primeiramente, aspectos dos processos de mudança de paradigma que ocorrem nas ciênciasnaturais e suas influências nos manuais didáticos (KUHN, 2005).Em seguida, expomos resultados de um levantamento acerca de pesquisas que abordam imagens fixas no ensino de Física, buscando compreender o que tem sido considerado importante em seu uso, em especial, nos livros didáticos. Dos artigos analisados pelo presente trabalho, percebemos uma carência na discussão sobre osparadigmas da ciência transmitidos por meio de imagens em livros didáticos de Física. Pensamos ser essa uma reflexão importante, uma vez que trata da visão de mundo da ciência com que estudantes entram em contato em sua formação acadêmica e que, de alguma forma, influenciará sua atuação na vida.