Dynamics of the Antarctic and Arctic mesosphere and lower thermosphere regions—I. The prevailing wind

The dynamics of the Antarctic and Arctic mesopause regions (ca. 95 ±15 km) are investigated through comparative analyses of winds measured by radars at the Scott Base (78°S), Molodezhnaya (68°S), and Mawson (67°S) stations in the Antarctic, and the near-conjugate stations of Heiss I. (81°N) and Poker Flat (65°N) in the Arctic region. The data were analyzed specifically to delineate hemispheric differences in mean monthly prevailing wind climatologies, and show the circulation systems in the Arctic and Antarctic mesosphere and lower thermospheres to exhibit significant asymmetries. These asymmetries may be attributable to hemispheric differences in dynamical forcing due to one or more of the following: insolation absorption by ozone, other mesospheric heat sources such as exothermic chemical reactions, tropospheric forcing of vertically or obliquely propagating gravity waves which engage in mesospheric mean-flow interactions, and dissipation of planetary waves which find ducting channels through the middle atmosphere.Interannual variability is also examined in the Molodezhnaya and Heiss I. data, which cover the periods 1967–1986 and 1968–1985, respectively. Accompanying significant year-to-year variability, eastward winds at 95 km over the Antarctic (Molodezhnaya station) exhibit a trend of decreasing amplitude from 1968 to 1977 that is not reflected in the Arctic data (Heiss I.); for instance, the annual mean wind decreases in a monotonie sense from 20–25 to 5 m s⁻¹ during this period. It cannot be unambiguously established whether this trend represents a decrease in intensity accompanying secular changes in thermal forcing, or a latitudinal contraction or shifting of the mesospheric jet system. The annual mean winds at Molodezhnaya remain at the 4–8 m s⁻¹ level from 1977 to 1986.In addition, existing empirical models are evaluated against the data, and are shown to be deficient in reproducing some salient characteristics of the high-latitude circulation systems. This latter result especially questions the common practice of deriving winds based on the geostrophic approximation in this altitude/latitude regime.     

The Stade de France. The Last Expression of French Centralism?

The Stade de France was built for the 1998 World Cup finals. The success of the French team and the substantial infrastructure investment that came with the stadium transformed the image of the formerly industrial suburb of Plaine-Saint-Denis where the stadium is located. However, the impacts of the Stade de France have been uneven and the northern suburbs still present substantial challenges for economic and social renewal. Whilst the key decisions about locating the stadium were taken by central government, the arrival of the Stade de France coincides with radical change in the governance of urban renewal, and future planning of the area will be managed through complex arrangements of inter-communal cooperation and inter-governmental coordination.     

The Role and Relevance of Intellectuals vis-à-vis the French and Italian Communist Parties in the Early Post-war Period. A Regional Grassroots Study

Taking as cases in point a French and an Italian communist party federation in the early post-war period, this paper considers the role and relevance of intellectuals vis-à-vis ‘the party’ from the perspectives of ordinary communists in regional contexts. New empirical evidence suggests that beneath surface parallels there were key differences in that respect, which apart from anything else, resulted in some very different responses to the macro political events of 1956. It appears that those differences related to core communist principles; interpretations of communist militancy; the nature and functioning of democratic centralism in the organisations in question; and matters of human agency. This paper examines the nature and extent of those constants and variables, accounts for them in their immediate and wider contexts, and evaluates what all of that can tell us about coherence and cohesion of French and Italian communism, and by extension that of the international communist movement, at that time.     

Early history of the state — West and east

Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp.549. UK £12.95 (paper).

John A. Hall, Powers and Liberties: The Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West, London, Penguin Books, 1986, pp.272. $14.95 (paper).     

J.A. Symonds,socialism and the crisis of sexuality in fin-de-siècle Britain

This article analyses the theory of sexuality, personality and politics developed by the literary critic John Addington Symonds (1840–1893). Sections 1 and 2 introduce Symonds’ changing reputation as a modernist theorist of ‘sexual inversion’ (homosexuality). Section 3 examines his conceptualization of the processes whereby an individual can sublimate sexual urges to create a harmonious and unalienated personality which acknowledges the need to combine transgressive self-expression with social convention. Section 4 demonstrates how this theory led Symonds to endorse an eroticized form of democratic socialism, while Section 5 explores the culmination of Symonds’ thought in a form of pantheistic idealism. This research is significant in that it extends our understanding of socialism and sexuality into areas that are marginalized and yet historically important.     

Meteorological effects in the variations of ionospheric parameters—I. The lower thermosphere

The influence of the troposphere and stratosphere on variations of ionospheric D-region parameters are discussed. It is found that variations of the minimum observable ionosonde frequency (f_min) and horizontal winds are closely related to temperature and pressure fields in the lower atmosphere. Experimental data for the Central Asian and East Siberian U.S.S.R. regions have been used.     

The amplitude of auroral backscatter—I. Model estimates of the dependence on electron density

A model of the auroral backscatter amplitude, in the form discussed by Uspensky and Oksman et al., has been derived for the radar geometry appropriate to joint observations by the PGI auroral radars at Karmaselga and Essoyla and the EISCAT incoherent scatter radar. The model shows how refraction effects cause a strongly non-linear dependence of backscatter amplitude on electron density in the E-region. It also explains why the macro aspect sensitivity for auroral radar operating at a frequency of about 45 MHz is only 1–2 dB per degree for aspect angles greater than 5°.     

The Sartre–Camus Quarrel and the Fall of the French Intellectual

Over the past thirty years, the disappearance, if not the death, of the intellectual in France has been the focus of significant conversation and debate. Yet a good bit earlier, two writers who epitomized that very figure of the intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, in works written after their bitter break, seemed to have already sensed this decline. The present essay explores what Camus's novel La Chute [The fall] and Sartre's autobiography Les Mots [The words] share thematically and, in particular, how both works anticipate the fall of the French intellectual.     

Can silence speak volumes? Widukind's Res Gestae Saxonicae and the coronation of Otto I reconsidered

The Res Gestae Saxonicae, Widukind of Corvey's chronicle of the rise of the Ottonian kings, waxes lyrical about Otto I's coronation as king at Aachen in 936 but passes in silence over his coronation as emperor at Rome in 962. This causes difficulties of interpretation, because the text is generally considered to constitute a unified narrative up to the end of its shortest surviving recension, dated to 967 or 968; scholars have previously dealt with these difficulties by claiming that Widukind's work was a ‘subtle polemic’ against the role of the pope in the making of an emperor. This article suggests instead that only the sections documenting events up to c.961 constitute a unified text, subsequent chapters being no more than hastily compiled addenda. Widukind's notorious omission of the imperial coronation was thus an accidental feature of the text, not the cornerstone of an ideological claim about the emperor's direct connection to God. His portrayal of the Aachen coronation establishes Otto's multiple claims to be the rightful king without differentiating qualitatively between them.     

“The Cause of This Blackness”: The Early American Republic and the Construction of Race

Abstract

Race is routinely defined as “socially constructed,” from which it follows that there was a time before its construction. What that time looked like, and how Africans were then viewed by white Americans, is difficult to perceive from a vantage point within the paradigm of race. This essay considers important but neglected cultural referents to argue that a binary distinction between black and white did not emerge on theoretical grounds until the 1780s, when Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia shrewdly redirected growing challenges to slavery into quasi-metaphysical reflections on the gulf between whites and blacks.