The development of British military professionalism through early-modern European warfare (c.1572-1637) viewed through soldiers' published literature

This thesis analyses the late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century literature of warfare through the printed works of English, Welsh and Scots soldiers. The introduction analyses the relationship between modern historiography and the early-modern published works. The first chapter through analysis of over forty works explores the dramatic increase in printed material on many aspects of warfare, the diversity of authors, the adaptation of existing writing traditions and the growing public interest in military affairs. There follows an extensive discussion in the second chapter on the categorisation of soldiers, which argues that soldiers' works are under-used evidence of the developing professionalism among military leaders at various levels and which challenges the traditional view that all combatants from the British Isles fighting voluntarily in Europe were mercenaries. The thesis has consequently been able to clarify the terminology associated with soldier categorisation, an issue about which historians have, to date, been imprecise. The third chapter explores the motivation of soldiers, and through the analysis of autobiographical material the thought process behind an individual's engagement with an army is investigated, the results of which provide compelling information that sheds light on the relevance of significant personal factors such as religious belief and the concept of loyalty. The fourth chapter assesses the narratives of soldiers and the finer details of their experience, an enquiry that greatly assists in understanding the formidable difficulties that were faced by individuals charged with both administering an army and confronting an enemy. Throughout, the study considers the limited use historians have made of these primary sources, attempts to place the material into sub-genres within the military bibliography listed in the appendices, and concludes that the information contained within these works should form a larger element within current historiography. The thesis thus attempts to reassess early-modern warfare by focussing on the published works of soldiers. The conclusion highlights the various types of soldier and how each type viewed his commitment to war, while it also considers the impact of published early-modem material on domestic military capability, the 'art of war', and the position of soldier-authors within the historical debate

Spinning Out of Control? How Academic Spinoff Formation Overlooks Medical Device Regulations

This paper investigates the impact of the medical device regulatory framework on the academic spinoff formation process and contributes to knowledge in the domain by expanding and deepening our understanding of its underlying routines and capabilities. A detailed case study focusing on academic spinoff formation in the Irish medical device industry was conducted and found that the consideration given to the medical device regulatory framework significantly lags behind that given to other commercialisation activities. This trend has potential to both significantly delay spinoff formation and negatively impact its potential success and survival. Findings indicate that incorporating expert regulatory knowledge earlier within the process may enhance the spinoff activities within universities, particularly funding, research and capital investment

Sparse Function-space Representation of Neural Networks

Deep neural networks (NNs) are known to lack uncertainty estimates and struggle to incorporate new data. We present a method that mitigates these issues by converting NNs from weight space to function space, via a dual parameterization. Importantly, the dual parameterization enables us to formulate a sparse representation that captures information from the entire data set. This offers a compact and principled way of capturing uncertainty and enables us to incorporate new data without retraining whilst retaining predictive performance. We provide proof-of-concept demonstrations with the proposed approach for quantifying uncertainty in supervised learning on UCI benchmark tasks.Comment: Accepted to ICML 2023 Workshop on Duality for Modern Machine Learning, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Why Does Disaster Recovery Work Influence Mental Health?: Pathways through Physical Health and Household Income

Disaster recovery work increases risk for mental health problems, yet the mechanisms underlying this association are unclear. We explored links from recovery work to posttraumatic stress (PTS), major depression (MD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms through physical health symptoms and household income in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As part of the NIEHS GuLF STUDY, participants (N = 10,141) reported on cleanup work activities, spill-related physical health symptoms, and household income at baseline, and mental health symptoms an average of 14.69 weeks (SD = 16.79) thereafter. Cleanup work participation was associated with higher physical health symptoms, which in turn were associated with higher PTS, MD, and GAD symptoms. Similar pattern of results were found in models including workers only and investigating the influence of longer work duration and higher work-related oil exposure on mental health symptoms. In addition, longer worker duration and higher work-related oil exposure were associated with higher household income, which in turn was associated with lower MD and GAD symptoms. These findings suggest that physical health symptoms contribute to workers’ risk for mental health symptoms, while higher household income, potentially from more extensive work, might mitigate risk

