Bright Day

Bright Day is a novel by J. B. Priestley, first published in 1946. One of his better-known works, it combines nostalgia for the northern England that existed before the First World War with an optimism inspired by the conclusion of the Second.
Plot introduction.
In 1946, an English screenwriter, Gregory Dawson, goes to a seaside hotel in Cornwall to finish a screenplay. An accidental meeting with two people from his distant past prompts him to explore his memories of his youth in 'Bruddersford' (a fictional town conflating Bradford and Huddersfield) between October 1912 and June 1914.
Plot summary.
Chapters 1–6.
Gregory Dawson is an English screenwriter in his fifties, who fought in the First World War, and who has spent most of the Second World War in Britain after ten years in Hollywood. He has retreated in the spring of 1946 to the Cornish village of Tralorna to finish the screenplay for a film called "The Lady Hits Back". An oldish couple staying at his hotel, the Royal Ocean, seem strangely familiar. They are identified to him as "Lord and Lady Harndean". In the hotel's restaurant Dawson is condescending to the musicians, who attempt to impress him by playing the slow movement of Schubert's B flat trio. The music triggers Dawson's memory, and he realises that the couple are Mr and Mrs Nixey, whom he has not seen since 1914. He approaches and introduces himself.
Back in his hotel room he recalls the Bruddersford of his youth, where he moved after the death of his parents to live with his maternal uncle. Lonely and missing his family, he finds himself charmed by a certain prosperous family he often sees on the tram and at concerts. He obtains a job at Hawes and Company, a wool firm, under the stentorian Joe Ackworth, and on the first day he is surprised to find that he recognises Ackworth's co-worker, Mr Alington, as the head of that happy family.
In December, Mr Alington's daughter Joan stops by at the office, looking for him. She talks to Greg and invites him to a concert at Gladstone Hall. After the concert he is delighted to find himself accepted without question as one of their social circle: the Alington children, Joan, Eva, Bridget, Oliver and David, and their friends Ben Kerry and Jock Barniston.
Ackworth quarrels with the cashier Croxton for sending samples away without his permission. Gregory enjoys Christmas 1912, which includes many visits, and a trip to the pantomime "Cinderella"; in May 1913, Greg accompanies the Alingtons to the village of Bulsden, on the edge of Broadstone Moor, for a picnic and a game of cricket. He meets the old painter Stanley Mervin. On arriving back home, the Schubert trio is played, but it is interrupted by the first arrival of the Nixeys.
In late summer 1913, Nixey takes Dawson out to the Market Grill and the Imperial Music Hall, and asks him about Ackworth and Croxton. Dawson goes on holiday to Silverdale with the Blackshaws, and meets their child Laura. In mid-September, he goes with Oliver and Bridget to a musical evening at the Leatons'. Nixey's monopolisation of a visiting customer, Albert Harfner, leads to a confrontation between him and Ackworth. Dawson guesses that Eleanor Nixey is having an affair with Ben Kerry, who is supposed to be "half-engaged" to Eva Alington. Dorothy Barniston tells Dawson's fortune. Joan demands that he tell her what is going on at the office that is upsetting her father; he quarrels with Ben Kerry at a showbiz party at the "Crown".
Chapters 7–12.
(Dawson explains to Elizabeth Earl that he is feeling troubled by his past.) He recollects 31 December 1913, the last party at the Alington residence, when the family played charades. The arrival of the Nixeys shortly before midnight ruins the atmosphere, and the New Year has, he feels "an ill-omened beginning."
In the late spring of 1914, Ackworth quarrels with Croxton, and soon afterwards decides to leave the company. In June, the Alingtons go for a picnic at Pikeley Scar, a limestone cliff, in the company of Dawson, Jock Barniston, and the 10-year-old Laura Blackshaw. Jock Barniston is to deliver a letter to Eva from Ben Kerry, and is worried that it may herald a break-up. They meet the artist Stanley Mervin again, and Dawson is chatting with Bridget by a river when they hear a scream. Eva has fallen to her death from the cliff, an event witnessed by Laura. It is ruled to be an accident. The day after the funeral, Mr Alington collapses at work, and a fortnight later the Nixeys call at his house, where they are confronted by Bridget, who blames them for what has happened.
Having done with reminiscing, Dawson finishes the screenplay, and while chatting with the restaurant trio he hears them mention a fellow musician named Sheila Connally. When he arrives back in London, Elizabeth Earl organises a surprise meeting with Bridget Alington, whom he has not seen for decades. He learns that Joan is dead. Their talk is uninspiring and leaves them both disgruntled.
At a party at Claridges, Dawson encounters Lord Harndean again, who asks him to phone someone called Mrs Childs, who is involved with a film-making youth group. It turns out, to his amazement, that Mrs Childs is in fact Laura Blackshaw. They talk about Bruddersford, and she tells him that she saw Joan push Eva from the cliff. This is the last piece of the puzzle. He agrees to help the youth group, and the book ends with the implication that one part of his life is finally over and that another has begun.
Adaptations.
The novel was adapted for radio as part of BBC Radio 4's Classic Serial series and broadcast in two parts on 30 May and 6 June 2010. The cast included Jack Shepherd as Gregory Dawson/Narrator, Liza Sadovy as Elizabeth Earl, Dean Smith as Young Gregory, Sarah Smart as Joan Alington, Sarah Churm as Bridget Alington, Lowri Evans as Eva Alington, Conrad Nelson as Jock/Harfner, Fred Ridgeway as Malcolm Nixey, Janice McKenzie as Eleanor Nixey, David Fleeshman as Mr Alington, Fine Time Fontayne as Mr Ackworth, Seamus O'Neill as Brent/Stanley Mervin and Steve Marsh as Ben Kerry. The production was dramatised by Diana Griffiths and produced/directed by Pauline Harris.


