Philosophical Transactions

Here, we propose that global brain function is geared towards the implementation of intelligent motricity. Motricity is the only possible external manifestation of nervous system function (other than endocrine and exocrine secretion and the control of vascular tone). The intelligence component of motricity requires, for its successful wheeling, a prediction imperative to approximate the consequences of the impending motion. We address how such predictive function may originate from the dynamic properties of neuronal networks.

The uncertainty associated with predicting extreme weather events has serious implications for the developing world, owing to the greater societal vulnerability to such events. Continual exposure to unanticipated extreme events is a contributing factor for the descent into perpetual and structural rural poverty. We provide two examples of how probabilistic environmental prediction of extreme weather events can support dynamic adaptation. In the current climate era, we describe how short-term flood forecasts have been developed and implemented in Bangladesh. Forecasts of impending floods with horizons of 10 days are used to change agricultural practices and planning, store food and household items and evacuate those in peril. For the first time in Bangladesh, floods were anticipated in 2007 and 2008, with broad actions taking place in advance of the floods, grossing agricultural and household savings measured in units of annual income. We argue that probabilistic environmental foreca...

As secretary of the early Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg exchanged thousands of letters with scientists around the world. These letters made their way into Oldenburg’s magazine, the Philosophical Transactions, usually in his own English translation. Oldenburg translated both the language and the format of his letters: rearranging his correspondence into standardized accounts of scientific news. In doing so, he earnt himself a key position in the development of the scientific article, and modern scientific prose.

The ‘accounts’, ‘narratives’, ‘epitomes’ and ‘relations’ Oldenburg created from his correspondence have long been studied by historians of science as records of the Scientific Revolution. However they are also unique resource for the study of the communication and exchange of ideas in the early modern world. Indeed, Oldenburg envisioned the Transactions as a digest of international scientific correspondence. He did not simply translate his letters: he collated and extracted arguments and observations from them, presented translations and paraphrases within an objective editorial framework, and provided updates, challenges and corroborations.

This complex practice of exchanging, interpreting, and distributing ‘Philosophical Commerce’ also demonstrates Oldenburg’s own commitment to empiricism and the experimental scientific method, and underlines his conception of the Philosophical Transactions: as a printed manifestation of his international, multilingual, scientific correspondence, and a forum for scientific debate.

Mesoscale weather, such as convective systems, intense local rainfall resulting in flash floods and lake effect snows, frequently is characterized by unpredictable rapid onset and evolution, heterogeneity and spatial and temporal intermittency. Ironically, most of the technologies used to observe the atmosphere, predict its evolution and compute, transmit or store information about it, operate in a static pre-scheduled framework that is fundamentally inconsistent with, and does not accommodate, the dynamic behaviour of mesoscale weather. As a result, today's weather technology is highly constrained and far from optimal when applied to any particular situation. This paper describes a new cyberinfrastructure framework, in which remote and in situ atmospheric sensors, data acquisition and storage systems, assimilation and prediction codes, data mining and visualization engines, and the information technology frameworks within which they operate, can change configuration automatical...

There are a number of fundamental problems in assessing the astronomically forced cyclostratigraphy of the Jurassic Period. First, Jurassic geochronology is not well constrained, due to a general scarcity of radiometric dates, inferior precision of the existing ones, and large inaccuracies in stratigraphic constraints. These problems are particularly troublesome in the Early to Middle Jurassic cyclic carbonates of the Colle di Sogno section in the Lombardy Pre-Alps, Italy. Second, Jurassic sedi-mentary formations have undergone signicant diagenesis, and again, the Colle di Sogno carbonates, with their location on the southern edge of the Alpine fold belt, are no exception. This prevents the recovery of the primary geochemical proxies needed to evaluate the relationship between cyclic sedimentation and orbital forcing. Finally, even when a strong case can be made for orbitally forced cycles, a direct calibration between the Jurassic and existing theoretical orbital solutions is not y...

