The Christmas Truce: Myth, Memory, and the First World War

The 1914 Christmas truce, when enemy soldiers met, fraternized and even played football in No-Man’s-Land, is frequently used to support the popular view of the First World War as a “stupid, tragic and futile” conflict, the ultimate “bad” war. The truce, which one historian describes as “a candle lit in the darkness of Flanders,” is commonly perceived as a manifestation of the anger that soldiers felt towards the meaningless war which they had been tricked into fighting. However, contemporaneous sources show that the impromptu cease-fire was not an act of defiance, but rather arose from the professionalism of the soldiers involved, the conditions of static trench warfare, the adaptation of the soldiers to their new environment, the foul weather on the Western Front, the absence of major battles, and memories of traditional celebrations of Christmas. The truce, in short, was caused by rain, mud, curiosity, lack of personal animosity towards the enemy, and homesickness, rather than by frustration and rebellion. Although the conventional narrative of the truce maintains that soldiers defied their 0fficers to participate in it, this was rarely the case: in fact, Lieutenant-Colonel Fisher-Rowe, commander of the 1st Grenadier Guards, wrote his wife that the Germans “say they want the truce to go on till after New Year and I am sure I have no objection. A rest from bullets will be distinctly a change.” No soldiers were punished for their participation in the 1914 truce, and no troops refused to fire upon their enemies afterwards. Newspapers published accounts of the armistice openly and many regimental histories later featured the event prominently. An evaluation of sources from 1914 through 2013 that reference the truce demonstrates that the conventional narrative of the truce, like that of the war itself, took many decades to develop. This work examines the myths that have defined the truce over the past century, and contrasts them with the letters and diaries of British soldiers who participated in it, the reports of it in the official war diaries of the battalions involved, and the accounts of it published in the newspapers. By examining the support the soldiers felt for the war, as well as their willingness to return to fighting after the impromptu armistice ended, the book argues that the Christmas truce, which would seem to confirm the dominant view of the First World War, instead challenges the war’s popular narrative. A soldier involved described the temporary cease-fire as being “just like the interval between the rounds in a friendly boxing match.” The boxing match that was the First World War was in fact a deadly and tragic conflict, yet this soldier’s view of the truce broadly summed up the attitudes of participants toward the event, who remained determined to win the war, while enjoying a break from the battle

Discussion on Acyclic (Homopolar) Dynamos

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A study of methods of prediction and measurement of the transmission of sound through the walls of light aircraft

The acoustic intensity technique was applied to the sound transmission loss of panel structures (single, composite, and stiffened). A theoretical model of sound transmission through a cylindrical shell is presented

Do Property Characteristics or Cash Flow Drive Hotel Real Estate Value? The Answer Is Yes

Analysts typically use two types of methods to value hotels: comparable sales and the present value of income (sometimes calculated as discounted cash flow). This report explores whether one model is superior to the other, and whether combining both models results in more precise hotel valuations. This evaluation addresses the issue of which property characteristics and income calculations are the most effective in explaining variation in the prices of hotels, how the descending influence of hotel property characteristics and income present value components determine the prices of hotels, and whether hedonic and income-based models produce similar estimates of hotel values. The findings show that using an approach based on comparable sales or one based on incomes results in similar value estimates. Beyond that, the analysis finds that combining both models does not result in more precise hotel valuations

Determinants of Hotel Property Prices

Pricing commercial real estate has its foundations in present value theory. Recent improvements for accessing transaction data have stimulated interest in commercial property hedonic pricing models, the structures of which follow traditions in single-family real estate in that the implicit prices of property characteristics and site-specific variables represent city and national market conditions. Adding present value variables has become increasingly common to account for general market conditions. We test two hedonic pricing models; one that follows the residential tradition and another that departs by incorporating city-specific net operating incomes and the discount rates. Modeling prices in these alternative ways allows for recognition of the relative contributions of property, city, and capital market determinants. Empirical testing relies on a sample of hotel transactions from 2005–2010. The responsiveness of hotel cash flows to market changes is an important consideration. We find that models with property characteristics perform about the same as models that also include present value variables. A plausible explanation for this phenomenon is that implicit prices corresponding to property characteristics and site-specific variables appear to reflect income streams associated with city and nationwide economic conditions

