The origins of money: Calculation of similarity indexes demonstrates the earliest development of commodity money in prehistoric Central Europe.

The origins of money and the formulation of coherent weight and measurement systems are amongst the most significant prehistoric developments of the human intellect. We present a method for detecting perceptible standardization of weights and apply this to 5028 Early Bronze Age rings, ribs, and axe blades from Central Europe. We calculate the degree of uniformity on the basis of psychophysics, and quantify this using similarity indexes. The analysis shows that 70.3% of all rings could not be perceptibly distinguished from a ring weighing 195.5 grams, indicating their suitability as commodity money. Perceptive weight equivalence is demonstrated between rings, and a selection of ribs and axe blades. Co-occurrence of these objects evidences their interchangeability. We further suggest that producing copies of rings led to recognition of weight similarities and the independent emergence of a system of weighing in Central Europe at the end of the Early Bronze Age.

Decisional Conflict Scale Use over 20 Years: The Anniversary Review.

Background. The Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS) measures 5 dimensions of decision making (feeling: uncertain, uninformed, unclear about values, unsupported; ineffective decision making). We examined the use of the DCS over its initial 20 years (1995 to 2015). Methods. We conducted a scoping review with backward citation search in Google Analytics/Web of Science/PubMed, followed by keyword searches in Cochrane Library, PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, PsycINFO, PRO-Quest, and Web of Science. Eligible studies were published between 1995 and March 2015, used an original experimental/observational research design, concerned a health-related decision, and provided DCS data (total/subscales). Author dyads independently screened titles, abstracts, full texts, and extracted data. We performed narrative data synthesis. Results. We included 394 articles. DCS use appeared to increase over time. Three hundred nine studies (76%) used the original DCS, and 29 (7%) used subscales only. Most studies used the DCS to evaluate the impact of decision support interventions (n = 238, 59%). The DCS was translated into 13 languages. Most decisions were made by people for themselves (n = 353, 87%), about treatment (n = 225, 55%), or testing (n = 91, 23%). The most common decision contexts were oncology (n = 113, 28%) and primary care (n = 82, 20%). Conclusions. This is the first study to descriptively synthesize characteristics of DCS data. Use of the DCS as an outcome measure for health decision interventions has increased over its 20-year existence, demonstrating its relevance as a decision-making evaluation measure. Most studies failed to report when decisional conflict was measured during the decision-making process, making scores difficult to interpret. Findings from this study will be used to update the DCS user manual.

The Accuracy of Ancient Cartography Reassessed: The Longitude Error in Ptolemy's Map.

This essay seeks to explain the most glaring error in Ptolemy's geography: the greatly exaggerated longitudinal extent of the known world as shown on his map. The main focus is on a recent hypothesis that attributes all responsibility for this error to Ptolemy's adoption of the wrong value for the circumference of the Earth. This explanation has challenging implications for our understanding of ancient geography: it presupposes that before Ptolemy there had been a tradition of high-accuracy geodesy and cartography based on Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth. The essay argues that this hypothesis does not stand up to scrutiny. The story proves to be much more complex than can be accounted for by a single-factor explanation. A more careful analysis of the evidence allows us to assess the individual contribution to Ptolemy's error made by each character in this story: Eratosthenes, Ptolemy, ancient surveyors, and others. As a result, a more balanced and well-founded assessment is offered: Ptolemy's reputation is rehabilitated in part, and the delusion of high-accuracy ancient cartography is dispelled.

The two earths of Eratosthenes.

In the third century B.C.E., Eratosthenes of Cyrene made a famous measurement of the circumference of the Earth. This was not the first such measurement, but it is the earliest for which significant details are preserved. Cleomedes gives a short account of Eratosthenes' method, his numerical assumptions, and the final result of 250,000 stades. However, many ancient sources attribute to Eratosthenes a result of 252,000 stades. Historians have attempted to explain the second result by supposing that Eratosthenes later made better measurements and revised his estimate or that the original result was simply rounded to 252,000 to have a number conveniently divisible by 60 or by 360. These explanations are speculative and untestable. However, Eratosthenes' estimates of the distances of the Sun and Moon from the Earth are preserved in the doxographical literature. This essay shows that Eratosthenes' result of 252,000 stades for the Earth's circumference follows from a solar distance that is attributed to him. Thus it appears that Eratosthenes computed not only a lower limit for the size of the Earth, based on the assumption that the Sun is at infinity, but also an upper limit, based on the assumption that the Sun is at a finite distance. The essay discusses the consequences for our understanding of his program.

Historical notes on immaturity. Part 1: measures of viability.

The interest in the limit of viability originated from various sources, including legal requirements, the rejection of mechnical life support, competition for resources, concerns about handicaps, and proximity to the fetus with its limited rights. Gestational age was determined from menstrual history by Hippocratic writers, who established the tenacious idea that 7-, but not 8-month infants could survive. Naegele's rule, already published by Boerhaave in 1744, was correct when applied to the last day of menstruation. Birth weight and length were not measured until the end of the 18(th) century. This remarkable disinterest resulted from superstition, grossly inaccurate measurements by the authorities Mauriceau and Smellie, and the conversion chaos of the pre-metric era. A table is provided with historic mass and length units allowing to determine birth weight and body length in the older literature. The idea of viability is a remnant of vitalism, a medical doctrine popularized in 1780 by Brown. Many short-lived statements defined its limit, but until now what was meant by viability remained nebulous.

"Measuring by the bushel": reweighing the Indian Ocean pepper trade.

Of all the oriental spices, black pepper was the most important until the eighteenth century. The historiography of the pepper trade is characterized by a strong focus on Europe in terms of both its economic significance in the ancient and medieval periods and the struggle for its control in the early modern period. This article, by contrast, seeks to situate the pepper trade firmly in its Asian contexts. It examines the Indian Ocean pepper trade from three perspectives. First, it places the trade in its supply-side context by focusing on the Malabar coast as the primary source of pepper. Second, it examines the relative importance of the different branches of Malabar's pepper trade and highlights the central role played by Muslim mercantile networks. Third, it considers the reconfiguration of these pepper networks in the sixteenth century in the face of aggressive competition from the Portuguese. In their sum, these arguments advocate the need for rethought balances of trade and a reweighted scholarly focus on the pepper trade in its global dimensions.

In the balance: weighing babies and the birth of the infant welfare clinic.

The nineteenth century saw the incorporation of technology, such as the stethoscope, microscope, and thermometer, into clinical medicine. An instrument that has received less attention in the history of the role of technology in medicine is the weighing balance, or scale. Although not new to nineteenth-century medicine, it played an important part in the rise of the numerical method and its application to the development and shaping of pediatrics. This article explores the origin and development of the weighing of babies. During its clinical and scientific adoption, this simple procedure was refined and applied in a number of increasingly sophisticated and far-reaching ways: as a measure of the dimensions of the fetus and newborn, as an index of the viability of the newborn, as a means of estimating milk intake, as a way of distinguishing normality from abnormality, as a summary measure of infant health, and as an instrument of mass surveillance. In so doing it changed the way in which medical care was delivered to infants.

Mechanized metrics: from verse science to laboratory prosody, 1880-1918.

From roughly the 1880s on, a methodical verse "science" was beginning to assert itself. Gripped by the thought of articulating an objective, fact-based metrics, poetry scientists brought to bear on the traditional verse-line principles of observation and, later, on full-blown experimental practices­not to mention a curious array of instrumentation. By the turn of the century, metrical verse was being subjected to a rigorous measurement regime, which employed techniques and apparatuses derived from the new disciplines of experimental physiology and psychology. Proponents of this newly mechanized metrics pitched themselves enthusiastically into the turn-of-the-century prosody fray, believing they could resolve, once and for all, some of the fundamental dilemmas of versification.

[Study on weight units of chinese medicine in Sui and Tang dynasties].

Although there were changes in measuring system of Sui dynasty, the measuring units of medicine, astronomy and music still remained unchanged. So there appeared two systems of measuring units. For medicine, the government of Tang dynasty followed the regulations of Sui dynasty in measuring system. Besides this, the measuring units of Qian and Fen also were also related to medicine.

Between grocers and physicians: pharmacists, the new chemistry, and institutional reforms in Bologna during the Napoleonic period.

This case study deals with pharmacy and the profession of the pharmacist in the Bolognese context of Napoleonic Italy. Pharmacists wished to be considered as peers by physicians. In order to reach this goal, they adopted two strategies: on the one hand, they tried to distinguish themselves from charlatans and grocers, with the refusal of the new decimal metric system in the name of the tradition and of the peculiarity of their discipline. On the other hand, they insisted on the theoretical side of the new anti-phlogistic chemistry, which provided pharmacy with a scientific basis. Through an analysis of the relationships between physicians and pharmacists before and after the reforms of public education and public health brought by Napoleon, as well as an analysis of the pharmacists' attitude towards the new chemistry, this paper shows that the two strategies adopted were too contradictory to allow the pharmacists to reach their goal.

The scale politics of emerging diseases.

The concept of scale politics offers historians a useful framework for analyzing the connections between environment and health. This essay examines the public health campaign around emerging diseases during the 1990s, particularly the ways in which different actors employed scale in geographic and political representations; how they configured cause, consequence, and intervention at different scales; and the moments at which they shifted between different scales in the presentation of their arguments. Biomedical scientists, the mass media, and public health and national security experts contributed to this campaign, exploiting Americans' ambivalence about globalization and the role of modernity in the production of new risks, framing them in terms that made particular interventions appear necessary, logical, or practical.

The tortuous road to the adoption of katal for the expression of catalytic activity by the General Conference on Weights and Measures.

BACKGROUND: The "unit" for "enzymic activity" (U = 1 micromol/min) was recommended by the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUB) in 1961 and is widely used in medical laboratory reports. The general trend in metrology, however, is toward global standardization through defining units coherent with the International System of Units (SI). APPROACH: Several proposals were advanced from the IFCC, International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and IUB regarding the definition for enzymic activity as well as the terms for kind-of-quantity, units, symbol, and dimension. In 1977, international agreement was reached between these bodies and WHO that "catalytic activity" (z), of a catalyst in a given system is defined by the rate of conversion in a measuring system (in mol/s) and expressed in "katal" (symbol, kat; equal to 1 mol/s). The katal is invariant of the measurement procedure, but the numerical quantity value is not. Gaining support for the katal from the final arbiter, the General Conference on Weights and Measures, was slow, but Resolution 12 of 1999 adopted the katal (symbol, kat) as a special name and symbol for the SI-derived unit, mol/s, used in measuring catalytic activity. CONCLUSIONS: Laboratory results for amounts of catalysts, including enzymes, measured by their catalytic activity can now officially be expressed in katals and are traceable to the SI provided that the specified indicator reaction reflects first-order kinetics. The conversion from "unit" is: 1 U = 16.667 x 10(-9) kat. Further derived quantities have coherent units such as kat/L, kat/kg, and kat/kat = 1.

The story of the gauge.

Gauges are old measures of thickness. They originated in the British iron wire industry at a time when there was no universal unit of thickness. The sizes of the gauge numbers were the result of the process of wire-drawing and the nature of iron as a substance. Gauges were measured and described in fractions of an inch during the 19th century. In the UK, one gauge was standardised and legally enforced as the Standard Wire Gauge. One important reason for the standardisation of the gauge was the convenience of craftsmen. In the 20th century, the gauge was to be replaced with the introduction of the International System of Units. However, within the field of anaesthesia at the threshold of the 21st century, the gauge seems hard to remove from the minds of craftsmen like anaesthetists.