Charles M. Breder, Jr.: Bahamas and Florida

Dr. Charles M. Breder, a well known ichthyologist, kept meticulous field diaries throughout his career. This publication is a transcription of field notes recorded during the Bacon Andros Expeditions, and trips to Florida, Ohio and Illinois during the 1930s. Breder's work in Andros included exploration of a "blue hole", inland ecosystems, and collection of marine and terrestrial specimens. Anecdotes include descriptions of camping on the beach, the "filly-mingoes" (flamingos) of Andros Island, the Marine Studios of Jacksonville, FL, a trip to Havana, and the birth of seahorses. This publication is part of a series of transcriptions of Dr. Breder's diaries. (PDF contains 55 pages)

Charles M. Breder, Jr.: Atlantis Expedition, 1934

Dr. Charles M. Breder participated on the 1934 expedition of the Atlantis from Woods Hole, Massachusetts to Panama and back and kept a field diary of daily activities. The Atlantis expedition of 1934, led by Prof. A. E. Parr, was a milestone in the history of scientific discovery in the Sargasso Sea and the West Indies. Although naturalists had visited the Sargasso Sea for many years, the Atlantis voyage was the first attempt to investigate in detailed quantitative manner biological problems about this varying, intermittent ‘false’ bottom of living, floating plants and associated fauna. In addition to Dr. Breder, the party also consisted of Dr. Alexander Forbes, Harvard University and Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI); T. S. Greenwood, WHOI hydrographer; M. D. Burkenroad, Yale University’s Bingham Laboratory, carcinology and Sargasso epizoa; M. Bishop, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Zoology Dept., collections and preparations and H. Sears, WHOI ichthyologist. The itinerary included the following waypoints: Woods Hole, the Bermudas, Turks Islands, Kingston, Colon, along the Mosquito Bank off of Nicaragua, off the north coast of Jamaica, along the south coast of Cuba, Bartlett Deep, to off the Isle of Pines, through the Yucatan Channel, off Havana, off Key West, to Miami, to New York City, and then the return to Woods Hole. During the expedition, Breder collected rare and little-known flying fish species and developed a method for hatching and growing flying fish larvae. (PDF contains 48 pages)

DADAISM Project Plan

The DADAISM project brings together researchers from the diverse fields of archaeology, human computer interaction, image processing, image search and retrieval, and text mining to create a rich interactive system to address the problems of researchers finding images relevant to their research. In the age of digital photography, thousands of images are taken of archaeological artefacts. These images could help archaeologists enormously in their tasks of classification and identification if they could be related to one another effectively. They would yield many new insights on a range of archaeological problems. However, these images are currently greatly underutilized for two key reasons. Firstly, the current paradigm for interaction with image collections is basic keyword search or, at best, simple faceted search. Secondly, even if these interactions are possible, the metadata related to the majority of images of archaeological artefacts is scarce in information relating to the content of the image and the nature of the artefact, and is time intensive to enter manually. DADAISM will transform the way in which archaeologists interact with online image collections. It will deploy user-centred design methodologies to create an interactive system that goes well beyond current systems for working with images, and will support archaeologists’ tasks of finding, organising, relating and labelling images as well as other relevant sources of information such as grey literature documents.

Los estudios de segunda enseñanza en Guipuzcoa. El Instituto Provincial (1845-1901)

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Charles I : unhero of royalist poetry

During the English Civil War, Charles I appeared as a character in Royalist poetry, both directly and allegorically. These depictions drew on ancient Roman epic poems, particularly Lucan’s De Bello Civili, in their treatment of the subject matter of civil war and Charles as an epic hero. Though the authors of these poems supported Charles, their depictions of him and his reign reveal anxiety about his weakness as a ruler. In comparison to the cults of personality surrounding his predecessors and the heroes of De Bello Civili, his cult appears bland and forced. The lack of enthusiasm surrounding Charles I may help to explain his downfall at the hands of his Parliamentarian opponents.  

Implications of governance structures on urban climate action: evidence from Italy and Spain

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Cartas enviadas por Charles Becker y por su viuda (M. L. Becker) entre 1929 y 1942

1 tarjeta postal y 1 carta (manuscritas) ; entre 140x90mm y 215x275mm

Feeding selectivity of brown trout (Salmo trutta) in Loch Ness, Scotland

The aim of this study was to compare statistically the zooplankton assemblage ingested by brown trout (Salmo trutta) in Loch Ness with that of the zooplankton in the water column. This would allow the examination of the apparent paradox that very few copepods appear to be consumed by trout at a time of year when they are numerous and readily available as food. The investigation was limited to the crustacean zooplankters, since the Rotifera are generally so small that they are only of interest to fish in the first few days of life. 25 trout were obtained from anglers, and the stomach contents of non-"ferox" animals analysed. Samples of pelagic zooplankton were obtained approximately monthly from 30-m vertical net-hauls (mesh size 100 km). It is concluded that the variation in dietary composition with trout wet weight indicates an ontogenetic habitat shift producing spatial separation of young and older individuals.