This theme issue pursues an exploration of the potential of taking into account the environmental sensitivity of development to explaining the evolution of metazoan life cycles, with special focus on complex life cycles and the role of developmental plasticity. The evolution of switches between alternative phenotypes as a response to different environmental cues and the evolution of the control of the temporal expression of alternative phenotypes within an organism's life cycle are here treated together as different dimensions of the complex relationships between genotype and phenotype, fostering the emergence of a more general and comprehensive picture of phenotypic evolution through a quite diverse sample of case studies. This introductory article reviews fundamental facts and concepts about phenotypic plasticity, adopting the most authoritative terminology in use in the current literature. The main topics are types and components of phenotypic variation, the evolution of orga...

This theme issue pursues an exploration of the potential of taking into account the environmental sensitivity of development to explaining the evolution of metazoan life cycles, with special focus on complex life cycles and the role of developmental plasticity. The evolution of switches between alternative phenotypes as a response to different environmental cues and the evolution of the control of the temporal expression of alternative phenotypes within an organism's life cycle are here treated together as different dimensions of the complex relationships between genotype and phenotype, fostering the emergence of a more general and comprehensive picture of phenotypic evolution through a quite diverse sample of case studies. This introductory article reviews fundamental facts and concepts about phenotypic plasticity, adopting the most authoritative terminology in use in the current literature. The main topics are types and components of phenotypic variation, the evolution of orga...

All life is organized as cells. Physical compartmentation from the environment and self–organization of self–contained redox reactions are the most conserved attributes of living things, hence inorganic matter with such attributes would be life's most likely forebear. We propose that life evolved in structured iron monosulphide precipitates in a seepage site hydrothermal mound at a redox, pH and temperature gradient between sulphide–rich hydrothermal fluid and iron(II)–containing waters of the Hadean ocean floor. The naturally arising, three–dimensional compartmentation observed within fossilized seepage–site metal sulphide precipitates indicates that these inorganic compartments were the precursors of cell walls and membranes found in free–living prokaryotes. The known capability of FeS and NiS to catalyse the synthesis of the acetyl–methylsulphide from carbon monoxide and methylsulphide, constituents of hydrothermal fluid, indicates that pre–biotic syntheses occurred at the in...

Calcium ions generate ubiquitous cellular signals. Calcium signals play an important role in development. The most obvious example is fertilization, where calcium signals and calcium waves are triggered by the sperm and are responsible for activating the egg from dormancy and cell cycle arrest. Calcium signals also appear to contribute to cell cycle progression during the rapid cell cycles of early embryos. There is increasing evidence that calcium signals are an essential component of the signalling systems that specify developmental patterning and cell fate. This issue arises from a Discussion Meeting that brought together developmental biologists studying calcium signals with those looking at other patterning signals and events. This short introduction provides some background to the papers in this issue, setting out the emerging view that calcium signals are central to dorsoventral axis formation, gastrulation movements, neural specification and neuronal cell fate.

The object of the present paper is anatomical dissection and
its role in changing the perception of the body as it emerges in
the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society between
the last quarter of the 17th century and the first decade of
the 19th. The medical practice of dissection was fundamental
for the elaboration of medicine as a modern science, based
on observation, experimentation, hypothesising and testing.
The increasing number of written accounts of this experience
testifies to its relevance within the disciplinary community
and within society at large.
From a disciplinary viewpoint, the interest in anatomy was not
new, and anatomical dissection had been steadily practiced in
the Classical Age and during the Renaissance. However, during
the 17th and 18th centuries, it came to represent substantial
investigation and experimentation, emerging as a “dynamic
field of medical inquiry” (Waddington 2011: 107). This practice
helped fostering a different perspective on the human being, a
stimulus towards a change in values and in approach to the
study of the human body. The representation of dissection as
science-in-the-making, and as medical-discourse-in progress,
is the key point of the following discussion.