Introducing a new breed of wine yeast: interspecific hybridisation between a commercial Saccharomyces cerevisiae wine yeast and Saccharomyces mikatae

Interspecific hybrids are commonplace in agriculture and horticulture; bread wheat and grapefruit are but two examples. The benefits derived from interspecific hybridisation include the potential of generating advantageous transgressive phenotypes. This paper describes the generation of a new breed of wine yeast by interspecific hybridisation between a commercial Saccharomyces cerevisiae wine yeast strain and Saccharomyces mikatae, a species hitherto not associated with industrial fermentation environs. While commercially available wine yeast strains provide consistent and reliable fermentations, wines produced using single inocula are thought to lack the sensory complexity and rounded palate structure obtained from spontaneous fermentations. In contrast, interspecific yeast hybrids have the potential to deliver increased complexity to wine sensory properties and alternative wine styles through the formation of novel, and wider ranging, yeast volatile fermentation metabolite profiles, whilst maintaining the robustness of the wine yeast parent. Screening of newly generated hybrids from a cross between a S. cerevisiae wine yeast and S. mikatae (closely-related but ecologically distant members of the Saccharomyces sensu stricto clade), has identified progeny with robust fermentation properties and winemaking potential. Chemical analysis showed that, relative to the S. cerevisiae wine yeast parent, hybrids produced wines with different concentrations of volatile metabolites that are known to contribute to wine flavour and aroma, including flavour compounds associated with non-Saccharomyces species. The new S. cerevisiae x S. mikatae hybrids have the potential to produce complex wines akin to products of spontaneous fermentation while giving winemakers the safeguard of an inoculated ferment.Jennifer R. Bellon, Frank Schmid, Dimitra L. Capone, Barbara L. Dunn, Paul J. Chamber

Putting climate resilience in its place: developing spatially literate climate adaptation initiatives

Understanding the socioeconomic, cultural, historical and political nuances of a place is essential for realising effective local decision-making for climate action. People are central to understanding place-based risk and resilience, with consideration of inequality and vulnerability required for effective place-based climate adaptation. Temporality is important. Place is not fixed, but changes over time, together with the community that inhabits it. Discussing and sharing community knowledge increases the likelihood of successful creation and implementation of climate adaptation practices. A sense of place can be deployed to build connections between people, across policy and between scales

Healthcare Reform and the Next Generation: United States Medical Student Attitudes toward the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

CONTEXT: Over one year after passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), legislators, healthcare experts, physicians, and the general public continue to debate the implications of the law and its repeal. The PPACA will have a significant impact on future physicians, yet medical student perspectives on the legislation have not been well documented. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate medical students' understanding of and attitudes toward healthcare reform and the PPACA including issues of quality, access and cost. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: An anonymous electronic survey was sent to medical students at 10 medical schools (total of 6982 students) between October-December 2010, with 1232 students responding and a response rate of 18%. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Medical students' views and attitudes regarding the PPACA and related topics, measured with Likert scale and open response items. RESULTS: Of medical students surveyed, 94.8% agreed that the existing United States healthcare system needs to be reformed, 31.4% believed the PPACA will improve healthcare quality, while 20.9% disagreed and almost half (47.7%) were unsure if quality will be improved. Two thirds (67.6%) believed that the PPACA will increase access, 6.5% disagreed and the remaining 25.9% were unsure. With regard to containing healthcare costs, 45.4% of participants indicated that they are unsure if the provisions of the PPACA will do so. Overall, 80.1% of respondents indicated that they support the PPACA, and 78.3% also indicated that they did not feel that reform efforts had gone far enough. A majority of respondents (58.8%) opposed repeal of the PPACA, while 15.0% supported repeal, and 26.1% were undecided. CONCLUSION: The overwhelming majority of medical students recognized healthcare reform is needed and expressed support for the PPACA but echoed concerns about whether it will address issues of quality or cost containment

