The Brain and the Behavioral Sciences

The increasing visibility and sense of intellectual opportunity associated with neuroscience in recent years have in turn stimulated a growing interest in its past. For the first time, a general reference book on the history of science has seen fit to include a review of the history of the brain and behavioral sciences as a thread to be reckoned with within the broader narrative tapestry. On the one hand, this looks like a welcome sign that a new historical subfield has “come of age.” On the other hand, when one settles down to the task of composing a “state of the art” narrative, one realizes just how much these are still early days. The bulk of available secondary literature still swims in a space between nostalgic narratives of great men and moments, big “march of ideas” overviews, and an unsystematic patchwork of more theorized forays by professional historians into specific themes (e.g., phrenology, brain localization, reflex theory). The challenge of imagining a comprehensive narrative is made all the more formidable by the fact that we are dealing here with a history that resists any easy or clean containment within disciplinary confines. The paper trail of ideas, experiments, clinical innovations, institutional networks, and high-stakes social debates not only moves across obvious sites of activity such as neurology, neurosurgery, and neurophysiology but also traverses fields as (only apparently) distinct as medicine, evolution, social theory, psychology, asylum management, genetics, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, and theology.History of Scienc

The biology and genetics of curly hair

YesHair fibres show wide diversity across and within all human populations, suggesting that hair fibre form and colour have been subject to much adaptive pressure over thousands of years. All human hair fibres typically have the same basic structure. However, the three-dimensional shape of the entire fibre varies considerably depending on ethnicity and geography, with examples from very straight hair with no rotational turn about the long axis, to the tightly sprung coils of African races. The creation of the highly complex biomaterials in hair follicle and how these confer mechanical functions on the fibre so formed is a topic that remains relatively unexplained thus far. We review the current understanding on how hair fibres are formed into a nonlinear coiled form and which genetic and biological factors are thought to be responsible for hair shape. We report on a new GWAS comparing low and high curl individuals in South Africa, revealing strong links to polymorphic variation in trichohyalin, a copper transporter protein CUTC and the inner root sheath component keratin 74. This builds onto the growing knowledge base describing the control of curly hair formation.Unilever R&

Influence du travail du sol sur la porosité

* INRA, URD, Domaine St Paul, Site Agroparc, 84914 Avignon cedex 9 Diffusion du document : INRA, URD, Domaine St Paul, Site Agroparc, 84914 Avignon cedex 9 Diplôme : Fin d'étude

L'uomo macchina

Un\u2019unica sostanza per tutto l\u2019universo e nessuna differenza che consenta una qualsiasi forma di trascendenza. Questo lo scenario filosofico e scientifico nel quale viene a collocarsi la descrizione dell\u2019uomo contenuta in uno dei pi\uf9 fortunati e controversi testi polemici dell\u2019Illuminismo, scritto nel 1747 dal filosofo e medico Julien Offray de La Mettrie. L\u2019intera dimensione del vivente \ue8 ricondotta a un principio materialistico unitario e pu\uf2 essere scientificamente descritta attraverso lo studio della struttura degli organismi. Da qui una serie di osservazioni e di esempi, che illustrano il modo in cui incomincia ad articolarsi un nuovo sguardo rivolto alla vita, scrupolosamente basato sull\u2019esperienza e al riparo da spiegazioni, trovate o tentazioni metafisiche. Da qui, anche, una messa fuori gioco della nozione di \u201canima\u201d in quanto sostanza separata dal corpo e dalla materia. Di conseguenza un rilancio \u2013 assai azzardato per quell\u2019epoca, ma non solo \u2013 di molte e decisive questioni morali