Arms and the (tax-)man: The use and taxation of armorial bearings in Britain, 1798–1944.

From 1798 to 1944 the display of coats of arms in Great Britain was taxed. Since there were major changes to the role of heraldry in society in the same period, it is surprising that the records of the tax have gone unstudied. This dissertation evaluates whether the records of the tax can say something useful about heraldry in this period. The surviving records include information about individual taxpayers, statistics at national and local levels, and administrative papers. To properly interpret these records, it was necessary to develop a detailed understanding of the workings of the tax; the last history of the tax was published in 1885 and did not discuss in detail how the tax was collected. A preliminary analysis of the records of the armorial bearings tax leads to five conclusions: the financial or social elite were more likely to pay the tax; the people who paid the tax were concentrated in fashionable areas; there were differences between the types of people who paid the tax in rural and urban areas; women and clergy were present in greater numbers than one might expect; and the number of taxpayers grew rapidly in the middle of the nineteenth century, but dropped off after 1914. However, several questions have to be answered before the records of the tax can be used to draw conclusions about the use of heraldry: Are the surviving records representative? Does tax evasion introduce any bias? How does one handle changes in what was considered taxable over the 150-year period? How does one distinguish between people who were taxed because they had an object decorated with a coat of arms, and people who intentionally displayed their personal or institutional coat of arms? The records of the armorial bearings tax have the potential to be useful, but as the above questions indicate, a much closer analysis of the records, as well as additional sources of information, are needed to fully realise this potential

Evidence for prelocalization of cytoplasmic factors affecting gene activation in early embryogenesis

Differentiation begins early in embryogenesis as different genes become active in different cells. Within the closed system of the early embryo, equal genomes thus direct the creation of diverse cell types. Though the nuclei of these cells contain complete copies of the same genome,(1,2) the nucleoplasmic and cytoplasmic environments of these genomes are not the same, as a result of the distribution of cleavage nuclei into diverse areas of egg cytoplasm early in the cleavage process. In some cases the fate of these nuclei, i.e., the type of differentiated cell to which they or their descendants give rise, has been seen to depend on the area of cytoplasm in which they come to lie

Pole dynamics for the Flierl-Petviashvili equation and zonal flow

We use a systematic method which allows us to identify a class of exact solutions of the Flierl-Petvishvili equation. The solutions are periodic and have one dimensional geometry. We examine the physical properties and find that these structures can have a significant effect on the zonal flow generation.Comment: Latex 40 pages, seven figures eps included. Effect of variation of g_3 is studied. New references adde

Identification of ‘erasers’ for lysine crotonylated histone marks using a chemical proteomics approach

Posttranslational modifications (PTMs) play a crucial role in a wide range of biological processes. Lysine crotonylation (Kcr) is a newly discovered histone PTM that is enriched at active gene promoters and potential enhancers in mammalian cell genomes. However, the cellular enzymes that regulate the addition and removal of Kcr are unknown, which has hindered further investigation of its cellular functions. Here we used a chemical proteomics approach to comprehensively profile 'eraser' enzymes that recognize a lysine-4 crotonylated histone H3 (H3K4Cr) mark. We found that Sirt1, Sirt2, and Sirt3 can catalyze the hydrolysis of lysine crotonylated histone peptides and proteins. More importantly, Sirt3 functions as a decrotonylase to regulate histone Kcr dynamics and gene transcription in living cells. This discovery not only opens opportunities for examining the physiological significance of histone Kcr, but also helps to unravel the unknown cellular mechanisms controlled by Sirt3, that have previously been considered solely as a deacetylase.published_or_final_versio

Dissociation of virtual photons in events with a leading proton at HERA

The ZEUS detector has been used to study dissociation of virtual photons in events with a leading proton, gamma^* p -> X p, in e^+p collisions at HERA. The data cover photon virtualities in two ranges, 0.03<Q^2<0.60 GeV^2 and 2<Q^2<100 GeV^2, with M_X>1.5 GeV, where M_X is the mass of the hadronic final state, X. Events were required to have a leading proton, detected in the ZEUS leading proton spectrometer, carrying at least 90% of the incoming proton energy. The cross section is presented as a function of t, the squared four-momentum transfer at the proton vertex, Phi, the azimuthal angle between the positron scattering plane and the proton scattering plane, and Q^2. The data are presented in terms of the diffractive structure function, F_2^D(3). A next-to-leading-order QCD fit to the higher-Q^2 data set and to previously published diffractive charm production data is presented

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns