Wandering in Darkness: Further Reflections

Darkness visible: reflections on underground ecology

1 Soil science and ecology have developed independently, making it difficult for ecologists to contribute to urgent current debates on the destruction of the global soil resource and its key role in the global carbon cycle. Soils are believed to be exceptionally biodiverse parts of ecosystems, a view confirmed by recent data from the UK Soil Biodiversity Programme at Sourhope, Scotland, where h...

Further reflections on TREC

The paper reviews the TREC Programme up to TREC-6 (1997), considering the test results, the substantive ®ndings for IR that follow and the lessons TREC o€ers for IR evaluation. The paper focuses on the ad hoc retrieval task, with discussion of other test tracks as appropriate. The paper summarises the structure of the TREC work and analyses the experimental data in some detail. The analysis of ...

Further Reflections on the Guillotine

Shifting mirrors: adaptive changes in retinal reflections to winter darkness in Arctic reindeer

Arctic reindeer experience extreme changes in environmental light from continuous summer daylight to continuous winter darkness. Here, we show that they may have a unique mechanism to cope with winter darkness by changing the wavelength reflection from their tapetum lucidum (TL). In summer, it is golden with most light reflected back directly through the retina, whereas in winter it is deep blu...

Highway spotters and traffic controllers: further reflections on complexity.

Norman’s essay on ‘Chaos, complexity and complicatedness’ in this issue of Medical Education offers an eloquent description of the reductionist position in medical education. The author’s argument is articulate and provides an impressive set of elaborations and clarifications regarding several scientific concepts that I and others have invoked in recent discussions on the epistemologies of medi...