History.

France lost the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 and many blamed the loss on France's inferior military education system. Following this defeat, the French assembly proposed a religious voucher that would hopefully improve schools by allowing students to seek out the best school. This proposal never moved forward due to the reluctance of the French to subsidize religious education. Despite its failure, this proposal is one of the earliest examples of a voucher system that closely resembles voucher systems proposed and used today in many countries.  The oldest continuing school voucher programs existing today in the United States are the Town Tuitioning programs in Vermont and Maine, beginning in 1869 and 1873 respectively. Because some towns in these states operate neither local high schools nor elementary schools, students in these towns "are eligible for a voucher to attend [either] public schools in other towns or non-religious private schools.

Definitions.

There are important distinctions

Economics.

Background.

Education as a tool for human capital accumulation is often crucial to the development and progression of societies and thus governments have large incentives to continually intervene and improve public education. Additionally, education is often the tool with which societies instill a common set of values that underlie the basic norms of the society. Furthermore, there are positive externalities to society from education. These positive externalities can be in the form of reduced crime, more informed citizens and economic development, known as the neighborhood effect.  In terms of economic theory, families face a bundle of consumption choices that determine how much they will spend on education and private consumption. Any number of consumption bundles are available as long as they fit within the budget constraint. Meaning that any bundle of consumption of education and private

Effects.

Positive effects.

In the United States, vouchers are usually funded with state dollars, and in other countries, through a variety of government funding vehicles. It is important to note that schools in the United States retain their federal and local funding regardless of enrollment- only state funding is dependent on enrollment size. Part of improving student performance involves improving teacher and school performance. In theory, more school vouchers would prompt the formation of more private schools which will give parents more choice in school. This increased competition would make both the private and public schools, who are both competing for the voucher funds, maintain a high-quality of teaching as well as keeping costs low. Indeed, there is evidence that school vouchers result in cost savings for school systems. A fiscal analysis of Indiana's school

Negative effects.

While there are some studies that show the positive effects of voucher programs, there is also research that shows the ineffectiveness of school vouchers. There have been some recent case studies showing that in voucher system school districts, students attending the public school, as opposed to the private school with a voucher, tend to outperform their private school peers.  Besides general lack of results, critics of school vouchers argue that vouchers will lead to segregation. Empirical studies show that there is some evidence that school vouchers can lead to racial or income segregation. However research on this topic is inconclusive, as there is also valid research that shows under certain

Implementations.

Colombia.

The PACES voucher program was established by the Colombian government in late 1991. It aimed to assist low-income households by distributing school vouchers to students living in neighborhoods situated in the two lowest socioeconomic strata. Between 1991 and 1997, the PACES program awarded 125,000 vouchers to lower-income secondary school students. Those vouchers were worth about US $190 in 1998, and data shows that matriculation fees and other monthly expenses incurred by voucher students attending private schools averaged about US $340 in 1998, so a majority of voucher recipients supplemented the voucher with personal funds.  The students selected to be in the program were selected by lottery. The vouchers were able to be renewed

Chile.

In 1981, Chile implemented a universal school voucher system for both elementary and secondary school students. As a result, over 1,000 private schools entered the market, and private enrollment increased by 20-40% by 1998, surpassing 50% in some urban areas. From 1981 to 1988, the private school enrollment rate in urban areas grew 11% more than the private school enrollment rate in rural areas. This change coincided with the transfer of public school administration from the central government to local municipalities. The financial value of a voucher didn't depend on the income of the family receiving it, and the program allowed private voucher schools to be selective, while public schools had to accept and enroll every interested student. At the turn of the 21 century, student achievement in Chile was low compared to students in other nations based on international test-scores. This disparity led to the Chilean government enacting substantial educational reforms in 2008, including major changes in the school voucher

Europe.

In most European countries, education for all primary and secondary schools is fully subsidized. In some countries (e.g. Belgium or France), parents are free to choose which school their child attends.

Ireland.

Most schools in the Republic of Ireland are state-aided parish schools, established under diocesan patronage but with capital costs, teachers salaries and a per head fee paid to the school. These are given to the school regardless of whether or not it requires its students to pay fees. (Although fee-paying schools are in the minority, there has been much criticism over the state aid they receive with opponents claiming this gives them an unfair advantage.)  There is a recent trend towards multi-denominational schools established by parents, which are organised as limited companies without share capital. Parents and students are free to choose their

Sweden.

In Sweden, a system of school vouchers (called "skolpeng") was introduced in 1992 at primary and secondary school level, enabling free choice among publicly run schools and privately run "friskolor" ("free schools"). The voucher is paid with public funds from the local municipality ("kommun") directly to a school based solely on its number of students. Both public schools and free schools are funded the same way. Free schools can be run by not-for-profit groups as well as by for-profit companies, but may not charge top-up fees or select students other than on a first-come, first-served basis. Over 10% of Swedish pupils were enrolled in free schools in 2008 and the number is growing fast, leading the country to be viewed as a pioneer of the model.  Per Unckel, governor of

Hong Kong.

A voucher system for children three to six years-old who attend a non-profit kindergarten was implemented in Hong Kong in 2007. Each child will get HK$13,000 per year. The $13,000 subsidy will be separated into two parts. $10,000 is used to subsidize the school fee and the remaining $3,000 is used for kindergarten teachers to pursue further education and obtain a certificate in Education. Also, there are some restrictions on the voucher system. Parents can only choose non-profit schools with a yearly fee less than $24,000. The government

Pakistan.

In Pakistani Punjab, the Education Voucher Scheme (EVS) was introduced by Dr. Allah Bakhsh Malik Managing Director and Chief Executive of Punjab Education Foundation (PEF), especially in urban slums and poorest of the poor in 2005. The initial study was sponsored by Open Society Institute New York USA. Professor Henry M. Levin extended Pro-Bono services for children of poor families from Punjab. To ensure educational justice and integration, the government must ensure that the poorest families have equal access to quality education. The

School voucher public policy in the United States.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pushed for vouchers, as did the George W. Bush administration in the initial education-reform proposals leading up to the No Child Left Behind Act. As of December 2016, 14 states had traditional school voucher programs. These states consist of: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin. The capital of the United States, Washington, D.C., also had operating school voucher programs as of December 2016. When including scholarship tax credits and education savings accounts – two alternatives to vouchers – there are 27 states plus the District of Columbia with private school choice programs. Most of these programs were offered to students in low-income families, low performing schools, or students with disabilities. By 2014, the number participating in either vouchers or tax-credit scholarships increased to 250,000, a 30% increase from 2010, but still a small fraction compared to the 55 million in traditional schools.  In 1990, the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's public schools were the first to offer vouchers and has nearly 15,000 students using vouchers as of 2011. The program, entitled the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, originally funded school vouchers for nonreligious, private institutions. It was, however, eventually expanded to include private, religious institutions after it saw success with nonreligious, private institutions. The 2006/07 school year marked the first time in Milwaukee that more than $100 million was paid in vouchers. Twenty-six percent of Milwaukee students will receive public funding to attend schools outside the traditional Milwaukee Public School system. In fact, if the voucher program alone were considered a school district, it would mark the sixth-largest district in Wisconsin. St. Anthony Catholic School, located on Milwaukee's south side, boasts 966 voucher students, meaning that it very likely receives more public money for general school support of a parochial elementary or high school than any before it in American history. A 2013 study of Milwaukee's program posited that the use of vouchers increased the probability that a student would graduate from high school, go to college, and stay in college. A 2015 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that participation in Louisiana's voucher program "substantially reduces academic achievement" although that the result may be reflective of the poor quality of private schools in the program.  Recent analysis of the competitive effects of school vouchers in Florida suggests that more competition improves performance in the regular public schools.  The largest school voucher program in the United States is Indiana's Indiana Choice Scholarships program.

Proponents.

Proponents of school voucher and education tax credit systems argue that those systems promote free market competition among both private and public schools by allowing parents and students to choose the school where to use the vouchers. This choice available to parents forces schools to perpetually improve in order to maintain enrollment. Thus, proponents argue that a voucher system increases school performance and accountability because it provides consumer sovereignty – allowing individuals to choose what product to buy, as opposed to a bureaucracy.  This argument is supported by studies such as "When Schools Compete: The Effects of Vouchers on Florida Public School Achievement" (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, 2003), which concluded that public schools located near private schools that were eligible to accept voucher students made significantly more improvements than did similar schools not located near eligible private schools. Stanford's Caroline Hoxby, who has researched the systemic effects of school choice, determined that areas with greater residential school choice have consistently higher test scores at a lower per-pupil cost than areas with very few school districts. Hoxby studied the effects of vouchers in Milwaukee and of charter schools in Arizona and Michigan on nearby public schools. Public schools forced to compete made greater test-score gains than schools not faced with such competition, and that the so-called effect of cream skimming did not exist in any of the voucher districts examined. Hoxby's research has found that both private and public schools improved through the use of vouchers. Also, similar competition has helped in manufacturing, energy, transportation, and parcel postal (UPS, FedEx vs. USPS) sectors of government that have been socialized and later opened up to free market competition.  Similarly, it is argued that such competition has helped in higher education, with publicly funded universities directly competing with private universities for tuition money provided by the Government, such as the GI Bill and the Pell Grant in the United States. The Foundation for Educational Choice alleges that a school voucher plan "embodies exactly the same principle as the GI bills that provide for educational benefits to military veterans. The veteran gets a voucher good only for educational expense and he is completely free to choose the school at which he uses it, provided that it satisfies certain standards." The Pell Grant, a need-based aid, like the Voucher, can only be used for authorized school expenses at qualified schools, and, like the Pell, the money follows the student, for use against those authorized expenses (not all expenses are covered).  Proponents

Opponents.

The main critique of school vouchers and education tax credits is that they put public education in competition with private education, threatening to reduce and reallocate public school funding to private schools. Opponents question the belief that private schools are more efficient.  Public school teachers and teacher unions have also fought against school vouchers. In the United States, public school teacher unions, most notably the National Education Association (the largest labor union in the USA), argue that school vouchers erode educational standards and reduce funding, and that giving money to parents who choose to send their child to a religious or other school is unconstitutional. The latter issue was struck down by the Supreme Court case "Zelman v. Simmons-Harris", which upheld Ohio's voucher plan in a 5-4 ruling. In contrast, the use of public school funding for vouchers to private schools was disallowed by the Louisiana Supreme Court in 2013. The Louisiana Supreme Court did not declare vouchers unconstitutional, just the use of money earmarked for public schools via the Louisiana Constitution for funding Louisiana's voucher program. The National Education Association also points out that access to vouchers is just like "a chance in a lottery" where parents had to be lucky in order to get a space in this program. Since almost all students and their families would like to choose the best schools, those schools, as a result, quickly reach its maximum capacity number for students that state law permits. Those who did not get vouchers then have to compete again to look for some other less preferred and competitive schools or give up searching and go back to their assigned local schools. Jonathan Kozol, a prominent public school reform thinker and former public school teacher called vouchers the "single worst, most dangerous idea to have entered education discourse in my adult life".  The National Education Association additionally argues that more money should go towards the Public Education to help the schools struggling and improve the schools overall, instead of reducing the public school's fund to go towards school vouchers. Their argument claims that increasing that amount of money that goes towards public education would also increase the amount of resources put into public schools, therefore, improving the education. This argument made towards school vouchers reflect the way the organization values public education. For example, in an interview in May 2017 regarding Donald Trump's 2018 Budget Proposal, the organization's president, Lily Eskelsen García, claimed:  "We should invest in what makes schools great, the things that build curiosity and instill a love of learning. That is what every student deserves and what every parent wants for his or her child. It should not depend on how much their parents make, what language they speak at home, and certainly, not what neighborhood they live in." -National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García.  Furthermore, there are multiple studies that support the arguments made by opponents of school vouchers. One of these studies, conducted by the Tulane University's Education Research Alliance, consists of observing the relationship between voucher programs and student's test scores. They found that students in the Louisiana voucher program initially had lower test scores, but after three years, their scores matched those of students who stayed in public schools from standardized test scores spanning from 2012 to 2015.  People who can benefit from vouchers may not know it. In April 2012, a bill passed in Louisiana that made vouchers available to low-income families whose children attended poorly ranked schools. A student whose household income was low (up to about $44,000 for a family of three) who attended a school ranked "C", "D", or "F" could apply for vouchers to attend another school. Of the estimated 380,000 eligible students during the school year when the bill was passed (2012/13), only 5,000 students knew about and applied for the vouchers, and accepted them.  In 2006, the United States Department of Education released a report concluding that average test scores for reading and mathematics, when adjusted for student and school characteristics, tend to be very similar among public schools and private schools. Private schools performed significantly better than public schools only if results were not adjusted for factors such as race, gender, and free or reduced price lunch program eligibility. Other research questions assumptions that large improvements would result from a more comprehensive voucher system.  Given the limited budget for schools, it is claimed that a voucher system would weaken public schools while not providing enough money for people to attend private schools. 76% of the money given in Arizona's voucher program went to children already in private schools.  Some sources claim that public schools' higher per-pupil spending is due to having a higher proportion of students with behavioral, physical and emotional problems, since in the United States, public schools must by law accept any student regardless of race, gender, religion, disability, educational aptitude, and so forth, while private schools are not so bound. They argue that some, if not all, of the cost difference between public and private schools comes from "cream skimming", whereby the private schools select only those students who belong to a preferred group – whether economic, religious, educational aptitude level, or ethnicity – rather than from differences in administration. The end result, it has been argued, is that a voucher system has led or would lead students who do not belong to the private schools' preferred groupings to become concentrated at public schools. However, of the ten state-run voucher programs in the United States at the beginning of 2011, four targeted low-income students, two targeted students in failing schools, and six targeted students with special needs. (Louisiana ran a single program targeting all three groups.)  It is also argued that voucher programs are often implemented without the necessary safeguards that prevent institutions from discriminating against marginalized communities. In the United States, as of 2016, there are currently no state laws that require voucher programs to not discriminate against marginalized communities. Further, while some voucher programs may explicitly be aimed at marginalized communities, this is not necessarily always the case. A common argument for school vouchers is that it allows for marginalized communities of color to be uplifted from poverty. Historically, however, data suggests that voucher programs have been used to further segregate Americans. Further, some data has shown that the effects of voucher programs such as the New York City School Choice Scholarship Program, are marginal when it comes to increasing student achievement.  Another argument against a school voucher system is its lack of accountability to taxpayers. In many states, members of a community's board of education are elected by voters. Similarly, a school budget faces a referendum. Meetings of the Board of Education must be announced in advance, and members of the public are permitted to voice their concerns directly to board members. By contrast, although vouchers may be used in private and religious schools, taxpayers cannot vote on budget issues, elect members of the board or even attend board meetings. Kevin Welner points out that vouchers funded through a convoluted tax credit system—a policy he calls "neovouchers"—present additional accountability concerns. With neovoucher systems, a taxpayer owing money to the state instead donates that money to a private, nonprofit organization. That organization then bundles donations and gives them to parents as vouchers to be used for private school tuition. The state then steps in and forgives (through a tax credit) some or all of the taxes that the donor has given to the organization. While conventional tax credit systems are structured to treat all private school participants equally, neovoucher systems effectively delegate to individual private taxpayers (those owing money to the state) the power to decide which private schools will benefit.  An example of lack of accountability is the voucher situation in Louisiana. In 2012, Louisiana State Superintendent of Education John White selected private schools to receive vouchers, then tried to fabricate criteria (including site visits) after schools had already received approval letters. One school of note, New Living Word in Ruston, Louisiana, did not have sufficient facilities for the over-300 students White and the state board of education had approved. Following a voucher audit in 2013, New Living Word had overcharged the state $395,000. White referred to the incident as a "lone substantive issue". However, most voucher schools did not undergo a complete audit for not having a separate checking account for state voucher money.  According to Susanne Wiborg, an expert on comparative education, Sweden's voucher system introduced in 1992 has "augmented social and ethnic segregation, particularly in relation to schools in deprived areas".  Tax-credit scholarships which are in most part disbursed to current private school students or to families which made substantial donations to the scholarship fund, rather than to low-income students attempting to escape from failing schools, amount to nothing more than a mechanism to use public funds in the form of foregone taxes to support private, often religiously based, private schools.

A school voucher, also called an education voucher, in a voucher system, is a certificate of government funding for a student at a school chosen by the student or the student's parents. The funding is usually for a particular year, term or semester. In some countries, states or local jurisdictions, the voucher can be used to cover or reimburse home schooling expenses. In some countries, vouchers only exist for tuition at private schools.

学券制,又称为教育券制。这是美国经济学家-{zh-hans:米尔顿·弗里德曼;zh-hk:米尔顿·佛利民;zh-tw:米尔顿·傅利曼;}-提倡的一种政府教育补贴制度。与直接给公立学校发放教育经费不同,政府向家长发放教育代金券。主要目的在于,在维持政府对教育的补贴同时,在教育体系中引入市场竞争机制,提升教育质量,给家长更多选择。


Development.

Two sets of Diderot's "Encyclopédie" and its supplements were cut up into articles. Each subject category was entrusted to a specialized editor, whose job was to collect all articles relating to his subject and exclude those belonging to others. Great care was to be taken of those articles that were of a doubtful nature, which were not to be omitted. For certain topics, such as air (which belonged equally to chemistry, physics and medicine), the methodical arrangement had the unexpected effect of breaking up a single article into several parts. Each volume was to have its own introduction, a table of contents, and a history of the "Encyclopédie". The whole work was to be linked together by a "Vocabulaire universel" (Vol. 14), with references to all locations where each word appears.  The prospectus, issued early in 1782, proposed three editions, each with seven volumes of 250 to 300 plates:  Subscription was priced at:  The "livraisons" (home-deliveries) were to be in two volumes each, the first (Jurisprudence, Vol. 1; Literature, Vol. 1,) to appear in July 1782, and the whole to be finished by 1787. The number of subscribers, 4072, was so great that the subscription list for the price of 672 livres was closed on April 30. Twenty-five printing offices were employed, and in November 1782, the first "livraison" (Jurisprudence, Vol. 1; and half volume each of "Arts et métiers" and "Histoire naturelle") was issued.  A Spanish prospectus was sent out and obtained 330 Spanish subscribers, with the inquisitor-general at their head.  The complaints of the subscribers and his own heavy advances of over 150,000 livres induced Panckoucke, in November 1788, to appeal to the authors to finish the work. Those who were behind made new contracts, giving their word of honor to put their parts to press by 1788, so that Panckoucke hoped to finish the whole, including the "Vocabulaire universel" (4 or 5 vols.) by 1792.  Entire topics such as architecture, engineering, hunting, police, and games had been overlooked in the prospectus. A new division was made in 44 parts, to contain 51 dictionaries, and about 124 volumes. Permission was obtained on February 27, 1789 to receive subscriptions for separate dictionaries. Two thousand subscribers were lost in the French Revolution.  The 50th "livraison" appeared on July 23, 1792, by which time all the dictionaries eventually published had been begun except for seven: "Jeux familiers" and "mathématiques", physics, "Art oratoire", physical geography, "Chasses" and "Pèches". On the other hand, eighteen volumes were now finished: "Mathématics", games, surgery, ancient and modern geography, history, theology, logic, grammar, jurisprudence, finance, political economy, commerce, marine, military science, academic art, arts and crafts, and "Encyclopédiana". Of the three parts of "Assemblée Nationale": only volume 2, i.e. "Debates", appeared in 1792, with 804 pages (Absens to Aurillac). Supplements were added to military art in 1797, and to history in 1807, but not to any of the other 16, despite many changes in knowledge by 1832.  The publication was continued by Henri Agasse, Panckoucke's son-in-law, from 1794 to 1813, and then by the latter's widow, Mme Agasse, until 1832, when it was completed in 102 livraisons or 337 parts, forming roughly 1661⁄2 volumes of text (depending on how the parts were bound) as well as 51 illustrated parts containing 6,439 plates. The number of pages totalled 124,210 pages, of which 5,458 pages were plates. To save money, the plates belonging to architecture were not published. Pharmacy (separated from chemistry), minerals, education, "Ponts et chausses" were not published as had been announced.  Many dictionaries have a classed index of articles. The one in "Oeconomie politique" is an excellent example, giving the contents of each article, so that any passage can be found easily.  When "completed," the encyclopedia suffered at least one great weakness. As the "Vocabulaire Universel", the key and index to the entire work, was not published, it was difficult to carry out any research or to find all the articles on any particular subject. The original parts had often been subdivided, and had been so added onto by other dictionaries, supplements, and appendices that an exact account could not be given of the work, which contained 88 alphabets, 83 indexes, 166 introductions, discourses, prefaces, etc. Overall, probably no more an unmanageable body of dictionaries has ever been published, except Jacques Paul Migne's "Encyclopédie théologique", Paris, 1844–1875, with 168 volumes, 101 dictionaries, and 119,059 pages.  The "Encyclopédie méthodique par ordre des matières" occupied a thousand workers in production, and 2,250 contributors.

Translations.

Ten volumes of a Spanish translation with a volume of plates were published at Madrid in 1806:  A French edition was printed at Padua, with the plates, very carefully engraved.

Details of encyclopedia format.

The division adopted was:  The largest dictionaries were:

The Encyclopédie méthodique par ordre des matières ("Methodical Encyclopedia by Order of Subject Matter") was published between 1782 and 1832 by the French publisher Charles Joseph Panckoucke, his son-in-law Henri Agasse, and the latter's wife, Thérèse-Charlotte Agasse. Arranged by disciplines, it was a revised and much expanded version, in roughly 210 to 216 volumes (different sets were bound differently), of the alphabetically arranged "Encyclopédie", edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. The full title was "L'Encyclopédie méthodique ou par ordre de matières par une société de gens de lettres, de savants et d'artistes; précédée d'un vocabulaire universel, servant de table pour tout l'ouvrage, ornée des portraits de MM. Diderot et d'Alembert, premiers éditeurs de l'Encyclopédie."

《方法论百科全书》是法国出版商查理·约瑟夫·潘寇克和他的女儿特蕾莎·夏洛特·雅加斯在1782年和1832年之间所出版的百科全书。全套共有206册。它是一个根据事情排序的,重新修订的扩展版本。原著是由德尼·狄德罗根据字母来排列的。方法论百科全书的法文全名为""。


Medical uses.

Ovulation induction.

Clomifene is one of several alternatives for ovulation induction in those who are infertile due to anovulation or oligoovulation. Evidence is lacking for the use of clomifene in those who are infertile without a known reason. In such cases, studies have observed a clinical pregnancy rate 5.6% per cycle with clomifene treatment vs. 1.3%–4.2% per cycle without treatment.  Proper timing of the drug is important; it should be taken starting on about the fifth day of the cycle, and there should be frequent intercourse.  The following procedures may be used to monitor induced cycles:  Repeat dosing: This 5-day treatment course can be repeated every 30 days. The dosage may be increased by 50-mg increments in subsequent cycles until ovulation is achieved. It is not recommended by the manufacturer to use clomifene for more than 6 cycles.  It is no longer recommended to perform an ultrasound examination to exclude any significant residual ovarian enlargement before each new treatment cycle.

Other uses.

Clomifene has also been used with other assisted reproductive technology to increase success rates of these other modalities.  Clomifene is sometimes used in the treatment of male hypogonadism as an alternative to testosterone replacement therapy. The medication has been used at a dosage of 20 to 50 mg three times per week to once day for this indication. It has been found to increase testosterone levels by 2- to 2.5-times in hypogonadal men at such dosages. Despite the use of questionnaires in testosterone replacement comparator trials being called into question, clomifene's lower cost, therapeutic benefits, and greater value towards hypogonadism improvement have been noted.  Clomifene has been used in the treatment of gynecomastia. It has been found to be useful in the treatment of some cases of gynecomastia but it is not as effective as tamoxifen or raloxifene for this indication. It has shown variable results for gynecomastia and hence is not recommended for treatment of the condition.

Contraindications.

Contraindications include an allergy to the medication, pregnancy, prior liver problems, abnormal vaginal bleeding of unclear cause, ovarian cysts other than those due to polycystic ovarian syndrome, unmanaged adrenal or thyroid problems, and pituitary tumors.

Side effects.

The most common adverse drug reaction associated with the use of clomifene (>10% of people) is reversible ovarian enlargement.  Less common effects (1–10% of people) include visual symptoms (blurred vision, double vision, floaters, eye sensitivity to light, scotomata), headaches, vasomotor flushes (or hot flashes), light sensitivity and pupil constriction, abnormal uterine bleeding and/or abdominal discomfort.  Rare adverse events (<1% of people) include: high blood level of triglycerides, liver inflammation, reversible baldness and/or ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.  Clomifene can lead to multiple ovulation, hence increasing the chance of twins (10% of births instead of ~1% in the general population) and triplets.  Rates of birth defects and miscarriages do not appear to change with the use of clomifene for fertility. Clomifene has been associated with liver abnormalities and a couple of cases of hepatotoxicity.

Cancer risk.

Some studies have suggested that clomifene if used for more than a year may increase the risk of ovarian cancer. This may only be the case in those who have never been and do not become pregnant. Subsequent studies have failed to support those findings.  Clomifene has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of malignant melanomas and thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer risk was not associated with the number of pregnancies carried to viability.

Pharmacology.

Pharmacodynamics.

Selective estrogen receptor modulator activity.

