Cottage Economy or Collective Farm? English Socialism and Agriculture Between Merrie England and the Five-Year Plan

The cottage economy and the collective farm are two alternative models of socialist agriculture that relate broadly to the traditions of Romantic and utilitarian socialism and embody diametrically opposed attitudes to food and its production. In the decades following the Russian Revolution of 1917 – at a time when collectivised agriculture was being implemented on a previously unimaginable scale, with disastrous consequences – the case for such a model was made enthusiastically by British Stalinists such as George Bernard Shaw, Jean Beauchamp, Margaret Cole, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. This fed into a wider shift in British society where responsibility for securing the food supply was increasingly seen as a function of the state rather than the market. During the inter-war decades the centre of gravity for British socialists’ thinking about food production shifted from the cottage economy to the collective farm. Yet there were those – like Chesterton, Belloc, Orwell and Muggeridge, as well as the emerging thinkers of the organic movement like Louise Howard and G. T. Wrench – who in various ways held on to the cottage economy ideal and the peasant smallholder as a bulwark against the vast, industrialised mega-farms of the Soviet Empire. They were often seen not as socialists but as cranks. This paper explores the debates around this issue and considers their continuing relevance to our own thinking about the ways food is produced

Characteristics of a series of high speed hard chine planing hulls - part II: performance in waves

An experimental investigation into the performance of high speed hard chine planing hulls in irregular waves has been conducted. A new series of models representative of current design practice was developed and tested experimentally. Measurements of the rigid body motions and accelerations were made at three speeds in order to assess the influence of fundamental design parameters on the seakeeping performance of the hulls and human factors performance of the crew, with an aim to provide designers with useful data. Response data, such as heave and pitch motions and accelerations, are presented as probability distributions due to the non-linear nature of high speed craft motions. Additionally statistical parameters for the experimental configurations tested are provided and the most relevant measures for crew performance discussed. Furthermore, an example of the use of these statistical parameters to evaluate the vibration dose value of the crew onboard a full scale high speed planingcraft is given. It is confirmed that at high speed craft motion leads to recommended maximum values of vibration dose value being exceeded after only short durations. In practice, therefore, mitigating strategies need to be developed and/or employed to reduce crew exposure to excessive whole body vibratio

A study of shock impacts and vibration dose values onboard highspeed marine craft

The shocks and impacts encountered on small high-speed craft exceed the limits set for safe working practice according to current standards. European legislation regarding the exposure to vibration will have far reaching effects on the operators of such craft with respect to the safety of their employees. This paper sets out to highlight the vibration dose values that can be expected during typical transits onboard high-speed craft and attempts to clarify some of the controversy currently surrounding vibration dose measurement in such circumstances. In order to relate vibration dosage to the impacts encountered and to boat motion, an algorithm was developed that identifies the timing and magnitude of impacts

Fluid-structure interactions of anisotropic thin composite materials for application to sail aerodynamics of a yacht in waves

In recent years technological innovations has allowed large improvements to be made in sail design and construction. Sails and in particular kite-sails have application for sport, ships’ auxiliary propulsion and even power generation. Sails are divided into upwind and downwind sails (Fig.1), where upwind sails operate as lifting surfaces with small angles of attack whereas traditional downwind sails acted as drag device. New designs of downwind sails have reduced the area of separated flow and increased the lifting behaviour of the sails. In order to capture the lifting behaviour and regions of separation present in both types of sail careful application of computational fluid dynamic analysis tools are required. Solutions of the Reynolds averaged Navier- Stokes equations (RANSE) are often used as a part of the design process of high performance sailing yachts.The present paper discusses some initial investigations and future guidelines in order to get a more detailed description of the physics involved in sail FSI. Three main fields are therefore covered: the use of CFD in order to accurately capture flow features and a comparison with experimental results; structural modelling; and approach to couplin

Treatment of patellar tendinopathy with extracorporeal shock wave therapy

Objective: To determine the effectiveness of extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) on patellar tendinopathy. Method: This was a single-centre, randomized controlled trial, with 20 male and female subjects ranging from age 23 to 52. Treatment subjects received three to five sessions of ESWT and the control subjects received three to five sessions with the use of an energy-absorbing pad. The effects of the shock wave therapy were measured using the Victorian Institute of Sport Assessment (VISA) test and a vertical jump test. Pretreatment ultrasound was used to determine which subjects had neovascularization in the area of the patellar tendon. Results: ESWT resulted in a significant improvement in the VISA score for questions 1, 3, and 6; for the VISA total score; and for the vertical jump score. Additionally, anecdotal evidence suggested an overall decrease in pain and an increase in function. Conclusions: Extracorporeal shock wave therapy appears to be a useful adjunct to the eccentric drop-squat strength protocol in the treatment of chronic patellar tendinopathy. Future studies need to include a larger subject pool, a long-term follow-up, and a reliable objective measure of the microscopic and macroscopic improvement of the patellar tendon

Race-time prediction for the Va’a paralympic sprint canoe

The 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro will see 200m sprint canoe events for the first time, using the Va’a class. The aim of this study is to predict race times for the Va’a over a 200m sprint event, through simulation of the hydrodynamic resistance of the hull (with outrigger) and the propulsion provided by the athlete. Such a simulation, once suitably validated, allows investigation of design and configuration changes on predicted race performance. The accuracy of the simulation is discussed through a comparison to times recorded for an athlete over a 200m race distanc

Rapamycin induces transactivation of the EGFR and increases cell survival.

The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling network regulates cell growth, proliferation and cell survival. Deregulated activation of this pathway is a common event in diverse human diseases such as cancers, cardiac hypertrophy, vascular restenosis and nephrotic hypertrophy. Although mTOR inhibitor, rapamycin, has been widely used to inhibit the aberrant signaling due to mTOR activation that plays a major role in hyperproliferative diseases, in some cases rapamycin does not attenuate the cell proliferation and survival. Thus, we studied the mechanism(s) by which cells may confer resistance to rapamycin. Our data show that in a variety of cell types the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin activates extracellularly regulated kinases (Erk1/2) signaling. Rapamycin-mediated activation of the Erk1/2 signaling requires (a) the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), (b) its tyrosine kinase activity and (c) intact autophosphorylation sites on the receptor. Rapamycin treatment increases tyrosine phosphorylation of EGFR without the addition of growth factor and this transactivation of receptor involves activation of c-Src. We also show that rapamycin treatment triggers activation of cell survival signaling pathway by activating the prosurvival kinases Erk1/2 and p90RSK. These studies provide a novel paradigm by which cells escape the apoptotic actions of rapamycin and its derivatives that inhibit the mTOR pathway