Review of Jon Tetsuro Sumida’s In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914

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Keeping the Germans out of the straits: The five ottoman dreadnought thesis reconsidered

This article contests Sean McMeekin’s claims concerning Russian culpability for the First World War. McMeekin maintains that Ottoman rearmament, particularly the purchase of several battleships released onto the global arms market by South American states, threatened to create a situation where the Russian Black Sea Fleet would be outclassed by its Ottoman opposite number. Rather than waiting for this to happen, the tsarist regime chose to go to war. Yet, contrary to McMeekin’s claims, the Ottoman naval expansion never assumed threatening dimensions because the Porte was unable to purchase battleships from Chile or Argentina. As a result, it provided no incentive for Russia to go to war in 1914

‘The Special Service Squadron of the Royal Marines’: The Royal Navy and Organic Amphibious Warfare Capability before 1914

It is usually maintained that before 1914 the Royal Navy had abandoned interest in amphibious warfare. This article argues otherwise. It shows that prior to 1914 the Admiralty sought to reconfigure the Royal Marines as an organic maritime strike force. The idea was advanced by junior officers and taken up by the naval leadership, who appointed a high-level committee to elaborate the details. Significant steps had been taken before war broke out, thereby showing that modern British amphibious warfare doctrine pre-dates the ill-fated Gallipoli operation and needs to be understood in a broader context than is currently the case

Relationship between mRNA secondary structure and sequence variability in Chloroplast genes: possible life history implications

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Synonymous sites are freer to vary because of redundancy in genetic code. Messenger RNA secondary structure restricts this freedom, as revealed by previous findings in mitochondrial genes that mutations at third codon position nucleotides in helices are more selected against than those in loops. This motivated us to explore the constraints imposed by mRNA secondary structure on evolutionary variability at all codon positions in general, in chloroplast systems.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that the evolutionary variability and intrinsic secondary structure stability of these sequences share an inverse relationship. Simulations of most likely single nucleotide evolution in <it>Psilotum nudum </it>and <it>Nephroselmis olivacea </it>mRNAs, indicate that helix-forming propensities of mutated mRNAs are greater than those of the natural mRNAs for short sequences and vice-versa for long sequences. Moreover, helix-forming propensity estimated by the percentage of total mRNA in helices increases gradually with mRNA length, saturating beyond 1000 nucleotides. Protection levels of functionally important sites vary across plants and proteins: <it>r</it>-strategists minimize mutation costs in large genes; <it>K</it>-strategists do the opposite.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Mrna length presumably predisposes shorter mRNAs to evolve under different constraints than longer mRNAs. The positive correlation between secondary structure protection and functional importance of sites suggests that some sites might be conserved due to packing-protection constraints at the nucleic acid level in addition to protein level constraints. Consequently, nucleic acid secondary structure <it>a priori </it>biases mutations. The converse (exposure of conserved sites) apparently occurs in a smaller number of cases, indicating a different evolutionary adaptive strategy in these plants. The differences between the protection levels of functionally important sites for <it>r</it>- and <it>K-</it>strategists reflect their respective molecular adaptive strategies. These converge with increasing domestication levels of <it>K</it>-strategists, perhaps because domestication increases reproductive output.</p

O Filho De Saul, De László Nemes: Um Novo Mito De Auschwitz?

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Tradición de los primitivos y filosofía griega

Fil: Seligmann Silva, Luis M.. Universidad Nacional de Cuy

Naval History by Conspiracy Theory: The British Admiralty before the First World War and the Methodology of Revisionism

Revisionist interpretations of British naval policy in the Fisher era claim that an elaborate smoke screen was created to hide the Royal Navy’s real policies; while documents showing the true goals were systematically destroyed. By asserting this, revisionists are able to dismiss those parts of the documentary record that contradict their theories, while simultaneously excusing the lack of evidence for their theories by claiming it has been destroyed. This article shows that this methodology is misleading and untenable