Review of \u3ci\u3eViews from Fort Battleford: Constructed Visions of an Anglo-Canadian West\u3c/i\u3e By Walter Hildebrandt

Walter Hildebrandt, a former Parks Canada historian, explains that his interest in telling the story of the Battleford area in west-central Saskatchewan originated in the unease he felt beginning work with the federal agency in the 1970s at its tendency to diminish the role of aboriginal groups and valorize non-Native pioneers, such as the mounted police, at the Fort Battleford historic site. Views from Fort Battleford provides a case study of the way in which public history, especially at historic sites, is contested terrain on which different groups vie to have their story told, or sometimes to have it dominate other narratives. Hildebrandt\u27s account succeeds best when it traces-unfortunately not until its final substantive chapter-the history of historical interpretation at Fort Battleford. This portion of the work lays bare the clash between metropolitan interpretations of Canadian history that originated in central Canada and local sensibilities in the prairie west. It also illustrates a key point of the book: Natives are shoved into the background in favor of red coated mounties. Where Views from Fort Battleford is somewhat less successful is in its treatment of the history of First Nations, mounted police, and settler society in the Battleford region. The problem is not so much that Hildebrandt\u27s account of the principal events is erroneous. Rather, the main difficulty is that the author\u27s effort to be a revisionist interpreter of mounted police history often involves him in criticisms of other historians he fails to sustain effectively. For example, Hildebrandt is critical of Rod Macleod\u27s interpretation of police-Native relations, although he eventually comes to concede that relations were good until 1885 . When he builds a case for an excessively coerciye police force after 1885, he does so by citing such measures as the pass system, which sought to confine Indians to their reserves, and the permit system, which attempted to regulate their sale of agricultural produce. Unfortunately, in spite of his assertions, Hildebrant does not demonstrate that such repressive measures were effectively enforced. Nor does he note that mounted police officers opposed enforcement of the pass system in the early 1890s. This evidentiary deficiency is symptomatic of a broader weakness in the research on which the volume is based. A key manuscript collection, the papers of the principal of Battleford Industrial School, Thomas Clarke (not Canon Matheson, as Hildebrandt states), is not cited; nor is a critically important published primary source such as treaty interpreter Peter Erasmus\u27s Buffalo Days and Nights. Secondary works that would have supported the author\u27s case, such as those of Noel Dyck, R. Huel, and Brian Titley, are similarly absent. Views from Fort Battleford, although deficient in research, tackles an important issue for historians. We all need to reflect more carefully, as Hildebrandt\u27s volume usefully reminds us, on whose history we choose to tell and commemorate publicly, not to mention how we and our governments choose to tell it

A Comprehensive Survey of Brane Tilings

An infinite class of $4d$ $\mathcal{N}=1$ gauge theories can be engineered on the worldvolume of D3-branes probing toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds. This kind of setup has multiple applications, ranging from the gauge/gravity correspondence to local model building in string phenomenology. Brane tilings fully encode the gauge theories on the D3-branes and have substantially simplified their connection to the probed geometries. The purpose of this paper is to push the boundaries of computation and to produce as comprehensive a database of brane tilings as possible. We develop efficient implementations of brane tiling tools particularly suited for this search. We present the first complete classification of toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds with toric diagrams up to area 8 and the corresponding brane tilings. This classification is of interest to both physicists and mathematicians alike.Comment: 39 pages. Link to Mathematica modules provide

What if Supersymmetry Breaking Unifies beyond the GUT Scale?

We study models in which soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters of the MSSM become universal at some unification scale, $M_{in}$, above the GUT scale, \mgut. We assume that the scalar masses and gaugino masses have common values, $m_0$ and $m_{1/2}$ respectively, at $M_{in}$. We use the renormalization-group equations of the minimal supersymmetric SU(5) GUT to evaluate their evolutions down to \mgut, studying their dependences on the unknown parameters of the SU(5) superpotential. After displaying some generic examples of the evolutions of the soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters, we discuss the effects on physical sparticle masses in some specific examples. We note, for example, that near-degeneracy between the lightest neutralino and the lighter stau is progressively disfavoured as $M_{in}$ increases. This has the consequence, as we show in $(m_{1/2}, m_0)$ planes for several different values of $\tan \beta$, that the stau coannihilation region shrinks as $M_{in}$ increases, and we delineate the regions of the $(M_{in}, \tan \beta)$ plane where it is absent altogether. Moreover, as $M_{in}$ increases, the focus-point region recedes to larger values of $m_0$ for any fixed $\tan \beta$ and $m_{1/2}$. We conclude that the regions of the $(m_{1/2}, m_0)$ plane that are commonly favoured in phenomenological analyses tend to disappear at large $M_{in}$.Comment: 24 pages with 11 eps figures; references added, some figures corrected, discussion extended and figure added; version to appear in EPJ

