bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A novel late Early Miocene assemblage of terrestrial gastropods from Santa Cruz (Patagonia, Argentina)
Authors: Miquel Sergio E. , Rodriguez Pablo E.
Published: March 2016

A remarkable fossil assemblage composed of five gastropod taxa is described from the Early Miocene of Santa Cruz (Patagonia, Argentina) in southernmost South America. The assemblage includes extinct and living genera South America, and on geographic distributions and represent background new information on spatial and across time distributions as well as identification of new taxa. A new taxon,Patagocharopa enigmatican. gen. n. sp., is tentatively assigned to Charopidae.Gastrocopta patagonican. sp. (Vertiginidae) represents the oldest record ofGastrocoptain Argentina and the southernmost record for the Americas.Punctum patagonicumn. sp. (Punctidae) represents the first record ofPunctumfor continental South America, and characterized by a protoconch with traces of axial costulae and a teleoconch with strong radial ribs.Zilchogyra miocenican. sp. is the first Miocene record of the charopid genusZilchogyra. Fragments of a possibleScolodonta(Scolodontidae) are recorded. Overall, the assemblage represents an important and useful paleoenvironmental tool. This fauna suggests that a more temperate and humid environment than today—with a more dense vegetation cover—was prevalent at this site during the Early Miocene.
Deliver the Vote! Micromotives and Macrobehavior in Electoral Fraud
Authors: RUNDLETT ASHLEA , SVOLIK MILAN W.
Published: March 2016

Most electoral fraud is not conducted centrally by incumbents but rather locally by a multitude of political operatives. How does an incumbent ensure that his agents deliver fraud when needed and as much as is needed? We address this and related puzzles in the political organization of electoral fraud by studying the perverse consequences of incentive conflicts between incumbents and their local agents. These incentive conflicts result in a herd dynamic among the agents that tends to either oversupply or undersupply fraud, rarely delivering the amount of fraud that would be optimal from the incumbent’s point of view. Our analysis of the political organization of electoral fraud explains why even popular incumbents often preside over seemingly unnecessary fraud, why fraud sometimes fails to deliver victories, and it predicts that the extent of fraud should be increasing in both the incumbent’s genuine support and reported results across precincts. A statistical analysis of anomalies in precinct-level results from the 2011–2012 Russian legislative and presidential elections provides preliminary support for our key claims.
Differing effects of high-fat or high-carbohydrate meals on food hedonics in overweight and obese individuals
Authors: Hopkins Mark , Gibbons Catherine , Caudwell Phillipa , Blundell John E. , Finlayson Graham
Published: March 2016

Although the effects of dietary fat and carbohydrate on satiety are well documented, little is known about the impact of these macronutrients on food hedonics. We examined the effects ofad libitumand isoenergetic meals varying in fat and carbohydrate on satiety, energy intake and food hedonics. In all, sixty-five overweight and obese individuals (BMI=30·9 (sd3·8) kg/m2) completed two separate test meal days in a randomised order in which they consumed high-fat/low-carbohydrate (HFLC) or low-fat/high-carbohydrate (LFHC) foods. Satiety was measured using subjective appetite ratings to calculate the satiety quotient. Satiation was assessed by intake atad libitummeals. Hedonic measures of explicit liking (subjective ratings) and implicit wanting (speed of forced choice) for an array of HFLC and LFHC foods were also tested before and after isoenergetic HFLC and LFHC meals. The satiety quotient was greater afterad libitumand isoenergetic meals during the LFHC condition compared with the HFLC condition (P=0·006 andP=0·001, respectively), whereasad libitumenergy intake was lower in the LFHC condition (P<0·001). Importantly, the LFHC meal also reduced explicit liking (P<0·001) and implicit wanting (P=0·011) for HFLC foods compared with the isoenergetic HFLC meal, which failed to suppress the hedonic appeal of subsequent HFLC foods. Therefore, when coupled with increased satiety and lower energy intake, the greater suppression of hedonic appeal for high-fat food seen with LFHC foods provides a further mechanism for why these foods promote better short-term appetite control than HFLC foods.
Defending democracy? The legislative response to political extremism in the Irish Free State, 1922–l39
Authors: Kissane Bill
Published: March 2016

The Irish Free State was both victim and survivor of the general crisis of European democracy in the inter-war era. Born into civil war in 1922, it saw repeated bouts of instability and political violence, the emergence of radicalised movements on the left and right in the 1930s, and the subsidence of political unrest late in that decade. In this period the state’s reliance on emergency legislation to deal with subversion was obviously an indication of the persistence of unrest, and such laws have usually been seen as an inescapable part of the state’s pursuit of authority and legitimacy. On the other hand, the Irish case is also an example of how a state’s political development can be affected by civil war, since the continuities in the state’s legislative response to political extremism, from 1922 onwards, are too strong to ignore. Of course, the Free State was also one of the few new democracies to survive the period with its democratic institutions intact, but from the outset this achievement was accomplished through the paradox of withholding the conventions of democracy until the period of crisis would pass. One view is that this was the price to be paid for countering the threat to democratic government posed by subversive organisations, while such organisations themselves argue that they remained subject not to a ‘government of laws’ but to ‘a government of men’. As in other situations, the legitimacy of such legislation was inextricably linked to the case governments made for there being a state of emergency, but such arguments were always deeply contested. Either way, the whole issue of emergency legislation reveals both a confused understanding of the requisites of constitutional government in Ireland, and the need to appreciate the complex nature of the decisions states make in an era of violent conflict.
Land and politics in independent Ireland, 1923–48: the case for reappraisal
Authors: Dooley Terence
Published: March 2016

