The evolution of Old and Middle English texts: linguistic form and practices of literacy

The late, great paleographer Malcolm Parkes used to opine that 'the greatest mistake a paleographer makes is to forget the nature of the text being copied'. The axiom is a powerful one that has relevance not simply for the sub-discipline of paleography but also for the wider philological enterprise of which (I would argue) paleography is part. In this paper, I examine a small group of texts -- Lawman's Brut, Ancrene Riwle and Beowulf -- and demonstrate how a focus on the formal characteristics of these texts - their spelling, their punctuation (if any), their paleographical characteristics and their layout -- can be related intimately to their textual function. The discussion articulates with some new directions for philology at the current time, most notably with reference to the burgeoning discipline of historical pragmatics

The inventions of Sir Thomas Urquhart

Perhaps the most famous – or notorious – practitioner of baroque prose in the Scottish literary ‘canon’ is Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty (1611-1660). Urquhart was seen by contemporaries as primarily a humorous writer, a reputation he has sustained, and it is clear from his later critical reception that an element in this reputation derives from his perceived linguistic inventiveness. This inventiveness is suggested by his presence in the top thousand of cited sources in OED. This chapter argues that Urquhart, though undoubtedly egregious in his deployment of Latinate usages in baroque prose, was by no means alone among his contemporaries. Indeed, it seems certain that his first readers, while undoubtedly amused by his writings, would have seen his outputs as not only within a specific prose tradition but in dialogue with numerous contemporary trends in religious, philosophical and scientific thinking. Contemporary readers may well have laughed; but the cognoscenti would also, surely, have discerned alongside the humour the serious and current issues and concerns that informed Urquhart’s ‘curious’ writings. The chapter demonstrates that there are now productive ways of aligning philological research and the historical study of the social networks of the kind with which Urquhart so evidently and profoundly engaged

From secreit script to public print: punctuation, news management and the condemnation of the Earl of Bothwell

The fall from power of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, in 1567 was as dramatic as it was sudden. The survival of documents associated with the event gives us a rare insight into the ways in which texts were adapted for different purposes and readerships. Initially recorded in the manuscript Register of the Acts of the Privy Council of Scotland, versions of these documents subsequently appeared as printed broadsheets for public display in prominent places such as Edinburgh’s Tolbooth next to the kirk of St Giles. They are the first Scottish documents of their kind known to have undergone this process of transition from script to print, and from the comparative privacy of the Privy Council’s Register to the public domain. Whereas the Register was an aide memoire for council use, the printed texts were public, performative acts. As these texts passed from one medium to another, their form and punctuation were changed, mirroring the changing function for which they were repurposed. In this essay, the differences in appearance between these two kinds of text will be shown to align quite precisely with the changing uses of literacy in early modern Scotland

Productivity Trends in the Coal Mining Industry in Canada

The purpose of this report is to uncover the factors behind what has been a very strong productivity performance from the coal mining industry in Canada over the past four decades. It is found that real price movements have had a substantial impact on productivity growth in the coal mining industry in Canada. The real price of coal increased sharply in the 1970s due to higher demand caused by the oil price shock. This increased the profitability of sites of marginal quality and thereby lead to operations on less productive sites than those in production at that point. This had the effect of lowering the average productivity of the overall industry. However, since the 1970s, the real price of coal has fallen steadily, reversing this effect and hence contributing to the high productivity growth of the 1980s and 1990s. Another factor in this impressive productivity performance, at least in the 1980s, was the gradual closing of underground coal mines and the concentration of production on open surface mines. Surface mines typically have higher levels of labour productivity than underground mines, so this effect reinforced the price effect in increasing the average productivity of the industry. The 1990s saw the computerization of several stages of the production process, from site planning to extraction. Despite having the image of an old-fashioned industry, the coal mining industry in Canada is actually among the most intensive users of advanced technologies, and this certainly appears to have contributed to the industry’s strong productivity performance as well.Coal Mining, Coal Industry, Mining, Mining Industry, Canada, Productivity, Productivity Growth

Schooling effects on subsequent university performance : evidence for the UK university population

From a unique data-set identifying the school attended prior to university for a full cohort of UK university students, we examine the determinants of final degree classification. We exploit the detailed school-level information and focus on the influence of school characteristics, such as school type, on subsequent performance of students at university. We estimate that, on average, a male (female) graduate who attended an Independent school is 6.5 (5.4) percentage points less likely to obtain a `good' degree than is a student who attended an LEA (that is, state-sector) school, ceteris paribus. We also find considerable variation around this average figure across different Independent schools. We find that, for males, the variation in the probability of attaining a `good' degree across schools can largely be explained by the level of school fees

Baryonic R-parity violation and its running

Baryonic R-parity violation arises naturally once Minimal Flavor Violation (MFV) is imposed on the supersymmetric flavor sector at the low scale. At the same time, the yet unknown flavor dynamics behind MFV could take place at a very high scale. In this paper, we analyze the renormalization group (RG) evolution of this scenario. We find that low-scale MFV is systematically reinforced through the evolution, with the R-parity violating couplings exhibiting infrared fixed points. Intriguingly, we also find that if holomorphy is imposed on MFV at some scale, it is preserved by the RG evolution. Furthermore, low-scale holomorphy is a powerful infrared attractor for a large class of non-holomorphic scenarios. Therefore, supersymmetry with minimally flavor violating baryon number violation at the low scale, especially in the holomorphic case but not only, is viable and resilient under the RG evolution, and should constitute a leading contender for the physics beyond the Standard Model waiting to be discovered at the LHC.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, to appear in JHE

A world of information

The National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC) functions, on behalf of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), as the national collection of geoscientific environmental data and information. It contains the most comprehensive collection of information on the surface and subsurface of Great Britain and the surrounding continental shelf. The collection has been gathered by our staff and their predecessors, over more than 175 years, along with information deposited by industry and academics

Armed violence and poverty in Northern Kenya: a mini case study for the Armed Violence and Poverty Initiative

YesThis report on Northern Kenya is one of 13 case studies (all of which can be found at www.bradford.ac.uk/cics). This research draws upon secondary data sources including existing research studies, reports and evaluations commissioned by operational agencies, and early warning and survey data where this has been available. These secondary sources have been complemented by interviews with government officers, aid policymakers and practitioners, researchers and members of the local population. The authors would like to thank Patta Scott-Villiers for comments on an earlier draft. The analysis and opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policy of DFID or the UK government

SCHOOLING EFFECTS ON SUBSEQUENT UNIVERSITY PERFORMANCE : EVIDENCE FOR THE UK UNIVERSITY POPULATION

From a unique data-set identifying the school attended prior to university for a full cohort of UK university students, we examine the determinants of final degree classification. We exploit the detailed school-level information and focus on the influence of school characteristics, such as school type, on subsequent performance of students at university. We estimate that, on average, a male (female) graduate who attended an Independent school is 6.5 (5.4) percentage points less likely to obtain a `good' degree than is a student who attended an LEA (that is, state-sector) school, ceteris paribus. We also find considerable variation around this average figure across different Independent schools. We find that, for males, the variation in the probability of attaining a `good' degree across schools can largely be explained by the level of school fees.Independent schools ; Degree Performance ; School fees

Testing for seasonal unit roots in heterogeneous panels

This paper uses the approach of Im, Pesaran and Shin (2003) to propose seasonal unit root tests for dynamic heterogeneous panels based on the means of the individuals HEGY test statistics. The standardised t-bar and F-bar statistics are simply averages of the HEGY tests across groups. These statistics converge to standard normal variateHeterogeneous dynamic panels, Monte Carlo, seasonal unit roots