Northumberland at War

At the Battle of Towton in 1461 the Lancastrian forces of Henry VI were defeated by the Yorkist forces of Edward IV. However Henry VI, with his wife, son and a few knights, fled north and found sanctuary in Scotland, where, in exchange for the town of Berwick, the Scots granted them finance, housing and troops. Henry was therefore able to maintain a presence in Northumberland and his supporters were able to claim that he was in fact as well as in theory sovereign resident in Northumberland. For three years and four months he was able to be maintained in this state and to offer a real challenge to Edward IV. This thesis seeks to answer the question, ‘how was it possible that the Lancastrian presence survived for such a long time?’ This under-researched episode in English history is the subject of this dissertation. It examines the lack of zest of Henry VI and how his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and some of her knights, notably Sir Ralph Percy and Henry, Duke of Somerset, made up for this by bravery and resource. It examines the lacklustre performance of the Scots and the reluctance of the French to get fully involved in England’s most northern county. It shows that the claim of almost all historians that Northumberland was a Lancastrian county is altogether false and that the number of local people who were involved in the fighting was in fact very small. This dissertation interrogates the secondary sources and tests them against both the primary sources and the logistical possibilities and restrictions of fifteenth-century warfare. The result is a retelling of a familiar story with surprising results

Content uniformity of intact pharmaceutical tablets by transmission near-infrared spectroscopy.

Content Uniformity (CU) testing assures the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) content within individual low dose units are within defined specifications. Primary techniques such as high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) are typically employed for CU testing, where the API is separated from the otherwise interfering excipient matrix. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a rapid, non-destructive technique, where samples are analysed 'as is' and the resulting spectra usually contain many overlapping peaks due to interfering excipients. It is therefore a potential challenge to use NIRS for CU testing. Computer simulations showing the effect of product and analytical variation indicated that 0.1% of tablet batches at nominal potency would fail the British and United States Pharmacopoeial CU tests if the combined error of production variation and analytical precision are greater than 5.05% and 4.84% respectively. Transmission NIRS was evaluated for CU testing of a hormone steroid in single intact tablets (17.64% to 2.94% m/m) utilising development scale batches for calibration. Although measurements of an independent test sets gave prediction errors of < 2.5% RSD, a limited number of batches for calibration resulted in large relative errors at lower active concentrations. However, it was demonstrated for low dose Norvasc® tablets containing 2.5% m/m active that a transmission NIRS CU assay can be developed with relative prediction error of 1.44% RSD where there was sufficient inherent batch variation and specificity. A transmission NIRS method was transferred between NIRS instruments for the CU testing of Feldene® 20 mg Zydis® tablets (37.7% m/m Piroxicam) with a relative prediction error of around 0.7%. Measurements of an independent test set gave prediction errors < 1.3% RSD. Finally, a transmission NIRS conformance procedure was successfully developed for the in-process API content assurance within single Viagra® 50 mg tablets. This conformance method can be implemented rapidly at-line in analytical technology philosophy

What Led Jesus to be Called the Son of God? An Historical Investigation of how an Appellation of Alexander the Great and of the Roman Emperors came to be used of Jesus.

