bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Contagion of behavior
Authors: Bennett Peggy D.
Published: November 2020

Like a cold, the flu, and other communicable diseases, poor behavior can be contagious in schools. So can good behavior. We all know students who, just by their presence, seem to have an effect on the entire class. Some stir up the environment, always a bit goading, laughing, sulking. Others keep things calm; they are eager to do their work, encouraging others, setting a tone for quiet achievement. Each affects the classroom “stew.” Teachers can be catalysts for other teachers’ achievements, large and small. We can set the standard for helpful, supportive behavior. In small but potent ways, we can spread goodwill. We can acknowledge others’ efforts. We can make things better. We can spread wellness. • To teachers struggling with challenges: “That’s a very difficult issue to deal with. Let me know how I can help.” • To teachers who are calm and caring: “You are so consistently caring, even when you need to issue a punishment. I appreci­ate having that model.” • To teachers who produce quality work: “Everything you cre­ate shows quality in content and appearance. I notice these things.” Our contagion of behavior can also productively influence non- teaching personnel in schools: “The way you manage all these hidden facets of our school helps us all. Thank you.” We sometimes expect administrators to give compliments, but we may not expect to give them to administrators our­selves: “What a lot you juggle behind the scenes every single day. Thank you for all you do to make our school run smoothly.” In whatever ways and with whatever words we offer them, our supportive comments can make a world of difference to the health of our schools. Our contagion of goodwill can offer moments of vitality to all who receive it.
Aim for understanding
Authors: Bennett Peggy D.
Published: November 2020

When someone agrees with us, we can feel validated and relieved. When someone disagrees, we can bristle at the implication that we are wrong. Some of us develop a habit of looking for agreement. Some of us have little tolerance for being wrong. During conflict, we can hold tightly to our positions, building a case for why we believe what we believe. We may know those who feel an innate preparation for combat when they sense dis­agreement. More treacherous than the disagreement itself can be the backstories we tell ourselves about reasons for the con­flict. We make assumptions. We assume we know the intent of another’s choices. How can we momentarily suspend our assumptions and shift our focus to a path toward understanding? Key here is com­munication. Asking questions in order to understand, rather than arguing to convince, widens our prospects for resolution (Rusk, 1993). With a calm demeanor and conversational tone, we open our­selves to listening and problem- solving. Simple questions and statements, spoken with calm curiosity, not sarcasm or aggres­sion, can pave the path to understanding. • “What happened that made you think that?” • “Can you tell me a little more about what led you to that decision?” • “Interesting. I had a very different reaction. Tell me how you interpreted that.” • “What can you tell me that will help me understand what just happened?” If the other person happens to explain his or her opinion without asking yours, simply say, “Now I better understand your position. Let me tell you my thoughts, so you can understand my perspec­tive as well.” Agreement is not always necessary for peaceful solutions. We need not feel threatened by conflicting views or actions. Responding to conflict by aiming to understand rather than agree (Rusk, 1993) can release the pressure valve of resistance, refuel each party’s vitality, and reenliven our presence in schools.
Persevere
Authors: Bennett Peggy D.
Published: November 2020

Being a teacher can be hard. • We invest ourselves wholeheartedly, yet sometimes our efforts fall short. • We know our subject matter, but students may seem uninterested. • We search for more and better ways to teach, but the results can be disappointing. As educators, we will fail. We will be hurt. We will be disap­pointed. We will be discouraged. Yet key to our recovery from these slumps is what we tell ourselves about those failures. What do we need to do? “Just get up.” “Just get up!” With this statement, Olympic gold medal fig­ure skater Scott Hamilton reminds us that the challenges of a skater involve many falls and frequent pain. It is impossible to be a skater and not fall down. All skaters fall. All skaters fail. They know they will fall. They know they will fail. They know both will hurt. Hamilton says: “Just get up!” Too many “falls” without strategies to recover can cause teachers to “crust up.” We generate layers of crust to protect us as we cling to our anger, refuse assistance, and numb our bod­ies, minds, and spirits. But crusting insulates us from feeling and caring, so we miss out on the vitality of our lives. Then “we forget to be glad for all the things that go right” When we know how to “get up,” when we accept that the fall will come again, we can persevere. We feel the strength of our knowing, and we use determination to pull ourselves out of the doldrums. Just get up. Just keep going. Just aspire to do better.
Annoyance anomaly
Authors: Bennett Peggy D.
Published: November 2020

HE: Where can I find a pencil? SHE: In the drawer beside the fridge. HE [RETURNING]: Where did you say the pencil is? SHE [STOPPING HER WORK, ENUNCIATING EACH WORD]: I said it’s in the drawer beside the fridge. HE [RETURNING ONCE MORE]: What color is it? SHE [CLEARLY IMPATIENT]: I don’t know. Yellow? It’s the only pencil in the drawer! HE [RETURNING YET AGAIN]: I can’t find it. With whom do you most sympathize? As the female speaker, could you hear your voice getting increasingly impatient, ready to say something cruel? Can you envision the annoyance in your face, voice, posture, and gritted teeth? As the male speaker, could you feel the innocence of your requests, the honest confu­sion, the genuine need for help? This scene taught an important, life- changing lesson to the female speaker. She was desperately trying to meet an important work deadline and was exceedingly annoyed by the continued interruptions. He didn’t know that; he just wanted a pencil. He was feeling less sure of himself and more confused with each effort to find the pencil. Does one of them warrant more sympa­thy than another? The background to this story was that the male speaker was recovering from a traumatic brain injury. He had no choice other than to behave the way he was behaving. Would that knowledge have changed your reaction if you were the female speaker? Would you have felt differently? Responded differently? Here was the lesson for the female speaker: Our feeling of annoyance does not mean others are being annoying. Likewise, our feeling of anger does not mean others are “making” us angry. Our feeling of being insulted does not mean someone is sending us the insults. Why not? Because others are just being them. We are the ones who permit ourselves to interpret and accept the emotions we are feeling. We tacitly agree to feel them. Initially, there is little connection between their behavior and our reaction. When we name and consequently feel another’s action as an offense, we, in essence, glue it to us. It becomes our reaction. When we voluntarily accept offense, we give the other per­mission to annoy, anger, or insult us.
A Selection of Grapes
Authors: Dalton David R.
Published: November 2020

This undistinguished, productive, drought resistant, vigorous white grape, Airén, from the La Mancha region of Spain, was said to be the most widely planted grape in the world. In part the justification for this claim relies upon the observation that it is planted at a very low density! Except for its use in blending to make other wines “lighter,” it has not found wide accep¬tance. In part, it appears that its lack of popularity is the result of what is reported to be a mild, neutral flavor, and advertising has not pushed wines produced from it to the fore. Although it is now common to attempt to analyze the headspace (or ullage) in bottled wine (as well as the wine itself ) by chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques it is less common to find that the grapes (skin, must, and seeds) are also subjected to such analysis. Nonetheless, the phenolic composition of V. vinifera var Airén was subjected to just such analysis during ripening from véraison to “technological” maturity (i.e., maturity which might actually be earlier than harvest, the latter being the decision of the viticulturist and vintner). The analysis of the ethyl ether extract of macerated skins, seeds, and accumulated solids (the pomace) was undertaken. Procyanidins and anthocyanins which would (the authors claim) interfere with subsequent analysis would not move into the ether phase. It was also found (using controls) that other highly polar materials (e.g., carboxylic acids) were only poorly extracted from the macerated skins and seeds. The isolated compounds and some information about their sources are provided in Figures 14.1 and 14.2. The analysis of the seeds, skin, and must did lead to the conclusion that “the maximum concentrations of benzoic and cinnamic acids and aldehydes and flavonol aglycones and glycosides at the end of the ripening period did not coincide with the minimum concentrations of the flavan-3-ols and hydroxycinnamic tartaric esters.” Depending upon what was sought, this information might thus affect decisions concerning the harvest date.
More Than Skin Deep
Authors: Dalton David R.
Published: November 2020

The grape berry is composed of skin, flesh (pulp) and seeds. After destemming (Chapter 13), the grapes are sent on for crushing. On crushing, the thick walls of the skin, including the waxy cuticle, are broken. Crushing the grapes (Figure 16.1) is a question of quantity. Small quantities are handled differently than large. The skins, including the contaminants thereon, as well as the majority of the materials discussed above for the individual grapes (i.e., phenols, anthocyanins, tanins, some acids, terpenes, pyrazines, and some carbohydrates including those attached to the anthocyanidins, forming anthocyanins) therein, are released. The cells of the pulp are also broken and released into the juice on crushing. This berry cell juice is mainly water (70–80% by weight) which contains the mixture of sugars (mostly glucose and fructose, but small concentrations of many other carbohydrates are also present), carboxylic acids (mostly tartaric and malic, but additional members of the tricarboxylic acid cycle, oxalic, glucuronic, etc. are also present), complex cross-linked polysaccharides from cell walls (pectins), some phenols and proteins (as well as the peptides and simple amino acids from which they are constructed), and minerals, including oxides of iron (Fe), phosphorus (P), and sulfur (S), as well as salts of potassium (K) and sodium (Na) brought up in the xylem to the growing berry. The seeds have their cellulose carbohydrate-based exterior coatings, which are also rich in complexed polyphenols (tannins). Additionally, amino acids, generally found as constituents of peptides, proteins, and enzymes, and their cofactors needed for all life, nucleic acids and their attached sugars needed for the next generation, are all present too. Thus, overall, the result of crushing the berries is a mixture consisting of skins, seeds, and fruit juice (the must = Latin vinum mustum = young wine). This mixture may, if the grapes were “white,” be cooled and the cap on the must—sometimes called the pomace (the solid portion of the must) removed early or late (usually between 12 and 24 hours) by the vintner. Most of the flavoring constituents are quickly extracted, and brightly colored phenols, tannins, anthocyanins, etc.
Algol Genes
Authors: Dasgupta Subrata
Published: November 2020

