Geography is not Destiny. Geography, Institutions and Literacy in England, 1837-1863

Geography made rural society in the south-east of England unequal. Economies of scale in grain growing created a farmer elite and many landless labourers. In the pastoral north-west, in contrast, family farms dominated, with few hired labourers and modest income disparities. Engerman and Sokoloff (2012) argue that such differences in social structure between large plantations in the southern Americas, and family farming in the north, explain the rise of schooling in the north, and its absence in the south. We show, however, that rural literacy across England 1810-45 was not determined by geographically driven inequality. There were substantial differences in literacy by region, but driven by culture not geography. Geography is not destiny.Comparative regional history, European education history, human capital development

The art and science of priority-setting: assessing the value of Public Health England’s Prioritization Framework

Background Findings are presented from the evaluation of Public Health England’s (PHE) Prioritization Framework (PF) aimed to assist local authority commissioners with their public health investment and disinvestment decisions. The study explored the take up of the PF in three early adopter local authority settings. Methods Semi-structured interviews (n = 30) across three local authorities supplemented by participant observation of workshops. Results Participants acknowledged that the PF provided a systematic means of guiding priority-setting and one that encouraged transparency over investment and disinvestment decisions. The role performed by PHE and its regional teams in facilitating the process was especially welcomed and considered critical to the adoption process. However, uptake of the PF required a significant investment of time and commitment from public health teams at a time when resources were stretched. The impact of the political environment in the local government was a major factor determining the likely uptake of the PF. Ensuring committed leadership and engagement from senior politicians and officers was regarded as critical to success. Conclusions The study assessed the value and impact of PHE’s PF tool in three early adopter local authorities. Further research could explore the value of the tool in aiding investment and disinvestment decisions and its impact on spending

Moving toward full, active, and conscious participation: worshiping practices for the entire beloved community

Work toward ecumenical liturgical convergence may be traced back to at least 1910; however, this project thesis expands upon the concept of full, active, and conscious participation in worship found in the 1963 Second Ecumenical Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium to illumine how shaping the worship practices of the Church can make our communities of faith inclusive of all sexual orientations and gender expressions. This thesis presents the design of a curriculum for worship leaders to reflect upon the worship practices of these local context, and move from their current state to a place where all members of the beloved community are valued

Chromosome 1 Map, Sequence and Variation

The construction of well characterised sequence-ready physical maps has been central to the generation of high quality genomic sequence by the Human Genome Project. The technological advances that made possible a clone based sequencing approach to large genomes have included the use of large insert bacterial clones and the development of high throughput fingerprinting techniques. The first part of this thesis is devoted to development and application of these improvements in technology. The adaptation of fluorescent technologies and their application to existing fingerprinting methods described in this work has resulted in a fingerprinting technique which improves upon levels of data accuracy, increases throughput and incorporates of increased levels of safety and automation. The initial application of this and other restriction digest fingerprinting methods to the assembly of large insert P1-artificial chromosome clones (PACs) was also evaluated. PACs were used to construct a 1.4 Mb contig across a region of chromosome 13q12 that includes the breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2. These experimental and technical developments were then utilised within a hierarchical mapping strategy to construct a 13 Mb contig of human chromosome 1pcen-1p13. The finished sequence generated by the clone based sequencing strategy provides the basis for the elucidation of genic features and the motifs that influence their regulation within the human genome sequence. Detailed analysis of the finished genomic sequence from 1pcen-1p13 is described. These analyses include the characterisation of base composition and determination of repeat content within the region, as well as identification of known and novel genes by manual annotation. The majority of differences between individuals can be attributed to allelic sequence variation. The characterisation of sequence differences and comprehension of how they may affect the expression and function of genes will be crucial for the study of molecular alterations in human disease. A subset of highly similar genes within 1pcen-1p13, in addition to seven other genes of interest, were investigated by developing and assessing assays to determine sequence variation. The particular challenges of investigating gene families where sequences are nearly identical were explored, and enable better resolution of new and previously available data. The consequences that these sequence changes may have upon gene function is also discussed, and this provides an example of the ways in which knowledge of genomic sequence can be analysed to support new areas of structural and functional research

The magnetic fields of forming solar-like stars

Magnetic fields play a crucial role at all stages of the formation of low mass stars and planetary systems. In the final stages, in particular, they control the kinematics of in-falling gas from circumstellar discs, and the launching and collimation of spectacular outflows. The magnetic coupling with the disc is thought to influence the rotational evolution of the star, while magnetised stellar winds control the braking of more evolved stars and may influence the migration of planets. Magnetic reconnection events trigger energetic flares which irradiate circumstellar discs with high energy particles that influence the disc chemistry and set the initial conditions for planet formation. However, it is only in the past few years that the current generation of optical spectropolarimeters have allowed the magnetic fields of forming solar-like stars to be probed in unprecedented detail. In order to do justice to the recent extensive observational programs new theoretical models are being developed that incorporate magnetic fields with an observed degree of complexity. In this review we draw together disparate results from the classical electromagnetism, molecular physics/chemistry, and the geophysics literature, and demonstrate how they can be adapted to construct models of the large scale magnetospheres of stars and planets. We conclude by examining how the incorporation of multipolar magnetic fields into new theoretical models will drive future progress in the field through the elucidation of several observational conundrums.Comment: 55 pages, review article accepted for publication in Reports on Progress in Physics. Astro-ph version includes additional appendice