Context-dependent memory

In psychology, context-dependent memory is the improved recall of specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding and retrieval are the same. In a simpler manner, "when events are represented in memory, contextual information is stored along with memory targets; the context can therefore cue memories containing that contextual information". One particularly common example of context-dependence at work occurs when an individual has lost an item (e.g. lost car keys) in an unknown location. Typically, people try to systematically "retrace their steps" to determine all of the possible places where the item might be located. Based on the role that context plays in determining recall, it is not at all surprising that individuals often quite easily discover the lost item upon returning to the correct context. This concept is heavily related to the encoding specificity principle.
This example best describes the concept of context-dependent forgetting. However, the research literature on context-dependent memory describes a number of different types of contextual information that may affect recall such as environmental context-dependent memory, state-dependent learning, cognitive context-dependent memory and mood-congruent memory. Research has also shown that context-dependence may play an important role in numerous situations, such as memory for studied material, or events that have occurred following the consumption of alcohol or other drugs.
History.
Early research.
Some of the earliest
research on this topic was conducted by researchers in the 1930s who analyzed how changes in context affect an individual's memory for nonsense syllables. These early studies were unable to demonstrate an effect of context-dependent memory. Such non-significant results encouraged the development of new methods, such as a retroactive interference paradigm, to analyze the effect of context on memory. By the 1950s, this technique was used to demonstrate an effect of contextual information on memory recall. However, the validity of using this particular paradigm has been questioned. Indeed, much of the early literature on this topic failed to provide conclusive evidence of any context-dependent effects on memory.
By the end of the 1970s, numerous successful demonstrations of a context-dependent effect appear in the literature. As early as 1971, Jensen et al. found evidence that contradicted previous findings by demonstrating a context-dependent effect on memory for nonsense syllables. In a similar timeframe, Endel Tulving and Donald Thompson proposed their highly influential 'encoding specificity principle', which provided the first framework for understanding how contextual information affects memory and recall. In 1975, the question of whether contextual information influences memory recall was famously investigated with the publication of Godden and Baddeley's paper detailing the well-known 'diving study'. A few years prior to the publication of this study, researchers demonstrated that the memory of deep sea divers for events witnessed underwater was reduced after resurfacing. The authors note in their 1975 paper that this incidental result immediately suggested a possible influence of the contextual environment (being underwater) on recall. To test this hypothesis, Godden and Baddeley had divers learn and recall word lists in two separate environments; under water and on dry land. Their results demonstrated that memory for word lists learned under water was better when recall sessions occurred under water as well, and that a congruent effect existed for words learned and recalled on land. In simplified form: changing the context between encoding and retrieval reduced the divers' ability to recall learned words. The publication of this study likely initiated the current synthesis of context-dependent memory as it is studied by psychologists today.
Theoretical background.
A number of factors are thought to affect how contextual information interacts with memory recall. For example, a meta-analysis of the literature on environmental context-dependent memory by Smith and Vela has suggested that in cases where contextual information is not particularly salient, context-dependent effects on memory are reduced. Similarly, this meta-analysis suggests that reinstatement of context can be achieved not only by physically returning to the encoding environment, but also by mentally visualizing that environment. This study considered only environmental context-dependence.
Additionally, other psychological constructs suggest further limits on how context can affect memory. For example, Johnson et al.'s source monitoring framework proposes that the ability of an individual to remember the source of an episode will affect the likelihood of that memory being recalled. Hence, in the case of context-dependent memory, this framework suggests that the effects of context on memory may also be limited by cognitive factors such as the ability of individuals to differentiate between individual contexts.
Context can refer to internal context, referring to state of mind at the time of memory encoding, or temporal context, which refers to the time when a memory was encoded, in addition to external context, or physical and situational surroundings. All of these types of context are incorporated as values into what are known as context vectors, vector representations of multiple context attributes, used in many theories of recall and recognition memory.
In summed similarity theory, the use of a memory matrix includes the context as an attribute in a memory vector. Other attributes of a memory make up the remainder of the memory matrix representation of a particular memory item, in an array model for association. Summed Similarity Theory explains that the theoretical memory matrix is searched and the memory representation with the highest summed similarity of all memory vectors to the probe item is selected. Context plays a large role in this search, especially as more recent items in a memory matrix have closer matching contexts.
The absolute-similarity framework also uses context as an important factor in determining how closely a probe vector and a memory vector match. Contextual drift can be thought of as a random walk, with one unit or step, in a random walk for each item stored in memory. The random walk can be in any direction and is representative of the gradually shifting physical or mental context of encoding. Absolute similarity framework determines whether a probe item is similar enough to a stored memory vector by the use of a threshold. Only those with similarities above threshold, C, are judged to be similar. Context plays a large role in this judgment because of the possibility that a probe item could be matched to a memory vector with a highly similar context rather than the corresponding item itself.
Context effects do differ when it comes to what sort of task is being performed. According to a study by Godden & Baddeley, the effects of context change on memory retrieval are much greater in recall tasks than in recognition tasks. Meaning that a similar context associates with greater recall than recognition.
Neuroanatomy.
A number of neuroanatomical structures are thought to play a role in context-dependent memory, These include the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. For example, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to demonstrate elevated activation in the hippocampus when contextual information matches from encoding to retrieval, suggesting that the hippocampus may be important in mediating context-dependent memory processes. Kalisch et al. provide further support for this role by demonstrating that context-dependent extinction memory is correlated with activation in both the hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Similarly, an experiment by Wagner et al. using fMRI demonstrated that activation of the right prefrontal cortex depended on contextual information. The authors of this study suggest that differential activation of the prefrontal cortex occurs because the different contexts require unique attempt processes for retrieval. In other words, depending on the retrieval context, participants used different strategies to recall information. Overall, the patterns of activation in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex following changes in contextual information suggest that these brain regions play an important role in context-dependent memory.
Environmental.
Environmental context-dependent memory, as defined by Smith, refers to a phenomenon whereby environmental context influences cognitive processing. As mentioned earlier, pioneering work on environmental context-dependent memory was performed by Godden and Baddeley in 1975. Their work looked at the memory recall of deep-sea divers on land and under water. Baddeley's earlier research had indicated that the cold environment underwater could create a strong context dependency in deep sea divers. They conducted an experiment where divers were placed under water or on the beach and listened to a prerecorded list of 36 unrelated, two-and-three syllable words. After listening to the list of words they were tested on their recall of the words either in the same environment they were tested in or in the alternative environment. The results clearly showed that words learned underwater were best recalled underwater, and words learned on land were best recalled on land.
Environmental reinstatement effect.
The most commonly researched area of environmental context-dependent memory is the phenomenon of the environmental reinstatement effect. This effect occurs when the reinstatement (i.e. revisiting) of an environmental context acts as a cue for past memories related to that particular environmental context. Commonly, memories recalled in this situation are ones a subject believed they had forgotten, and it is only when an individual revisits this environmental context that they recall these memories. How much this effect occurs varies depending on a number of factors, and may be classified under two types of reinstatement effects: long-term and short-term.
Long-term reinstatement effects.
The effects of environmental context-dependent memory are positively correlated with the length of time between initial encoding and retrieval of a memory, such that these effects increase with duration between encoding and retrieval. This correlation may help to explain the "flood" of memories an individual experiences after returning to a previous residence or school following a long period of absence. This common example of long-term reinstatement effects may occur for a number of reasons. For instance, a long duration of residence in a particular location is likely to increase the amount of environmental contextual information that is encoded to memory. When an individual moves to a new location with different contextual information, remembering and recalling information from this new environment may interfere with the old memories and result in "forgetting". However, when returning to the former location, the presence of contextual information "reactivates" these old memories, allowing them to be recalled, even after many years of absence.
Another example of a long-term reinstatement effect is the revival of wartime memories by veterans and prisoners of war. Upon return to old battlefields, many of these individuals have been known to reconstruct tragic memories of life during wartime. A similar effect may occur when such individuals watch television war documentaries and broadcasts of battles, an effect attributed to generalization of the contextual cues associated with war. Importantly, due to the trauma associated with some of their experiences, recall of these past memories of war has been reported to lead many veterans to seek mental health care following exposure to this contextual information.
Short-term reinstatement effects.
Momentary forgetting, such as forgetting what you wanted to get from the kitchen after getting up from your desk, is frequently experienced in day-to-day life. Usually what was forgotten can be remembered again by returning to the context where the event began. For example, imagine sitting at your desk and deciding you want to get a drink from the kitchen. Once you get to the kitchen, you completely forget what you wanted there. If you return to your desk, you will most likely remember what you wanted from the kitchen.
There is also evidence to support that our lives and memories may be compartmentalized by our environmental surroundings. Different environments, such as home, the workplace, a restaurant or a theatre, are associated with different memories and incidentally, different roles. This implies that surroundings cue memories, situations and even personal roles specific to the context a person is in at any given time.
The outshining hypothesis.
The outshining hypothesis is the phenomenon by which context effects are absent as a result of a different cue (item cue) suppressing the weaker cue at retrieval. This "outshining" can also occur for item cues by stronger context cues. It is based on the idea that a heavenly body is more difficult to see when it is obscured by a full moon. Similarly, incidental encoding of environmental context-dependent cues can be completely "outshone" when there are better cues available. However, these incidentally encoded environmental cues can be used to prompt memory recall if stronger cues are not present at encoding. A cue may be considered "better" simply because it has been more deeply processed, repeated more often, or has fewer items associated with it. As an example, a study by Steuck and Levy showed that environmental context-dependent memory has a decreased effect in word recall tests if the words are embedded into meaningful text. This is because meaningful texts are stored better in memory and are more deeply processed.
State-dependent learning.
State-dependent learning refers to the finding that people recall more information when their physiological state is the same at encoding and retrieval. For example, people that undergo alcohol intoxication while encoding information recall significantly more when they are also intoxicated during retrieval, compared to those whose alcoholic states differ from encoding to retrieval. This state-dependent learning effect has been shown in both human and animal research., The state-dependent effect has also been generalized to a variety of drugs, including morphine, cigarettes, scopolamine, and nitric oxide.
It is important to note, however, that certain drug states impair learning. For example, a study done by Harry demonstrated that despite the state-dependent effect associated with light marijuana use, people smoking marijuana showed slower learning than people in a placebo group. More precisely, people who consumed marijuana during both the encoding and retrieval phases managed to learn the material in an average of 10 trials, whereas people who were in the placebo condition for both phases learned the same material in only 5.6 trials, on average.
State as a contextual cue.
A tentative explanation for state-dependent recall is the use of the physiological state as a contextual cue. Results of converging studies have shown that in tasks where no contextual cue is provided, internal states may serve as contextual cues. Therefore, people who are in a certain drug state at the time of encoding may utilize this state as a cue for retrieval. In contrast, when information is encoded and retrieved in different states, individuals have no cues available to aid them in recalling information, leading to a decline performance. Eich provides further evidence for this theory, demonstrating that the introduction of additional contextual cues abolishes the state-dependent effect. If a cue such as a sound or an image is provided to remind people of what they encoded, they no longer require the state to prompt retrieval. In this instance, participants perform equally, regardless of the states at encoding and retrieval. According to Eich, the complete absence of any other observable reminders is critical for showing state-dependent cueing effects.
Cognitive.
Language of discourse.