The land question from the mid-Victorian period to around 1903 looms large in Irish historiography. This is hardly surprising given the fact that, while it was immensely important in its own right, it could not be disentangled from the wider political developments of the time that saw the land and national questions merge. However, with the exception of recent work by Professor David Seth Jones, the land question in post-independence Ireland has been largely overlooked. There seems, in fact, to be a general assumption among political, social and economic historians that there was no land question after 1922, that the land act of the following year defused all potential for future agrarian unrest by completing the transfer of ownership from landlords to tenants.
‘Ireland in his heart north and south’ the contribution of Ernest Blythe to the partition question
Authors: Corráin Daithí Ó
Published: March 2016

Ulster Protestant, farmer’s son, journalist, I.R.B. member, Irish Volunteer organiser, hunger-striker, Sinn Féin T.D. and Minister for Trade and Commerce, advocate of the Anglo-Irish treaty, Cumann na nGaedheal Minister for Local Government, Finance and Posts and Telegraphs, Vice-President of the Executive Council, Blueshirt intellectual (but no fascist): these successive designations capture the varied early career of Ernest Blythe. Far less is known of his interests and writing after his retirement from political life: the Irish language, theatre and, in particular, the partition question.
Donegal and the joint-I.R.A. northern offensive, May–November 1922
Authors: Lynch Robert
Published: March 2016

The study of the Irish Civil War has undergone enormous changes in recent years, especially in terms of a new appreciation of the role played by minorities and localities in shaping the conflict. However, despite these new perspectives, the war continues to be defined almost solely with reference to its effects on the Free State. This is to ignore one of the most important military and political initiatives of the period: the combined I.R.A. campaign against partition which took place in the first six months of 1922 and persisted into the early stages of the Civil War.
Factions, feuds and noble power in the lordship of Ireland,c. 1356–1496
Authors: Crooks Peter
Published: March 2016

On 17 September 1496 Gerald, eighth earl of Kildare (the ‘Great Earl’), landed at Howth, County Dublin, after a lengthy and troubled voyage from England. One of the earl’s fellow travellers gave thanks to God for his safe arrival. If Kildare did likewise, his gratitude probably sprang less from his delivery from the natural elements than from his survival of a hostile political climate at court. Since the battle of Bosworth in 1485 not one but two Yorkist pretenders had found support in Ireland. The first of them — Lambert Simnel — was crowned in May 1487 as ‘King Edward VI’ in Christ Church cathedral, Dublin, after which a parliament was held in his name. Kildare was chief governor of Ireland during both conspiracies. More recently he had faced allegations of treason during the expedition of Sir Edward Poynings (1494-5). Despite this dubious record of loyalty to the newly established Tudor dynasty, on 6 August 1496 Henry VII appointed the Great Earl lord deputy of Ireland.
Refraining the Reformation
Authors: Gillespie Raymond
Published: March 2016

The Reformation in Ireland has never lacked chroniclers, defenders and detractors. The reason for this is not hard to discern. The older literature that grappled with the processes of religious change in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ireland was based on a number of well-recognised and widely agreed propositions. The first of these was that confessional and political positions were inextricably linked, and the fate of one served not only as a proxy for the other but as an explanation for the trajectory of change; thus, to explain the failure of the reform process to strike deep roots in sixteenth-century Ireland, one had only to invoke the failure of the Tudor conquest.
Bishop Francis Hutchinson (1660–1739): a case study in the eighteenth-century culture of improvement
Authors: Sneddon Andrew
Published: March 2016

In recent years our understanding of the attempts of the Irish Protestant élite to convert and ‘civilise’ Ireland in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has increased substantially. Some historians have examined the various campaigns to convert the largely Irish-speaking Catholic native population to Protestantism, through schools, the employment of Irish-speaking clergy and the publication of key religious texts in Irish. Others have explored Protestant efforts to civilise Ireland by bringing its governmental and legal infrastructure into line with those of England and through the spread of English dress, language, industries and agriculture.
Questioning the (bad) question: ‘Was Ireland a colony?’
Authors: Howe Stephen
Published: March 2016

