The Control of the Past

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) was one of the earliest and strongest critics of what he saw as the British government’s attempts to control the past through the writing of so-called, ‘official histories’. His famous diatribe against the 'pitfalls' of government-mandated history first appeared in 1949, at a time when the British government was engaged in publishing official histories and diplomatic documents on an unprecedented scale following the Second World War. But why was Butterfield so hostile to official history, and why do his views still matter today? Written by one of the few historians employed by the British government, this important new book details how successive governments have applied a selective approach to the past in order to tell or re-tell Britain’s national history, with implications for the future. Providing a unique overview of the main trends of official history in Britain since the Second World War, the book details how Butterfield came to suspect that the British government was trying to suppress vital documents revealing the Duke of Windsor’s dealings with Nazi Germany. This seemed to confirm his long-held belief that all governments would seek to manipulate history if they could, and conceal the truth if they could not. At the beginning of the 21st century, official history is still being written and the book concludes with an insider’s perspective on the many issues it faces today– on freedom of information, social media and reengaging with our nation’s colonial legacy. Governments have recently been given many reminders that history matters, and it is Herbert Butterfield above all who reminds us that we must remain vigilant in monitoring how they respond to the challenge

Foreign policy and national identity: The Norwegian Integrity treaty 1907-24

After Norway's entry into the Leauge of Nations in 1920, Norway approached Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia, the four powers which had guranteed the integrity of Norway in 1907, with a proposal to abrogate the integrity treaty. thenegotiations proved far more complex than had been expected. Largely owing to Soviet objections no solution could be reached until 1924, andthe treaty did not finally lapse until 1928. This study shows how Norwegian diplomacy drew the country unwittingly into the ideological antagonism between its two powerful neighbours, Great Britain and Soviet Russia. Through the use of British and Soviet sources it also reveals much about the political and strategic preoccupations of the two great powers in the early 1920s, and suggests taht there was a continuity in Soviet attitudes towards Norway extending wll into the Cold War period

Development and validation of the child post-traumatic cognitions inventory (CPTCI)

Background: Negative trauma-related cognitions have been found to be a significant factor in the maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults. Initial studies of such appraisals in trauma-exposed children and adolescents suggest that this is an important line of research in youth, yet empirically validated measures for use with younger populations are lacking. A measure of negative trauma-related cognitions for use with children and adolescents, the Child Post-Traumatic Cognitions Inventory (CPTCI), is presented. The measure was devised as an age-appropriate version of the adult Post-Traumatic Cognitions Inventory (Foa et al., 1999). Methods: The CPTCI was developed and validated within a large (n = 570) sample, comprising community and trauma-exposed samples of children and adolescents aged 6-18 years. Results: Principal components analysis suggested a two-component structure. These components were labelled 'permanent and disturbing change' and 'fragile person in a scary world', and were each found to possess good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent validity, and discriminative validity. The reliability and validity of these sub-scales was present regardless of whether the measure was completed in the acute phase or several months after a trauma. Scores on these sub-scales did not vary with age. Conclusions: The CPTCI is a reliable and valid measure that is not specific to the type of trauma exposure, and shows considerable promise as a research and clinical tool. The structure of this measure suggests that appraisals concerning the more abstract consequences of a trauma, as well as physical threat and vulnerability, are pertinent factors in trauma-exposed children and adolescents, even prepubescent children

Нестаціонарний колокаційно-ітеративний метод розв’язування крайової задачі для звичайних диференціальних рівнянь з параметрами

Розглядається питання застосування нестаціонарного колокаційно-ітеративного методу до розв’язування крайових задач для звичайних диференціальних рівнянь з параметрами. Побудовано алгоритм методу, встановлено достатні умови його збіжності.The question of non stationary collocation-iterative method appliance concerning the The question of non stationary collocation-iterative method appliance concerning the boundary problem solution for the simple differential equations with parameters is substantiated. The methods algorithm is built, and sufficient conditions for convergence are found here

