Churchill, Fulton and the Anglo-American special relationship: setting the agenda?

Churchill is often deemed to have failed at Fulton in delivering ‘the crux’ of what he came to secure, namely a special Anglo-American relationship based in both interest and ‘fraternal association’. As other contributions to this special edition demonstrate, there are good grounds for this verdict. However we ask whether, and if so in what ways, Churchill was actually able in and through the Sinews of Peace speech to set the agenda and frame the terms of discussion for the later emergence of a special relationship. To do this we treat the special relationship as a discursive construct and by combining diplomatic history with corpus-assisted discourse studies map discourse features of the Sinews of Peace speech against media discourse on Anglo-American relations in the early 1950s

Creating an Experiential Learning Based Multi-Disciplinary Program

For many years, curriculum development has considered learning outcomes at the program level largely via learning outcomes at the course level. Some programs have modified their designs to use different structures such as condensed courses or project based learning. Recently, there has been an increased interest in experiential learning as a way to facilitate student acquisition of real-world applicable capabilities while enhancing student learning of ‘soft skills’ such as professionalism, communication, and team management. Historically, such engagement including complexities of real-world problems has been accomplished through internships, co-op, capstone courses, or project based learning. In this paper we present an innovative model for experiential curriculum design based on skill requirements and learning outcomes derived from industry needs combined with technology enabled learning. The curriculum has been designed in a highly modular approach to ensure flexibility in student learning pathways to meet the requirements of the work related learning projects that are integrated as part of the program design. The conceptual model of this approach to curriculum design will be presented through a case study of the development of the informatics program at UOIT. Areas of caution are explored to identify recommendations for risk mitigation when developing a program utilizing this type of learning environment. In particular, student selection, technical infrastructure requirements, learning outcome measurement, faculty scheduling, and program management are considered

Beyond essential: Britons and the Anglo-American special relationship

This article assesses the unsuccessful attempt by US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron to rebrand the ties between their countries as ‘the essential relationship’. The failure of that initiative revealed the enduring attachment of ordinary Britons to the notion of a UK-US ‘special relationship’ regardless of how accurately it reflected the changing reality of the two nations’ interactions

The Special Relationship and the Anglo-Iranian oil crisis, 1950–4

The Anglo-Iranian oil crisis of 1950–4 provides an ideal case-study for those interested in the postwar Anglo-American Special Relationship. This article investigates the oil crisis with two purposes in mind: first, to demonstrate how Britain and the United States struggled to adjust their bilateral relations in response to their changing postwar world positions; second, to show just how crucial both countries perceived the Special Relationship to be in the early 1950s. This is done by examining the American decision not to pursue a policy in the Iranian oil crisis that would undermine Britain’s position, despite at times severe Anglo-American tension. It is concluded that the problems created by the changing balance of forces within the Special Relationship were mitigated in Iran by a combination of consanguinity and, more important, the US need for British help in its policy of global containment. In short, Anglo-American policy-makers perceived sufficient mutual need to persuade them to actively preserve and develop the Special Relationship

Anglo-American relations and soft power: transitioning the special relationship

This article argues that British soft power is a hitherto under-recognised factor in explaining the survival and changing character of the Anglo-American special relationship during the so-called long-1970s. First, the long-term interpenetration of UK and US soft power became a shared resource that British and American governments used to cohere their bilateral relations and provided for a ‘common cast of mind’ that facilitated high levels of policy congruence. Second, the particular international and domestic political changes that occurred during the long 1970s elevated the relative importance of soft power and thereby gave the British, within American calculations of mutual utility, a means of offsetting, in part at least, the relative decline of their hard power capabilities

Distribution and Abundance of the Dugong in Gulf of Carpentaria Waters: a basis for cross-jurisdictional conservation planning and management

[Extract] This survey provides the first synopsis of the distribution and abundance of the dugong in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The results of previous surveys of parts of this region in both Queensland and the Northern Territory have been difficult to interpret because of the potentially confounding influences of unpredictable dugong movements between areas within the region

