The death of John Stuart Mill

This article surveys the fiercely contested posthumous assessments of John Stuart Mill in the newspaper and periodical press, in the months following his death in May 1873, and elicits the broader intellectual context. Judgements made in the immediate wake of Mill's death influence biographers and historians to this day and provide an illuminating aperture into the politics and shifting ideological forces of the period. The article considers how Mill's failure to control his posthumous reputation demonstrates both the inextricable intertwining of politics and character in the 1870s, and the difficulties his allies faced. In particular, it shows the sharp division between Mill's middle and working class admirers; the use of James Mill's name as a rebuke to his son; the redefinition of Malthusianism in the 1870s; and how publication of Mill's Autobiography damaged his reputation. Finally, the article considers the relative absence of both theological and Darwinian critiques of Mill

Numerical modelling of hailstone impact on the leading edge of a wind turbine blade

The scale of modern blades means that tip speeds in excess of 100ms-1 are now common in utility scale turbines. Coupling this with a hailstone terminal velocity ranging from 9ms-1 to 40ms-1, the relative impact velocity becomes highly significant. There is little published data on the performance of blade materials under these impact conditions and as such this work aims to understand the impact phenomena more clearly and consequently characterize the impact performance of the constitutive blade materials. To better understand hailstone impact, the LS-DYNA explicit dynamics code was employed to simulate hailstone impact on the blade leading edge. A Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics approach (SPH) was chosen to represent the hailstone geometry. It was found that the forces and stresses created during hail impact are significant and in some cases damaging, therefore posing both short and long term risks to the material integrity. It was also found that coating systems such as the gel coat provide essential – and in extreme conditions, sacrificial – protection to the composite substrate

The hostility of William Stanley Jevons towards John Stuart Mill: the fourth dimension

This article explores the basis for the well-known hostility of William Stanley Jevons toward John Stuart Mill, and offers an alternative explanation to those which have hitherto dominated discussion. After reviewing the importance of disagreements over economic doctrine and questions of scientific method, as well as the “psychological dimension” to the hostility, the article makes the case for considering a “fourth dimension”: the centrality of religion and, more particularly, an urgent fear of religious unbelief in the 1860s and 1870s. The article concludes that by identifying religion at the root of Jevons’s hostility to Mill we are reminded of the need to routinely consider religion and religious concerns when analyzing later nineteenth-century political economy

Modelling rain drop impact on offshore wind turbine blades

The effects of rain and hail erosion and impact damage on the leading edge of offshore wind turbine blades have been investigated. A literature review was conducted to establish the effects of exposure to these conditions and also to investigate the liquid impact phenomena and their implications for leading edge materials. The role of Explicit Dynamics software modelling in simulating impact events was then also established. Initial rain impact modelling is then discussed with the results showing good agreement with theoretical predictions both numerically and with respect to the temporal and spatial development of the impact event. Future development of the rain model and a proposed hail model are then detailed. Planned rain impact and erosion testing work is addressed which will be used to validate, inform and compliment the ongoing modelling efforts

Who Adds Value to Ventures? Understanding the Roles and Relative Contributions of Key Advisors in High-Technology Startups

During the process of starting and growing a company, entrepreneurs seek help from their key advisors, which include its directors, advisory board members, financiers, as well as others informally affiliated with the venture. This paper examines how the various groups add value to a venture and assesses the relative value of their contributions. Through a survey of high technology entrepreneurs, we find that directors, advisory board members and informal advisors add significant value by offering their expertise in various fields. Surprisingly, investors add relatively little value, even in such key areas as strategic planning and finance. While professional venture capitalists add more value than private investors, even the venture capitalists\u27 contribution was perceived lower than those of the other advisors in key areas. Our results suggest that the contributions of investors may have been overestimated in conventional literature

Repeated impact of simulated hail ice on glass fibre composite materials

Wind turbine blade damage, particularly leading edge erosion, is a significant problem faced by the renewable energy industry. Wind turbines are subject to a wide range of environmental factors during a 20 + year lifespan, with hailstones often touted as a key contributor to the deterioration of the blade profile. An experimental campaign was carried out to investigate the effects of repeated impact of smaller diameter simulated hail ice (SHI) on composite materials, to correspond to those most prevalent at wind farm locations. Hailstones of four different diameters (5 mm, 10 mm, 15 mm and 20 mm) were fired at velocities in the range of 50 ms −1 to 95 ms −1. Samples used for experimentation were manufactured from triaxial stitched glass fibre [0°/−45°/+45°] and epoxy resin. Damage was evaluated in terms of sample mass loss and microscopy of the composite surface. For all examples, mass loss was negligible and optical microscopy showed little evidence of surface damage. Surface degradation was discernible under scanning electron microscopy for the larger diameter SHI (≥15mm), with projectile velocity a notable factor in the extent of the damage. Even for large numbers of impacts, there was little noteworthy damage caused by smaller, more prevalent SHI (≤10mm). This suggests that hail is not a direct cause of wind turbine blade erosion

Charles Darwin and the scientific mind

The idea that there exists such a thing as a ‘scientific mind’, or an identifiable ‘psychology of science’, has enjoyed an early twenty-first century revival among some psychologists, and historians have been slow to respond to the implicit challenge this represents to established historical understanding. This article contributes to the reassertion of a contextual reading of the scientific mind by probing Charles Darwin’s understanding of the term, and the self-analysis of his own psychology he undertook in his ‘Recollections of the development of my mind and character’ (1876). Drawing upon a broad range of Darwin’s published and unpublished works, this article argues that Darwin’s understanding of the scientific mind was rooted in his earliest notebooks, and was far more central to his thought than is usually acknowledged. The article further delineates the differences between Darwin’s understanding and that of his half-cousin Francis Galton, and argues for the importance of treating the ‘scientific mind’ as a culturally conditioned construct, rather than as an ahistorical, psychological entity

‘Beyond the facts’: how a US sociologist made John Stuart Mill into a Neo-Malthusian

This article explores the roots of the characterization of John Stuart Mill as a ‘Neo‐Malthusian’. Making extensive use of the Norman E. Himes Papers, held at the Countway Library of Medicine, it shows that Himes, a U.S. sociologist and committed birth control campaigner in the inter‐war period, framed a characterization of Mill that endures to this day. The article demonstrates how and why Himes repeatedly took his arguments ‘beyond the facts’, partly in response to a dispute with the British birth control campaigner Marie Stopes, and established the practice of referring to Mill as a ‘Neo‐Malthusian’. The article concludes by arguing that the term impedes more than it aids our understanding and Mill scholars would benefit from stripping away decades of accreted interpretation