A history of the tithe system in England, 1690-1850 with special reference to Staffordshire

This thesis attempts to provide a general history of the tithe system during the last century and a half of its existence in its old form. It attempts this partly through a detailed study of one county, thus enabling a wider variety of legal, administrative, ecclesiastical and parochial documents to be used than has been attempted in previous studies of the tithe system. Staffordshire was selected partly because of its excellent source materials in the Stafford County Record Office, the William Salt Library and the Lichfield Joint Record Office, and partly because the county provides a most useful admixture of different agricultural and industrial settlements. As Caird wrote in 1850: 'The state of agriculture in Staffordshire is influenced by such a variety of circumstances that examples of every system pursued in England may be found in this county.'(1) It was therefore possible to assess whether the tithe system had a differential impact on different types of farming, and how much it penetrated industrial areas. The thesis attempts to show how tithe was collected in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and how far tithing in kind remained. The importance of lay as well as clerical tithe owners is studied and the thesis attempts to indicate the amount of social tension occasioned by the system. As litigation over tithe was frequent in much of the period, the complexities of the legal situation are studied and an analysis made of the Staffordshire cases, indicating the major reasons for litigation, what evidence was considered valuable, how cases were settled, and the importance of legal costs in the progress and determination of disputes. One particularly lengthy tithe battle - from Cheadle - is treated as a separate case study. A case study of the Quaker attitude to tithe, as the leading dissenting sect objecting ID its payment, is also made, indicating the degree of non-payment by Quakers, their legal tussles, persecution and campaigns to change tithe law. The national campaign against tithe is studied with consideration and evaluation of the arguments of both sides in the light of the actual situation. The reasons for the increasing momentum and bitterness of the campaign from the late eighteenth century onwards are assessed. As the eighteenth century enclosure movement provided the first major opportunity since the Reformation for a change and redistribution of tithe property, attention is paid to the impact of the movement, indicating how far tithe was exchanged for land at enclosure. The relative benefits to land and tithe owner are assessed. The thesis concentrates finally on the parliamentary attempts to reform the system, and the difficulties encountered there. The origins of the 1836 Commutation Act are studied together with an analysis of the Act and its intentions. The last chapter is devoted to a study of the Act in operation, showing how easily commutation was effected, how tithe values were altered, and how the parties concerned reacted to the changes which commutation would bring. The thesis ends at 1850 with most commutations, and their attendant redistribution, complete. Above all, however, this study attempts to explain how men attempted to make an anachronistic system work in an increasingly complex society, how far compromises were necessary and acceptable, and how far tithe was responsible for tension in the village community. It attempts to provide a general history of tithe, but it does so in the belief that, because tithe was a local and parochial burden, its proper impact and effects cannot be properly understood without detailed reference to local situations

Welcome back, Polaris the Cepheid

For about 100 years the amplitude of the 4-day pulsation in Polaris has decreased. We present new results showing a significant increase in the amplitude based on 4.5 years of continuous monitoring from the ground and with two satellite missions.Comment: 5 pages; to appear in the proceedings of the "Cool Stars 15" workshop held at St Andrews, U

Direct introduction of cloned DNA into the sea urchin zygote nucleus, and fate of injected DNA

A method is described for microinjection of cloned DNA into the zygote nucleus of Lytechinus variegatus. Eggs of this species are unusually transparent, facilitating visual monitoring of the injection process. The initial fate of injected DNA fragments appears similar to that observed earlier for exogenous DNA injected into unfertilized egg cytoplasm. Thus after end-to-end ligation, it is replicated after a lag of several hours to an extent indicating that it probably participates in most of the later rounds of DNA synthesis undergone by the host cell genomes during cleavage. The different consequences of nuclear versus cytoplasmic injection are evident at advanced larval stages. Larvae descendant from eggs in which exogenous DNA was injected into the nuclei are four times more likely (32% versus 8%) to retain this DNA in cell lineages that replicate very extensively during larval growth, i.e. the lineages contributing to the imaginal rudiment, and thus to display greatly enhanced contents of the exogenous DNA. Similarly, 36% of postmetamorphic juveniles from a nuclear injection sample retained the exogenous DNA sequences, compared to 12% of juveniles from a cytoplasmic injection sample. However, the number of copies of the exogenous DNA sequences retained per average genome in postmetamorphic juveniles was usually less than 0.1 (range 0.05-50), and genome blot hybridizations indicate that these sequences are organized as integrated, randomly oriented, end-to-end molecular concatenates. It follows that only a small fraction of the cells of the average juvenile usually retains the exogenous sequences. Thus, even when introduced by nuclear microinjection, the stable incorporation of exogenous DNA in the embryo occurs in a mosaic fashion, although in many recipients the DNA enters a wider range of cell lineages than is typical after cytoplasmic injection. Nuclear injection would probably be the route of choice for studies of exogenous DNA function in the postembryonic larval rudiment

Hybrid and Perennial Tetraploid Ryegrasses Are at least as Productive and Persistent as Perennial Diploids in Dryland Conditions in Northern Tasmania

Perennial ryegrass Lolium perenne is the preferred grass for fertile conditions and high rainfall areas or those with irrigation. Persistence of ryegrass can become a problem in drier and warmer areas (Fraser 1994). Even in high rainfall areas of south eastern Australia receiving between 550 and 750 mm of annual rainfall, loss of perennial ryegrass within a few years from sowing is a common problem (Waller and Sale 2001). This work aimed to examine the ability of a range of lines and cultivars of ryegrass to produce and persist under dryland conditions and rotational grazing by sheep in northern Tasmania, Australia

Protocol for electrophysiological monitoring of carotid endarterectomies.