The title of this article is consciously provocative, and thus cries out for immediate explanation and perhaps, in some sense, for the provocation to be disarmed. Why, then, is ‘Was Ireland a colony?’ a bad question - or rather, a question often badly posed? Reasons include the fact that the question is so intertwined with other disputes, including directly political ones, and because there are problems with the term ‘colony’ itself, which has in so many varied contexts been overworked, under-theorised and even under-defined. The oversimplified, stark ‘either/or’ nature of the question is also problematic, when it would be more productive, and perhaps more precise, to think in terms of colonial features in combination with others, if not, indeed, of graduations and degrees of coloniality.
James Craig: Chamberlainite imperialist, 1903–14
Authors: Daly T. P.
Published: March 2016

The relationship of Irish unionists to the Empire presents opposing views. Hugh Shearman claimed that Irish unionists were ‘progressive imperialists’. Alvin Jackson disagreed, writing that they were more focused on local matters, and had little interest in the Empire except as a resource to suit their own agenda. The career of the leading Irish and Ulster unionist, James Craig, in the period 1903–14, can be used to test these competing theories and to illuminate such topics as the influence of Joseph Chamberlain on Craig, how local, national and imperial issues were dealt with by Craig, and the part played by Orangeism in Craig’s imperialism. This author shall argue that imperialism was a strand within Craig’s Protestantism and Orangeism that allowed him to deal with local-constituency problems, the demands of party at Westminster, and the national issue of home rule. As such, Craig provides evidence for what Keith Jeffery calls the ‘irrelevance’ of the Empire for Ulster unionists. From the early part of Craig’s political career, the Empire was a means of making Ulster-unionist arguments relevant to a particular audience, local or British.
The foundation and development of Na Fianna Éireann, 1909–16
Authors: Hay Marnie
Published: March 2016

This article examines the establishment and development of Na Fianna Éireann, or the Irish National Boy Scouts, in the period 1909–16. It also assesses the contributions of the organisation’s two founders, Countess Constance Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson, in the early years of its existence. Bureau of Military History witness statements, a key source for the history of the Fianna, indicate that a degree of controversy surrounds the relative importance of the pair in the foundation and control of the Fianna movement.
Cumann na nGaedheal, sea fishing and west Galway, 1923–32
Authors: Fathartaigh Mícheál Ó
Published: March 2016

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British government made a vigorous effort to ameliorate poverty in the west of Ireland. In 1891 the Congested Districts Board (C.D.B.) was established, with an array of special powers to promote economic development in the west. It recognised that land could only play a limited role in development due to its generally poor quality, but that sea fishing had significant potential. Nowhere was this more obvious than west Galway, where the majority of people were farmer-fishermen, living either on the islands or along a coastal belt on the mainland because fishing offered some compensation for inadequate land. Sea fishing in west Galway was, however, for the most part primitive.
‘God save the king’ versus ‘The soldier’s song’: the 1929 Trinity College national anthem dispute and the politics of the Irish Free State
Authors: Morris Ewan
Published: March 2016

National symbols have long been the subject of political controversy in Ireland and remain so today. Although arguments about symbols are now more common in Northern Ireland than in the Irish Republic, the early years of the Irish Free State saw vigorous discussions about the appropriateness of the new state’s symbols. One such debate broke out in 1929, following a dispute between the Free State government and Trinity College, Dublin, over which anthem should be played for the Governor-General. At the time this dispute was described by one political commentator as ‘one of those political storms in a tea-cup in which we delight’, and now, from a distance of almost seventy years, it is perhaps even harder to understand how such passions were roused over a seemingly minor incident. Even teacup storms can provide valuable insights, however, if historians can learn to read the tea-leaves.

One way of studying national anthems is to analyse their texts and compare them with those of other nations in order to obtain ‘an unique view into the polity, its self-conception or self-image, and ultimately, its deepest political aspirations, experiences, goals, and values’. Such an approach, however, takes an ahistorical and essentialist view of the nation or state and loses sight of political divisions within the nation. National anthems must be seen in their historical context: the circumstances of their creation and adoption must be examined, as must the ways in which the meanings attached to them change over time. They often emerge out of political conflict and can become the focus of conflict once again as new political forces come to the fore. Despite the claims of governments and nationalist ideologues, the selection of a national anthem is not a simple expression of ‘national will’.
XLVIII: Lord Kimberley and the foundation of Liberal Irish policy: annotations to George Sigerson’s Modern Ireland: its vital questions, secret societies, and government (1868)
Authors: Powell John , Kennedy Pádraic
Published: March 2016

Late in 1868 the Dublin doctor, author and nationalist George Sigerson (c. 1836–1925) published, under the title Modern Ireland, a collection of widely quoted articles he had written for the Daily Chronicle during the previous year. Among the bewildering flood of Irish commentary on British rule, his was notable for its clear exposition and its moderate tone. From the perspective of the Liberal Party, on the verge of being returned to office, Sigerson’s observations were valuable in representing the views of a moderate, middle-class Irish element which might co-operate in implementing a liberal policy acceptable to all parties in both England and Ireland. His credentials as a nationalist were impeccable, yet he had not been seduced by the Fenian inclination towards violence. The book prompted modest praise from critics and enjoyed a reasonable success in the book trade, going through several printings and two editions.