Introduction: History and Future of Ranaviruses

Dr. Allan Granoff (1923–2012), who isolated the first ranavirus (Granoff et al. 1966), had, scattered throughout his office at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a variety of frog-related items including the poem cited above. Although one of Allan’s isolates, Frog virus 3 (FV3), subsequently became the best-characterized member of both the genus (Ranavirus) and the family (Iridoviridae); the impact of that discovery was not fully appreciated at the time. FV3 was neither the first iridoviridae to be recognized as a pathogen of lower vertebrates or the first isolated. Those honors belonged to lymphocystis disease virus (LCDV) and Invertebrate iridovirus 1 (IIV1), respectively (Wissenberg 1965; Xeros 1954). LCDV is responsible for a generally non-life threatening, but disfiguring, disease in fish characterized by the appearance of wart-like growths on the skin and (rarely) internal organs, whereas IIV1 is the causative agent of latent and patent infections in crane fly larvae. Despite its lack of primacy, FV3 was studied because, in keeping with the mission of St. Jude Hospital, it was initially thought to be linked to adenocarcinoma in frogs and thus could be a useful model of human malignancies. Furthermore, unlike LCDV and IIV1, it could be readily grown in cultured cells and was thus amenable to detailed molecular characterization. Although its role in tumor development was soon proven incorrect, FV3 served as a gateway into understanding the replication strategy of a heretofore poorly studied virus family. Moreover, over the next 20 years, its study led to important insights not only into iridoviridae replication, but also eukaryotic biology, virus evolution, and host–virus interactions

THIRD INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON RANAVIRUSES:: ADVANCING THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE THREAT OF RANAVIRUSES TO NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOFAUNA

Members of the genus Ranavirus, one of five genera withinthe family Iridoviridae, encompass a group of large, doublestrandedDNA viruses that infect all three classes of ectothermicvertebrates: fish, amphibians, and reptiles. Ranaviruses areglobally emerging pathogens that cause considerable morbidityand mortality among diverse populations. In North America,ranavirus epizootics are regularly reported in wild and culturedfish, amphibian, and reptile populations

Stratosphere-troposphere transport in a numerical simulation of midlatitude convection

The transport of stratospheric air deep into the troposphere via convection is investigated numerically using the UK Met Office Unified Model. A convective system that formed on 27 June 2004 near southeast England, in the vicinity an upper level potential vorticity anomaly and a lowered tropopause, provides the basis for analysis. Transport is diagnosed using a stratospheric tracer that can either be passed through or withheld from the model’s convective parameterization scheme. Three simulations are performed at increasingly finer resolutions, with horizontal grid lengths of 12, 4, and 1 km. In the 12 and 4 km simulations, tracer is transported deeply into the troposphere by the parameterized convection. In the 1 km simulation, for which the convective parameterization is disengaged, deep transport is still accomplished but with a much smaller magnitude. However, the 1 km simulation resolves stirring along the tropopause that does not exist in the coarser simulations. In all three simulations, the concentration of the deeply transported tracer is small, three orders of magnitude less than that of the shallow transport near the tropopause, most likely because of the efficient dilution of parcels in the lower troposphere

Final Report: Two Dimensional Computer Simulation of Bilateral Silicon Solar Cells

Bilateral solar cells can convert albedo light (sunlight reflected from the earth) incident on the back side of the cell to improve the power to weight ratio of satellite arrays operating in Low Earth Orbits. However, the high energy radiation trapped in the Van Allen Belt surrounding the earth limits the possible improvement of solar cell electrical output by degrading the minority carrier diffusion length. The purpose of this work is to design cells to be able to collect efficiently albedo-generated carriers at end-of-life(EOL). The FORTRAN program Solar Cell Analysis Program in Two Dimensions is used to model four cell geometries for base resistivities of 1.0 to 1240. Ω—cm. The EOL efficiencies and normalized output power are compared for all cells. All the thicker (250. micron) cells modeled peak in performance within the 10.-40. Ω—cm base resistivity range both with and without albedo illumination. It is found that alternative geometries to the standard solar cell can be used to better collect albedo-generated carriers at EOL. The etched multiple vertical junction cell(22%) and the 50. micron thick standard cell(45%) show the most improvement in normalized output power over the best one- sun illuminated standard cell. Albedo light is modeled as 40. milliwatts /cm2 (AMI.5 spectrum), or 30% of one sun AM0.0 incident power. Values for the damage coefficient, Kj, are found in the literature for irradiation by 1.0 MeV electrons. Radiation induced degradation is modeled by SCAP2D through degradation of the minority carrier lifetimes. Solar cell output parameters are compared for four cells, the standard cell (for varying thicknesses), the etched multiple vertical junction cell, and the tandem junction cell. The physical phenomena responsible for poor cell performance at EOL are discussed