Women Making Shells: Marking Women’s Presence in the Munitions Work 1914–1918: The Art of Frances Loring, Florence Wyle, Mabel May, and Dorothy Stevens

In 1915, while working as a volunteer in a munitions factory canteen, Canadian artist Florence Carlyle described the munitions factory in letters to her family as a “systematized hell.” However, the atmosphere of the factory made a deep impression on her, for she continued; “what a picture for an artist...an artist with a fifty foot canvas and tubs of paint.” This paper will focus on the art commissioned from Canadian women artists during the First World War by the Canadian War Memorials Fund (CWMF), and specifically upon art which depicts the subject of women working in Canadian munitions factories. These works of painting, sculpture and printmaking were executed by four of Canada\u27s premier women artists: Frances Loring (1887–1968), Florence Wyle (1881–1968), Henrietta Mabel May (1884–1971), and Dorothy Stevens (1888–1966) between 1918 and 1920. These commissions garnered significant critical acclaim, and were hailed as among the most successful works in the Canadian War Memorials (CWM) exhibitions that toured between 1919 and 1924. The art created by these women not only forms the nucleus of official war art by Canadian women artists during the First World War, but is also significant as powerful expressions of Canadian home front activity during the war. This paper will examine this artistic production with consideration of the social context of the time, and in the light of the contemporary critical reception

The origins of postmating reproductive isolation: testing hypotheses in the grasshopper Chorthippus parallelus

Although there are several well-established hypotheses for the origins of postmating isolation during allopatric divergence, there have been very few attempts, to determine their relative importance in nature. We have developed an approach based on knowledge of the differing evolutionary histories of populations within species that allows systematic comparison of the predictions of these hypotheses. In previous work, we have applied this methodology to mating signal variation and premating reproductive isolation between populations of the meadow grasshopper Chorthippus parallelus. Here we review the principles behind our approach and report a study measuring postmating isolation in the same set of populations. The populations have known and differing evolutionary histories and relationships resulting from the colonization of northern Europe following the last glaciation. We use a maximum-likelihood analysis to compare the observed pattern of postmating isolation with the predictions of the hypotheses that isolation primarily evolves either as a result of gradual accumulation of mutations in allopatry, or through processes associated with colonization, such as founder events., We also quantify the extent to which degree of postmating isolation can be predicted by genetic distance. Our results suggest that although there is only a weak correlation between genetic distance and postmating isolation, long periods of allopatry do lead to postmating isolation. In contrast to the pattern of premating isolation described in our previous study, colonization does not seem to be associated with increased postmating isolation

Response bounds for complex systems with a localised and uncertain nonlinearity

Predicting the vibration response of complex nonlinear structures is a significant challenge: the response may involve many modes of the structure; nonlinearity precludes the use of efficient techniques developed for linear systems; and there is often uncertainty associated with the nonlinear law, even to the extent that its functional form is not always known. This paper builds on a recently developed method for handling this class of problem in a novel way. The method exploits the fact that nonlinearities are often spatially localised, and seeks the best- and worst-case system response with respect to a chosen metric by regarding the internal nonlinear force as an independent excitation to the underlying linear system. Constraints are used to capture what is thought to be known about the nonlinearity without needing to specify a particular law. This paper focuses on the case of systems with a single point nonlinearity but with arbitrarily complex underlying linear dynamics, driven by a sinusoidal force excitation. Semi-analytic upper and lower bounds are proposed for root-mean-square response metrics subject to constraints which specify that the nonlinearity should be a combination of (A) passive, (B) displacement-limited, and / or (C) force-saturating. The concept of ‘equivalent linear bounds’ is also introduced for cases where the response metric is thought to be dominated by the same frequency as the input. The bounds corresponding to a passive and displacement-limited nonlinearity are compared with Monte Carlo experimental and numerical results from an impacting beam test rig. The bounds corresponding to a passive and force-saturating nonlinearity are compared with numerical results for a friction-damped beam. The global upper and lower bounds are satisfied for all input frequencies but are generally found to be rather conservative. The ‘equivalent linear bounds’ show remarkably good agreement for predicting the range of root-mean-square velocity responses. Finally, the principle of Maximum Entropy is used to estimate the response distributions, which was found to give surprisingly good agreement with experimental and numerical data.Royal Academy of Engineering, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Counci

