“In the Eye of the Storm”: A Recollection of Three Days in the Falaise Gap, 19–21 August 1944

These are the memoirs of a Canadian infantryman who was involved in, and survived, the battle of the Falaise Gap, the final phase of the Normandy Campaign, in August 1944. He was a rifleman of 14 Platoon, “C” Company, the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders of Canada. In the author’s own words this account, “is not intended to represent me as being heroic. Far from it. I was terrified most of the time in battle, and eventually ended up a couple of months after St. Lambert as a battle exhaustion casualty. There’s nothing heroic about that. It just happened that I was in St. Lambert at that time, not realizing the importance of the situation until reading about it much later. We low rankers seldom knew what was going on, where we were, where we were going, or what to expect when we got there. It has only been since the war, and with the help of history books, that I have been able to retrace my steps through the campaign and to put names to the places that had no particular meaning at the time -just another place to run in, dig in and prepare for the counterattack.” The Argylls were part of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division, which went to Normandy in July 1944 and relieved the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division just south of Caen. In the battles of early August the Argylls slowly pushed south through the wheat fields, and a determined enemy, suffering heavy casualties in the process. It was obvious that the Normandy campaign was nearing completion, with the American Army running wild further south and west. But the Germans were not giving up easily. As the situation developed, the Americans were advancing northward, and the Canadians were heading south trying to link up and trap the enemy in a massive pocket. The enemy was trying to escape through the few miles that separated the Americans and Canadians, the so-called Falaise Gap. In the centre of the Gap was the small village of St. Lambert-sur-Dives, squarely astride the Germans’ main escape route. It was within this context that the events recalled below took place

Learning unification-based grammars using the Spoken English Corpus

This paper describes a grammar learning system that combines model-based and data-driven learning within a single framework. Our results from learning grammars using the Spoken English Corpus (SEC) suggest that combined model-based and data-driven learning can produce a more plausible grammar than is the case when using either learning style isolation.Comment: 10 page

Relapse of polymyalgia rheumatica following adjuvanted influenza vaccine: A case-based review

Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) is the most common inflammatory rheumatological condition affecting individuals aged >50 years. There have been rare reports of PMR and other vasculitides developing within 3 months of influenza vaccination. Influenza is a major public health issue associated with seasonal increased mortality and intensified health care service use. Annual vaccination is the most effective intervention to prevent influenza, especially in elderly individuals. We report a severe “flare” of PMR in a 70-year-old patient after receiving the adjuvanted trivalent influenza vaccine, as recommended by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisations for this age group in the UK National Health Service in 2018-2019. The adverse event (AE) could be interpreted as the newly described autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA syndrome) as both PMR and ASIA display hyperactive immune responses. Caution is warranted in the use of vaccine adjuvants in patients with PMR with pre-existing imbalance of B and T cell homeostasis. Rare AEs are important to individuals, and personalized medicine means we should move away from “one size fits all” for vaccines, as well as for therapeutics

Evaluating the effectiveness of the Disability Discrimination (NI) Order (2006) duties

This report evaluates the effectiveness of the Disability Discrimination (NI) Order (2006) duties. These duties require public authorities in Northern Ireland to promote positive attitudes towards disabled people and to encourage the participation of disabled people in public life. The duties also require public authorities to produce disability action plans and to report annually on progress towards disability equality. The report provides a framework for evaluation of progress and applies this to provide an assessment of the implementation of these duties up to 2009 and makes recommendations to improve the effectiveness and implementation of the duties

Developing a research method to test a new first-order decision making model for the procurement of public sector major infrastructure

Given global demand for new infrastructure, governments face substantial challenges in funding new infrastructure and simultaneously delivering Value for Money (VfM). The paper begins with an update on a key development in a new early/first-order procurement decision making model that deploys production cost/benefit theory and theories concerning transaction costs from the New Institutional Economics, in order to identify a procurement mode that is likely to deliver the best ratio of production costs and transaction costs to production benefits, and therefore deliver superior VfM relative to alternative procurement modes. In doing so, the new procurement model is also able to address the uncertainty concerning the relative merits of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and non-PPP procurement approaches. The main aim of the paper is to develop competition as a dependent variable/proxy for VfM and a hypothesis (overarching proposition), as well as developing a research method to test the new procurement model. Competition reflects both production costs and benefits (absolute level of competition) and transaction costs (level of realised competition) and is a key proxy for VfM. Using competition as a proxy for VfM, the overarching proposition is given as: When the actual procurement mode matches the predicted (theoretical) procurement mode (informed by the new procurement model), then actual competition is expected to match potential competition (based on actual capacity). To collect data to test this proposition, the research method that is developed in this paper combines a survey and case study approach. More specifically, data collection instruments for the surveys to collect data on actual procurement, actual competition and potential competition are outlined. Finally, plans for analysing this survey data are briefly mentioned, along with noting the planned use of analytical pattern matching in deploying the new procurement model and in order to develop the predicted (theoretical) procurement mode

Solar plasma experiment

Solar plasma experiment by Mariner IV space prob