Education and Training in the Mining Industry, 1750-1860: European Models and the Italian Case

Mining education was one of the areas of technical savoir transformed during the eighteenth century. Mining academies arose and spread through Europe in the second half of that century. This happened first in the German states and the Austrian dominions, due to the cameralistic system, and soon developed elsewhere through a transfer of the German model to France (Ecole des mines) as well as to other francophone and Spanish-speaking areas (Belgium and Piedmont-Savoy, Spain and America). The mining academies may rightly be considered among the prototypes of technical high schools (Polytechniques and Technische Hochschulen) established during the nineteenth century. In the course of exploring some of the details of this development, the present paper aims at suggesting outlines to be followed in pursuing a comparative analysis of special schools for the training of technicians and mining officers (Bergschulen and Bergakademien). A second aim is to examine more closely the Italian case as a typical example of adaptation, although on a smaller scale, of French and German experiences. This can provide a framework within which to place further microanalyses and case-studies.     

Blood clots: the nineteenth-century debate over the substance and means of transfusion in Britain

Historians have devoted little attention to blood transfusion in the nineteenth century. In part, this neglect reflects the presentist assumption that, before Karl Landsteiner's discovery of blood types, this practice would have failed too often to gain currency. Yet, transfusion was in fact the subject of much debate, and was actively practised, primarily by obstetricians on haemorrhaging women. Examining this practice through the conceptual lens of 'blood clots', both as noun and as observation, I follow transfusors' assumptions about the nature of the blood and the problem of its coagulation. Tracing the medicalization of ideas about blood by the century's end, I map this shift onto changing notions about why transfusion was performed, what substance was best employed, and what instrument best fitted that substance's movement into the circulation. In this way, 'Blood Clots' reconstructs the discourse surrounding transfusion, extending that discourse to material culture in order to illuminate the rationale that guided transfusion's practice in nineteenth-century Britain.     

Eugenics and politics in Britain in the 1930s

This paper discusses the surprising resurgence in the fortunes of the British eugenics movement in the 1930s. It is argued that although mass unemployment may in the long run have discredited that version of eugenics in which social dependence and destitution were attributed to genetic defect, in the short run the Depression was often perceived as a vindication of the eugenical creed. In particular, the attempt to reduce the fertility of the unemployed by popularising birth control techniques, and the voluntary sterilization campaign aimed at preventing the propagation of defectives from the so-called Social Problem Group, satisfied the urge felt by many conservative members from the professional classes to respond creatively to the country's crisis, without endangering existing social and economic institutions. It is also shown that not until 1938 did events in Germany cause substantial damage to the cause of eugenics in Britain. In fact, the ‘German experiment’ was actually greeted with approval by certain British eugenists of an authoritarian cast of mind. However, the Society as a whole never identified with these right-wing extremists, thanks in part to the moderating influence exercised by its General Secretary, Dr. C. P. Blacker, whose prime concern was with psycho-medical problems likely to concern people of all party persuasions.     

山西省高新技术产业发展的瓶颈分析及对策研究

进入21世纪，发展高新技术产业已经成为全球经济发展的主流。当前，山西省高新技术产业的发展与自身相比，增长很快，但整体发展水平明显落后。本文分析了制约山西省高新技术产业发展的主要因素，并提出了相应的对策措施。     

生物能量在生命体中传递的新理论及应用

生物能量在生物体当中的传递是生命科学中的一个基本问题，它相关于ATP水解放出的能量沿着蛋白质分子的传递。这种传递与蛋白质的动力学相关。根据ATP分子分布和水解的特性以及蛋白质结构的特点，在Davyclov理论的基础上提出了一个新的生物能量传递的理论。在这个理论当中，Amide振动的集体激发状态用一个两量子准相干态表示，系统的哈密顿量不但包含了Amide振动引起的相邻氨基酸残基的位移，而且包含了相邻Amide之间的共振相互作用所引起的氨基酸残基的相对位置的改变。由这个理论得出的传递生物能量的孤子的寿命可得10^-10秒，在这个时间之内孤子能传递过上千个氨基酸残基，因此它能在生物过程中起着重要的作用。这个理论与E．col．的Ramma谱的实验结果和我们做出的胶原蛋白的红外吸收谱等实验结果相一致，因此它可能是生物体中生物能量传递的一个可利用的和正确的理论。     

An ‘experimental’ instrument: testing the torsion balance in Britain,Canada and Australia

The torsion balance, an instrument that was first developed to demonstrate the high precision of physical science in the laboratory became a different sort of demonstration instrument in its brief vogue in the 1920s. This article considers intersecting stories of acquiring and testing the torsion balance as a field instrument in Canada, Britain and Australia. It examines the purchasing trip and fieldwork of A. H. Miller of the Dominion Observatory in 1928–1931, testing conducted by the British Geological Survey in 1926–1930, and finally the Imperial Geophysical Experimental Survey of 1928–1930 in Australia. These different stories produce a kind of collective biography, illustrating well the variety of material and textual records that accrete around instruments, especially expensive ones. But the trials and travels of the torsion balance also point to large themes. By comparing the different ways an instrument becomes valuable, and to whom, these micro-histories reveal significant features of the developing identity of geophysics. They also show the interaction of different forms of scientific internationalism in the inter-war period.     

