Familiarity with chemistry from children’s toy kits leads Weinberg to investigate physics, the subject that underlies all of chemistry. He reads George Gamow’s Mr. Tompkins books, among others. He is admitted to the famous Bronx High School of Science, where he becomes friends with Shelly Glashow and Gary Feinberg, who would also become well-known physicists. He wins a New York state scholarship to Cornell.

This chapter considers the uses of sublime blockage for science. The sublime was, on the one hand, a prod for precision and, on the other hand, a nod to skepticism and mystery, potentially ennobling an otherwise mechanical science. The chapter shows how astronomers, biologists, chemists, electricians, and natural historians and neurologists exploited sublime blockage either to elevate science above crude mechanism or butchery or to engage in skepticism so that it could arguably further scientific research. Such engagement with blockage paved the way for Franz Anton Mesmer’s quackery along with Benjamin Franklin’s efforts to defeat it, but quackery proved to be a more robust foe than anticipated.

Teresa Connolly argues that a profound understanding of key chemistry concepts and processes is as fundamental to scientific literacy as mastering complex procedures and skills, such as performing experiments, interpreting data or communicating one’s findings using specific text types. However, she points out that such an understanding of chemical concepts is inhibited not only by learners’ poor command of academic language but also by the fact that chemical processes can be observed at different levels of abstraction. This poses a specific challenge in chemistry because learners often report having difficulties distinguishing clearly between processes at the sub-microscopic, the microscopic and the macroscopic level, which will lead to misconceptions and prevent deeper understanding. To address that issue, Connolly’s deeper learning episode on redox reactions offers engaging ways of promoting scientific reasoning through a series of student-led experiments and inquiry. Systematic guidance in academic language use will enable learners to express their findings and observations precisely and adequately and thus help them distinguish the processes occurring at various levels of abstraction with increasing ease and confidence.

This new collection enables students and general readers to appreciate Coleridge’s renewed relevance 250 years after his birth. An indispensable guide to his writing for twenty-first-century readers, it contains new perspectives that reframe his work in relation to slavery, race, war, post-traumatic stress disorder and ecological crisis. Through detailed engagement with Coleridge’s pioneering poetry, the reader is invited to explore fundamental questions on themes ranging from nature and trauma to gender and sexuality. Essays by leading Coleridge scholars analyse and render accessible his extraordinarily innovative thinking about dreams, psychoanalysis, genius and symbolism. Coleridge is often a direct and gripping writer, yet he is also elusive and diverse. This Companion’s great achievement is to offer a one-volume entry point into his incomparably rich and varied world.

This chapter considers the characteristics and contexts of three eighteenth-century encyclopaedic dictionaries: Cyclopaedia (1728) by Ephraim Chambers, A medicinal dictionary (1742–45) by Robert James, and The first part of a dictionary of chemistry (1789) by James Keir, especially in relation to their own comments on their intentions. Chambers’s is generalist, while the other two are specialist works on medicine and chemistry. The Cyclopaedia had a long and acclaimed afterlife, while James’s dictionary was translated into French and Italian, but did not reach a second edition in England. Keir’s remained unfinished. An attempt is made to position these works in their larger lexicographical and scientific context, primarily through their paratexts.

Species are fundamental units used to describe and interpret nature. Molecular delimitation methods have shown that many species cannot be diagnosed using morphological traits. We suggest that cryptic species represent an opportunity to progress Linnean taxonomy,. We examine what can be learned from sympatric cryptic species pairs that occupy the same habitat. Their sympatry is possible under two conditions, 1) reproductive isolation, 2) the effects of interspecific competition on population growth must be neutralised. Understanding the mechanisms that maintain species differences and integrating this understanding into taxonomy will help to delineate species boundaries. We first examine the mechanisms of cryptic species origin. Then we review some well-documented cases of reproductive isolation between cryptic species, focusing on prezygotic isolation mechanisms mediated by premating recognition and communication. We follow with examples of co-occurring cryptic species, focusing on mechanisms of coexistence and ecological niche differentiation. Both mate recognition and niche differentiation are grounded in the sensory worlds that animals experience. Sensory ecology provides tools to explore hitherto hidden diversity and so identify, misunderstood and unprotected in this time of rapid anthropogenic global change. We argue that the field of sensory ecology has a potential for improving taxonomy