One man who read the first edition was John Wodehouse, first earl of Kimberley (1826–1902), the immediate past viceroy of Ireland, who annotated profusely as he read. His notes are unusual in that they are extensive (52 of 393 pages were annotated), spread throughout the text, and generally lengthy (averaging twenty words per annotated page). A few involve the kinds of ethnically disparaging remarks to which he was prone. However, the majority deal with substantive issues with which Kimberley as viceroy had had to deal (Fenianism and land improvement) or would be dealing later that year as part of Gladstone’s first government (disestablishment and land reform).
A ‘Presbyterian insurrection’? Reconsidering the Hearts of Oak disturbances of July 1763
Authors: Magennis Eoin F.
Published: March 2016

In the midsummer of 1763 six of the nine counties of Ulster temporarily passed out of the control of the landed élite and into that of the Hearts of Oak. People gathered in their thousands across most of Ulster, with the exclusion of Counties Antrim, Donegal and most of Down, to protest at the levels of the taxes levied by the grand juries, the collection of small dues by the clergy of the established church and the compulsory six days’ labour on the roads. At the time one Dublin newspaper expressed its horror at this outbreak among the ‘loyal Protestants of the North of Ireland’ and warned that ‘our neighbours [might] be glad to make a handle out of this to our great prejudice and scandal, as they did about the Whiteboys last year’. Among many observers the belief was that these embarrassing disturbances by Ulster’s Protestants, particularly by the Presbyterians — who had long been seen as a difficult element — should quickly be put down and the insurrection regarded as an aberration.

The scale of subsequent events in late eighteenth-century Ulster made it easier to forget the Oakboy disturbances. They were neither as long-lasting as the Steelboy outrages, nor as violent as the later clashes between the Peep o’ Day Boys and Defenders. In the early nineteenth century the narrators of rural unrest, Richard Musgrave and George Cornewall Lewis, believed the Hearts of Oak disturbances to be of little importance, while historians like Lecky saw all agrarian rioters as largely cut from the same apolitical cloth. This was to remain the perception until the late 1970s and 1980s and a series of groundbreaking articles, several of them resulting from the research of James S. Donnelly. These showed a fresh insight into eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Irish agrarian troubles, accompanied by a willingness to use theoretical models of unrest in pre-industrial societies and the responses of their legal systems.
The trials of James Cotter and Henry, Baron Barry of Santry: two case studies in the administration of criminal justice in early eighteenth-century Ireland
Authors: Garnham Neal
Published: March 2016

At least twice during the first half of the eighteenth century criminal prosecutions were undertaken in Ireland which gripped the public imagination. The first of these celebrated cases, involving the trial for rape, conviction and subsequent execution of the Cork Jacobite James Cotter in 1720, has also come to hold an extraordinary fascination for historians of eighteenth-century Ireland. Few writers concerned with early Georgian Ireland have been able to avoid its allure. For the most part, however, the incident has been referred to only fleetingly, employed variously as a motif of religious or political conflict or ethnic alienation. For Kevin Whelan, it is illustrative of the ‘conflict between old and new families’ in Munster, and indicative of a ‘partisan popish paranoia’ on the part of the province’s Protestant rulers. For Louis Cullen, it was ‘part of the legacy of the 1690s’, yet an event which would provide ‘the spark which set alight the sectarian tensions in Munster in the 1760s’. Other commentators have seen the case as one in which ‘a trumped-up charge’ was laid, for political purposes, against a man ‘generally believed’ to be innocent. A few have offered more guarded conclusions. Thomas Bartlett ventures only that this was ‘certainly a sensational event’. James Kelly both recognises the unique circumstances of Cotter’s case and suggests that it is ‘unlikely that he was the victim of judicial assassination’. S. J. Connolly goes further, stressing that Cotter had ‘quite clearly been guilty of rape’. However, the fullest and most recent examination of the case, in an essay written by Breandán Ó Buachalla in an ‘attempt to correlate a specific literary text to the career of a specific political activist’, returns us firmly to the recurrent context of Catholic Jacobite resistance and Protestant collusion.
National humiliation and the Great Hunger: fast and famine in 1847
Authors: Gray Peter
Published: March 2016

On Wednesday 24 March 1847 a national day of fast and humiliation was observed throughout the United Kingdom, imploring, in the words of the royal proclamation, ‘the removal of those heavy judgments which our manifold sins and provocations have most justly deserved’. The fast-day was marked by a general stoppage of work and the opening of places of worship for special services. Substantial collections for the relief of famine distress in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands were made at church and chapel doors as the congregations retired. The effect was, as one Hampshire clergyman observed, dramatic: ‘The whole nation has this day lamented their sins and prayed for pardon; imagination can scarcely picture a more affecting scene than that of millions of people, assembled at the same moment in the presence of the Almighty, imploring his forgiveness, praying for grace to amend their lives, and deprecating the continuance of his displeasure.’

