Official histories of parliament and the nature of the union of 1707:a forgotten episode in Anglo-Scottish academic relations

The Scottish Committee on the History of Parliament was established in 1936 as an offshoot of Col. Josiah Wedgwood's scheme for a collaborative ‘history of parliament’ researched and written on biographical lines. Circumstances, however, determined that the Scottish history would take a separate path. When Wedgwood's scheme was revived in 1951 an unsuccessful attempt was made to reintegrate the two projects. Discussions between the respective managing committees were conflicted and often bad-tempered, focussing on different interpretations of the nature of the united parliament created in 1707. The Scottish committee insisted that it was a new constitutional entity, while the English saw it as a continuation of the Westminster parliament with Scottish MPs added. This story of mutual incomprehension illustrates the profound differences between Scottish and English academics in the writing of parliamentary history, and also reveals a hitherto unobserved element in the development among leading Scottish jurists of a strain of ‘legal nationalism’ based on their interpretation of the constitutional significance of the Union.

Human Papillomavirus and Oral Cancer: the International Agency for Research on Cancer Multicenter Study

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV), the causal agent of cervical cancer, appears to be involved in the etiology of cancer of the oral cavity and oropharynx. To investigate these associations, we conducted a multicenter case-control study of cancer of the oral cavity and oropharynx in nine countries. Methods: We recruited 1670 case patients (1415 with cancer of the oral cavity and 255 with cancer of the oropharynx) and 1732 control subjects and obtained an interview, oral exfoliated cells, and blood from all participants and fresh biopsy specimens from case patients. HPV DNA was detected by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Antibodies against HPV16 L1, E6, and E7 proteins in plasma were detected with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Multivariable models were used for case-control and case-case comparisons. Results: HPV DNA was detected in biopsy specimens of 3.9% (95% confidence interval [CI]=2.5% to 5.3%) of 766 cancers of the oral cavity with valid PCR results and 18.3% (95% CI=12.0% to 24.7%) of 142 cancers of the oropharynx (oropharynx and tonsil combined) with valid PCR results. HPV DNA in cancer biopsy specimens was detected less frequently among tobacco smokers and paan chewers and more frequently among subjects who reported more than one sexual partner or who practiced oral sex. HPV16 DNA was found in 94.7% of HPV DNA-positive case patients. HPV DNA in exfoliated cells was not associated with cancer risk or with HPV DNA detection in biopsy specimens. Antibodies against HPV16 L1 were associated with risk for cancers of the oral cavity (odds ratio [OR]=1.5, 95% CI=1.1 to 2.1) and the oropharynx (OR=3.5, 95% CI=2.1 to 5.9). Antibodies against HPV16 E6 or E7 were also associated with risk for cancers of the oral cavity (OR=2.9, 95% CI=1.7 to 4.8) and the oropharynx (OR=9.2, 95% CI=4.8 to 17.7). Conclusions: HPV appears to play an etiologic role in many cancers of the oropharynx and possibly a small subgroup of cancers of the oral cavity. The most common HPV type in genital cancers (HPV16) was also the most common in these tumors. The mechanism of transmission of HPV to the oral cavity warrants further investigation.

A machine vision approach to the grading of crushed aggregate

The grading of crushed aggregate is carried out usually by sieving. We describe a new image-based approach to the automatic grading of such materials. The operational problem addressed is where the camera is located directly over a conveyor belt. Our approach characterizes the information content of each image, taking into account relative variation in the pixel data, and resolution scale. In feature space, we find very good class separation using a multidimensional linear classifier. The innovation in this work includes (i) introducing an effective image-based approach into this application area, and (ii) our supervised classification using wavelet entropy-based features.

A variational approach to the relaxation of single domain magnetic particles based on Brown's model

Brown's model for the relaxation of the magnetization of a single domain ferromagnetic particle is considered. This model results in the Fokker-Planck equation of the process. The solution of this equation in the cases of most interest is non- trivial. The probability density of orientations of the magnetization in the Fokker-Planck equation can be expanded in terms of an infinite set of eigenfunctions and their corresponding eigenvalues where these obey a Sturm-Liouville type equation. A variational principle is applied to the solution of this equation in the case of an axially symmetric potential. The first (non-zero) eigenvalue, corresponding to the largest time constant, is considered. From this we obtain two new results. Firstly, an approximate minimising trial function is obtained which allows calculation of a rigorous upper bound. Secondly, a new upper bound formula is derived based on the Euler-Lagrange condition. This leads to very accurate calculation of the eigenvalue but also, interestingly, from this, use of the simplest trial function yields an equivalent result to the correlation time of Coffey et at. and the integral relaxation time of Garanin. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Description and search labor for information retrieval

Selection power is taken as the fundamental value for information retrieval systems. Selection power is regarded as produced by selection labor, which itself separates historically into description and search labor. As forms of mental labor, description and search labor participate in the conditions for labor and for mental labor. Concepts and distinctions applicable to physical and mental labor are indicated, introducing the necessity of labor for survival, the idea of technology as a human construction, and the possibility of the transfer of human labor to technology. Distinctions specific to mental labor, particular between semantic and syntactic labor, are introduced. Description labor is exemplified by cataloging, classification, and database description, can be more formally understood as the labor involved in the transformation of objects for description into searchable descriptions, and is also understood to include interpretation. The costs of description labor are discussed. Search labor is conceived as the labor expended in searching systems. For both description and search labor, there has been a progressive reduction in direct human labor, with its syntactic aspects transferred to technology, effectively compelled by the high relative costs of direct human labor compared to machine processes.

Simultaneous feature selection and feature weighting using Hybrid Tabu Search/K-nearest neighbor classifier

Feature selection and feature weighting are useful techniques for improving the classification accuracy of K-nearest-neighbor (K-NN) rule. The term feature selection refers to algorithms that select the best subset of the input feature set. In feature weighting, each feature is multiplied by a weight value proportional to the ability of the feature to distinguish pattern classes. In this paper, a novel hybrid approach is proposed for simultaneous feature selection and feature weighting of K-NN rule based on Tabu Search (TS) heuristic. The proposed TS heuristic in combination with K-NN classifier is compared with several classifiers on various available data sets. The results have indicated a significant improvement in the performance in classification accuracy. The proposed TS heuristic is also compared with various feature selection algorithms. Experiments performed revealed that the proposed hybrid TS heuristic is superior to both simple TS and sequential search algorithms. We also present results for the classification of prostate cancer using multispectral images, an important problem in biomedicine.