Music and Persecution

Psalm 96:1-6, Luke 21:7-1

Reminiscence of John Muir by Whitehead, James

Emporia, Kansas, March 7, 1917. Mr. William Fredrick Bade, 323 Marlborough St, Boston, Mass. My Dear Sir:- Your letter acknowledging receipt of John Muir matter received thia a-m- The paper containing article- Recollections of John Muir must have gone astray as I mailed it myself. I send you in envelope another copy as you will be more sure to get it in this way. But for the disclosures of John Muir his fathers severity with his children would never have been known. So far as I know, and I lived in that neighborhood for 30 years, no one thought or dreamed of Mr. Muir\u27s punishing his children as John afterwards claimed he did. The difference between us was we told others about it, the Muir children never did, they bore their puishment in silence. This in my judgement was the reason his brother David sought to restrain him. Apropos to this - Ploubet in his Notes on the International S.S. Lessons for 1915 has this to say relative to The Solomon method & its application to John Muir-Lesson Fen.21.,1915 on The Death of Eli and his Sons He that apareth the rod hateth his son , is as true to day as it ever was, if rod is interpreted as not merely a switch but as any kind of wise punishment. The famous naturalist, JOHN MUIR in his autobiography, represents his Scotch father as greatly overdoing the rod business. But JOHN MUIR turned out to be a wonderfully fine Man. — Prefaced with the remark- The most of those who go astray from religious not all, could have been paved by wise restraint and punishment. You may have been told-though it nay not be of value or pertinent to your plan -Of Mr. Muirs investing largely in books, religious, & his traversing that entire country with horse & buggy and leaving them in the home of farmers who wore unable to purchase & after a stated period going over the same route collecting the same. The years passed on, the Muir family had scattered, one or two of the younger girls alone remained at home, so Mr. Muir sold the place known as The Hickory Hill Farm . A sale was called at which the stock, farming impliments and part of the household furniture was offered for sale. An imense throng gathered. During the sale Mr. Muir stood near the auctioneer, if in his zeal to make good sale he mistated the facts Mr. Muir would say in his scotch dialect Na, Na, mon tell the truth, tell the truth, dinna lie, it\u27l no pay, its an auld horse ye\u27re seeling noo . A neighbor who had bought a horse asked me to accompany him when he went for the same, & some corn he had purchased also - Mr. Muir was directing the delivery of the goods or articles purchased. An old scotchman named John was weighing the grain, Mr M. happened to be near when John was, he thought, scrimping on the weight- put on another ear John, put on another ear, its an aufa sin John, an aufa sin ta gie licht weight . And that to when the scales balanced & the weight correct. John as if to get even or the unmerited rebuke would put on two instead of one ear, at which Mr. Muir nodded approval & walked away. And it was from this man John Muir got his honesty & desire for a square deal . It characterised Daniel Muir in ALL his dealings with his fellow man- Whlle this may not be of intront I take the liberty of submitting the same for your personal benefit & inforroation- Trusting you may receive thia letter with inclosure, (I would ask also, a list of books the publication of which you have supervised) I am very Sincerely Yours, James Whitehea

