“It made them Forget about the War for a Minute”: Canadian Army, Navy and Air Force Entertainment Units during the Second World War

On 3 February 1944, wounded Canadian service personnel recuperating in a British hospital were delighted to hear that a concert party, part of the Canadian Army Show, was in the area and would be performing for patients that evening. The variety was extremely well-received; singing, dancing and comedy routines seemed to be exactly was the injured needed to raise their spirits. After the show was over, a man in a wheelchair approached performer James Cameron and exclaimed “it was so good to see that—please come back again.” The Captain in charge of this satisfied patient wrung Cameron’s hand and enthusiastically declared “First Canadian show I’ve seen, Major-Brother, and it was like mail from home.” Under consideration here is the development and function of the Second World War Canadian military entertainment units that inspired such comments

Review of No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton by Kathryn A. Young and Sarah M. McKinnon

Review of No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton by Kathryn A. Young and Sarah M. McKinnon

Internationalism, empire, and the early Esperanto movement in India

The artificial language of Esperanto would achieve remarkable success in early twentieth-century Europe. Its popularity there is not surprising: though designed as a universal language, Esperanto was essentially European in its grammar and lexicon. But this Europeanness—or, more precisely, this near-Europeanness—also spoke to communities living further afield. In India before the First World War, groups regarded as Europeanized by most Indians but as Indian by most Europeans found Esperanto a literal language with which to articulate their social location. As an ‘Esperantist’, there was no contradiction between being Indian and participating in European society, and to claim the label offered a shorthand that others (whatever their relationship to the movement) could readily grasp. This article considers these dynamics against the backdrop of a visit to India by the Irish Esperantist John Pollen, an event that sheds light on both the innerworkings of the Indian movement and the importance that non-Indian Esperantists assigned to it. Though the popularity of Esperanto would eventually decline in India with the First World War, but until it did, the movement—indexical of Europe yet resonant in India—would promise a transnational community to which many in India felt they could aspire and belong

THE JOURNEYS OF SIX MOM PEDAGOGUES: ENACTING PERSONAL CONVICTIONS AND DISRUPTING THE STATUS QUO

Home education or “homeschooling” began to re-emerge in the late 1960’s in the US, parallel to civil rights initiatives and shifting educational policies (Murphy, 2014). Nevertheless, few studies have been dedicated to examining the lives and practices of homeschool parents (Goldberg, 2021; Lois, 2006; Ray, 2021). Rather, topics have centered on homeschool demographics, academic outcomes, and challenges (Hauseman, 2011; Isenberg, 2007; Lines, 2000; Shepherd, 2010). The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the lived experiences of six homeschool mothers’ everyday lives and the meanings assigned to their pedagogical decisions and related feelings in their journeys of becoming Mom Pedagogues. The study took place in a metropolitan area in the southeastern region of the US. Six mothers, who were members of a single home school group, were recruited through snowball sampling and were all female, white and middle class. The study took place across nine months, including 39 weekly home visits and final, in-depth interviews. Data sources included field notes, audio recordings, and photographs taken by participants. At each visit, seminal moments of the week were represented and mediated through mothers’ photographs, representing current experiences, and recalling and memories of their childhoods in traditional school settings. Key tenets of Bioecological and Sociocultural Theories were drawn upon to illuminate how the mothers viewed their roles and enacted their evolving identities. Selected frameworks included Women’s Ways of Knowing, Ethic of Care, and Foucault’s analysis of power and discipline. These contributed to understanding how the mothers developed their personal epistemological beliefs and processes of coming to know, linked to their present-day concerns and life histories. Three findings emerged that include (a) the identification of turning points in participants’ lives that led to homeschooling, (b) the role of desire, ethic of care, and need to ensure emancipatory learning experiences for their children, and (c) the identification of convictions to ensure learning experiences drew upon their children’s needs, everyday lives, interests and a tolerance for an uncertainty they were making the right decisions for their children. Findings illustrate the ways in which the mothers aimed to fill their lives with direction and meaning in accordance with their lifelong values and beliefs, taking advantage of everyday experiences imbued with their children’s decisions and desires to enact and pursue meaningful learning. Implications for future research includes the need to value participants’ reflections from their childhoods to motherhoods, as they navigated their mothering and pedagogical roles in their efforts to disrupt the status quo of formal educational for their children

The Effects of Genetic-based and Swarm Intelligence-based Feature Selection on Adversarial Author Identification