Near zero stroke rates can be achieved in carotid endarterectomy (CEA) surgery with selective shunting and electrophysiological neuromonitoring. though false negative rates as high as 40% have been reported. We sought to determine if improved training for interpretation of the monitoring signals can advance the efficacy of selective shunting with electrophysiological monitoring across multiple centers, and determine if other factors could contribute to the differences in reports. Processed and raw beta band (12.5-30 Hz) electroencephalogram (EEG) and median and tibial nerve somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEP) were monitored in 668 CEA cases at six surgical centers. A decrease in amplitude of 50% or more in any EEG or SSEP channel was the criteria for shunting or initiating a neuroprotective protocol. A reduction of 50% or greater in the beta band of the EEG or amplitude of the SSEP was observed in 150 cases. No patient showed signs of a cerebral infarct after surgery. Selective shunting based on EEG and SSEP monitoring can reduce CEA intraoperative stroke rate to a near zero level if trained personnel adopted standardized protocols. We also found that the rapid administration of a protective stroke protocol by attending anesthesiologists was an important aspect of this success rate

Negative spatial regulation of the lineage specific CyIIIa actin gene in the sea urchin embryo

The CyIIIa·CAT fusion gene was injected into Strongylocentrotus purpuratus eggs, together with excess ligated competitor sequences representing subregions of the CyIIIa regulatory domain. In this construct, the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) reporter gene is placed under the control of the 2300 nucleotide upstream regulatory domain of the lineage-specific CyIIIa cytoskeletal actin gene. CAT mRNA was detected by in situ hybridization in serial sections of pluteus stage embryos derived from the injected eggs. When carrier DNA lacking competitor CyIIIa fragments was coinjected with CyIIIa.CAT, CAT mRNA was observed exclusively in aboral ectoderm cells, i.e. the territory in which the CyIIIa gene itself is normally expressed (as also reported by us previously). The same result was obtained when five of seven different competitor subfragments bearing sites of DNA-protein interaction were coinjected. However, coinjection of excess quantities of either of two widely separated, nonhomologous fragments of the CyIIIa regulatory domain produced a dramatic ectopic expression of CAT mRNA in the recipient embryos. CAT mRNA was observed in gut, mesenchyme cells and oral ectoderm in these embryos. We conclude that these fragments contain regulatory sites that negatively control spatial expression of the CyIIIa gene

The Impact of the Massive Young Star GL 2591 on its Circumstellar Material: Temperature, Density and Velocity Structure

The temperature, density and kinematics of the gas and dust surrounding the luminous young stellar object GL~2591 are investigated on scales as small as 100 AU, probed by 4.7 micron absorption spectroscopy, to over 60,000 AU, probed by single-dish submillimeter spectroscopy. These two scales are connected by interferometric 86-226 GHz images of size 60,000 AU and resolution 2000 AU in continuum and molecular lines. The data are used to constrain the physical structure of the envelope and investigate the influence of the young star on its immediate surroundings.Comment: To be published in The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 522 No. 2 (1999 Sep 10). 45 pages including 11 figure

Competitive titration in living sea urchin embryos of regulatory factors required for expression of the CyIIIa actin gene

Previous studies have located some twenty distinct sites within the 2.3 kb 5' regulatory domain of the sea urchin CyIIIa cytoskeletal actin gene, where there occur in vitro high-specificity interactions with nuclear DNA-binding proteins of the embryo. This gene is activated in late cleavage, exclusively in cells of the aboral ectoderm cell lineages. In this study, we investigate the functional importance in vivo of these sites of DNA-protein interaction. Sea urchin eggs were coinjected with a fusion gene construct in which the bacterial chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) reporter gene is under the control of the entire CyIIIa regulatory domain, together with molar excesses of one of ten nonoverlapping competitor subfragments of this domain, each of which contains one or a few specific site(s) of interaction. The exogenous excess binding sites competitively titrate the available regulatory factors away from the respective sites associated with the CyIIIa.CAT reporter gene. This provides a method for detecting in vivo sites within the regulatory domain that are required for normal levels of expression, without disturbing the structure of the regulatory domain. We thus identify five nonoverlapping regions of the regulatory DNA that apparently function as binding sites for positively acting transcriptional regulatory factors. Competition with a subfragment bearing an octamer site results in embryonic lethality. We find that three other sites display no quantitative competitive interference with CyIIIa.CAT expression, though as shown in the accompanying paper, two of these sites are required for control of spatial expression. We conclude that the complex CyIIIa regulatory domain must assess the state of many distinct and individually necessary interactions in order to properly regulate CyIIIa transcriptional activity in development