Unfortunate Strangers: Lascars in the British Maritime World c. 1849-1912

<p>In 1903, there were 36,893 lascar sailors out of the 247,448 seamen working on British merchant ships. Lascars were non-white workers mostly recruited from Asia. As a result of changes to the British maritime industry in the second half of the nineteenth century, notably the shift from sail to steam, lascar numbers increased. Lascars became critical to the success of the British shipping fleet. They filled the gap that had formed because of the lack of British sailors to crew ships. Lascars were characterised as cheap, lazy, and dirty, as well as being regarded as poor sailors. Lascars were essentially perceived as everything the British sailor was not. Although lascars were British subjects, they were paid less than British sailors, ate inferior food, and slept in substandard accommodation. Once in British ports, after their voyages had ended lascars enjoyed fewer settlement rights, access to welfare and resources than their counterparts. As a result, lascars struggled to survive in Britain. Strategies that created a racial division of labour and hierarchy entrenched a low social status for lascars compared to that of their British counterparts. This thesis discusses how and why some groups of non-white sailors were given the label lascar. It analyses how the label lascar became a term to represent and enforce difference. Being cheap labour, and non-white was the basis for lascar difference, but the strict regulation and control of their conditions put these men in a much more subordinate position than their British counterparts. The strict conditions and tight regulation that lascars experienced became characteristics of the label they were tagged with. Many lascars were abandoned or chose to stay in Britain where the strategies they employed to survive further enforced their difference. This thesis highlights the period 1849-1912 because of the significant increase in lascar numbers during this period. Chapter one discusses who a lascar was and the interchangeable nature of the term lascar with other labels that describe non-white maritime workers. Chapter two draws on newspaper evidence, plus the works of Gopalan Balachandran and Michael Fisher to examine the effects on lascar recruitment and employment practices that reinforced difference. Chapter 3 focuses on lascars in Britain and what strategies they employed to survive and how they reinforced difference. The majority of the discussion will focus on examples from port cities of London, Glasgow, and Dundee because lascars were a visible part of the social diversity of these cities. Between 1849 and 1912 lascars contributed significantly to the economic success of Britain’s maritime industry.</p>

Unfortunate Strangers: Lascars in the British Maritime World c. 1849-1912

<p>In 1903, there were 36,893 lascar sailors out of the 247,448 seamen working on British merchant ships. Lascars were non-white workers mostly recruited from Asia. As a result of changes to the British maritime industry in the second half of the nineteenth century, notably the shift from sail to steam, lascar numbers increased. Lascars became critical to the success of the British shipping fleet. They filled the gap that had formed because of the lack of British sailors to crew ships. Lascars were characterised as cheap, lazy, and dirty, as well as being regarded as poor sailors. Lascars were essentially perceived as everything the British sailor was not. Although lascars were British subjects, they were paid less than British sailors, ate inferior food, and slept in substandard accommodation. Once in British ports, after their voyages had ended lascars enjoyed fewer settlement rights, access to welfare and resources than their counterparts. As a result, lascars struggled to survive in Britain. Strategies that created a racial division of labour and hierarchy entrenched a low social status for lascars compared to that of their British counterparts. This thesis discusses how and why some groups of non-white sailors were given the label lascar. It analyses how the label lascar became a term to represent and enforce difference. Being cheap labour, and non-white was the basis for lascar difference, but the strict regulation and control of their conditions put these men in a much more subordinate position than their British counterparts. The strict conditions and tight regulation that lascars experienced became characteristics of the label they were tagged with. Many lascars were abandoned or chose to stay in Britain where the strategies they employed to survive further enforced their difference. This thesis highlights the period 1849-1912 because of the significant increase in lascar numbers during this period. Chapter one discusses who a lascar was and the interchangeable nature of the term lascar with other labels that describe non-white maritime workers. Chapter two draws on newspaper evidence, plus the works of Gopalan Balachandran and Michael Fisher to examine the effects on lascar recruitment and employment practices that reinforced difference. Chapter 3 focuses on lascars in Britain and what strategies they employed to survive and how they reinforced difference. The majority of the discussion will focus on examples from port cities of London, Glasgow, and Dundee because lascars were a visible part of the social diversity of these cities. Between 1849 and 1912 lascars contributed significantly to the economic success of Britain’s maritime industry.</p>

Penetrative and non-penetrative interaction between Laboulbeniales fungi and their arthropod hosts

Laboulbeniales are a highly specialized group of fungi living only on arthropods. They have high host specificity and spend their entire life-cycle on an arthropod host. Taxonomic characters of Laboulbeniales are based on the architecture of the cells of the parenchymal thallus, i.e. the visible part of the fungus outside the host. The extent of the fungus spreading inside the host—the haustorium—remains largely unknown. The attachment to the arthropod host is fundamental to understand the fungus-animal interaction, but how this truly occurs is unclear. Recent evidences question the strictly parasitic life-style of Laboulbeniales. We used micro-computed tomography (µCT) and 3D reconstructions to visualize, for the first time, the complete structure of Laboulbeniales species in situ on their hosts. We compared the haustoriate species, Arthrorhynchus nycteribiae on an insect host to the non-haustoriate species, Rickia gigas on a millipede host. Our results confirm that some Laboulbeniales species are ectoparasitic and have a haustorial structure that penetrates the host’s cuticle, while others are ectobionts and are only firmly attached to the host’s cuticle without penetrating it. The presence and the morphology of the haustorium are important traits for Laboulbeniales evolution, and key factors for future understanding of host dependence and specificity.

Quality Assessment of Installed Rock Bolts

The chapter presents a method for non-destructive identification of discontinuity of a resin layer (grout) surrounding rock bolts. The method uses modal analysis procedures and is based on an impact excitation where a response transducer is positioned at a visible part of a rock bolt. Since the installed rock bolt acts as an oscillator, its modal parameters are changed by different lengths and positions of grouting discontinuity. Thanks to proper extraction of these parameters, with a resonant frequency seen as the most valuable, the intended identification is possible. The measurements and analyses were performed in laboratory conditions and subsequently at experimental and working coal mines where the measurement system was verified. The developed finite element model of the system under test, rock bolt - resin - rock mass, may be used as reference data base for investigated rock bolts. The advantages of the method include plausibility of grouting discontinuity assessment at any time after its installation, a non-destructive character of the method and the fact that it is not necessary to install any additional equipment into a roof section. It enables a localization of a grout discontinuity, whether it is the back part or the front part of a rock bolt.

Labels as the Visible Part of International Law’s Invisible Frames

The chapter explores how labels can be used in international law-making to reinforce cognitive associations. Its first section defines the notion of labels and explains the relevance of labels in the literature on framing. The second section presents an empirical case-study on the use of frames and labels: the history of negotiations of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Drawing on primary sources and on the travaux préparatoires, the chapter reviews how the making of the FCTC was supported by framing and labelling. Finally, the third section of the chapter reflects on how analysing labels can enhance our understanding of international law.

Exploring presentations of sustainability by US synthetic biology companies

The field of synthetic biology is increasingly being positioned as a key driver of a more sustainable, bio-based economy, and has seen rapid industry growth over the past 15 years. In this paper we undertake an exploratory investigation of the relationship between sustainability and synthetic biology, identifying and analyzing sustainability-related language on the public websites of 24, US-based synthetic biology companies. We observe that sustainability is a visible part of the self-presentation of the nascent synthetic biology industry, explicitly mentioned by 18 of the 24 companies. The dominant framing of sustainability on these company websites emphasizes environmental gains and “free-market” approaches to sustainability, with little explicit mention of social dimensions of sustainability such as access, justice or intergenerational equity. Furthermore, the model of sustainability presented focuses on incremental transition towards environmental sustainability through direct substitution of products and processes using bioengineered alternatives (n = 16 companies), with no change in societal consumption or policy frameworks required in order to see sustainability gains. One-third of the companies analyzed (n = 8) mention “nature” on their websites, variously framing it as a resource to be managed or as a source of inspiration; whether the latter signals a potentially more complex relationship with nature than advanced free-market models of sustainability remains to be seen. As the synthetic biology industry begins to grow in size and visibility, we suggest this is an opportune time for the community to engage in explicit deliberation about its approach to sustainability.