Acceleration Sensing, Feedback Cooling, and Nonlinear Dynamics with Nanoscale Cavity-Optomechanical Devices

Light has long been used for the precise measurement of moving bodies, but the burgeoning field of optomechanics is concerned with the interaction of light and matter in a regime where the typically weak radiation pressure force of light is able to push back on the moving object. This field began with the realization in the late 1960's that the momentum imparted by a recoiling photon on a mirror would place fundamental limits on the smallest measurable displacement of that mirror. This coupling between the frequency of light and the motion of a mechanical object does much more than simply add noise, however. It has been used to cool objects to their quantum ground state, demonstrate electromagnetically-induced-transparency, and modify the damping and spring constant of the resonator. Amazingly, these radiation pressure effects have now been demonstrated in systems ranging 18 orders of magnitude in mass (kg to fg).

In this work we will focus on three diverse experiments in three different optomechanical devices which span the fields of inertial sensors, closed-loop feedback, and nonlinear dynamics. The mechanical elements presented cover 6 orders of magnitude in mass (ng to fg), but they all employ nano-scale photonic crystals to trap light and resonantly enhance the light-matter interaction. In the first experiment we take advantage of the sub-femtometer displacement resolution of our photonic crystals to demonstrate a sensitive chip-scale optical accelerometer with a kHz-frequency mechanical resonator. This sensor has a noise density of approximately 10 micro-g/rt-Hz over a useable bandwidth of approximately 20 kHz and we demonstrate at least 50 dB of linear dynamic sensor range. We also discuss methods to further improve performance of this device by a factor of 10.

In the second experiment, we used a closed-loop measurement and feedback system to damp and cool a room-temperature MHz-frequency mechanical oscillator from a phonon occupation of 6.5 million down to just 66. At the time of the experiment, this represented a world-record result for the laser cooling of a macroscopic mechanical element without the aid of cryogenic pre-cooling. Furthermore, this closed-loop damping yields a high-resolution force sensor with a practical bandwidth of 200 kHZ and the method has applications to other optomechanical sensors.

The final experiment contains results from a GHz-frequency mechanical resonator in a regime where the nonlinearity of the radiation-pressure interaction dominates the system dynamics. In this device we show self-oscillations of the mechanical element that are driven by multi-photon-phonon scattering. Control of the system allows us to initialize the mechanical oscillator into a stable high-amplitude attractor which would otherwise be inaccessible. To provide context, we begin this work by first presenting an intuitive overview of optomechanical systems and then providing an extended discussion of the principles underlying the design and fabrication of our optomechanical devices.

Metaphysics in the Work of Charles Darwin

It is not hard to see how two visions of nature are intertwined in Darwin’s Journal of Researches: one vision, the province of romantic authors depicting the sentiments awakened by certain landscapes, the other, the domain of natural scientists describing the world without reference to the aesthetic qualities of the scenery. Nevertheless, analyses of this double perspective in Darwin’s work are relatively rare. Most scholars focus on Darwin, the scientist, and more or less ignore the aesthetic aspects of his work. Perceiving the gradual transformation of Darwin’s world view, however, depends on analyzing the two different modes in which Darwin approached and perceived the world. While one can, on occasion, find commentaries on the beauty of the natural world in Darwin’s early work, the passage of time produces a modification in the naturalist’s manner of perceiving nature. This does not, however, mean that Darwin ceases to find beauty in nature; on the contrary, the disenchantment, in Max Weber’s words, that Darwin’s theory produces should not be understood in a pejorative, but rather in a literal sense. The theory of evolution, in effect, divests nature of its magical character and begins to explain it in terms of natural selection, according it, in the process a new and more intense attraction. In the present work, the metaphysical implications of this new vision of the world are analyzed through the eyes of its discoverer.

Charles Darwin y la Descripción de la Naturaleza

Comunicación presentada en el I Congreso de la Asociación Iberoamericana de Filosofía de la Biología (Valencia)

The Executive Council of the Charles Darwin Foundation 1964-1988

From a special issue: A Brief History of the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands 1959-1988

Mugilid Fish Are Sentinels of Exposure to Endocrine Disrupting Compounds in Coastal and Estuarine Environments

Effects on fish reproduction can result from a variety of toxicity mechanisms first operating at the molecular level. Notably, the presence in the environment of some compounds termed endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can cause adverse effects on reproduction by interfering with the endocrine system. In some cases, exposure to EDCs leads to the animal feminization and male fish may develop oocytes in testis (intersex condition). Mugilid fish are well suited sentinel organisms to study the effects of reproductive EDCs in the monitoring of estuarine/marine environments. Up-regulation of aromatases and vitellogenins in males and juveniles and the presence of intersex individuals have been described in a wide array of mullet species worldwide. There is a need to develop new molecular markers to identify early feminization responses and intersex condition in fish populations, studying mechanisms that regulate gonad differentiation under exposure to xenoestrogens. Interestingly, an electrophoresis of gonad RNA, shows a strong expression of 5S rRNA in oocytes, indicating the potential of 5S rRNA and its regulating proteins to become useful molecular makers of oocyte presence in testis. Therefore, the use of these oocyte markers to sex and identify intersex mullets could constitute powerful molecular biomarkers to assess xenoestrogenicity in field conditions.