Little-known Swiss contributions to the description, diagnosis, and surgery of lumbar disc disease before the Mixter and Barr era

The understanding of lumbar spine pathologies made substantial progress at the turn of the twentieth century. The authors review the original publication of Otto Veraguth in 1929 reporting on the successful resection of a herniated lumbar disc, published exclusively in the German language. His early report is put into the historical context, and its impact on the understanding of pathologies of the intervertebral disc (IVD) is estimated. The Swiss surgeon and Nobel Prize laureate Emil Theodor Kocher was among the first physicians to describe the traumatic rupture of the IVD in 1896. As early as 1909 Oppenheim and Krause published 2 case reports on surgery for a herniated lumbar disc. Goldthwait was the first physician to delineate the etiopathogenes is between annulus rupture, symptoms of sciatica, and neurological signs in his publication of 1911. Further publications by Middleton and Teacher in 1911 and Schmorl in 1929 added to the understanding of lumbar spinal pathologies. In 1929, the Swiss neurologist Veraguth (surgery performed by Hans Brun) and the American neurosurgeon Walter Edward Dandy both published their early experiences with the surgical therapy of a herniated lumbar disc. Veraguth's contribution, however, has not been appreciated internationally to date. The causal relationship between lumbar disc pathology and sciatica remained uncertain for some years to come. The causal relationship was not confirmed until Mixter and Barr's landmark paper in 1934 describing the association of sciatica and lumbar disc herniation, after which the surgical treatment became increasingly popular. Veraguth was among the first physicians to report on the clinical course of a patient with successful resection of a herniated lumbar disc. His observations should be acknowledged in view of the limited experience and literature on this ailment at that time.

Timely Tenses: Considering Present Tense Narration

When the jury of the Man Booker Prize 2010 chose three novels for their short-list that were written in present tense they earned some harsh criticism. To some, like Philipp Pullman, present tense narration seemed to be no more than an annoying fad, “a silly affectation,” which he criticises as a limitation to narrative possibility.1 Nevertheless, present tense narration is spreading fast, not only among Booker Prize nominees and winners. Indeed, it has become so common that it hardly seems to draw much attention anymore. But what is the appeal of present tense narration to contemporary authors? What effect does the choice of present tense narration have on the ways stories are told and read? This paper will address and compare the use of present tense narration in recent British novels by authors such as Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies), Ali Smith (Hotel World, The Accidental ), Tom McCarthy (C) and others, looking for similarities and differences in their respective narrative rationale. In view of the heterogeneous and complex use of present tense in contemporary fiction, I would like to suggest, merely pointing to the pace of contemporary life and the simultaneity of new communication media does not suffice to adequately address a phenomenon that has become a characteristic feature of 21st century narration. 1 Laura Roberts. “Philip Pullman and Philip Hensher criticise Booker Prize for including present tense novels.” The Telegraph. 11. Sept. 2010.

The Nature of Scientific Proof in the Age of Simulations. Is numerical mimicry a third way of establishing truth?

Is numerical mimicry a third way of establishing truth? Kevin Heng received his M.S. and Ph.D. in astrophysics from the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 2007 to 2010, first as a Member and later as the Frank & Peggy Taplin Member. From 2010 to 2012 he was a Zwicky Prize Fellow at ETH Z¨urich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). In 2013, he joined the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern, Switzerland, as a tenure-track assistant professor, where he leads the Exoplanets and Exoclimes Group. He has worked on, and maintains, a broad range of interests in astrophysics: shocks, extrasolar asteroid belts, planet formation, fluid dynamics, brown dwarfs and exoplanets. He coordinates the Exoclimes Simulation Platform (ESP), an open-source set of theoretical tools designed for studying the basic physics and chemistry of exoplanetary atmospheres and climates (www.exoclime.org). He is involved in the CHEOPS (Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite) space telescope, a mission approved by the European Space Agency (ESA) and led by Switzerland. He spends a fair amount of time humbly learning the lessons gleaned from studying the Earth and Solar System planets, as related to him by atmospheric, climate and planetary scientists. He received a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research in 2006

Best practice in transdisciplinary research - Swiss td-award Winners 2013

Transdisciplinary research plays an increasing role in topics of societal relevance and impact. The td-net of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences awards innovative transdisciplinary research every other year. The last td-award was given in 2013. This special focus of GAIA features the six prize-winning projects, presenting short summaries of their work. Explaining its selection in the following introduction, the Jury of the td-net honours the awardees, and puts their work into a global perspective.

“But look: we have sat here too long”: Hilary Mantel’s tightrope walk of present-tense usage

Even after Hilary Mantel has won the Man Booker prize two times in a row with Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, her novelistic account of the life of Thomas Cromwell, her intriguing decision to write these historical novels in the present tense gave cause to surprisingly little extended comment beyond a perfunctory nod to its evocation of immediacy. This presents not only a lacunae in the discussion about Mantel’s novels, but is also symptomatic for a change in the contemporary critical evaluation of present-tense narration in general. If present-tense narration once used to be a marker for experimental daring and might even have implied a certain hostility towards fictionality, Mantel’s novels give ample evidence that literary sensibilities have changed. In order to understand the scope and nature of this change, my paper puts Mantel’s use of the present tense in the context of both the historical development of present-tense usage and the ample contemporary landscape of present-tense narration. This allows me to show that the complexities of present-tense usage belie a reduction of its effect to an evocation of immediacy. Rather, I argue, Mantel uses it for a delicate tightrope walk between proximity and distance, history and fiction, authenticity and imagination.