Cognitive context-dependent memory is the improved memory recall for information that is both encoded and retrieved in the same cognitive state. The clearest example of a cognitive context-dependent effect has been demonstrated in studies of proficient bilingual speakers, as it has been hypothesized that different languages provide a different cognitive context. It has been shown that both autobiographical and semantic memories could be better recalled when the same language was used for both encoding and retrieval. In particular, Marian and Neisser studied this effect in Russian immigrants to the United States by looking at autobiographical memory. For this study, participants were asked to recall specific autobiographical memories in response to word cues. By varying both the language of the interview (either Russian or English) and the language word cues were presented in, it was possible to alter which autobiographical memories were recalled. Importantly, interviewing and word-cueing in Russian biased participants towards recalling memories that had occurred in that language.
Matsumoto and Stanley found a similar effect for Japanese-American students. In particular, they demonstrated that cues words written in Japanese were more likely than English cue words to induce memories from participants' past experiences in Japan. Other studies have suggested similar results for bilinguals in Spanish and English, and in Polish and Danish. However, these studies used a different experimental design that does not demonstrate a causal effect. Additionally, Marian and Fausey found an effect of language on recall of semantic information in studies of Spanish-English bilinguals. In particular, they show that accuracy and reaction times are improved for recall of academic information when the language of encoding and retrieval are similar. However, they also suggest that this effect partially depends on participants' language proficiency (i.e., poor English speakers did not show an improvement in scores when English was used for both encoding and retrieval).
"Motivational state".
It has also been suggested that changes in "motivational state" between encoding and retrieval may affect memory recall for events. In a study by Woike et al. participants were asked to read stories of differing motivational contexts and to recall specific information from these stories. The authors found that recall was biased towards stories containing information that matched participants' own motivational state. Another study by Woike et al. provides a more direct examination of context-dependence by testing the effect of motivational contextual cues on recall of specific word pairs. Specifically, the authors demonstrated that associating word pairs with achievement cues produced a motivational context that increased memory for these word pairs. This study in particular uses neutral motivational cues as a control. These neutral cues did not produce similar improvements in recall for word pairs.
Mood-congruent and mood-dependent memory.
One commonly reported phenomenon is that when individuals are in a "bad mood", they typically recall more bad things having happened to them and evaluate episodes in their lives in a more negative way than usual. It has been suggested that this effect occurs because a person's mood at any given time has a strong influence on which aspects of their environment seem most salient. This affects what they remember about the past, and what they encode about the present. This particular effect is referred to as mood-congruent and mood-dependent memory.
Mood-congruent memory.
Mood-congruent memory has been demonstrated by the finding that emotional material is remembered more reliably in moods that match the emotional content of these memories. For example, when feeling depressed, it is quite typical for an individual to remember more of the negative events their past than of the positive events. Hence, the mood-congruence memory effect refers to better recall for information contained in experiences that match an individual's current emotional state. This effect has been found to occur for both happy and sad memories. Specifically, happy people will remember more happy than sad information, whereas sad people will better remember sad than happy information. Mood-congruent memory bias has been found for explicit but not implicit memory tasks, which suggests that mood-congruent memory requires an awareness of one's own mood state. There also seems to be a higher occurrence of mood-congruent memory in females, possibly due to a purportedly greater amount of mood awareness.
Further evidence for the existence of mood-congruent memory comes from studies demonstrating altered memory recall following experimentally-induced changes in mood using drugs. Additionally, mood-congruent memory bias in explicit memory has been found to be specific to information congruent with negative moods rather than to all negative information. Studies of clinical depression have demonstrated congruent findings.
Mood-dependent memory.
Mood dependence is the facilitation of memory when mood at retrieval is matched to mood at encoding. Thus, the likelihood of recalling an event is higher when encoding and recall moods match than when they are mismatched. However, it seems that only authentic moods have the power to produce these mood-dependent effects. It has also been found that events that originate through internal mental operations—such as reasoning, imagination, and thought—are more connected to one's current mood than are those that emanate from external sources. This makes the former less likely than external events to be recalled after a shift in mood state. Importantly, this role of emotional state in memory recall suggests a potential mechanism for enhancing retrieval of past memories.
Context-dependent forgetting.
A large body of research has shown that memory performance is reduced when an individual's environment differs from encoding to retrieval than if the two environments were the same. This effect is known as context-dependent forgetting. As a result, a number of techniques have been created for the purpose of reducing context-dependent forgetting associated with environmental cues.
Context recall technique.
One strategy for overcoming context-dependent forgetting is the context recall technique. This technique involves consciously generating old environmental cues from memory rather than physically reinstating the cued environment. For example, if an individual learned material in a classroom where the desks were organized in rows, that person could visualize that specific arrangement at a later testing date in a new environment (i.e. with the desks arranged in a circle). In a study conducted by Smith in 1979, participants who used this technique while being tested in a new room were able to recall as many words as participants who were tested in the original learning room. Participants who were tested in a new room that did not use this technique showed typical context-dependent forgetting, recalling only two-thirds of the words recalled by the other groups. Therefore, the effects of context-dependent forgetting can be reduced by visualization of the learning environment without full reinstatement. However, this technique is only useful and successful when the learning context is easy to remember.
Multiple learning context technique.
The multiple-learning-context-technique is another strategy proposed by Smith to combat context-dependent forgetting. This technique involves presenting subsets of the learning material in multiple contexts rather than presenting them all in the same environment. When given a free recall test in a new room, participants who studied in multiple rooms recalled more words than participants who only studied in one room. Smith suggests that when individuals have additional environmental cues their performance will be sustained because it will be less likely that all of the cues will be forgotten.
Along with the multiple learning context technique, other research has demonstrated that increasing the number of environmental cues will increase an individual's recall performance. The cue-overload theory proposed by Watkins and Watkins in 1975 explains that the effectiveness of an environmental cue will decline when there is an increase in the number of items that it is associated with. Therefore, when given a fixed number of items to recall, performance will increase if the number of cues also increases. This theory focuses on one of the two factors that must be considered when determining the effectiveness of multiple learning environments: the variety of contextual cues. However, research conducted by Jones in 1976 demonstrates that for this technique to be useful, the cues must use different senses. For example, there is no recall advantage when only the number of visual cues is increased. On the other hand, there is a recall advantage when different sensory media such as sight, sound, and smell were added together. Hence, this suggests that using multiple sensory media as sources for cues during encoding will provide an advantage in different testing environments where the number of contextual cues has been reduced.
Attention.
The second factor to be considered when determining the effectiveness of multiple learning environments is the likelihood that an individual will even use environmental cues when recalling. Instructing subjects to use self-generated cues (i.e. the context recall technique) will increase recall for participants tested in a different environment. However, individuals do not automatically do this when learning occurs in a single location. Therefore, by moving individuals from room to room, they may pay more attention to the environmental cues. Smith claims that both the context recall technique and the multiple learning context technique work similarly, in that both methods force individuals to pay attention to and remember environmental information.
In 2003, Chu et al. demonstrated that conscious effort and attention is important to overcome context-dependent forgetting. Their research has shown that active processing of the context during the encoding phase is an important factor of successful performance. When actively attending to environmental cues with the goal of using a technique such as the context recall technique, stronger associations are created between the material and the environment. However, if an individual does not actively attend to environmental cues during the encoding phase, such cues may not be easily visualized in the recall phase if a new context is present.
Ambient and transferable cues.
The word "ambient" is defined as completely surrounding and encompassing. Some researchers have suggested that ambient cues, such as odour and sound, aid in recall when the learning context and recall context are different. In addition, these cues are useful in recall because they can also be transferable. For example, if music is played in a room where material is learned, it is sometimes possible to transfer that musical source to a different room where material will be tested. This phenomenon, which occurs when a memory or emotion is reactivated by a song that is associated to a specific event, demonstrates the effectiveness of sound (and odour) as useful cues in the absence of the original context. Using transferable cues may be useful for individuals who have difficulty using the context recall technique because they have trouble creating a mental image of the original environment. For example, this technique has been proven useful for patients at home who are trying to reproduce skills that they learned in a hospital environment.
Context-dependent extinction.
Extinction refers to the loss of performance after a conditioned stimulus is no longer paired with an unconditioned stimulus. It can also refer to the loss of an operant response when it is no longer reinforced.
Research done by Bouton (2002) has shown that extinction is not an example of unlearning, but a new type of learning where the performance of the individual depends on the context. The renewal effect is seen when a participant is first conditioned in a context (context A) and then shows extinction in another context (B). Returning to context A may renew the conditioned response. This evidence demonstrates that appropriate responses underlying extinction may be linked to contextual information. Hence, someone who is in the context in which they initially learned the material is likely to be cued to act as they were initially conditioned to act. If they are in the extinction context, then that context will likely prompt them not to respond. After the extinction of learned fear, Maren and colleagues have shown that the context-dependence of extinction is mediated by hippocampal and prefrontal cortical neurons projecting to the amygdala.
Clinical applications.
Extinction is often used in a type of clinical therapy called exposure therapy to treat disorders such as phobias and anxiety and is also used to treat drug dependence. For example, a person who learns to associate snakes with a traumatic event such as being bitten may develop a phobia. As a treatment, a therapist may choose to expose the person to snakes in the absence of any traumatic event, leading to extinction of maladaptive behaviours related to fear. However, due to the fact that extinction is a context-dependent process, it may lead to relapse once the patient is no longer in the extinction context.
In a study by Crombag and Shaham, rats were taught to self-administer a heroin and cocaine mixture followed by twenty days of extinction. Half of the rats experienced extinction in the same context as the original self-administration and the other half in a new context. The rats that underwent extinction in a new context renewed drug self-administration significantly more than the other rats when they were put back in the original context.
A similar effect was shown in human exposure therapy for severe fear of spiders. The participants who were treated through extinction and later tested in the same context were significantly less afraid than the participants who were treated and tested in different contexts. This shows the lack of generalizability of one context to another in exposure therapy.
Hence, it should be taken into consideration that context-dependence of extinction is critical for successful treatments. To acquire stable and effective extinction of phobias, anxiety, or drug-seeking, the context of extinction must be as similar as possible to the day-to-day encounters with emotion-arousing cues that patients may experience.
Applications.
According to the literature cited above, information is better recalled when the context matches from encoding to retrieval. Therefore, when a person is studying, they should match the studying context as best as possible to the testing context to optimize the amount of material that will be recalled. This idea was made apparent in a study done by Grant et al. In this study, participants were asked to study meaningful information under either quiet or noisy conditions. Afterwards, they were asked short-answer and multiple choice questions on the previously learned material, which prompted both recognition and recall. Half of them were tested under silent conditions and the other half under noisy conditions. The participants whose noise-level matched during studying and testing conditions remembered significantly more information than those whose noise-level was mismatched. Grant et al. conclude that students should take into consideration the context of testing, such as the noise level, while studying, in order to maximize their performance on both recall and recognition tasks.
Further, in cases where it is not possible to have similar learning and testing contexts, individuals who pay conscious attention to cues in the learning environment may produce better results when recalling this information. By doing so, individuals are better able to create a mental image of the original context when trying to recall information in the new testing context—allowing for improved memory retrieval. Further, several contextual cues should be attended to, using more than one sensory system to maximize the number of cues that can help remember information.


John Arthur (philosopher)

John Arthur (September 22, 1946 – January 22, 2007) was an American professor of philosophy and an expert in legal theory, constitutional theory, social ethics, and political philosophy. He taught at Binghamton University for 18 years.
Early life and education.
John Arthur, son of L. James Arthur and Elizabeth Gleason Arthur, grew up in Denver, Colorado. Arthur earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy and history at Cornell College and his master's degree in political sociology and PhD in philosophy at Vanderbilt University.
Academic career.
In total, John Arthur spent time teaching at five colleges and universities, including Brandeis University, Harvard University, Tennessee State University, the College of Charleston and Lake Forest College.
From 1981–1988 Arthur taught at Tennessee State University. Finding the segregated conditions at TSU to be in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution, he organized a biracial group to file suit against the State of Tennessee. The resulting settlement included a desegregation plan for the entire post-secondary education system of Tennessee and brought in millions of dollars to improve Tennessee State University. In 1989, soon after leaving Tennessee State University, Arthur published his first book, "The Unfinished Constitution: Philosophy and Constitutional Practice". Arthur served as a fellow in law and philosophy at Harvard Law School from 1986–1988.
In 1988, Arthur became a professor of philosophy at Binghamton University, where he worked for 18 years. He created an interdisciplinary academic major for Binghamton undergraduate students called the "Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Law", of which Arthur was the director. He received the University and Chancellor's Awards for Excellence in Teaching in 1992. In 1995, Arthur served as a research fellow at the University of St Andrews' Centre for Philosophy and Public Affairs, and from 2002–2003 he was a fellow in law and philosophy at the University of Oxford.
Personal life.
In 1990, John Arthur married consumer protection lawyer Amy Shapiro in Denver, Colorado. Arthur's previous marriage had ended in divorce.
John Arthur died in hospice care at Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, New York on the morning of January 22, 2007 after a year-long battle with lung cancer. He was buried in Denver, Colorado and was survived by his wife.
Selected works.
John Arthur wrote three books, the last of which was published posthumously.
Arthur also co-edited and co-authored several books, including:


Esteban Navarro

Esteban Navarro Soriano (born 18 March 1965, in Moratalla) is a Spanish novelist and journalist known as a contributor to the newspapers "Diario del AltoAragón" and "El País". He is considered by Random House as one of the great names of the Spanish crime novel.
Career.
In 2011 Soriano earned numerous sales successes with the national police trilogy Moisés Guzmán, protagonist to date of three novels: "El Buen Padre", "Los fresones rojos" and "Los ojos del escritor". Ediciones B has acquired the rights to publish the novel "La casa de enfrente", work in the digital edition went on to achieve top sales for several months and has been published on paper in Spain and South America for Ediciones B. In September 2013 he became the best-selling novel on Amazon Mexico, reaching number one authors ahead of the likes of Dan Brown.
In January 2013, he was a finalist in the 69th edition of the Premio Nadal with the novel La noche de los peones.
He has won awards for his 2008 novella "I Katharis" and his 2011 novel "The Stone Raft" He has also been nominated for other awards.
Navarro is a promoter and organizer of various literary contests, and a jury member of several literary contests based in Huesca.
Personal life.
Navarro has been based in Huesca since 2001.
Generación Kindle.
Esteban Navarro is considered the creator of the term Generation Kindle, referring to writers who emerged on the Kindle digital platform. This "Generación Kindle" brings together authors who, although they are of different ages and styles, publish their works through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). The term has been embraced by the media to refer to all the authors who publish and succeed through ebooks.
Controversy.
In 2017, the Directorate-General of the Police opened an Information File of him in his capacity as an official of the National Police after having published his novel "A history of police", although the author unlinked the file with the publication of this work.
This news had a lot of media coverage even in international newspapers, such as "The Guardian".
In the indictment they pointed out that "some officials of the police station in Huesca" were worried that their activity in social networks would damage the image of the body to which it belongs.


Joanne Harris

Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris, (born 3 July 1964) is an English author especially known for her novel "Chocolat" (1999), which was adapted the following year for the film "Chocolat".
Early life.
Harris was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, to an English father and a French mother. Both of her parents were teachers of modern languages and literature at a local grammar school. Her first language was French, which caused divisions between her English family, where nobody spoke French, and her French family, where nobody spoke English. Both families had turbulent histories and a tradition of strong women, kitchen gardening, storytelling, folklore and cookery.
Career.
Harris began writing at an early age. She was strongly influenced by Grimms' Fairy Tales and Charles Perrault's work, as well as local folklore and Norse mythology. She was educated at Wakefield Girls' High School, Barnsley Sixth Form College, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where she studied modern and medieval languages.
After a single, unsuccessful year as an accountant, which she describes as "like being trapped in a Terry Gilliam movie", she trained as a teacher at Sheffield University, and for fifteen years she taught modern languages, mostly at Leeds Grammar School, a boys' independent school in Yorkshire. She also taught at Sheffield University, lecturing on aspects of French literature and film. During this period she worked on a number of book projects; "The Evil Seed", "Sleep, Pale Sister" and "Chocolat" were published whilst she was still teaching.
Her first novel, "The Evil Seed", was published in 1989, with only limited success. A second novel, "Sleep, Pale Sister", shows the way in which her style developed from horror-pastiche to literary ghost story. In 1999 her third novel, "Chocolat", a darkly magical modern folk-tale, thematically based on food and set in the Gers region of France, reached No. 1 in the "Sunday Times" bestseller list. The book won the Creative Freedom Award in 1999 and was shortlisted for the 1999 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. The film rights were sold to David Brown and developed by Miramax Pictures. The success of the motion picture, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, brought Harris worldwide recognition, and in 2012 she became one of only four female members of the "Millionaires Club", the elite group of authors who have achieved a million sales of a single book in the UK since records began.
Since "Chocolat" all of Harris's books have been UK bestsellers. Her wide-ranging choice of subject matter means that her work often defies categorization, and she has a predilection for difficult or challenging issues. She has written three more novels in the "Chocolat" series, continuing the adventures of Vianne Rocher; "The Lollipop Shoes" (re-titled "The Girl With No Shadow" in the US), "Peaches for Monsieur le Curé" ("Peaches for Father Francis" in the US), and "The Strawberry Thief" – published 4 April 2019, as well as two French cookbooks (co-written with Fran Warde), two collections of short stories and a number of dark psychological thrillers, including "Gentlemen and Players" and "Blueeyedboy".
In August 2007, she published "Runemarks", a mythpunk/fantasy novel based on Norse mythology, aimed at both children and adults. The sequel, "Runelight", was published in 2011, and since then the "Rune" books have acquired an enthusiastic following alongside the fans of Vianne Rocher. Continuing the Norse mythology theme, "The Gospel of Loki" was published in February 2014. This book tells of the rise and fall of the gods of Asgard from the point of view of Loki the trickster.
In 2011, she contributed a short story, "Never Cut A Hawthorn", to "Why Willows Weep"an anthology which supports the Woodland Trust.
She is currently Chair of the Society of Authors, and sits on the Board of the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society.
She is a patron of the charities Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and Plan UK, and has travelled to Togo and to the Congo to report on their work. An account of her visit to the Congo was published in "Writing on the Edge", a collection of essays by noted literary figures, with photographs by Tom Craig, in 2010. She has also donated short stories for inclusion in anthologies published by a number of charities, notably Piggybank Kids, the Woodland Trust, the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition and Breast Cancer UK.
Harris works from a shed in her back garden She is married and has one daughter, Anouchka. She lives in Yorkshire with her husband, Kevin.
Recurrent themes.
Some of Harris's recurrent themes are issues of identity, mother/child relationships, the emotional resonance of food, the magic and horror of everyday things, the outsider in the community, faith and superstition, and the joy of small pleasures. She has spoken out against entrenched sexism in the literary field, and she has discussed how she weaves a critique of sexist attitudes into her fiction:
Her writing style focuses on the senses, especially those of taste and smell. This may be due to the fact that Harris has a form of synaesthesia, in which she experiences colours as scents.
Her novels are often much darker than the film adaptation of "Chocolat" would lead us to suppose, and characters are often emotionally damaged or morally ambivalent. Father-figures are frequently absent, and mothers are often portrayed as controlling, harsh or even abusive, as in "Blueeyedboy" and "Five-Quarters of the Orange". Harris favours a first-person, dual-narrator narrative structure, often revisiting past events to cast light on current developments. This generally makes for complex characterisation, and even minor characters are often unusually well developed. Her books have a very strong sense of place, with settings that play as significant a role as do the characters themselves.
The fictional French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, the setting of "Chocolat" and "Peaches for Monsieur le Curé", also features in "Blackberry Wine", and the fictional Yorkshire village of Malbry is the setting for both "Blueeyedboy" and "Gentlemen and Players", as well as numerous short stories. Malbry is also the name of Maddy's home in the "Rune" books, and seems to bear a certain resemblance to Harris's home village of Almondbury.
Awards and honours.
In 2013 she was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
Harris is the holder of honorary doctorates in literature from the University of Huddersfield and the University of Sheffield, and is an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge.
In 2017, she won a Fragrance Foundation Jasmine Award for perfume journalism.
Harris's books are now published in over fifty countries and have won a number of UK and international awards, including:
Bibliography.
Stories featured in the following anthologies:


Golden Arena for Best Film Editing

List of winners.
The following is a list of winners of the Golden Arena for Best Film Editing at the Pula Film Festival.


Algebra of sets

In mathematics, the algebra of sets, not to be confused with the mathematical structure of an algebra of sets, defines the properties and laws of sets, the set-theoretic operations of union, intersection, and complementation and the relations of set equality and set inclusion. It also provides systematic procedures for evaluating expressions, and performing calculations, involving these operations and relations.
Any set of sets closed under the set-theoretic operations forms a Boolean algebra with the join operator being "union", the meet operator being "intersection", the complement operator being "set complement", the bottom being formula_1 and the top being the universe set under consideration.
Fundamentals.
The algebra of sets is the set-theoretic analogue of the algebra of numbers. Just as arithmetic addition and multiplication are associative and commutative, so are set union and intersection; just as the arithmetic relation "less than or equal" is reflexive, antisymmetric and transitive, so is the set relation of "subset".
It is the algebra of the set-theoretic operations of union, intersection and complementation, and the relations of equality and inclusion. For a basic introduction to sets see the article on sets, for a fuller account see naive set theory, and for a full rigorous axiomatic treatment see axiomatic set theory.
The fundamental properties of set algebra.
The binary operations of set union (formula_2) and intersection (formula_3) satisfy many identities. Several of these identities or "laws" have well established names.
The union and intersection of sets may be seen as analogous to the addition and multiplication of numbers. Like addition and multiplication, the operations of union and intersection are commutative and associative, and intersection "distributes" over union. However, unlike addition and multiplication, union also distributes over intersection.
Two additional pairs of properties involve the special sets called the empty set Ø and the universe set formula_10; together with the complement operator (formula_11 denotes the complement of formula_12. This can also be written as formula_13, read as A prime). The empty set has no members, and the universe set has all possible members (in a particular context).
The identity expressions (together with the commutative expressions) say that, just like 0 and 1 for addition and multiplication, Ø and U are the identity elements for union and intersection, respectively.
Unlike addition and multiplication, union and intersection do not have inverse elements. However the complement laws give the fundamental properties of the somewhat inverse-like unary operation of set complementation.
The preceding five pairs of formulae—the commutative, associative, distributive, identity and complement formulae—encompass all of set algebra, in the sense that every valid proposition in the algebra of sets can be derived from them.
Note that if the complement formulae are weakened to the rule formula_18, then this is exactly the algebra of propositional linear logic.
The principle of duality.
Each of the identities stated above is one of a pair of identities such that each can be transformed into the other by interchanging ∪ and ∩, and also Ø and U.
These are examples of an extremely important and powerful property of set algebra, namely, the principle of duality for sets, which asserts that for any true statement about sets, the dual statement obtained by interchanging unions and intersections, interchanging U and Ø and reversing inclusions is also true. A statement is said to be self-dual if it is equal to its own dual.
Some additional laws for unions and intersections.
The following proposition states six more important laws of set algebra, involving unions and intersections.
PROPOSITION 3: For any subsets "A" and "B" of a universe set U, the following identities hold:
As noted above, each of the laws stated in proposition 3 can be derived from the five fundamental pairs of laws stated above. As an illustration, a proof is given below for the idempotent law for union.
"Proof:"
The following proof illustrates that the dual of the above proof is the proof of the dual of the idempotent law for union, namely the idempotent law for intersection.
"Proof:"
Intersection can be expressed in terms of set difference :
formula_25
Some additional laws for complements.
The following proposition states five more important laws of set algebra, involving complements.
PROPOSITION 4: Let "A" and "B" be subsets of a universe U, then:
Notice that the double complement law is self-dual.
The next proposition, which is also self-dual, says that the complement of a set is the only set that satisfies the complement laws. In other words, complementation is characterized by the complement laws.
PROPOSITION 5: Let "A" and "B" be subsets of a universe U, then:
The algebra of inclusion.
The following proposition says that inclusion, that is the binary relation of one set being a subset of another, is a partial order.
PROPOSITION 6: If "A", "B" and "C" are sets then the following hold:
The following proposition says that for any set "S", the power set of "S", ordered by inclusion, is a bounded lattice, and hence together with the distributive and complement laws above, show that it is a Boolean algebra.
PROPOSITION 7: If "A", "B" and "C" are subsets of a set "S" then the following hold:
The following proposition says that the statement formula_35 is equivalent to various other statements involving unions, intersections and complements.
PROPOSITION 8: For any two sets "A" and "B", the following are equivalent:
The above proposition shows that the relation of set inclusion can be characterized by either of the operations of set union or set intersection, which means that the notion of set inclusion is axiomatically superfluous.
The algebra of relative complements.
The following proposition lists several identities concerning relative complements and set-theoretic differences.
PROPOSITION 9: For any universe U and subsets "A", "B", and "C" of U, the following identities hold:


Horace L. Friess

Horace L. Friess (March 4, 1900 – October 12, 1975) was an American ethicist. He was the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Human Relations at Columbia University, and a Guggenheim Fellow.
Early life.
Friess was born on March 4, 1900 in New York City. He attended Columbia University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1918 and a PhD in 1926.
Career.
Friess joined the Department of Philosophy and Religion at his alma mater, Columbia University, as a faculty member in 1919. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1942. He was the department chair from 1962 to 1964, and the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Human Relations from 1964 to 1966, when he retired.
Friess was the head of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, founded by his father-in-law. He translated from German into English a book by Friedrich Schleiermacher, and he co-authored another book with Herbert Schneider. He edited "The Review of Religion" for 15 years.
Personal life and death.
Friess married Ruth Adler, the daughter of ethicist Felix Adler. They resided in Manhattan.
Friess died on October 12, 1975 in New York City.


Self/Pity


Martin Pensa

Martin Pensa is a film editor. Pensa and fellow film editor Jean-Marc Vallée (as John Mac McMurphy) were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for the 2013 film "Dallas Buyers Club".


Physical theories modified by general relativity

"This article will use the Einstein summation convention."
The theory of general relativity required the adaptation of existing theories of physical, electromagnetic, and quantum effects to account for non-Euclidean geometries. These physical theories modified by general relativity are described below.
Classical mechanics and special relativity.
Classical mechanics and special relativity are lumped together here because special relativity is in many ways intermediate between general relativity and classical mechanics, and shares many attributes with classical mechanics.
In the following discussion, the mathematics of general relativity is used heavily. Also, under the principle of minimal coupling, the physical equations of special relativity can be turned into their general relativity counterparts by replacing the Minkowski metric ("ηab") with the relevant metric of spacetime ("gab") and by replacing any partial derivatives with covariant derivatives. In the discussions that follow, the change of metrics is implied.
Inertia.
Inertial motion is motion free of all forces. In Newtonian mechanics, the force "F" acting on a particle with mass "m" is given by Newton's second law, formula_1, where the acceleration is given by the second derivative of position "r" with respect to time "t" . Zero force means that inertial motion is just motion with zero acceleration:
The idea is the same in special relativity. Using Cartesian coordinates, inertial motion is described mathematically as:
where "formula_4" is the position coordinate and "τ" is proper time. (In Newtonian mechanics, "τ ≡ t", the coordinate time).
In both Newtonian mechanics and special relativity, space and then spacetime are assumed to be flat, and we can construct a global Cartesian coordinate system. In general relativity, these restrictions on the shape of spacetime and on the coordinate system to be used are lost. Therefore, a different definition of inertial motion is required. In relativity, inertial motion occurs along timelike or null geodesics as parameterized by proper time. This is expressed mathematically by the geodesic equation:
where formula_6 is a Christoffel symbol. Since general relativity describes four-dimensional spacetime, this represents four equations, with each one describing the second derivative of a coordinate with respect to proper time. In the case of flat space in Cartesian coordinates, we have formula_7, so this equation reduces to the special relativity form.
Gravitation.
For gravitation, the relationship between Newton's theory of gravity and general relativity is governed by the correspondence principle: General relativity must produce the same results as gravity does for the cases where Newtonian physics has been shown to be accurate.
Around a spherically symmetric object, the Newtonian theory of gravity predicts that objects will be physically accelerated towards the center on the object by the rule
where "G" is Newton's Gravitational constant, "M" is the mass of the gravitating object, "r" is the distance to the gravitation object, and formula_9 is a unit vector identifying the direction to the massive object.
In the weak-field approximation of general relativity, an identical coordinate acceleration must exist. For the Schwarzschild solution (which is the simplest possible spacetime surrounding a massive object), the same acceleration as that which (in Newtonian physics) is created by gravity is obtained when a constant of integration is set equal to "2MG/c2"). For more information, see Deriving the Schwarzschild solution.
Transition from Newtonian mechanics to general relativity.
Some of the basic concepts of general relativity can be outlined outside the relativistic domain. In particular, the idea that mass/energy generates curvature in space and that curvature affects the motion of masses can be illustrated in a Newtonian setting.
General relativity generalizes the geodesic equation and the field equation to the relativistic realm in which trajectories in space are replaced with Fermi–Walker transport along world lines in spacetime. The equations are also generalized to more complicated curvatures.
Transition from special relativity to general relativity.
The basic structure of general relativity, including the geodesic equation and Einstein field equation, can be obtained from special relativity by examining the kinetics and dynamics of a particle in a circular orbit about the earth. In terms of symmetry, the transition involves replacing global Lorentz covariance with local Lorentz covariance.
Conservation of energy–momentum.
In classical mechanics, conservation laws for energy and momentum are handled separately in the two principles of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. With the advent of special relativity, these two conservation principles were united through the concept of mass-energy equivalence.
Mathematically, the general relativity statement of energy–momentum conservation is:
where formula_11 is the stress–energy tensor, the comma indicates a partial derivative and the semicolon indicates a covariant derivative. The terms involving the Christoffel symbols are absent in the special relativity statement of energy–momentum conservation.
Unlike classical mechanics and special relativity, it is not usually possible to unambiguously define the total energy and momentum in general relativity, so the tensorial conservation laws are "local" statements only (see ADM energy, though). This often causes confusion in time-dependent spacetimes which apparently do not conserve energy, although the local law is always satisfied. Exact formulation of energy–momentum conservation on an arbitrary geometry requires use of a non-unique stress–energy–momentum pseudotensor.
Electromagnetism.
General relativity modifies the description of electromagnetic phenomena by employing a new version of Maxwell's equations. These differ from the special relativity form in that the Christoffel symbols make their presence in the equations via the covariant derivative.
The source equations of electrodynamics in curved spacetime are (in cgs units)
where "Fab" is the electromagnetic field tensor representing the electromagnetic field and "Ja" is a four-current representing the sources of the electromagnetic field.
The source-free equations are the same as their special relativity counterparts.
The effect of an electromagnetic field on a charged object is then modified to
where "q" is the charge on the object, "m" is the rest mass of the object and "P a" is the four-momentum of the charged object. Maxwell's equations in flat spacetime are recovered in rectangular coordinates by reverting the covariant derivatives to partial derivatives. For Maxwell's equations in flat spacetime in curvilinear coordinates see
or


Pseudolikelihood

In statistical theory, a pseudolikelihood is an approximation to the joint probability distribution of a collection of random variables. The practical use of this is that it can provide an approximation to the likelihood function of a set of observed data which may either provide a computationally simpler problem for estimation, or may provide a way of obtaining explicit estimates of model parameters.
The pseudolikelihood approach was introduced by Julian Besag in the context of analysing data having spatial dependence.
Definition.
Given a set of random variables formula_1 the pseudolikelihood of formula_2 is
in discrete case and
in continuous one.
Here formula_5 is a vector of variables, formula_6 is a vector of values, formula_7 is conditional density and formula_8 is the vector of parameters we are to estimate. The expression formula_9 above means that each variable formula_10 in the vector formula_5 has a corresponding value formula_12 in the vector formula_6 and formula_14 means that the coordinate formula_15 has been omitted. The expression formula_16 is the probability that the vector of variables formula_5 has values equal to the vector formula_6. This probability of course depends on the unknown parameter formula_19. Because situations can often be described using state variables ranging over a set of possible values, the expression formula_16 can therefore represent the probability of a certain state among all possible states allowed by the state variables.
The pseudo-log-likelihood is a similar measure derived from the above expression, namely (in discrete case)
One use of the pseudolikelihood measure is as an approximation for inference about a Markov or Bayesian network, as the pseudolikelihood of an assignment to formula_10 may often be computed more efficiently than the likelihood, particularly when the latter may require marginalization over a large number of variables.
Properties.
Use of the pseudolikelihood in place of the true likelihood function in a maximum likelihood analysis can lead to good estimates, but a straightforward application of the usual likelihood techniques to derive information about estimation uncertainty, or for significance testing, would in general be incorrect.


Edmund Ironside (play)

Edmund Ironside, or War Hath Made All Friends is an anonymous Elizabethan play that depicts the life of Edmund II of England. At least three critics have suggested that it is an early work by William Shakespeare.
Text.
The play was never published in its own era; the unique copy of the text was preserved in MS. Egerton 1994, an important collection of play manuscripts now in the collection of the British Library.
Authorship.
E.B. Everitt, Eric Sams, and Peter Ackroyd have argued that this play is perhaps Shakespeare's first drama. According to Sams, "Edmund Ironside" "contains some 260 words or usages which on the evidence of the "Oxford English Dictionary" were first used by Shakespeare himself... Further, it exhibits 635 instances of Shakespeare's rare words including some 300 of the rarest." Sams dates the play to 1587, noting that the play's presentation after that period until the death of Elizabeth I would have been illegal because of an edict that was passed that would have applied to a scene featuring a brawl between two archbishops. He further argues that the play's strong similarities in both line and plot to "Titus Andronicus", and the latter play's high number of mentions of the Roman setting, may indicate that "Titus" is something of a rewriting of "Edmund Ironside". His appendix notes correlations of images and ideas that are found only in Shakespeare's plays and not from any known playwright of the era, such as serpents stinging via their tongues and reporting of Judas Iscariot saying "all hail," which is non-Biblical, but also found in such plays as "Henry VI, Part 3".
Synopsis.
Act I.
"Edmund Ironside" tells the story of a battle between two men who both want to be king of England: Edmund Ironside, who is a native, and depicted as noble, and Canutus (based on Cnut the Great), who is a Danish prince, and depicted as treacherous. Canutus is preoccupied with the possibility that the native English population will side with Ironside and rebel against Canutus.
A third important figure is Edricus (based on Eadric Streona), who is duplicitous, plays each side against the other, and who also wants the crown. Edricus is occasionally found alone on stage, and frequently boasts about his villainy (in a manner similar to the protagonist of Shakespeare’s "Richard III").
Act II.
Stitch, brother to Edricus, is a cobbler, and wants to join the ranks of his brother’s supporters. Their mother discloses that Edricus was in fact born the bastard child of a soldier she once met. Edricus calls her a witch, and says that Stitch can enter his service, but first he must banish their parents from town. Stitch does this.
Canutus, angry that two of his supporters have deserted him on the day of his wedding to Southampton's daughter, Egina, decides to get revenge on them by cutting off the hands and noses of their sons. Stitch gets an axe and cuts off the hands of the two boys. News arrives that Ironside has had a victory against Canutus' troops in the north.
Act III.
Canutus attacks London. Ironside’s army fights back.
Edricus attempts to frighten Ironside’s men by showing them a severed head and declaring it to be Ironside’s. Then Ironside reappears, and in a battle Canutus is again driven back, and Ironside praises his men for the victory.
Canutus rails against his troops and supporters, calling them cowards. After this, Edricus writes to Ironside, asking forgiveness. He then exchanges clothing with Stitch.
Stitch, now dressed in aristocratic clothing, has a scene where he play-acts the part, and is a Falstaffian comic tyrant.
Act IV.
Ironside reads the letter written by Edricus, and delivered by the disguised Edricus. In the letter Edricus claims that he defected because of rumors that Ironside was hunting for him, and he begs for mercy. Ironside is skeptical, and then recognizes Edricus beneath his disguise. Edricus explains that he planned to reveal himself and side with Ironside, or else exile
himself. Edricus also claims to have information regarding Canutus' military plans. Ironside is trusting and announces that he will give Edricus a military command. In an aside, Edricus admires the success of his own dissimulation.
Meanwhile, as the Danes are ravaging the country, Emma, the stepmother of Ironside, says goodbye to her two young sons Alfred and Edward, who are about to embark and find safety with her brother, Duke Richard the Fearless of Normandy.
Canutus receives a letter from Edricus describing his insinuation into Ironside's confidences. Canutus exults at this, and his soldiers look forward to battle. The drums sound.
Edricus meets Canutus and tells him he plans to be absent when Ironside needs him most. When Ironside attacks Canutus, Edricus backs Canutus and Ironside is driven off. Canutus promises to reward Edricus. Edricus then runs after Ironside to try to explain.
Act V.
Ironside is cursing Edricus, when Edricus enters limping and with his hand wrapped in a scarf, claiming that he had a plan to support Ironside, if only Ironside had not retreated. Edricus points to his “injuries”. Ironside is persuaded and apologizes. Alone Edricus gloats.
Ironside and Canutus meet, each claiming to be king. Canutus, uses his knowledge of the law to argue his point. Ironside, angry, argues in return. They then draw swords, and a battle begins. Edricus has an idea to resolve the issue. He suggest that they either split the kingdom or that Canutus and Ironside fight one-on-one. The idea is accepted and the fight between the two men begins. Ironside seems to be winning, and Canutus yields, offering his hand to Ironside, who receives it honorably. Ironside wants the Danes to select which side, east or west, of England they want. Canutus and Ironside leave to go celebrate. Edricus, in an aside, speaks the last words of the play: “By heaven I'll be revenged on both of you.”