Within the realm of author identification, where researchers work to classify writing samples by author, researchers are using more and diverse feature sets to try to improve classification accuracy. From a computational cost perspective, these additional feature sets become problematic. Further, adding more feature sets may inadvertently decrease classification accuracy. Therefore, selecting the appropriate subset of features is an important challenge for researchers. However, the feature subset selection concern becomes even more challenging due to a couple of complexities. The first complexity is that different datasets require different feature sets for good identification performance. A feature set that performs well with one dataset may not perform well with another. So, it is important to customize the feature set to the characteristics of the dataset. The second complexity is that it appears that feature selection makes author identification systems more susceptible to adversarial attacks. These attacks occur when authors attempt to obfuscate their writing style or impersonate another author’s writing style. The focus of the research in this work is in this second area of complexity, namely, understanding the susceptibility of adversarial attacks on author identification systems due to feature selection. Specifically, this research investigates the susceptibility of adversarial attacks on author identification systems that use genetic-based and swarm intelligence-based feature selection. The intent of this research is to observe and characterize the factors affecting adversarial susceptibility by considering several parameters, including dataset content, dataset size and feature selection algorithm. This work employs two datasets: the CASIS dataset, which is a collection of blog posts, and the PAN19 dataset, which is a collection of extracts from Twitter feeds and includes bot- generated writing samples. We vary the dataset sizes to ascertain the effects of a larger author pool. We also vary the bias towards minimizing the feature set. Then, we analyze the data to determine those factors that correlate with successful adversarial attacks on author identification systems both with and without feature selection

Transfield Shipping Inc v Mercator Shipping Inc (The “Achilleas”) [2008] 2 Lloyd's Rep 275

REMOTENESS OF CONTRACTUAL DAMAGESOn 9 July 2008, the House of Lords handed down its decision in Transfield Shipping Inc v Mercator Shipping Inc (The “Achilleas”).1  Overturning a series of lower decisions, the House of Lords unanimously decided to restrict the damages available for the breach of a charterparty caused by the late re-delivery of the ship.  The case will undoubtedly be important for those in the shipping industry, but will also be important for the development of the doctrine of remoteness of damages in contract law.

Cephalosporin-3’-diazeniumdiolate NO-donor prodrug PYRRO-C3D enhances azithromycin susceptibility of non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae biofilms

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Objectives: PYRRO-C3D is a cephalosporin-3-diazeniumdiolate nitric oxide (NO)-donor prodrug designed to selectively deliver NO to bacterial infection sites. The objective of this study was to assess the activity of PYRRO-C3D against non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) biofilms and examine the role of NO in reducing biofilm-associated antibiotic tolerance. Methods: The activity of PYRRO-C3D on in vitro NTHi biofilms was assessed through CFU enumeration and confocal microscopy. NO release measurements were performed using an ISO-NO probe. NTHi biofilms grown on primary ciliated respiratory epithelia at an air-liquid interface were used to investigate the effects of PYRRO-C3D in the presence of host tissue. Label-free LC/MS proteomic analyses were performed to identify differentially expressed proteins following NO treatment. Results: PYRRO-C3D specifically released NO in the presence of NTHi, while no evidence of spontaneous NO release was observed when the compound was exposed to primary epithelial cells. NTHi lacking β-lactamase activity failed to trigger NO release. Treatment significantly increased the susceptibility of in vitro NTHi biofilms to azithromycin, causing a log-fold reduction in viability (p<0.05) relative to azithromycin alone. The response was more pronounced for biofilms grown on primary respiratory epithelia, where a 2-log reduction was observed (p<0.01). Label-free proteomics showed that NO increased expression of sixteen proteins involved in metabolic and transcriptional/translational functions. Conclusions: NO release from PYRRO-C3D enhances the efficacy of azithromycin against NTHi biofilms, putatively via modulation of NTHi metabolic activity. Adjunctive therapy with NO mediated through PYRRO-C3D represents a promising approach for reducing biofilm associated antibiotic tolerance

Annulment Funding Co Ltd v Cowey and another [2010] EWCA 711 First Plus Financial Group v Hewett [2010] EWCA Civ 312

RECENT PROBLEMS IN UNDUE INFLUENCEAfter the flood of litigation at the end of the 20th Century, it was hoped that the House of Lords decisions in O’Brien and Etridge would put an end to the uncertainties facing those wishing to take security over a family home.  But as seen in the recent Court of Appeal decisions in Annulment Funding Co Ltd v Cowey and another [2010] EWCA 711 (“Cowey”) and First Plus Financial Group v Hewett [2010] EWCA Civ 312 (“Hewett”), there still remain some interesting questions and potential problems for the unwary lender

Patchett and another v Swimming Pool & Allied Trades Association Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 717

SURVIVING A FALL INTO THE DEEP ENDIn spite of the vast increase in contracts entered into over the internet, there are still very few appellant level cases concerning this process.  It was therefore of great interest when the Court of Appeal gave its decision in Patchett and another v Swimming Pool &amp; Allied Trades Association Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 717