The Socio-Economic Relations of Warfare and the Military Mortality Crises of the Thirty Years' War

Michael Flinn wrote that the Thirty Years' War, fought in central Europe between 1618 and 1648, "remains the classic study of the military causation of mortality crises".' Despite these words, the Thirty Years' War has rarely been studied from this perspective. In what follows, I seek to explain the enormous demographic loss experienced during the War. In doing so, I find that the socio-economic relations of warfare and, in particular, the nature of civil-military relations during the War form a key element of the explanation. The wider import of this paper is therefore that the new approach to the history of mortality, in which the contributions of social action and personal behaviour to mortality changes have been investigated and highlighted, is one which promises a significantly deeper and more successful account of the military mortality crises which punctuated the past and continue to afflict the present

Need, Merit or Self-Interest - What Determines the Allocation of Aid?

Previous studies into aid allocation have concluded that foreign aid is allocated not only according to development needs but also according to donor self-interest. We revisit this topic and allow for donor as well as recipient specific effects in our analysis. Our results indicate that roughly half of the predicted value of aid is determined by donor specific effects. Of the remaining variation, recipient need accounts for 36 percent and donor selfinterest or about 16 percent. This suggests that the previous literature has overstated the importance of donor self-interest. However, bilateral donors seem to place little importance on recipient merit. Recipient merit, measured by growth, democracy and human rights, accounts for only two percent of predicted aid.

In situ product recovery of butanol from the acetone butanol ethanol fermentation

EngD ThesisFrom 1916 the “acetone butanol ethanol”, or “ABE”, fermentation process was the main production method for n-butanol. It was superseded in the 1950s by a more economical petrochemical process, causing the majority of plants to cease operation. In the fermentation, product inhibition led to low productivity and high energy demand in the downstream processing, making the process unable to compete with the petrochemical route. Overcoming these problems could revive the ABE industry and promote a bio-based economy. In situ product recovery (ISPR) can be applied to the fermentation process to counteract the effects of product toxicity. Productivity increases of greater than 300% are theoretically possible. Many ISPR techniques have been applied to the ABE process at laboratory scale, but a direct comparison of the different techniques has been hindered by experimental inconsistencies. Here, a techno-economic analysis was performed to compare the most developed ISPR techniques, with process simulations providing comparative data on the separation efficiency and energy demand. All the techniques were found to be economically viable, with profit increases compared to an equivalent batch plant of 110-175% and payback times of 2.2-4.5 years. In addition to generating the most profit and having the shortest payback time, perstraction was the only technique to lead to a reduction in overall plant energy demand, by ~5%, compared to a traditional ABE process. Thus perstraction warrants further investigation for application to the ABE process. Perstraction is significantly underdeveloped compared to other ISPR techniques. It was originally designed to overcome various problems associated with liquid-liquid extractions, including solvent toxicity. Here, experiments focused on the use of high-distribution toxic extractants with commercially available membranes. Results showed that high-distribution toxic extractants (1-pentanol, 1-hexanol, 1-heptanol, 1-octanol and 2-ethyl-1-hexanol) have a larger mass transfer coefficient than oleyl alcohol (the main non-toxic extractant), although chemical structure differences, such as branching, can have a greater impact on mass transfer than distribution coefficient. Unfortunately, all extractants investigated here were transferred across the membrane to some extent, which would limit perstraction to non-toxic extractants. However, differences in membrane type have a greater impact on mass transfer than the choice of extractant. Porous membranes have a mass transfer coefficient 10 times greater than non-porous membranes, which would see a factor of 10 reduction in ii membrane size and cost. Overall, this work has confirmed that perstraction is technically viable and compared options for process improvements through membrane and extractant selection.EPSRC and Green Biologic

