MITPressLog

Monday Eye Candy: Paper Machines

Today's eye candy is from Markus Krajewski's Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929. The book discusses why the card catalog--a “paper machine” with rearrangeable elements--can be regarded as a precursor of the computer. It contains 24 figures and 1 table (click on each image to enlarge).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The classification system of the Pandectae in Gessner 1549, following a tree structure. (From Gessner 1549, page after the cover)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hybrid card index in book form. (From Placcius 1689, p. 67.)

 

 

 

 

Excerpt cabinet. (From Placcius 1689, p. 152.)

 

 

 

 

French prerevolutionary playing cards. (From François 1974, p. 81.)

 

 

 

 

 

The catalog capsule. (From Petschar, Strouhal, and Zobernig 1999, p. 112.)

Monday Eye Candy: Atlas of Science

This week's eye candy comes from Atlas of Science: Visualizing What We Know by Katy Börner. Atlas of Science, based on the popular exhibit "Places & Spaces: Mapping Science," (which will arrive at Northeastern University's Snell library tomorrow, January 31st and remain on display through
March) describes and displays successful mapping techniques and features 600 color illustrations. 

Here are a few maps from Atlas of Science (click on each image to enlarge). For those of you in the Boston area, be sure to check out the Places & Spaces Exhibit at Northeastern. As an added bonus, Katy Börner will be speaking at 421 Snell Library this Thursday, February 2nd from 4-5 pm with a reception and chance to view the exhibit to follow.

 

 

 

 

 

In Terms of Geography
By André Skupin
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, 2005
Courtesy of André Skupin, San Diego State University, San Diego

 

 

 

 

U.S. Frequency Allocations Chart
By the National Telecommunications and Information Administration
WASHINGTON, DC, 2003
Courtesy of the Office of Spectrum Management

 

 

 

 

 

WorldProcessor: Zones of Invention—Patterns of Patents
By Ingo Günther
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, 2006
Courtesy of Ingo Günther

 

 

 

 

 

113 Years of Physical Review
By Bruce W. Herr II, Russell J. Duhon, Elisha F. Hardy, Shashikant Penumarthy, and Katy Börner
BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA, 2007
Courtesy of Indiana University

 

 

 

 

Soviet Coup and Science

Paul Josephson, author of Lenin's Laureate: Zhores Alferov's Life in Communist Science, on the August 1991 Soviet coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.

 

Twenty years ago, on a hot summer day in late August, communist hardliners staged a coup to depose Mikhail Gorbachev. They rejected Gorbachev’s reforms of perestroika that had led to political liberalization if economic uncertainly, and to widespread questioning of communist orthodoxy. Indeed, on August 20, 1991, Gorbachev and leaders of several other Soviet republics were to meet in Moscow to sign a new union treaty that would have decentralized power from the Kremlin. To hardliners, this was an unacceptable step toward the dissolution of the USSR. On August 19, 1991, they placed Gorbachev under house arrest at his summer home in Crimea and sent troops and tanks into Moscow to secure power.

 I “watched” the coup from television in the US. The Gorbachev reforms enabled the presence of cable TV, telephone and other media as never before under Soviet power. I had spent a lot of time in the USSR in the late 1980s during perestroika. What heady times! Every week and every day brought a new development in Soviet society, economy and polity. Many intellectuals, even conservative intellectuals, at first embraced fully those reforms. They USSR had stagnated under Leonid Brezhnev’s leadership. The economy grew slowly, consumer goods were in short supply, and ideological controls over the cultural sphere led to a gray and colorless daily life.

Such leading scientists as Zhores Alferov embraced the Gorbachev reforms to reinvigorate science and education. I met with Alferov several times in Moscow and could feel his excitement over the future of the reforms. (Physicist Andrei Sakharov also embraced perestroika, but he pushed Gorbachev to go further, to embrace true democracy and willingly permit the rise of other political parties.)

