Oxford University Press's Blog, page 998

In memoriam: Patrick Moore

By David Rothery

There’s a Patrick Moore-sized hole in the world of astronomy and planetary science that is unlikely ever to be exactly filled. He presented “The Sky at Night,” a monthly BBC TV astronomy programme, from 1957 until his death. This brought him celebrity, and the books that he wrote for the amateur enthusiast were bought or borrowed in vast numbers from public libraries for half a century — including by myself as a schoolboy. Patrick was the mainstay of the BBC’s Apollo Moon-landing coverage that those of us of a certain age will never forget, and there can be few amateur or professional astronomers who grew up in the UK without having been influenced by him. Tributes posted on the Internet show that he was known and admired beyond these shores too. They also attest to Patrick’s extraordinary generosity, exemplified by numerous accounts of how he replied to letters from strangers (of whom in the early 1970s I was one) or took time to chat after his lectures.

Patrick served with distinction and under age as a navigator with Bomber Command during the war. I believe (on the basis of dark hints made during late night conversations) that he also spent time on special operations in occupied Poland, where his youth and assumed Irish identity afforded him a plausible (but surely high-risk) cover story. An encounter with what he referred to as ‘a working concentration camp’ led to his lifelong professed dislike of Germans (“apart from Werner von Braun, the only good German I ever met”).

After the war, Patrick became a school teacher and also very active in the British Astronomical Association notably in its lunar section on account of his painstaking and careful observations of the Moon, some of which were to prove useful for both the American and Soviet lunar missions. He became a friend of the science fiction visionary Arthur C. Clarke, with whom he shared the authorship of Asteroid (2005) sold in aid of Sri Lankan tsunami relief.

I first met Patrick when we were speakers at a meeting to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the discovery of Neptune, so that must have been 1996. He spoke about Neptune itself, and I about its main satellite Triton. Afterwards he was kind enough to remark that he had read my book (Satellites of the Outer Planets). Our first joint TV appearance was “Live from Mars,” an Open University TV programme on a Saturday morning in 1997 when NASA’s Mars Pathfinder landed, allowing us to broadcast the first new pictures from the surface of Mars for nearly 20 years. I became an occasional guest on “The Sky at Night” more recently, which led to a friendship, as with so many of his guests. The programme was usually recorded at Patrick’s home in Selsey, and Patrick delighted to put his guests up overnight, rather than send them to a nearby hotel. That was a cue for an impressively-laden supper table, copious quantities of lubricant, and entertaining — if sometimes outrageous — conversation. Patrick had a wry sense of humour, and would self-parody his supposed extreme views. However, I think he was being serious when, or several occasions, he styled a certain recent US President as “a dangerous lunatic”.

I witnessed Patrick’s mobility decline from walking sticks, to zimmer frame, to wheelchair. His once famously rapid speech became slurry, but his mind and monocle-assisted eyesight stayed sharp. Co-presenters assumed larger and large roles on “The Sky at Night,” but Patrick was always there as the pivotal host. I last saw him less than three weeks before his death, when I guested on what was to prove his last “Sky at Night.” He was drowsy at first, but his intellect soon kicked in. He steered our discussion as ably as of old, and we were treated to a vintage Patrick moment of scepticism “When someone gives me a cupful of lunar water, then I’ll admit I was wrong.”

I lingered afterwards for a chat — inevitably partly about cats. Noticing the time, Patrick ordered a gin and tonic for each of us, and was soon involved in good-natured banter with his carer about why she would not let him have a second. He encouraged me to write a book about Mercury, and kindly agreed to write the foreword if I did. That’s an offer that I shall no longer be able to take him up on, but wherever you are, Patrick, I hope someone’s brought you that cupful of lunar water by now.

Sir Patrick Moore

4 March 1923 – 9 December 2012

Patrick Moore with David Rothery earlier this year.

David Rothery is a Senior Lecturer in Earth Sciences at the Open University UK, where he chairs a course on planetary science and the search for life. He is the author of Planets: A Very Short Introduction.

Image credit: Image is the personal property of David Rothery. Used with permission. Do not reproduce without explicit permission of David Rothery.

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Artists’ books: emphasizing the physical book in an era of digital collections

By Michael Levine-Clark

Probably like most librarians, I went to library school because I loved books and associated libraries with some of my fondest book-related memories. In my childhood, and through college, I used libraries to find books. Occasionally I used periodicals or even microfiche, but the library, to me, was all about the books. I learned in library school that library collections were becoming increasingly digital, and that most of the things libraries purchased were journals; already, in the mid-1990s, the collection was much more than an aggregation of monographs, and had been for a long time. But students coming to use the library had no choice but to encounter books, and it would have been very difficult to complete any research assignment without using some print publications.

Penrose Library, University of Denver (11-19-12). Creative Commons License.

Today, at my own library — the University of Denver’s Penrose Library — it’s pretty easy for a student to use the library daily without ever setting foot in the building, and without ever needing to use tangible collections. Over half of the records in our catalog point to digital content, and we now spend 72% of a $5.4 million materials budget on electronic resources.

Overall, electronic resources are a good thing — an amazing thing. They can be used by students wherever they happen to be; they can be searched in ways that would have been unimaginable a decade ago; they free up valuable shelf space; and they make available incredible content that would have required focused research trips when I was in college. Resources like Early English Books Online or London Low Life — just two of hundreds available to University of Denver students — make it possible to conduct primary research at levels impossible at most universities not too long ago.

But we have done such an amazing job building digital collections that students can attend the University of Denver without ever needing to touch paper publications, without ever having to encounter physical books — and that’s a shame. There is value to the book as a physical object, and libraries need to find ways to emphasize that value to digital natives.

At the University of Denver, we decided to emphasize books — while still committing strongly to our digital collections — by increasing funding for special collections. Within that context, we began collecting artists’ books heavily about five years ago and now have a collection of almost 900 titles, many of them unique. There are larger and more important collections at many libraries, but our collection is quickly becoming significant.

Artists’ books are works of art, books where the container is as important as the content, and books that call out to be handled. When done well, artists’ books can impact all of our senses. Direction of the Road, by Ursula K. Le Guin, produced in an elaborate edition by Foolscap Press, uses the texture of the paper to mimic the rustling of leaves. And this book’s use of anamorphic art always surprises readers. But artists’ books can also be quite simple. A Diction, a small but powerful book, shaped like a pint glass, uses simple text and white space to capture the experience of addiction.

As students become less and less used to physical books, this collection gives them a chance to immerse themselves in the book. It is a reminder that libraries have always been about books, and will continue to be about books even when most of our collections become digital.

There are some terrific resources for learning more about artists’ books. Vamp & Tramp Booksellers — besides having a wonderful name and being run by wonderful people — has a great website that makes it easy to get a sense of the books they carry. Joshua Heller Rare Books and Priscilla Juvelis have great selections as well. And the Guild of Book Workers maintains a useful list of Book Arts Links.

Michael Levine-Clark is the Associate Dean for Scholarly Communication and Collections Services at the University of Denver’s Penrose Library. He is co-editor of the journal Collaborative Librarianship, co-editor of The ALA Glossary of Library and Information Science, 4th edition, and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 4th edition. He has been a member or chair of many committees within library organizations, and has served on a variety of national and international publisher and vendor library advisory boards. He writes and speaks regularly on strategies for improving academic library collection development practices, including the use of e-books in academic libraries and the development of demand-driven acquisition (DDA) models. Read his previous blog posts: “An academic librarian without a library” and “Replacing ILL with temporary leases of ebooks.”

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Image credit: Photograph of Steacie Science and Engineering Library at York University by Raysonho@Open Grid Scheduler. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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A deep-sea microorganism and the origin of eukaryotes

By Masashi Yamaguchi and Cedric Worman

There are only two kinds of organisms on Earth: prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Prokaryotes include the Bacteria and Archaea and consist of structurally simple cells that are generally a few micrometers (1 µm= 1/1,000 mm) in size and lack a nucleus. Eukaryotes include animals, plants, fungi, etc. and consist of structurally complex cells that are nearly 10,000 times the volume of prokaryotic cells and have a nucleus enclosed by a double membrane in addition to various organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts.

Although eukaryotes are considered to have evolved from prokaryotes, there were no previously known examples of intermediate forms between prokaryotic and eukaryotic organization. In fact, the differences in cellular structure between prokaryotes and eukaryotes are so vast that the problem of how eukaryotes could have evolved from prokaryotes is one of the greatest enigmas in biology. One way to address this question is to find an organism with intermediate organization and examine its ultrastructure, DNA, and molecular machinery in detail. The deep sea is one of the most likely environments in which to find such organisms because it exhibits the extreme environmental stability that allows for the survival of morphologically stable organisms over long periods of time, such as the coelacanth fish, which has changed little morphologically in the past 400 million years.

Last year, we discovered a unique organism with cellular structures appearing to have intermediate features between prokaryotes and eukaryotes from the deep sea off the coast of Japan using electron microscopy. The organism was 10 μm long and 3 μm in diameter, having more than 100 times the volume of Escherichia coli, a common bacterium. It had a large ‘nucleoid’, consisting of naked DNA fibers (unlike eukaryotes, whose DNA is tightly organized with proteins) surrounded by a single nucleoid membrane (unlike both prokaryotes, which have no nucleoid membrane, and eukaryotes, which have a double nuclear membrane) and endosymbionts that resemble bacteria, but no mitochondria. Because this organism appears to be a life form distinct from both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, but similar to eukaryotes, we named this unique microorganism the ‘Myojin parakaryote’ with the scientific name of Parakaryon myojinensis (‘next to (eu)karyote from Myojin’) after the discovery location and its intermediate morphology.

Three-dimensional ultrastructure of P. myojinensis. The large nucleoid is shown in blue and endosymbionts in red. An electron micrograph of an organism which shows intermediate cell structures between a prokaryote and a eukaryote. This microorganism has a large nucleoid with a single nucleoid membrane, and endosymbionts that resemble bacteria, but no mitochondria. It was discovered in the deep sea off the coast of Japan, and named Parakaryon myojinensis.

There are two major hypotheses regarding the origin of eukaryotes. The symbiotic theory, initially proposed by Lynn Margulis in 1970, supposes that eukaryotes evolved from symbiotic relationships established between anaerobic archaeans and aerobic bacteria that began to live inside the larger archaeans. On the other hand, the autogenesis theory supposes that the structures and functions of eukaryotic cells developed gradually from simple rudiments in prokaryotic cells. The cellular structure of Parakaryon myojinensis suggests that stable endosymbiosis is maintained between the host and the engulfed bacteria, and thus supports the plausibility of the symbiotic theory.

We have found only one P. myojinensis so far, and need to collect more individuals to obtain molecular data, including sequences of ribosomal RNA genes, to establish the evolutionary relationships between this microorganism and the prokaryotic and eukaryotic branches of life.

We believe that life is a continuum and there might be a multitude of organisms in the deep sea that demonstrate many possible pathways from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, either because they are relatively stable descendents of the intermediates themselves or because they are unrelated lineages that chanced upon similar adaptations. Also, unusual prokaryotic life forms which never evolved or are extinct on the Earth’s surface might survive in the deep sea where the selective pressures are relatively stable and competition from other types of organisms is low. The extremely long generation times of deep-sea microorganisms due to low temperatures (1-2 °C) and poor nutrition would also favor the survival of ancient morphologies. Thus, the deep sea might be regarded as a huge living museum that may still hold a variety of the basic forms life has evolved in the 3.8 billion years since the first cell appeared on Earth.

Masashi Yamaguchi is an Associate Professor of Cell Biology at the Medical Mycology Research Center, Chiba University, Japan, and the Editor of the Journal of Electron Microscopy (becoming Microscopy in 2013). Cedric Worman is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Francis Marion University, South Carolina, USA. They are the authors of “Prokaryote or eukaryote? A unique microorganism from the deep sea” in the latest issue of the Journal of Electron Microscopy, which is available to read for free for a limited time.

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The Journal of Electron Microscopy, the official publication of the Japanese Society of Microscopy, promotes research combined with any type of microscopy techniques, not limited to electron microscopy, by publishing informative articles on their theories, methods, techniques and instrumentation as well as their applications to life and material sciences.

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Mars, grubby hands, and international law

By Gérardine Goh Escolar

The relentless heat of the sun waned quickly as it slipped below the horizon. All around, ochre, crimson and scarlet rock glowed, the brief burning embers of a dying day. Clouds of red dust rose from the unseen depths of the dry canyon — Mars? I wish! We were hiking in the Grand Canyon, on vacation in that part of our world so like its red sister. It was 5 August 2012. And what was a space lawyer to do while on vacation in the Grand Canyon that day? Why, attend the Grand Canyon NASA Curiosity event, of course!

Wait, what? Space lawyers? Have they got their grubby hands on Mars now?

Well, quite the contrary, and in a manner of speaking, space law has been working to keep any grubby hands off Mars. In the heady aftermath of the Soviet launch of Sputnik-1 in 1957, nations flocked to the United Nations to discuss — and rapidly agree upon — the basic principles relating to outer space. Just a decade later, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty was concluded, declaring outer space a global commons, and establishing that the “exploration and use of outer space shall be carried on for the benefit and in the interests of all mankind”. Today, more than half of the world’s nations are Parties to the Outer Space Treaty, and its principles have achieved that hallowed status of international law — custom — meaning that they are binding on all States, Party or not.

More specifically, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty affirmed that outer space, including the Moon, planets, and other natural objects in outer space (such as Mars!), were not subject to appropriation, forbidding States from claiming any property rights over them. Enterprising companies and individuals have sought to exploit what they saw as a loophole in the Treaty, laying claim to extraterrestrial land on the Moon, Mars and beyond, and selling acres of this extraterrestrial property for a pretty penny. One company claims to have sold over 300 million acres of the Moon to more than 5 million people in 176 countries since 1980. The price of one Moon acre from this company starts at USD$29.99 (not including a deep 10% discount for the holiday season) — potentially making the owner of said company a very rich man. Other companies have also started a differentiated pricing model: “The Moon on a Budget” – only USD$18.95 per acre if you wouldn’t mind a view of the Sea of Vapours — vs. the “premiere lunar location” of the Sea of Tranquillity for USD$37.50 per acre. The package includes a “beautifully engraved parchment deed, a satellite photograph of the property and an information sheet detailing the geography of your region of the moon.” Land on Mars comes at a premium: starting at USD$26.97 per acre, or a “VIP” deal of USD$151.38 for 10 Mars acres.

Indeed, the USD$18.95 may be a good price for the paper that the “beautifully engraved parchment deed” is printed on. And that is likely all you will get for your money. Although the Treaty does not also explicitly forbid individuals or corporate entities from laying claim to extraterrestrial property, it does make States internationally responsible for space activities carried out by their nationals. Despite these companies’ belief that the Treaty only prohibits States from appropriating extraterrestrial property, it is disingenuous to say that on Mars and any other natural object in outer space, “apart from the laws of the HEAD CHEESE, currently no law exists.” International law does apply to the use and exploration of outer space and natural extraterrestrial bodies, including Mars. And that international law, including the prohibition on the appropriation of extraterrestrial property, applies equally to individuals and corporate entities through the vehicle of State responsibility in international law, and through domestic enforcement procedures.

Now, that’s not to say that the principle of non-appropriation is popular. It has been questioned by a caucus of concerned publicists, worried that it would stifle commercial interest in the exploration of Mars. Some other publicists — myself included — have come up with proposals for “fair trade/eco”-type uses of outer space that they contend should be an exception to the blanket ban. But the law at the moment stands as it is — Mars cannot be owned. Or bought. Or sold. For many private ventures into outer space, that is a “big legal buzzkill.” These days, it seems, NASA may even land a spacecraft on the asteroid you purport to own and refuse to pay parking charges — and the US federal court will actually dismiss your case as without legal merit. What is the world coming to?

On the bright side, international space law has meant that there has been a lot of international cooperation in outer space. This has mostly kept the peace in outer space (no Star Wars!) and has ensured the freedom of the exploration and use of outer space for the benefit of humanity. International space law has also contributed towards keeping the Martian (and outer space) environment pristine. And in a world where we worry about the future of our own blue planet, maybe having international law keep our grubby hands of her sister Red Planet isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Dr. Gérardine Goh Escolar is Associate Legal Officer at the United Nations. She is also Associate Research Fellow at the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University, and has taught international law and space law at various universities, including the National University of Singapore, the University of Cologne and the University of Bonn. She was formerly legal officer and project manager at a national space agency, as well as counsel for a satellite-geoinformation data company. She is currently working on her fourth book, International Law and Outer Space (Oxford International Law Library, OUP: forthcoming 2014). All opinions and any errors in this post are entirely her own.

The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law is a comprehensive online resource containing peer-reviewed articles on every aspect of public international law. Written and edited by an incomparable team of over 800 scholars and practitioners, published in partnership with the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, and updated through-out the year, this major reference work is essential for anyone researching or teaching international law. Articles on outer space law, free for a limited time, include: “Moon and Celestial Bodies” ; “Astronauts” ; “Outer Space, Liability for Damage” ; and “Spacecraft, Satellites, and Space Objects”.

Oxford University Press’ annual Place of the Year competition, celebrating geographically interesting and inspiring places, coincides with its publication of Atlas of the World – the only atlas published annually — now in its 19th Edition. The Nineteenth Edition includes new census information, dozens of city maps, gorgeous satellite images of Earth, and a geographical glossary, once again offering exceptional value at a reasonable price. Read previous blog posts in our Place of the Year series.

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Image credit: Valles Marineris is a vast canyon system that runs along the Martian equator. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS. Image has been altered from the original with the addition of a “FOR SALE” sign.

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Competition: who’s your favourite philosopher?

To celebrate the publication of our second Philosophy Bites book, Philosophy Bites Back, authors Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds have released a 39 minute podcast episode of a wide range of philosophers answering the question ‘Who’s Your Favourite Philosopher?’

Listen to Who’s Your Favourite Philosopher?

[See post to listen to audio]

Twitter Competition

We’d like to hear who is your favourite philosopher. Pick your favourite philosopher and let us know why in a tweet (140 characters or fewer), incorporating the hashtag #philosophybites. We’ll be monitoring your suggestions from @oupacademic and @philosophybites. The competition closes on  10 January 2013 and our top five entrants will receive a copy of Philosophy Bites Back. The winning entries and a selection of shortlisted tweets will be posted to OUPblog in January 2013, and may well also appear in the next book in the Philosophy Bites series. To get you started, here are a few of ideas:

TIM CRANE: Descartes. Not because what I think what he said was true, but because he was incredibly clear in his vision of things.

ALAIN DE BOTTON: Nietzsche has a fascinating metaphysical structure to his thought, writes beautifully, and has a sense of humour.

RAYMOND GEUSS: Thucydides. My favourite philosopher because nobody else thinks he’s a philosopher, but I think he is.

BRIAN LEITER: Oh Fred. Nietzsche. I call him Fred. Because he’s a great writer, and he’s more right than wrong about most of the things he has views on.

GALEN STRAWSON: Kant. Every time I hear the words the Critique of Pure Reason I involuntarily salivate.

Good luck!

David Edmonds is an award-winning documentary maker for the BBC World Service and a Research Associate at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University. Nigel Warburton is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Open University. They are co-authors of Philosophy Bites (OUP, 2010) and Philosophy Bites Back (OUP, 2012), which are based on their highly successful series of podcasts. You can also follow @philosophybites on Twitter.

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Tax reform and the fiscal cliff

With the ongoing negotiations around the fiscal cliff — what taxes can we raise? what can we cut instead? — we’ve pulled a brief excerpt from Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know by Leonard E. Burman and Joel Slemrod. When heated debates over taxation roil Congress and the nation, a better understanding of our tax system is of vital importance.

Taxes have always been an incendiary topic in the United States. A tax revolt launched the nation and the modern day Tea Party invokes the mantle of the early revolutionaries to support their call for low taxes and limited government.

And yet, despite the passion and the fury, most Americans are remarkably clueless about how our tax system works. Surveys indicate that they have no idea about how they are taxed, much less about the overall contours of federal and state tax systems. For instance, in a recent poll a majority of Americans either think that Social Security tax and Medicare tax are part of the federal income tax system or don’t know whether it is or not, and more than six out of ten think that low-income or middle-income people pay the highest percentage of their income in federal taxes. Neither is correct.

Thus, there is a desperate need for a clear, concise explanation of how our tax system works, how it affects people and businesses, and how it might be made better.

Should tax reform and deficit reduction be separated?

One critical point in the current debate about tax reform is whether it should be revenue-neutral. Some argue that it should be so as to follow the successful blueprint laid out in 1986. Also, many advocates of revenue-neutrality object to tax increases on principle. But some counter that our long-run budget problems are so severe that more revenues will be needed and potentially tying tax reform to lessening future debt burdens could be an effective strategy.

We side with those who think more revenue will be needed and that tax reform should be part of a revenue-raising, deficit-reducing plan. The two go together in that raising revenue is less damaging if done with a more efficient tax system. As discussed below, the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan and the proposal by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force both followed this approach. They would eliminate many tax expenditures to finance income tax rate cuts, as in 1986, but reserve some of the revenue gains for deficit reduction. The BPC plan cut fewer tax expenditures, but would introduce a new VAT to augment federal revenues.

