The Foxite party and foreign politics, 1806 - 1816

This thesis is a study of the foreign politics of Charles James Fox and his political successors during the final decade of the Napoleonic wars. As such it is an account not only of the closing months of Fox's political life and the thought which moulded the foreign policy of his last government but also an evaluation of his legacy in foreign politics and its effect on the 'Whig' coalition which he willed to posterity. The thesis stops short of treating the mechanics of foreign policy. It is primarily a study of the effect which foreign developments had on the political fortunes of the Foxite-dominated Whig party. I have not tried to sample the views of the ill-defined Whig party as a whole. Instead I have concentrated my efforts on the personalities who determined policy: on the peers who constituted the Foxite hierarchy; on frontbenchers in the Commons; on Fox's oldest supporters both in and out of Parliament; on political allies who disagreed fundamentally with traditional Foxite dogma; and to a lesser extent on those outside the party hierarchy who questioned and sometimes influenced the process of decision-making with their pens. Within this framework, the thesis argues generally that Fox's fragile union with Grenville and Fitzwilliam was merely a tactical manoeuvre designed to reestablish systematic opposition to the Crown, gain office, promote Anglo-French accord, and therefore facilitate de facto Whig unity by neutralizing the issue which had caused the disintegration of the party during the debate on the French Revolution. It argues further that Fox's controversial behaviour in office was geared to the attainment of this object; that his death and failure left his lieutenants burdened with the problems which arose from a tactical coalition with former antagonists; and that the resulting delicate equipoise of agreement which at once maintained and undermined the Grey-Grenville coalition until its collapse during the hundred Days was a product of a fundamental contradiction in Foxite 'principles' which had arisen during the 1790's and which Fox had failed to remedy in 1806. This contradiction pitted the most identifiable feature of Fox's politics between 1803 and 1806— coalition on a principle of 'men before measures' for the purpose of reestablishing systematic opposition— against the unpopular Foxite concept of politics which had broken the Whig party during the 1790's. These arguments, of course, are founded on a contention that Fox's general concept of the French Revolution and the European war continued to exert a powerful influence on Whig councils until the collapse of France's revolutionary government in 1815. The thesis therefore attempts to explain this concept, to display how it influenced the foreign policy of the Ministry of All the Talents, and to establish its continuity by examining the reactions of key statesmen to the ups and downs of the European war, particularly the Spanish Revolution and the subsequent Peninsular War, the collapse of the French Empire, and the events of the Hundred Days

Panel discussion

"The Importance of Being Predictable" by John B. Taylor -- "Monetary Policy Under Uncertainty" by Ben S. Bernanke -- "The Importance of Being Predictable" by William PooleMonetary policy

Panel discussion monetary policy modeling: where are we and where should we be going?

Monetary policy ; Inflation (Finance) ; Econometric models

Physics of the ether

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Replicability of nitrogen recommendations from ramped calibration strips in winter wheat

Ramped calibration strips have been suggested as a way for grain producers to determine nitrogen needs more accurately. The strips use incrementally increasing levels of nitrogen and enable producers to conduct an experiment in each field to determine nitrogen needs. This study determines whether predictions from the program Ramp Analyzer 1.2 are replicable in Oklahoma hard red winter wheat (Triticum aestivum). Predictions are derived from 36 individual strips from on-farm experiments—two pairs of adjacent strips at each of nine winter wheat fields in Canadian County, OK. The two pairs of strips within each field were between 120 and 155 m apart. Each strip was analyzed three times during the 2006–2007 growing season. Nitrogen recommendations from Ramp Analyzer 1.2 are not correlated even for strips that were placed side by side, and recommendations from strips in the same field show no more homogeneity than randomly selected strips throughout the county. The results indicate that ramped calibration strips are unlikely to produce accurate nitrogen requirement predictions at any spatial scale, whether at the county level or for subsections of a single field. In contrast, a procedure that uses only measures from the plot with no nitrogen and the plot with the highest level of nitrogen applied does show replicability. Thus, improvements in the ramped calibration strip technology are needed if it is to become viable.Fertilizer; Nitrogen; Precision agriculture; Ramped calibration strip; Winter wheat

Diamond Jenness (1886-1969)

