A national security strategy for England: Matthew Sutcliffe, the Earl of Essex, and the Cadiz Expedition of 1596

The English cleric Matthew Sutcliffe arguably produced the first comprehensive security concept in history. It had at its centre the war between England and Spain (1585-1604), and Sutcliffe advocated taking the war to the Iberian Peninsula to seize Philip II's main Atlantic ports, rather than remaining satisfied with the indirect combat of Spain in Flanders, defensive action against naval attacks on England and the guerre de course on Spanish shipping at sea. This approach seems to be at the heart of Essex's 1596 naval campaing against Spanish ports, which foundered on the bureaucratic politics of the Elizabethan government.

Earl of Aylesford v Morris (1873)

A Characteristic of a landmark case is that it stands for a proposition of law. In Earl of Aylesford v Morris,1 Lord Selborne held that where there existed an inequality between contracting parties, with weakness on one side and an extortionate advantage taken of that weakness on the other, the contract could not stand unless the party claiming the benefit of the contract could rebut the presumption by establishing that the transaction was ‘fair, just and reasonable’. This chapter examines the historical circumstances behind the formulation of this proposition.

Thomas-Fermi ground state of dipolar fermions in a circular storage ring

Recent developments in the field of ultracold gases has led to the production of degenerate samples of polar molecules. These have large static electric-dipole moments, which in turn causes the molecules to interact strongly. We investigate the interaction of polar particles in waveguide geometries subject to an applied polarizing field. For circular waveguides, tilting the direction of the polarizing field creates a periodic inhomogeneity of the interparticle interaction. We explore the consequences of geometry and interaction for stability of the ground state within the Thomas-Fermi model. Certain combinations of tilt angles and interaction strengths are found to preclude the existence of a stable Thomas-Fermi ground state. The system is shown to exhibit different behavior for quasi-one-dimensional and three-dimensional trapping geometries.

THAUMATOMYRMEX STRIPS MILLIPEDES FOR PREY - A NOVEL PREDATORY BEHAVIOR IN ANTS, AND THE 1ST CASE OF SYMPATRY IN THE GENUS (HYMENOPTERA, FORMICIDAE)

We describe, for the first time, the predatory behaviour of Thaumatomyrmex ants on millipedes of the family Polyxenidae, based on field observations of T. atrox and a field and laboratory study of T. contumax. The capture of the prey and the removal process of its body-covering setae by the ants before they eat the millipede are described. This specialized behaviour in at least two species of the genus, belonging to two distinct groups of species, indicates a general trend in Thaumatomyrmex. We coupled this study with a comparative morphological analysis of the mouthparts and digestive tube of these and other Thaumatomyrmex species. Also, we report the first case of sympatry in the genus, which suggests that Thaumatomyrmex includes several species. and not only one highly variable taxon, as hypothesized earlier.