Living Off the Grid

Living in the city most people take for granted the convenience of flicking on a light switch or plugging in an appliance. They also expect to be able to call the utility company if there is no heat for the house. Now imagine being responsible for providing all of your survival needs from electricity through waste management. This is off-grid living. The settlers who came here to Canada lived off-grid. Homes were often built of sod, heated with wood-fired stoves, and lit with candles they made themselves. The majority of twenty-first century Canadians would perish in similar living conditions. The Canadian Encyclopaedia in its history of Western and Northwest Canada describes the lives of the pioneer homesteaders who purchased 160 acres of land for $10 and struggled to survive. “Homesteaders and their families were often separated from friends and relatives, and many suffered years of hardship and loneliness. One of the greatest difficulties was the absence of roads and bridges. Most trails were impassable when wet. Medical care was scarce and farm injuries were often crippling or fatal, and many simple ailments caused prolonged hardship. For many settlers the price of homesteading was too high, they cancelled their claims and moved away” (McCracken, 2011). Today, off-grid living is sought out for different reasons. People who decide to live off-grid are often looking for a way to live in harmony with and lessen their impact on the environment. They enjoy a physical challenge, and/or appreciate some solitude. It is possible to lessen reliance on the grid and still live in the city, but it is expensive and more difficult due mainly to regulatory requirements. Since regulations vary widely among municipal jurisdictions the focus of this article is development of an off-grid living facility where municipal services are unavailable. Off-grid living in its simplest form involves finding ways to provide for basic human comforts. “Off-grid also means not using or depending on public utilities, especially the supply of electricity,” (Oxford Dictionary, 2011). For many people who are living this lifestyle it also involves growing food, raising chickens for eggs and meat, goats or cows for milk, and pigs for pork, bacon and ham. Off-grid living also means changing lifestyle to suit the season. Spring is planting season and that is the focus of activity. Summer means long days and a chance to build and do maintenance and time to cut, split and stack next year’s firewood if the primary source of heat is wood-burning stoves. Fall is harvest time with its many hours of work preserving the food. Winter is for cocooning and making plans for the next growing season. If power generation is solar based, it probably means going to bed early and sleeping later to conserve energy. A Personal Choice to Live Sustainably The author and some of his family are in the process of developing a multigenerational home site on ten acres of forested property on the North Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada. This article presents information that a family needs to consider when deciding to live off-grid. It then presents a case study of the decisions, considerations, and expectations that the author’s family encountered when building the home site; including real-world suggestions and solutions based on primary research done by the family members. It also gives some site-specific details of that ongoing work

Bone fracture and within-bone nutrients: an experimentally based method for investigating levels of marrow extraction

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Copyright © 2002 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Publishing Archaeological Experiments: a quick guide for the uninitiated

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. © 2005 SEA Hradec Králové and EXARC. Full details of the journal EuroREA are available at: http://www.eurorea.net/issues.htm

Applied Models and Indices vs. High-Resolution, Observed Data: Detailed Fracture and Fragmentation Analyses for the Investigation of Skeletal Part Abundance Patterns

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Copyright © 2004 Prometheus Press/Palaeontological Network Foundation.This is the published version of an article published in the Journal of Taphonomy 2(3), pp.167-184The history and development of skeletal part abundance studies is briefly discussed. Two principal strands of this sub-discipline are the application of indices of food utility and bone mineral density to the interpretation of skeletal part abundance patterns. Both food utility and bone mineral density indices are derived from modern observations, underwritten by uniformitarian assumptions, and are used to model behavioural and taphonomic patterns in the selection and survival of bone elements. The application of such models is critiqued. It is argued that, whilst such models remain extremely valuable, they will always suffer from equifinality with regard to end interpretations. The solution to this problem does not lie in improving these models, or the data they derive from, though this may be desirable, but in the more time-consuming option of improving the resolution of archaeologically observed data. Several ways of doing this are briefly discussed. One of these options, fracture and fragmentation analysis, is outlined in detail. Sample applications of such an approach are presented and discussed. These include the use of fracture and fragmentation analysis to identify specific practices that can severely skew skeletal part abundances, such as bone grease rendering, and the identification of levels of pre-depositional and post-depositional fracturing within the taphonomic history of bone assemblages

Ochre roasting: the enigma of an unusual lime kiln alteration at the Cheddleton Flint Mills, near Leek, North Staffordshire

© World copyright - The Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology. Post-Medieval Archaeology is a biannual journal devoted to the study of the material evidence of European society wherever it is found in the world. Post-Medieval Archaeology is now published on behalf of the SPMA by Maney Publishing. Details of the original publication, Post-Medieval Archaeology, are available on the SPMA website www.spma.org.u