Signals of demographic expansion in Drosophila virilis

BACKGROUND: The pattern of genetic variation within and among populations of a species is strongly affected by its phylogeographic history. Analyses based on putatively neutral markers provide data from which past events, such as population expansions and colonizations, can be inferred. Drosophila virilis is a cosmopolitan species belonging to the virilis group, where divergence times between different phylads go back to the early Miocene. We analysed mitochondrial DNA sequence variation among 35 Drosophila virilis strains covering the species' range in order to detect demographic events that could be used to understand the present characteristics of the species, as well as its differences from other members of the group. RESULTS: Drosophila virilis showed very low nucleotide diversity with haplotypes distributed in a star-like network, consistent with a recent world-wide exponential expansion possibly associated either with domestication or post-glacial colonization. All analyses point towards a rapid population expansion. Coalescence models support this interpretation. The central haplotype in the network, which could be interpreted as ancestral, is widely distributed and gives no information about the geographical origin of the population expansion. The species showed no geographic structure in the distribution of mitochondrial haplotypes, in contrast to results of a recent microsatellite-based analysis. CONCLUSION: The lack of geographic structure and the star-like topology depicted by the D. virilis haplotypes indicate a pattern of global demographic expansion, probably related to human movements, although this interpretation cannot be distinguished from a selective sweep in the mitochondrial DNA until nuclear sequence data become available. The particular behavioural traits of this species, including weak species-discrimination and intraspecific mate choice exercised by the females, can be understood from this perspective

Anti-optimisation for modelling the vibration of locally nonlinear structures: An exploratory study

Modelling the vibration of complex structures with uncertain nonlinearities is a significant challenge. However, nonlinearities are often spatially localised: this enables efficient linear methods to describe the behaviour of the majority of the structure and reduces the size of the nonlinear problem. This paper explores anti-optimisation as an approach to modelling uncertain nonlinearities for this class of system. The ‘worst-case’ output metric is sought by considering nonlinear forces as an external input subject to constraints that capture what is known about the nonlinearity. A systematic sequence of tests is carried out using a mass on spring system within a pair of end-stops: the results show how the anti-optimised solutions become less conservative as the constraints are increasingly restrictive. The method is applied to bending vibration of a beam within a pair of local end-stops. Anti-optimised solutions are found as a function of frequency and are compared with a Monte Carlo set of benchmark simulations. Almost all anti-optimised solutions over-predict the simulations and the overall trend of the simulations is also clearly captured. The method shows significant potential and motivates further research.Tore Butlin is supported by an RAEng/EPSRC Research FellowshipThis is the final published version distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which can also be found on the publisher's website at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022460X13005683

The materiality of research: ‘the materiality of motherhood in academic research: notes on ”workflow” from a mid-life doctoral mother’ by Helen Butlin

In this feature essay, Helen Butlin reflects on the process of rethinking the notion of ‘workflow’ as a mid-life doctoral mother concurrently working in front-line healthcare. She describes how this has meant apprenticing to writing as a craft, redefining one’s understanding of ‘the good PhD student’ and accepting the inevitable messiness of both life and academic research

Searching for wisdom: A phenomenological investigation of women\u27s perspectives following participation in an ovarian cancer supportive care group

This study used a novel methodology of hermeneutic-poetic-phenomenology to explore perspectives of women living with ovarian cancer. Each had participated in a supportive care group process Soul-Medicine prior to volunteering. Three women, Beth, Carrie, and Denise contributed to this study. The methodology was grounded in Gaston Bachelard’s philosophy of poetic-phenomenology. Data was analyzed with attention to image-centred knowledge; material imagination; reverie; and horizons of hope to elucidate their implicated aspects of wisdom and the ways participant’s formed their personal wisdom integrating feminist theories of embodiment and bioethics. Findings are framed through three images of a uniquely formed inner ‘wisdom-compass’, an ‘inner navigator’ who heuristically creates the compass and uses it for navigating daily life, and a ‘magnetic north’ of wisdom-poiesis orienting the individual towards embodying a wise life, revealed in dying. The embodiment lens frames an understanding of wisdom where embodiment, itself, forms a wisdom-labour creating a ‘hand-made’ compass used to guide wayfinding towards a wisely lived life. Discussion on Embodiment includes: embodied relationality with ‘other’; embodied relationality with ‘self’; embodied relationality with nature; embodied relationality in wise care; embodied relationality with ‘ethical sensibility’ as including empathy, agency, subjectivity, epistemic power, (re) embodying lost knowledges; embodied ‘knowing’; embodied temporality; embodying wisdom’s invisibility; embodied reflectivity. This study responds to the contemporary appeal study of the more intuitive, creative and holistic dimensions of wisdom often termed the sophian forms of wisdom. Discussion on findings for imagination and its role in wisdom includes four sophian dimensions of wisdom: (a) embodied-intuiting; (b) embodied-creating; (c) embodied-spirituality; (d) embodied imagining. Implications are discussed for medical education, study and preservation of clinical phronesis in health care practitioners cultures of care, wisdom-activating conversations that elicit less legitimate forms of knowledge in patient and clinician such as ‘embodied knowing’. It also invites the reader to reflect on their own wisdom and how, perhaps, this lies submerged from view amidst daily life with its tensions and struggles. The novel methodology is proposed as a possible path towards creating poetic renderings of a personal ‘wisdom-compass’

The materiality of motherhood in academic research: notes on ”workflow” from a mid-life doctoral mother

In this feature essay, Helen Butlin reflects on the process of rethinking the notion of ‘workflow’ as a mid-life doctoral mother concurrently working in front-line healthcare. She describes how this has meant apprenticing to writing as a craft, redefining one’s understanding of ‘the good PhD student’ and accepting the inevitable messiness of both life and academic research