PurposeCurrent accounting practice tends to split environmental complexities into quantifiable, codified elements, producing codified simplifications of the “complex” in pursuit of environmental ...externalities. This has led to standardization, but has done little to motivate organizations to engage in more environmentally-aware behavior that transcends the coercive dimensions of codification. The work of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) can bring new insights and perspectives to social and environmental accounting (SEA). In discussing Humboldt's philosophy of understanding the interconnectedness between people, their contexts (cultures) and their environment, the authors contribute to the emerging SEA literature on notions of interconnectedness and the web of accountabilities. The authors also explore how a Humboldtian approach may help break through the current epistemological boundaries of SEA by combining accurate measurement with imagery to make the “complex” manageable whilst embracing interconnectedness and hermeneutics.Design/methodology/approachIn this conceptual paper, the authors humbly draw on Humboldt's legacy and explore the underlying philosophical assumptions of Humboldtian science. The authors then contrast these with current SEA approaches in the literature and derive new insights into their intentionality and practical use.FindingsRe-examining Humboldt's pioneering work enables us to pinpoint what might be missing from current SEA approaches and debates. Humboldt upheld an “ethics of precision,” which included both measurement accuracy and qualitative relevance, and combined hands-on scientific fieldwork with the aesthetic ideals and interconnectedness of the age of Romanticism. Drawing on Humboldtian science, the authors propose focusing on the interconnectedness of nature and humanity, embracing the qualitative and hermeneutical and including aesthetics and emotion in environmental visualizations.Originality/valueThe paper elucidates why and how Humboldtian science might inform, guide and enhance the emancipatory potential of SEA in the 21st century. Specifically, the authors discuss Humboldt's approach of linking accurate measurement with imagery to convey a sense of interconnectedness.
Fascioliasis has been sporadically associated with chronic liver disease on previous studies. In order to describe the current evidence, we carried out a systematic review to assess the association ...between fascioliasis with liver fibrosis, cirrhosis and cancer.
A systematic search of electronic databases (PubMed, LILACS, Scopus, Embase, Cochrane, and Scielo) was conducted from June to July 2015 and yielded 1,557 published studies. Among 21 studies that met inclusion and exclusion criteria, 12 studies explored the association of F. hepatica with liver fibrosis, 4 with liver cirrhosis, and 5 with cancer. Globally these studies suggested the ability of F. hepatica to promote liver fibrosis and cirrhosis. The role of F. hepatica in cancer is unknown. Given the heterogeneity of the studies, a meta-analysis could not be performed.
Future high-quality studies are needed to determine the role of F. hepatica on the development of liver fibrosis, liver cirrhosis, and cancer in humans.
Isoniazid and rifampicin are the two most efficacious first-line agents for tuberculosis (TB) treatment. We assessed the prevalence of isoniazid and rifampicin mono-resistance, associated risk ...factors, and the association of mono-resistance on treatment outcomes.
A prospective, observational cohort study enrolled adults with a first episode of smear-positive pulmonary TB from 34 health facilities in a northern district of Lima, Peru, from March 2010 through December 2011. Participants were interviewed and a sputum sample was cultured on Löwenstein-Jensen (LJ) media. Drug susceptibility testing was performed using the proportion method. Medication regimens were documented for each patient. Our primary outcomes were treatment outcome at the end of treatment. The secondary outcome included recurrent episodes among cured patients within two years after completion of the treatment.
Of 1292 patients enrolled, 1039 (80%) were culture-positive. From this subpopulation, isoniazid mono-resistance was present in 85 (8%) patients and rifampicin mono-resistance was present in 24 (2%) patients. In the multivariate logistic regression model, isoniazid mono-resistance was associated with illicit drug use (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 2.10; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.1-4.1), and rifampicin mono-resistance was associated with HIV infection (aOR = 9.43; 95%CI: 1.9-47.8). Isoniazid mono-resistant patients had a higher risk of poor treatment outcomes including treatment failure (2/85, 2%, p-value<0.01) and death (4/85, 5%, p<0.02). Rifampicin mono-resistant patients had a higher risk of death (2/24, 8%, p<0.01).
A high prevalence of isoniazid and rifampicin mono-resistance was found among TB patients in our low HIV burden setting which were similar to regions with high HIV burden. Patients with isoniazid and rifampicin mono-resistance had an increased risk of poor treatment outcomes.
ABSTRACT
This article departs from the hypothesis that Alexander von Humboldt used ‘Big Data’ in order to bring new scientific evidence into the open. His method of measuring and combining ...temperature, humidity, altitude and magnetism in a geographical environment must be regarded as innovative, indeed, as the foundation of modern science. Although Humboldt lived in an analogue world and used the instruments of his time, his way of assembling information was not so different from what we are seeing in today's digitalised world. Information has no value unless it is shared. It does not say anything unless it is linked with other data. It cannot remain isolated but must be compared and interpreted. The generation of ʻBig Dataʼ was a pathway to Humboldt's concept of ʻKosmosʼ in much the same way as ʻBig Dataʼ today is the pathway to a virtual world. In this sense, Humboldt not only laid the foundation of modern science but anticipated the existence of a world where data and information are the source of everything when it comes to understanding the interconnectivity of the physical and the virtual world.
Zusammenfassung
Dieser Beitrag geht von der Hypothese aus, dass Alexander von Humboldt ʻBig Dataʼ verwendet hat, um neue wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse ans Licht zu bringen. Sein Ansatz, Temperatur, Feuchtigkeit, Höhe und Magnetismus in einer geografischen Umgebung zu messen und zu kombinieren, muss als innovativ, ja als Grundlage der modernen Wissenschaft angesehen werden. Obwohl er in einer analogen Welt lebte und die entsprechenden Instrumente benutzte, unterscheidet sich seine Art, Informationen zu sammeln, nicht so sehr von der in der heutigen digitalisierten Welt. Informationen haben keinen Wert, wenn sie nicht geteilt werden, sie sagen nichts aus, wenn sie nicht mit anderen Daten verknüpft sind, sondern müssen interpretiert werden. Die Erzeugung von ʻBig Dataʼ durch Alexander von Humboldt war ein Weg zum Konzept eines ʻKosmosʼ, ähnlich wie ʻBig Dataʼ heute der Weg zum Konzept einer virtuellen Welt ist. Und doch ergänzen sich beide gegenseitig: der ʻKosmosʼ von Humboldt und die heutige virtuelle Welt gewinnen immer mehr an Bedeutung. In diesem Sinne hat Alexander von Humboldt nicht nur die Grundlagen der modernen Wissenschaft gelegt, sondern er hat die Existenz einer Welt vorweggenommen, in der Daten und Informationen die Quellen für alles sind, um die Wechselwirkung zwischen der physischen und der virtuellen Welt zu verstehen.
ABSTRACT
Alexander von Humboldt was regarded as an anti‐fascist symbol among German‐speaking exiles who, fleeing persecution from the Nazi regime, found refuge in Mexico. Humboldt's legacy was read ...as being an endorsement of the country's struggle for political and cultural emancipation, while his famously anti‐racist stance proved helpful in framing the exiles’ unprecedented encounter with Mexico's indigenous peoples. Moreover, as I argue, Humboldt's approach to creating knowledge indicated a willingness to treat non‐Europeans as intellectual peers, paving the way for a more egalitarian relationship between Germans and Mexicans. Yet the legacy of Humboldt, as will be seen with reference to several German writers between the 1920s and 1940s, was far from being an unfailing antidote to both racist attitudes or the tendency to exoticise. These tensions will be exemplified through works by Alfons Goldschmidt, B. Traven, Egon Erwin Kisch, Ludwig Renn and Gustav Regler, using novel sources and calling into question some of the established truths in the literature about German exiles in Mexico. In particular, I will show why Goldschmidt was considered by fellow exiles to be Humboldt's successor, insofar as both gave a political and ethical dimension to scientific practice.
