American Scientist

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first iteration of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev’s periodic table of chemical elements. Mendeleev wasn’t the only scientist trying to organize the elements, of course, but as Abhik Ghosh and Paul Kiparsky note, he deserves credit for his appreciation of the elements’ periodic properties, which led him to leave gaps in his table for elements not yet discovered. Mendeleev used Sanskrit names of numbers to mark gaps in his table:

Let that sink in. Not Greek. Not Latin. Not even German, the lingua franca of science in continental Europe at the time. But Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language that few Europeans outside certain rarefied circles had even heard about. This unique decision led us, a chemist and a linguist, to explore what might have led Mendeleev to reference Sanskrit in this way.

Read their article, The Grammar of the Elements, in the current issue of American Scientist.

Detail of image; credits: De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images; Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo; Abhik Ghosh

The celebration of the periodic table's sesquicentennial anniversary continues with a blog from chemist and historian of science Eric Scerri, who gives his perspective on the events of the International Year of the Periodic Table and on some current debates surrounding the table and the elements themselves.

Providing Context to Today's News

American Scientist publishes on a wide variety of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary science topics, so readers have a vast trove of magazine articles and blog posts to provide context to the latest news. We regularly highlight these contextual connections on our social media accounts (follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). Here is a curated list of some of those recent connections.
 

• The first batch of data from NASA's Sun-visiting probe is now available to the public, with science teams expected to release the mission's first science results later this year. Read/hear our interview with the probe's namesake, Eugene Parker



• Sesame Street recently celebrated its 50th birthday. The "beloved children’s television show," as described in Smithsonian magazine, was advised by a "board of experts from the diverse fields of education, child development, psychology, medicine, the social sciences, the arts, and advertising." One of the regular lessons of the show? Self discipline, which a long-term study predicts adult quality of life. Read Lifelong Impact of Early Self-Control by Terrie Moffitt, Richie Poulton, and Avshalom Caspi.



• Flowering plants arose in part by co-evolving with insect pollinators, scientists think, particularly having discovered the earliest direct evidence of insects pollinating flowering plants: as reported in PNAS, a newly discovered species of beetle was found trapped in amber with grains of pollen attached to its body. The specimen is about 100 million years old, which pushes back the history of insect pollination by 50 million years. For context, read Retracing the Long Journey of the Insects—two book reviews by entomologist George Poinar.



• Going forward, the National Institutes of Health will require all those with NIH funding to share their data. They're collecting comments on the draft policy until January 10, 2020. For context, current efforts to make research more accessible and transparent can reinforce inequality within STEM professions. Read Open Science Isn't Always Open to All Scientists by Christie Bahlai, Lewis J. Bartlett, Kevin R. Burgio, Auriel M. V. Fournier, Carl N. Keiser, Timothée Poisot, and Kaitlin Stack Whitney.



• Why was Koh Ker’s tenure as the political center of the Khmer Empire in the 10th century remarkably short‐lived? The vast empire, which ruled over much of what is now Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, was troubled by poor engineering, researchers write in Geoarchaeology: the reservoir failed. The tools available for mapping the planet today even allow archaeologists to find whole new sites while flying above them. Read Archaeology from the Air by William E. Carter, Ramesh Shrestha, and Juan C. Fernandez-Diaz.



• Vulturine guineafowl create complex societies despite small brains, report researchers in Current Biology. Increasingly, too, are indications that insects exhibit consciousness-like phenomena. Read Expanding Consciousness by Lars Chittka and Catherine Wilson.



• Did you see Mercury transit the Sun earlier this month? You can replay the full transit as NASA captured it via a variety of different filters. Similar transits around other stars could tell us whether exoplanets have mountains, implying tectonic plate movement and volcanism, which helps sustain life. Read Mapping Alien Worlds by Moiya McTier.

Detail of cover from Nov-Dec, '19 issue; artwork by Wayne Brezinka.

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