The Cultural History of Modern Britain: Some Methodological Reflections

Paper by Martin J. Wiene

Pieter C. Spierenburg, Written in blood. Fatal attraction in Enlightenment Amsterdam

Twice within a decade, in 1766 and 1775, women were murdered in Amsterdam out of an excessive love. Are these «two cases of lethal passion in the age of Enlightenment,» as Pieter Spierenburg, author of a number of important works on the history of crime and punishment, calls them, worth the intensive scrutiny of the historian? In this book he makes a convincing case that they are. The genre of «microhistory» that has become well-established in recent years has focused predominantly on crimes ..

Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England 1750-1900

The first edition of this work, bringing together for the first time the findings of specialized scholarship in a concise overview of the subject, immediately became a standard reference. In less than a decade, the large amount of scholarly work in the decade since has called forth a revised edition, one which maintains the work's position as an indispensable introduction to the field. Like its predecessor, this edition provides not only authoritative brief summaries of specialized research (..

Exact expression for the diffusion propagator in a family of time-dependent anharmonic potentials

We have obtained the exact expression of the diffusion propagator in the time-dependent anharmonic potential $V(x,t)={1/2}a(t)x^2+b\ln x$. The underlying Euclidean metric of the problem allows us to obtain analytical solutions for a whole family of the elastic parameter a(t), exploiting the relation between the path integral representation of the short time propagator and the modified Bessel functions. We have also analyzed the conditions for the appearance of a non-zero flow of particles through the infinite barrier located at the origin (b<0).Comment: RevTex, 19 pgs. Accepted in Physical Review

What do hospital decision-makers in Ontario, Canada, have to say about the fairness of priority setting in their institutions?

BACKGROUND: Priority setting, also known as rationing or resource allocation, occurs at all levels of every health care system. Daniels and Sabin have proposed a framework for priority setting in health care institutions called 'accountability for reasonableness', which links priority setting to theories of democratic deliberation. Fairness is a key goal of priority setting. According to 'accountability for reasonableness', health care institutions engaged in priority setting have a claim to fairness if they satisfy four conditions of relevance, publicity, appeals/revision, and enforcement. This is the first study which has surveyed the views of hospital decision makers throughout an entire health system about the fairness of priority setting in their institutions. The purpose of this study is to elicit hospital decision-makers' self-report of the fairness of priority setting in their hospitals using an explicit conceptual framework, 'accountability for reasonableness'. METHODS: 160 Ontario hospital Chief Executive Officers, or their designates, were asked to complete a survey questionnaire concerning priority setting in their publicly funded institutions. Eight-six Ontario hospitals completed this survey, for a response rate of 54%. Six close-ended rating scale questions (e.g. Overall, how fair is priority setting at your hospital?), and 3 open-ended questions (e.g. What do you see as the goal(s) of priority setting in your hospital?) were used. RESULTS: Overall, 60.7% of respondents indicated their hospitals' priority setting was fair. With respect to the 'accountability for reasonableness' conditions, respondents indicated their hospitals performed best for the relevance (75.0%) condition, followed by appeals/revision (56.6%), publicity (56.0%), and enforcement (39.5%). CONCLUSIONS: For the first time hospital Chief Executive Officers within an entire health system were surveyed about the fairness of priority setting practices in their institutions using the conceptual framework 'accountability for reasonableness'. Although many hospital CEOs felt that their priority setting was fair, ample room for improvement was noted, especially for the enforcement condition

Spectral age modelling of the 'Sausage' cluster radio relic

CIZA J2242.8+5301 is a post-core passage, binary merging cluster that hosts a large, thin, arc-like radio relic, nicknamed the 'Sausage', tracing a relatively strong shock front. We perform spatially resolved spectral fitting to the available radio data for this radio relic, using a variety of spectral ageing models, with the aim of finding a consistent set of parameters for the shock and radio plasma. We determine an injection index of 0.77(-0.02)(+0.03) for the relic plasma, significantly steeper than was found before. Standard particle acceleration at the shock front implies a Mach number M = 2.90(-0.13)(+0.10), which now matches X-ray measurements. The shock advance speed is v(shock) approximate to 2500 km s(-1), which places the core passage of the two subclusters 0.6-0.8 Gyr ago. We find a systematic spectral age increase from 0 at the northern side of the relic up to similar to 60 Myr at similar to 145 kpc into the downstream area, assuming a 0.6 nT magnetic field. Under the assumption of freely ageing electrons after acceleration by the 'Sausage' shock, the spectral ages are hard to reconcile with the shock speed derived from X-ray and radio observations. Re-acceleration or unusually efficient transport of particle in the downstream area and line-of-sight mixing could help explain the systematically low spectral agesPeer reviewe

Magnetic Field Amplification in Galaxy Clusters and its Simulation

We review the present theoretical and numerical understanding of magnetic field amplification in cosmic large-scale structure, on length scales of galaxy clusters and beyond. Structure formation drives compression and turbulence, which amplify tiny magnetic seed fields to the microGauss values that are observed in the intracluster medium. This process is intimately connected to the properties of turbulence and the microphysics of the intra-cluster medium. Additional roles are played by merger induced shocks that sweep through the intra-cluster medium and motions induced by sloshing cool cores. The accurate simulation of magnetic field amplification in clusters still poses a serious challenge for simulations of cosmological structure formation. We review the current literature on cosmological simulations that include magnetic fields and outline theoretical as well as numerical challenges.Comment: 60 pages, 19 Figure

"The extreme penalty of the law": mercy and the death penalty as aspects of state power in colonial Nyasaland, c. 1903-47

Open access article.Capital punishment was the pinnacle of the colonial judicial system and its use of state violence, but has previously been neglected as a topic of historical research in Africa. This article is based on the case files and legal records of over 800 capital trials – predominantly for murder – dating between 1900 and 1947. It outlines the functioning of the legal system in Nyasaland and the tensions between “violence” and “humanitarianism” in the use and reform of the death penalty. Capital punishment was a political penalty as much as a judicial punishment, with both didactic and deterrent functions: it operated through mercy and the sparing of condemned lives as well as through executions. Mercy in Nyasaland was consistent with colonial political objectives and cultural values: it was decided not only on the facts of cases, but according to British conceptions of “justice”, “order”, “criminality”, and “African” behaviour. This article analyses the use of mercy in Nyasaland to provide a lens on the nature of colonial governance, and the tensions between African and colonial understandings of violence.Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) and the Beit Fund, University of Oxfor