Presidential Address: The Future of the Past in Canada on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century

In the past half-century, the historical profession in Canada has broadened its attention significantly beyond the political, diplomatic, and military concerns that were dominant as recently as the 1950s. This came about in particular by three challenges: from Marxists who insisted on the study of history from the bottom up and on the importance of class and class conflict; from feminists, who focussed attention on the history of women and gender relations; and from scholars who shifted the historical study of politics from political systems to political cultures. Other methodological innovations also helped broaden the study of history, most noticeably the use of statistics in historical analysis.This "opening" of the profession has, however, made it more sectarian and fractious. Moreover, the attention of historians continues to be paid to the western world and is now largely focussed on the last two-and-a-half centuries. A longer and much wider view of human history is necessary. Accordingly, the paper briefly discusses examples drawn from daily life - paper, food, flowers, and the environment - as evidence of the global nature of history and of the importance of the longue durée in it. The paper concludes by arguing that it is essential for historians to enlargen their conception of the past, for by examining much earlier times and very different cultures, we may come to recognize what is distinctive or peculiar about ourselves as well as others. Such imaginative travels through space and time provide a deeply humanizing and liberating experience.Au cours de la dernière moitié de ce siècle, la profession historique canadienne a élargi la portée de son attention de manière significative, au delà des préoccupations politiques, diplomatiques et militaires qui l'avaient dominée jusqu'à tard dans les années 1950. Trois défis en particulier ont facilité cette évolution : celui des marxistes qui ont mis l'accent sur une histoire du bas vers le haut et sur l'importance des classes et des conflits de classe ; celui des féministes qui ont concentré l'attention sur l'histoire des femmes et des relations sociales de sexe ; et celui des analystes de la politique qui ont remplacé l'étude des systèmes par celle des cultures politiques. Des innovations méthodologiques ont contribué à cette extension, dont la plus notable est sans doute l'utilisation des statistiques historiques.Cette « ouverture », cependant, a rendu la profession plus sectaire et plus fracturée. Autres problèmes, les historiens n 'ont pas cessé de porter le gros de leur attention sur le monde occidental et ils réservent dorénavant la plupart de leurs travaux aux derniers deux siècles et demi. Une conception plus large et plus longue de l'histoire humaine est pourtant nécessaire. Cet essai aborde des exemples tirés de la vie quotidienne, ceux du papier, de la nourriture, des fleurs et de l'environnement, comme manifestations de la nature globale de l'histoire et de l'importance qu'y détient la longue durée. Il conclut qu'il est essentiel pour les historiens assouplir leur idée du passé. L'examen de temps plus reculés et de cultures très différentes peut aider à identifier ce qu’il y a de particulier et de spécifique chez soi et chez les autres. Enfin, de tels périples de l'imagination à travers le temps et l'espace procurent des expériences profondément humaines et libératrices

The French Revolution: The Origins of a Modern Liberal Political Culture?