Zusammenfassung
Alexander von Humboldt galt als antifaschistisches Symbol unter den deutschsprachigen Exilanten, die auf der Flucht vor dem Nazi‐Regime in Mexiko Zuflucht fanden. Humboldts Vermächtnis wurde als Unterstützung des Kampfes für die politische und kulturelle Emanzipation des Landes gewertet, während sich seine bekanntermaßen antirassistische Haltung als hilfreich erwies, um die erstmalige Begegnung der Exilanten mit den indigenen Völkern Mexikos zu gestalten. Darüber hinaus, wie ich argumentiere, propagierte Humboldts Art und Weise, Wissen zu schaffen, die Bereitschaft Nicht‐Europäer als intellektuelle ʻPeersʼ zu behandeln, und ebnete damit den Weg für ein gleichberechtigteres Verhältnis zwischen Deutschen und Mexikanern. Dennoch war das Vermächtnis Humboldts, wie es in Bezug auf mehrere deutsche Schriftsteller zwischen den 1920er und 1940er Jahren gezeigt werden wird, weit davon entfernt ein unfehlbares Gegenmittel, weder gegen rassistische Einstellungen, noch gegen eine Tendenz zur Exotisierung, zu sein. Diese Spannungen werden anhand von Werken von Alfons Goldschmidt, B. Traven, Gustav Regler und Ludwig Renn veranschaulicht, wobei neue Quellen herangezogen und einige der etablierten Wahrheiten in der Literatur über das deutsche Exil in Mexiko in Frage gestellt werden. Insbesondere führe ich aus, dass Goldschmidt von bedeutenden Exilkollegen als Humboldt‐Nachfolger gesehen wurde, da beide der wissenschaftlichen Praxis eine politische und ethische Dimension verliehen.
ABSTRACT
Alexander von Humboldt pursued a philosophy and practice of science that was contemplative and emotional. From this perspective, the study of nature started in observation and contemplation, ...and in the experience of feelings. This meant that Humboldt's scientific approach was not limited to the productive potential of science and technology, which was crucial to the expansion of capitalism and colonialism in the nineteenth century. The enjoyment of nature was both the origin and purpose of Humboldt's work. He emphasised the need to write about science and his travels in such a way that the feelings of the explorer towards nature (‘Naturgefühl’) were evoked, while at the same time awakening in his readership the joy of nature (‘Naturgenuss’) he experienced himself. This paper explores the contemplative and emotional aspects of Humboldt's philosophy of science and investigates the extent to which Humboldt's epistemology positioned itself in opposition to the productive and pragmatic aims of scientific understanding.
Alexander von Humboldt verfolgte eine Wissenschaftspraxis und ‐philosophie, die als emotional und kontemplativ verstanden werden können. Daraus ging die Untersuchung der Natur anhand der Beobachtung und Betrachtung von Naturphänomenen hervor, wobei die Erfahrung von Emotionen eine zentrale Rolle spielte. Deshalb war Humboldts Konzept nicht nur auf das produktiv‐pragmatische Potenzial von Technologie und Wissenschaft begrenzt, welche die Expansion von Kapitalismus und Kolonialismus im 19. Jh. entscheidend beeinflussten. Vielmehr war für Humboldt der Naturgenuss sowohl Ursprung als auch Ziel seiner wissenschaftlichen Arbeit. Er betonte, dass wissenschaftliche und Reiseliteratur das eigene Naturgefühl der Wissenschaftler*innen wiedergeben sollen, um gleichzeitig einen Naturgenuss in der Leserschaft hervorzurufen. Dieser Artikel untersucht den kontemplativen und den emotionalen Aspekt in Humboldts Wissenschaftsphilosophie und diskutiert, inwiefern Humboldts Epistemologie sich gegenüber der produktiv‐pragmatischen Ziele der Wissenschaft positioniert.
HUMBOLDT AND METABIOGRAPHY Rupke, Nicolaas
German life and letters,
July 2021, 2021-07-00, 20210701, Letnik:
74, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
ABSTRACT
In the wake of contemporary anxieties about climate change and environmental degradation, biographers of Alexander von Humboldt have sought inspiration from his life as an explorer, a plant ...geographer and a scientific writer. A ‘green Humboldt’ has emerged, to many a key thinker on the environment, to some the founding father of modern environmentalism. During earlier times and in separate places, in the course of the nearly 200‐year tradition of Humboldt biography, different – even very different – biographical traits have been highlighted, different narratives have been produced, each related to contemporaneous predilections and preoccupations. Does this mean that in telling Humboldt's life – or in telling scientific lives more generally – ‘anything goes’? Are we ‘telling it as we like it’ or ‘telling it like it is’? Can we have ‘lives after death’, that is, a plurality of biographical Humboldts, suited to distinct times, places and concerns and yet, for each of them, lay claim to authenticity? The genre of metabiography systematically engages with questions such as these and recognises the possible historical validity of multiple appropriations and Humboldt reincarnations, aka avatars. This article traces the recent emergence of scientific metabiography, and discusses some of the points that are being made pro and con.