What was the meaning of this seemingly archaic reaction to the Irish Famine? Considered through the filter of late twentieth-century religious scepticism, it might appear at best a marginal distraction from the catastrophic drama of the Famine, at worst a cynical attempt by the political establishment to lay a moral smokescreen around the question of responsibility for famine relief by reviving pre-modern conceptions of divine agency. To understand the significance of the fast-day and its repercussions, however, it is necessary to recognise the extent to which a Christian — and more particularly a Protestant evangelical — world-view permeated early Victorian British society.
John Toland, the druids, and the politics of Celtic scholarship
Authors: Champion J.A.I.
Published: March 2016

In dedicating hisSpecimen of the critical history of the Celtic religion and learningto Robert, Lord Molesworth, John Toland carefully outlined his attitude to historical writing: the ‘fundamental law of a historian is, daring to say whatever is true, and not daring to write any falsehood; neither being swayed by love nor hatred, nor gain’d by favour or interest: so he ought of course to be as a man of no time or country, of no sect or party: which I hope the several nations, concern’d in this present enquiry, will find to be particularly true of me’. These words, it will be contended, ought to be the starting-point for treating Toland, in the precision of his own words, ‘as a man of no time or country’. Recently there has been a renaissance of historical interest in the significance of the life and thought of Toland; particular attention has been paid to the question of his religious, cultural and national identity. Variously described as the ‘first Irish philosopher’, an adventurer in scholarship, ‘crazy John’, a ‘traditional Irish trickster’, a postmodernist and even a post-nationalist, Toland’s reputation as an elusive and ambiguous figure has replaced an older historiography that was confident in identifying him as a radical deist, or perhaps a ‘pantheist’ on the margins of the Enlightenment canon of philosophers of reason.
The Irish Race Conference, 1922, reconsidered
Authors: Keown Gerard
Published: March 2016

The Irish Race Conference met in Paris at the end of January 1922 to initiate a new world organisation that would link the people of Ireland with their cousins around the globe. The gathering of delegates attracted comment wherever the Irish had settled, and even the Belfast Telegraph noted its opening ceremonies. The South African Irish newspaper, The Republic, heralded the conference as a ‘family reunion on a world wide scale’, but, like many family gatherings, disagreement was to follow in its wake. The idea of a conference was first mooted in February 1921 by the Irish Republican Association of South Africa (I.R.A.S.A.), to support the efforts then being made to win international recognition for an independent Irish republic. However, the I.R.A.S.A. did not see its work stopping there, envisaging the creation of a worldwide organisation that would link the Irish overseas with their compatriots at home. Over the following months the idea was developed into plans for an Irish International that would pursue a programme of social, cultural and economic objectives in Ireland and abroad. As The Republic explained,

It is not the Ireland of four millions that we are thinking of now, nor even merely the potential Ireland of ten or fifteen millions. We are thinking also of the Greater Ireland, the Magna Hibernia across the seas, the millions of Irish people throughout the world. Though these Irish are now citizens of their adopted lands, they must not be, and they are not, wholly lost to Ireland. They also are to share in the great destiny of their motherland.

Just how such wide-ranging aims were to be realised would prove a matter of dissent among delegates when they assembled twelve months later in Paris. But in February 1921 the proposal inspired only enthusiasm and hope for the future.

The idea of the conference was a product of the belief prevalent at the time that the Irish had ‘yet to give to the world the best which is in them’. The official programme for the new race organisation captured this sentiment, declaring the organisers’ belief that ‘Ireland has much to give to the world’. It was widely expected that this potential would be realised once the Irish were free to govern themselves. It is thus ironic that it was ultimately over the relationship between the new Irish government and the overseas Irish that the conference, and all its worthy ambitions, would founder.
Vaucouleurs, Ludlow and Trim: the role of Ireland in the career of Geoffrey de Geneville (c. 1226–1314)
Authors: Hartland Beth
Published: March 2016

In 1252 Geoffrey de Geneville married Matilda de Lacy, the elder coheiress of Meath and Weobley, thereby becoming lord of Trim in Ireland and Ludlow in the Welsh March. By birth, however, this second son of Simon, lord of Joinville, was the lord of Vaucouleurs in Champagne and was thus an ‘exotic’ figure to find involved in late thirteenth-century Ireland. While Geoffrey was not alone in being a landowner in Ireland with continental origins, since he was part of what Robert Bartlett calls the ‘aristocratic diaspora’ — the movement of western European aristocrats from their homelands into new areas where they settled in order to augment their fortunes — he was exceptional in that he was the most successful figure to emerge in Ireland as a result of Henry III’s tendency to invest foreigners from the court circle with lands in outlying areas. This pattern has been described as a policy by H. W. Ridgeway, who saw an intention to secure potentially troublesome border regions as one reason behind Henry’s distribution of peripheral patronage to ‘aliens’; and, indeed, Geoffrey numbered himself among the upright men of different nationalities placed in Ireland by the descendants of Henry II in order to bring the island to the obedience of the English king and to conserve the peace. The success that Geoffrey made of his grant of Trim related to the ‘secure nature’ of that particular lordship. However, that cannot be the whole story. There is no firm evidence that either William de Valence or Geoffrey de Lusignan, Henry III’s half-brothers, or the Savoyard knight Otto de Grandison, members of the Poitevin and Savoyard entourages of Henry III and the Lord Edward and the recipients of grants in the securely held areas of Wexford, Louth and Tipperary respectively, ever visited the lordship of Ireland in spite of their receipt of valuable lands there.
H.V. Evatt, Australia and Ireland’s departure from the Commonwealth: a reassessment
Authors: Bongiorno Frank
Published: March 2016

On 7 September 1948 the newly appointed Taoiseach, John A. Costello, the leader of a coalition government in which his party Fine Gael was the senior partner, announced in Ottawa that he intended to repeal Eire’s External Relations Act, and thus sever its final tenuous link with the crown. The External Relations Act ‘empowered the Executive Council of the Irish Free State to authorise the use of the king’s signature on the letters of credence to be presented to heads of foreign states by Irish diplomatic representatives’. Eamon de Valera, Costello’s predecessor, had introduced the External Relations Act in 1936, and had regarded it as a device that might help to end partition. The measure magnified Ireland’s constitutional ambiguity, but with its repeal the twenty-six counties would assuredly become a republic outside the Commonwealth.
Irish newspapers and the Spanish Civil War
Authors: McGarry Fearghal
Published: March 2016

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed.

George Orwell (1943)

The Spanish Civil War was one of the most controversial conflicts of recent history. For many on the left, it was a struggle between democracy and fascism. In contrast, many Catholics and conservatives championed Franco as a crusader against communism. Others felt Spain was the beginning of an inevitable conflict between fascism and communism which had increasingly threatened the stability of inter-war Europe. Spain has remained a battleground of ideologies ever since. Many supporters of the Spanish Republic attribute its defeat to the failure of other democratic states to oppose fascism, a policy of appeasement which ultimately led to the Second World War; for others on the left, including Orwell, Spain came to symbolise the betrayal of socialism by the Soviet Union — a disillusioning suppression of liberty repeated in subsequent decades in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Ireland was no less drawn to Spain than other European nations. Within months of the war breaking out, close to one thousand Irishmen were fighting among the armies of both sides on the frontlines around Madrid. But for most Irish people, influenced by the Catholic church and sensational newspaper reports of anticlerical atrocities, the ideological conflict was perceived to be between Catholicism and communism rather than left and right. The outbreak of the war was followed by an immense outpouring of popular sympathy for Franco’s Nationalists. During the autumn of 1936 the Irish Christian Front organised mass pro-Franco rallies which attracted the support of opposition politicians, clergymen and much of the public. The dissenting voices of support for the Spanish Republic emanating from the marginalised Irish left were ignored or, more often, suppressed. De Valera’s Fianna Fáil government expressed its support for Spain’s Catholics while, somewhat awkwardly, adopting a position of neutrality for reasons of international diplomacy.
J.C. Beckett: politics, faith, scholarship
Authors: Jackson Alvin
Published: March 2016

On 16 February 1966 James Camlin Beckett, who by that time had taught in Queen’s University Belfast for twenty-one years, confided to his diary that he found it ‘hard to stay awake for an hour long lecture’ and wondered whether ‘we also go to sleep without knowing it, when we are giving a lecture instead of receiving it’. In this, the first of the lectures commemorating Beckett’s achievement, I propose — one hopes in a passably alert state — to examine three central aspects of his life and convictions: his politics and sense of national identity, his religious life, and finally his philosophy of history. The lecture draws upon Beckett’s writings, and on his papers and diaries (which are at present housed in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland); other Beckett letters, some in private hands, have also been used.
‘Parnell’s Old Brigade’: the Redmondite–Fenian nexus in the 1890s
Authors: Kelly Matthew
Published: March 2016

The relationship between constitutional and advanced or physical-force nationalism in nineteenth-century Ireland was always tense and intimate. Both traditions professed to repudiate the stated aims and strategies of the other, while at the same time often co-operating across the apparent ideological and organisational divides. The Fenians worked with Isaac Butt’s early home rule movement, while the New Departures of the late 1870s facilitated I.R.B. involvement in the Land League and the home rule movement, proving crucial to the emergent leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. Although this ideological flexibility was often motivated by a self-interested desire to be associated with influential organisations and personalities, it also arose from the realisation that the ideal strategy was currently inappropriate. The essence of the New Departure lay in allowing physical-force men to join the agrarian agitation of the Land League on the understanding that this did not compromise their separatist ideals. Consequently, the self-identification of separatists at the time of the 1916 rising as belonging to an immemorial tradition, consecrated by the blood of martyrs, needs to be set against both the contingency of political engagement and the lack of precision as to the form of state a separate Ireland might take.
Gaelic sport and the Irish diaspora in Boston, 1879–90
Authors: Darby Paul
Published: March 2016

