Imperfect Creatures

"Lucinda Cole’s Imperfect Creatures offers the first full-length study of the shifting, unstable, but foundational status of “vermin” as creatures and category in the early modern literary, scientific, and political imagination. In the space between theology and an emergent empiricism, Cole’s argument engages a wide historical swath of canonical early modern literary texts—William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Abraham Cowley’s The Plagues of Egypt, Thomas Shadwell’s The Virtuoso, the Earl of Rochester’s “A Ramble in St. James’s Park,” and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Journal of the Plague Year—alongside other nonliterary primary sources and under-examined archival materials from the period, including treatises on animal trials, grain shortages, rabies, and comparative neuroanatomy. As Cole illustrates, human health and demographic problems—notably those of feeding populations periodically stricken by hunger, disease, and famine—were tied to larger questions about food supplies, property laws, national identity, and the theological imperatives that underwrote humankind’s claim to dominion over the animal kingdom. In this context, Cole’s study indicates, so-called “vermin” occupied liminal spaces between subject and object, nature and animal, animal and the devil, the devil and disease—even reason and madness. This verminous discourse formed a foundational category used to carve out humankind’s relationship to an unpredictable, irrational natural world, but it evolved into a form for thinking about not merely animals but anything that threatened the health of the body politic—humans, animals, and even thoughts.

ASSESSING AND MITIGATING LAWN INSECTICIDE HAZARDS TO BEES AND OTHER BENEFICIAL INVERTEBRATES

Turfgrass settings, including lawns, golf courses, and sports fields, support many beneficial invertebrates that provide important ecosystem services. These non-target organisms and their associated predation, decomposition, and pollination services can be disrupted by the use of certain insecticides. I compared the ecotoxicity of representatives from three major turf insecticide groups, the neonicotinoids, premix formulations, and the anthranilic diamides, in lab and field realistic settings in order to inform industry initiatives towards environmental sustainability. In lab and field bioassays clothianidin, a neonicotinoid, and a premix clothianidin/pyrethroid spray were acutely toxic to beneficial insects. Populations of predators, springtails, and earthworms, as well as parasitism, predation, and decomposition rates were all reduced. In contrast, chlorantraniliprole, a novel anthranilic diamide with a similar spectrum of pests controlled, had no apparent impact on natural enemies, decomposers, or ecosystem services. This newer class is a good fit for industry initiatives to use relatively less toxic pesticides, with the caveat that golf course superintendents may see secondary pest outbreaks of ants and earthworms. Bumble bee colonies exposed to clothianidin-treated white clover for two weeks suffered acute effects including increased mortality of workers and decreases in the number of honeypots constructed in the hive. When hives were exposed to clothianidin treated clover for six days and then allowed to develop naturally over six weeks they exhibited delayed weight gain and produced no new queens. Colonies exposed to chlorantraniliprole-treated flowers suffered no observable adverse effects. When treated blooms were mowed, colonies exposed to newly-formed blooms exhibited no ill effects. After a single mowing neonicotinoid residues in clover nectar were reduced from \u3e 2000 ng/g, to \u3c 10 ng/g. Residues of imidacloprid were also short-lived in guttation water. Some 50 species of bees and other pollinators were collected from flowering white clover and dandelions in lawns across an urbanization gradient. Such weeds, an underappreciated resource for urban bees, could play a role in pollinator conservation if tolerated and not over-sprayed with broad-spectrum insecticides. Informing the public about the potential benefits these weeds could have for pollinators may help lead to more environmentally conscious management decisions

Worms, worms, everywhere, and not a one to see: The connotative role of worms in Shakespeare's canon

The study of animals in Shakespeare’s collected works has expanded over the last 30 years. While a number of different animals have been discussed, the importance of the worm in the larger scope of the canon has largely been ignored. By focusing on the perception and presentation of worms in relation to cultural ideas of death, corruption, and consumption, ideas surrounding the body and soul are brought to the forefront. Worms are integral to our understanding of the Early Modern cultural constructs of the body and soul as the presence of worms reveals the state of the individual or the broader environment. Overall, the depiction of worms in Shakespeare’s works serves as a way to understand the metaphysical processes surrounding death and corruption

Economic Aspects of High School Biology

A purpose of present day biology is to help the student apply biological concepts to practical situations. The student is concerned with scientific knowledge about bacteria, insects, birds, trees and other forms of life because of their effect upon man. This report has been prepared for the purpose of bringing together and condensing into compact form as much as possible of the information concerning the economic relations of plants and animals; their bearing upon the welfare of the human race; their food habits; and methods of controlling the more harmful ones. Man's dependence on other organisms for the essentials of his existence has been of paramount importance in his life since the human race began. Not only have they played an important part in the everyday life of mankind, but also they have had a profound influence on the course of history and civilization. A knowledge of the industrial, medicinal and edible plants and animals cannot fail to broaden one's outlook.Natural Scienc

Parasitic Worms in Early Modern Science and Medicine, 1650-1810

From antiquity, parasites, and especially worms, were thought to be responsible for human suffering and disease. However, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, worms became the subject of extensive scientific investigations and began to be implicated in a much wider array of diseases. The advent of widespread use of the compound microscope for scientific investigation in the mid-seventeenth century contributed to a flourishing of research into parasitic organisms, particularly worms, and their role in disease. Although historians of medicine have written about the history of parasitology, almost all of these studies begin with the formal establishment of parasitology as a scientific discipline in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The preceding two centuries of parasitological research, however, remain relatively unexamined. In this project, I argue that parasites, especially worms, were important explanatory mechanisms for a wide range of diseases during the early modern period. Thus, the neglect of early modern parasitology by historians of medicine means that we have missed a crucial aspect of medical theory in this period. This project contributes to our understanding of early modern ideas about disease and disease causation by challenging existing historiographical categories