Clomifene is a nonsteroidal triphenylethylene derivative that acts as a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM). It consists of a racemic mixture of zuclomifene (~38%) and enclomifene (~62%), each of which has unique pharmacologic properties. It is a mixed agonist and antagonist of the estrogen receptor (ER). Clomifene activates the ERα in the setting of low baseline estrogen levels and partially blocks the receptor in the context of high baseline estrogen levels. Conversely, it is an antagonist of the ERβ. Clomifene is a long-acting ER ligand, with a nuclear retention of greater than 48 hours.  Even though clomifene has some estrogenic effect, the antiestrogenic property is believed to be the primary source for stimulating ovulation. Clomifene appears to act mostly in the hypothalamus where it depletes hypothalamic ERs and blocks the negative feedback effect of circulating endogenous estradiol, which in turn results in an increase in hypothalamic gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) pulse frequency and circulating concentrations of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH).  In normal physiologic female hormonal cycling, at 7 days past ovulation, high levels of estrogen and progesterone produced from the corpus luteum inhibit GnRH, FSH, and LH at the hypothalamus and anterior pituitary. If fertilization does not occur in the post-ovulation period the corpus luteum disintegrates due to a lack of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). This would normally be produced by the embryo in the effort of maintaining progesterone and estrogen levels during pregnancy.  Therapeutically, clomifene is given early in the menstrual cycle. It is typically prescribed beginning on day 3 and continuing for 5 days. By that time, FSH levels are rising steadily, causing the development of a few follicles. Follicles, in turn, produce the estrogen, which circulates in serum. In the presence of clomifene, the body perceives a low level of estrogen, similar to day 22 in the previous cycle. Since estrogen can no longer effectively exert negative feedback on the hypothalamus, GnRH secretion becomes more rapidly pulsatile, which results in increased pituitary gonadotropin release. (More rapid, lower amplitude pulses of GnRH lead to increased LH and FSH secretion, while more irregular, larger amplitude pulses of GnRH leads to a decrease in the ratio of LH to FSH.) Increased FSH levels cause the growth of more ovarian follicles, and subsequently rupture of follicles resulting in ovulation. Ovulation occurs most often 6 to 7 days after a course of clomifene.  Clomifene has antiestrogenic effects in the uterus. There is little clinical research on the influence of clomifene in many target tissues, such as lipids, the cardiovascular system, and the breasts. Positive effects of clomifene on bone have been observed. Clomifene has been found to decrease insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels in women.  In normal men, 50 mg/day clomifene for 8 months has been found to increase testosterone levels by around 870 ng/dL in younger men and by around 490 ng/dL in elderly men. Estradiol levels increased by 62 pg/mL in younger men and by 40 pg/mL in elderly men. These findings suggest that the progonadotropic effects of clomifene are stronger in younger men than in older men. In men with hypogonadism, clomifene has been found to increase testosterone levels by 293 to 362 ng/dL and estradiol levels by 5.5 to 13 pg/mL. In a large clinical study of men with low testosterone levels (<400 ng/dL), 25 mg/day clomifene increased testosterone levels from 309 ng/dL to 642 ng/dL after 3 months of therapy. No significant changes in HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting glucose, or prolactin levels were observed, although total cholesterol levels decreased significantly.

Other activities.

Clomifene is an inhibitor of the conversion of desmosterol into cholesterol by the enzyme 24-dehydrocholesterol reductase. Concerns about possible induction of desmosterolosis and associated symptoms such as cataracts and ichthyosis with extended exposure precluded the use of clomifene in the treatment of breast cancer. Continuous use of clomifene has been found to increase desmosterol levels by 10% and continuous high doses of clomifene (200 mg/day) have been reported to produce visual disturbances.

Pharmacokinetics.

Clomifene produces "N"-desmethylclomifene, clomifenoxide (clomifene "N"-oxide), and 4-hydroxyclomifene as metabolites. Clomifene has an onset of action of 5 to 10 days following course of treatment and an elimination half-life about 5 days. Most clomifene metabolism occurs hepatically, where it undergoes enterohepatic recirculation. Clomifene and its metabolites are excreted primarily through feces (42%), and excretion can occur up to 6 weeks after discontinuation.

Chemistry.

Clomifene is a triphenylethylene derivative. It is a mixture of two geometric isomers, enclomifene ("(E)"-clomifene) and zuclomifene ("(Z)"-clomifene). These two isomers have been found to contribute to the mixed estrogenic and antiestrogenic properties of clomifene.

History.

A team at William S. Merrell Chemical Company led by Frank Palopoli synthesized clomifene in 1956; after its biological activity was confirmed a patent was filed and issued in November 1959. Scientists at Merrell had previously synthesized chlorotrianisene and ethamoxytriphetol. Clomifene was studied in the treatment of advanced breast cancer during the period of 1964 to 1974 and was found to be effective but was abandoned due to concerns about desmosterolosis with extended use. Short-term use (e.g. days to months) did not raise the same concerns however and clomifene continued to be studied for other indications.  Clinical studies were conducted under an Investigational New Drug Application; clomifene was third drug for which an IND had been filed under the 1962 Kefauver Harris Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that had been passed in response to the thalidomide tragedy. It was approved for marketing in 1967 under the brand name Clomid. It was first used to treat cases of oligomenorrhea but was expanded to include treatment of anovulation when women undergoing treatment had higher than expected rates of pregnancy.  The drug is widely considered to have been a revolution in the treatment of female infertility, the beginning of the modern era of assisted reproductive technology, and the beginning of what in the words of Eli Y. Adashi, was "the onset of the US multiple births epidemic".  The company was acquired by Dow Chemical in 1980, and in 1989 Dow Chemical acquired 67 percent interest of Marion Laboratories, which was renamed Marion Merrell Dow. In 1995 Hoechst AG acquired the pharmaceutical business of Marion Merrell Dow. Hoechst in turn became part of Aventis in 1999, and subsequently a part of Sanofi. It became the most widely prescribed drug for ovulation induction to reverse anovulation or oligoovulation.

Society and culture.

Brand names.

Clomifene is marketed under many brand names worldwide, including Beclom, Bemot, Biogen, Blesifen, Chloramiphene, Clofert, Clomene, ClomHEXAL, Clomi, Clomid, Clomidac, Clomifen, Clomifencitrat, Clomifene, Clomifène, Clomifene citrate, Clomifeni citras, Clomifeno, Clomifert, Clomihexal, Clomiphen, Clomiphene, Clomiphene Citrate, Cloninn, Clostil, Clostilbegyt, Clovertil, Clovul, Dipthen, Dufine, Duinum, Fensipros, Fertab, Fertec, Fertex, Ferticlo, Fertil, Fertilan, Fertilphen, Fertin, Fertomid, Ferton, Fertotab, Fertyl, Fetrop, Folistim, Genoclom, Genozym, Hete, I-Clom, Ikaclomin, Klofit, Klomen, Klomifen, Lomifen, MER 41, Milophene, Ofertil, Omifin, Ova-mit, Ovamit, Ovinum, Ovipreg, Ovofar, Ovuclon, Ovulet, Pergotime, Pinfetil, Profertil, Prolifen, Provula, Reomen, Serofene, Serophene, Serpafar, Serpafar, Surole, Tocofeno, and Zimaquin.

Regulation.

Clomifene is included on the World Anti-Doping Agency list of illegal doping agents in sport. It is listed because it is an "anti-estrogenic substance".

Research.

Clomifene has been used almost exclusively for ovulation induction in premenopausal women, and has been studied very limitedly in postmenopausal women.  Clomifene was studied for treatment and prevention of breast cancer, but issues with toxicity led to abandonment of this indication, as did the discovery of tamoxifen. Like the structurally related drug triparanol, clomifene is known to inhibit the enzyme 24-dehydrocholesterol reductase and increase circulating desmosterol levels, making it unfavorable for extended use in breast cancer due to risk of side effects like irreversible cataracts.

Clomifene, also known as clomiphene, is a medication used to treat infertility in women who do not ovulate. This includes those who have polycystic ovary syndrome. Use results in a greater chance of twins. It is taken by mouth once a day with a course of treatment generally lasting five days. Common side effects include pelvic pain and hot flashes. Other side effects can include changes in vision, vomiting, trouble sleeping, ovarian cancer, and seizures. It is not recommended in people with liver disease, abnormal vaginal bleeding of unknown cause, or who are pregnant. Clomifene is in the selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) family of medication and is a nonsteroidal medication. It works by causing the release of GnRH by the hypothalamus, and subsequently gonadotropin from the anterior pituitary. Clomifene was approved for medical use in the United States in 1967. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system. It is available as a generic medication. The wholesale cost in the developing world is about 0.79 to 2.00 USD for a course of treatment. In the United States the wholesale cost of a course of treatment is 4.80 USD. Its introduction began the era of assisted reproductive technology.

可洛米分(Clomifene),为治疗女性无排卵性不孕症,包含多囊卵巢综合症(PCOS)患者。使用后会导致生出双胞胎的几率增加。本品为口服药,一天服用一次。 常见副作用包含骨盆痛及潮热,其他副作用则包含视力模糊、呕吐、睡眠障碍、卵巢癌,以及癫痫发作。患有肝脏疾病以及妊娠期间不建议使用。本品属于选择性雌激素受体调节物(SERM),可促进下丘脑分泌GnRH,刺激脑下腺前叶分泌性腺激素 。 可洛米分于美国在1967年开始用于药用,并列名于世界卫生组织基本药物标准清单,为基础公卫体系必备药物之一。本品属于通用名药物。在发展中国家,每次疗程剂量批发价约介于 0.79 至 2.00 美金之间。美国则约 4.80 美金。本品在体外人工受精技术发展时期开始应用。


History.

Max Braun, a mechanical engineer, established a small engineering shop in Frankfurt am Main in 1921. In 1923, he began producing components for radio sets. In 1928, the company had grown to such an extent, partly due to the use of certain plastic materials, that it moved to new premises on "Idsteiner Strasse".  In 1929, eight years after he started his shop, Max Braun began to manufacture entire radio sets. Soon after, Braun became one of Germany's leading radio manufacturers. This development continued with the launch of one of the first combined radio and record players in 1932.  In 1935, the Braun brand was introduced, and the original incarnation of the logotype with the raised "A" was born. At the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, Max Braun received the award "For special achievements in phonography". During World War II, Braun was compelled to more or less abandon products for the civilian sector. In 1944, the Frankfurt factories were almost entirely destroyed and Max Braun began to rebuild his company.  After the war, Braun continued to produce state-of-the art radios and audio equipment, and soon became well known for its "high-fidelity" audio and record players, including the famous SK line. Braun was the only foreign licensee of the QUAD electrostatic loudspeaker for a time. In 1954, the company also began producing film slide projectors, a mainstay of its business for the next forty years. By 1956, Braun was marketing the first fully automatic tray film slide projector, the PA 1. Braun AG slide projectors all utilized a linear or straight tray as opposed to a round-tray design, which allowed the projector to remain small and compact.  The 1950s also marked the beginning of the product that Braun is most known for today: the electric shaver. The S 50 was the first electric shaver from Braun. The shaver was designed in 1938, but World War II delayed its introduction until 1951. It featured an oscillating cutter block with a very thin, yet very stable steel-foil mounted above it. This principle is still used in Braun's shavers of today.  The 1950s also saw the start of kitchen appliances, like the mixer MX 3 and the kitchen machine (Küchenmaschine or kitchen machine) Braun KM 3. The KM 3 is a family of food processors which started with the model KM 3/31 in 1957. Designed by Gerd Alfred Müller, these machines were built in nearly unchanged form for 36 years, until 1993.  In 1962, Braun became Braun AG, a publicly traded company. In 1963, the company started distributing microphones by U.S. manufacturer Shure in Germany. Also during the 1960s, Braun created the Rams-designed T3 pocket radio. By this time, Braun's film slide projectors were featuring high-quality optics and all-metal construction combined with sleek functionalist styling, and competed with higher-end Eastman Kodak and Leitz products in the global market. Braun also started distributing in Germany high-end medium-format SLR system-cameras produced by Japanese camera manufacturer Zenza Bronica, as well as Braun-Nizo brand cameras and Super 8 film cameras (formerly of Niezoldi & Krämer GmbH; purchased by Braun in 1962). In 1967, a majority share of the company was acquired by the Boston, Massachusetts-based conglomerate Gillette Group.  Erwin Braun, one of Max Braun's sons, took on the sales agency of the LECTRON system product line in 1967. He was very interested in making the teaching of electronics approachable to students all over the world. The LECTRON system was a simple but ingenious product which fit the bill perfectly. The LECTRON System was introduced to the German marketplace in 1966 by Egger-Bahn (a company primarily focused on the 9mm toy train sector). An electronic component such as a resistor was placed inside a transparent flat cube with a white cover on the top of which had the electronic symbol and its value. The blocks containing different components and types of connections could be put together to form a working circuit with the schematic diagram of the circuit illustrated by the symbols on the top of the block. The blocks were held together with the use of magnets behind the conductive plates on the sides and bottom of the block. In 1972, due to pressure from Gillette, the LECTRON assets were sold off to Manfred Walter, the manager of the LECTRON product line at Braun. Mr. Walter formed Lectron, GmbH in 1972 to continue selling and developing the LECTRON product line. Mr. Walter retired and gifted the LECTRON assets to the Reha-Werkstatt Oberrad in 2001. The RWO continues to manufacture and sell the LECTRON system to this day.  By the 1970s, Braun had begun to focus on home consumer appliances, including shavers, coffee makers, razors, clocks, and radios. The company's line of film slide projectors and hi-fi products was discontinued. In 1998, Braun AG was transformed into a privately held company.  In 1981, the company's audio and hi-fidelity division, which grew out of Braun's former core business of radios, turntables, and hi-fidelity audio products, was spun off into Braun Electronic GmbH, a legally independent Gillette subsidiary. Braun Electronic GmbH put out its last audio-fi set in 1990 before the business was discontinued. Also in the early 1980s, Braun sold its photographic and slide projector division to Robert Bosch GmbH.  In 1982, Gillette Group moved to integrate Braun with the parent company by taking full control over its operations. In 1984, Braun ceased the production of cigarette lighters. That same year, Braun became a wholly owned subsidiary of Gillette.  By the mid-1990s, Braun held a leading position among the world's home appliance manufacturers, but profitability concerns began to surface. Many of Braun's competitors closely imitated Braun designs and had them produced in low-cost labor countries at lower costs. The litigation commenced by the company to reverse the sales losses and damage to its product image cost Braun substantial amounts of money.  In 1998, Gillette decided to transform Braun AG into a private company before it bought back a 19.9 percent share in its subsidiary The Gillette Company Inc., which Braun had acquired in 1988. The following year, Braun's sales organization was merged with those of Gillette's other business divisions to cut costs. At the end of the 1990s, Braun and Gillette suffered losses in several areas. Looking for ways to return to profitability, Gillette considering the disposal of some of Braun's less profitable divisions, such as kitchen appliances and thermometers, but abandoned the idea a few months later when no buyers were found. Braun's sales in those areas began to recover in 2000.  Gillette was acquired by Procter & Gamble ("P&G") in 2005, making Braun a wholly owned subsidiary of P&G. In early 2008, P&G discontinued sales of Braun appliances, except certain appliances such as shavers and electric toothbrushes, in the United States market. Elsewhere, however, Braun kept selling all its core categories until 2012, when the Braun product line relating to kitchen appliances was purchased by De'Longhi, using the Braun trademark under license from P&G.

Products.

Braun's products include the following categories:  The company was formerly a manufacturer of food processors, radios, slide projectors, Super 8 film cameras and accessories, and high-fidelity sound systems.  Today, Braun focuses on its core categories (shaving and grooming, beauty and hair care). Household Small Appliances, Health and wellness category as well as clocks and watches are now run by other companies (De'Longhi, Zeon, Kaz) under licence.

Design department.

From the mid-1950s, the Braun brand was closely linked with the concept of German modern industrial design and its combination of functionality and technology. In 1956, Braun created its first design department, headed by Dr. Fritz Eichler, who instituted a collaboration with the Ulm School of Design to develop a new product line. In 1956 the company introduced its famous "SK4" record player ("Snow White's Coffin"), designed by a youthful Dieter Rams together with the pioneer of system design, Hans Gugelot, then lecturer of design at the Ulm School of Design. Rams soon became the most influential designer at Braun. Rams was a key figure in the German design renaissance of the late 1950s and 1960s. Eventually becoming head of Braun's design staff, Rams' influence was soon evidenced in many products. Braun's famous SK 4 record player and the high-quality "D"-series (D25–D47) of 35mm slide projectors are some of the better examples of Functionalist design.  Another 'icon' of modern design, but less well known, is the electrostatic loudspeaker unit BRAUN LE1, the electronics were licensed from QUAD. Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs are also responsible for the classic range of Braun alarm clocks, collaborating first on the AB 20 in 1987. These designs were discontinued by Braun in 2005. For nearly 30 years Dieter Rams served as head of design for Braun A.G. until his retirement in 1995 when he was succeeded by Peter Schneider. Many of his designs—sleek coffee makers, calculators, radios and razors—have found a permanent home at the Museum of Modern Art.  In the 1970s, a design approach influenced by pop-art began to inspire Braun products, which by this time included many common household appliances and products. Contemporary Braun design of the period incorporated this new approach in bright colors and a lightness of touch, while still clean-lined in keeping with Functionalist philosophy.

Braun GmbH ( "brown"; ), formerly Braun AG, is a German consumer products company based in Kronberg. From 1984 until 2007, Braun was a wholly owned subsidiary of The Gillette Company, which had purchased a controlling interest in the company in 1967. Braun is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, which acquired Gillette in 2005. On 16 April 2012, De'Longhi bought perpetual rights to manufacture Braun branded products from Procter & Gamble in the small appliance segment. Procter & Gamble will continue to own the Braun brand.

德国百灵公司()为一间德国公司,又称-{zh-hans:百灵;zh-hant:博朗}-公司,于1921年创立,主要的产品是家用电器。


Nomenclature.

"α Andromedae" (Latinised to "Alpha Andromedae") is the star's Bayer designation. Ptolemy considered Alpha Andromedae to be shared by Pegasus, and Johann Bayer assigned it a designation in both constellations: Alpha Andromedae (α And) and Delta Pegasi (δ Peg). When the modern constellation boundaries were fixed in 1930, the latter designation dropped from use.  The star bore the traditional names "Alpheratz" () or "Alpherat" and "Sirrah" deriving from the Arabic name, سرة الفرس "the navel of the mare". (سرة alone is ). The word "horse" reflects the star's historical placement in Pegasus. In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016 included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN; which included "Alpheratz" for this star.  Another term for this star used by medieval astronomers writing in Arabic was راس المراة المسلسلة "rās al-mar'a al-musalsala" "the head of the woman in chains", the chained woman here being Andromeda. Other Arabic names include "al-kaff al-khaḍīb" and "kaff al-naṣīr".  In the Hindu lunar zodiac, this star, together with the other stars in the Great Square of Pegasus (α, β, and γ Pegasi), makes up the nakshatras of Pūrva Bhādrapadā and Uttara Bhādrapadā.  In Chinese, (), meaning "wall", refers to an asterism consisting of α Andromedae and γ Pegasi. Consequently, the Chinese name for α Andromedae itself is (,.)  It is also known as one of the "Three Guides" that mark the prime meridian of the heavens, the other two being Beta Cassiopeiae and Gamma Pegasi. It was believed to bless those born under its influence with honour and riches.

System.

The radial velocity of a star away from or towards the observer can be determined by measuring the red shift or blue shift of its spectrum. The American astronomer Vesto Slipher made a series of such measurements from 1902 to 1904 and discovered that the radial velocity of α Andromedae varied periodically. He concluded that it was in orbit in a spectroscopic binary star system with a period of about 100 days. A preliminary orbit was published by Hans Ludendorff in 1907, and a more precise orbit was later published by Robert Horace Baker.  The fainter star in the system was first resolved interferometrically by Xiaopei Pan and his coworkers during 1988 and 1989, using the Mark III Stellar Interferometer at the Mount Wilson Observatory, California, United States. This work was published in 1992. Because of the difference in luminosity between the two stars, its spectral lines were not observed until the early 1990s, in observations made by Jocelyn Tomkin, Xiaopei Pan, and James K. McCarthy between 1991 and 1994 and published in 1995.  The two stars are now known to orbit each other with a period of 96.7 days. The larger, brighter star, called the "primary", has a spectral type of B8IVpMnHg, a mass of approximately 3.6 solar masses, a surface temperature of about 13,800 K, and, measured over all wavelengths, a luminosity of about 200 times the Sun's. Its smaller, fainter companion, the "secondary", has a mass of approximately 1.8 solar masses and a surface temperature of about 8,500 K, and, again measured over all wavelengths, a luminosity of about 10 times the Sun's. It is an early-type A star whose spectral type has been estimated as A3V.

Chemical peculiarities.

In 1906, Norman Lockyer and F. E. Baxandall reported that α Andromedae had a number of unusual lines in its spectrum. In 1914, Baxandall pointed out that most of the unusual lines came from manganese, and that similar lines were present in the spectrum of μ Leporis. In 1931, W. W. Morgan identified 12 additional stars with lines from manganese appearing in their spectra. Many of these stars were subsequently identified as part of the group of mercury-manganese stars, a class of chemically peculiar stars which have an excess of elements such as mercury, manganese, phosphorus, and gallium in their atmospheres. In the case of α Andromedae, the brighter primary star is a mercury-manganese star which, as well as the elements already mentioned, has excess xenon.  In 1970, Georges Michaud suggested that such chemically peculiar stars arose from radiative diffusion. According to this theory, in stars with unusually calm atmospheres, some elements sink under the force of gravity, while others are pushed to the surface by radiation pressure. This theory has successfully explained many observed chemical peculiarities, including those of mercury-manganese stars.

Variability of primary.

α Andromedae has been reported to be slightly variable, but observations from 1990 to 1994 found its brightness to be constant to within less than 0.01 magnitude. However, Adelman and his co-workers have discovered, in observations made between 1993 and 1999 and published in 2002, that the mercury line in its spectrum at 398.4 nm varies as the primary rotates. This is because the distribution of mercury in its atmosphere is not uniform. Applying Doppler imaging to the observations allowed Adelman et al. to find that it was concentrated in clouds near the equator. Subsequent Doppler imaging studies, published in 2007, showed that these clouds drift slowly over the star's surface.

Observation.

The location of α Andromedae in the sky is shown on the left. It can be seen by the naked eye and is theoretically visible at all latitudes north of 60° S. During evening from August to October, it will be high in the sky as seen from the northern midlatitudes.

Optical companion.

The binary system described above has an optical visual companion, discovered by William Herschel on July 21, 1781. Designated as "ADS 94 B" in the Aitken Double Star Catalogue, it is a G-type star with an apparent visual magnitude of approximately 10.8. Although by coincidence it appears near to the other two stars in the sky, it's much more distant from Earth; the parallax observed by Gaia place this star more than 1,300 light years away.

In Popular Culture and Media.

The star system is referred to by the name "Sirrah" on the 2017 Ayreon record entitled The Source. On this record an alien race abandons their home planet in search of a new home world orbiting "the star of Sirrah."

Alpha Andromedae (α Andromedae, abbreviated Alpha And or α And), officially named Alpheratz, is located 97 light-years from the Sun and is the brightest star in the constellation of Andromeda. Located immediately northeast of the constellation of Pegasus, it is the upper left star of the Great Square of Pegasus.

壁宿二(Alpha And / α And / α Andromedae)在英文的固有名称是 Alpheratz和Sirrah(与Sirah的拼法相通),是在仙女座中最亮的一颗恒星,位置紧邻在飞马座的东北部,是构成飞马四边形的恒星之一。做为一颗与飞马座相连接的恒星,它也曾经被称为飞马座δ,但这个名称现在已经不再使用了。另一颗有双重名称的恒星是金牛座β 。壁宿二与地球相距97光年,虽然以裸眼观看是一颗视星等2.06等的单独恒星,实际上他是一对联星,由轨道距离很近的两颗恒星组成。两颗恒星中较亮的一颗是化学组成很不寻常的汞-锰星,它的大气层中包含异常高浓度的汞、锰和其他元素,包括镓和氙,是已知的汞-锰星中最亮的一颗。


Nomenclature.

"β Carinae" (Latinised to "Beta Carinae") is the star's Bayer designation.  The star's historical name "Miaplacidus" made its debut on star maps in 1856 when the star atlas "Geography of the Heavens", composed by Elijah Hinsdale Burritt, was published. The meaning and linguistic origin of the name remained an enigma for many decades, until William Higgins, a great scholar and expert on star names, surmised that the name "Miaplacidus" is apparently a bilingual combination of Arabic "مياه" "miyāh" for 'waters' and Latin "placidus" for 'placid'. The IAU Working Group on Star Names first bulletin of July 2016 included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN; which included "Miaplacidus" for this star.  In Chinese, (), meaning "Southern Boat", refers to an asterism consisting of β Carinae, V337 Carinae, PP Carinae, θ Carinae and ω Carinae. Consequently, β Carinae itself is known as (,.)

Physical properties.

The stellar classification of A1 III suggests this is an evolved giant star, although Malagnini and Morossi (1990) rated it as an A2 IV subgiant star. It has an estimated age of 260 million years. This star does not show an excess emission of infrared radiation that might otherwise suggest the presence of a debris disk. It has about 3.5 times the Sun's mass and has expanded to almost seven times the radius of the Sun. Presently is it radiating 288 times as much luminosity as the Sun from its outer envelope at an effective temperature of 8,866 K. Despite its enlarged girth, this star still shows a rapid rotation rate, with a projected rotational velocity of.

Beta Carinae (Latinised from β Carinae, abbreviated Beta Car, β Car), officially named Miaplacidus, is the second-brightest star in the constellation of Carina and one of the brightest stars in the night sky, with apparent magnitude 1.68. It is the brightest star in the southern asterism known as the Diamond Cross, marking the southwestern end of the asterism. It lies near the planetary nebula IC 2448. Parallax measurements place it at a distance of from the Sun.

南船五(β Car / 船底座β)是船底座第二亮星,也是全天最亮的恒星之一,视星等为+1.68。它是广为人知的南极星群钻石十字中最亮的恒星,位于该星群的西南端。南船五英文俗名Miaplacidus,意为“平静的水”。它位于行星状星云IC 2448附近。


Biography.

Early life.

Wundt was born at Neckarau, Baden (now part of Mannheim) on the 16th of August 1832, the fourth child to parents Maximilian Wundt (a Lutheran minister), and his wife Marie Frederike, née Arnold (1797–1868). Wundt's paternal grandfather was Friedrich Peter Wundt (1742–1805), Professor of Geography and pastor in Wieblingen. When Wundt was

Education and Heidelberg career.

Wundt studied from 1851 to 1856 at the University of Tübingen, at the University of Heidelberg, and at the University of Berlin. After graduating as a doctor of medicine from Heidelberg (1856), with doctoral advisor Karl Ewald Hasse, Wundt studied briefly with Johannes Peter Müller, before joining the Heidelberg University's staff, becoming an assistant to the physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz in 1858 with responsibility for teaching the laboratory course in physiology. There

Marriage and family.

In 1867, near Heidelberg, Wundt met Sophie Mau (1844–1912). She was the eldest daughter of the Kiel theology professor and his wife Louise, née von Rumohr, and a

Career in Zurich and Leipzig.

In 1875, Wundt was promoted to professor of "Inductive Philosophy" in Zurich, and in 1875, Wundt was made professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig where Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878) and Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887) had initiated research on sensory psychology and psychophysics – and where two centuries earlier Gottfried Wilhelm

Laboratory of Experimental Psychology.

