George C. Caldwell (1834-1907): American Agricultural Chemist

George Caldwell served as president of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 1892. Prior to this time, the ACS had been a rather parochial New York City based organization. In 1890, the constituency of the ACS expressed its desire to become a truly national body. Toward this end, it forged closer ties with the Chemical Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and merged with the Chemical Section in 1891. As Caldwell had been active with the AAAS group for several years previous to this merger, his election to the presidency of the ACS can be seen as an expression of unity in the American chemical community

Needham’s Girls: a historical case study of gender and mentoring in entomology

James G. Needham (1868-1958) was a professor of entomology at Cornell University from 1906 to 1936, and an active emeritus for about ten years thereafter. As a professor, mentored many women graduate students at Cornell, a group that included twenty-nine who took doctorates. As a scientist, he was a member of an extensive network that included many more women entomologists. These women were located throughout the United States and Canada. Some had been his students at Cornell, some were colleagues with whom he did fieldwork, and others were young women who, even though students at colleges other than Cornell, worked closely with Needham on their dissertations. This article is about the role that Needham, as mentor, played in supporting a vision that was both scientifically and socially unpopular. Through studying the Needham network, the complexity of issues faced by these women and their strategies for coping with them comes to life. Some of Needham\u27s students made major contributions to entomology. This group includes Edith Morgan, Ann H. Morgan, Emmeline Moore, and Elsie B. Klots. Despite the apparent success of these students and of the Needham school as a whole, it was not easy for Needham\u27s female students to establish careers. One problem stemmed from Needham\u27s emphasis on nature study, ecology and systematic entomology; this field simply was not popular in an era dominated by economic entomology, an era that culminated with the widespread misuse of pesticides such as DDT. Other problems reflect the general history of women in American science: professional barriers; conflicts between marriage and career; the onset of the Great Depression, when jobs were reserved for family men ; competition between women connected by bonds of friendship; and World War II, which brought career opportunities that were often terminated after the war\u27s end. To cope with such problems, Needham\u27s girls depended on their mentor and group affiliation to aid them in building and maintaining connections and relationships within a complex network. Though Needham\u27s Girls were victims of exclusionary male-gendered science, they also represented a distinct postmodern trend -- the emergence of ecology as a new science

ANALYSIS OF HUMAN VERSUS MACHINE TRANSLATION ACCURACY

The purpose of this study was to determine whether significant differences exist in Chinese-to-English translation accuracy between moderate to higher-level human translators and commonly employed freely available machine translation tools. A Chinese-to-English language proficiency structure test and a Chinese-to-English phrase and sentence translation test were given to a large sample of machine (n=10) and human translators (n=133) who are native Chinese speakers with at least 15 years of familiarity with the English language. Results demonstrated that native Chinese speakers with this minimum level of English proficiency were significantly better at translating sentences and phrases from Chinese to English, compared to the ten freely available online machine translation applications, which unexpectedly showed a considerable degree of variation in translation accuracy among them. These results indicate that humans with at least a moderate level of exposure to a non-native language make far fewer translation errors compared to machine translation tools. This outcome is understandable, given the unique human ability to take into account subtle linguistic variants, context, and capricious meaning associated with the language and culture of different groups

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Restoration of German Gulch Creek and a Vision for Fisheries Restoration in the Silver Bow Creek watershed

The German Gulch Watershed Restoration Project will benefit the Silver Bow Creek watershed, complement Superfund remedy and restoration, and enhance recreational opportunities for local residents. Midway between Butte and Anaconda, German Gulch Creek is a major tributary of Silver Bow Creek that was heavily placer mined about 100 years ago. Restoring and protecting natural resources in German Gulch is a key element in maximizing aquatic habitat and recreational opportunities in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin. This restoration project has four objectives: Insure connectivity between German Gulch Creek and Silver Bow Creek; Restore and protect habitat for native Westslope cutthroat trout; Improve public access to lower German Gulch; and Enhance water quality and quantity to German Gulch Creek and Silver Bow Creek. German Gulch Creek is the most popular recreational fishery in the Silver Bow Creek watershed, and its restoration will directly benefit Silver Bow Creek through the recruitment of native trout—a seed stock to repopulate the remediated and restored stream. Furthermore, the proximity of German Gulch to Butte, Anaconda, and the Greenway insures that the public will benefit from this restoration effort. The restoration and protection of Westslope cutthroat trout in German Gulch Creek is an integral part of George Grant Trout Unlimited’s vision for the Silver Bow Creek watershed. Native populations of Westslope cutthroat trout persist in the headwaters of many streams feeding Silver Bow Creek. Because of historical pollution in Silver Bow Creek, it was never colonized by exotic species such as rainbow and brown trout. Thus, the remediation and restoration of Silver Bow Creek by Montana’s Natural Resource Damage Program brings a major opportunity to restore the upper Silver Bow Creek watershed for native trout. Along with this opportunity come serious challenges, including high levels of nutrient pollution from Butte’s sewage treatment plant, metals pollution from mine tailings in the Butte Priority Soils superfund operable unit, agricultural dewatering of tributary streams that severs connectivity with Silver Bow Creek, and the presence of exotic brook trout in most tributary streams. Though these challenges make the restoration of a native fishery in Silver Bow Creek a long term goal, we argue that authentic restoration requires what the philosopher Albert Borgmann calls focal realism and patient vigor