Salt encroachment : the 1974 saltland survey

It has long been recognised that the clearing of land for agriculture in the south western Australia is followed by the development of saline soils and streams. In 1955 and again in 1962, in conjunction with the annual statistical returns, farmers in Western Australia were asked to supply estimates of salt-affected land on their properties. In 1974 a further survey was conducted, in co-operation with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, using questions covering only the basic information. As the information is again available on a Shire basis a direct comparison can be made with the 1962 survey except for some high and low rainfall areas not included in 1962. Comparison of 1974 survey results with those for the 1962 saltland survey indicates both marked increases and decreases in various shires

Resonant Processes in a Frozen Gas

We present a theory of resonant processes in a frozen gas of atoms interacting via dipole-dipole potentials that vary as $r^{-3}$, where $r$ is the interatomic separation. We supply an exact result for a single atom in a given state interacting resonantly with a random gas of atoms in a different state. The time development of the transition process is calculated both on- and off-resonance, and the linewidth with respect to detuning is obtained as a function of time $t$. We introduce a random spin Hamiltonian to model a dense system of resonators and show how it reduces to the previous model in the limit of a sparse system. We derive approximate equations for the average effective spin, and we use them to model the behavior seen in the experiments of Anderson et al. and Lowell et al. The approach to equilibrium is found to be proportional to $\exp (-\sqrt{\gamma_{eq}t}$), where the constant $\gamma _{eq}$ is explicitly related to the system's parameters.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figure

Wilhelm Groener, Officering, and the Schlieffen Plan

This dissertation analyzes the career and attitudes of Wilhelm Groener (1867-1939), whom it uses as a vehicle for understanding the Imperial German army officer corps and the assumptions that guided the General Staff war planning process that culminated in the Schlieffen Plan and the German invasion of Belgium and France in 1914

Organizing and Communicating Historical Knowledge: Some Personal Observations

Personal reflections on historiographical publishing cultures in the United States and Germany by way of trying to understand some of the differing attitudes to blogging that we were encountering as we established the "History of Knowledge" blog

Blogging Migrant Knowledge – Part I

An introduction to the blog 'Migrant Knowledge' as an editorial project for the readers of 'History of Knowledge.' It concentrates on a rich and dynamic group of studies centering around young migrants and the historiographical problem of their agency. It also considers the topic of adult experts on these children

Christof Vischer: Wie man junge Fürsten und Herren aufferzihen solle, 1573

Biography of a Protestant pastor and general superintendent in early modern Germany, Cristoph Vischer (1520–98), and interpretation of his mirror for princes (Fürstenspiegel) about "How to Raise Young Princes and Gentlemen.

Knowledge as an Object of Historical Research

This piece uses Shadi Bartsch's five tenets for understanding knowledge and several previous posts on History of Knowledge to discuss what histories of knowledge are about

Blogging Migrant Knowledge – Part II

In Part II of my survey of the blog 'Migrant Knowledge,' I turn to a rich set of posts that treat societal knowledge about migrants from the perspective of two elite groups, so to speak, the state and its agents, on the one hand, and scholars, here primarily historians, on the other hand. Two additional perspectives appear in these accounts: the entanglement of state knowledge about migrants with the knowledge that migrants develop about the state and its expectations, a big theme here, and the influence that scholarship can have on migration policy and outcomes

Bürgerliche und adlige Krieger: Zum Verhältnis zwischen sozialer Herkunft und Berufskultur im wilhelminischen Offizierkorps

This essay offers a revisionist interpretation of the Imperial German officer corps, whose members have long enjoyed a schizophrenic reputation in the historiography as either consummate military professionals or feudalistic representatives of a bygone political system. Using the career of Wilhelm Groener (1867-1939). it reexamines the relationship between social background and occupation in the Imperial German officer corps

An 1853 Map for German-Speaking Emigrants

This blog post interrogates a mid-nineteenth-century map for German emigrants, using it as a way to talk about the central concept behind the "Migrant Knowledge" blog