Assessment and Control of Foodborne Pathogens in Ireland

End of Project ReportConsumers are increasingly demanding food that is free from pathogens, but with less preservatives and additives. As a response to these conflicting demands, current trends in the food industry include minimal processing, and the investigation of alternative inhibitors for use in foods. Additionally, the manufacture of an increasing range of novel foods, and the inclusion of non-dairy ingredients into dairy products, and vice versa, poses additional dangers with respect to safety. Furthermore, the dramatic increase in incidence of food-borne illness internationally, as a result of contamination with food-borne pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes, is a cause of considerable consumer concern. Bacteriocins are inhibitory peptides produced by a number of Lactic Acid Bacteria which are capable of killing other bacteria. These natural inhibitors have widespread applications in the preservation of foods, since they can kill a number of pathogenic and spoilage bacteria. The broad spectrum bacteriocin Lacticin 3147 (discovered in a previous project and patented - see DPRC No. 3) is produced by Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis DPC3147, a food-grade strain, similar to strains used for commercial cheese manufacture. Lacticin 3147 is effective in the inhibition of all Gram positive bacteria tested including the food pathogens Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus and food spoilage bacteria such as Clostridia and Bacillus species. As part of this project the bacteriocin Lacticin 3147 was assessed as a food preservative for improving food safety via inhibition of pathogenic organisms. Thus the project plan followed a "twin-track" approach to assessing and controlling the food safety aspects of Irish food. The first of these was designed to investigate the current safety status of Irish dairy products. The second approach involved an attempt to exploit natural antimicrobial substances, including Lacticin 3147, to protect foods from pathogenic bacteria.Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marin

Intermedial Relationships of Radio Features with Denis Mitchell’s and Philip Donnellan’s Early Television Documentaries

Writing of the closure in early 1965 of the Radio Features Department, Asa Briggs identifies one of the reasons for the controversial decision as ‘the incursion of television, which was developing its own features.’ ‘[Laurence] Gilliam and his closest colleagues believed in the unique merits of “pure radio”. The screen seemed a barrier’ (The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 5, p. 348). Rather than the screen being ‘a barrier’ for them, a number of the creators of the emerging television documentary were from the late 1950s onwards able to transfer and transform distinctive techniques of ‘pure radio’ into highly effective visual forms. Two key figures were the producers of ‘poetic’ documentaries Denis Mitchell and Philip Donnellan, who employed layered voices, imaginative deployments of music and effects, and allusive juxtapositions of sound and image, to develop an alternative (although always marginal) tradition to the supposedly objective approaches of current affairs and, later, verité filmmakers. And a dozen years after the dismemberment of the Features Department, Donnellan paid tribute to it in his glorious but little-seen film Pure Radio (BBC1, 3 November 1977). Taking important early films by Mitchell and Donnellan as case studies, this paper explores the impact of radio features on television documentaries in the 1950s and early 1960s, and assesses the extent to which the screen in its intermedial relationships with ‘pure radio’ was a barrier or, in the work of certain creators, an augmentation

Historical influences on the current provision of multiple ecosystem services: is there a legacy of past landcover?

Ecosystem service provision varies temporally in response to natural and human-induced factors, yet research in this field is dominated by analyses that ignore the time-lags and feedbacks that occur within socio-ecological systems. The implications of this have been unstudied, but are central to understanding how service delivery will alter due to future land-use/cover change. Urban areas are expanding faster than any other land-use, making cities ideal study systems for examining such legacy effects. We assess the extent to which present-day provision of a suite of eight ecosystem services, quantified using field-gathered data, is explained by current and historical (stretching back 150 years) landcover. Five services (above-ground carbon density, recreational use, bird species richness, bird density, and a metric of recreation experience quality (continuity with the past) were more strongly determined by past landcover. Time-lags ranged from 20 (bird species richness and density) to over 100 years (above-ground carbon density). Historical landcover, therefore, can have a strong influence on current service provision. By ignoring such time-lags, we risk drawing incorrect conclusions regarding how the distribution and quality of some ecosystem services may alter in response to land-use/cover change. Although such a finding adds to the complexity of predicting future scenarios, ecologists may find that they can link the biodiversity conservation agenda to the preservation of cultural heritage, and that certain courses of action provide win-win outcomes across multiple environmental and cultural goods