In 1879, at the University of Leipzig, Wundt opened the first laboratory ever to be exclusively devoted to psychological studies, and this event marked the official birth of psychology as an independent field of study. The new lab was full of graduate students carrying out research on topics assigned by Wundt, and it soon attracted young scholars from all over the world who were eager to learn about the new science that Wundt had developed.  The University of Leipzig assigned Wundt a lab in 1876 to store equipment he had brought from Zurich. Located in the Konvikt building, many of Wundt's demonstrations

Wundt's teaching in the Institute for Experimental Psychology.

The list of Wundt's lectures during the winter terms of 1875-1879 shows a wide-ranging programme, 6 days a week, on average 2 hours daily, e.g.

Wundt's doctoral students.

Wundt was responsible for an extraordinary number of doctoral dissertations between 1875 and 1919: 184 PhD students included 70 foreigners (of which 23 were from Russia, Poland and other east-European countries, 18 were American). Several of Wundt's students became eminent psychologists in their own right. They include: the Germans Oswald Külpe (a professor at the University of Würzburg), Ernst Meumann (a professor in Leipzig and Hamburg and pioneer in pedagogical psychology), Hugo Münsterberg a professor in Freiburg and at Harvard University, a pioneer in applied psychology), Willy Hellpach (in Germany known for cultural psychology).  The Americans listed include James McKeen Cattell (the first professor of psychology in the United States), Granville Stanley Hall (the father of the child psychology movement and adolescent developmental theorist, head of Clark University), Charles Hubbard Judd (Director of the

Retirement and death.

Wundt retired in 1917 to devote himself to his scientific writing. According to Wirth (1920), over the summer of 1920, Wundt "felt his

Awards.

Honorary doctorates from the Universities of Leipzig and Göttingen; Pour le Mérite for Science and Arts; Honorary

Overview of Wundt's work.

Wundt was initially a physician and a well-known neurophysiologist before turning to sensory physiology and psychophysics. He was convinced that, for example, the process of spatial perception could not solely be explained on a physiological level, but also involved psychological principles. Wundt founded experimental psychology as a discipline and became a pioneer of cultural psychology. He created a broad research programme in empirical psychology and developed a system of philosophy and ethics from the basic concepts of his psychology – bringing together several disciplines in one person.  Wundt's epistemological position – against John Locke and English empiricism (sensualism) – was made clear in his book "Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung" (Contributions on the Theory of Sensory Perception) published in 1862,

Central themes in Wundt's work.

Process theory Psychology is interested in the current process, i.e. the mental changes and functional relationships between perception, cognition, emotion, and volition/ motivation. Mental (psychological) phenomena are changing processes of consciousness. They can only be determined as an actuality, an "immediate reality of an event in the psychological experience". The relationships of consciousness, i.e. the actively organising processes, are no longer explained metaphysically by means of an immortal ‘soul’ or an abstract transcendental (spiritual) principle.  The delineation of categories  Wundt considered that reference to the subject (Subjektbezug), value assessment (Wertbestimmung), the existence of purpose (Zwecksetzung), and volitional acts (Willenstätigkeit) to be specific and fundamental categories for psychology. He frequently used the formulation "the human as a motivated and thinking subject" in order to characterise features held in common with the humanities and the categorical difference to the natural sciences.  Psychophysical parallelism Influenced by Leibniz, Wundt introduced the term psychophysical parallelism as follows: "... wherever there are regular relationships between mental and physical phenomena the two are neither identical nor convertible into one another because they are per se incomparable; but they are associated with one another in the way that certain mental processes regularly correspond to certain physical processes or, figuratively expressed, run 'parallel to one another'." Although the inner experience is based on the functions of the brain there are no physical causes for mental changes.  Leibniz wrote: "Souls act according to the laws of final causes, through aspirations, ends and means. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes, i.e. the laws of motion. And these two realms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, harmonize with one another." (Monadology, Paragraph 79).  Wundt follows Leibniz and differentiates between a "physical" causality (natural causality of neurophysiology) and a "mental" ("psychic") causality of the consciousness process. Both causalities, however, are not opposites in a dualistic metaphysical sense, but depend on the standpoint Causal explanations in psychology must be content to seek the effects of the antecedent causes without being able to derive exact predictions. Using the example of volitional acts, Wundt describes possible inversion in considering cause and effect, ends and means, and explains how causal and teleological explanations can complement one another to establish a co-ordinated consideration.  Wundt's position differed from contemporary authors who also favoured parallelism. Instead of being content with the postulate of parallelism, he developed his principles of "mental causality" in contrast to the natural causality of neurophysiology, and a corresponding methodology. There are two fundamentally different approaches of the postulated psychophysical unit, not just two points-of-view in the sense of Gustav Theodor Fechner's identity hypothesis. Psychological and physiological statements exist in two categorically different reference systems; the important categories are to be emphasised in order to prevent category mistakes as discussed by Nicolai Hartmann. In this regard, Wundt created the first genuine epistemology and methodology of empirical psychology (the term philosophy of science did not yet exist).  Apperception  Apperception is Wundt's central theoretical concept. Leibniz described apperception as the process in which the elementary sensory impressions pass into (self-)consciousness, whereby individual aspirations (striving, volitional acts) play an essential role. Wundt developed psychological concepts, used experimental psychological methods and put forward neuropsychological modelling in the frontal cortex of the brain

Physiology.

During the Heidelberg years from 1853 to 1873, Wundt published numerous essays on physiology, particularly on experimental neurophysiology, a textbook on human physiology (1865, 4th ed. 1878) and a manual of medical physics (1867). He wrote about 70 reviews of

Psychology.

Starting point.

As a result of his medical training and his work as an assistant to Hermann von Helmholtz, Wundt knew the benchmarks of experimental research, as well as the speculative nature of psychology in the mid-19th century. Wundt's aspiration for scientific research and the necessary methodological critique were clear when he wrote of the language of ordinary people, who merely invoked their personal experiences of life, criticized naive introspection, or quoted the influence of uncritical amateur ("folk") psychology on

General psychology.

The "Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie" ("Main Features of Physiological Psychology") on general psychology is Wundt's best-known textbook. He wanted to connect two sciences with one another. "Physiology provides information on all phenomena of life that can be perceived using our external senses. In psychology humans examine themselves, as it were, from within and look for the connections between these processes to explain which of them represent this inner observation."  "With sufficient certainty the approach can indeed be seen as well-founded – that nothing takes place in our consciousness that does not

Cultural psychology.

Wilhelm Wundt's "Völkerpsychologie. Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte" ("Social Psychology. An Investigation of the Laws of Evolution of Language, Myth, and Custom", 1900-1920, 10 Vols.) which also contains the evolution of Arts, Law, Society, Culture and "History", is a milestone project, a monument of cultural psychology, of the early 20th century. The dynamics of cultural development were investigated according to psychological and epistemological principles. Psychological principles were derived from Wundt's psychology of apperception (theory of higher integrative processes, including association, assimilation, semantic change) and motivation (will), as presented in his "Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie" (1908-1910, 6th ed., 3 Vols.). In contrast to individual psychology, cultural psychology aims to illustrate general mental development laws governing higher intellectual processes: the development of thought, language, artistic imagination, myths, religion, customs, the relationship of individuals to

Neuropsychology.

Wundt contributed to the state of neuropsychology as it existed at the time in three ways: through his criticism of the theory of localisation (then widespread in neurology), through his demand for research hypotheses founded on both neurological and psychological thinking, and through his neuropsychological concept of an apperception centre in the frontal cortex. Wundt considered attention and the control of attention an excellent example of the desirable combination of experimental psychological and neurophysiological research. Wundt called for experimentation to localise the higher central nervous functions to be based on clear, psychologically-based research hypotheses because the questions could

Methodology and strategies.

"Given its position between the natural sciences and the humanities, psychology really does have a great wealth of methodological tools. While, on the one hand, there are the experimental methods, on the other hand, objective works and products in cultural development ("Objektivationen des menschlichen Geistes") also offer up abundant material for comparative psychological analysis".  Psychology is an empirical science and must endeavor to achieve a systematic procedure, examination of results, and criticism of its methodology. Thus self-observation must be trained and is only permissible under strict experimental control; Wundt decisively rejects naive introspection. Wundt provided a standard definition of psychological experiments. His dispute with Immanuel Kant (Wundt, 1874) had a major influence. Kant had argued against the assumption of the measurability of conscious processes and made a well-founded, if very short, criticism of the methods of self-observation: regarding method-inherent reactivity, observer error, distorting attitudes of the subject, and the questionable influence of "independently thinking people", but Wundt expressed himself optimistic that methodological improvements could be of help here. He later admitted that measurement and mathematics were only applicable for very elementary conscious processes. Statistical methods were also of only limited value, for example in psychophysics or in the evaluation of population statistics.  Experimental psychology in Leipzig mainly lent on four methodological types of assessment: the "impression methods" with their various measurement techniques in psychophysics; the "reaction methods" for chronometry in the psychology of apperception; the "reproduction methods" in research on memory, and the "expression methods" with observations and psychophysiological measurement in research on feelings. Wundt considered the methodology of his linguistic psychological investigations (Vols. 1 and 2 of Völkerpsychologie) to be the most fruitful path to adequate psychological research on the thought process.  The principles of his cultural psychological methodology were only worked out later. These involved the analytical and comparative observation of objective existing materials, i.e. historical writings, language, works, art, reports and observations of human behaviour in earlier cultures and, more rarely, direct ethnological source material. Wundt differentiated between two objectives of comparative methodology: individual comparison collected all the important features of the overall picture of an observation material, while generic comparison formed a picture of variations to obtain a typology. Rules of generic comparison and critical interpretation are essentially explained in his Logik:  "We therefore generally describe the epitome of the methods as interpretation that is intended to provide us with an understanding of mental processes and intellectual creation." Wundt clearly referred to the tradition of humanistic hermeneutics, but argued that the interpretation process basically also followed psychological principles. Interpretation only became the characteristic process of the humanities through criticism. It is a process that is set against interpretation to dismantle the interaction produced through psychological analysis. It examines external or internal contradictions, it should evaluate the reality of intellectual products, and is also a criticism of values and a criticism of opinions. The typical misconceptions of the intellectualistic, individualistic and unhistorical interpretation of intellectual processes all have "their source in the habitually coarse psychology based on subjective assessment."

Philosophy.

Wundt's philosophical orientation.

In the introduction to his "Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie" in 1874, Wundt described Immanuel Kant and Johann Friedrich Herbart as the philosophers who had the most influence on the formation of his own views. Those who follow up these references will find that Wundt critically analysed both these thinkers’ ideas. He distanced himself from Herbart's science of the soul and, in particular, from his "mechanism of mental representations" and pseudo-mathematical speculations. While Wundt praised Kant's critical work and his rejection of a "rational" psychology deduced from metaphysics, he argued against Kant's epistemology in his publication "Was soll uns Kant nicht sein?" (What Kant should we reject?) 1892 with regard to the forms of perception and presuppositions, as well as Kant's category theory and his position in the dispute on causal and teleological explanations.  Gottfried Wilhelm

Metaphysics.

Wundt distanced himself from the metaphysical term soul and from theories about its structure and properties, as posited by Herbart, Lotze and Fechner. Wundt followed Kant and warned against a primarily metaphysically founded, philosophically deduced psychology: "where one notices the author's metaphysical point-of-view in the treatment of every problem then an unconditional empirical science is no longer involved – but a metaphysical theory intended to serve as an exemplification of experience." He is, however, convinced that every single science contains general prerequisites of a philosophical nature. "All psychological

System of philosophy.

Wundt claimed that philosophy as a general science has the task of "uniting to become a consistent system through the general knowledge acquired via the individual sciences." Human rationality strives for a uniform, i.e. non-contradictory, explanatory principle for being and consciousness, for an ultimate reasoning for ethics, and for a philosophical world basis. "Metaphysics is the same attempt to gain a binding world view, as a component of individual knowledge, on the basis of the entire scientific awareness of an age or particularly prominent content." Wundt was convinced that empirical psychology also contributed fundamental knowledge on the understanding of humans – for anthropology and ethics – beyond its narrow scientific field. Starting from the active and creative-synthetic apperception processes of consciousness, Wundt considered that the unifying function was to be found in volitional processes and the conscious setting

Ethics.

Parallel to Wundt's work on cultural psychology he wrote his much-read "Ethik" (1886, 3rd ed. in 2 Vols., 1903), whose introduction stressed how important development considerations are in order to grasp religion, customs and morality. Wundt considered the questions of ethics to be closely linked with the empirical psychology of motivated acts "Psychology has been such an important introduction for me, and such an indispensable aid for the investigation of ethics, that I do not understand how one could do without it." Wundt sees two paths: the anthropological examination of the facts of a moral life (in the sense of cultural psychology) and the scientific reflection on the concepts of morals. The derived principles are to be examined in a variety of areas: the family, society, the state, education, etc. In his discussion on free will (as

Logic, epistemology and the scientific theory of psychology.

Wundt divided up his three-volume "Logik" into General logic and epistemology, Logic of the exact sciences, and Logic of the humanities. While logic, the doctrine of categories, and other principles were discussed by Wundt in a traditional manner, they were also considered from the point

Complete works and legacy.

Publications, libraries and letters.

The list of works at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science includes a total of 589 German and foreign-language editions for the period from 1853 to 1950 MPI für Wissenschaftsgeschichte: "Werkverzeichnis Wilhelm Wundt".The American psychologist Edwin Boring counted 494 publications by Wundt (excluding pure reprints but with revised editions) that are, on average, 110 pages long and amount to a total of 53,735 pages. Thus Wundt published an average of seven works per year over a period of 68 years and wrote or revised an average of 2.2 pages per day. There is as yet no annotated edition of the essential writings, nor does a complete edition of Wundt's major works exist, apart from more-or-less suitable scans or digitalisations.  Apart from his library and

Biographies.

The last Wundt biography which tried to represent both Wundt's psychology and his philosophy was by Eisler (1902). One can also get an idea of Wundt's thoughts from

Political attitude.

At the start of the First World War, Wundt, like Edmund Husserl and Max Planck, signed the patriotic call to arms as did about 4,000 professors and lecturers in Germany, and during the following years he wrote several political speeches and essays that were also characterized by the feeling of a superiority of German science and culture. Wundt was a Liberal during his early Heidelberg time, affiliated with a Workers’

Wundt Societies.

Four "Wilhelm Wundt Societies" or Associations have been founded:

Reception of Wundt's work.

Reception by his contemporaries.

The psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin described the pioneering spirit at the new Leipzig Institute in this fashion: "We felt that we were trailblazers entering virgin territory, like creators of a science with undreamt-of prospects. Wundt spent several afternoons every week in his adjacent modest Professorial office, came to see us, advised us and often got involved in the experiments; he was also available to us at any time."  The philosopher Rudolf Eisler considered Wundt's approach as follows: "A major advantage of Wundt's philosophy is that it neither consciously nor unconsciously takes metaphysics back to its

Research on reception of his work.

Leipzig was a world-famous centre for the new psychology after 1874. There are various interpretations regarding why Wundt's influence after the turn of the century, i.e. during his lifetime, rapidly waned and from his position as founding father Wundt became almost an outsider. A survey was conducted on the basis of more than 200 contemporary and

Misunderstandings of basic terms and principles.

Wundt's terminology also created difficulties because he had – from today's point-of-view – given some of his most important ideas unfortunate names so that there were constant misunderstandings. Examples include:  A representation of Wundt's psychology as ‘natural science’, ‘element psychology’ or ‘dualistic’ conceptions is evidence of enduring misunderstandings. It is therefore necessary to remember Wundt's expressly stated desire for uniformity and lack of contradiction, for the mutual supplementation of psychological perspectives. Wundt's more demanding, sometimes more complicated and relativizing, then again very precise style can also be difficult – even for today's German readers; a high level of linguistic competence is required. There are only English translations for very few of Wundt's work. In particular, the "Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie" expanded into three volumes and the ten volumes of Völkerpsychologie, all the books on philosophy and important essays on the theory of science remain untranslated.  Such shortcomings may explain many of the fundamental deficits and lasting misunderstandings in the Anglo-American reception of Wundt's work. Massive misconceptions about Wundt's

Scientific controversies and criticisms.

Like other important psychologists and philosophers, Wundt was subject to ideological criticism, for example by authors of a more Christianity-based psychology, by authors with materialistic and positivistic scientific opinions, or from the point-of-view of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and social theory, as in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic, up to 1990. Wundt was involved in a number of scientific controversies or was responsible for triggering them:  There are many forms of criticism of Wundt's psychology, of his apperception psychology, of his motivation theory, of his version of psychophysical

Wundt's excellence.

Wundt developed the first comprehensive and uniform theory of the science of psychology. The special epistemological and methodological status of psychology is postulated in this wide-ranging conceptualization, characterized by his neurophysiological, psychological and philosophical work. The human as a thinking and motivated subject is not to be captured in the terms of the natural sciences. Psychology requires special categories and autonomous epistemological principles. It is, on the one hand, an empirical humanity but should not, on the other hand, ignore its physiological basis and philosophical assumptions. Thus a varied, multi-method approach is necessary: self-observation, experimentation, generic comparison and interpretation. Wundt demanded the ability and readiness to distinguish between perspectives and reference systems, and to understand the necessary supplementation of these reference systems in changes of perspective. He defined the field of psychology very widely

Selected works.

Wundt's works in English.

References given by

External links.

Earlier translations online.

Caution: Earlier translations of

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the founders of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and biology, was the first person ever to call himself a psychologist. He is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology". In 1879, at University of Leipzig, Wundt founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research. This marked psychology as an independent field of study. By creating this laboratory he was able to establish psychology as a separate science from other disciplines. He also formed the first academic journal for psychological research, "Philosophische Studien" (from 1881 to 1902), set up to publish the Institute's research.

威廉·冯特(Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt,1832年-8月16日-1920年-8月31日)是德国著名心理学家、生理学家兼哲学家,心理学发展史上的开创性人物。他被普遍公认为是实验心理学和认知心理学的创建人,构造主义的奠基人。