But instead of a rejuvenated USSR, the economy went into free fall, and the hardliners determined to “save” the Soviet Union. Fortunately, their efforts failed. Reformers, including Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation, railed the public in the streets and turned the army against the coup plotters who wavered and gave up.

The Soviet Union did break up at the end of 1991, but with it the scientific enterprise lost its financial support and esteemed status. Alferov reaffirmed his communist affiliation in the 1990s to save his beloved science from what he believed were misguided policies of the Russian government.

 

Grad Roundup

School's out, which means no more teachers, but definitely more books. Here are a few titles that we think are great for graduates, whether preparing articles for submission to professional journals or looking for a guide to architecture:

Atlas of Science by Katy Börner

Allowing us to visualize scientific results, science maps help us make sense of the avalanche of data generated by scientific research today. Atlas of Science serves as a visual index to the evolution of modern science and as an introduction to "the science of science"—charting the trajectory from scientific concept to published results.  

Advice for a Young Investigator by Santiago Ramon y Cajal

In addition to leaving a legacy of unparalleled scientific research, Cajal sought to educate the novice scientist about how science was done and how he thought it should be done. This is an anecdotal guide for the perplexed new investigator as well as a refreshing resource for the old pro.

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick

These 101 concise lessons in design, drawing, the creative process, and presentation provide a much-needed primer in architectural literacy, making concrete what too often is left nebulous or open-ended in the architecture curriculum.

The Atlas of New Librarianship by R. David Lankes

Lankes recasts librarianship and library practice using the fundamental concept that knowledge is created though conversation. New librarians approach their work as facilitators of conversation; they seek to enrich, capture, store, and disseminate the conversations of their communities.

Art School by Steven Henry Madoff

The essays in the book range over continents, histories, traditions, experiments, and fantasies of education. Accompanying the essays are conversations with such prominent artist/educators as John Baldessari  and Marina Abramović, as well as questionnaire responses from a dozen important artists—among them Mike Kelley and Shirin Neshat—about their own experiences as students.

A Guide for the Young Economist by William Thompson

For young economists working on their dissertations, preparing their first articles for submission to professional journals, getting ready for their first presentations at conferences and job seminars, or facing their first refereeing assignments.

 

PG&E: Good Work on Relocation Offer at Hinkley but what about the plight of residents on your fenceline in Daly City?

 

It is good news to hear that officials at the utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric, are finally talking with residents of Hinkley about offering to buy their homes so they can relocate to a safer area. The residents live over or near the plume of groundwater contaminated with Chromium 6, a toxic chemical used in the past at one of the utility's facilities,

 

This relocation offer should have been proffered decades ago when the spill and its devastating health impacts, so aptly chronicled in the movie "Erin Brokovich", first surfaced. But a late offer is better than none at all.

 

It would be even better news if PG&E officials learned from their experience in Hinkley and applied similar relocation measures in Daly City, CA, where residents of Midway Village, a public housing complex, live in housing that was constructed on top of soil contaminated long ago by one of the utility's neighboring facilities. At their Daly City facility, PG&E officials have maintained that the contaminated soil does not pose a danger to the health of residents even as they carried out a large-scale remedial soil removal program while residents were present at the housing complex. During this remediation residents were exposed to contaminated dust from the excavation, notes Bradley Angel, director of GeenAction, which was involved with a number of protests at the site.

 

Independent experts, such as Wilma Subra, a chemist who assists community residents who live adjacent to industrial contamination sites, disagree with PG&E officials who say it is safe to live at Midway Village. Subra is concerned that remediation efforts have not gone far enough; and that there are still contaminated soils beneath some of the public housing units and beneath paved walkways.

 

 In my book "Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States," I tell the story of how the residents of Midway Village came to realize they had a contamination problem, how they organized a protest, how they were treated by PG&E officials, and how they lost their lawsuit asking for relocation and compensation for health problems they feel were caused by the contamination.