Although Gaelic sports have been played in an organised fashion for over a century in the United States, academic research on the development and role of these sports among the Irish diaspora has been extremely limited. This is hardly surprising, given the more general disregard of the significance of sport in the burgeoning literature examining the Irish experience in America. In its most general aspect, this study seeks to redress this neglect. Drawing predominantly on archival material from the John J. Burns Library at Boston College and from Boston Public Library, the article charts and explores the processes involved in the transfer of Gaelic sports from Ireland to one of the most significant focal points of Irish immigration, Boston. This analysis not only identifies and examines the key agencies and individuals responsible for the early development of Irish sports in Boston, but also seeks to explore the role they played in the promotion and preservation of a distinctively Irish ethnic identity. In particular, the article assesses the extent to which Gaelic games have functioned as an arena in which Irish nationalism was fostered in the greater Boston area during the 1880s. Before turning to these central concerns, it is important to understand the social milieu in which these games developed. Thus the article begins with a brief context-setting discussion that charts Irish emigration to Boston and offers some insights into the socio-economic and political environment encountered by the Irish on completion of their journey.
California mussels (Mytilus californianus) as sentinels for marine contamination with Sarcocystis neurona
Authors: MICHAELS LAUREN , REJMANEK DANIEL , AGUILAR BEATRIZ , CONRAD PATRICIA , SHAPIRO KAREN
Published: March 2016

Sarcocystis neurona is a terrestrial parasite that can cause fatal encephalitis in the endangered Southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis). To date, neither risk factors associated with marine contamination nor the route of S. neurona infection to marine mammals has been described. This study evaluated coastal S. neurona contamination using California mussels (Mytilus californianus) as sentinels for pathogen pollution. A field investigation was designed to test the hypotheses that (1) mussels can serve as sentinels for S. neurona contamination, and (2) S. neurona contamination in mussels would be highest during the rainy season and in mussels collected near freshwater. Initial validation of molecular assays through sporocyst spiking experiments revealed the ITS-1500 assay to be most sensitive for detection of S. neurona, consistently yielding parasite amplification at concentrations ⩾5 sporocysts/1 mL mussel haemolymph. Assays were then applied on 959 wild-caught mussels, with detection of S. neurona confirmed using sequence analysis in three mussels. Validated molecular assays for S. neurona detection in mussels provide a novel toolset for investigating marine contamination with this parasite, while confirmation of S. neurona in wild mussels suggests that uptake by invertebrates may serve as a route of transmission to susceptible marine animals.
Transgenesis inStrongyloidesand related parasitic nematodes: historical perspectives, current functional genomic applications and progress towards gene disruption and editing
Authors: LOK J. B. , SHAO H. , MASSEY H. C. , LI X.
Published: March 2016

Transgenesis forStrongyloidesandParastrongyloideswas accomplished in 2006 and is based on techniques derived forCaenorhabditis elegansover two decades earlier. Adaptation of these techniques has been possible becauseStrongyloidesand related parasite genera carry out at least one generation of free-living development, with adult males and females residing in soil contaminated by feces from an infected host. Transgenesis in this group of parasites is accomplished by microinjecting DNA constructs into the syncytia of the distal gonads of free-living females. InStrongyloides stercoralis, plasmid-encoded transgenes are expressed in promoter-regulated fashion in the F1 generation following gene transfer but are silenced subsequently. Stable inheritance and expression of transgenes inS. stercoralisrequires their integration into the genome, and stable lines have been derived from integrants created using thepiggyBactransposon system. More direct investigations of gene function involving expression of mutant transgene constructs designed to alter intracellular trafficking and developmental regulation have shed light on the function of the insulin-regulated transcription factor Ss-DAF-16. Transgenesis inStrongyloidesandParastrongyloidesopens the possibility of powerful new methods for genome editing and transcriptional manipulation in this group of parasites. Proof of principle for one of these, CRISPR/Cas9, is presented in this review.
Single and multi-gene phylogeny ofHepatospora(Microsporidia) – a generalist pathogen of farmed and wild crustacean hosts
Authors: BATEMAN K. S. , WIREDU-BOAKYE D. , KERR R. , WILLIAMS B. A. P. , STENTIFORD G. D.
Published: March 2016