In 1969 a “Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 68” was published in the journal Numerische Mathematik. The authors of the report were also its designers, all academic computer scientists, Adriaan van Wijngaarden and C. H. A. Koster from the Netherlands and Barry Mailloux and John Peck from Canada. The Algol 68 project was, by then, 4 years old. The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) had under its umbrella a number of technical committees devoted to various specialties; each technical committee in turn had, under its jurisdiction, several working groups given to subspecialties. One such committee was the technical committee TC2, on programming; and in 1965 one of its constituent working groups WG2.1 (programming languages) mandated the development of a new international language as a successor to Algol 60. The latter, developed by an international committee of computer scientists between 1958 and 1963, had had considerable theoretical and practical impact in the first age of computer science. The Dutch mathematician-turned-computer scientist Adriaan van Wijngaarden, one of the codesigners of Algol 60 was entrusted with heading this task. The goal for Algol 68 was that it was to be a successor of Algol 60 and that it would have to be accepted and approved by IFIP as the “official” international programming language. Prior to its publication in 1969, the language went through a thorough process of review, first within the ranks of WG2.1, then by its umbrella body TC2, and finally by the IFIP General Assembly before being officially recommended for publication. The words review and recommendation mask the fact that the Algol 68 project manifested some of the features of the legislative process with its attendant politics. Thus, at a meeting of WG2.1 in Munich in December 1968— described by one of the Algol 68 codesigners John Peck as “dramatic”— where the Algol 68 report was to be approved by the working group, the designers presented their language proposal much as a lawmaker presents a bill to a legislative body; and just as the latter debates over the bill, oftentimes acrimoniously, before putting the bill to a vote, so also the Algol 68 proposal was debated over by members of WG2.1 and was finally voted on.
The Importance of Following Up
Authors: Astor Ron Avi , Jacobson Linda , Wrabel Stephanie L. , Benbenishty Rami , Pineda Diana
Published: November 2020

The transition period for a child into a new school lasts much longer than the initial visit and the first few days. And, even if a school made sincere attempts to welcome the child, introduce him or her to peers, and make sure the student was comfortable in the new surroundings, those gestures may “wear off” after a while. That’s why it’s important to develop a system for checking in with those students who have changed schools for reasons other than the typical moves from elementary to middle or middle to high school. A few indicators can help demonstrate whether a student has adjusted well to his or her new community or still feels disconnected or out of step with other students—grades, attendance, participation in extracurricular activities, and behavior. In this chapter, some different strategies schools are using to monitor how students are transitioning and address concerns or gaps in a student’s progress are also highlighted. As mentioned earlier, the needs of students who experienced a proactive move may be quite different from those of students who left a prior school because they or their parents were reacting to something. How is the student performing? Is homework being turned in on time? If the student’s grades are lower than they were in his or her previous school, it’s possible that he or she has missed some critical pieces of the content being taught. Review district and community-based options for getting the student some tutoring or additional instruction to fill in those learning gaps. Students who change schools in the middle of the year sometimes miss days because of a move. This can lead to a drop in performance, as noted in Chapter 1. If the child continues to miss days, the problem will likely get worse. Missing too many days of school can be an indicator that the child is struggling with the transition and hasn’t made the connections to students and adults that are necessary to develop a sense of belonging.
The Voices of Staff Members
Authors: Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: November 2020

