From secreit script to public print: punctuation, news management and the condemnation of the Earl of Bothwell

The fall from power of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, in 1567 was as dramatic as it was sudden. The survival of documents associated with the event gives us a rare insight into the ways in which texts were adapted for different purposes and readerships. Initially recorded in the manuscript Register of the Acts of the Privy Council of Scotland, versions of these documents subsequently appeared as printed broadsheets for public display in prominent places such as Edinburgh’s Tolbooth next to the kirk of St Giles. They are the first Scottish documents of their kind known to have undergone this process of transition from script to print, and from the comparative privacy of the Privy Council’s Register to the public domain. Whereas the Register was an aide memoire for council use, the printed texts were public, performative acts. As these texts passed from one medium to another, their form and punctuation were changed, mirroring the changing function for which they were repurposed. In this essay, the differences in appearance between these two kinds of text will be shown to align quite precisely with the changing uses of literacy in early modern Scotland

Professionalism in science

In everyday speech, the word “professional” has an ambiguous ring, applied to one who follows, by way of profession, what is ordinarily regarded as a pastime (e.g., a sport), or disparagingly applied to one who “makes a trade” of politics and the like. In this sense it is contrasted with “amateur”, one who does something, literally, for the love of it, without remuneration. The latter is generally regarded as superior to the former; remuneration being considered as likely to irremeably invest the activity with self-interest, resulting in the task at hand being merely accomplished with the minimally sufficient expertise and skill to obtain the offered remuneration, whereas the amateur strives to do whatever task is at hand as well as he or she possibly can, “ excellence for its own sake”

The regulation of scientific work

Government research councils, national science foundations and the like have become ubiquitous. The first one seems to have been the US National Science Foundation (NSF), created in 1950; the similarly named organization with an equivalent function in Switzerland was established in 1952; the UK Science Research Council was formed in 1965; and so forth. The mode of operation of these organizations was to issue “calls for proposals” (i.e., general invitations to scientists to submit project proposals) and then disburse funds according to an assessment of proposals received. The main effect seems to have been a general stifling of innovative ideas, since the final decisions whether to fund a given project are made by a committee, which, almost axiomatically, favours the most conservative ideas

Extending the Support Theorem to Infinite Dimensions

The Radon transform is one of the most useful and applicable tools in functional analysis. First constructed by John Radon in 1917 it has now been adapted to several settings. One of the principle theorems involving the Radon transform is the Support Theorem. In this paper, we discuss how the Radon transform can be constructed in the white noise setting. We also develop a Support Theorem in this setting.Comment: 22 page

A legislative bargaining approach to earmarked public expenditures

This paper develops a model of legislative spending in which revenues can be spent through earmarks or a general fund. Legislative choice is modeled as a Baron and Ferejohn style legislative bargaining game. The novel approach is to model the bargaining process as a two-stage game reflecting the reality that earmarked expenditures precede general fund appropriations. This drives the result that all revenue is spent by way of earmarking leaving no revenue in the general fund.Earmarking, legislative bargaining, public goods.

Hydrodynamic Photoevaporation of Protoplanetary Disks with Consistent Thermochemistry

Photoevaporation is an important dispersal mechanism for protoplanetary disks. We conduct hydrodynamic simulations coupled with ray-tracing radiative transfer and consistent thermochemistry to study photoevaporative winds driven by ultraviolet and X-ray radiation from the host star. Most models have a three-layer structure: a cold midplane, warm intermediate layer, and hot wind, the last having typical speeds $\sim 30~\mathrm{km\ s}^{-1}$ and mass-loss rates $\sim 10^{-9}~M_\odot~\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$ when driven primarily by ionizing UV radiation. Observable molecules including CO, OH and H2O re-form in the intermediate layer and survive at relatively high wind temperatures due to reactions being out of equilibrium. Mass-loss rates are sensitive to the intensity of radiation in energy bands that interact directly with hydrogen. Comparison with previous works shows that mass loss rates are also sensitive to the treatment of both the hydrodynamics and the thermochemistry. Divergent results concerning the efficiency of X-ray photoevaporation are traced in part to differing assumptions about dust and other coolants.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Ap

The Structural and Kinematic Evolution of Central Star Clusters in Dwarf Galaxies and Their Dependence on Dark Matter Halo Profiles

Through a suite of direct N-body simulations, we explore how the structural and kinematic evolution of a star cluster located at the center of a dwarf galaxy is affected by the shape of its host's dark matter density profile. The stronger central tidal fields of cuspier halos minimize the cluster's ability to expand in response to mass loss due to stellar evolution during its early evolutionary stages and during its subsequent long-term evolution driven by two-body relaxation. Hence clusters evolving in cuspier dark matter halos are characterized by more compact sizes, higher velocity dispersions and remain approximately isotropic at all clustercentric distances. Conversely, clusters in cored halos can expand more and develop a velocity distribution profile that becomes increasingly radially anisotropic at larger clustercentric distances. Finally, the larger velocity dispersion of clusters evolving in cuspier dark matter profiles results in them having longer relaxation times. Hence clusters in cuspy galaxies relax at a slower rate and, consequently, they are both less mass segregated and farther from complete energy equipartition than cluster's in cored galaxies. Application of this work to observations allows for star clusters to be used as tools to measure the distribution of dark matter in dwarf galaxies and to distinguish isolated star clusters from ultra-faint dwarf galaxies.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA