Thunderer, recluse or apostate? Interruptions and continuities in the life of a Jacobin fox

An essay in review, critically reconsidering the political writings of John Thelwall (1764-1834), radical democrat, republican, political theorist, pioeer speech therapist and Romantic poet

'Bringing great shame upon this city': Sodomy, the courts and the civic idiom in eighteenth-century Bristol

During the 1730s, Bristol acquired an unenviable reputation as a city in which sodomy was endemic and rarely punished by the civil power. Although the cause lay partly in difficulties experienced in securing convictions, the resolve of magistrates was exposed to fierce scrutiny. Taking an effusive curate's moral vindication of the city as a starting point, this article examines the social production of sodomy in eighteenth-century Bristol, analyses prosecution patterns and considers the importance of collective moral reputation in the forging of civic history. © 2007 Cambridge University Press

'Till our liberties be secure': Popular sovereignty and public space in Bristol, 1780-1850

Struggles over the symbolic ownership of Bristol's open spaces were often influenced by association with conflicts between mercantile elites and 'the people' over the definition and nature of civic identity. Shifting political and cultural readings of Brandon Hill and Queen Square are here identified and contrasted, offering a fresh interpretation of controversies over 'improvement' and gentrification via the fluid appropriation of these sites for the representation of radicalism, citizenship, liberty, respectability or commercialism

Gillray, Cruikshank & Thelwall: Visual satire, physiognomy and the Jacobin body

In the years following his acquittal for High Treason in 1794, John Thelwall came to personify all that English loyalists most feared about the plebeian democrats of the London Corresponding Society. In loyalist discourse, he became at one and the same time, an intemperate but horribly effective Jacobin orator, and a covert conspirator working quietly behind the scenes to ally the Foxite opposition with the LCS and some of its insurrectionary fellow travellers. The apparent disjuncture in Thelwall's character between public bluster and private plotting presented a unique set of problems for loyalist caricature, explicitly demonstrated in the practice of the best known ministerial cartoonists of the period, Rowlandson, Cruikshank and Gillray. This essay explores some of the ways in which this dichotomy was resolved in visual culture, and assesses the impact of popular prints like these on the manufacturing of Thelwall's political reputation

Pathway Possibilities: The Lilly Endowment's Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative

Looking to the future for what supervision and mentoring will look like and be utilized

Bring the BitCODE -- Moving Compute and Data in Distributed Heterogeneous Systems

In this paper, we present a framework for moving compute and data between processing elements in a distributed heterogeneous system. The implementation of the framework is based on the LLVM compiler toolchain combined with the UCX communication framework. The framework can generate binary machine code or LLVM bitcode for multiple CPU architectures and move the code to remote machines while dynamically optimizing and linking the code on the target platform. The remotely injected code can recursively propagate itself to other remote machines or generate new code. The goal of this paper is threefold: (a) to present an architecture and implementation of the framework that provides essential infrastructure to program a new class of disaggregated systems wherein heterogeneous programming elements such as compute nodes and data processing units (DPUs) are distributed across the system, (b) to demonstrate how the framework can be integrated with modern, high-level programming languages such as Julia, and (c) to demonstrate and evaluate a new class of eXtended Remote Direct Memory Access (X-RDMA) communication operations that are enabled by this framework. To evaluate the capabilities of the framework, we used a cluster with Fujitsu CPUs and heterogeneous cluster with Intel CPUs and BlueField-2 DPUs interconnected using high-performance RDMA fabric. We demonstrated an X-RDMA pointer chase application that outperforms an RDMA GET-based implementation by 70% and is as fast as Active Messages, but does not require function predeployment on remote platforms.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, to be published in IEEE CLUSTER 202

'A lasting and salutary warning': Incendiarism, rural order and England's last scene of crime execution

Agricultural incendiarism was a perennial factor in social relations in some areas of nineteenth-century rural England and is often understood by historians as an expression of 'covert' social protest. However, such categorisation risks oversimplifying what may be diverse and locally specific factors. In 1830, the high sheriff of Somerset presided over England's last ever scene of crime execution at the Somerset village of Kenn following the conviction of three labourers for incendiarism. This requires explanation. Crime scene executions were not only anachronistic and rare, but unfashionably brutal and expensive by this time, and were not undertaken lightly; moreover arson was soon to be removed from the list of capital statutes. Yet, oddly, the case was not obviously connected to the agenda of 'social protest' characterised by Swing as it emerged just months afterwards; indeed understanding the behaviour of the county authorities here requires an appreciation of a considerably more specific and parochial set of concerns and conditions. The Kenn incendiaries, it is argued here, were put to death at the scene of their crime to protect and uphold the principle of informing in a rural community whose dysfunctional social relations made the practice a judicial necessity. © 2008 Cambridge University Press 2008

A novel method for the age estimation of Saddletail snapper (Lutjanus malabaricus) using Fourier Transform-near infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy

Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was investigated as a potential rapid method of estimating fish age from whole otoliths of Saddletail snapper (Lutjanus malabaricus). Whole otoliths from 209 Saddletail snapper were extracted and the NIR spectral characteristics were acquired over a spectral range of 800–2780 nm. Partial least-squares models (PLS) were developed from the diffuse reflectance spectra and reference-validated age estimates (based on traditional sectioned otolith increments) to predict age for independent otolith samples. Predictive models developed for a specific season and geographical location performed poorly against a different season and geographical location. However, overall PLS regression statistics for predicting a combined population incorporating both geographic location and season variables were: coefficient of determination (R2) = 0.94, root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) = 1.54 for age estimation, indicating that Saddletail age could be predicted within 1.5 increment counts. This level of accuracy suggests the method warrants further development for Saddletail snapper and may have potential for other fish species. A rapid method of fish age estimation could have the potential to reduce greatly both costs of time and materials in the assessment and management of commercial fisheries

The effect of using a pre-dive checklist on the incidence of diving mishaps in recreational scuba diving: a cluster-randomized trial

BACKGROUND: Scuba diving mishaps, caused by equipment problems or human errors, increase the occurrence of injuries and fatalities while diving. Pre-dive checklists may mitigate mishaps. This study evaluated the effect of using a pre-dive checklist on the incidence of diving mishaps in recreational divers. METHODS: A multi-location cluster-randomized trial with parallel groups and allocation concealment was conducted between 1 June and 17 August 2012. The participants had to be at least 18 years of age, permitted to dive by the dive operator and planning to dive on the day of participation. They were recruited at the pier and dive boats at four locations. The intervention group received a pre-dive checklist and post-dive log. The control group received a post-dive log only. The outcomes, self-reported major and minor mishaps, were prompted by a post-dive questionnaire. Mishap rates per 100 dives were compared using Poisson regression with generalized estimating equations. Intent-to-treat, per-protocol and marginal structural model analyses were conducted. RESULTS: A total of 1043 divers (intervention = 617; control = 426) made 2041 dives, on 70 location-days (intervention = 40; control = 30) at four locations. Compared with the control group, the incidence of major mishaps decreased in the intervention group by 36%, minor mishaps by 26% and all mishaps by 32%. On average, there was one fewer mishap in every 25 intervention dives. CONCLUSIONS: In this trial, pre-dive checklist use prevented mishaps which could lead to injuries and fatalities. Pre-dive checklists can increase diving safety and their use should be promoted. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT01960738