The voices of staff members are important to any school improvement process. The perceptions of those who work in a school can have a significant impact on the environment within that school. Improving school climate doesn’t mean only making sure that stu­dents feel safe and welcome and believe that adults care about their academic and social-emotional well- being. It also means that teachers, administrators, and other school staff feel committed to the school, view it as a good place to work, and believe they have a role in promoting positive experiences for all students— even those not in their classes or otherwise assigned to them. Staff surveys are an important part of a comprehensive monitoring system because they can tell us first- hand about the lives of staff members in school and can also add another perspective on student behaviors. Staff members are an essential source of information on the interrelationships among teachers, administrators, and classified personnel. For teachers and supporting staff members to contribute best to school performance, they need to feel that the organizational climate supports them and their work. Teachers who feel unappreciated and that they operate under difficult working conditions will be less motivated to invest in their work and may burn out faster and leave the school. Such frequent staff turnover has disastrous consequences for students’ lives in school (see Box 6.1). Staff members may feel that asking for students’ perceptions of how they teach and run the school puts them in a disadvantageous position in which others can blame them for academic or behavior problems among students. Listening to staff members and their views of the students, the school, and the district leadership is a way of communicating that their opinions and perceptions are valued. It is also a way for leaders to advocate for the importance of listening to feedback and to show that they welcome feedback from staff members about their performance. Providing regular opportunities for feedback from staff members is an important way to assess their needs for training and other types of support.
India Connected
Authors: Agrawal Ravi
Published: November 2020

Former chief CNN India correspondent and award-wining journalist Ravi Agrawal takes readers on a journey across the Subcontinent, through its remote rural villages and its massive metropolises, seeking out the nexuses of change created by smartphones, and with them connection to the internet. As always with India, the numbers are staggering: in 2000, 20 million Indians had access to the internet; by 2017, 465 million were online, with three Indians discovering the internet every second. By 2020, India's online community is projected to exceed 700 million, and more than a billion Indians are expected to be online by 2025. In the course of a single generation, access to the internet has progressed from dial-up connections on PCs, to broadband access, wireless, and now 4G data on phones. The rise of low-cost smartphones and cheap data plans has meant the country leapfrogged the baby steps their Western counterparts took toward digital fluency. The results can be felt in every sphere of life, upending traditions and customs and challenging conventions. Nothing is untouched, from arranged marriages to social status to business start-ups, as smartphones move the entire economy from cash-based to credit-based. Access to the internet is affecting the progress of progress itself. As Agrawal shows, while they offer immediate and sometimes mind-altering access to so much for so many, smartphones create no immediate utopia in a culture still driven by poverty, a caste system, gender inequality, illiteracy, and income disparity. Internet access has provided greater opportunities to women and changed the way in which India's many illiterate poor can interact with the world, but it has also meant that pornography has become more readily available. Under a government keen to control content, it has created tensions. And in a climate of hypernationalism, it has fomented violence and even terrorism. The influence of smartphones on "the world's largest democracy" is nonetheless pervasive and irreversible, and India Connected reveals both its dimensions and its implications.
Deconstructing the State: Subnational Conflict and Cooperation over Water
Authors: Moore Scott M.
Published: November 2020

The concept of hydropolitics outlined in the Introduction defines conflict and cooperation over water as part of a set of interactions that occur at both international and subnational levels. On this definition, conflicts between states, provinces, or municipalities differ in degree from those that occur between countries but not necessarily in kind. Indeed, as this chapter details, there are many more similarities than differences between international and subnational hydropolitics. But reconceptualizing hydropolitics as a continuum rather than a dichotomy between international and subnational levels requires considerable elaboration, which this chapter attempts in three sections. The first seeks to better define subnational hydropolitics by comparing and contrasting it with its international equivalent, noting in particular a long-term trend toward greater institutionalized cooperation at the international, but not necessarily the subnational, level. The second explains this divergence by exploring the many constraints that central governments face in attempting to manage water resources, especially when political power is decentralized. As this section demonstrates, contrary to popular belief, shared water resources can be difficult to manage even when they are contained within the same country. Finally, the third builds on this conceptual foundation by adding an empirical survey of subnational hydropolitics in ten countries, in the process sketching its three basic dimensions: interjurisdictional, intergovernmental, and state–society relationships. In reconceptualizing hydropolitics along these lines, this chapter attempts to address the first of the key questions raised in the Introduction, namely why interjurisdictional collective action in shared river basins can be equally or even more difficult at the subnational than the international level. The answer has much to do with the often unappreciated limits of the state in managing shared water resources—and the likewise unrecognized role that subnational political elites can play in hindering its involvement. But states are not without their advantages: as Chapter 3 details, they can offer third parties opportunities to support cooperation instead of conflict.
Dynamics Of Hydropolitics Sustaining Conflict And Catalyzing Cooperation
Authors: Moore Scott M.
Published: November 2020