Recently it has been argued that the chief legacy of the French Revolution was that it provided a prototype of a modern liberal political culture. This paper argues that, while some of the features of such a political culture did appear during the revolutionary decade, the revolutionaries never discarded an ancient conception of sovereignty which insisted that political will had to be unitary and indivisible. This led to rejection of political parties, legitimate opposition, and pluralism. The debates in the Constituent Assembly already reveal these illiberal tendencies. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, with its apparent emphasis on individual rights, might seem to have counterbalanced these tendencies, but two clauses inserted at the insistence of Abbé Sieyès vested sovereignty in the nation and asserted that law must be the expression of the general will. These clauses transformed the rights of the individual into the rights of the Leviathan. The insistence on a unified will was revealed in the allegorical figures, symbols, and architectural projects of the period. The figure of the demigod Hercules, which came to represent the People, conveyed a monolithic conception of the citizenry in complete contradiction to the conception of them in a pluralistic liberal democracy. Also the fasces, the tightly bound bundle of rods with no power to move independently, suggested a conception of the body politic at odds with that of a variegated liberal society. If such unity did not exist, it was to be created by the rituals performed in Temples décadaires every tenth day, the republican Sunday. Those who would not join this vast congregation would be excised or coerced. Moreover, throughout the decade there were various theories of revolutionary government at odds with liberal ideals: the unlimited power of a constituent body, the concentration of power in a tribune or dictator, or the dictatorship of a committee. Such notions, too, were important for the future.Il a été proposé, récemment, que l'héritage le plus important de la Révolution française serait celui d'un prototype de culture politique moderne et libérale. Le présent essai tente de démontrer que si certains éléments d'une telle culture politique sont apparus au cours de la décennie révolutionnaire, les révolutionnaires eux-mêmes n'ont jamais abandonné une conception plus ancienne de la souveraineté selon laquelle la volonté politique se doit d'être unique et indivisible. Cette croyance les a amenés à rejeter à la fois partis politiques, idée d'une opposition légitime et pluralisme. Les débats de l'Assemblée Constituante font déjà entrevoir ces tendances. Et si la Déclaration des Droits. de l'Homme, aux accents de droits individuels, a pu sembler offrir un contrepoids à ces tendances, deux de ses clauses, insérées à la demande expresse de l'abbé Sieyès, établirent que la souveraineté réside dans la nation et que la loi était l'expression de la volonté générale. Ces dispositions transformaient les droits de l'individu en droits du Leviathan. La croyance en une volonté unifiée s'exprimait aussi bien dans les symboles, personnages allégoriques et projets architecturaux de l'époque. Le personnage du demi-dieu Hercule, qui en vint à représenter le peuple, donnait l'impression d'une conception monolithique de l'ensemble des citoyens, à l'opposé de la conception que s'en ferait une démocracie libérale et pluraliste. Déplus, le faisceau, cet assemblage de tiges liées de façon si serrée qu'elles ne peuvent bouger séparément, suggérait une idée du corps politique bien éloignée de celle que détiendrait une société libérale bigarrée. En outre, au cas ou une telle unité n'aurait pas existé pas dans la réalité, les révolutionnaires entreprirent d'en assurer la création, par la promotion de rituels collectifs, ceux des « Temples décadaires », tenus tous les dix jours, lors du dimanche républicain. Ils menacèrent de coercition, voire de suppression, ceux qui ne voudraient pas se joindre à ces grands rassemblements. Finalement, la décennie vit naître plusieurs théories du gouvernement révolutionnaire à l'encontre des idées libérales — du pouvoir illimité d'une assemblée constituante, à la concentration du pouvoir aux mains d'un tribun ou d'un dictateur, en passant par la dictature d'un comité. De telles notions allaient, elles aussi, devenir importantes dans le futur

A survey of X-ray emission from 100 kpc radio jets

We have completed a Chandra snapshot survey of 54 radio jets that are extended on arcsec scales. These are associated with flat spectrum radio quasars spanning a redshift range z=0.3 to 2.1. X-ray emission is detected from the jet of approximately 60% of the sample objects. We assume minimum energy and apply conditions consistent with the original Felten-Morrison calculations in order to estimate the Lorentz factors and the apparent Doppler factors. This allows estimates of the enthalpy fluxes, which turn out to be comparable to the radiative luminosities.Comment: Conference Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 313, Extragalactic jets from every angle, pp. 219-224, 4 figure

Direct and indirect effects of mood on risk decision making in safety-critical workers

The study aimed to examine the direct influence of specific moods (fatigue, anxiety, happiness) on risk in safety-critical decision making. It further aimed to explore indirect effects, specifically, the potential mediating effects of information processing assessed using a goodness-of-simulation task. Trait fatigue and anxiety were associated with an increase in risk taking on the Safety-Critical Personal Risk Inventory (S-CPRI), however the effect of fatigue was partialled out by anxiety. Trait happiness, in contrast was related to less risky decision making. Findings concerning the ability to simulate suggest that better simulators made less risky decisions. Anxious workers were generally less able to simulate. It is suggested that in this safety-critical environment happiness had a direct effect on risk decision making while the effect of trait anxiety was mediated by goodness-of-simulation

Complement-Mediated Virus Infectivity Neutralisation by HLA Antibodies Is Associated with Sterilising Immunity to SIV Challenge in the Macaque Model for HIV/AIDS.