 

 The book also points out that there are troubling disparities between the extent of remediation actions taken at Midway Village, where many residents are low-income African American and Latinos; and the measures taken in a similar situation in a upscale white community. In Midway Village the soil was not removed from beneath the housing units; in the more affluent community it was.  Similarly, residents at the Daly City housing complex were not moved out during the removal of contaminated soil, while residents at the more affluent community were temporarily relocated to a safe area.

 

In "Sacrifice Zones" I report on a number of instances around the nation where public housing complexes have been constructed immediately adjacent to heavily-polluting facilities. These badly located public housing complexes become toxic traps because residents are stuck in them, regardless of how egredious are the contamination problems, because they fear losing their berth in poublic housing if they complain. One of these dangerously located public housing complexes is located in Port Arthur, Texas, where the residents of Carver Terraces live across the fenceline from a giant Motiva refinery. This land-use configuration, where residential/industrial zoning permits families to live next door to heavy industry (something that would never be allowed in a middle class or affluent community), has predictable and tragic results. Fenceline residents are disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals and suffer elevated levels of environmentally-induced disease and premature death.

 

PG&E officials should be congratulated for finally making a relocation offer in Hinkley. But they should also be urged to make relocation offers in Daly City and in other locations where their emissions cause dangers to neighboring residents.

 

Steve Lerner, author of "Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor;" and "Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States"

Arrival of the Fittest

An article in today’s New York Times gives a good overview of evo-devo, a cross-disciplinary field that has been gaining ground lately. Evo-devo (short for evolutionary developmental biology) studies the relationship between embryological development and evolution at the gene level. Reporter Carol Kaesuk Yoon explains that “evo-devo researchers are finding that the evolution of complex new forms, rather than requiring many new mutations or many new genes as had long been thought, can instead be accomplished by a much simpler process requiring no more than tweaks to already existing genes and developmental plans. Stranger still, researchers are finding that the genes that can be tweaked to create new shapes and body parts are surprisingly few. The same DNA sequences are turning out to be the spark inciting one evolutionary flowering after another.” She goes on to quote Dr. Scott F. Gilbert, a developmental biologist at Swarthmore College and a contributor to the MIT Press book From Embryology to Evo-Devo: A History of Developmental Evolution edited by Manfred Laubichler and Jane Maienschein, who explains, “that classical evolutionary theory looks at survival of the fittest… evo-devo looks at the arrival of the fittest.”

Read the entire New York Times article here. Read a few sample chapters of From Embryology to Evo-Devo: A History of Developmental Evolution edited by Manfred Laubichler and Jane Maienschein here.

Science Exposed

In today’€™s New York Times, science writer Cornelia Dean profiles Felice Frankel, author of the MIT Press book Envisioning Science: The Design and Craft of the Science Image. Ms. Dean considers whether the photographs that Ms. Frankel produces as part of her work to help scientists display their research is art or just plain science. While Ms. Frankel is adamant that her work is about representing scientific phenomena, one could easily hang it on the wall and no one would know the difference. Below are examples of a few particularly amazing photographs (cropped to fit) from Envisioning Science. Can you guess what they are? Send your answers in by posting a comment!

Example 1.

A) E. coli colony in a petri dish
B) The underside of a jelly fish
C) A new fiber made from spider webs

Example 2.

A) White coral
B) Yeast colonies
C) Tooth decay

Example 3.

A) Mummified mastodon skin
B) Pacific salmon brain
C) An acrylimide gel

Example 4.

A) A tiger salamander
B) Spanish moss
C) Mouse kidney

The March of Women: Lives in Biography

To wind up our column on women’s history, here are two forthcoming biographies on influential women from MIT Press:

Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA is the story of one of the most prominent female molecular biologists, Elizabeth Blackburn, who is known for her progressive and essential research into telomeres, the specialized ends of chromosomes, and telomerase, the enzyme that extends them. Author Catherine Brady delves into Blackburn’s fight for respect in a male dominated field of research and mentorship of other women, while exploring the conflict between pure and applied science.