As noted in the Introduction, it is far from clear why subnational jurisdictions like states and provinces would choose to fight over water, especially for prolonged periods of time. Enmeshed in deep political, social, and economic relationships, these jurisdictions and the politicians who lead them would seem to have much more to gain from cooperation than conflict. In this chapter, I explain the emer¬gence and persistence of subnational conflict and cooperation over water in terms of two oppositional factors, sectional identity and political opportunity structure. As I describe further in this chapter, persistent interjurisdictional water conflict usually results from the conflation of shared water resources and sectional identity. In particular, subnational political leaders often seek to gain political support from geographically concentrated ethnic, linguistic, or other groups by alleging that neighboring groups are effectively stealing water at their constituents’ expense. Because of the unique economic importance and emotional resonance of water, such allegations are highly effective in mobilizing political support, and successive subnational politicians can find it expedient to engage in confrontational rather than cooperative behavior. Using water as a tool for political mobilization can also help subnational politicians achieve other objectives, including enhancing their autonomy, distracting from other political challenges, and outflanking opposition parties. On the other hand, where the political opportunity structure in a given country enables third parties to form alliances with national political elites, these alliances create a constituency for strong interjurisdictional institutions that can prevent and resolve conflicts over shared water resources. This chapter proceeds in three sections. First, it explains how the conflation of sectional identity and shared water resources sustains interjurisdictional conflict over long periods of time. The desire of subnational politicians and geographically concentrated water user groups to seek broader support for their objectives leads them to link water-sharing issues to sectional identity. The second section describes how, provided they enjoy access to the political process, third parties can help to induce collective action in shared river basins.
Over Water
Authors: Moore Scott M.
Published: November 2020

The preceding chapters have emphasized the often unappreciated extent to which subnational jurisdictions engage in behaviors that resemble those of sovereign nation-states with respect to shared water resources. The United States, the world’s first modern federation, provides perhaps the clearest illustration of how institutional arrangements create the conditions for such behavior to be exercised. Even in comparison to other federal systems, the U.S. Constitution grants an unusual degree of power to state governments. This asymmetry is codified in the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, which assigns all powers not specifically granted to the federal government to the states instead. The greater power of American states, even relative to their counterparts in other federal systems, is also reflected in the fact that they maintain not only independent executive and legislative bodies but also judiciaries, a feature that has resulted in the uniquely complicated American legal system wherein different states recognize different bodies of law, especially in the case of water rights (Watts 2008). Despite this fundamental asymmetry, the power of the federal government relative to the states has grown over time, especially following the expansion of federal authority during the New Deal era (Sharansky 1970; Elazar 1984; Zimmerman 2011). The United States also lacks several of the mechanisms that ensure a greater degree of coordination and cooperation between states in other federal systems. In particular, the United States lacks the prominent intergovernmental organizations, like the Council of Australian Governments, that are a feature of many other federal systems and that help to address interjurisdictional issues like water resource management. Hydropolitics in the United States presents a twofold puzzle. First, unlike the other countries examined in this book, the United States features a notable diversity of institutional models for governing its river basins. While many American river basins, including the Colorado, are governed either by a patchwork of institutions or by none at all, organizations like the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) represent some of the most powerful river basin governance institutions in the world (Delli Priscoli 2007).
Causes Of Climate Change
Authors: Rohling Eelco J.
Published: November 2020

The causes of natural climate variations, before human impacts, typically arose from one or more of the following: carbon- cycle changes, astronomical changes in the Earth- Sun configuration, large volcanic eruptions (especially plate- tectonics- related major volcanic episodes), asteroid impacts, or variations in the intensity of solar radiation output. Carbon-cycle changes may have acted on their own but were often also involved as a feedback in amplifying the climate responses to changes driven initially by the other mechanisms. In the following sections, we will look at each of these processes in turn. When we want to discuss the dominant changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, we focus mainly on CO2 and CH4 , of which CO2 is the dominant one on longer timescales because it exists in much higher concentrations and lasts much longer in the atmosphere than CH4. As mentioned before, we then commonly investigate things in terms of carbon (C) emissions and uptake because this allows us to relate variations directly to changes in the carbon cycle and how we humans are affecting it. The carbon cycle represents an intricate web of interactions that control carbon storage and exchange between the biosphere (life), hydrosphere (oceans, lakes, rivers), and lithosphere (rocks and sediments; Figure 4.1). We need to consider two critical terms when discussing it. The first is known as the reservoir volume. This stands for the volume of carbon held within each reservoir, such as land- plants and trees, the ocean, or carbonate rocks. The second term is known as flux, and it refers to the amount of carbon that is exchanged between two reservoirs in a year. Because the volumes of carbon that are involved are enormous, we commonly express them in gigatons (Gt). One gigaton is one billion (one thousand million) tons, where a ton is 1000 kg. Most frequently, this term will be used in the expression gigaton of Carbon, or GtC. There are several important reservoirs of carbon (Figure 4.1). The atmosphere holds an approximate volume of 750 GtC. The land-biosphere—living flora and fauna—comprises some 600 or 700 GtC of living material and more than 2000 GtC of dead material.
November: Beavers to the Rescue
Authors: Wohl Ellen
Published: November 2020

By late November, snow covers much of the beaver meadow. I visit on a sunny day well above freezing, but the low-angle light comes with long, long shadows. The meadow is noisy with continuously rushing wind that keeps the bare willow branches swaying and sculpts the snow on the lee side of plants into streamlined mounds. Individual grass stems have traced downwind crescents on the snow surface. Tracks of wind, tracks of animals: the activities of the meadow are once again made visible in the footprints of moose, hare, squirrel, coyote, and birds. The snow is mushy in the warmth and many of the tracks are blurred, but I also cross fresh, sharply defined traces left by four little leaping paws, with just the brush from a long, slender tail behind them. The prints are so delicate that they barely indent the snow, but clearly a mouse was stirring here recently. The fragile tracery of tiny claws in the snow seems vulnerable, but I know the animal is probably better adapted to the cold than I am. The main channel of the creek remains open, the water golden brown between white banks bulbed with ice along the edges. The creek flows quietly, the sound of moving water submerged beneath the wind. The larger side channels also remain open and green with filamentous algae, but I break through the snow-covered thin ice on the smallest side channels. The off-channel ponds are frozen more solidly. Mats of dried algae quiver in the wind on one newly drained pond. Downwind, the snow is dirty with silt blown from the exposed bed. A layer of sticks, sand, and muck floors the pond with a woody carpet created by the beavers. The main beaver lodge is freshly plastered with mud and sticks, but the ice on the surrounding pond remains unbroken and the snow is trackless. Away from the pond, snow into which I sink to mid-calf obscures the details of the ground. The upright stems of willows and aspen trunks dominate the foreground.
Paradise lost
Authors: Beerling David
Published: November 2020

The Isle of Sheppey lies in the mouth of the Thames tucked up along the northern coastline of Kent, south-eastern England. Known to the Romans as insula orivum, and accessible for centuries only by ferry, the small Isle waited until 1860 for the construction of its first permanent bridge, over the River Swale to the mainland. It contains an uneasy mixture of lowland agricultural farmland, tourism, and commercial shipping activities, all divided by a diagonal east-to-west line of low hills. Elmley Marshes, situated on the southern side of the Isle, attract thousands of ducks, geese, and wading birds in the winter. Further to the east lies the Swale National Nature Reserve, a mosaic of grazing land and salt marshes that is home to short-eared owls and hen harriers. Fine beaches dotted along the northern coastline near to the traditional seaside town of Leysdown-on-Sea draw tourists whose spending boosts the local economy. Discovery of a deep-water channel off the north-west coast saw the construction of a Royal Navy dockyard at Sheerness in 1669. The new dockyard was replaced 290 years later by the commercially successful Port of Sheerness, which benefits from the capacity to accommodate large modern ships regardless of the tides. Geology and the sea have combined to shape the cultural and economic aspects of the Isle from its earliest days. In the early part of the nineteenth century, pyrite—iron sulfide—collected from the beaches and foreshore provided a source of green vitriol dye for the tanning and textiles industries. At around the same time, a small industry flourished excavating cement stones (septaria) for the manufacture of Parker’s (or Roman) cement. But the supply of septarian nodules on the beaches was soon exhausted and, with the emergence of more economic means of producing cement, the industry collapsed. The fleeting septaria industry mirrors the fleeting existence of Sheppey, for the Isle is shrinking fast as wave action erodes metres of its cliffs each year. Ultimately, in no more than a geological instant, the Isle of Sheppey and its inhabitants will be gone.
Introduction to Patricia J. Williams
Authors: Shaw Jane , Williams Patricia J.
Published: November 2020

The brilliance of Patricia Williams’s work lies in her ability to use the personal to analyse the structures and institutions that affect our ways of living together. She has an unerring eye for the telling story which reveals to us our habits of being. As one of the foremost public intellectuals in the United States, she brings the qualities of a great and witty storyteller to her training as a lawyer, and tells us about ourselves. In her books The Alchemy of Race and Rights (1991) and The Rooster’s Egg (1995), she reveals the institutional racism that seeps through American society, corroding human rights on a day-to-day basis in ways both large and small. She shows how popular notions of racial difference are transmitted through American culture in myths about black single mothers and about America as a ‘colour-blind’ land of opportunity and hard work. She analyses the media’s sensational reporting of African-Americans in positions of authority and of crimes involving black people. At the heart of such myths and media sensationalism, she argues, is a crippling fear of the other which divides societies against themselves, to everyone’s loss and no one’s gain. It is this sense—that fear impedes and destroys civil rights and humiliates individuals on a daily basis—which drives the analysis she offers of American civil and urban society at this peculiar time of the ‘war on terror’ in her Oxford Amnesty Lecture. Beginning with the notion that America has a very particular notion of division within cities, one which is rooted in its own settler history where good and evil are seen to be battling for control, she then describes the present crisis as a structural problem masquerading as a personal one. Urban chaos is seen as ‘the result [. . .] of personal choice to side with darkness’. Consequently, the threat of terrorism within America is viewed as one that is to be confronted by ‘the project of rooting out the Evil-doers among us’. This is ‘an enterprise in which the application of due process and substantive justice is subordinated to a kind of secularized casting-out-of-demons from the Beloved Community’.
Colossus and the Rise of the Modern Computer
Authors: Copeland Jack
Published: November 2020

Secrecy about Colossus has bedevilled the history of computing. In the years following the Second World War, the Hungarian-born American logician and mathematician John von Neumann, through writings and charismatic public addresses, made the concept of the electronic digital computer widely known. Von Neumann knew nothing of Colossus, and he told the world that the American ENIAC—first operational at the end of 1945, two years after Colossus—was ‘the first electronic computing machine’. Others familiar with the ENIAC and unaware of Colossus peddled the same message. The myth soon became set in stone, and for the rest of the twentieth century book after book—not to mention magazines and newspaper articles—told readers that the ENIAC was the first electronic computer. In 1971, a leading computer science textbook gave this historical summary: ‘The early story has often been told, starting with Babbage and . . . up to the birth of electronic machines with ENIAC.’ The present chapter revisits the early story, setting Colossus in its proper place. In the original sense of the word, a computer was not a machine at all, but a human being—a mathematical assistant whose task was to calculate by rote, in accordance with a systematic method supplied by an overseer prior to the calculation. The computer, like a filing clerk, might have little detailed knowledge of the end to which his or her work was directed. Many thousands of human computers were employed in business, government, and research establishments, doing some of the sorts of calculating work that nowadays is performed by electronic computers (see photograph 42). The term ‘computing machine’ was used increasingly from the 1920s to refer to small calculating machines which mechanised elements of the human computer’s work. For a complex calculation, several dozen human computers might be required, each equipped with a desktop computing machine. By the 1940s, however, the scale of some calculations required by physicists and engineers had become so great that the work could not easily be done in a reasonable time by even a roomful of human computers with desktop computing machines. The need to develop high-speed large-scale computing machinery was pressing.
Setter and Breaker
Authors: Jenkins Roy
Published: November 2020

There were two sections which worked on the German military cipher known as ‘Fish’. One was called Mr Newman’s section and consisted mainly of civilian mathematicians assisted by Wrens and by the embryonic computers. Their task was to strip the first layer of disguise off the intercepted messages. This they did purely by the techniques of probability mathematics, for their product had no more obvious meaning than their raw material. Having got this far they sent the half-deciphered messages over to us in Major Tester’s section. (The Major existed, but was always a shadowy figure, neither much encouraging nor admonishing, nor indeed performing great feats of cryptography himself.) We were a more mixed bag, army officers if we were already so, RSMs (Warrant Officer Class I) if not (this saved time; the rank, at least equally well paid, could be conferred without officer training), one American lieutenant, and a few civilians who were nominally on the strength of some section of the Foreign Office. We were assisted by ATS girls, but by no analytical machines, for our task was the more intuitive one of seeing the clear German (or at least German obscured only by Wehrmacht jargon) under the second layer of cipher, and this was thought to be beyond the help of machines. I would guess, however, that what we did could now be easily computerised. Another retrospective reflection from the perspective of half a century on is that it was very odd that in both sections, despite the fact that the processes called for no strength of physique or even exercise of authority, the question of giving women other than subordinate jobs simply never arose. Tester’s section was divided into two parts. There were the ‘breakers’ and the ‘setters’. The breakers were obviously the elite. They were like matadors compared with picadors, except that they did their work first. Setting was relatively routine. You had to know all the properties of the cipher which had been discovered during the past three years or so, and work with logic and precision. But, if you did this, output for any individual was more or less predictable.
Bletchley Park’s Sturgeon—The Fish That Laid No Eggs
Authors: Weierud Frode
Published: November 2020

