Greek-Arabic-Latin: The transmission of mathematical texts in the Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages many Greek mathematical and astronomical texts were translated from Greek into Arabic (ca. ninth century) and from Arabic into Latin (ca. twelfth century). There were many factors complicating the study of them, such as translation from or into other languages, redactions, multiple translations, and independently transmitted scholia. A literal translation risks less in loss of meaning, but can be clumsy. This article includes lists of translations and a large bibliography, divided into sections

Premature thoughts on writing disorders

Three papers appeared in the 19th century describing the dissociation between speech and writing: Marce (1856), Ogle (1867) and Pitres (1884). An account of the convincing evidence of dissociations put forward in these papers is presented. Three explanations are proposed as to the reason why the observations reported by these authors were overlooked or rejected by their contemporaries, namely: (a) in the first half of the century it seems that very little knowledge of the processes underlying writing (as opposed to speech) was available, (b) the debates focussed on the independence of speech versus motor control and language versus the intellect, (c) parallelisms between phylogeny, ontogeny and aphasia impeded the application of the principle of double dissociations, including the dissociations between speech and writing. It is argued that this phenomenon in the history of aphasia is best captured by the concept of prematurity in scientific discovery proposed by Stent (1972, 2003)

Charles West: a 19th century perspective on acquired childhood aphasia

Dr Charles West was the founder (1852) of the first paediatric hospital in the English-speaking world. In a career spanning four decades, he devoted a great part of his energies to describing the nervous diseases of infants and children. In 1871, West published a series of lectures which focused uniquely on the developmental and acquired language and mental disorders of children. West's clinical experience indicated that acquired aphasia was almost always a transitory condition in children. However, there was one exceptional case which West followed for over 3 years. It represents the youngest case of persistent aphasia described in the modern English medical literature. West's writings reflect a significant early attempt to document and categorise language loss and disturbance in children. In this paper, we detail West's innovations in the description, assessment and treatment of child language disorders

Income sources of malnourished people in rural areas: Microlevel information and policy implications

"This research is stimulated by the preliminary insight that rural households, even if they are poor and/or located in so-called subsistence-oriented regions, are dependent on a variety of farm, nonfarm, and nonagricultural income sources. The scale and nature of these income sources and their relationship to the major economic sectors (agriculture, rural manufacturing, and services), through backward and forward linkages, need to be better understood for priority setting in development policy. The objectives of this study are threefold: 1) to identify employment and income sources of rural households of different socioeconomic characteristics in regions and countries at different stages of agricultural transformation and development; 2) to trace income and employment strategies (as revealed by these) of rural households, and, thus, to broaden the information base for policy priorities for integration of the poor into a sustainable growth and development process. 3) to look into distributions below and above the poverty line in order to identify relevant differences in demographic, income, and employment characteristics of poor and nonpoor rural households and, thereby, assess the scope for "targeting" income sources of the poor as a poverty alleviation strategy. Poverty is essentially, but not always, a matter of low incomes, where the cost of acquiring a certain commodity bundle determines the income- or expenditure-based poverty line. An income-based indicator is an indirect means of measuring poverty. In this study, poverty is measured directly through consumption, given certain commodity characteristics and behaviors, rather than in directly through incomes. A central and fundamental characteristic of absolute poverty is insufficient food consumption for an active and healthy life. The poverty line (cutoff point) is defined here by calorie consumption being 80 percent of the recommended consumption for an active and healthy life." from authors' abstractRural poor Developing countries., Income Developing countries., Rural poor Developing countries Nutrition., Malnutrition Developing countries.,