Urelement

In set theory, a branch of mathematics, an urelement or ur-element (from the German prefix "ur-", 'primordial') is an object that is not a set, but that may be an element of a set. It is also referred to as an atom or individual.
Theory.
There are several different but essentially equivalent ways to treat urelements in a first-order theory.
One way is to work in a first-order theory with two sorts, sets and urelements, with "a" ∈ "b" only defined when "b" is a set.
In this case, if "U" is an urelement, it makes no sense to say formula_1, although formula_2 is perfectly legitimate.
Another way is to work in a one-sorted theory with a unary relation used to distinguish sets and urelements. As non-empty sets contain members while urelements do not, the unary relation is only needed to distinguish the empty set from urelements. Note that in this case, the axiom of extensionality must be formulated to apply only to objects that are not urelements.
This situation is analogous to the treatments of theories of sets and classes. Indeed, urelements are in some sense dual to proper classes: urelements cannot have members whereas proper classes cannot be members. Put differently, urelements are minimal objects while proper classes are maximal objects by the membership relation (which, of course, is not an order relation, so this analogy is not to be taken literally).
Urelements in set theory.
The Zermelo set theory of 1908 included urelements, and hence is a version we now call ZFA or ZFCA (i.e. ZFA with axiom of choice). It was soon realized that in the context of this and closely related axiomatic set theories, the urelements were not needed because they can easily be modeled in a set theory without urelements. Thus, standard expositions of the canonical axiomatic set theories ZF and ZFC do not mention urelements. (For an exception, see Suppes.) Axiomatizations of set theory that do invoke urelements include Kripke–Platek set theory with urelements, and the variant of Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory described by Mendelson. In type theory, an object of type 0 can be called an urelement; hence the name "atom."
Adding urelements to the system New Foundations (NF) to produce NFU has surprising consequences. In particular, Jensen proved the consistency of NFU relative to Peano arithmetic; meanwhile, the consistency of NF relative to anything remains an open problem, pending verification of Holmes's proof of its consistency relative to ZF. Moreover, NFU remains relatively consistent when augmented with an axiom of infinity and the axiom of choice. Meanwhile, the negation of the axiom of choice is, curiously, an NF theorem. Holmes (1998) takes these facts as evidence that NFU is a more successful foundation for mathematics than NF. Holmes further argues that set theory is more natural with than without urelements, since we may take as urelements the objects of any theory or of the physical universe. In finitist set theory, urelements are mapped to the lowest-level components of the target phenomenon, such as atomic constituents of a physical object or members of an organisation.
Quine atoms.
An alternative approach to urelements is to consider them, instead of as a type of object other than sets, as a particular type of set. Quine atoms (named after Willard Van Orman Quine) are sets that only contain themselves, that is, sets that satisfy the formula "x" = {"x"}.
Quine atoms cannot exist in systems of set theory that include the axiom of regularity, but they can exist in non-well-founded set theory. ZF set theory with the axiom of regularity removed cannot prove that any non-well-founded sets exist (unless it is inconsistent, in which case it will any arbitrary statement), but it is compatible with the existence of Quine atoms. Aczel's anti-foundation axiom implies there is a unique Quine atom. Other non-well-founded theories may admit many distinct Quine atoms; at the opposite end of the spectrum lies Boffa's axiom of superuniversality, which implies that the distinct Quine atoms form a proper class.
Quine atoms also appear in Quine's New Foundations, which allows more than one such set to exist.
Quine atoms are the only sets called reflexive sets by Peter Aczel, although other authors, e.g. Jon Barwise and Lawrence Moss use the latter term to denote the larger class of sets with the property "x" ∈ "x".


Filmfare Award for Best Editing

The Filmfare Best Editing Award is given by the "Filmfare" magazine as part of its annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films.
Superlatives.
Most Awards


Samaritan Fundraising

Samaritan Fundraising is a national fundraising company solely dedicated to support churches, ministries, schools, and other faith-based organizations reach their fundraising goal.
Headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, Samaritan Fundraising is owned and operated by Salem Communications, the country's leading Christian radio broadcaster, Internet content provider, and Christian magazine and book publisher.
History.
Tom Freiling founded Samaritan Fundraising in April 2009 after leaving Xulon Press, the online book publishing company that he started in September 2001 and eventually sold to Salem Web Network.
Acquisition by Salem Web Network.
Samaritan Fundraising was acquired by Salem Web Network, the online division of Salem Communications Corporation, in September 2010.
Products.
Samaritan Card.

Beveridge Report

The Beveridge Report, officially entitled "Social Insurance and Allied Services" (Cmd. 6404), is a government report, published in November 1942, influential in the founding of the welfare state in the United Kingdom. It was drafted by the Liberal economist William Beveridge, who proposed widespread reforms to the system of social welfare to address what he identified as "five giants on the road of reconstruction": "Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness". Published in the midst of World War II, the report promised rewards for everyone's sacrifices. Overwhelmingly popular with the public, it formed the basis for the post-war reforms known as the Welfare State, which include the expansion of National Insurance and the creation of the National Health Service.
Background.
In 1940, during the Second World War, the Labour Party entered into a coalition with the Conservative Party. On 10 June 1941 Arthur Greenwood, the Labour MP and Minister without Portfolio, announced the creation of an inter-departmental committee which would carry out a survey of Britain's social insurance and allied services:
Its members were civil servants from the Home Office, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Ministry of Pensions, Government Actuary, Ministry of Health, HM Treasury, Reconstruction Secretariat, Board of Customs and Excise, Assistance Board, Department of Health for Scotland, Registry of Friendly Societies and Office of the Industrial Assurance Commissioner.
The report was printed by Alabaster Passmore & Sons Limited which kept their factory in Maidstone busy when there was very little other printing work available.
Recommendations.
The Report offered three guiding principles to its recommendations:
Beveridge was opposed to "means-tested" benefits. His proposal was for a flat rate universal contribution in exchange for a flat rate universal benefit. Means-testing was intended to play a tiny part because it created high marginal tax rates for the poor (the "poverty trap").
Reaction.
Inside the Cabinet, there was debate, instigated by Brendan Bracken, on 16 November 1942 over whether to publish the Report as a White Paper at that time. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, said that it involved "an impracticable financial commitment" and that publication should therefore be postponed. However, the Cabinet decided on 26 November to publish it on 2 December.
The Ministry of Information Home Intelligence found that the Report had been "welcomed with almost universal approval by people of all shades of opinion and by all sections of the community" and seen as "the first real attempt to put into practice the talk about a new world". In a sample poll taken in the fortnight after the Report's publication, the British Institute of Public Opinion found that 95% of the public had heard of the Report and that there was "great interest in it", but there was criticism that old age pensions were not high enough. They also found that "there was overwhelming agreement that the plan should be put into effect".
"The Times" called the Report "a momentous document which should and must exercise a profound and immediate influence on the direction of social change in Britain", while the "Manchester Guardian" described it as "a big and fine thing". "The Daily Telegraph" said it was a consummation of the revolution begun by David Lloyd George in 1911. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, said it was "the first time anyone had set out to embody the whole spirit of the Christian ethic in an Act of Parliament".
A Parliamentary debate on the Report was planned for February 1943: the Cabinet appointed the Lord President of the Council, Sir John Anderson, to chair a committee to consider the Report and to set out the government's line. In the Commons debate the government announced they would not implement the Report immediately. The Tory Reform Committee, consisting of 45 Conservative MPs, demanded the founding of a Ministry of Social Security immediately. At the division at the end of the debate, 97 Labour MPs, 11 Independents, 9 Liberals, 3 Independent Labour Party MPs and 1 Communist voted against the government. A Ministry of Information Home Intelligence report found that after the debate the left-wing section of the public were disappointed but that "an approving minority" thought that the government was correct to wait until the post-war financial situation was known before making a decision. An opinion poll by the British Institute of Public Opinion found that 29% were satisfied with the government's attitude to the Report; 47% were dissatisfied; 24% "didn't know".
Winston Churchill gave a broadcast on 21 March 1943 entitled "After the War", where he warned the public not to impose "great new expenditure on the State without any relation to the circumstances which might prevail at the time" and said there would be "a four-year plan" of post-war reconstruction "to cover five or six large measures of a practical character" which would be put to the electorate after the war and implemented by a new government. These measures were "national compulsory insurance for all classes for all purposes from the cradle to the grave"; the abolition of unemployment by government policies which would "exercise a balancing influence upon development which can be turned on or off as circumstances require"; "a broadening field for State ownership and enterprise"; new housing; major reforms to education; and largely expanded health and welfare services. Churchill's commitment to creating a welfare state was limited: he and the Conservative Party opposed much of the implementation of the Beveridge Report, including voting against the founding of the NHS.
The Labour Party won the 1945 general election on a platform that promised to address Beveridge's five Giant Evils. The report's recommendations were implemented through a series of Acts of Parliament (namely the National Insurance Act 1946, the National Assistance Act 1948, and the National Health Service Act 1946) which founded the modern British welfare state. Labour deviated from Beveridge in the state's role: their leaders opposed Beveridge's idea of a National Health Service run through local health centres and regional hospital administrations, preferring a state-run body. Beveridge complained about this: "For Ernest Bevin, with his trade-union background of unskilled workers... social insurance was less important than bargaining about wages." Bevin derided the Beveridge Report as a "Social Ambulance Scheme" and followed the Coalition Government's view that it should not be implemented until the end of the war (he was furious in February 1943 when a large number of Labour back-benchers ignored their leaders and voted against delay in implementing Beveridge).
Wartime changes.
The war years saw great improvements in working conditions and welfare provisions, which paved the way for the postwar UK Welfare State. Infant, child, and maternity services were expanded, while the Official Food Policy Committee (chaired by the deputy PM and Labour leader Clement Attlee) approved grants of fuel and subsidised milk to mothers and to children under the age of five in June 1940. A month later, the Board of Education decided that free school meals should become more widely available. By February 1945, 73% of children received milk in school, compared with 50% in July 1940. Free vaccination against diphtheria was also provided for children at school. In addition, the Town and Country Planning Act 1944 gave consideration to those areas damaged in bombing raids and enabled local authorities to clear slums, while the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act passed that same year made £150 million available for the construction of temporary dwellings.
To improve conditions for the elderly, supplementary pensions were introduced in 1940. In 1943, there were further improvements in rates and conditions for those in receipt of supplementary pensions and unemployment assistance. Food prices were stabilised in December 1939, initially as temporary measure, but this was made permanent in August 1940, while both milk and meals were provided at subsidised prices, or free in those cases of real need.
In July 1940, increased Treasury grants led to an improvement in the supply of milk and meals in schools. The number of meals taken doubled within a year, and take-up of school milk increased by 50%. By 1945, roughly 33% of all children ate at school compared with just 3.3% (one in thirty) in 1940, while those taking milk increased from about 50% to roughly 75%. In 1940, a national milk scheme was launched, which provided a pint of milk at about half price for all children under the age of five, and for expectant or nursing mothers. The take-up rate was such that, by 1944, 95% of those eligible had participated in the scheme. The government's general food policy that priority groups like young children and mothers were not just entitled to essentials like milk, but actually received supplies as well. Evacuation during the course of the war also revealed, to more prosperous Britons, the extent of deprivation in society. Historian Derek Fraser noted that evacuation became "the most important subject in the social history of the war because it revealed, to the whole people, the black spots in its social life."
An Emergency Hospital Service was introduced, which provided free treatment to casualties (a definition which included war evacuees), while rationing led to significant improvements in the diets of poor families. As noted by Richard Titmuss,
Implementation.
The Labour Party eventually also adopted the Beveridge proposals, and after their victory in the 1945 general election, they proceeded to implement many social policies, which became known as the Welfare State. These included the Family Allowances Act 1945, National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Acts 1946 and 1948, National Insurance Acts 1946 and 1949, National Health Service Act 1946, Pensions (Increase) Act 1947, Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act 1949.