This chapter describes the Siemens & Halske T52 cipher machines and explains how Bletchley Park broke them. (See photograph 51.) Many authors have confused the T52 with the Tunny machine, and have erroneously linked the T52 to Colossus. The German armed forces employed three different types of teleprinter cipher machines during the Second World War: the Lorenz SZ40/42a/42b (Tunny), the Siemens & Halske Schlüs-selfernschreibmaschine (SFM—Cipher Teleprinter Machine) T52, and the one-time-tape machine T43, also manufactured by Siemens. The Siemens T52 existed in four functionally distinct models: T52a/b, T52c, T52d, and T52e (there was also the T52ca, a modified version of the T52c). At Bletchley Park all T52 models went under the code name ‘Sturgeon’. The Siemens T43 was probably the unbreakable machine that BP called ‘Thrasher’. (This came into use relatively late in the war, and appears to have been used only on a few selected links.) In 1964 Erik Boheman, the Swedish Under-Secretary of State, first revealed that Sweden had broken the T52 during the Second World War. The Swedish successes against the T52 are the topic of Chapter 26. It was only in 1984 that the British officially acknowledged that Bletchley Park had also enjoyed some success against the T52. Not only did BP intercept traffic enciphered on the T52; it also broke all the different models that it discovered. It was clear from the beginning that the T52 was a very difficult machine to break. Probably it would have remained unbroken had it not been for German security blunders in using the machines. The blame should not be put entirely on the German teleprinter operators, however: the designers of the machines at Siemens, who failed to listen to the advice of the German cryptographic experts, were also responsible. The Siemens engineers seem to have focused more on the engineering problems than on the cryptographic security of the machine. The T52a/b and the original T52c were machines with quite limited security. The T52c is an extraordinary example of how not to go about designing a cryptographic machine. The wheel-combining logic, which was meant to strengthen the machine, had exactly the opposite effect—it eased the task of breaking the machine.
The War Against the Wards
Authors: Nasaw David
Published: November 2020

The progressive reformers would restructure the classroom and expand the responsibilities of the public schools to fit the changing requirements of the productive order. They were, in a sense, standing on the shoulders of the common school crusaders, adjusting the latter’s institutions to the new social situation. Unfortunately, like their forebears, the progressives lacked the power to realize their plans. They were middle-class, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant interlopers in cities filling with poor and immigrant workers. Though they were convinced that they had the answers, they were not consulted; nor was their advice, when offered voluntarily, accepted. The cities, much to the dismay of the reformers, had become the domain of a new breed of American autocrat: the ward boss and his “machine,” politicians who cared little or nothing about productive efficiency, national prosperity, or social morality. The older, established urban gentry and the newly arrived middle class, businessmen and professionals, watched with horror as their democracy went astray. The immigrants, unschooled in democratic principles and practices, continued to vote for the wrong people. Democracy, the progressives feared, was no longer working in the cities. Perhaps because there was too much of it. The progressives did not propose to abolish democracy, just to curb it enough to secure for their people the positions of power and influence needed to accomplish the task of reform. The solutions to the problems of the city, as they saw it, were to get the right people—the experts, the progressives, the reform-minded men and women of the middle classes—into positions of urban leadership, to replace the elected machine politicians with appointed city managers and commissions, the party men with professionals. Though the progressive reformers wanted to effect change in every arena of municipal decision-making, from the mayor’s office through the police, sanitation, and water works, they focused their attention on the public schools, the most vital of social institutions and, to their eyes, the most corrupt. The common schoolers had succeeded in mandating state property taxes and state-legislated and state-supervised curricular guidelines. But they had not succeeded in abolishing the decision-making powers of locally elected or appointed school boards.
Environmental Studies, University
Authors: Kakela Peter
Published: November 2020

I applied for a job at Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois, because it was founded in 1970 to be “the public affairs university” in the country. There I set up a course in Citizens’ Action in Environmental Affairs because I realized that you can talk forever about respecting the environment but if you don’t get into the political workings of power, your talk will mean nothing. I began the course by showing the students a dozen bills that Illinois legislators were going to consider while our course was in progress. We talked briefly about what directions the legislators might take, and then I asked the students what bills they’d like to work on. I had imagined they would form several groups and work on different projects, but they all wanted to study the Illinois Beverage Container Act, what we called “The Bottle Bill.” One of the fellows was the host for the late show on the university radio station. He wanted to get something about the Bottle Bill on his program immediately, but I slowed him down. I wanted to train these students in thorough investigation. At this time a public hearing in Chicago on the Bottle Bill was announced. That was two hundred miles away. “Can we go?” said several students. “Sure,” I said, and gave a tape recorder to those who were going and a couple of tapes I had bought. They went, and came back from Chicago all excited. In class they played some of the testimony they had heard. “That legislator didn’t even know this—” said one student, mentioning a crucial point. I was determined that right from the start my students would know what they were talking about. They had strong opinions, but in this course they would have to get the data. They had to read journals and study the reason and logic behind all points of view. As a group we worked to get the stuff together to make a Fact Sheet to present to legislators, lobbyists, and anyone else we were going to approach. I knew that otherwise the experts and the legislators would pay no attention to us.