The economic organization of nuclear plant projects : some cross-national comparisons

This paper examines the relationship between the economic organization of the nuclear power industry and its perfornmance in designing and building nuclear power plants. The institutional relationships that link French, West German and Japanese utilities with their nuclear plant suppliers are described and compared. The focus is on three interrelated aspects of these relationships: (1) the extent of utility involvement in the supply process; (2) the extent to which the various supply functions are "horizontally" integrated; and (3) the nature of the contracts linking the utilities and their suppliers. The transaction cost approach provides the framework for the analysis. The central idea underlying this approach is that important efficiency consequences flow from decisions concerning whether to organize transactions contractually between firms or administratively within them, and that for any given transaction an optimal governance structure exists which depends in a predictable way on certain attributes of the transaction. There are substantial differences in nuclear power plant project organization among the three countries. The transaction cost approach cannot explain why these differences have arisen, since they are much less the outcome of the formal economic optimization process assumed in the theory than of state-specific factors, including industrial traditions, legal restrictions, political initiatives and administrative planning. Nevertheless, the approach provides qualitative insights into the economic implications of these differences. It also provides insights into why an organizational approach that is effective in one structural and/or national cultural context may be more or less effective in another.Mellon Foundation and the M.I.T. Center for Energy Policy Researc

Strong Attraction between Charged Spheres due to Metastable Ionized States

We report a mechanism which can lead to long range attractions between like-charged spherical macroions, stemming from the existence of metastable ionized states. We show that the ground state of a single highly charged colloid plus a few excess counterions is overcharged. For the case of two highly charged macroions in their neutralizing divalent counterion solution we demonstrate that, in the regime of strong Coulomb coupling, the counterion clouds are very likely to be unevenly distributed, leading to one overcharged and one undercharged macroion. This long-living metastable configuration in turn leads to a long range Coulomb attraction.Comment: REVTEX-published versio

Respiration and Heart Rate at the Surface between Dives in Northern Elephant Seals

All underwater activities of diving mammals are constrained by the need for surface gas exchange. Our aim was to measure respiratory rate (fb) and heart rate (fh) at the surface between dives in free-ranging northern elephant seals Mirounga angustirostris. We recorded fb and fh acoustically in six translocated juveniles, 1.8-2. 4 years old, and three migrating adult males from the rookery at Ano Nuevo, California, USA. To each seal, we attached a diving instrument to record the diving pattern, a satellite tag to track movements and location, a digital audio tape recorder or acoustic datalogger with an external hydrophone to record the sounds of respiration and fh at the surface, and a VHF transmitter to facilitate recovery. During surface intervals averaging 2.2+/−0.4 min, adult males breathed a mean of 32.7+/−5.4 times at a rate of 15. 3+/−1.8 breaths min(−)(1) (means +/− s.d., N=57). Mean fh at the surface was 84+/−3 beats min(−)(1). The fb of juveniles was 26 % faster than that of adult males, averaging 19.2+/−2.2 breaths min(−)(1) for a mean total of 41.2+/−5.0 breaths during surface intervals lasting 2.6+/−0.31 min. Mean fh at the surface was 106+/−3 beats min(−)(1). fb and fh did not change significantly over the course of surface intervals. Surface fb and fh were not clearly associated with levels of exertion, such as rapid horizontal transit or apparent foraging, or with measures of immediately previous or subsequent diving performance, such as diving duration, diving depth or swimming speed. Together, surface respiration rate and the duration of the preceding dive were significant predictors of surface interval duration. This implies that elephant seals minimize surface time spent loading oxygen depending on rates of oxygen uptake and previous depletion of stores

Advanced manufacturing development of a composite empennage component for L-1011 aircraft. Phase 2: Design and analysis

The composite fin design consists of two one-piece cocured covers, two one-piece cocured spars and eleven ribs. The lower ribs are truss ribs with graphite/epoxy caps and aluminum truss members. The upper three ribs are a sandwich design with graphite/epoxy face sheets and a syntactic epoxy core. The design achieves a 27% weight saving compared to the metal box. The fastener count has been reduced from over 40,000 to less than 7000. The structural integrity of the composite fin was verified by analysis and test. The static, fail-safe and flutter analyses were completed. An extensive test program has established the material behavior under a range of conditions and critical subcomponents were tested to verify the structural concepts