"Simple, clear, and easily understood by the farmer…": On expert-layman communication in American soil science, 1920s-50s

This article presents a case study of how American soil scientists encountered the increasing demands to prove the social utility of their scientific work in the first half of the twentieth century and how this influenced the professional rivalry and competition among them. Previous historical studies of agricultural science in the period have not overlooked the increasing demands for applicability that agricultural scientists were faced with at the time. However, in describing the response of agricultural scientists to these demands, research has focused on the content of their scientific work, that is, their methods, empirical interests, and theories. This study, by contrast, explores how the debates on applied vs. fundamental/basic research in American agricultural science were closely linked to the question of how scientific knowledge could be made understood to laymen and practitioners.

Virus-Bacteria Interactions: Implications and Potential for the Applied and Agricultural Sciences

Eukaryotic virus-bacteria interactions have recently become an emerging topic of study due to multiple significant examples related to human pathogens of clinical interest. However, such omnipresent and likely important interactions for viruses and bacteria relevant to the applied and agricultural sciences have not been reviewed or compiled. The fundamental basis of this review is that these interactions have importance and deserve more investigation, as numerous potential consequences and applications arising from their discovery are relevant to the applied sciences. The purpose of this review is to highlight and summarize eukaryotic virus-bacteria findings in the food/water, horticultural, and animal sciences. In many cases in the agricultural sciences, mechanistic understandings of the effects of virus-bacteria interactions remain unstudied, and many studies solely focus on co-infections of bacterial and viral pathogens. Given recent findings relative to human viral pathogens, further research related to virus-bacteria interactions would likely result in numerous discoveries and beneficial applications.