Yvonne Rainer: The Mind is a Muscle explores this ground-breaking performance and the artist behind it’s transformative choreography. Author Catherine Wood explains how Rainer’s “ordinary” dance and choreography in her performance piece, The Mind is a Muscle, attempted to present the dancer on her own terms, rather than through the gestural conventions of traditional dance or theater. Against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, Wood examines Rainer’s choice to express her personal and political views through live form and its impact on the art world.   And if you can't wait for this one to come out in October, we do have Rainer's own gossipy Feelings Are Facts to tide you over.   

Be sure to check back for more on both of these titles this fall. 

The March of Women: From the Body to the Stars

The Secrets of Women addresses the exploration of female anatomy in Italy towards the end of the Middle Ages and how it helped to define the cultural and religious perceptions of the body. Considered both a holy vessel and at the same time, subject to mortal illness, the human body was in many ways considered a mystery. Through dissections of women, for purposes such as embalming or caesarean section, a history and understanding of human anatomy, illness, and reproductive processes was born. Secrets of Women examines the dual concepts of holiness and female corporeality by following the case studies and stories of some of the women who were dissected—from the holy body of a revered abbess to the body of a convicted criminal.

" This book… argues that women’s bodies, real and imagined, played a central role in the history of anatomy during that time. Urgent question about where babies came from and how they were conceived spurred physicians and surgeons to open human corpses and to write about them. In the process, what male writers knew as the “secrets of women” came to symbolize the most difficult intellectual challenges posed by human bodies: challenges that dissection promised to overcome."

 -The Secrets of Women by Katherine Park (MIT Press, 2006)

 

Almost Heaven looks at another kind of exploration all together, but one that still remains as mysterious to us today as medical anatomy did to early scientists—the exploration of space. Kevles gives us an in depth look into the lives of female astronauts and cosmonauts, their efforts  to change the space program against a back drop of Cold War fears and the women’s movement’s sense of empowerment.  Based on interviews and extensive research, Kevles paints a colorful and detailed history of women’s pursuit of the final frontier.

" This book is about women in space and their struggle, not altogether over, to join on an equal footing with men in what is perhaps the greatest adventure of our time. Every one of these women is remarkable, and each has bravely met two challenges—the risk of space travel and struggle to succeed in what was formerly a man’s world. Together they have changed the cast of human exploration."

-Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space by Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles (MIT Press, 2006)

The March of Women: Mathematics to Computer Science

In honor of Women’s History Month we’re proud to present a weekly column this month, “The March of Women,” which will highlight some of our books that focus on women in the arts, technology, history, and sciences.

To get us started, here are two MIT Press classics that compliment each other: Women Becoming Mathematicians discusses the struggles of women pursuing Ph.D’s in the rapidly expanding field of mathematics during the post-World War II era. Mathematics would later give birth to the field of computer science, where women now face similar problems in gaining an equal education. Unlocking the Clubhouse looks at women’s current struggle in this burgeoning, male-dominated field of computing, and makes a strong case for letting women into the “boy’s clubhouse.” Both books are based on extensive interviews with women who pursued degrees in these fields, against the odds, with both success and failure, in order to pave the way for other women. Below are two excerpts from these important books:

The women mathematics Ph.D.’s of the forties and fifties lived in a turbulent time of social, political and cultural growth and change…the rigid and inflexible model of career development put forward in the myth of the mathematical life course was never a viable model for them to follow. Indeed changing times and circumstances require courage, flexibility, resilience, and the willingness to strike out in new directions. The experiences of the women mathematicians of the postwar generation provide a model for both men and women, in mathematics and in many other fields as well, who must face the challenge of building a meaningful personal and professional life at the turn of a new millennium. 

- Women Becoming Mathematicians: Creating Professional Identity in Post-World War II America by Margaret A.M. Murray (2001)

 

In this book, we lay out the blueprints—the doors, walls, and windows—of the “boy’s clubhouse” of computing education. We show how rarely girls’ interest in computing is kindled and how women who do develop an interest in computing often have it extinguished in school. We discuss what is necessary to remodel education so that girls and women who are or could be interested in computing can find a home in the discipline.

- Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher (2003)