Almost half of all known microsporidian taxa infect aquatic animals. Of these, many cause disease in arthropods.Hepatospora, a recently erected genus, infects epithelial cells of the hepatopancreas of wild and farmed decapod crustaceans. We isolatedHepatosporaspp. from three different crustacean hosts, inhabiting different habitats and niches; marine edible crab (Cancer pagurus), estuarine and freshwater Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) and the marine mussel symbiont pea crab (Pinnotheres pisum). Isolates were initially compared using histology and electron microscopy revealing variation in size, polar filament arrangement and nuclear development. However, sequence analysis of the partial SSU rDNA gene could not distinguish between the isolates (~99% similarity). In an attempt to resolve the relationship betweenHepatosporaisolated fromE. sinensisandC. pagurus, six additional gene sequences were mined from on-going unpublished genome projects (RNA polymerase, arginyl tRNA synthetase, prolyl tRNA synthetase, chitin synthase, beta tubulin and heat shock protein 70). Primers were designed based on the above gene sequences to analyseHepatosporaisolated from pea crab. Despite application of gene sequences to concatenated phylogenies, we were unable to discriminateHepatosporaisolates obtained from these hosts and concluded that they likely represent a single species or, at least subspecies thereof. In this instance, concatenated phylogenetic analysis supported the SSU-based phylogeny, and further, demonstrated that microsporidian taxonomies based upon morphology alone are unreliable, even at the level of the species. Our data, together with description ofH. eriocheirin Asian crab farms, reveal a preponderance for microvariants of this parasite to infect the gut of a wide array of decapods crustacean hosts and the potential forHepatosporato exist as a cline across wide geographies and habitats.
On the deep structure of social affect: Attitudes, emotions, sentiments, and the case of “contempt”
Authors: Gervais Matthew M. , Fessler Daniel M. T.
Published: March 2016

Contempt is typically studied as a uniquely human moral emotion. However, this approach has yielded inconclusive results. We argue this is because the folk affect concept “contempt” has been inaccurately mapped onto basic affect systems. “Contempt” has features that are inconsistent with a basic emotion, especially its protracted duration and frequently cold phenomenology. Yet other features are inconsistent with a basic attitude. Nonetheless, the features of “contempt” functionally cohere. To account for this, we revive and reconfigure thesentimentconstruct using the notion of evolved functional specialization. We develop the Attitude–Scenario–Emotion (ASE) model of sentiments, in which enduring attitudes represent others' social-relational value and moderate discrete emotions across scenarios. Sentiments are functional networks of attitudes and emotions. Distinct sentiments, includinglove,respect,like,hate, andfear, track distinct relational affordances, and each is emotionally pluripotent, thereby serving both bookkeeping and commitment functions within relationships. The sentimentcontemptis an absence ofrespect; from cues to others' low efficacy, it represents them as worthless and small, mutingcompassion,guilt, andshameand potentiatinganger,disgust, andmirth. This sentiment is ancient yet implicated in the ratcheting evolution of human ultrasocialty. The manifolds of thecontemptnetwork, differentially engaged across individuals and populations, explain the features of “contempt,” its translatability, and its variable experience as “hot” or “cold,” occurrent or enduring, and anger-like or disgust-like. This rapprochement between psychological anthropology and evolutionary psychology contributes both methodological and empirical insights, with broad implications for understanding the functional and cultural organization of social affect.
Constat Ergo Inter Nos Verba Signa Esse: The Understanding of the Miraculous in Anglo-Saxon Society
Authors: Fadda Anna Maria Luiselli
Published: March 2016

This paper investigates two important themes which have not hitherto been fully appreciated: how the Anglo-Saxons, during the whole lengthy process of their reception of Christianity, interpreted the meaning of those extraordinary events commonly called miracula, and what reflection on the vernacular was carried forward by the knowledge achieved for purposes of communication. Although the question of the vocabulary of ‘miracle’ in Antiquity and early Christian times has been dealt with elsewhere, any discussion of vernacular terminology is barely discernible and scarcely ever encountered. My intention is, therefore, to consider the intentional expressive activity of the Anglo-Saxons as a reflection of meaning on their language.
Miracle, Meaning and Narrative in the Latin East
Authors: Friedman Yvonne
Published: March 2016

In medieval narrative the First Crusade and the founding of the Latin kingdom were perceived as Gesta Dei per Francos – God’s own deed. Having no doubt that the success of the First Crusade was a miracle, God’s intervention in history, the chroniclers’ rendering of events was accordingly replete with miracles, such as the discovery of the Holy Lance in Antioch and the saints’ taking an active role in the battle against Kirbogha of Mosul in 1098. Even in the more level-headed historical narratives, military success was seen as a miracle and failures were attributed to the sins of the participants who were not pure enough to merit a miracle. Thus the miraculous intervention of God in history became the logical consequence of the prowess and religious behavior of the crusaders, an almost expected outcome of natural events.
Mirabilis Deus in Sanctis Suis*:Social History and Medieval Miracles
Authors: Goodich Michael
Published: March 2016

Perhaps our most learned and knowledgeable informant concerning both the heretics and their persecutors is the great inquisitor, hagiographer and Dominican historian Bernard Gui (1261–1331), who has been immortalized as the personification of evil by Umberto Eco inThe Name of the Rose. In his manual for inquisitors, Gui issued the following caveat concerning the conduct of inquiries into heresy:

It is worthwhile noting that if too many questions and answers are raised, the truth is distorted and destroyed as a result of the diversity of persons and events. Rather, it is suitable not to write down all the questions and answers, but only those which touch directly on the substance and character of the event and which more closely appear to express the truth. If in one deposition too many questions and answers are found, another deposition will appear thereby diminished since too little is recorded. When so many questions and answers are written down in a trial, agreement can scarcely be found in the depositions of the witnesses, which should be both considered and avoided.