Fort Montgomery (Hudson River)

Fort Montgomery is a fortification built on the west bank of the Hudson River in Highlands, New York by the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Erected in 1776, Fort Montgomery was one of the first major investments by the Americans in strategic construction projects.
Declared a National Historic Landmark, it is part of the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, owned and operated by the state of New York as the Fort Montgomery State Historic Site.
Background.
The strategic importance of the ability to control navigation along the Hudson River was obvious to both the Americans and the British from the outbreak of open hostilities. The Hudson was the major means for transportation of supplies and troops throughout a large portion of the northeast. The fort was constructed at a site noted as early as the seventeenth century for its strategic advantage in controlling navigation along the river.
A month after the first open armed conflict in Lexington, the Continental Congress resolved on May 25, 1775 to build fortifications in the Hudson highlands for the purpose of protecting and maintaining control of the Hudson River. It noted that "…a post be also taken in the Highlands on each side of Hudson’s River and batteries erected in such a manner as will most effectually prevent any vessels passing that may be sent to harass the inhabitants on the borders of said river…"
Fort Constitution.
James Clinton and Christopher Tappan, both lifetime residents of the area, were sent to scout appropriate locations. The initial site chosen was further to the north, on Martlaer's Island, across from West Point. Plans for the fort called for four bastions. Construction of the fortifications began in the summer of 1775. By November it had 70 cannons. However, difficulties in construction and management of the original plan of fortifications, together with escalating costs, led to abandonment of that project. The site on the north side of Popolopen Creek across from Anthony's Nose was proposed, and in January 1776, the materials and resources from Fort Constitution were redirected to the construction at the new site. Construction began on the new Fort Montgomery in March 1776.
Fort Montgomery in the American Revolution.
Fort Montgomery was located at the confluence of Popolopen Creek with the Hudson River near Bear Mountain in Orange County, New York. The fortifications included a river battery of six 32-pound cannons, a cable chain supported by a boom across the Hudson River (see Hudson River Chain), and landward redoubts connected by ramparts, all situated on a cliff promontory rising 100 feet (30 m) above the river. The fort was commanded by General George Clinton, also the newly appointed governor of the state. Fort Montgomery and its companion fortification Fort Clinton, on the southern bank of the Popolopen, held a combined garrison of roughly 700 American soldiers. These men were from the 5th NY Regiment, Lamb's Artillery, Orange County Militia, and Ulster County Militia.
The strategic importance of the opposite bank of Popolopen Creek was quickly realized, as it was an elevated cliff terrace with a full view of the Fort Montgomery site and could not be left undefended. The Army built the smaller fortification named Fort Clinton at that site. These two forts and their associated cannon batteries effectively controlled this stretch of the Hudson River. The Army also conceived a major engineering project to effectively blockade any naval traffic headed north on the river. In 1776 a chain and boom were built across the river to provide a physical barrier to ships, in addition to the combined firepower of the fortifications, which could be massed against ships.
In July 1776, the New York convention appointed a committee, including John Jay, Robert Livingston, George Clinton and Robert Yates, to "devise and carry into execution" measures for "obstructing the channel of Hudson's river, or annoying the navigation of the said River." Worried about lack of arms, the committee worked to buy more cannons.
Battle of Fort Montgomery.
On October 6, 1777, a combined force of roughly 2,100 Loyalists, Hessians, and British regulars led by Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton attacked forts Montgomery and Clinton from the landward side (where the defenses were only partially completed). They had support from cannon fire from British ships on the Hudson River that had passed through the chevaux de frise on the lower river. The land columns attacking from west of the fort consisted of the New York Volunteers, the Loyal American Regiment, Emmerich's Chasseurs, the 57th and the 52nd Regiments of Foot. By the end of the day, both forts had fallen to the British, who burned the forts and tore down the stonework buildings.
The battle was strategically barren for the British, however. Their campaign against the forts caused delays in reinforcing General John Burgoyne at Saratoga. Americans gained the upper hand at the Battle of Bemis Heights and forced the surrender of Burgoyne ten days later at the Battle of Saratoga, when the reinforcements were still far to the south.
Historic Site.
The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972. A system of trails and interpretive signs guides visitors through the ruins of the fort.
Designed by the architect Salvatore Cuciti, the Visitor Center opened in October 2006. The timber frame building is oriented to provide visitors with a "gun sight" view down the Hudson. Operated as a state museum, it contains artifacts from the site, mannequins representing military units and a detailed model of the fort.


WHYU-LP

WHYU-LP is a low-power radio station operated by the American Militia Association in Meyersdale, Pennsylvania. It claims to be the "only FCC licensed FM broadcast station operated by a militia related organization in the United States" .


Copernican paradigm

Copernican paradigm is an analysis of Australian constitutional structures in order to develop models establishing Australia as a republic with a directly elected head of state. It is named for Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
Background.
Although a constitutional monarchy, in practice, Australia has most of the essential features of a federal republic. The modern objectives of Australian republicanism are usually viewed in terms of replacing monarchist institutions, in particular the Governor-General, with republican institutions.
Analysis.
The paradigm focuses on the Queen of Australia being the central institution of the Australian constitutional system. It is from this central authority, that the executive authority of the Governor-General and each state governor is legally derived.
Model development.
Proponents of this analysis argue that their perspective on Australian constitutional structures allows republicans to develop constitutional models that are simpler and with substantively less disruption to parliamentary government. Such models would focus on replacing the Queen alone, retaining the Governor-General and state governors.
In replacing the Queen, a model based on the Copernican paradigm can accommodate a directly elected head of state without codification of the reserve powers, which currently may be exercised by the Governor-General and state governors.
Professor George Winterton, noting this as advantageous, added the paradigm retains the nationally unifying element of a joint state-federal Head of State.
Criticism.
In the report of the 2004 Senate Inquiry republican models based on the Copernican paradigm were criticised as understating the amount of constitutional change required to establish a republic. Senators queried the potential for duplication and confusion over the ceremonial roles of the Australian head of state and the Governor-General.
Professor Winterton criticised the concept as "tricephalous" (three-headed) and potentially unstable. He argued a "locally-resident directly-elected public officer" was not readily comparable to a "hereditary absentee monarch" and a future Head of State would interfere with the exercise of the Governor-General's powers to some degree.


Henry letters

The Henry Letters were correspondence by an adventurer named John Henry with the Governor General of Canada, Sir James Craig in 1809. The letters documented Henry's efforts to determine Federalist sympathies to have the New England states leave the United States and join the British Empire. A bundle of letters was sold to President James Madison for $50,000. The letters were fraudulent, but both the President and his fellow Republicans in Congress were deceived on the eve of the War of 1812.
Henry left the United States for France shortly before the letters were made public on March 9, 1812 in a message to Congress by President Madison.
Historians have been sharply critical of Madison's actions. Leopold writes, "In buying sight unseen, in February, 1812, the worthless Henry letters at the cost of a badly needed frigate in order to expose the supposed intrigues of the New England Federalists, Madison and Secretary of State Monroe looked like fools as well as knaves."