What did the Royal Almoner do in Britain and Ireland, c.1450-1700?

The late medieval and early modern royal almoner for England and Wales was an important figure, a senior cleric best documented as a court preacher who was the crown’s religious and moral face; prominent holders included Wolsey and Lancelot Andrewes. The article begins by looking at the almoner’s appointment and functions at court, but it is mostly devoted to his interactions with Tudor and Stuart society at large. Indeed he had many public roles that are poorly understood. These included arbitrating, mediating, and directing the distribution of the forfeited goods of suicides found felo de se by coroners’ inquests, granted to successive almoners by the crown. The article looks at the almoner’s operations both in courts such as Star Chamber and outside them. It argues that he sought to create or repair communal bonds when survivors of suicide denied their obligations. Exploring what he did to re-establish charity between neighbours, his role as a benevolent giver, and the underlying religious imperatives that directed his actions, the article illuminates central issues of lordship, law and community in a period of profound social, legal, religious and political change. Focusing mainly on England, it also uncovers the significantly different roles of the separate royal almoners of Ireland and Scotland.PostprintPeer reviewe

Custom in context : Medieval and Early Modern Scotland and England

Studying custom and its context gives unique insights into relations of property, production and law in a society. The first part of the article discusses meaning in Scotland, focusing on ‘custom as normative practice, custom as unwritten law, and custom in opposition to law’. The second seeks to demonstrate (using evidence focusing principally on landholding) that custom as legal currency was more restricted for Scots than English. The third sets out the implications for continuity of landholding and for agrarian change in the Highlands of Scotland, an area where custom might be thought strong. The fourth deals with the differential legal development of Scotland and England between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries and its effects on social and tenurial relationships. A final section suggests why custom mattered more as a resource to the English, the domains in which it was important to Scots and the implications for understanding the comparative development of the two societies since the Middle Ages.PostprintPeer reviewe

Adoption and economics of silver barb (Puntius gonionotus) culture in seasonal waters in Bangladesh

This report is the outcome of a research undertaken during the implementation of Agricultural Research Project II (Supplement) by ICLARM-Bangladesh in collaboration with several agencies, to evaluate the socioeconomic viability and the farmers' assessment of culturing silver barb using ICLARM technology in different agroclimatic zones.Fish culture, Technology assessment, Aquaculture economics, Bangladesh, Puntius gonionotus

Electromagnetic source localization with finite set of frequency measurements

A phase conjugation algorithm for localizing an extended radiating electromagnetic source from boundary measurements of the electric field is presented. Measurements are taken over a finite number of frequencies. The artifacts related to the finite frequency data are tackled with $l_1-$regularization blended with the fast iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm with backtracking of Beck & Teboulle.Comment: 10 page

The Real Price of College: College Completion Series: Part Two

The high price of college is the subject of media headlines, policy debates, and dinner table conversations because of its implications for educational opportunities, student and family pocketbooks, and the economy. Some people caution against giving too much weight to the advertised price of a college education, pointing out that the availability of financial aid means that college is not as expensive as people think it is. But they overlook a substantial problem: for many students, the real price of college is much higher than what recruitment literature, conventional wisdom, and even official statistics convey. Our research indicates that the current approach to higher education financing too often leaves low-income students facing unexpected, and sometimes untenable, expenses.Financial challenges are a consistent predictor of non-completion in higher education, and they are becoming more severe over time. Unexpected costs, even those that might appear modest in size, can derail students from families lacking financial cushions, and even those with greater family resources. Improving college completion rates requires both lowering the real price of attending college -- the student's remaining total costs, including tuition, books, and living expenses, after financial aid -- to better align with students' and families' ability to pay, and providing accurate information to help them plan to cover the real price of college.Many policymakers argue that bringing the personal and public benefits of higher education to an expanded population of Americans is important for the economy and to address inequality. Financial aid policies, they assume, help those with scarce resources to earn their degrees. But these policies often fall short, and when students have difficulty paying for college, they are more likely to focus their energies on working and raising funds rather than studying and attending classes, and are less likely to complete their degrees

What Was the Secret of Hegedüs? The Coping Strategy of a Hungarian Financial Minister in the Interwar Period

The turbulent history of Hungary in the 20th century is exceptional with its nine changes of regime. These political transitions had serious consequences. Firstly, they caused a crisis both in the society and in the lives of the individuals. Secondly, they contributed to the formulation of a misapprehension which is still often referred to today and which often paralyses the majority of Hungarians when, in order to solve a crisis situation, the first step should be taken. The core of this idea is the following: “We can never decide about our own fate.” Its explanation is as follows. Our revolutions have always failed and we have always got the circumstances shaping our lives and also our paternalist leaders ready and accomplished. In my view, this is a major heritage of Hungarian changes of regime. The above idea is still so vivid that I would like to show a nearly century-old example of an opposite conduct, a pattern of behavior or rather a coping strategy which was and is still worthy of attention. My example is Loránt Hegedüs, who lived from 1872 to 1943 and was the Minister of Finance of Hungary in 1920–1921. My conclusions are based on roughly 2000 pages of primary documents written by and about Hegedüs

A digitális kultúra hatása az emberi viselkedésre a gamifikáció példáján keresztül = The impact of digital culture on human behiavor through the example of gamification

Kutatásom két legfontosabb megállapítása: 1. A technológia terjedés sebesség miatt egy olyan nemzedék jelenik meg, mely (digitális) kultúrájának kialakításakor nem támaszkodhat elei tudására és tapasztalatára – "magára hagyott nemzedék". 2. A játékszerű gondolkodás messze túlmutat a szórakozáson, társadalmi működési rendszer. Meglátásom szerint a gamifikációs mentális logikák működése (a digitális kultúra számos jellemzőjének összegeként is) meghatározza a digitális kultúrába belépő, de még inkább az ebben nevelkedő emberek viselkedését