Violence, Colonization and Henry VIII’s Conquest of France, 1544–1546

In 1579 the English writer Thomas Churchyard explained to his readers the military strategy that Sir Humphrey Gilbert had used in Ireland during the suppression of the First Desmond Rebellion ten years earlier. He wrote that ‘when soeuer he [Gilbert] made any ostyng, or inrode, into the enemies Countrey, he killed manne, woman, and child, and spoiled, wasted, and burned, by the grounde all that he might: leauyng nothyng of the enemies in saffetie, whiche he could possiblie waste, or consume’. Gilbert’s actions have been seen as emblematic of the apparently special character of English warfare in sixteenth-century Ireland. The editors of an influential collection of essays examining conflict in early modern Ireland have written of ‘a level of violence in Ireland that was more intense and vicious than elsewhere in the Tudor and Stuart kingdoms’. Other historians of early modern Ireland have made even bolder claims. For Vincent Carey, the English ‘campaigns of indiscriminate killing and systematic starvation in Munster and Ulster constituted an early modern European version of total war, which in its impact on the civilian population was probably unprecedented and unmatched until the events of the Thirty Years’ War some decades later’. Recently, David Edwards has reasserted the unique and brutal character of English violence in Ireland. Rather than being a product of the Elizabethan conquest, ‘this type of violence’, Edwards finds, was first used in Ireland during the repression of the Geraldine Rebellion in the 1530s and became especially pronounced in the ‘colonial wars’ that accompanied the establishment of English plantations in Laois and Offaly from the late 1540s

Vitamin D exposure and cancer incidence and mortality, all-cause mortality, and cause-specific mortality in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)

Despite extensive epidemiological research and plausible biological mechanisms being elucidated, it is unclear whether vitamin D reduces risks of cancer incidence and mortality. Only for colorectal cancer does the observational evidence seem persuasive, whereas for other cancer types an anti-carcinogenic role has not been established convincingly, with rarer cancers seldom investigated. Similarly, whether vitamin D has a beneficial role on other chronic disease end-points and all-cause mortality remains uncertain, despite extensive research. Prospective studies which directly measure actual circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) are viewed as the “gold standard” approach to assess vitamin D-disease associations. However, these studies are expensive to carry out (as circulating 25(OH)D usually has to be measured in all participants) and a single measurement of circulating 25(OH)D may not reflect long-term exposures (due to within-person variability). An alternative approach, not yet used in European populations, is to create predictor scores of circulating 25(OH)D levels. This cost effective approach provides the opportunity to examine associations between predicted 25(OH)D and multiple outcomes (including less common diseases). Sex-specific predictor scores were derived in 4,089 participants from the European Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study by quantifying the relationships between correlates/determinants of circulating 25(OH)D levels (using multivariable linear regression models). The predictor scores were validated in 2,029 participants with measured circulating 25(OH)D levels. In summary, the predictor scores provided poor estimates of absolute circulating 25(OH)D levels but were more successful at ranking individuals similarly by their actual and predicted levels. The predictor scores were also able to replicate results from previous EPIC colorectal cancer incidence and prostate cancer incidence nested case-control studies which used actual circulating 25(OH)D measurements. Overall, this evidence suggests that the predictor scores may have utility for epidemiological research but not in a clinical setting. The predictor scores were then applied to the full EPIC cohort to assess the associations between predicted 25(OH)D levels with risks of cancer incidence and mortality, all-cause mortality, and cause-specific mortality. In summary, significant inverse predicted 25(OH)D score associations were observed for: overall cancer incidence and mortality; colorectal cancer incidence; lung cancer incidence and mortality; kidney cancer incidence; stomach and oesophageal cancer incidence; pancreatic cancer incidence and mortality; thyroid cancer incidence; prostate cancer mortality; all-cause mortality; circulatory disease mortality; respiratory disease mortality; and digestive disease mortality. However, due to the methodological limitations specific to 25(OH)D predictor scores - such as providing poor estimates of absolute levels - and observational epidemiology in general, it is important to acknowledge that alternative explanations may explain some or all of these observed relationships.Open Acces

The Poetics of “Pure Invention”: John Banville’s Ghosts

Este ensaio argumenta que Ghosts (1993), de John Banville, pode considerado o romance mais tecnicamente inventivo de Banville, repleto de níveis ontológicos com diversas camadas que trazem, repetidamente, seu discurso diegético primário em comunhão com outras formas artísticas – música, pinturas, estátuas, bem como uma saturação narrativa com outros antecedentes literários que excedem qualquer coisa encontrada em outro lugar em sua obra. Ghosts demonstra uma camada implícita de níveis dialéticos que são, de fato, uma encenação narrativa da teoria dos múltiplos mundos que tanto fascinam muitos dos narradores de Banville. Em nenhum outro lugar ele gera um modelo tão abrangente de um sistema ontológico com diferentes níveis que se cruzam tão propositadamente quanto em Ghosts. Este ensaio mapeia uma topografia do que é efetivamente uma variante fictícia sofisticada da teoria científica de múltiplos mundos em Ghosts, e oferece algumas perspectivas sobre a importância desse modelo estético.This essay argues that John Banville’s Ghosts (1993) may in fact be Banville’s most technically inventive novel, replete as it is with multi-layered ontological levels that repeatedly bring its primary diegetic discourse into communion with other artistic forms – music, paintings, statues, as well as a narrative saturation with other literary antecedents that exceeds anything found elsewhere in his work. Ghosts demonstrates an implicit layering of dialectical levels, in effect a narrative enactment of the multiple worlds theory that so fascinates several of Banville’s narrators. Nowhere else does he generate so comprehensive a model of a multi-level ontological system in which the levels intersect so purposefully as Ghosts. This essay maps out a topography of what is effectively a sophisticated fictional variant on the scientific multiple worlds theory in Ghosts, and offers some perspectives on the significance of this aesthetic model

The Duke of Albany's Invasion of England in 1523 and Military Mobilisation in Sixteenth-century Scotland

In November 1523 a Scottish army, led by John Stewart, duke of Albany, invaded England for the first time since the battle of Flodden. While this was a major campaign, it has largely been ignored in the extensive literature on Anglo-Scottish warfare. Drawing on Scottish, French and English records, this article provides a systematic analysis of the campaign. Although the campaign of 1523 was ultimately unsuccessful, it is the most comprehensively documented Scottish offensive against England before the seventeenth century and the extensive records detailing the expedition advances broader understanding of military mobilisation in medieval and early modern Scotland. While the national mobilisation drive which sought to gather men from across the kingdom was ultimately unsuccessful, the expedition witnessed the most extensive number of French soldiers yet sent to Scotland. Finally, the article considers how an examination of the expedition enhances understanding of regency rule and the political conditions in Scotland in the years after Flodden

Diversification in small firms: Does parental influence matter?

Diversification is a common goal for many small firms, yet research examining whether small firm ownership structure influences their use of the tactic is limited. As such, this paper provides one of the first empirical investigations of the subject by examining whether the presence of a corporate parent positively influences the likelihood that small firms will utilize diversification. Results indicate that small firms with corporate parents are more likely to use both related and unrelated diversification than comparable firms that are independently owned. Such findings are noteworthy because diversification may be more beneficial for small, independently owned firms, yet small, subsidiary firms appear to be better able to utilize diversification. Implications of these findings are discussed

A generic news story segmentation system and its evaluation

The paper presents an approach to segmenting broadcast TV news programmes automatically into individual news stories. We first segment the programme into individual shots, and then a number of analysis tools are run on the programme to extract features to represent each shot. The results of these feature extraction tools are then combined using a support vector machine trained to detect anchorperson shots. A news broadcast can then be segmented into individual stories based on the location of the anchorperson shots within the programme. We use one generic system to segment programmes from two different broadcasters, illustrating the robustness of our feature extraction process to the production styles of different broadcasters

Wind-Driven Wireless Networked System of Mobile Sensors for Mars Exploration

A revolutionary way is proposed of studying the surface of Mars using a wind-driven network of mobile sensors: GOWON. GOWON would be a scalable, self-powered and autonomous distributed system that could allow in situ mapping of a wide range of environmental phenomena in a much larger portion of the surface of Mars compared to earlier missions. It could improve the possibility of finding rare phenomena such as "blueberries' or bio-signatures and mapping their occurrence, through random wind-driven search. It would explore difficult terrains that were beyond the reach of previous missions, such as regions with very steep slopes and cluttered surfaces. GOWON has a potentially long life span, as individual elements can be added to the array periodically. It could potentially provide a cost-effective solution for mapping wide areas of Martian terrain, enabling leaving a long-lasting sensing and searching infrastructure on the surface of Mars. The system proposed here addresses this opportunity using technology advances in a distributed system of wind-driven sensors, referred to as Moballs