Three overlooked photosynthesis papers of Otto Warburg (1883-1970), published in the 1940s in German and in Russian, on light-driven water oxidation coupled to benzoquinone reduction

After a brief background on Otto Heinrich Warburg (1883-1970), and some of his selected research, we provide highlights, in English, of three of his papers in the 1940s-unknown to many as they were not originally published in English. They are: two brief reports on Photosynthesis, with Wilhelm Lüttgens, originally published in German, in 1944: 'Experiment on assimilation of carbonic acid'; and 'Further experiments on carbon dioxide assimilation'. This is followed by a regular paper, originally published in Russian, in 1946: 'The photochemical reduction of quinone in green granules'. Since the 1944 reports discussed here are very short, their translations are included in the Appendix, but that of the 1946 paper is provided in the Supplementary Material. In all three reports, Warburg provides the first evidence for and elaborates on light-driven water oxidation coupled to reduction of added benzoquinone. These largely overlooked studies of Warburg are in stark contrast to Warburg's well-known error in assigning the origin of the photosynthetically formed dioxygen to carbonate.

My precarious career in photosynthesis: a roller-coaster journey into the fascinating world of chloroplast ultrastructure, composition, function and dysfunction

Despite my humble beginnings in rural China, I had the good fortune of advancing my career and joining an international community of photosynthesis researchers to work on the 'light reactions' that are a fundamental process in Nature. Along with supervisors, mentors, colleagues, students and lab assistants, I worked on ionic redistributions across the photosynthetic membrane in response to illumination, photophosphorylation, forces that regulate the stacking of photosynthetic membranes, the composition of components of the photosynthetic apparatus during acclimation to the light environment, and the failure of the photosynthetic machinery to acclimate to too much light or even to cope with moderate light due to inevitable photodamage. These fascinating underlying mechanisms were investigated in vitro and in vivo. My career path, with its ups and downs, was never secure, but the reward of knowing a little more of the secret of Nature offset the job uncertainty.

Uncovering the metaphysics of psychological warfare: The social science behind the Psychological Strategy Board's operations planning, 1951-1953

In April 1951 president Harry S. Truman established the Psychological Strategy Board to enhance and streamline America's sprawling psychological warfare campaign against the USSR. As soon as the Board's staff began work on improving US psychological operations, they wondered how social science might help them achieve their task. Board Director, Gordon Gray, asked physicist turned research administrator Henry Loomis to do a full review of America's social science research program in support of psychological operations. Loomis willingly accepted the task. This paper documents Loomis's investigation into America's social science research program. It uncovers the critical role that government departments had in the creation of research in the early 1950s and thus highlights that the government official is an important actor in the history of social science and the application of social science to psychological operations at the beginning of the Cold War.

The 'Poitrot Report', 1945: the first public document on Nazi euthanasia

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the so-called 'Poitrot Report', submitted to the French Military Government in Baden-Baden, Germany, in December 1945 and published in a reduced German version in 1946. Its author was the French-Moroccan psychiatrist Robert Poitrot, who had been put in charge of the public mental asylums in Südwürttemberg after World War II. Poitrot took responsibility for restoring psychiatric care during the occupation, and was also eager to document Nazi 'euthanasia' and to start investigating the role of staff in mental hospitals during National Socialism. Focusing on the 'Poitrot Report', this paper also reflects on life in Württemberg mental hospitals and the interaction between French representatives such as Poitrot and regional German medical staff.

The study of epilepsy in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century

In the nineteenth century, there was a continuous debate on the structure and function of the brain, focusing on localization of function and on epilepsy. France, Germany, and England played a leading role. This article addresses the question of what happened with respect to the study of epilepsy in the Netherlands in that period. A systematic search of the literature has been performed and papers by Schroeder van der Kolk, Huet, Jelgersma, and Niermeijer are discussed. Also two dissertations were selected for discussion, those of Kroon and Langelaan. It is concluded that from a scientific point of view, only the paper by Schroeder van der Kolk deserved and received international attention.

Geography and global health

In the wake of the report of the World Health Organisation's Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, Closing the gap in a generation (Marmot 2008), this invited commentary considers the scope for geographical research on global health. We reflect on current work and note future possibilities, particularly those that take a critical perspective on the interplay of globalisation, security and health.

Concurrent validity of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI): a study of African American precollege students

Concurrent validation procedures were employed, using a sample of African American precollege students, to determine the extent to which scale scores obtained from the first edition of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) were appropriate for diagnostic purposes. Data analysis revealed that 2 of the 10 LASSI scales (i.e., Anxiety and Test Strategies) significantly correlated with a measure of academic ability. These results suggested that scores obtained from these LASSI scales may provide valid assessments of African American precollege students’ academic aptitude. Implications for teachers, school counselors, and developmental studies professionals were discussed.

How does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings? Evidence from Project Star

In Project STAR, 11,571 students in Tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade. This article evaluates the long-term impacts of STAR by linking the experimental data to administrative records. We first demonstrate that kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings. We then document four sets of experimental impacts. First, students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes. Class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27, but this effect is imprecisely estimated. Second, students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings. Third, an analysis of variance reveals significant classroom effects on earnings. Students who were randomly assigned to higher quality classrooms in grades K–3—as measured by classmates' end-of-class test scores—have higher earnings, college attendance rates, and other outcomes. Finally, the effects of class quality fade out on test scores in later grades, but gains in noncognitive measures persist.

The Bruce Report and social welfare leadership in the politics of Toronto’s “Slums”, 1934–1939

Slum clearance and rebuilding first became a serious political project in Toronto during the 1930s. Following the release of a systematic housing survey known as the Bruce Report (1934), a set of actors distinguished by their planning authority with respect to social agencies, influence over social work education, coordination of social research, and role as spokespersons of religious bodies inaugurated a political struggle over state power. While the campaign failed, it called forth a reaction from established authorities and reconfigured the local political field as it related to low-income housing. This article gives an account of these processes by drawing upon correspondence and minutes of meetings of city officials and the campaign’s organizers, newspaper clippings, and published materials.

Religion and attitudes toward abortion and abortion policy in Brazil

This study examines the association between religion and attitudes toward the practice of abortion and abortion policy in Brazil. Drawing upon data from the 2002 Brazilian Social Research Survey (BSRS), we test a number of hypotheses with regard to the role of religion on opposition to the practice of abortion and its legalization. Findings indicate that frequently attending Pentecostals demonstrate the strongest opposition to the practice of abortion and both frequently attending Pentecostals and Catholics demonstrate the strongest opposition to its legalization. Additional religious factors, such as a commitment to biblical literalism, were also found to be significantly associated with opposition to both abortion issues. Ultimately, the findings have implications for the future of public policy on abortion and other contentious social issues in Brazil.

Integrating diversity into graduate social work education: a 30-year retrospective view by MSW-level African American social workers

The study surveyed a national sample of 100 African American master of social work graduates to retroactively assess perceived diversity content in Human Behavior courses before and after the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) established accreditation standards on diversity. Seventy-one percent of the respondents were females, the mean age was 45.8 years, and their graduation years ranged from 1958 to 2002. Most graduated from northeastern schools (34%), followed by midwestern (28%), southeastern (22%), northwestern (11%), and southwestern (5%) schools. Investigators used the Preparation for Graduate Education Social Work Education Scale and the Human Behavior Survey Addendum (alpha = .97). There were no statistically significant differences on diversity content scores for participants enrolled before and after CSWE diversity standards were established, but graduates of historically Black colleges gave higher diversity content scores in every area. Study includes discussion and implications for Afrocentric theory and the need to prepare practitioners for future social work careers in multicultural communities.

Academic freedom or political maneuvers: Theodore W. Schultz and the oleomargarine controversy revisited

The oleomargarine controversy was a case of academic freedom in which nineteen researchers resigned from Iowa State College to protest pressure from the dairy industry to change their research findings. This article explores the ways in which the boundaries between science and politics were more blurred than they seemed at the time or in subsequent historical treatments. The argument begins with a history of the unique composition of agricultural economics research at Iowa State, refocuses the affair from a conflict between the state college and the dairy industry to one among a much larger number of actors, and concludes by demonstrating that one professor, Theodore Schultz, was in the process of transitioning to a new career in prescriptive policy work with private policy associations that ended up being opposed to the practices and policy goals of some of the farm organizations in question.

Moving in circles: a brief history of reports and inquiries relating to mental health content in undergraduate nursing curricula

Since the abolition of specialist, undergraduate education in mental health nursing, serious concerns have been raised about the inadequate amount of theory and clinical experience devoted to this specialty in most pre-registration nursing programs in Australia. A number of government initiated reports and inquiries have been undertaken to scope the problem and provide recommendations with the aim of overcoming the identified deficits. Most inquiries have agreed that mental health nursing is under-represented in undergraduate programs and this has serious consequences for establishing a sustainable mental health nursing workforce and for providing optimal care for people experiencing a mental illness. The recommendations tend to support the continuation of comprehensive nursing education, but emphasise the need for increased mental health content. Terms like significant and substantial are often used which are not easily quantifiable. The repetitive nature of the recommendations and findings of the reports suggests that real change is not likely to occur unless specific minimum standards for the mental health content of undergraduate nursing programs are set.

Thinking about Winnicott and the origins of the self

Reading Rodman's "Winnicott: Life and Work" has induced some considerations in the author who for years has shared Winnicott's "research analysis" in the field of potential space. Among these considerations is the rarely remarked affinity between Erikson and Winnicott in their view of human nature as well as in their seeing basic trust as the essence of good growth. For Winnicott particularly maternal functions have great maturational value, facilitating the process which takes infants from their first sensory experiences to mentalization, where father will exist in reality. The significance of illusion at different maturational stages is briefly considered as opposed to reality. To the latter a distant origin (possibly in foetal movements, which in utero meet resistance) has been attributed by Winnicott as mentioned in one of his last letter. "Meeting resistance one feels real" was one of his sayings (Gaddini, 2003).

Evacuation, hygiene, and social policy: the "Our Towns" Report of 1943

There has recently been much debate about social policy in Britain during the Second World War. This article takes up Jose Harris's suggestion that historians should look not at large-scale forces, but at ‘those minuscule roots of idiosyncratic private culture’. As a way into the complex amalgam that comprised ideas on social policy in the 1940s, we look in particular at the report on the evacuation of schoolchildren entitled Our towns: a close up, published by the Women's Group on Public Welfare in March 1943. Of course it is undeniable that one report is unrepresentative of all the many surveys that were produced on the evacuation experience. However, the initial wave of evacuation in September 1939 was the most significant, and the Our towns survey, along with a famous leader article in The Economist, has already received some selective attention from historians. Here we subject the survey to a more intensive examination, looking at the backgrounds of its authors, its content, and its reception by various professional groups. The article argues that it was the apparently contradictory nature of the report that explains its powerful appeal – it echoed interwar debates about behaviour and citizenship, but also reflected the ideas that would shape the welfare state in the post-war years.

[The institutional construction of Spanish biochemistry, 1945-70: the role of exchanges with Northern Europe and America]

RÉSUMÉ. — Au lieu de chercher des alliés parmi leurs collègues méditerranéens, proches par leur situation géographique, politique et économique, les biochimistes espagnols ont pris pour modèle l'Europe du Nord, puis la science anglo-américaine. La fondation de leur discipline, en pleine dictature franquiste, est marquée par le dévouement à la recherche, le souci d'obtenir une reconnaissance internationale, la précarité des moyens et le soutien de l'autorité politico-scientifique mise en place par le franquisme.