Early laboratories c.1600 - c.1800 and the location of experimental science

Surprisingly little attention has been given hitherto to the definition of the laboratory. A space has to be specially adapted to deserve that title. It would be easy to assume that the two leading experimental sciences, physics and chemistry, have historically depended in a similar way on access to a laboratory. But while chemistry, through its alchemical ancestry with batteries of stills, had many fully fledged laboratories by the seventeenth century, physics was discovering the value of mathematics. Even experimental physics was content to make use of almost any indoor space, if not outdoors, ignoring the possible value of a laboratory. The development of the physics laboratory had to wait until the nineteenth century.     

The 'Hyperbola of Quantum Chemistry': the Changing Practice and Identity of a Scientific Discipline in the Early Years of Electronic Digital Computers, 1945-65

In 1965, John A. Pope presented a paper entitled 'Two-Dimensional Chart of Quantum Chemistry' to illustrate the inverse relationship between the sophistication of computational methods and the size of molecules under study. This chart, later called the 'hyperbola of quantum chemistry', succinctly summarized the growing tension between the proponents of two different approaches to computation–the ab initio method and semiempirical method–in the early years of electronic digital computers. Examining the development of quantum chemistry after World War II, I focus on the role of computers in shaping disciplinary identity. The availability of high-speed computers in the early 1950s attracted much attention from quantum chemists, and their community took shape through a series of conferences and personal networking. However, this emerging community soon encountered the problem of communication between groups that differed in the degree of reliance they placed on computers. I show the complexity of interactions between computing technology and a scientific discipline, in terms of both forming and splitting the community of quantum chemistry.     

'Science Fights Death': David Stark Murray,Science, and Socialism in Interwar Britain

The pathologist David Stark Murray (1900-77) was a founder and leading member of the Socialist Medical Association (SMA), an organization affiliated to the Labour Party and instrumental in shaping its health policy in the period up to 1945. Murray played a prominent role in the SMA as a member of its Executive Committee and as Editor of its journal MedicineToday and Tomorrow. This article examines Murray's popular writings about science during the interwar period, focusing on his emphasis on the relationship between, on the one hand, scientific knowledge and scientific method; and, on the other, a socialized health service and a socialist society.     

‘Physics and fashion’: John Tyndall and his audiences in mid-Victorian Britain

This paper explores how the physicist John Tyndall transformed himself from humble surveyor and schoolmaster into an internationally applauded icon of science. Beginning with his appointment as Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution in 1853, I show how Tyndall’s worries about his social class and Irish origins, his painstaking attention to his lecturing performance and skilled use of the material and architectural resources of the Royal Institution were vital to his eventual success as a popular expositor and ambassador for science. Secondly I explore the implications of Tyndall’s ‘popularity’ with respect to debates over the meaning and value of scientific ‘popularisation’. In support of recent work challenging diffusionist models of science communication, I show how Tyndall’s interactions with his audiences illustrate the symbiotic relationship between producer and consumer of ‘popular’ science. By examining the views of Tyndall’s critics—notably the ‘North British’ group of physicists—and his defenders and rivals in the domain of popular scientific lecturing, I show that disputes over Tyndall’s authority reflected anxieties about what constituted popular science and the transient boundaries between instruction and entertainment. The term ‘popularisation’ enjoyed many different uses in these debates, not least of all as a rheorical device with which to either exalt or destroy a scientist’s credibility.     

William Whewell,natural theology and the philosophy of science in mid nineteenth century Britain

This article aims to reveal the moral and theological dimensions of William Whewell's philosophy of science. It suggests that, in addition to an internalist account of Whewell's method and epistemology, there is a need to view his philosophy of science (and knowledge) within the intellectual context constituted by the assumptions of natural theology. It argues that writers of natural theology saw man's ability to know the world as an indication of his special place in nature, and that epistemological theories were therefore invested with moral and theological significance. Whewell's work is interpreted as an attempt to dissociate natural science from Utilitarianism and empiricist philosophy: he sought to promote a philosophy of science which guaranteed the principles of natural theology and the values of Christianity. But the idealist epistemology which he proposed was criticized by both scientists and theologians. In 1853 (in his book Of the plurality of worlds), again within the framework of natural theology, Whewell attempted to justify this epistemology by affirming the metaphysics of a Christian Platonism. From this position, Whewell defended natural theology against the metaphysical scepticism of both Henry Mansel and the positivists.     

ICT产业竞争力与高级ICT人才培养:以日本为案例

本文拟以日本信息通信产业发展进程为背景,探讨日本在ICT人才尤其是高级人才培养方面所采取的做法、它所面临的问题以及日本政府所采取的针对性政策,揭示ICT产业发展与人才培养之间的重要关联,以期为我国ICT人才政策的制定提供参考依据。本文将着重说明的是：进入20世纪,日本ICT产业发展到一个新的高度,然而。也正是在这一时期,高级ICT人才匮乏的问题也得以彰显,并导致日本ICT产业竞争力的下滑。     

新加坡中小企业21世纪10年发展计划及对我国的启示

在21世纪来临之际,新加坡政府为了使中小企业更具活力和经得起知识经济的考验,根据国内外形势变化的情况,以及中小企业生存,发展的需求,适时制定了《新加坡中小企业21世纪10年发展计划》（SME21）。本文指出这一计划设定的三大目标实际可行,它的实施将可以协助新加坡中上企业的提升,转型及外国业者建立伙伴关系,加速中小企业的成长,特别是,新加坡政府在计划中积极鼓励中小企业通过国际互联网交易的目标,将大大推动中小企业勇于改变传统经营模式,选择崭新的商业模式,为迎合知识经济时代的步伐,本文提出对我国的4点启示,强化政府对中小企业的扶持力度,制定我国中小企业21世纪发展战略规划,加快建立中小企业管理和服务新机制,增强中小企业的开拓创新能力。