Are there some sensible tax reform ideas?

Sure. President George W. Bush put together a blue ribbon panel to propose fundamental tax reform, and they came up with two alternative packages that would have each been simpler and more efficient than the existing tax code. One option would have radically simplified the tax code by eliminating many tax expenditures and converting many of the remaining tax deductions to flat credits. One insight of the Bush tax reform panel was that while tax experts view the standard deduction as a simplification—because people who do not itemize don’t need to keep records on charitable contributions, mortgage payments, taxes, and so on—most real people think it’s unfair that high income people can deduct those items while lower income people can’t. The proposal would have dispensed with itemization.

The “simplified income tax” under the Bush panel’s scheme would have reduced the number of tax brackets and cut top rates, eliminated the individual and corporate alternative minimum tax, consolidated savings and education tax breaks to reduce “choice complexity” and confusion, simplified the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits, simplified taxation of Social Security benefits, and simplified business accounting. The alternative “growth and investment” tax plan would have lowered the taxation of capital income compared with current law—somewhat similar to Scandinavian dual income tax systems.

The Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force contained a tax reform plan aimed at simplifying the tax code enough so that half of households would no longer have to file income taxes. That plan would create a new value-added tax and use the revenue to cut top individual and corporate income tax rates to 27 percent.

President Obama empaneled another commission, commonly called the Bowles-Simpson Commission (after its two heads) with the mandate to reform the tax code and reduce the deficit. (The Bush panel had been instructed to produce a revenue-neutral plan.) The commission failed to achieve the super-majority required to force legislative consideration, but a majority supported the chairmen’s blueprint. Bowles-Simpson would have eliminated even more tax expenditures than the BPC Task Force, allowing substantial tax rate cuts without the need for a new VAT or other revenue source.

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Dan Coats (R-IN) produced a more incremental tax reform plan, designed to be revenue-neutral and preserve the most popular tax breaks. It would eliminate the AMT and cut the corporate tax rate to 24 percent while capping individual income tax rates at 35 percent. The cost of these provisions would be offset by closing or scaling back various tax expenditures. The proposal would raise tax rates on high income taxpayers’ long-term capital gains and dividends from 15 to 22.75 percent. It would revise the formula the federal government uses to adjust tax parameters for inflation, generally cutting the revenue cost of annual inflation adjustments. The plan would also reduce businesses’ interest deductions. It would consolidate and simplify individual tax breaks for saving and education. The most radical process change is that the plan would require the IRS to prepare pre-filled tax returns for lower-income filers.

Columbia law professor Michael Graetz has an even more sweeping proposal.6 He proposes to raise the income tax exemption level so high that 100 million households would no longer owe income tax. To make up the lost revenue a new 10 to 15 percent VAT would be enacted. Only families with incomes above $100,000 would have to file an income tax return. The plan would also substantially simplify the income tax for those few who continued to file, but the main simplification would be to take most households off the income tax rolls entirely. (However, households would still have to supply information to claim new refundable tax credits aimed at offsetting the regressivity of the VAT.)

Leonard E. Burman and Joel Slemrod are the author of Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know. Leonard E. Burman is Daniel Patrick Moynihan Professor of Public Affairs at Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Joel Slemrod is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and the Paul W. McCracken Collegiate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, at the University of Michigan.

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Image credit: Macro shot of the seal of the United States on the US one dollar bill. Photo by briancweed, iStockphoto.

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An Oxford Companion to Mars

By Alice Northover

With our announcement of Place of the Year 2012 and NASA’s announcement at the American Geophysical Union on December 3rd, and a week full of posts about Mars, what better way to wrap things up than by pulling together information from across Oxford’s resources to provide some background on the Red Planet.

Of Gods and Men

While the planet been subject to study since humans first gazed into the sky (as one of the few planets visible to the naked eye), the English name for the planet comes from the Roman god of war, Mars. Latin marks many astronomical names, such as mare, which refers to the dark areas of the Moon or Mars. Sol (Latin for Sun) refers to a solar day on Mars (roughly 24 hours and 39 minutes). However, be careful not to mix up martialists, those born under its astrological influence, with martians, aliens from the planet. (Not that it always had that meaning.) The Romans, as usual, stole their planet-naming scheme from the Greeks. Ares, the Greek god of war, provides a pre-fix for a number of Mars-related words: areocentric, areˈographer, areo-graphic, are-ography, are’ology. Mars has two moons: Phobos and Deimos (those mythological names again!). It’s important to remember that these names reveal how people related, and continue to relate to the sky.

The Martian People

What has fueled our fascination with Mars all these years? Everyone from scientists to poets has kept it in our thoughts over the centuries.

Almost all ancient world cultures closely observed its pattern through the sky, although this was often a confluence of gods, astrology, and astronomy. Aristotle and Ptolemy were among the ancient theorists. The Renaissance saw new discoveries from Brahe, Kepler, and Cassini among others, made possible by the telescope and advanced mathematics, as we moved from a geocentric to a heliocentric view of the universe (although Mars’s eccentric orbit caused considerable annoyance).

In the 19th century, Giovanni Schiaparelli was the first to create a detailed map of Mars. Percival Lowell (1855-1916), who saw himself as a successor to Schiaparelli, searched for signs of intelligent life on Mars and made numerous invaluable observations, even if many of his speculations have now been dismissed. Moreover, his legacy, the Lowell Observatory, continues to watch the stars. Astronomer Richard Proctor (1837-88) researched the rotation period of Mars and rightly dismissed the canals as an optical effect.

Scientific breakthroughs naturally inspired artists throughout the ages. In the Renaissance, writers struggled to make sense of a new vision of the universe; in the 19th century, science fiction emerged and it has grown and adapted to every medium in the 20th. H.G. Wells (1866–1946) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) built on scientific discoveries with novels such as The War of the Worlds and The Princess of Mars. In 1938, Orson Welles’s (1915-1985) famous dramatization of The War of the Worlds led many Americans to believe that Martians had invaded New Jersey. The story was adapted to film in 1953 and again in 2005. One of the masterpieces of Soviet cinema, Aelita, is based on an Aleksey Tolstoy science fiction novel. In television, Mars has provided the backdrop or villians for numerous programs, such as the Ice Warriors, one of the great monsters of Doctor Who. UFOs still capture the imagination.

The planet has also provided ideas to musicians as diverse as Gustav Holst and David Bowie, and populated the night skies of artists. And we cannot forget those with the surname of Mars, most of all confectioners Frank C. Mars and Edward Forrest Mars (1904-1999). Mars, Inc. and the famous Mars Bar are often associated with the planet although the origin of their names is distinctly earthly.

A History of Martian Space Exploration

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Russian Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS), and the European Space Agency (ESA) have all been involved in the exploration of Mars, from probes to rovers. In 1962 the Soviet space program began lanching Mars probes, the last of which was Mars 96 (in 1996). In 1975, NASA sent two Viking probes to Mars. In 1996, NASA begins a series of missions called Mars Surveyor and has sent numerous probes, rovers, and more to the Red Planet in the past 20 years, including the Mars Pathfinder (and the rover Sojourner), the Mars Odyssey, the Mars Global Surveyor, and two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

But space exploration is not without its setbacks. The Soviet Union failed in its Phobos missions in 1988, and NASA lost communication with the probe New Millennium Deep Space-2 in 1999. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe continues to provide valuable information although the Beagle 2 lander was lost.

The Mars Curiosity Rover landed successfully at 10:32 pm PST on 5 August 2012. But is it physically possible for us to send a human there? And how long would it take to get there and back?

Areography

There has been much speculation about the geography and geology of Mars, with new theories arising as our technology improves.

Mars is a terrestrial planet with numerous montes (mountain ranges), valles (valleys) , rima (long narrow furrows), and cave systems. Its most famous geographical features are the Olympus Mons (giant volcano) and Valles Marineris (system of canyons).

In the 19th and 20th centuries, people speculated about Martian canals, faint markings of the surface that once led people to believe the planet had flowing, liquid water. (The word canal actually comes from a mis-translation Giovanni Schiaparelli’s work; canali (Italian) actually means channels.) Wrinkle ridges further added to the mystery.

Without a thick atmosphere to burn up descending asteroids, Mars is pockmarked with impact craters. The Mars Curiosity Rover landed in the Gale Crater, just south of Mars’s equator. Previous rovers have attempted to measure Marsquakes, the Martian equivalent of earthquakes, as the Red Planet may have its own system of tectonic plates.

The Long Arm of Outer Space Law

In space, no one can hear you scream, but that doesn’t stop the lawsuit.

It began with the UN Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space in 1963 and the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies in 1967 because of the need to regulate competing claims on the shared space of outer space.

Who can claim land or natural resources in space? What are the health and safety provisions for astronauts? Under whose jurisdiction do they fall? Are you liable when your telecommunications satellite scrapes the International Space Station? Exactly who’s in charge of the space up there anyway? These are only a few of the questions legal scholars are grappling with.

What would we call our Red Planet lawmen? Marshals of course — although martial and marshal aren’t actually related. And be sure to check back tomorrow to hear from our space lawyer!

Recommended resources from A Dictionary of Space Exploration

The Mars Climate Database

The Mars Exploration Program

Views of the Solar System

Space Ref

And remember: Stay curious!

Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.

Oxford University Press’ annual Place of the Year, celebrating geographically interesting and inspiring places, coincides with its publication of Atlas of the World – the only atlas published annually — now in its 19th Edition. The Nineteenth Edition includes new census information, dozens of city maps, gorgeous satellite images of Earth, and a geographical glossary, once again offering exceptional value at a reasonable price. Read previous blog posts in our Place of the Year series.

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Six facts about regional anesthesia

The Mayo Clinic Scientific Press suite of publications is now available on Oxford Medicine Online. To highlight some of the great resources, we’ve pulled together some interesting facts about anesthesia from James Hebl and Robert Lennon’s Mayo Clinic Atlas of Regional Anesthesia and Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Blockade. Get free access to the Mayo Clinic suite for a limited time with this Facebook offer (watch out, it closes today!).

(1) Egyptian pictographs dating back to 3000 BC showing a physician compressing a nerve in the antecubital fossa while an operation is being performed on the hand.

(2) William Halsted, M.D. (1852–1922; Chair, Department of Surgery, Johns Hopkins Hospital), used cocaine as local infiltration as he dissected down toward major nerve trunks. He then injected cocaine around them, performing regional blockade under direct vision.

(3) In Paris in the early 1920s, a new technique for blocking the brachial plexus from an axillary approach was introduced. M. Reding, M.D., studying the anatomy of the axilla, discovered that the nerves of the plexus surround the artery in a fascial sheath. Thus, using the artery as a landmark, Reding found that the fascial compartment could be filled with local anesthetic to result in brachial plexus blockade. Reding blocked the musculocutaneous nerve, which lay outside the sheath, by infiltrating the coracobrachialis muscle.

(4) Paresthesia technique—the long-preferred method of regional anesthesiologists—was slowly replaced during the 1980s as peripheral nerve stimulation began to emerge. During its development, peripheral nerve stimulation was thought to provide superior localization of neural structures compared with blind paresthesia-seeking techniques. Peripheral nerve stimulators transmit a small electric current through a stimulating needle that, when in proximity to neural structures, causes depolarization and muscle contraction.

(5) In contemporary medical practice, regional anesthetic techniques have expanding socioeconomic and clinical implications. For example, studies evaluating patient satisfaction have found that perioperative analgesia and the avoidance of nausea and vomiting are consistently two of the highest concerns among patients.

(6) Ultrasound guidance may represent the 21st century’s version of Halsted’s anatomical dissection down to the brachial plexus.

Mayo Clinic Atlas of Regional Anesthesia and Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Blockade by James Hebl and Robert Lennon is a practical guide for residents-in-training and clinicians to gain greater familiarity with regional anesthesia and acute pain management to the upper and lower extremity. It emphasizes the importance of a detailed knowledge of applied anatomy to safely and successfully performing regional anesthesia. It also provides and overview of the emerging field of ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia, which allows reliable identification of both normal and variant anatomy. Mayo Clinic Atlas of Regional Anesthesia and Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Blockade contains more than 200 beautifully illustrated anatomic images important to understanding and performing regional anesthesia. Corresponding ultrasound images are provided when applicable.

The Mayo Clinic Scientific Press suite of publications is now available on Oxford Medicine Online. With full-text titles from Mayo Clinic clinicians and a bank of 3,000 multiple-choice questions, Mayo Clinic Toolkit provides a single location for residents, fellows, and practicing clinicians to undertake the self-testing necessary to prepare for, and pass, the Boards and remain up-to-date. Oxford Medicine Online is an interconnected collection of over 250 online medical resources which cover every stage in a medical career, for medical students and junior doctors, to resources for senior doctors and consultants. Oxford Medicine Online has relaunched with a brand new look and feel and enhanced functionality. Our aim is to ensure that the site continues to deliver the highest quality Oxford content whilst meeting the requirements of the busy student, doctor, or health professional working in a digital world.

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Written in the stars

By Marilyn Deegan

The new discoveries of the Mars rover Curiosity have greatly excited the world in the last few weeks, and speculation was rife about whether some evidence of life has been found. (In actuality, Curiosity discovered complex chemistry, including organic compounds, in a Martian soil analysis.)

Why the excitement? Well, astronomy, cosmology, astrology, and all matters to do with the stars, the planets, the universe, and space have always fascinated humankind. Scientists, astrologers, soothsayers, and ordinary people look up to the heavenly bodies and wonder what is up there, how far away, whether there is life out there, and what influence these bodies have upon our lives and our fortunes. Were we born under a lucky star? Will our horoscope this week reveal our future? What is the composition of the planets?

Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences, but it was the invention of the telescope in the early 17th century that advanced astronomy into a science in the modern sense of the word. Throughout the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and others challenged the established Ptolemeic cosmology, and put forth the theory of a heliocentric solar system. The Church found a heliocentric universe impossible to accept because medieval Christian cosmology placed earth at the centre of the universe with the Empyrean sphere or Paradise at the outer edge of the circle; in this model, the moral universe and the physical universe are inextricably linked. (This is a model that is typified in Dante’s Divine Comedy.)

Authors from John Skelton (1460-1529) to John Evelyn (1620-1706) lived in this same period of great change and discovery, and we find a great deal of evidence in Renaissance writings to show that the myths, legends, and scientific discoveries around astronomy were a significant source of inspiration.

The planets are of course not just planets: they are also personifications of the Greek and Roman gods; Mars is a warlike planet, named after the god of war. Because of its red colour the Babylonians saw it as an aggressive planet and had special ceremonies on a Tuesday (Mars’ day; mardi in French) to ward off its baleful influence. We find much evidence of the warlike nature of Mars in writers of the period: Thomas Stanley’s 1646 translation Love Triumphant from A Dialogue Written in Italian by Girolamo Preti (1582-1626) is a verbal battle between Venus and her accompanying personifications (Love, Beauty, Adonis) and Mars (who was one of her lovers) and his cohort concerning the superior powers of love and war. Venus wins out over the warlike Mars: a familiar image of the period.

John Lyly’s play The Woman in the Moon (c.1590-1595) also personifies the planets and plays on the traditional notion that there is a man in the moon. Lyly’s use of the planets is thought to reflect the Elizabethan penchant for horoscope casting. The warlike Mars versus Venus trope is common throughout the period, and it appears in the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Middleton, Gascoigne, and most of their contemporaries. A search in the current Oxford Scholarly Editions Online collection for Mars and Venus reveals almost 300 examples. Many writers of the period also refer to astrological predictions; Shakespeare in Sonnet 14 says:

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,

And yet methinks I have astronomy,

But not to tell of good or evil luck,

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;

This is thought to be a response to Philip Sidney’s quote in ‘Astrophil and Stella’ (26):

Who oft fore-judge my after-following race,

By only those two starres in Stella’s face.

Thomas Powell (1608-1660) suggests astrological allusions in his poem ‘Olor Iscanus’:

What Planet rul’d your birth? what wittie star?

That you so like in Souls as Bodies are!

…

Teach the Star-gazers, and delight their Eyes,

Being fixt a Constellation in the Skyes.

While there is still much myth and metaphor pertaining to heavenly bodies in 17th century literature, there is increasing scientific discussion of the positions of the planets and their motions. To give just a few examples, Robert Burton’s 1620 Anatomy of Melancholy discusses the new heliocentric theories of the planets and suggests that the period of revolution of Mars around the sun is around three years (in actuality it is two years).

In his Paradoxes and Problemes of 1633, John Donne in Probleme X discusses the relative distances of the planets from the earth and quotes Kepler:

Why Venus starre onely doth cast a Shadowe?

Is it because it is neerer the earth? But they whose profession it is to see that nothing bee donne in heaven without theyr consent (as Kepler sayes in himselfe of all Astrologers) have bidd Mercury to bee nearer.

The editor’s note suggests that Donne is following the Ptolemaic geocentric system rather than the recently proposed heliocentric system. In his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions of 1623 Donne castigates those who imagine that there are other peopled worlds, saying:

Men that inhere upon Nature only, are so far from thinking, that there is anything singular in this world, as that they will scarce thinke, that this world it selfe is singular, but that every Planet, and every Starre, is another world like this; They finde reason to conceive, not onely a pluralitie in every Species in the world, but a pluralitie of worlds;

There are also a number of letters written in the 1650s and 1660s between Thomas Hobbes and Claude Mylon, Francois de Verdus, and Samuel Sorbière concerning the geometry of planetary motion.

William Lilly’s chapter on Mars in his Christian Astrology (1647), is a blend of the scientific and the metaphoric. He is correct that Mars orbits the sun in around two years ‘one yeer 321 dayes, or thereabouts’, and he lists in great detail the attributes of Mars: the plants, sicknesses, qualities associated with the planet. And he states that among the other planets, Venus is his only friend.

There are few areas of knowledge where myth, metaphor, and science are as continuously connected as that pertaining to space and the universe. Our origins, our meaning systems, and our destinies — whatever our religious beliefs — are bound up with this unimaginably large emptiness, furnished with distant bodies that show us their lights, lights which may have been extinguished in actuality millenia ago. Only death is more mysterious, and many of our beliefs about life and death are also bound up with the mysteries of the universe. That is why we remain so fascinated with Mars.

Marilyn Deegan is Professor Emerita in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College, University of London. She has published widely on textual editing and digital imaging. Her book publications include Digital Futures: Strategies for the Information Age (with Simon Tanner, 2002), Digital Preservation (edited volume, with Simon Tanner, 2006), Text Editing, Print and the Digital World (edited volume, with Kathryn Sutherland, 2008), and Transferred Illusions: Digital Technology and the Forms of Print (with Kathryn Sutherland, 2009). She is editor of the journal Literary and Linguistics Computing and has worked on numerous digitization projects in the arts and humanities. Read Marilyn’s blog post where she looks at the evolution of electronic publishing.

Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) is a major new publishing initiative from Oxford University Press. The launch content (as at September 2012) includes the complete text of more than 170 scholarly editions of material written between 1485 and 1660, including all of Shakespeare’s plays and the poetry of John Donne, opening up exciting new possibilities for research and comparison. The collection is set to grow into a massive virtual library, ultimately including the entirety of Oxford’s distinguished list of authoritative scholarly editions.

Oxford University Press’ annual Place of the Year, celebrating geographically interesting and inspiring places, coincides with its publication of Atlas of the World – the only atlas published annually — now in its 19th Edition. The Nineteenth Edition includes new census information, dozens of city maps, gorgeous satellite images of Earth, and a geographical glossary, once again offering exceptional value at a reasonable price. Read previous blog posts in our Place of the Year series.

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Friday procrastination: why is it December? edition

By Alice Northover

What happened to 2012? I checked the book room, those weird spaces between the cubicles, and the inexplicable drawers in conference rooms (why would they have stuff in them in the first place). Here’s a week in (my) reading — a particularly librarianish one too.

Are you happy to see me or is that organic compounds in your Martian soil analyzer?

Happy Birthday Texting! Do not fear the telegraph. (h/t Susan Ferber)

Sign language and the lexicon: Crowdsourcing new words for science.

Feeling conflicted about your career choice? It’s common in academia.

Did any of you participate in the Twitter fiction festival?

If so, would you adapt your avatar for signature iconography?

When disaster strikes, there’s no way to call.

Hey sexy librarians! Regina M. Anderson, Melvil Dewey, John Vance Cheney, Sam Walter Foss, and Casanova.

You don’t know metadata.

Chanel is reviving ties with Scotland. Bouclé, vous savez?

The daily life of librarians in Iraq, or how to maintain collections with the threat of car bombs.

Terrifying charts of the digital age. (Only terrifying if you’re trying to adapt to new technology trends)

Can you predict the classic books of the future? (h/t The Millions)

A Boston church is selling a Bay Psalm Book to raise funds.

Benjamin White writes about libraries, copyright, and the digital age.

How guillemots adapt (or die) in a changing environment.

And finally, thank you Richard Horton.

#bbpBox_273380856280788992 a { text-decoration:none; color:#FF0000; }#bbpBox_273380856280788992 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }The International Journal of Epidemiology is promoting a campaign to strengthen epidemiology in low-income settings. This is important.November 27, 2012 6:00 am via Twitter for iPad Reply Retweet Favorite richard horton

Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.

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