The idea of the record

This paper examines the idea of the sports record and its relation to our ideas of excellence, achievement and progress. It begins by recovering and reviewing the work of Richard Mandell, whose definition of the record emphasizes three central ideas: statistic, athletic and recognition. It then considers the work of Henning Eichberg, Allen Guttmann and Mandell, from the 1970s onwards, on the genesis of the modern sports record, explaining and developing their ideas via a distinction between descriptive and emulative records, and between different kinds of emulative records. This then permits an analysis of contemporary athletic and sports records. The idea of the significant record will also be advanced, offering the four-minute mile as an example, in an attempt to explicate our continuing fascination with such exceptional achievements. It then considers the contribution of recent discussions of sport technologies and the logic of quantifiable progress, and tries to put our obsession with records in perspective as but one way in which we respond to and evaluate sporting performance

The mathematical research of William Parry FRS

In this article we survey the mathematical research of the late William (Bill) Parry, FRS

Circe and the Poets: Theocritus IX. 35-36

published or submitted for publicatio

Two Parameters for Three Dimensional Wetting Transitions

Critical effects at complete and critical wetting in three dimensions are studied using a coupled effective Hamiltonian H[s(y),\ell]. The model is constructed via a novel variational principle which ensures that the choice of collective coordinate s(y) near the wall is optimal. We highlight the importance of a new wetting parameter \Omega(T) which has a strong influence on critical properties and allows the status of long-standing Monte-Carlo simulation controversies to be re-examined.Comment: 4 pages RevTex, 2 encapsulated postscript figures, to appear in Europhys. Let

JJDP Monitoring Data — 1988: JJDP Violations and Juvenile Detention Counts for Lockups, Jails, Adult Correctional Facilities and Juvenile Detention Centers

This data supplement to the 1988 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act Compliance Monitoring Report (Mar 1990) presents data on 1988 violations in Alaska of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), which mandates removal of status offenders and nonoffenders from secure detention and correctional facilities, sight and sound separation of juveniles and adults, and removal of juveniles from adult jails and lockups.Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Family and Youth ServicesJJDP Violations — 1988 / Offense Type by Duration of Detention — 1988 / All Facilities / Lockups / Jails / Correctional and Youth Facilitie

Alaska's System for Monitoring Compliance with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act

Pursuant to Section 223(1)(15) of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 and 28 CFR Part 31.303(f), states are required to describe their plans and procedures for annually monitoring compliance with the Act. Alaska's monitoring plan was developed by the Justice Center of the University of Alaska Anchorage in 1988 under contract with the Alaska Division of Family and Youth Services (DFYS).Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Family and Youth ServicesI. The Monitoring Plan / A. Identification of Monitoring Universe / B. Classification of the Monitoring Universe / C. Inspection of Facilities / D. Data Collection and Verification / II. Barriers to Implementation of the Monitoring System / III. Violation Procedures / Appendix. Timetables for Completion of Monitoring Task

A silver ion water sterilization system

Small amounts of silver are incorporated in mixture of ion exchange resins, and water passing through this mixture is thus exposed to silver ion concentration. System is useful in self-contained water systems except city water systems where residual chlorine level is stipulated

Construction and utilisation of a bidirectional reporter vector in the analysis of two nod-boxes in of Rhizobium loti : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Molecular Genetics at Massey University

The nod-box is a 47bp cis-acting regulatory region which has been conserved amongst every species of Rhizobium studied to date. In species such as R. meliloti and R. leguminosarum, the nod-box has been shown to promote constitutive activity towards the regulatory nodD gene, and flavonoid-inducible expression towards the divergently-transcribed nodABCIJ operon. This bidirectional regulation of the so-called common nod genes was not observed in R. loti. A previous analysis of this species had shown that its nod-box promoted inducible activity towards the truncated 'nodD' gene, as well as the nodACIJ operon. It was the unusual arrangement of these R. loti nod genes that had initially aroused interest in this bacteria. To further investigate the role of the nod-box in the regulation of the R. loti common nod genes, a bidirectional reporter vector (pSPV4) was constructed. This novel vector allowed the promoter activity of a cloned nod-box-containing fragment to be concurrently measured in either direction using the same culture of cells. To achieve this construct, the gusA gene from pRAJ260 was blunt-end ligated into pUC21. An in-frame ribosome binding site (rbs) was cloned upstream of the gusA coding sequence to facilitate transcriptional fusions. The rbs and gusA gene were later excised as a functional unit and blunt-end ligated into pMP220 alongside the B-galactosidase reporter gene but in the opposite orientation. Hence, both reporter genes could be divergently transcribed from a common regulatory region cloned into the multiple cloning site that separated the genes. The fragments of DNA that were eventually cloned into the bidirectional vector were generated through the polymerase chain reaction. Each DNA insert contained the nod-box bracketed by differing lengths of flanking region. Once these PCR-generated fragments had been sequenced in pUC118 and subcloned into pSPV4, the resulting constructs were transformed into R. loti cells by electroporation. As the electroporation of these cells had not previously been reported, the conditions for this procedure were established and optimised. The results obtained from the bidirectional reporter assays disagreed with those observed in the earlier assays by Teo (1990). Neither the nodACIJ nod-box of NZP2037 nor the nodB nod-box of NZP2213, showed bidirectional inducible expression. In fact, both nod-boxes showed constitutive expression in the 'nodD' direction and inducible expression in the opposite direction. This indicates that the control of the nod genes in R. loti is fundamentally the same as that seen in other fast-growing Rhizobium species. Three regulatory elements affecting the levels of nod gene expression have tentatively been identified outside the nod-box sequence, though the results indicating their presence may simply be·due to spacing differences between the nod-box and the reporter gene

The Costs of Restrictive Trade Policies in the Presence of Factor Tax Distortions

This paper uses a numerical general equilibrium model to examine the quantitative importance of pre-existing factor tax distortions for the welfare effects of restrictive trade policies in economies with and without market power in trade. We analyze tariffs, non-auctioned import quotas (with rents accruing to domestic firms) and voluntary export restraints (with rents accruing to foreign firms). We find that allowing for interactions with pre-existing taxes can greatly magnify the overall costs of these policies - possibly by over several hundred percent! In the case of import tariffs, much of this additional cost can be offset if the tariff revenues are used to reduce other distortionary taxes. Indeed the cost discrepancy between revenue-neutral tariffs and import quotas is dramatic at modest levels of import reduction, but declines to zero as these policies become prohibitive. We find that the optimal tariff for a country with market power in trade is greatly reduced, and possibly to zero, unless tariff revenues finance cuts in other distorting taxes. The proportionate increase in costs due to pre-existing taxes is much smaller under voluntary export restraints than under import quotas when costs are measured by domestic welfare losses, but not when measured by world welfare losses.