• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• Journal of Church and State close
• Oxford University Research Archive close

Lack of consideration of the complex European scientific scene from the late 18th century to the mid-decades of the 19th century has produced partial and often biased reconstructions of priorities, worries, implicit and explicit philosophical and at times political agendas characterizing the early debates on species. It is the purpose of this paper firstly to critically assess some significant attempts at broadening this historiographic horizon concerning the immediate context to Darwin's intellectual enterprise, and to devote the second part to arguing that a multi-faceted European debate on the transformation of life forms had already occurred in Europe around 1800. Of this debate, contrary to long cherished views, Lamarck's was only one voice, amongst many. Naturalists active in different national contexts elaborated solutions and proposed doctrines that shared several viewpoints, yet clearly stemmed from a variety of disciplinary traditions and problematic contexts.

This thesis explored the possibilities of regional history as a basis for understanding the development of society in Iran in the nineteenth century. It begins by defining some conceptual problems needing dis- cussion in order to embark on such a history. The choice of a regional society as the unit of study, and the selection of Kennan in particular are examined. The problem of source material is dealt with by a survey of the sources used in the study of nineteenth century Kennan. The emergence of the region as a geographical and historical entity is then summarised in order to clarify its identity as it appeared by the nineteenth century. The central section of the thesis is an examina- tion of the important aspects of material life in Kerman. The rural sector is discussed first as being dominant in economy and society, with a survey of crop production being followed by examination of rural technology and society, and then a discussion of landlord-cultivator relations. The urban sector is then analysed in terms of a survey of craft production and then of social organisation. A separate chapter examines the sphere of circulation linking urban and rural sectors, looking at urban-rural contacts especially as articulated by landlord- peasant relations, and also at the links between Kennan and other regions, and with international markets. There is an appendix on the special case of pastoral ism and nomadism. The last section of the thesis uses the understanding of society which has emerged in an analysis of politics. Discussion of useful definitions of this term is followed by examination of various levels of political life, and more specifically of the decade 1905-1915. Finally conclusions are drawn about the contribution of this regional study to better under- standing of history arid society in Iran,

Recent work on Model Informed Drug Discovery and Development (MID3) has noted the need for clarity in model description used in quantitative disciplines such as pharmacology and statistics. 1-3 Currently, models are encoded in a variety of computer languages and are shared through publications that rarely include original code and generally lack reproducibility. The DDMoRe Model Description Language (MDL) has been developed primarily as a language standard to facilitate sharing knowledge and understanding of models.

The emergence of religious liberty as a valid principle, as one of those axiomatic commitments that is almost universally rec ognized, is surely one of the major achievements of our time. In spite of the fact that there is overwhelming evidence to indicate that religious liberty is far from being a reality in much of today's world, perhaps nowhere fully realized, religious liberty has become a normative principle for almost all nations, and, conversely, the denial of religious liberty is virtually everywhere viewed as morally and legally invalid. Consequently, guarantees of religious liberty presently appear in most national constitu tions throughout the world, including those governments com mitted to atheism or irreligion. While religious liberty can hardly be said to be descriptive of conditions as they are in many countries throughout the world today, there is profound sig nificance to be found in that the concept of religious liberty has come almost universally to have normative value. Despite this universal commitment to religious liberty, there is no univeral consensus as to its basis, either between religion and secularism or among the great world religions themselves. Modern man while categorically advocating religious liberty has remained largely oblivious to its philosophical or religious bases, as well as its historical roots.

Laser driven wakefield accelerators produce accelerating fields thousands of times those achievable in conventional radio-frequency accelerators, offering compactness and ultrafast bunches to potentially extend the frontiers of high energy physics and enable laboratory scale ultrafast radiation sources. Realization of this potential requires understanding of accelerator physics to advance beam performance and stability, and particle simulations model the highly nonlinear, kinetic physics required. One-to-one simulations of experiments provide new insight for optimization and development of 100 MeV to GeV and beyond laser accelerator stages, and on production of reproducible and controllable low energy spread beams with improved emittance (focusability) and energy through control of injection. © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd.