"Well-Dispos'd Savages": Elite Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Writers in eighteenth-century Britain catered to, and helped create, public fascination with the brazen, sometimes illicit, often violent exploits of elite and aristocratic men. Literary critics have seen this elite male figure as part of an outmoded order superseded over the course of the century by the rising British middle class. Debauched aristocratic characters are often reformed over the course of eighteenth-century narratives, reflecting a larger societal shift in values towards polite restraint. As expressed in my dissertation's title phrase, however, many of the period's writers develop elite male characters whose behaviors and self-presentation blur those very boundaries between oppositional categories, like savagery and civilization, on which both Enlightenment theories of human progress and polite culture's prescriptions for decorum were presumed to rest. Through an examination of this paradoxical figure in novelistic, dramatic, and autobiographical literature, my dissertation demonstrates that the oft-repeated reform-of-the-rake narrative calls attention to obstacles and resistance to the ascendancy of a middle-class culture, not to the inevitability of its rise. Each chapter centers on a site that is accessible to a larger public only through literary or dramatic accounts, including the club, the elite school, the court, and the overseas estate. Chapter One, "`Our imperial reign': Addison, Steele, Gay and the London Mohocks," examines writings about a gang of rakish gentlemen rumored to prowl the streets of Augustan London. Chapter Two, "Schools for Scandal: Elite Education and Eighteenth-Century Narrative," uncovers a relationship between key mid-century novels and a longstanding debate about elite schooling. The final two chapters trace the influence of late-eighteenth-century discourses of liberty and sensibility on constructions of elite masculinity. Chapter Three, "Command Performance: Boswell's Libertine Diplomacy," focuses on the journals and travelogues of James Boswell, a self-professed libertine who strove, with mixed results, to restrain his appetite for power and pleasure. Chapter Four, "A `strong transition of place': Cultural Encounter and the reform plot in Sydney Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl," offers a new framework in which to read the genre of the national tale by shifting the critical lens from the novel's Anglo-Irish marriage plot to a parallel plot of intersecting and competing masculinities

Study of yield components under heat stress conditions in wheat

High temperature tolerance can be characterised by measuring various plant productivity traits in different developmental stages. The present work investigated the effect of exposure to high temperature (30-35°C) at first node appearance, during early embryo development and in the grain-filling stage on the yield parameters of two winter wheat varieties. Periods of high temperature had diverse effects on wheat plants in different phenophases. The greatest differences between the various developmental stages were found for grain number, grain yield and thousand-kernel weight. Heat stress was demonstrated to have the least effect on total grain number and number of grains per spikelet on the main spike during the grain-filling period. The most pronounced reductions in the traits examined were detected when heat stress was applied during the early embryo development stage

Effect of elevated atmospheric CO2 level on the abiotic and biotic stress tolerance of cereals

Abstract Effect of elevated CO2 level (EC) was studied on the tolerance of cereals to elevated temperature and drought and on the resistance of wheat to fungal diseases. In general, elevated growth temperature did not affect final grain size, thus having less harmful effects than heat stress or drought during grain-filling. The plants subjected to low water supply levels or elevated temperature had higher biomass and grain yield at EC than at the ambient level. Susceptible wheat varieties were, however, usually more prone to diseases when grown at EC, while resistant varieties remained resistant even at EC

Seedling Resistance to Stagonospora nodorum Blotch in Wheat Genotypes

In two independent experiments set up in the greenhouse the seedling resistance to Stagonospora nodorum blotch was investigated in 92 varieties, breeding lines and genotypes with a known genetic background. The greatest area under the disease progress curve calculated from lesion type was 37.06, while in the case of the most resistant genotype this value was 0.38. Many of the lines and varieties bred in Martonvásár proved to have excellent resistance in terms of both percentage of infected leaf area and lesion type. Observations indicate that, depending on the aim of the experiment, the efficient selection of breeding lines is possible in the seedling stage either on the basis of the area under the disease progress curve calculated for lesion types, or on the basis of lesion types scored 7, 11 or 14 days after inoculation

Hatékony vízfelhasználás a fenntartható gabonatermesztés kulcsa

A szántóföldi termesztés egyik legfontosabb limitáló tényezője az időjárás, mely meghatározza a termésmennyiséget és annak minőségét is, ezen keresztül a termelői munka jövedelmezőségét. A csapadék mennyisége és a hőmérséklet alakulása az a két legfontosabb éghajlati tényező, melynek hosszú távú módosulásai, valamint szélsőséges értékei befolyásolhatják leginkább a szántóföldi gazdálkodást

Cluster size distributions in gas jets for different nozzle geometries

Cluster size distributions were investigated in case of different nozzle geometries in argon and xenon using Rayleigh scattering diagnostics. Different nozzle geometries result in different behaviour, therefore both spatial- and temporal cluster size distributions were studied to obtain a well-characterized cluster target. It is shown that the generally used Hagena scaling can result in a significant deviation from the observed data and the behaviour cannot be described by a single material condensation parameter. The results along with the nanoplasma model applied to the data of previous high harmonic generation experiments allow the independent measurement of cluster size and cluster density.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Környezeti stresszek és az emelt légköri CO2-koncentráció hatása a gabonafélék antioxidáns enzimrendszerének működésére = Effect of environmental stresses and CO2 concentration on antioxidant enzyme activity.