The immunohistochemistry assay has evolved over many years. Primarily based on an antibody binding to epitopes in tissue sections, the technology has come a long way from its earliest manifestation using direct fluorescence labels. Current polymer technology is the result of many variations and adaptations on technique throughout the years. Indeed, much of its continued development is owed to early pioneers who experimented and overcame technical boundaries. This chapter is a broad discussion about what immunohistochemistry is from the historical perspective, and the individuals who have contributed to its expansion. It includes a journey about protocol adaptations and explanations of their context and applications. This chapter provides a sound basis in which to explore the rest of the book.

In France, a consolidated research ecosystem, including different national structures, has been developed to promote excellence in academic research. While research-oriented curricula are well organized at doctoral and master levels, the national policy perspective has not yet considered introducing academic research at undergraduate level. However, various initiatives exist within the institutions to encourage the participation of undergraduate students in research activities. In this chapter, we introduce some initiatives developed towards undergraduate research in the context of the French national system of education.

Chapter 6 chronicles how money as social technology was reconfigured during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It examines economic and philanthropic discourse as well as government practice between 1750 and 1850 to explain the motives for a quick succession of currency reforms in the nineteenth century, that profoundly transformed the material properties of public money in circulation. Cheap but precise mass production was especially important in order to issue low-denomination coins, used primarily for wage payments and retail, that would be fully conversant with the official monetary standard. In order to explain why the Dutch came to take a more hostile stance towards multiple currencies circulating in their territory, the chapter delineates how a 'national economy', forged through monetary exchange, became first an ideological and then a bureaucratic reality. While national currency did not do away with plurality of money in use, especially in the Dutch–Prussian borderland that is the main locale of this book, the strong discourse of technological superiority of uniform, centrally managed currency made it more difficult to think about plurality as something other than chaos.

Chapter 4 explores how artisanal knowledge helped sustain early modern monetary order by making and unmaking the intrinsic value of precious metal. Intrinsic value was a conceptual tool and a material practice that allowed people to collapse many coins into one another and to forge units from multiples. Effectively, this meant establishing a network of corresponding values between specific batches of coins. The papers of a family of assayers from The Hague offer a fine-grained picture of the processes involved. Small differences in the precious metal content of coins aroused creeping suspicion, anger, and even physical violence because it was believed that the metal of a coin reflected the mettle of a person. This was particularly true for the masters of the mint, whose reputation was tied to the reputation of their coins. Making coins, and making them work, involved financial and legal expertise, but the artisanal knowledge of assayers and other metal-workers was key. Their practices such as sampling, using high-precision balances and powerful acids, note-taking, the rule of three, and algebraic calculation allowed people to hold on to the convention that metals had an intrinsic, quantifiable value in spite of fluctuations in the price of silver and gold, both across time and across the globe.

The risk of wide-scale cryptanalysis pervades narratives about quantum computing. We argue in this chapter that Feynman's vision for quantum computing will ultimately prevail, despite the discovery of Peter Shor's factoring algorithm that generated excitement about a use of quantum computers that people could understand---and dread. Feynman's vision of quantum devices that simulate complex quantum interactions is more exciting and strategically relevant, yet also more difficult to portray popular descriptions of technology. The Feynman vision for quantum computing will lead to applications that benefit humans in multifarious and unforeseen ways, just like the classical computing revolution improved our lives. Feynman's vision may also enable a ``winner-take-all'' outcome in building a large quantum computer. \par To explain this outcome, we canvass the three primary applications that have been developed for quantum computing: Feynman's vision of simulating quantum mechanical