Investigating the impacts of urbanization on soil ecology in Berlin, Germany

Urban landscapes, whilst only accounting for a small proportion of total land surface, are now home to the majority of humanity. The functioning of soils within these systems is therefore highly influential for human wellbeing; these soils mediate flood risk, cycle nutrients, and determine whether healthy plant life can be supported. This plant life in turn brings not only aesthetic benefits to cities, but can also yield food and boost the mental wellbeing of inhabitants. These soils are also the basis of urban agriculture and provide aesthetically pleasing spaces for cultural events. This thesis examines three different aspects of soil ecology across a series of urban and peri-urban grasslands, scattered across Berlin and its neighbouring federal state, Brandenburg. Due to their varied surroundings, these sites represent a gradient of urbanization. Throughout this thesis Principal Component Analysis is used to extract axes of variation from a substantial dataset of environmental parameters, in order to make these grasslands practically comparable. The most significant axis of variation within this environmental data is consistently shown to be a selection of urban-related parameters. Examples being the degree to which soil is sealed, the proximity of roads, and the local population density. We term the axis “urbanity” and use it as a metric to score how urban a grassland is. The first aspect of these soils that we explore is their physico-chemical properties. This investigation, presented in Chapter One of this thesis, consisted of a selection of field and laboratory tests. In-situ, we used an infiltrometer to measure the infiltration rate of the soil, and ex-situ we used wet-sieving to establish the percentage of water stable aggregates within samples, and dry sieving to establish the particle sizes present. Finally, we used the molarity-of-ethanol-drop method to investigate levels of hydrophobicity present in soil samples. By using the aforementioned urbanity metric, we were able to understand how these properties were impacted by urbanization. We found that the most urban soils tended to have lower percentages of stable aggregates, larger particle sizes, and more rapid infiltration rates. In Chapter Two of this thesis, we explore the fungal colonisation levels of plant roots, again using samples taken from our study sites. By staining short sections of root, and then examining them under a microscope, it was possible to establish colonisation rates of both arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and non-arbuscular filamentous fungi. We also examined the degree of root-hair presence on roots. Again, we compared these parameters to the urbanity score for each site to explore how urbanization impacted root colonisation and morphology. We found that roots in the most urban soils had increased levels of colonisation by non-arbuscular filamentous fungi and higher numbers of root hairs. Finally, in Chapter Three, we use molecular techniques to explore how microbial communities changed across our study sites. We used high-throughput illumina sequencing to record the bacterial, fungal, and cercozoan communities, and then used advanced statistical techniques to investigate how the community composition and species richness of these groups shifted across our urban gradient. We also considered the distribution of some highly abundant species and identified potential urban-indicator species. We found that fungal richness was increased at the most urban sites, and that a variety of environmental variables, including urbanity, drove microbial community composition.Städtische Landschaften machen zwar nur einen kleinen Teil der gesamten Landfläche aus, beherbergen aber die Mehrheit der Menschheit. Das Funktionieren der Böden in diesen Systemen ist daher von großer Bedeutung für das menschliche Wohlergehen. Diese Böden beeinflussen das Hochwasserrisiko und den Nährstoffkreislauf und bestimmen, ob eine gesunde Pflanzenwelt gedeihen kann. Dieses Pflanzenleben wiederum bringt nicht nur ästhetische Vorteile (für die Städte) mit sich, sondern kann auch Nahrungsmittel liefern und das psychische Wohlbefinden der Bewohner*innen fördern. Diese Böden sind auch die Grundlage der städtischen Landwirtschaft und bieten ästhetisch ansprechende Räume für kulturelle Veranstaltungen. In dieser Arbeit werden drei verschiedene Aspekte der Bodenökologie auf einer Reihe von städtischen und stadtnahen Grünlandflächen untersucht, die über Berlin und das benachbarte Bundesland Brandenburg verstreut sind. Aufgrund ihrer unterschiedlichen Umgebung stellen diese Standorte einen Gradienten der Urbanisierung dar. In dieser Arbeit wird die Hauptkomponentenanalyse verwendet, um Variationsachsen aus einem umfangreichen Datensatz von Umweltparametern zu extrahieren, was den praktischen Vergleich dieser Grünlandflächen ermöglicht. Die signifikanteste Variationsachse innerhalb dieser Umweltdaten ist nachweislich eine Auswahl stadtbezogener Parameter. Beispiele hierfür sind der Grad der Bodenversiegelung, die Nähe von Straßen und die lokale Bevölkerungsdichte. Wir bezeichnen diese Achse als "Urbanität" und verwenden sie als Maßstab, um zu bewerten, wie urban ein Grünland ist. Der erste Aspekt der Böden, die wir untersuchen, sind ihre physikalisch-chemischen igenschaften. Diese Untersuchung, die im ersten Kapitel der Arbeit vorgestellt wird, besteht aus einer Reihe von Feldund Labortests. In-situ haben wir mit einem Infiltrometer die Infiltrationsrate des Bodens gemessen, ex-situ haben wir durch Nasssiebung den Prozentsatz der wasserstabilen Aggregate in den Proben ermittelt und durch Trockensiebung die vorhandenen Partikelgrößen bestimmt. Schließlich untersuchten wir mit der Molaritäts-Ethanol-Tropfen-Methode den Grad der Hydrophobie in den Bodenproben. Durch die Verwendung der oben erwähnten Urbanitätsmetrik konnten wir nachvollziehen, wie sich die Urbanisierung auf diese Eigenschaften auswirkt. Wir stellten fest, dass die meisten städtischen Böden tendenziell einen geringeren Anteil an stabilen Aggregaten, größere Partikelgrößen und schnellere Infiltrationsraten aufweisen. Im zweiten Kapitel dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir anhand von Proben aus unseren Untersuchungsgebieten den Grad der Pilzbesiedlung von Pflanzenwurzeln. Durch das Färben kurzer Wurzelabschnitte und die anschließende Untersuchung unter dem Mikroskop konnten wir die Besiedlungsraten sowohl von arbuskulären Mykorrhizapilzen als auch von nicht-arbuskulären Pilzen ermitteln. Des Weiteren untersuchten wir Wurzelhaare. Auch hier verglichen wir diese Parameter mit dem Urbanitätswert für jeden Standort, um zu untersuchen, wie sich die Urbanisierung auf die Wurzelbesiedlung und die Morphologie auswirkt. Wir stellten fest, dass die Wurzeln in den am stärksten urbanen Böden stärker von nicht-arbuskulären Fadenpilzen besiedelt waren und eine höhere Anzahl von Wurzelhaaren aufwiesen. In Kapitel drei untersuchten wir schließlich mithilfe molekularer Methoden, wie sich die mikrobiellen Lebensgemeinschaften an unseren Untersuchungsstandorten veränderten. Wir verwendeten Hochdurchsatz-Illumina-Sequenzierung, um die Bakterien-, Pilz- und Cercozoa-Gemeinschaften zu erfassen und untersuchten dann mit geeigneten statistischen Verfahren, wie sich die Zusammensetzung der Gemeinschaft und der Artenreichtum dieser Gruppen über unseren urbanen Gradienten hinweg veränderten. Wir untersuchten auch die Verteilung einiger sehr häufiger Arten und identifizierten potenzielle Stadtindikatorarten. Wir fanden heraus, dass der Pilzreichtum an den am stärksten urbanen Standorten erhöht war und dass eine Vielzahl von Umweltvariablen, einschließlich der Urbanität, die Zusammensetzung der mikrobiellen Gemeinschaft beeinflusste

The Production of Pairs of Isolated Photons at Higher Orders in QCD

In this thesis, we consider the corrections to the production of a pair of isolated photons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which arise at Next-to-Next-to-Leading-Order (NNLO) in QCD, and Next-to-Leading-Order (NLO) in the electroweak theory. These corrections are calculated through the antenna subtraction formalism, and implemented in the parton-level Monte Carlo program NNLOJET. This calculation is then applied to a study of the theoretical and phenomenological issues which drive the apparent tension between prior theoretical predictions at this order, and LHC data taken with the ATLAS detector at 8 TeV. In particular, we focus upon the issue of photon isolation, presenting the first calculation of the diphoton process with ‘hybrid isolation’, a compromise between the theoretical and experimental constraints upon predictions and measurements of photonic final-states. We further consider the consequences of another theoretical choice, the renormalisation and factorisation scales at which the calculation is made. We find that these two theoretical choices act in concert to generate the tension between prediction and data, and show that reasonable alternatives can lead to excellent agreement. We conclude with an application of the same approach to preliminary 13 TeV ATLAS data, again finding excellent agreement