Mt Stromlo Observatory

Author(s):  
Ragbir Bhathal ◽  
Ralph Sutherland ◽  
Harvey Butcher

This book tells the story of the Mt Stromlo Observatory in Canberra which began with W.G. Duffield's idealism and vision in 1905. The Observatory began life as a government department, later becoming an optical munitions factory producing gun sights and telescopes during the Second World War, before changing its focus to astrophysics – the new astronomy. In the ensuing years programs were introduced to push the Observatory in new directions at the international frontiers of astronomy. The astronomers built new, better and larger telescopes to unravel the secrets of the universe. There were controversies, exciting new discoveries and new explanations of phenomena that had been discovered. The Observatory and its researchers have contributed to determining how old the universe is, participated in the largest survey of galaxies in the universe, and helped to show us that the universal expansion is accelerating – research that led to Brian Schmidt and his international team being awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. These and other major discoveries are detailed in this fascinating book about one of the great observatories in the world.

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
MELINDA BALDWIN

AbstractBy the onset of the Second World War, the British scientific periodical Nature – specifically, Nature's ‘Letters to the editor’ column – had become a major publication venue for scientists who wished to publish short communications about their latest experimental findings. This paper argues that the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ernest Rutherford was instrumental in establishing this use of the ‘Letters to the editor’ column in the early twentieth century. Rutherford's contributions set Nature apart from its fellow scientific weeklies in Britain and helped construct a defining feature of Nature's influence in the twentieth century. Rutherford's participation in the journal influenced his students and colleagues in the field of radioactivity physics and drew physicists like the German Otto Hahn and the American Bertram Borden Boltwood to submit their work to Nature as well, and Nature came to play a major role in spreading news of the latest research in the science of radioactivity. Rutherford and his colleagues established a pattern of submissions to the ‘Letters to the editor’ that would eventually be adopted by scientists from diverse fields and from laboratories around the world.


Author(s):  
Yuliya Podriez

The article is devoted to studing the trunsformation (changes) in the world after the Second World War, as well as the role and the place in it of two powerful states – the USA and the USSR. The article is devoted to the study of the question of the universe after the Second World War, as well as the role and the place in it of two powerful states – the USA and the USSR. In the article, the author emphasizes the objective and subjective circumstances that transformed Soviet-American relations since 1945. At the same time, it is emphasized that relations are complicated by the emergence of a new factor – atomic. Consideration of Soviet-USA relations is proposed through the lens of attempting to establish USA-USSR cooperation in the economic sphere, the development of nuclear weapons, and a technological approach in strategic arms. Much attention is paid to the meeting of the Big Three, which took place in Potsdam. In particular, on the one hand, the focus is on the direct procedure for concluding peace treaties and establishing diplomatic relations with Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Romania and Finland; on the other, the distribution of spheres of influence across Germany, based on the relevant protocol. In general, the author attempted to prove that the Berlin Conference made it possible to find mutually agreed solutions and to reach compromises, despite the escalation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.


Author(s):  
Daiva Tamulevičienė ◽  
Jonas Mackevičius

Appropriate product costing helps not only to estimate the cost of production correctly but also to evaluate the activity results, forecast product prices, make reasonable economic decisions. The article analyses the development of product costing in Lithuania from 1918 to 2019. The following stages of development of product costing were distinguished: 1) between the world wars when Lithuania was independent and during the Second world war (1918–1944); 2) during the years of Soviet occupation (1944–1990); 3) after reinstating the independence of Lithuania (1990–2019). The most important provisions of normative documents related to product costing of every stage were analysed, opinions, statements and suggestions how to improve product costing by different Lithuanian authors were evaluated.


Author(s):  
Alexander Sukhodolov ◽  
Tuvd Dorj ◽  
Yuriy Kuzmin ◽  
Mikhail Rachkov

For the first time in Russian historiography, the article draws attention to the connection of the War of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 and the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939. For a long time, historical science considered these two major events in the history of the USSR and history of the world individually, without their historic relationship. The authors made an attempt to provide evidence of this relationship, showing the role that surrounding and defeating the Japanese army at Khalkhin Gol in August 1939 and signing in Moscow of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact played in the history of the world. The study analyzes the foreign policy of the USSR in Europe, the reasons for the failure in the conclusion of the Anglo-Franco-Soviet military union in 1939 and the circumstances of the Pact. It shows the interrelation between the defeat of the Japanese troops at Khalkhin Gol and the need for the Soviet-German treaty. The authors describe the historic consequences of the conclusion of the pact for the further development of the Japanese-German relations and the course of the Second World War. They also present the characteristics of the views of these historical events in the Russian historiography.


Author(s):  
Micheline Dumont

This is the story of the school path of a little girl of Quebec during the 1940s. Hers was a mixed primary school, as were the majority of schools found in little towns and villages in Quebec. While the Second World War gave far away rhythm to the life of the world, this story informs us about the education offered before the great educational reform of 1948; on the schoolmistresses, the religious frame, and the positive role played by the school in the pre-television period, in a family where education was greatly valued.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 84-94
Author(s):  
Maximiliano Emanuel Korstanje

The current paper focused on the spectatularization of disasters as the main commodity thana capitalism exchanges. The discussion around the crimes against mankind perpetrated by Nazis in the clandestine concentration camps opened the doors towards new insights respecting the roots of thana capitalism. Nazis violated human rights secreting their crimes in a moment of the world where millions certainly died. Today´s philosophers are shocked to see how Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the sanctuary of the horrors of the Second World War, sets the pace to a new allegory, intended to entertain thousands of tourists, many of them unfamiliar with these events. As a highly-demanded tourist destination, Auschwitz evinces the change of new postmodern ethics that commoditizes the other´s loss as a criterion of entertainment. The example of terrorism shows one of the paradoxes of thana capitalism simply because media covers and disseminates the cruelties of attacks to gain further subscribers and investors while terrorism finds a fertile ground to penetrate the homes of a wider audience.


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