Sterilising immunity is a desired outcome for vaccination against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and has been observed in the macaque model using inactivated simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). This protection was attributed to antibodies specific for cell proteins including human leucocyte antigens (HLA) class I and II incorporated into virions during vaccine and challenge virus preparation. We show here, using HLA bead arrays, that vaccinated macaques protected from virus challenge had higher serum antibody reactivity compared with non-protected animals. Moreover, reactivity was shown to be directed against HLA framework determinants. Previous studies failed to correlate serum antibody mediated virus neutralisation with protection and were confounded by cytotoxic effects. Using a virus entry assay based on TZM-bl cells we now report that, in the presence of complement, serum antibody titres that neutralise virus infectivity were higher in protected animals. We propose that complement-augmented virus neutralisation is a key factor in inducing sterilising immunity and may be difficult to achieve with HIV/SIV Env-based vaccines. Understanding how to overcome the apparent block of inactivated SIV vaccines to elicit anti-envelope protein antibodies that effectively engage the complement system could enable novel anti-HIV antibody vaccines that induce potent, virolytic serological response to be developed

Situating Speech: A Rhetorical Approach to Political Strategy

Ideas are increasingly acknowledged as factors in explaining political behaviour. But often they are treated as inert resources rather than dynamic instances of action in themselves. The latter, I propose, requires reflection on the character of speech – as the medium of ideas – in responding to and refiguring a prevailing situation. I undertake such reflection by setting out a rhetorical approach to political strategy. Building upon ‘interpretive’ advances in political science I shift the focus from stable cognitive frames to the dynamics of argumentation where ideas work expressively. I then explore the rhetorical aspect of strategising with attention to the way speech serves to orient audiences by creatively re-appropriating a situation. That approach is shown to be consistent with a ‘dialectical’ political sociology that emphasises the interaction of structure and agency. Finally, I sketch a method for undertaking rhetorical analysis and indicate how it might be applied to a concrete example

Measurement of CP-violation asymmetries in D0 to Ks pi+ pi-

We report a measurement of time-integrated CP-violation asymmetries in the resonant substructure of the three-body decay D0 to Ks pi+ pi- using CDF II data corresponding to 6.0 invfb of integrated luminosity from Tevatron ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV. The charm mesons used in this analysis come from D*+(2010) to D0 pi+ and D*-(2010) to D0bar pi-, where the production flavor of the charm meson is determined by the charge of the accompanying pion. We apply a Dalitz-amplitude analysis for the description of the dynamic decay structure and use two complementary approaches, namely a full Dalitz-plot fit employing the isobar model for the contributing resonances and a model-independent bin-by-bin comparison of the D0 and D0bar Dalitz plots. We find no CP-violation effects and measure an asymmetry of ACP = (-0.05 +- 0.57 (stat) +- 0.54 (syst))% for the overall integrated CP-violation asymmetry, consistent with the standard model prediction.Comment: 15 page

Diffractive Dijet Production at sqrt(s)=630 and 1800 GeV at the Fermilab Tevatron

We report a measurement of the diffractive structure function $F_{jj}^D$ of the antiproton obtained from a study of dijet events produced in association with a leading antiproton in $\bar pp$ collisions at $\sqrt s=630$ GeV at the Fermilab Tevatron. The ratio of $F_{jj}^D$ at $\sqrt s=630$ GeV to $F_{jj}^D$ obtained from a similar measurement at $\sqrt s=1800$ GeV is compared with expectations from QCD factorization and with theoretical predictions. We also report a measurement of the $\xi$ ($x$-Pomeron) and $\beta$ ($x$ of parton in Pomeron) dependence of $F_{jj}^D$ at $\sqrt s=1800$ GeV. In the region $0.035<\xi<0.095$, $|t|<1$ GeV$^2$ and $\beta<0.5$, $F_{jj}^D(\beta,\xi)$ is found to be of the form $\beta^{-1.0\pm 0.1} \xi^{-0.9\pm 0.1}$, which obeys $\beta$-$\xi$ factorization.Comment: LaTeX, 9 pages, Submitted to Phys. Rev. Letter