Side-Steppers and Original-Firsts: The Overseas Chevron Controversy and Canadian Identity in the Great War

Badges of rank, qualification, and achievement can play significant, it not always explicit, roles in military culture. In late 1917 the British War Office instituted a new award, overseas service chevrons, to recognize service abroad for all ranks and branches of the Empire’s expeditionary forces. This article considers evolving Canadian attitudes toward the chevrons throughout 1918 and in the postwar years. Rather than boost the morale of rank and file soldiers in the Canadian Corps, the chevrons appear to have caused much resentment. Some front liners believed that the award should somehow be distinguish between combat and non-combat service. After the war, however, veterans who had once rejected the chevrons reclaimed them as unique symbols of their long years on the Western front

The early modern transmission of the ancient Greek romances : a bibliographic survey

This contribution offers a new, critical bibliography of translations and editions of the five extant Greek romances in the early modern era, from the beginning of printing to the eighteenth century. By consulting catalogues of libraries, digitalised copies, and secondary literature, I expand, update and correct earlier bibliographies. I identify alleged editions and include creative treatments of the texts as well as incomplete versions. As an interpretation of my survey, I give an overview of broad, changing tendencies throughout the era and filter the dispersion over Europe in a wider area and period than was available so far, in order to get a more complete picture of their distribution. Furthermore, I point to some peculiar (tendencies in) combinations, among the lemmata themselves, as well as with other stories

Breaking the Waves: A Poisson Regression Approach to Schumpeterian Clustering of Basic Innovations

The Schumpeterian theory of long waves has given rise to an intense debate on the existenceof clusters of basic innovations. Silverberg and Lehnert have criticized the empirical part ofthis literature on several methodological accounts. In this paper, we propose the methodologyof Poisson regression as a logical way to incorporate this criticism. We construct a new timeseries for basic innovations (based on previously used time series), and use this to test thehypothesis that basic innovations cluster in time. We define the concept of clustering invarious precise ways before undertaking the statistical tests. The evidence we find onlysupports the ‘weakest’ of our clustering hypotheses, i.e., that the data display overdispersion.We thus conclude that the authors who have argued that a long wave in economic life isdriven by clusters of basic innovations have stretched the statistical evidence too far.research and development ;

Cycles in basic innovations

Basic innovations are often believed to be the drivers of economic growth. It has been widely documented that economic growth follows cyclical patterns of varying length. In this paper we examine if such patterns are also present in basic innovations. For an annual time series of count data covering 1764-1976, we fit a harmonic Poisson regression model. The results suggest the presence of multiple cycles of length 5, 13, 24, 34 and 61. We compare these cycles and their joint effect with widely documented economic cycles and find important resemblances and differences.economic cycles;basic innovations;harmonics;poisson regression

Reconstructing the channel shifting pattern of the Torsa River on the Himalayan Foreland Basin over the last 250 years

The varied physiography, incidences of high seasonal discharge, influences of neo-tectonic activity and the young geological foundation with less consolidated cohesive and non-cohesive sediment have left the Himalayan foreland basin a formidable ground, where silt-laden rivers tend to migrate frequently. A set of maps prepared after 1764, space photographs captured in 1970 and current satellite images from 2015 and 2017 were studied to reconstruct the fluvial dynamics of the Torsa River on the foreland basin of Sikkim-Bhutan Himalaya considering a time span of nearly 250 years. Evidence collected from colonial literature, the above-mentioned satellite images and a field survey, were combined to verify results taken from the old maps used as the base of the study. The application of satellite remote sensing and analysis of the topographic signatures of the palaeo-courses in the form of the palaeo-levee, abandoned courses and ox-bow lakes were the major operational attributes in this study. As a consequence of the channel migration of Torsa River since 1764, the historical floodplain of Torsa has been topographically marked by beheaded old distributaries, a misfit channel system and the presence of abandoned segments. Morphometric changes in the old courses, major flood events and neo-tectonic activity guided an overall trend of channel migration eastwards and has led to a couple of channel oscillation events in the Torsa River over the last 250 years. The mechanism of the avulsion events was thoroughly driven by sedimentation-induced channel morphometric changes and occasional high discharge

Nervous System Architecture: Staff College Graduates and the Formation of Regular, Territorial Force, New Army, and Dominion Divisions, 1914-1916

The historiography of the First World War lacks an assessment of the role that trained staff officers had during the expansion of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) between 1914 and 1918. This article aims to determine what role staff college graduates played in the early expansion of the BEF. The central conclusion of this article is that staff-trained officers were critical in the expansion of the BEF during the war. They occupied all the key command and staff appointments in the British regular army, the Territorial Force, New Army, and Dominion divisions, both when those formations were formed and when they first went into action. The armies of the empire could neither have expanded nor functioned without them

ДО ПРОБЛЕМИ ВИКОРИСТАННЯ ІННОВАЦІЙ У ПРОЦЕСІ ФОРМУВАННЯ ІНШОМОВНОЇ КОМПЕТЕНЦІЇ

У статті проаналізовано використання інноваційного підходу навчання іноземної мови в педагогічній діяльності; визначено зміст інноваційних процесів в освіті; обґрунтовано предмет і завдання освітньої інноватики, концептуальні положення проектування ефективних освітніх технологій у процесі вивчення іноземних мов

Beetle fauna of the island of Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies

Tobago is a biologically rich but poorly investigated island. In this paper we report the occurrence of 672 species of beetles representing 69 families. Of these, only 95 had been previously reported from the island

This Side Of The Grave: Navigating The Quaker Plainness Testimony In London And Philadelphia In The Eighteenth Century

For observant members of the Society of Friends in greater London and Philadelphia during the eighteenth century, navigating the Quaker plainness testimony involved material culture choices that might be viewed by non-Quakers as concealing motives of frugality or blurring class lines or as violating standards of decency and propriety. This was particularly true of coffins, which were carried through the streets from home to burial ground followed by family and friends. On this public stage, Quaker coffin choices satisfied the requirements for plainness while at the same time they demonstrated family values and fulfilled societal expectations

Culture in Economics

It is a self-evident fact that there cannot be a human society without culture. The necessity of culture to humans is imperative. Culture in its most basic sense fulfils and harnesses the obligations of communal cohabitation. Equally imperative is the fact that culture is not an ad hoc construction of any one individual. What is manifestly obvious is that culture is a reality. On this matter, we can draw a definite conclusion. Humans by their nature are social animals and therefore the survival of human beings, by necessity, will depend on living in groups. Leading a completely secluded life is not sustainable. From their very origin, people have lived in various forms of society. In turn, human society is a whole - composed of many interconnected parts. But what is the bond that joins the various parts into one united whole? In this paper, it will be argued that the biosphere of any society is culture. That is the all-inclusive common denominator and invisible glue that interlinks all the parts as the whole. From this perspective culture is dispensable and its function is more profound, organic and dynamic than perceived in economics. The paper examines how different schools of thought in economics view culture in light of the aforementioned standpoint.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio