Remembrances of Empires Past

This paper argues that the colonial legacy is ever present in contemporary Europe. For a generation, most Europeans largely tried, publicly, to forget the colonial past, or remembered it only through the rose-coloured lenses of nostalgia; now the pendulum has swung to memory of that past – even perhaps, in the views of some, to a surfeit of memory, where each group agitates for its own version of history, its own recognition in laws and ceremonies, its own commemoration in museums and monuments, the valorization or repatriation of its own art and artefacts. Word such as ‘invasion,’ ‘racism’ and ‘genocide’ are emotional terms that provoke emotional reactions. Whether leaders should apologize for wrongs of the past – and which wrongs – remains a highly sensitive issue. The ‘return of the colonial’ thus has to do with ethics and politics as well as with history, and can link to statements of apology or recognition, legislation about certain views of history, monetary compensation, repatriation of objects, and—perhaps most importantly—redefinition of national identity and policy. The colonial flags may have been lowered, but many barricades seem to have been raised. Private memories—of loss of land, of unacknowledged service, of political, economic, social and cultural disenfranchisement, but also on the other side of defeat, national castigation and self-flagellation—have been increasingly public. Monuments and museums act not only as sites of history but as venues for political agitation and forums for academic debate – differences of opinion that have spread to the streets. Empire has a long after-life

Spatial distribution of land type in regression models of pollutant loading

This paper proposes a method to improve landscape-pollution interaction regression models through the inclusion of a variable that describes the spatial distribution of a land type with respect to the pattern of runoff within a drainage catchment. The proposed index is used as an independent variable to enhance the strength, as quantified by R² values, of regression relationships between empirical observations of in-stream pollutant concentrations and land type by considering the spatial distribution of key land-type categories within the sample point’s drainage area. We present an index that adds a new dimension of explanatory power when used in conjunction with a variable describing the proportion of the land type. We demonstrate the usefulness of this index by exploring the relationship between nitrate ( - 3 NO ) and land type within 40 drainage sub-catchments in the Ipswich River watershed, Massachusetts. Nutrient loads associated with non-point source pollution paths are related to land type within the up-stream drainage catchments of sample sites. Past studies have focused on the quantity of particular land type within a sample point’s drainage catchment. Quantifying the spatial distribution of key land-type categories in terms of location on a runoff surface can improve our understanding of the relationship between sampled - 3 NO concentrations and land type. Regressions that employ the proportion of residential and agricultural land type within catchments provide a fair fit (R² = 0.67). However, we find that a regression adding a variable that indicates the spatial distribution of residential land improves the overall relationship between instream - 3 NO measurements and associated land types (R² = 0.712). We test the sensitivity of the results with respect to variations in the surface definition in order to determine the conditions under which the spatial index variable is useful

Contending cultures of counterterrorism: transatlantic divergence or convergence?

Terrorist attacks on the United States, Spain and the United Kingdom have underlined the differing responses of Europe and the United States to the 'new terrorism'. This article analyses these responses through the prism of historically determined strategic cultures. For the last four years the United States has directed the full resources of a 'national security' approach towards this threat and has emphasized unilateralism. Europe, based on its own past experience of terrorism, has adopted a regulatory approach pursued through multilateralism. These divergences in transatlantic approaches, with potentially major implications for the future of the relationship, have appeared to be mitigated by a revised American strategy of counterterrorism that has emerged during 2005. However, this article contends that while strategic doctrines may change, the more immutable nature of strategic culture will make convergence difficult. This problem will be compounded by the fact that neither Europe nor America have yet addressed the deeper connections between terrorism and the process of globalization

Cryptography and the global South : secrecy, signals and information imperialism

For decades, espionage during the Cold War was often presented as a competition between East and West. The extent to which the Global South constituted the main battleground for this conflict is now being appreciated, together with the way coups and covert regime change represented a continuation of colonialism by other means. Recent revelations about the nature of technical surveillance and signals intelligence during this period paint an even more alarming picture. New research materials released in Germany show the ways in which Washington, London and even Moscow conspired to systematically attack the secure communications of the Global South. For almost half a century, less advanced countries were persuaded to invest significant sums in encryption machines that were adapted to perform poorly. This was a deceptive system of non-secrecy that opened the sensitive communications of the Global South to an elite group of nations, that included former colonial rulers, and emergent neo-imperial powers. Moreover, the nature of this technical espionage, which involved commercial communications providers, is an early and instructive example of digital global information inequality