A pályázatban a gabonafélék antioxidáns enzimeinek működését vizsgáltuk természetes és mesterséges körülmények között. Szántóföldön az időjárási tényezők közül a szárazságnak volt a legmarkánsabb hatása az antioxidáns enzimrendszerre, míg a növénybetegségek előfordulása és a fertőzések súlyossága nem mutatott szoros összefüggést az enzimek aktivitásának változásával. A szárazabb 2008-as évben a levélbetegségek kevésbé fertőztek, a kataláz (CAT), aszkorbát peroxidáz (APX ) és a glutation reduktáz aktivitása nőtt. A fitotroni kísérletek eredményei alapján megállapítottuk, hogy a fotoszintézis intenzitása szoros kapcsolatban volt a talajnedvesség szint csökkenésével, és jól jelezte az adott genotípus stressztűrő képességét. Az antioxidáns enzimaktivitás a szárazság hatására a szárbaindulás és érés idején változott meg a legnagyobb mértékben. A fejlődés korai szakaszában a magas CO2-koncentráció a stresszhatást mérsékelte, alacsonyabb antioxidáns enzim aktivitást eredményezett. Az éréskor alkalmazott emelt CO2-szint az enzimaktivitás fokozásával járult hozzá a kialakult stresszállapot negatív hatásainak mérsékléséhez. Az antioxidáns enzimrendszer magasabb aktivitása valószínűsíti az adott genotípus jobb stressztűrő képességét. A kevésbé stressztűrő fajták relatíve nagy aktivitásváltozással reagáltak a szárazságra, de antioxidáns enzimműködésük vízmegvonás hatására sem érte el a stresszmentes feltételek között nevelt, nagyon jó rezisztenciájú genotípusokét. | Within the present project, antioxidant enzyme activities were studied in cereals under natural and artificial conditions. Among weather elements, drought had the most noticeable effect on the antioxidant enzyme system, while the changes in the antioxidant enzyme activities were not closely related to the occurrence and severity of diseases. In 2008, with low soil moisture contents, leaf diseases were less virulent and activities of Catalase, Ascorbate peroxidase and Glutathione reductase increased. According to the phytotron experiments, intensity of photosynthesis was found to be closely related to decreases in the soil water level and it indicated well the stress tolerance ability of a genotype. Antioxidant enzyme activities changed most due to water stress during the stem elongation phase and grain-filling. Elevated CO2 level mitigated the effect of stress in the young developmental phase resulting in a lower antioxidant enzyme activity level. At the grain-filling stage it reduced the negative effects of stress conditions via enhancing the enzyme activities. It was also found that higher general activities of antioxidant enzymes might indicate that a genotype has better stress tolerance. Sensitive varieties had relatively higher increases in activity due to water withdrawal but even at their highest levels the antioxidant enzyme activities were lower than those under normal conditions in genotypes with good resistance

Investigation of parametric instabilities in femtosecond laser-produced plasmas

Ultrahigh-intensity lasers are fundamental tools in modern physics. Their fast evolution over the last 15 years [1] started with the invention of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) [2]. This technique opened a new window to the investigation of light-matter interactions. The CPA technique made it possible to generate much shorter laser pulses down to the femtosecond regime with laser peak powers reaching the 1–1000 terawatt level. Nowadays the most of the ultrahigh intensity lasers in the world are applying this method. One of these lasers is the Jena 12 TW laser [3]. These lasers can be focussed down to a few micrometers and enormous intensities up to 1021 W/cm2 can be reached. At these intensities the electric field exceeds many times the binding energy of electrons in an atom. After a plasma is formed, the electrons oscillate at relativistic velocities in these fields [4]. The interaction of ultrahigh-intensity laser pulses with plasmas became a central point of the investigations [5]. There is a great variety of applications of these plasmas from particle acceleration, generation of electromagnetic waves to inertial confinement fusion. There is a large body of work about laser-plasma based electron acceleration [6]. It was suggested originally in underdense plasmas by Tajima and Dawson [7]. One type of these accelerators, the laser wakefield accelerator, is based on the generation of electron plasma waves and the electrostatic fields of these waves accelerates the electrons [7]