Radiometry on Argo Floats: From the Multispectral State-of-the-Art on the Step to Hyperspectral Technology

Over the past two decades, robotic technology such as Argo floats have revolutionized operational autonomous measurement of the oceans. Recently, Biogeochemical Argo floats (BGC-Argo floats) have measured optical and biogeochemical quantities down to a depth of 2,000 m. Among these parameters, are measurements of the underwater light field from which apparent optical properties (AOPs), such as the diffuse attenuation coefficient for downwelling irradiance Kd(λ), can be derived. Presently, multispectral observations are available on this platform at three wavelengths (with 10–20 nm bandwidths) in the ultraviolet and visible part of the spectrum plus the Photosynthetically Available Radiation (PAR; integrated radiation between 400 and 700 nm). This article reviews studies dealing with these radiometric observations and presents the current state-of-the-art in Argo radiometry. It focus on the successful portability of radiometers onboard Argo float platforms and covers applications of the obtained data for bio-optical modeling and ocean color remote sensing. Generating already high-quality datasets in the existing configuration, the BGC-Argo program must now investigate the potential to incorporate hyperspectral technology. The possibility to acquire hyperspectral information and the subsequent development of new algorithms that exploit these data will open new opportunities for bio-optical long-term studies of global ocean processes, but also present new challenges to handle and process increased amounts of data.

Parts-per-Object Count in Agricultural Images: Solving Phenotyping Problems via a Single Deep Neural Network

Solving many phenotyping problems involves not only automatic detection of objects in an image, but also counting the number of parts per object. We propose a solution in the form of a single deep network, tested for three agricultural datasets pertaining to bananas-per-bunch, spikelets-per-wheat-spike, and berries-per-grape-cluster. The suggested network incorporates object detection, object resizing, and part counting as modules in a single deep network, with several variants tested. The detection module is based on a Retina-Net architecture, whereas for the counting modules, two different architectures are examined: the first based on direct regression of the predicted count, and the other on explicit parts detection and counting. The results are promising, with the mean relative deviation between estimated and visible part count in the range of 9.2% to 11.5%. Further inference of count-based yield related statistics is considered. For banana bunches, the actual banana count (including occluded bananas) is inferred from the count of visible bananas. For spikelets-per-wheat-spike, robust estimation methods are employed to get the average spikelet count across the field, which is an effective yield estimator.

Ocular pigmentation in humans, great apes, and gibbons is not suggestive of communicative functions

Pigmentation patterns of the visible part of the eyeball, encompassing the iris and portions of the sclera, have been discussed to be linked to social cognition in primates. The cooperative eye hypothesis suggests the white sclera of humans to be a derived adaptive trait that enhances eye-mediated communication. Here, we provide a comparative analysis of ocular pigmentation patterns in 15 species of hominoids (humans, great apes & gibbons) that show marked differences in social cognition and quantify scleral exposure at the genus level. Our data reveals a continuum of eye pigmentation traits in hominoids which does not align with the complexity of gaze-mediated communication in the studied taxa. Gibbons display darker eyes than great apes and expose less sclera. Iridoscleral contrasts in orangutans and gorillas approach the human condition but differ between congeneric species. Contrary to recent discussions, we found chimpanzee eyes to exhibit a cryptic coloration scheme that resembles gibbons more than other apes. We reevaluate the evidence for links between social cognition and eye pigmentation in primates, concluding that the cooperative eye hypothesis cannot explain the patterns observed. Differences in scleral pigmentation between great apes and humans are gradual and might have arisen via genetic drift and sexual selection.

Simulation-Based Estimation of the Number of Cameras Required for 3D Reconstruction in a Narrow-Baseline Multi-Camera Setup

Graphical visualization systems are a common clinical tool for displaying digital images and three-dimensional volumetric data. These systems provide a broad spectrum of information to support physicians in their clinical routine. For example, the field of radiology enjoys unrestricted options for interaction with the data, since information is pre-recorded and available entirely in digital form. However, some fields, such as microsurgery, do not benefit from this yet. Microscopes, endoscopes, and laparoscopes show the surgical site as it is. To allow free data manipulation and information fusion, 3D digitization of surgical sites is required. We aimed to find the number of cameras needed to add this functionality to surgical microscopes. For this, we performed in silico simulations of the 3D reconstruction of representative models of microsurgical sites with different numbers of cameras in narrow-baseline setups. Our results show that eight independent camera views are preferable, while at least four are necessary for a digital surgical site. In most cases, eight cameras allow the reconstruction of over 99% of the visible part. With four cameras, still over 95% can be achieved. This answers one of the key questions for the development of a prototype microscope. In future, such a system can provide functionality which is unattainable today.