Issues

Volume 6, Issue 2

July 7, 2021

Critical Essays

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Battlefield Medicine

Benjamin Davido

[short_description] The AstraZeneca debacle in France, at the least, showed that to stop vaccinating for 48–72 hours in the name of the precautionary principle is to restart work on vaccine awareness from scratch.

Review Essays

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Biology

Giant Viruses and the Tree of Life

Patrick Forterre

[short_description] When the first giant virus was discovered, it was misidentified as a bacterium because it was much larger than any known virus at that time. Ever since, biologists puzzle over how to classify them.

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Anthropology

On Science and Civilisation in China

Shellen Wu

[short_description] From the time the first volumes of Science and Civilisation in China were published in the 1950s, it forced the world to acknowledge early Chinese scientific and technological achievements.

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Linguistics

On Aspects of the Theory of Syntax

Anna Maria Di Sciullo

[short_description] In the first essay for a new series on landmark texts, Anna Maria Di Sciullo revisits Noam Chomsky’s classic Aspects on the Theory of Syntax.

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Archaeology

The Footsteps of Artemis

Denis Knoepfler

[short_description] After a centuries-long search, archeologists finally located a lost sanctuary for Artemis. Clues came in the form of ancient manuscripts, Apollonian symbolism, wandering stones, and a scribal error…

Book Reviews

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Medicine

Expertise Unheeded

George Scialabba

[short_description] In responding to pandemics, members from the middle levels of the US government have tried, usually futilely, to get the appointees above them to do the right thing, or merely to pay attention.

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Political Science

A Continent Divided

Silvio Pons

[short_description] In Stalin and the Fate of Europe, Norman Naimark examines Joseph Stalin’s foreign policy objectives in early postwar Europe. In each of his seven case studies, Naimark focuses on how Stalin’s shifting strategies were shaped by local leaders who were anything but passive participants.

Experiment Reviews

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Physics

Metallic Hydrogen

Isaac Silvera & Ranga Dias

[short_description] For over eighty years, scientists have been trying to produce metallic hydrogen. In that process, diamond anvils must withstand pressures greater than those at the center of the earth—no mean feat.

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Biology

Reconstructing Ancestral Proteins

Chase Nelson

[short_description] As the aphorism suggests, the present is the key to the past. In the study of evolution, ancestral proteins can be inferred from modern ones. But recent work challenges just how much should be inferred.

Biographies

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Biochemistry

In Memoriam: Dan Tawfik

Anthony Futerman

[short_description] Dan Tawfik passed away in May 2021 at the age of sixty-five and yet at the height of his powers. He was a giant in the field of enzyme evolution and the study of de novo protein generation.

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Physics

In Memoriam: Steven Weinberg

Sheldon Lee Glashow

[short_description] For seventy-four of their eighty-eight years, Sheldon Lee Glashow and the late Steven Weinberg knew each other. Their high-school friendship eventually led to a shared Nobel Prize in Physics.

Letters to the Editors

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On Anthropic Arguments

Milan Ćirković

[short_description] The universe supports life on one planet. Some erroneously find this fact to be evidence of fine-tuning and thus evidence of design. Might research into astrobiology have more insights to offer?

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Escape from the Prisoner’s Dilemma

Christoph Adami

[short_description] William Press and Freeman Dyson’s serendipitous and seminal work on zero determinant strategies has shined a spotlight on how to escape from the trap that is set by dangling a reward for selfish behavior.

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Lotfi Sayahi

[short_description] A survey of the Arabic grammatical tradition is not about Arabic alone. It is about scholarly inquiry and debate, diglossic languages, and their contribution to the evolution of language and linguistics.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On the Shoulders of Giants

Kersten Hall

[short_description] In discovering DNA’s structure, while James Watson and Francis Crick stood on the shoulders of Rosalind Franklin, there remains another unsung heroine upon whose shoulders Franklin herself stood.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Czechoslovakia and Soviet Foreign Policy

Norman Naimark

[short_description] Although not addressed in his study of Soviet foreign policy in postwar Europe, Norman Naimark believes the Czechoslovak coup of February 1948 would make an ideal subject for a future monograph.

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Thom Scott-Phillips

[short_description] Over the past twenty or so years, comparative studies have revealed that important qualities of human languages are also present in the communication systems of other species.

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Sabrina Engesser & W. Tecumseh Fitch

[short_description] Studies on animal combinatoriality, particularly in birds, have evoked heated discussion among linguists. Some researchers doubt whether animal communication is comparable to human linguistic structures.

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Ethan Akin

[short_description] William Press and Freeman Dyson’s 2012 results were new and unexpected, and still excite considerable response. Ethan Akin presents another approach to winning the iterated prisoner’s dilemma.

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Michael Corballis

[short_description] Our culture may prefer vocal communication, but little is lost in communicating through overt bodily movements, as in sign languages. Indeed, a gestural system may have preceded a vocal one in evolution.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On Theory Building

Carol Padden

[short_description] Linguists should study sign as well as speech. A science of language that is broad and inclusive will enrich both linguistics and its allied fields in medicine, child development, and education.

ISSN #2576–4403