Negative and positive selection of antigen-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes affected by the α3 domain of MHC I molecules

THE α1 and α2 domains of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules function in the binding and presentation of foreign peptides to the T-cell antigen receptor and control both negative and positive selection of the T-cell repertoire. Although the α3 domain of class I is not involved in peptide binding, it does interact with the T-cell accessory molecule, CDS. CDS is important in the selection of T cells as anti-CDS antibody injected into perinatal mice interfers with this process. We previously used a hybrid class I molecule with the α1/α2 domains from L^d and the α3 domain from Q7^b and showed that this molecule binds an L^d-restricted peptide but does not interact with CD8-dependent cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Expression of this molecule in transgenic mice fails to negatively select a subpopulation of anti-L^d cytotoxic T lymphocytes. In addition, positive selection of virus-specific L^d-restricted cytotoxic T lymphocytes does not occur. We conclude that besides the α1/α2 domains of class I, the α3 domain plays an important part in both positive and negative selection of antigen-specific cells

Neighbourhood deprivation and lung cancer risk: a nested case–control study in the USA

Objectives To examine the association between neighbourhood deprivation and lung cancer risk. Design Nested case–control study. Setting Southern Community Cohort Study of persons residing in 12 states in the southeastern USA. Participants 1334 cases of lung cancer and 5315 controls. Primary outcome measure Risk of lung cancer. Results After adjustment for smoking status and other confounders, and additional adjustment for individual-level measures of socioeconomic status (SES), there was no monotonic increase in risk with worsening deprivation score overall or within sex and race groups. There was an increase among current and shorter term former smokers (p=0.04) but not among never and longer term former smokers. There was evidence of statistically significant interaction by sex among whites, but not blacks, in which the effect of worsening deprivation on lung cancer existed in males but not in females. Conclusions Area-level measures of SES were associated with lung cancer risk in current and shorter term former smokers only in this population

Added and Discouraged Workers in the Late 1930s: A Re-Examination

We revisit a famous controversy in labor economics: the debate between W.S. Woytinsky and Clarence Long over "added" and "discouraged" worker effects in the late 1930s. According to Woytinsky, the Depression created large numbers of added workers, persons who entered the labor force when the head of the household became unemployed. Long, on the other hand, believed that the number of added workers was trivial compared with the number of discouraged workers, and subsequent research has largely supported Long. Using a sample of married women drawn from the public use sample of the 1940 census, we show that added worker effect was alive and well in the late 1930s, but that its viability was muted by the operation of work relief. Wives whose husbands held "public emergency work relief" jobs with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) or related agencies were far less likely to participate in the labor force than wives whose husbands were employed in a private sector or non-relief government job, or whose husbands were unemployed, so much so that the added worker effect disappears in the aggregate if the impact of work relief is ignored.

Compulsory Schooling Legislation and School Attendance in Turn-of-the-Century America: A "Natural Experiment" Approach

Recent research by Joshua Angrist and Alan Krueger has used information on exact dates of birth in the 1960 to 1980 federal censuses to study the impact of compulsory schooling laws on school attendance. This paper modifies their methodology to analyze similar data in the 1900 federal census to measure the impact of turn-of-the-century compulsory schooling laws. Using data on 14-year olds from the 1900 census public use microdata sample we compare attendance rates of children born after January 1, 1900 with those born before, across states with and without compulsory schooling laws. In states that combined school-leaving with child labor laws, we find that compulsion significantly raised attendance rates.

Wavelet-based Image deconvolution for Wide Field CCD Imagery

We show how a wavelet-based image adaptive deconvolution algorithm can provide significant improvements in the analysis of wide-field CCD images. To illustrate it, we apply our deconvolution protocol to a set of images from a Baker-Nunn telescope. This f/1 instrument has an outstanding field of view of 4.4°x4.4° with high optical quality offering unique properties to study our deconvolution process and results. In particular, we obtain an estimated gain in limiting magnitude of ΔR∼0.6 mag and in limiting resolution of Δρ∼3.9 arcsec. These results increase the number of targets and the efficiency of the underlying scientific project