Famine and land in Ireland and India 1845-1880: James Caird and the political economy of hunger

The perception of Ireland and India as ‘zones of famine’ led many nineteenth-century observers to draw analogies between these two troublesome parts of the British empire. This article investigates this parallel through the career of James Caird (1816–92), and specifically his interventions in the latter stages of both the Great Irish Famine of 1845–50, and the Indian famines of 1876–9. Caird is best remembered as the joint author of the controversial dissenting minute in the Indian famine commission report of 1880; this article locates the roots of his stance in his previous engagements with Irish policy. Caird's interventions are used to track the trajectory of an evolving ‘Peelite’ position on famine relief, agricultural reconstruction, and land reform between the 1840s and 1880s. Despite some divergences, strong continuities exist between the two interventions – not least concern for the promotion of agricultural entrepreneurship, for actively assisting economic development in ‘backward’ economies, and an acknowledgement of state responsibility for preserving life as an end in itself. Above all in both cases it involved a critique of a laissez-faire dogmatism – whether manifest in the ‘Trevelyanism’ of 1846–50 or the Lytton–Temple system of 1876–9.

Analysing spatio-temporal change by use of national historical Geographical Information Systems: Population change during and after the Great Irish Famine

Several countries have made large investments in building historical Geographical Information Systems (GIS) databases containing census and other quantitative statistics over long periods of time. Making good use of these databases requires approaches that explore spatial and temporal change.

Sildenafil citrate improves sperm motility but causes a premature acrosome reaction in vitro

Objective: to determine if sildenafil citrate; a cyclic monophosphate specific type 5 phosphodiesterase inhibitor, influences sperm motility or the acrosome reaction. Design: laboratory analysis of sperm motility after exposure to sildenafil citrate using computer assisted semen analysis (CASA) and acrosome reaction by fluoroscein isothiocyanate labelled peanut agglutinin (FITC-PNA) staining. Setting: An ART unit Patients: 57 male patients Interventions: Sperm were divided into 90% (the best fertilizing potential used in assisted conception) and 45% (the poorer subpopulation) fractions by density centrifugation and incubated with sildenafil citrate ( 0.67uM) at 37ï?°C for up to 180 minutes. Main outcome measures: both the numbers and velocity of progressively motile sperm were significantly increased by sildenafil citrate between 15 and 135 minutes. Further, samples revealed that these effects were consistent in the 90% and 45% subpopulations of sperm. In both subpopulations, sildenafil also caused a significant increase in the proportion of acrosome reacted sperm - 22.1% compared with 11.8% in the control group of the good quality fraction (p