Zusammenfassung
Angesichts der zeitgenössischen Besorgnis um Klimawandel und Umweltzerstörung haben sich Alexander von Humboldt‐Biografen von seinem Leben als Forscher, Pflanzengeograf und Wissenschaftsautor inspirieren lassen. So ist ein ‘grüner Humboldt’ entstanden, der für viele eine Schlüsselfigur des Umweltgedankens ist, und für manche der Gründervater des modernen Umweltschutzes. Im Laufe der fast 200‐jährigen Tradition der Humboldt‐Biografik wurden schon in früheren Zeiten und an verschiedenen Orten unterschiedliche ‒ sogar sehr unterschiedliche ‒ biografische Züge hervorgehoben; unterschiedliche Narrative wurden produziert, die jeweils in Zusammenhang mit zeitgenössischen Vorlieben und aktuellen Fragestellungen standen. Bedeutet dies, dass bei der Erzählung von Humboldts Lebensgeschichte ‒ oder ganz allgemein bei wissenschaftlichen Biografien ‒ ‘erlaubt ist, was gefällt’? Erzählen wir, ‘wie es uns gefällt’, oder erzählen wir, ‘wie es wirklich ist’? Kann es unterschiedliche ‘Leben nach dem Tod’ geben, d. h. eine Vielzahl von biografischen Humboldts, je nach den verschiedenen Zeiten, Orten und Anliegen, und können wir dennoch für jeden von ihnen den Anspruch auf Authentizität erheben? Das Genre der Metabiografie setzt sich systematisch mit Fragen wie diesen auseinander und erkennt die mögliche historische Gültigkeit von Mehrfachaneignungen und Humboldt‐Reinkarnationen, auch Avatare genannt, an. Dieser Aufsatz zeichnet die Entstehung der wissenschaftlichen Metabiografie in jüngerer Zeit nach und erörtert einige der Argumente zum Für und Wider.
The 55 color plates included in the volume are stunning and make the work valuable for historians, cartographers, and colonial-period cultural scholars. Kessell continues to provide scholars and ...readers with some of the best interpretive work on primary sources focused on the Greater Southwest and, in this case, the Great Basin as we label it today. The central egregious error which survived unscathed for nearly 70 years was a mythical Río San Buenaventura magically flowing west out of the Great Salt Lake.
The abstraction of science from the perspective of time wasn't always so clear. Maren Meinhardt, in her captivating new biography of Alexander von Humboldt (A Longing for Wide and Unknown Things, ...Hurst, 2018), discovers a scientist who annealed measurement with mind. The result transformed European thought in ways that resonate powerfully today.
In the Peruvian Amazon, Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax malaria are endemic in rural areas, where microscopy is not available. Malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) provide quick and ...accurate diagnosis. However, pfhrp2 gene deletions may limit the use of histidine-rich protein-2 (PfHRP2) detecting RDTs. Further, cross-reactions of P. falciparum with P. vivax-specific test lines and vice versa may impair diagnostic specificity.
Thirteen RDT products were evaluated on 179 prospectively collected malaria positive samples. Species diagnosis was performed by microscopy and confirmed by PCR. Pfhrp2 gene deletions were assessed by PCR.
Sensitivity for P. falciparum diagnosis was lower for PfHRP2 compared to P. falciparum-specific Plasmodium lactate dehydrogenase (Pf-pLDH)-detecting RDTs (71.6% vs. 98.7%, p<0.001). Most (19/21) false negative PfHRP2 results were associated with pfhrp2 gene deletions (25.7% of 74 P. falciparum samples). Diagnostic sensitivity for P. vivax (101 samples) was excellent, except for two products. In 10/12 P. vivax-detecting RDT products, cross-reactions with the PfHRP2 or Pf-pLDH line occurred at a median frequency of 2.5% (range 0%-10.9%) of P. vivax samples assessed. In two RDT products, two and one P. falciparum samples respectively cross-reacted with the Pv-pLDH line. Two Pf-pLDH/pan-pLDH-detecting RDTs showed excellent sensitivity with few (1.0%) cross-reactions but showed faint Pf-pLDH lines in 24.7% and 38.9% of P. falciparum samples.
PfHRP2-detecting RDTs are not suitable in the Peruvian Amazon due to pfhrp2 gene deletions. Two Pf-pLDH-detecting RDTs performed excellently and are promising RDTs for this region although faint test lines are of concern.
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