Neonatal oxytocin administration and weaning onto a gruel based diet reduce weight loss at weaning and enhance gastric leptin expression

Administering oxytocin to neonatal rats has positive long-term effects on growth and development (Uvnas-Moberg and Petersson, 2005). These effects include a reduction in the stress response to weaning, increased post-weaning feed intake and alterations in the expression of gastrointestinal (GI) hormones regulating feed intake (Uvnas-Moberg et al., 1998; Sohlstrom et al., 1999). Two GI hormones of importance in regulating feed intake are ghrelin and leptin, which have antagonistic actions. Ghrelin expression is increased in response to fasting and leptin expression increases rapidly in response to feed intake. Since weaning the piglet is associated with stress and growth restriction, this study examined whether oxytocin given to young pigs could reduce the extent of the post-weaning growth check, along with any associated changes in ghrelin and leptin expression

The role of plant species and soil condition in the structural development of the rhizosphere

© 2019 The Authors Plant, Cell & Environment Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd Roots naturally exert axial and radial pressures during growth, which alter the structural arrangement of soil at the root–soil interface. However, empirical models suggest soil densification, which can have negative impacts on water and nutrient uptake, occurs at the immediate root surface with decreasing distance from the root. Here, we spatially map structural gradients in the soil surrounding roots using non-invasive imaging, to ascertain the role of root growth in early stage formation of soil structure. X-ray computed tomography provided a means not only to visualize a root system in situ and in 3-D but also to assess the precise root-induced alterations to soil structure close to, and at selected distances away from the root–soil interface. We spatially quantified the changes in soil structure generated by three common but contrasting plant species (pea, tomato, and wheat) under different soil texture and compaction treatments. Across the three plant types, significant increases in porosity at the immediate root surface were found in both clay loam and loamy sand soils and not soil densification, the currently assumed norm. Densification of the soil was recorded, at some distance away from the root, dependent on soil texture and plant type. There was a significant soil texture×bulk density×plant species interaction for the root convex hull, a measure of the extent to which root systems explore the soil, which suggested pea and wheat grew better in the clay soil when at a high bulk density, compared with tomato, which preferred lower bulk density soils. These results, only revealed by high resolution non-destructive imagery, show that although the root penetration mechanisms can lead to soil densification (which could have a negative impact on growth), the immediate root–soil interface is actually a zone of high porosity, which is very important for several key rhizosphere processes occurring at this scale including water and nutrient uptake and gaseous diffusion

Using cascading Bloom filters to improve the memory usage for de Brujin graphs

De Brujin graphs are widely used in bioinformatics for processing next-generation sequencing data. Due to a very large size of NGS datasets, it is essential to represent de Bruijn graphs compactly, and several approaches to this problem have been proposed recently. In this work, we show how to reduce the memory required by the algorithm of [3] that represents de Brujin graphs using Bloom filters. Our method requires 30% to 40% less memory with respect to the method of [3], with insignificant impact to construction time. At the same time, our experiments showed a better query time compared to [3]. This is, to our knowledge, the best practical representation for de Bruijn graphs.Comment: 12 pages, submitte

GMOS IFU observations of the stellar and gaseous kinematics in the centre of NGC 1068

We present a data cube covering the central 10 arcsec of the archetypal active galaxy NGC 1068 over a wavelength range 4200–5400 Å obtained during the commissioning of the integral field unit (IFU) of the Gemini Multi-object Spectrograph (GMOS) installed on the Gemini-North telescope. The data cube shows a complex emission line morphology in the [O iii] doublet and Hβ line. To describe this structure phenomenologically we construct an atlas of velocity components derived from multiple Gaussian component fits to the emission lines. The atlas contains many features which cannot be readily associated with distinct physical structures. While some components are likely to be associated with the expected biconical outflow, others are suggestive of high velocity flows or disc-like structures. As a first step towards interpretation, we seek to identify the stellar disc using kinematical maps derived from the Mg b absorption line feature at 5170 Å and make associations between this and gaseous components in the atlas of emission line components

Placenta percreta following first trimester miscarriage

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135586/1/ijgo140.pd

Targeted free energy perturbation

A generalization of the free energy perturbation identity is derived, and a computational strategy based on this result is presented. A simple example illustrates the efficiency gains that can be achieved with this method.Comment: 8 pages + 1 color figur