Higher and colder: The success and failure of boundaries in high altitude and Antarctic research stations

Timeless spaces: Field experiments in the physiological study of circadian rhythms, 1938-1963

In the middle of the twentieth century, physiologists interested in human biological rhythms undertook a series of field experiments in natural spaces that they believed could closely approximate conditions of biological timelessness. With the field of rhythms research was still largely on the fringes of the life sciences, natural spaces seemed to offer unique research opportunities beyond what was available to physiologists in laboratory spaces. In particular, subterranean caves and the High Arctic became archetypal 'natural laboratories' for the study of human circadian (daily) rhythms. This paper is explores the field experiments which occurred in these 'timeless spaces'. It considers how scientists understood these natural spaces as suitably 'timeless' for studying circadian rhythms and what their experimental practices can tell us about contemporary physiological notions of biological time, especially its relationship to 'environmentality' (Formosinho et al. in Stud History Philos Sci 91:148-158, 2022). In so doing, this paper adds to a growing literature on the interrelationship of field sites by demonstrating the ways that caves and the Arctic were connected by rhythms scientists. Finally, it will explore how the use of these particular spaces were not just scientific but also political - leveraging growing Cold War anxieties about nuclear fallout and the space race to bring greater prestige and funding to the study of circadian rhythms in its early years.

Adaptation and altitude sickness: A 40-year bibliometric analysis and collaborative networks

Introduction

We analyze the scientific production and collaboration networks of studies based on adaptation and altitude diseases in the period 1980-2020.

Methods

The publications were extracted from journals indexed in Scopus. The bibliometric analysis was used to analyze the scientific production, including the number of annual publications, the documents, and the characteristics of the publications. With the VOSviewer software, the analysis of collaborative networks, productivity of the countries, as well as the analysis of the co-occurrence of keywords were visualized.

Results

15,240 documents were registered, of which 3,985 documents were analyzed. A significant trend was observed in the number of publications (R ²: 0.9847; P: < 0.001), with annual growth of 4.6%. The largest number of publications were original articles (77.8%), these published more frequently in the journal "Altitude Medicine and Biology". The largest number of countries were from Europe and Asia; however, the largest collaboration network was with the United States. Of the countries with high altitudes, China and Peru ranked first in scientific productivity. The research priorities were on the adaptation mechanism (37.1%), mainly anoxia and respiratory function. Acute mountain sickness (18.4%) and pulmonary edema (14.7%) were the most reported diseases. Of the top 10 institutions, "University of Colorado" and "Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia" contributed more than 100 publications.

Conclusions

Scientific production on adaptation and altitude illnesses continues to grow. The United States and United Kingdom present collaborative networks with high-altitude countries. The research is aimed at studying the mechanisms of adaptation to altitude and acute mountain sickness.

A change of heart: mechanisms of cardiac adaptation to acute and chronic hypoxia

Over the last 100 years, high‐altitude researchers have amassed a comprehensive understanding of the global cardiac responses to acute, prolonged and lifelong hypoxia. When lowlanders are exposed to hypoxia, the drop in arterial oxygen content demands an increase in cardiac output, which is facilitated by an elevated heart rate at the same time as ventricular volumes are maintained. As exposure is prolonged, haemoconcentration restores arterial oxygen content, whereas left ventricular filling and stroke volume are lowered as a result of a combination of reduced blood volume and hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction. Populations native to high‐altitude, such as the Sherpa in Asia, exhibit unique lifelong or generational adaptations to hypoxia. For example, they have smaller left ventricular volumes compared to lowlanders despite having larger total blood volume. More recent investigations have begun to explore the mechanisms underlying such adaptive responses by combining novel imaging techniques with interventions that manipulate cardiac preload, afterload, and/or contractility. This work has revealed the contributions and interactions of (i) plasma volume constriction; (ii) sympathoexcitation; and (iii) hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction with respect to altering cardiac loading, or otherwise preserving or enhancing biventricular systolic and diastolic function even amongst high altitude natives with excessive erythrocytosis. Despite these advances, various areas of investigation remain understudied, including potential sex‐related differences in response to high altitude. Collectively, the available evidence supports the conclusion that the human heart successfully adapts to hypoxia over the short‐ and long‐term, without signs of myocardial dysfunction in healthy humans, except in very rare cases of maladaptation.

From Value to Valuation: Pragmatist and Hermeneutic Orientations for Assessing Science on the International Space Station

Based on a study of the International Space Station (ISS), this paper argues that - as a set of orientations for sociological inquiry - pragmatism and hermeneutics are confluent frameworks to examine valuation as a social process. This confluence is grounded on their common attunement to valuing as a problematic and relational process, their equally common updates with theories of institutions, and a further conceptual development regarding the temporalities of valuation. I advance the argument in four steps. First, looking at how the question about the "scientific value" of the ISS is far from settled, I show how valuation is always about something considered problematic and indeterminate. Second, characterizing the ISS at the intersection of different criteria of assessment, I stress the nature of valuation as a fundamentally perspectival and interpretive process, and show how a hermeneutic approach can complement some of the limitations of pragmatism in this regard. Third, I look at the question of institutions considering how some modes of assessment sediment more successfully than others. Fourth, I argue that, while providing insights towards it, pragmatist and hermeneutic approaches to valuation have not fully grasped its temporal nature as a process, and outline ways to open this line of inquiry. I conclude with some ideas for studies in sociology of science to re-entangle detailed case studies of scientific practice with the study of how institutions make claims of worth about the nature of science, I propose ways to extend these arguments to other studies of what I call iridescent institutions, and I make some considerations about our stance as sociologists in these valuation disputes.

The politics of a natural laboratory: Claiming territory and governing life in the Galápagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands are often called a natural laboratory of evolution. This metaphor provides a powerful way of understanding space that, through scientific research, conservation and tourism, has shaped the archipelago over the past century. Combining environmental histories of field science with political ecologies of conservation biopower, this article foregrounds the territorial production of the archipelago as a living laboratory. In the mid-twentieth century, foreign naturalists used the metaphor to make land claims as they campaigned to create the Galápagos National Park and Charles Darwin Research Station. Unlike earlier 'parks for science', these institutions were not established under colonial rule, but through postwar institutions of transnational environmental governance that nonetheless continued colonial approaches to nature protection. In the following decades, the metaphor became a rationale for territorial management through biopolitical strategies designed to ensure isolation by controlling human access and introduced species. This article's approach extends the scope of what is at stake in histories of field science: not only the production of knowledge and authority of knowledge claims, but also the foundation of global environmental governance and authority over life and death in particular places. Yet while the natural laboratory was a powerful geographical imagination, analysis shows that it was also an unsustainable goal.

A home for science: The life and times of Tropical and Polar field stations

A 'halfway house' between the generic, purified space of the laboratory and the varied and particular spaces of the field, the field station is a controlled yet uncontained setting from which nature can be accessed and anchored. As living quarters for visiting scientists, field stations are also enmeshed in the routine and rhythms of everyday domestic life, and in longer cycles of habitation, wear, and repair. This introduction considers the empirical and conceptual significance of Polar and Tropical field stations as homes for scientific work and scientific lives. The field station's extra-territorial yet intimate character affects the credibility and circulation of knowledge along science's frontiers. The challenge of making a home in the (non-temperate) field and the mundane experiences of expatriation and appropriation establish particular political dynamics of knowledge-making in these locations. They bring into focus the imaginaries of nature and science that drive transnational research and put into relief the aesthetic and affective dimensions of work and life in these distant homes for science. All these themes are pursued and amplified in a different medium by the artists who contributed to our research and are also featured in this special issue.