The Forgotten “Old-Darwinian” Synthesis: The Evolutionary Theory of Ludwig H. Plate (1862–1937)

The German zoologist and geneticist Ludwig Plate was a pupil and successor of the “German Darwin” Ernst Haeckel as the director of the Institute of Zoology at Jena University. Plate campaigned for a revival of the original Darwinism. His research program, which he labelled “old-Darwinism”, proclaimed the synthesis of selectionism with “moderate Lamarckism” and orthogenesis.This article reconstructs and analyses Plate’s “old-Darwinian” synthesis and sheds light on Plate’s controversial biography, especially his conflict with Haeckel. Our research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (HO 2143/5–2).     

Properties and application of low- and medium-modulus carbon fibres

Translated from Khimicheskie Volokna, No. 6, pp. 16–18, November–December, 1990.     

Photosensitive 2,5-distyrylpyrazine particles produced from rapid expansion of supercritical solutions

Solvent-free, photoreactive particles of 2,5-distyrylpyrazine (DSP) monomer were developed by rapid precipitation from an expanding supercritical chlorodifluoromethane solution. DSP polymer particles were produced by solid-state photopolymerization. DSP particles below a critical diameter of about 0.5 μm were found to be mechanically stable and did not fragment upon photopolymerization. The rate of DSP photopolymerization was shown to be size-sensitive. Nano-scale particles demonstrated superior photoreactivity in the solid state in comparison to micro-scale crystals. UV spectra of DSP at different degrees of conversion were investigated and the extinction coefficients were calculated for the DSP monomer and polymer in sulfuric acid.     

The phenomenology of low noise charge sensitive amplifiers

The equations describing the noise performance of charge sensitive amplifiers have been reported in several papers. In this article, these equations are evaluated for several practical sets of amplifier parameters under a wide variety of operational conditions. These data are presented as a series of plots of noise versus amplifier shaping time. The results are compared with measurements made upon several versions of the LeCroy HQV810 amplifier hybrids.