Abstract of a Master of Letters Degree, Durham University The Reverend Canon William Ernest Lionel Broad M.A., Durham University By 100 CE the principal appellation of Jesus of Nazareth had become ’Son of God’; a title of such importance to his followers that one of their principle activities for the succeeding 350 years was to define its meaning. Yet this dissertation maintains that widespread belief that the title originates in the Hebrew Scriptures is misplaced. Investigation of Jewish literature leads to the discovery that the title ‘Son of God’ was seldom used in it and never in such a way as to justify it becoming Jesus’ most significant appellation. The aim of my thesis is to examine where else in the ancient world the appellation ‘Son of God’ was used, and, when it was used, to see if it could provide the basis for describing Jesus by this title. The objective of the dissertation is to establish that the use of this title by Greeks and Romans provided the model for Jesus of Nazareth to be called ‘Son of God’. Chapter 1 examines the religions of Persia, Egypt and Greece and finds that, in the world of mythology, Greek heroes were born as a result of intercourse between a god and a human being and were called sons of the gods. Chapter 2 examines the career of Alexander the Great and especially his visit to the shrine at Siwa and finds that he was there proclaimed a son of god. It establishes that this proclamation transformed the appellation ‘Son of God’ from a mythological to a historical title and led to Alexander’s deification. Chapter 3 examines the Hebrew Scriptures and other Jewish literature with the results described above. Chapter 4 examines the use of the title ‘Son of God’ in the New Testament and discusses the development of this title in the unfolding history of the first century church. It finds that the title was first used of Jesus in Greece during Paul’s ministry to the gentiles and that it provided the motif for Mark’s Gospel. Chapter 5 assesses the use of ‘Son of God’ in post apostolic literature and establishes that, though this literature shows a development of the appellation, it provides no further clue as to it origin. Chapter 6 investigates the effect that the titling of Augustus and subsequent Roman emperors as sons of god had on the way Jesus was portrayed by the evangelists. In particular, it finds that Augustus, originally called a ‘Son of God’ because his father was deified on his death, is portrayed as a figure of such excellence that he was deified during his lifetime. Chapter 7 concludes the thesis. It shows that Alexander, a person whose historical doings more than justified his being described as ‘the Great’ and who was surrounded by fabulous legends, provided a precedent for a human being to be called a ‘Son of God’ and hence for Jesus of Nazareth to be so described. It indicates how events at Siwa were a precursor of the baptism of Jesus, how one of the temptations was clearly modelled on Alexander’s experiences at Siwa and how Jesus’ reported age at his crucifixion was perhaps chosen because it was Alexander’s age when he died. It also shows how the widespread titling of Roman emperors as sons of gods seriously influenced the way Jesus was perceived as ‘Son of God’. Three appendices examine the birth stories of Alexander, the Messiah as ‘Son of God and some of the titles of Augustus that are relevant to the thesis

The Forensic Analysis of Counterfeit Pharmaceutical Packaging

Pharmaceutical packaging is the coordinated system that encloses and protects a dosage form. Counterfeit drugs have caused deaths, and lead to the failure of public trust in the healthcare system and the pharmaceutical manufacturers. The authentication of packaging materials requires a trained forensic approach. Advanced instrumentation has become expensive, for example with hyper- and multi-spectral techniques, and multivariate data interpretation can be non-standard. There is always a need for rapid screening of suspect materials, particularly across market surveys where rapid, non-destructive determination counterfeits is required to segregate and allow further downstream forensic analysis. The development of Fourier transfer infra-red (FT-IR) spectroscopy in the 1970's facilitated the rapid data capture and analysis of solids and liquids. Since then thousands of spectra are commercially available for identification purposes based on transmission and, more recently, attenuated total reflectance (ATR) analysis modes. ATR is a rapid technique requiring pressure exerted from a crystal onto a sample to create a spectrum. Specular reflectance is a third analysis mode that does not require such force to obtain a spectrum. It was found that the ExoScan FT-IR in specular reflectance mode combined with a similarity identification algorithm was most successful for confirming the presence of counterfeit Reductil cartons. Results were in less than a minute with no damage inflicted on the suspect with this non-destructive technique. Results can be shown overlaid or stacked, together with a similarity (hit) value. The repeatability for a single control carton was 0.16% for six replicates. The use of external reflectance FT-IR has been shown to be able to rapidly uncover counterfeit packaging materials, with the application of bespoke, easy to create libraries. The technique is non-destructive and especially suited to carbon based solids

Rimonabant improves cardiometabolic risk factors in overweight/obese patients irrespective of treatment with statins: Pooled data from the RIO program

peer reviewe

Science- and Engineering-Related Ethics and Values Studies: Characteristics of an Emerging Field of Research

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68834/2/10.1177_016224399001500109.pd

A horizon scan of global conservation issues for 2014

This paper presents the output of our fifth annual horizon-scanning exercise, which aims to identify topics that increasingly may affect conservation of biological diversity, but have yet to be widely considered. A team of professional horizon scanners, researchers, practitioners, and a journalist identified 15 topics which were identified via an iterative, Delphi-like process. The 15 topics include a carbon market induced financial crash, rapid geographic expansion of macroalgal cultivation, genetic control of invasive species, probiotic therapy for amphibians, and an emerging snake fungal disease. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd