Association and reassurance: local responses to the French Revolution in the Bath newspapers, 1789-1802

The people of the City of Bath and its surrounding areas were well served by newspapers in the last decade of the eighteenth century. These newspapers provided their readers with a digest of international and national news stories gleaned from the London press and, to a lesser extent, from other provincial newspapers. They carried advertisements for businesses and printed notices on behalf of various organisations. They dedicated column space to local news and announcements, and also provided a space for readers' opinions in the form of letters to the editor. This local content in the Bath newspapers reflected the concerns of the readership, which became particularly visible during the French Revolution. Limited attention has yet been paid to local content in the provincial press, particularly with regard to its societal role. Indeed, many historians have dismissed the provincial press as amateurish and uniform. One notable exception is Hannah Barker who has argued that regional newspapers provide an insight into the local conditions in which they were created. Peter Clark has also recognised the pivotal role of provincial newspapers in facilitating the growth of an associational culture during the eighteenth century. This dissertation provides a thematic case study on the role of the provincial press during a time of ideological and military conflict, drawing upon the local content of the Bath newspapers printed during this period. This is supplemented by newspapers printed in other urban centres to provide a comparison with similar content in other provincial titles as well as demonstrating how other newspapers reported on Bath and its neighbourhood at that time. The themes that are explored include philanthropy, the presence of émigrés in the city, celebrations of royal anniversaries, the clash of radicals and loyalists, the county militia and the volunteer movement. I argue that the main role of the Bath newspapers during the French Revolution was in promoting various forms of association in the city, which became increasingly inclusive over the period, particularly with regard to women and those of a lower social status. This increased participation in civil society laid the groundwork for later democratic reforms. At the same time, they painted a reassuring picture of a united, generous and well defended city at a troubling time

The place-cell representation of volumetric space in rats

Place cells are spatially modulated neurons found in the hippocampus that underlie spatial memory and navigation: how these neurons represent 3D space is crucial for a full understanding of spatial cognition. We wirelessly recorded place cells in rats as they explored a cubic lattice climbing frame which could be aligned or tilted with respect to gravity. Place cells represented the entire volume of the mazes: their activity tended to be aligned with the maze axes, and when it was more difficult for the animals to move vertically the cells represented space less accurately and less stably. These results demonstrate that even surface-dwelling animals represent 3D space and suggests there is a fundamental relationship between environment structure, gravity, movement and spatial memory

Volumetric spatial behaviour in rats reveals the anisotropic organisation of navigation

We investigated how access to the vertical dimension influences the natural exploratory and foraging behaviour of rats. Using high-accuracy three-dimensional tracking of position in two- and three-dimensional environments, we sought to determine (i) how rats navigated through the environments with respect to gravity, (ii) where rats chose to form their home bases in volumetric space, and (iii) how they navigated to and from these home bases. To evaluate how horizontal biases may affect these behaviours, we compared a 3D maze where animals preferred to move horizontally to a different 3D configuration where all axes were equally energetically costly to traverse. Additionally, we compared home base formation in two-dimensional arenas with and without walls to the three-dimensional climbing mazes. We report that many behaviours exhibited by rats in horizontal spaces naturally extend to fully volumetric ones, such as home base formation and foraging excursions. We also provide further evidence for the strong differentiation of the horizontal and vertical axes: rats showed a horizontal movement bias, they formed home bases mainly in the bottom layers of both mazes and they generally solved the vertical component of return trajectories before and faster than the horizontal component. We explain the bias towards horizontal movements in terms of energy conservation, while the locations of home bases are explained from an information gathering view as a method for correcting self-localisation

The Archaeology of First World War U-boat Losses in the English Channel and its Impact on the Historical Record

This paper examines how the archaeological record of 35 known U-boat wrecks sunk in WW1 in the English Channel compares with the assessment of U-boat destructions made by the Admiralty’s Antisubmarine Division (ASD) in 1919. Comparison of the two shows that only 48% of the 37 assessments was correct. This divergence between the extant archaeology and the 1919 assessment was partly caused by over optimism at ASD regarding reported attacks. However, it is also observed that ASD’s own processes were on occasion overridden by a need to overstate Allied successes, and should be seen in the broader context of a wider range of inefficiencies that confronted the Naval Staff during WW1. The same mistakes seem entirely absent from the WW2 records in the same geographical area. The research reveals that the radio silence observed by the Flanders Flotilla proved a challenge to combating its U-boats at sea, making the tracking of the U-boats and the rerouting of Allied ships practically impossible. This was a factor in the early adoption of “controlled sailings” in the Channel. It may have also been the driving factor behind the Navy’s pressure to attack the Flanders bases by land in 1917, a key component often overlooked by historians

Insensitivity of place cells to the value of spatial goals in a two-choice flexible navigation task

Hippocampal place cells show position-specific activity, thought to reflect a self-localization signal. Several reports also point to some form of goal encoding by place cells. We investigated this by asking whether they also encode the value of spatial goals, which is a crucial information for optimizing goal-directed navigation. We used a continuous place navigation task in which male rats navigate to one of two (freely chosen) unmarked locations and wait, triggering the release of reward which is then located and consumed elsewhere. This allows sampling of place fields, and dissociates spatial goal from reward consumption. The two goals varied in the amount of reward provided, allowing assessment of whether the rats factored goal value into their navigational choice, and of possible neural correlates of this value. Rats successfully learned the task, indicating goal localization, and they preferred higher-value goals, indicating processing of goal value. Replicating previous findings, there was goal-related activity in the out-of-field firing of CA1 place cells, with a ramping-up of firing rate during the waiting period, but no general over-representation of goals by place fields, an observation that we extended to CA3 place cells. Importantly, place cells were not modulated by goal value. This suggests that dorsal hippocampal place cells encode space independently of its associated value, despite the effect of that value on spatial behavior. Our findings are consistent with a model of place cells in which they provide a spontaneously constructed value-free spatial representation, rather than encoding other navigationally relevant, but non-spatial, information

The neural correlates of spatial disorientation in head direction cells

While the brain has evolved robust mechanisms to counter spatial disorientation, their neural underpinnings remain unknown. To explore these underpinnings, we monitored the activity of anterodorsal thalamic head direction (HD) cells in rats while they underwent unidirectional or bidirectional rotation at different speeds and under different conditions (light vs dark, freely-moving vs head-fixed). Under conditions that promoted disorientation, HD cells did not become quiescent but continued to fire, although their firing was no longer direction specific. Peak firing rates, burst frequency, and directionality all decreased linearly with rotation speed, consistent with previous experiments where rats were inverted or climbed walls/ceilings in zero gravity. However, access to visual landmarks spared the stability of preferred firing directions (PFDs), indicating that visual landmarks provide a stabilizing signal to the HD system while vestibular input likely maintains direction-specific firing. In addition, we found evidence that the HD system underestimated angular velocity at the beginning of head-fixed rotations, consistent with the finding that humans often underestimate rotations. When head-fixed rotations in the dark were terminated HD cells fired in bursts that matched the frequency of rotation. This postrotational bursting shared several striking similarities with postrotational “nystagmus” in the vestibulo-ocular system, consistent with the interpretation that the HD system receives input from a vestibular velocity storage mechanism that works to reduce spatial disorientation following rotation. Thus, the brain overcomes spatial disorientation through multisensory integration of different motor-sensory inputs

An Approach to Conceptual and Embodiment Design within a New Product Development Lifecycle Framework

[EN] The design of new innovative products is the result of an accurate and precise management of knowledge sources all over its life cycle, such as technology, market, competitors and suppliers. The work contributes with a framework that shows how the knowledge sources influence in the state-of-the-art and market needs so that they become opportunities for innovating products addressing the whole product life cycle. It provides a systematic path from the early generation of ideas to the production of a new product proposal. Through a deep analysis of previous research works of new product innovation life cycle development frameworks and linking it with knowledge management, strategic planning and scorecards, we came out with a structured contribution. The result considers the concurrent activities and its relationships all the way through the product life cycle that can help in creativity and innovation, combined with a process management proposal. Managing the sources of knowledge in highly dynamic markets and technologies is one of the major difficulties involved in innovative products design and development. The emerging knowledge from external sources is confronted with organisation internal knowledge and experience in order to achieve the first product correct.This work was supported by the Spanish Government and the Universitat Jaume I of Castellon (Spain) through research [project number P11B2009-37], entitled 'Methodologies for Implementing Product lifecycle management tools for mechanical Small and Medium Enterprises'.Vila, C.; Albinana, JC. (2016). An Approach to Conceptual and Embodiment Design within a New Product Development Lifecycle Framework. International Journal of Production Research. 54(10):2856-2874. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2015.1110632S28562874541

PLM in SME, what are we missing? an alternative view on PLM implementation for SME

Part 10: PLM Maturity, Implementation and AdoptionInternational audienceToday, the concept of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is widely accepted as strategically important. It is used to manage the increasing complexity of products, processes and organizations. The need to adopt PLM is growing rapidly for Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SME). PLM implementations are costly and require a lot of effort. The business impact and financial risks are high for SME. Also, SMEs seem to have relatively more difficulties to benefit from PLM. The study at hand addresses the question, based on literature research, why these difficulties exist and how they can be overcome. To answer that question, three sub questions are discussed in this paper. (1) A generic PLM implementation process structure. (2) A list of identified PLM implementation challenges, specific for SME. (3) A classification of PLM research for SME, related to the common PLM implementation process structure. A hypothesis for a PLM implementation failure mechanism in SMEs is formulated, based on the findings. Also, a potential research gap on operational implementation knowledge in SMEs is identified

TOI-858 B b: A hot Jupiter on a polar orbit in a loose binary

We report the discovery of a hot Jupiter on a 3.28-day orbit around a 1.08 M$_{Sun}$ G0 star that is the secondary component in a loose binary system. Based on follow-up radial velocity observations of TOI-858 B with CORALIE on the Swiss 1.2 m telescope and CHIRON on the 1.5 m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), we measured the planet mass to be $1.10\pm 0.08$ M$_{J}$ . Two transits were further observed with CORALIE to determine the alignment of TOI-858 B b with respect to its host star. Analysis of the Rossiter-McLaughlin signal from the planet shows that the sky-projected obliquity is $\lambda = 99.3\pm 3.8$. Numerical simulations show that the neighbour star TOI-858 A is too distant to have trapped the planet in a Kozai-Lidov resonance, suggesting a different dynamical evolution or a primordial origin to explain this misalignment. The 1.15 Msun primary F9 star of the system (TYC 8501-01597-1, at $\rho$ ~11") was also observed with CORALIE in order to provide upper limits for the presence of a planetary companion orbiting that star.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&