Kewenangan Penetapan Kerugian Keuangan Negara Dalam Tindak Pidana Korupsi

Introduction: The laws and regulations in force in Indonesia have given the BPK the authority to determine and determine state losses which are the basis for investigating corruption by investigating agencies, both the Prosecutor's Office and the Police. Purposes of the Research: To examine the authority of state institutions in determining losses as the basis for investigating corruption crimes. Methods of the Research: The type of research used in this paper is normative juridical research, which is also called doctrinal research. Results Originality of the Research: The results of the study indicate that the Government Internal Supervision apparatus including BPKP according to the legislation does not have the authority to determine state financial losses as the basis for investigations by investigating agencies in corruption. The results of the determination of state losses carried out by the Government Supervision Apparatus in this case the BPKP are often used as the basis for investigating criminal acts of corruption. This will raise the question of the validity of government actions carried out by the investigative apparatus, both the Prosecutor's Office and the Police in the investigation of criminal acts of corruptio

A software solution for recording circadian oscillator features in time-lapse live cell microscopy

BACKGROUND: Fluorescent and bioluminescent time-lapse microscopy approaches have been successfully used to investigate molecular mechanisms underlying the mammalian circadian oscillator at the single cell level. However, most of the available software and common methods based on intensity-threshold segmentation and frame-to-frame tracking are not applicable in these experiments. This is due to cell movement and dramatic changes in the fluorescent/bioluminescent reporter protein during the circadian cycle, with the lowest expression level very close to the background intensity. At present, the standard approach to analyze data sets obtained from time lapse microscopy is either manual tracking or application of generic image-processing software/dedicated tracking software. To our knowledge, these existing software solutions for manual and automatic tracking have strong limitations in tracking individual cells if their plane shifts. RESULTS: In an attempt to improve existing methodology of time-lapse tracking of a large number of moving cells, we have developed a semi-automatic software package. It extracts the trajectory of the cells by tracking theirs displacements, makes the delineation of cell nucleus or whole cell, and finally yields measurements of various features, like reporter protein expression level or cell displacement. As an example, we present here single cell circadian pattern and motility analysis of NIH3T3 mouse fibroblasts expressing a fluorescent circadian reporter protein. Using Circadian Gene Express plugin, we performed fast and nonbiased analysis of large fluorescent time lapse microscopy datasets. CONCLUSIONS: Our software solution, Circadian Gene Express (CGE), is easy to use and allows precise and semi-automatic tracking of moving cells over longer period of time. In spite of significant circadian variations in protein expression with extremely low expression levels at the valley phase, CGE allows accurate and efficient recording of large number of cell parameters, including level of reporter protein expression, velocity, direction of movement, and others. CGE proves to be useful for the analysis of widefield fluorescent microscopy datasets, as well as for bioluminescence imaging. Moreover, it might be easily adaptable for confocal image analysis by manually choosing one of the focal planes of each z-stack of the various time points of a time series. AVAILABILITY: CGE is a Java plugin for ImageJ; it is freely available at: http://bigwww.epfl.ch/sage/soft/circadian/

Understanding nitrogen transfer dynamics in a small agricultural catchment: Comparison of a distributed (TNT2) and a semi distributed (SWAT) modeling approaches

The coupling of an hydrological and a crop model is an efficient approach to study the impact of the interactions between agricultural practices and catchment physical characteristics on stream water quality. We analyzed the consequences of using different modeling approaches of the processes controlling the nitrogen (N) dynamics in a small agricultural catchment monitored for 15 years. Two agro-hydrological models were applied: the fully distributed model TNT2 and the semi-distributed SWAT model. Using the same input dataset, the calibration process aimed at reproducing the same annual water and N balance in both models, to compare the spatial and temporal variability of the main N processes. The models simulated different seasonal cycles for soil N. The main processes involved were N mineralization and denitrification. TNT2 simulated marked seasonal variations with a net increase of mineralization in autumn, after a transient immobilization phase due to the burying of the straw with low C:N ratio. SWAT predicted a steady humus mineralization with an increase when straws are buried and a decrease afterwards. Denitrification was mainly occuring in autumn in TNT2 because of the dynamics of N availability in soil and of the climatic and hydrological conditions. SWAT predicts denitrification in winter, when mineral N is available in soil layers. The spatial distribution of these two processes was different as well: less denitrification in bottom land and close to ditches in TNT2, as a result of N transfer dynamics. Both models simulate correctly global trend and inter-annual variability of N losses in small agricultural catchment when a sufficient amount data is available for calibration. However, N processes and their spatial interactions are simulated very differently, in particular soil mineralization and denitrification. The use of such tools for prediction must be considered with care, unless a proper calibration and validation of the different N processes is carried out