Canada's most distinguished anthropologist, Dr. Diamond Jenness, formerly Chief of the Division of Anthropology, National Museums of Canada, and Honorary Associate of the Arctic Institute of North America, died peacefully at his home in the Gatineau Hills near Ottawa on 29 November, 1969. He was one of that rapidly-vanishing, virtually extinct kind - the all round anthropologist, who, working seriously, turned out first-class publications in all four major branches of the discipline: ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, and physical anthropology. One must also add a fifth: applied anthropology, a fitting designation for the series of monographs on Eskimo administration in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland which he wrote after his retirement and which were published by the Arctic Institute of North America. ... [In response to an invitation to join Stefansson Arctic Expedition and study Eskimos for three years, Jenness found himself a member of the Southern Party with an assignment to study the Copper Eskimos around Coronation Gulf. These plans were interrupted due to the presence of sea ice.] On 30 September, Stefansson, with his secretary Burt McConnell, Jenness, two Eskimos, and the expedition's photographer G.H. Wilkins (later Sir Hubert Wilkins), left the Karluk near the mouth of the Colville River to hunt caribou and lay in a supply of fresh meat when it had become apparent that the ship, immobilized in the ice, could proceed no further. With two sleds, twelve dogs and food for twelve days the party set out for the mainland, but they never saw the Karluk again, for a week or so later the unfortunate vessel began her final drift westward. This was the inauspicious beginning of Jenness' arctic career. Few young anthropologists have faced such difficulties in beginning field-work in a new and unfamiliar area; yet none, surely, has emerged from the test with a more brilliant record of work accomplished. ... Jenness' first winter's field-work on the Arctic coast of Alaska led to [an] impressive list of publications ... conducted under conditions that many an ethnographer would have found intolerable. ... Scarcely a hint of these personal experiences of his first winter in the Arctic will be found in Jenness' anthropological writings. They were reserved for his retrospective volume Dawn in Arctic Alaska (1957) which he wrote while on a Gugenheim scholarship in 1954, some years after his retirement. ... Jenness' first year in the Arctic ended in July 1914 when the Expedition's schooners left Camden Bay and sailed eastward to Dolphin and Union Strait where he was to meet with another though very different, Eskimo people named by Stefansson the Copper Eskimos, most of whom, before Stefansson worked among them in 1910-1911, had never seen a white man. ... To obtain a faithful picture of the life of the Copper Eskimos Jenness chose an approach that in those days was not often employed by ethnologists. He entered into their life directly, as one of them. He attached himself to an Eskimo family and became the adopted son of Ikpukhuak, one of the foremost hunters and respected leaders of the Puivlik tribe of southwest Victoria Island, and his wife Higilak (Ice House), who was not only proficient in the ordinary and burdensome duties of an Eskimo wife but was also a shaman in her own right, a talent that saved Jenness from a local murder charge. Jenness lived with these people in their snow houses in winter and skin tents in summer, observing and recording the vastly different modes of life according to season. ... Jenness' researches extended far beyond Coronation Gulf and the arctic coast westward. ... Jenness always disclaimed being an archaeologist, yet he made two discoveries that are fundamental to an understanding of Eskimo prehistory - discovery of the Dorset culture in the eastern Arctic, and of the Old Bering Sea, earliest stage of the maritime pattern of Eskimo culture that later spread from northern Alaska to Canada and Greenland to form the principal basis for modern Eskimo culture. ... And so much more. In 1926, Jenness succeeded Edward Sapir as Chief Anthropologist of the National Museum of Canada. ... He developed the Antiquities Legislation that has been so important for the protection of archaeological resources in the Northwest Territories. ... Between 1962 and 1968 the Arctic Institute of North America published his admirable five volumes on Eskimo administration in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These monographs reflect his durable and compassionate concern for Canadian Indians and Eskimos and in them one can find much of the advice that he, for so many decades, provided the Canadian Government. ... [Jenness' accomplishments extend beyond the realm of anthropology and his reputation was both national and international. For his services in the field of anthropology, particularly in connection with the Indian and Eskimo population of Canada, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada.

The Drosophila genome nexus: a population genomic resource of 623 Drosophila melanogaster genomes, including 197 from a single ancestral range population.

Hundreds of wild-derived Drosophila melanogaster genomes have been published, but rigorous comparisons across data sets are precluded by differences in alignment methodology. The most common approach to reference-based genome assembly is a single round of alignment followed by quality filtering and variant detection. We evaluated variations and extensions of this approach and settled on an assembly strategy that utilizes two alignment programs and incorporates both substitutions and short indels to construct an updated reference for a second round of mapping prior to final variant detection. Utilizing this approach, we reassembled published D. melanogaster population genomic data sets and added unpublished genomes from several sub-Saharan populations. Most notably, we present aligned data from phase 3 of the Drosophila Population Genomics Project (DPGP3), which provides 197 genomes from a single ancestral range population of D. melanogaster (from Zambia). The large sample size, high genetic diversity, and potentially simpler demographic history of the DPGP3 sample will make this a highly valuable resource for fundamental population genetic research. The complete set of assemblies described here, termed the Drosophila Genome Nexus, presently comprises 623 consistently aligned genomes and is publicly available in multiple formats with supporting documentation and bioinformatic tools. This resource will greatly facilitate population genomic analysis in this model species by reducing the methodological differences between data sets

Tests of a multichannel photometer based on silicon diode detectors

A breadboard photometer was constructed that demonstrates a precision of 2 times 10 to the 4th power in the laboratory and scintillation-limited performance when used with an 0.5 m aperture telescope. Because the detectors and preamps are not cooled, only stars with m sub v approx. less than 4 are bright enough to allow the photometer to attain a precision of 1 times 10 to the 3rd power for three minute observations with an 0.5 m aperature telescope. Cooling the telescope should allow much fainter stars to be observed. Increasing the aperture of the telescope will allow higher precision and the observation of fainter stars

Comparisons of Speech Anxiety in Basic Public Speaking Courses: Are Intensive or Traditional Semester Courses Better?

Students of public speaking are often asked if a basic public speaking course helped them deal with their fear of public speaking. Comparisons of anxiety levels between students enrolled in traditional 15-week semester courses and those enrolled in intensive courses has received little attention. The purpose of this exploratory, quasi-experimental study was to determine whether students enrolled in intensive public speaking courses reported higher levels of communication apprehension, i.e., speech anxiety. Participants were 722 undergraduate students who completed the Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety instrument. The findings indicated that students enrolled in intensive public speaking courses had significant moderate communication apprehension scores compared to students enrolled in 15-week semester courses. It is argued that the study indicates that there are factors that should be explored in further research on intensive public speaking courses