Britain, Anglo-American relations and the ending of the US War in Vietnam, 1969-1973

This dissertation examines the approach of the Labour government of Harold Wilson in 1969-1970 and the Conservative government of Edward Heath from 1970 towards the war in Vietnam in general and towards the Paris peace process in particular. In the historiography of the Vietnam war, there has been little attention given to UK policy in connection with the US Nixon administration’s efforts to secure a “peace with honor” for America, and this dissertation seeks to fill a gap in the literature. As will be seen, both the Labour and Conservative governments were more actively involved at a diplomatic level than the historiography suggests. In the first place, in terms of the UK-US “special relationship”, Britain was called upon by America for support both in the ongoing war and the parallel peace process. In the Wilson-Heath period, the UK accepted the imperative of containing communism in Southeast Asia, where the UK retained considerable Commonwealth, economic and strategic interests. This dictated support for the US. At the same time, the US war was very unpopular in Britain, and support for the US had to be balanced against political considerations closer to home. It is one of the more surprising findings of this dissertation that Heath, who is often depicted as the most sceptical UK postwar Prime Minister about the Anglo-American relationship, was consistently supportive of the Nixon administration’s policy – even controversial features of that policy such as the 1972 Christmas bombing. However, as will be seen, Heath’s attitude was related to his European policy; by backing the US on Vietnam, he hoped to be able to maintain good UK-US relations after the UK joined the EEC. Heath did not regard UK entry into the EEC as building a new special relationship with Europe to take the place of the old UK-US one, but as an additional prop of support for the UK. Finally, in the Wilson-Heath period, we see the legacy of an earlier UK Vietnam peace initiative – the 1954 Geneva settlement which ended the French war in Vietnam. The terms of that settlement had been quickly violated, and Britain, along with the USSR, the co-chairs of the 1954 Geneva conference, assumed responsibility for restoring the situation in Vietnam along the lines of the 1954 settlement. This sometimes required the UK to distance itself in public from aspects of US policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and to propose peace initiatives of its own, to the irritation of the Americans. Heath, however, in contrast to Wilson, refused to be overly loyal to 1954 and tended to back the US, as noted, in most instances. But when peace finally arrived, for the US at least, in 1973, the Heath government was determined not to assume any responsibility for its preservation in the way that the UK became entangled in the legacy of 1954

Police Procedural Justice, Lawyer Procedural Justice, Judge Procedural Justice, and Satisfaction with the Criminal Justice System: Findings from a Neglected Region of the World

Although the impact of procedural justice on citizens’ satisfaction with the police and other branches of the criminal justice system has been tested in several geopolitical contexts, this is the first study to examine the relative impacts of police procedural justice, lawyer procedural justice, and judge procedural justice on satisfaction with a country’s criminal justice system. To assess the universal applicability of procedural justice, scholars must carry out research in all geopolitical regions. However, subSaharan Africa appears to be a region that scholars have neglected for far too long. As a result, the current study assesses the relative impacts of three strands of procedural justice—police, lawyer, and judge—on satisfaction with the criminal justice system in Kenya. Using a sample of 523 students from a prominent Kenyan university, we found that all three strands of procedural justice predicted satisfaction with Kenya’s criminal justice system under the country’s new Constitution, although judge procedural justice exerted the strongest influence on satisfaction. Also, less highly educated students (first-year students, compared to sophomores, juniors, and seniors) and male students were more satisfied with Kenya’s criminal justice system. The study’s implications for policy and future research are discussed

A Sociological Perspective on Pidgin\u27s Viability and Usefulness for Development in West Africa

This essay examines the viability and usefulness of pidgin for development in West Africa. Pidgin in West Africa has endured as a unifying medium of communication among people who do not share a common language. It has been lauded as a neutral language that facilitates trade, commerce, and everyday dealings among people of all walks of life. Some have proposed supplanting English, which is the official language in most of the West African countries where the use of pidgin is prevalent, with either pidgin or some other indigenous language. Contrarians, however, consider pidgin to be a limiting factor, in that, it is a barrier to speaking, reading, and writing standard English, and thus impedes upward mobility. They argue that projecting pidgin or some other indigenous language may create some political backlash, and strife among the people. Using qualitative analysis, we examine this debate from a sociological perspective

Graduate Employability Skills for the Hospitality Industry in Singapore: A comparison between onset and recovery stages of COVID-19

Background - Singapore holds status as a mecca ‘tourism and hospitality’ hub. Yet, its tertiary education for Tourism and Hospitality has not followed the growth patterns of the industry. The Skills Futures Framework of the Singapore Tourism Board presents government’s predictions of a dire need for qualified staff and intentions to resource the industry through five tracks that lead to 69 different in-demand roles. Purpose – This paper seeks to identify the employability skills evident for some of the in-demand roles. It examines if there has been a shift in the employability skills since the onset of COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach – Data was collected in March-November 2020 and November-December 2021, from websites advertising jobs for the Hospitality Industry. Job descriptions for a range of positions were gathered, focusing on junior to senior management roles. NVivo 12 Plus was used to collate and analyse the data. Findings – Inductive thematic analysis protocols indicated that there is a shift in the top five skills for the roles between the onset and recovery stages of COVID-19. Most prominent is an emerging focus on teamwork; sales and marketing; customer service and guest experience, business acumen, and communication. Implications – While similar skills continue to be sought for supervisory-managerial roles in the Hospitality Industry since the onset of COVID-19, there is a greater focus on skills that will help organisations to pivot and build their teams and brands so as to enhance customer service and revenue. Research limitations/implications – The research is limited by its focus on Singapore. Future research can extend the research by examining job roles in other countries

The Role of Procedural Justice in Policing: A Qualtative Assessment of African Americans\u27 Perceptions and Experiences in a Large US City

Empirical studies have pointed to the increasing importance of procedural justice as a tool for improving the relationship between the police and local communities. The mediating role of procedural justice continues to be embraced by scholars, practitioners, and community members; as a result, we examine in the present study African Americans’ attitudes toward the police via the interpretive lens of procedural justice policing. Using procedural justice questions found in the social-psychology literature, we interviewed seventy-seven African Americans in Durham, NC, to assess their views about the U.S. police. Our results point to the following for improving the relationship between the police and African Americans: respect for African Americans by police, police fairness in the African American community, and increased and improved interaction between police and African Americans. Notably, these findings spanned three distinct educational and socioeconomic spectrums. The implications of our findings for community relations, public policy, and future research are discussed

The Classical Relativistic Quark Model in the Rest-Frame Wigner-Covariant Coulomb Gauge

The system of N scalar particles with Grassmann-valued color charges plus the color SU(3) Yang-Mills field is reformulated on spacelike hypersurfaces. The Dirac observables are found and the physical invariant mass of the system in the Wigner-covariant rest-frame instant form of dynamics (covariant Coulomb gauge) is given. From the reduced Hamilton equations we extract the second order equations of motion both for the reduced transverse color field and the particles. Then, we study this relativistic scalar quark model, deduced from the classical QCD Lagrangian and with the color field present, in the N=2 (meson) case. A special form of the requirement of having only color singlets, suited for a field-independent quark model, produces a ``pseudoclassical asymptotic freedom" and a regularization of the quark self-energy.Comment: 81 pages, RevTe

Stability and Quasinormal Modes of Black holes in Tensor-Vector-Scalar theory: Scalar Field Perturbations

The imminent detection of gravitational waves will trigger precision tests of gravity through observations of quasinormal ringing of black holes. While General Relativity predicts just two polarizations of gravitational waves, the so-called plus and cross polarizations, numerous alternative theories of gravity predict up to six different polarizations which will potentially be observed in current and future generations of gravitational wave detectors. Bekenstein's Tensor-Vector-Scalar (TeVeS) theory and its generalization fall into one such class of theory that predict the full gamut of six polarizations of gravitational waves. In this paper we begin the study of quasinormal modes (QNMs) in TeVeS by studying perturbations of the scalar field in a spherically symmetric background. We show that, at least in the case where superluminal propagation of perturbations is not present, black holes are generically stable to this kind of perturbation. We also make a unique prediction that, as the limit of the various coupling parameters of the theory tend to zero, the QNM spectrum tends to $1/\sqrt{2}$ times the QNM spectrum induced by scalar perturbations of a Schwarzschild black hole in General Relativity due to the intrinsic presence of the background vector field. We further show that the QNM spectrum does not vary significantly from this value for small values of the theory's coupling parameters, however can vary by as much as a few percent for larger, but still physically relevant parameters.Comment: Published in Physical Review

Memory B Cells are Major Targets for Effective Immunotherapy in Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis

Although multiple sclerosis (MS) is considered to be a CD4, Th17-mediated autoimmune disease, supportive evidence is perhaps circumstantial, often based on animal studies, and is questioned by the perceived failure of CD4-depleting antibodies to control relapsing MS. Therefore, it was interestingly to find that current MS-treatments, believed to act via T cell inhibition, including: beta-interferons, glatiramer acetate, cytostatic agents, dimethyl fumarate, fingolimod, cladribine, daclizumab, rituximab/ocrelizumab physically, or functionally in the case of natalizumab, also depleted CD19+, CD27+ memory B cells. This depletion was substantial and long-term following CD52 and CD20-depletion, and both also induced long-term inhibition of MS with few treatment cycles, indicating induction-therapy activity. Importantly, memory B cells were augmented by B cell activating factor (atacicept) and tumor necrosis factor (infliximab) blockade that are known to worsen MS. This creates a unifying concept centered on memory B cells that is consistent with therapeutic, histopathological and etiological aspects of MS

Policy-based management for body-sensor networks

Accepted versio

The ocrelizumab phase II extension trial suggests the potential to improve the risk: Benefit balance in multiple sclerosis.

OBJECTIVE: Ocrelizumab inhibits relapsing multiple sclerosis when administered every six months. Based on potential similar memory B cell depletion mechanisms with cladribine and alemtuzumab, we hypothesised that CD20-depletion of B cells by ocrelizumab may exhibit a duration of response exceeding the current licenced treatment interval. METHODS: Internet-located information from regulatory submissions and meeting reports relating to the unpublished open-label, phase II ocrelizumab extension trial (NCT00676715) were reviewed. This followed people (54-55/arm) with MS, who switched from placebo or interferon-beta to ocrelizumab for three 600 mg treatment cycles (week 24, 48, 72) or people treated with ocrelizumab for four 600 mg treatment cycles (week 0-72), followed by an 18 month treatment-free period. RESULTS: CD19+ B cells were rapidly depleted within 2 weeks and slow CD19+ B cell repopulation began about 6 months after the last infusion with median-repletion of over 15 months. The reduced annualized relapse rate during the published efficacy study appeared to be maintained in the extension study and there were no new T1 gadolinium-enhancing or T2 lesions detected in the treatment-free period. Importantly, within these extension cohorts, there appeared to be fewer adverse events and infections events. CONCLUSIONS: Ocrelizumab appears to induce durable relapsing disease inhibition, within 3 treatment cycles Therefore, it may be possible to reduce the frequency of dosing to maintain efficacy, whilst limiting infection and other risks associated with continuous immunosuppression and could allow more effective vaccination against new pathogens. Further studies are now clearly required to determine whether this data is robust