Developing teaching for mathematical resilience in further education

The construct ‘Mathematical Resilience’ [1] has been developed to describe a positive stance towards mathematics; resilient learners develop approaches to mathematical learning which help them to overcome the affective barriers and setbacks that can be part of learning mathematics for many people. A resilient stance towards mathematics can be engineered by a strategic and explicit focus on the culture of learning mathematics within both formal and informal learning environments. As part of that engineering, we have developed the notion of ‘Teaching for Mathematical Resilience’. The work described here is focused on developing teachers who know how explicitly to develop resilient learners of mathematics. Teachers for Mathematical Resilience develop a group culture of ‘can do’ mathematics which works to counter the prevalent culture of mathematics helplessness and mathematics anxiety in the general population when faced with mathematical ideas. This paper discusses the changes in awareness brought about by a one-day course designed to develop ‘teaching for mathematical resilience’. The course presentations ran between November 2015 and July 2016 and recruited participants who work as teachers of numeracy or mathematics in Further Education (FE) institutions in England – predominantly in the Midlands. Many of these teachers were being required to teach beyond their own level of mathematical confidence. The data shows that it is possible within a one day course to increase teachers’ awareness of negative past experiences as a possible cause of difficulty with mathematics; teachers become aware of how patterns of behaviour such as avoidance and disruption may have developed as safe-preservation habits and how mathematics anxiety can be transmitted from teacher to student in a vicious cycle. Teachers are supported to work through personal anxieties towards mathematics in a safe and collaborative environment and to develop elements of personal mathematical resilience and awareness of the affective domain. Thus we have sought to break the cycle of mathematics anxiety by educating teacher awareness. However, we have also found that many UK FE teachers request and would likely benefit from further courses

Search Engine Optimisation in UK news production

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journalism Practice, 5(4), 462 - 477, 2011, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17512786.2010.551020.This paper represents an exploratory study into an emerging culture in UK online newsrooms—the practice of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), which assesses its impact on news production. Comprising a short-term participant observational case study at a national online news publisher, and a series of semi-structured, in-depth interviews with SEO professionals at three further UK media organisations, the author sets out to establish how SEO is operationalised in the newsroom, and what consequences these practices have for online news production. SEO practice is found to be varied and application is not universal. Not all UK news organisations are making the most of SEO even though some publishers take a highly sophisticated approach. Efforts are constrained by time, resources and management support, as well as off-page technical issues. SEO policy is found, in some cases, to inform editorial policy, but there is resistance to the principal of SEO driving decision-making. Several themes are established which call for further research

The Nature of the Secondary Star in the Black Hole X-Ray Transient V616 Mon (=A0620-00)

We have used NIRSPEC on Keck II to obtain $K$-band spectroscopy of the low mass X-ray binary V616 Mon (= A0620$-$00). V616 Mon is the proto-typical soft x-ray transient containing a black hole primary. As such it is important to constrain the masses of the binary components. The modeling of the infrared observations of ellipsoidal variations in this system lead to a derived mass of 11.0 M_{\sun} for the black hole. The validity of this derivation has been called into question due to the possiblity that the secondary star's spectral energy distribution is contaminated by accretion disk emission (acting to dilute the variations). Our new $K$-band spectrum of V616 Mon reveals a late-type K dwarf secondary star, but one that has very weak $^{\rm 12}$CO absorption features. Comparison of V616 Mon with SS Cyg leads us to estimate that the accretion disk supplies only a small amount of $K$-band flux, and the ellipsoidal variations are not seriously contaminated. If true, the derived orbital inclination of V616 Mon is not greatly altered, and the mass of the black hole remains large. A preliminary stellar atmosphere model for the $K$-band spectrum of V616 Mon reveals that the carbon abundance is approximately 50% of the solar value. We conclude that the secondary star in V616 Mon has either suffered serious contamination from the accretion of supernova ejecta that created the black hole primary, or it is the stripped remains of a formerly more massive secondary star, one in which the CNO cycle had been active.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure