Location of an eye mutant in the onion flyHylemya antiqua meigen using a pericentric chromosome inversion

Summary With the use of a pericentric inversion in chromosome 3, an eye color mutant in the onion fly was located in chromosome 3. No recombination occurs in males; 40.2% recombination was observed in females. This linkage through the male facilitates further cytogenetic research on structural aberrations involving chromosome 3.     

Some observations of Leonardo,Galileo, Mariotte and others relative to size effect

A letter in which astronomer John Flamsteed expounded his unusual views about the causes of earthquakes survives in a number of drafts and copies. Though it was compiled in response to shocks felt in England in 1692 and Sicily in 1693, its relationship to the wide range of comparable theories current in the later seventeenth century must be considered. Flamsteed's suggestion that an ‘earthquake’ might be an explosion in the air was linked with contemporary thinking about the roles of sulphur and nitre in earthquakes underground, and in combustion, respiration, and other processes. It reveals his concern with subjects other than astronomy and the influence of his continuing contact with members of the Royal Society; it also offers an early example of how seventeenth-century work on sulphur and nitre prepared the way for ‘airquake’ and electrical theories associated with the London earthquake of 1750.     

The Science of Magnetism Before Gilbert Leonardo Garzoni's Treatise on the Loadstone

This paper presents the main features of the treatise on magnetism written by the Jesuit Leonardo Garzoni (1543–92). The treatise was believed to be lost, but a copy of it has been recently recovered. The treatise is briefly described and analysed. The results of a comparison between Garzoni's treatise, Della Porta's Magia Naturalis (1589), and Gilbert's De Magnete (1600) are also summarized. As claimed in the seventeenth century by Niccolò Cabeo and Niccolò Zucchi, the treatise contains quite a lot of the material to be found subsequently in the Magia Naturalis and in the De Magnete. Most importantly, the treatise presents so many interesting features, well before Gilbert's work, which make it the first example of a modern treatment of magnetic phenomena.     

Leonardo da Vinci's solution to the problem of the pinhole camera

The longstanding challenge of the pinhole camera for medieval theorists was explaining why luminous bodies cast onto a screen different images at different distances from the screen.I argue that this problem was first solved not by Francesco Maurolico, as David Lindberg concludes in his influential series of articles on the camera, but by Leonardo da Vinci. In studies in the Codex Atlanticus dating c. 1508–14, Leonardo explains the changes in screen patterns with distance by applying a key perspective principle to two kinds of projection pyramids that figure into pinhole camera imaging.In contrast, Maurolico's later conclusions about the pinhole camera are only partly correct. Maurolico gives a mistaken account of why pinhole images change with distance. He also introduces the erroneous notion that similar superimposed parts of the camera image actually fuse as the screen withdraws.     

Robertsonian translocation,pericentric inversion and heterochromatin block in the evolution of the Tailless Fruit Bat

Summary The karyotype ofMegaerops ecaudatus from Peninsular Malaysia consists of 24 chromosomes as compared to 2n=26 for specimens from Thailand. The difference in diploid number is the result of Robertsonian translocation. The Peninsular Malaysian specimens also exhibit pericentric inversion in the smallest pair of autosomes, and the presence of a totally heterochromatic short arm in the second longest metacentric pair. There is 1 pair of Ag-NOR, located on the secondary constriction of the longest metacentric autosome.This work is supported by a University of Malaya research grant.     

Photoreceptor properties of an ectopic eye in the fleshfly,Sarcophaga bullata

Summary Ectopic eyes were produced on the fleshfly,Sarcophaga bullata by transplantation of imaginal eye discs. Electrophysiological and histological observations of these supernumerary eyes indicate the absence of synaptic connections between retinular cells and higher order neurons.Supported by an University of New Brunswick research grant to P.S. and NSF grant BNS-76-11921 and NIH grant 1-R01-EY-02487-01A1 to W.S.S.We would like to thank Dr I.A. Meinertzhagen for suggestions and Mary Johnson for technical assistance.     

Instances of sex inversion in the domesticated swordtail,Xiphophorus helleri heckel (pisces,osteichthyes)

Summary 3 protogynous hermaphrodites were found in a domesticated strain ofXiphophorus helleri, confirming much doubted observations by older authors. It therefore seems that sex determination may vary between strains, certain strains being strictly gonochoristic but others being capable of true hermaphroditism.     

Instances of sex inversion in the domesticated swordtail, Xiphophorus helleri Heckel (Pisces, Osteichthyes)

3 protogynous hermaphrodites were found in a domesticated strain of Xiphophorus helleri, confirming much doubted observations by older authors. It therefore seems that sex determination may vary between strains, certain strains being strictly gonochoristic but others being capable of true hermaphroditism.     

Inhibition of lens regeneration in the eye of the adult newt,Diemictylus viridescens

Résumé La comparaison immunoéléctrophorétique d'extrait du cristallin de salamandre avec de l'extrait du cristallin de poulet a montré que la différence essentielle réside dans le caractère antigénétique du-cristallin. La régénération du cristallin fut inhibée par les matières extraites du cristallin de salamandre mais non pas par celles qui provenaient du cristallin de poulet.

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This work was supported by a grant from the National Research Council of Canada toD. J. McCallion.     

Kepler,Tycho, and the ‘Optical Part of Astronomy’: the genesis of Kepler's theory of pinhole images

In the last half of the 16^th century, the method of casting a solar image through an aperture onto a screen for the purposes of observing the sun and its eclipses came into increasing use among professional astronomers. In particular, Tycho Brahe adapted most of his instruments to solar observations, both of positions and of apparent diameters, by fitting the upper pinnule of his diopters with an aperture and allowing the lower pinnule with an engraved centering circle to serve as a screen. In conjunction with these innovations a method of calculating apparent solar diameters on the basis of the measured size of the image was developed, but the method was almost entirely empirically based and developed without the assistance of an adequate theory of the formation of images behind small apertures. Thus resulted the unsuccessful extension of the method by Tycho to the quantitative observation of apparent lunar diameters during solar eclipses. Kepler's attention to the eclipse of July 1600, prompted by Tycho's anomalous results, gave him occasion to consider the relevant theory of measurement. The result was a fully articulated account of pinhole images. Dedicated to the memory of Ronald Cameron Riddell (29.1.1938–11.1.1981)     

Longitudinal continuity of the subrhabdomeric cisternae in the photoreceptors of the compound eye of the drone, Apis mellifera

It is shown that the subrhabdomeric cisternae of the honey bee drone photoreceptor cell constitute a single structure with a continuous lumen, that extends over at least 15 micron and perhaps the whole length of the cell. In this case, the structure of the cisternae might subserve the propagation of light adaptation along the cell.     

A MSH-released serum factor acting on the blood-aqueous barrier of the rabbit eye

Résumé L'injection sous-cutanée de l'hormone synthétique-MSH en dose de 10g/kg peut produire chez le lapin une augmentation de la perméabilité dans l'il. Le sérum qui a été prélevé à ces lapins contient un facteur non-dialysable et de grandes molécules. Injecté par voie intraveineuse à d'autres lapins, ce facteur augmente la perméabilité oculaire.