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Nature conservation

Nature conservation is the moral philosophy and conservation movement focused on protecting species from extinction, maintaining and restoring habitats, enhancing ecosystem services, and protecting biological diversity. A range of values underlie conservation, which can be guided by biocentrism, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and sentientism, environmental ideologies that inform ecocultural practices and identities. There has recently been a movement towards evidence-based conservation which calls for greater use of scientific evidence to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts. As of 2018 15% of land and 7.3% of the oceans were protected. Many environmentalists set a target of protecting 30% of land and marine territory by 2030. In 2021, 16.64% of land and 7.9% of the oceans were protected. The 2022 IPCC report on climate impacts and adaptation, underlines the need to conserve 30% to 50% of the Earth's land, freshwater and ocean areas – echoing the 30% goal of the U.N.'s Convention on Biodiversity.

Introduction
Conservation goals include conserving habitat, preventing deforestation, maintaining soil organic matter, halting species extinction, reducing overfishing, and mitigating climate change. Different philosophical outlooks guide conservationists towards these different goals.

The principal value underlying many expressions of the conservation ethic is that the natural world has intrinsic and intangible worth along with utilitarian value – a view carried forward by parts of the scientific conservation movement and some of the older Romantic schools of the ecology movement. Philosophers have attached intrinsic value to different aspects of nature, whether this is individual organisms (biocentrism) or ecological wholes such as species or ecosystems (ecoholism).

More utilitarian schools of conservation have an anthropocentric outlook and seek a proper valuation of local and global impacts of human activity upon nature in their effect upon human wellbeing, now and to posterity. How such values are assessed and exchanged among people determines the social, political and personal restraints and imperatives by which conservation is practiced. This is a view common in the modern environmental movement. There is increasing interest in extending the responsibility for human wellbeing to include the welfare of sentient animals. In 2022 the United Kingdom introduced the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act which lists all vertebrates, decapod crustaceans and cephalopods as sentient beings. Branches of conservation ethics focusing on sentient individuals include ecofeminism and compassionate conservation.

In the United States of America, the year 1864 saw the publication of two books which laid the foundation for Romantic and Utilitarian conservation traditions in America. The posthumous publication of Henry David Thoreau's Walden established the grandeur of unspoiled nature as a citadel to nourish the spirit of man. A very different book from George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature, later subtitled "The Earth as Modified by Human Action", catalogued his observations of man exhausting and altering the land from which his sustenance derives.

The consumer conservation ethic has been defined as the attitudes and behaviors held and engaged in by individuals and families that ultimately serve to reduce overall societal consumption of energy. The conservation movement has emerged from the advancements of moral reasoning. Increasing numbers of philosophers and scientists have made its maturation possible by considering the relationships between human beings and organisms with the same rigor. This social ethic primarily relates to local purchasing, moral purchasing, the sustained, and efficient use of renewable resources, the moderation of destructive use of finite resources, and the prevention of harm to common resources such as air and water quality, the natural functions of a living earth, and cultural values in a built environment. These practices are used to slow down the accelerating rate in which extinction is occurring at. The origins of this ethic can be traced back to many different philosophical and religious beliefs; that is, these practices has been advocated for centuries. In the past, conservationism has been categorized under a spectrum of views, including anthropocentric, utilitarian conservationism, and radical eco-centric green eco-political views.

More recently, the three major movements has been grouped to become what we now know as conservation ethic. The person credited with formulating the conservation ethic in the United States is former president, Theodore Roosevelt.

Terminology
The term "conservation" was coined by Gifford Pinchot in 1907. He told his close friend United States President Theodore Roosevelt who used it for a national conference of governors in 1908.

In common usage, the term refers to the activity of systematically protecting natural resources such as forests, including biological diversity. Carl F. Jordan defines biological conservation as:

"a philosophy of managing the environment in a manner that does not despoil, exhaust or extinguish."

While this usage is not new, the idea of biological conservation has been applied to the principles of ecology, biogeography, anthropology, economy, and sociology to maintain biodiversity.

The term "conservation" itself may cover the concepts such as cultural diversity, genetic diversity, and the concept of movements environmental conservation, seedbank curation (preservation of seeds), and gene bank coordination (preservation of animals' genetic material). These are often summarized as the priority to respect diversity.

Much recent movement in conservation can be considered a resistance to commercialism and globalization. Slow Food is a consequence of rejecting these as moral priorities, and embracing a slower and more locally focused lifestyle.

Sustainable living is a lifestyle that people are beginning to adopt, promoting to make decisions that would help protect biodiversity. The small lifestyle changes that promote sustainability will eventually accumulate into the proliferation of biological diversity. Regulating the ecolabeling of products from fisheries, controlling for sustainable food production, or keeping the lights off during the day are some examples of sustainable living. However, sustainable living is not a simple and uncomplicated approach. A 1987 Brundtland Report expounds on the notion of sustainability as a process of change that looks different for everyone: "It is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs. We do not pretend that the process is easy or straightforward." Simply put, sustainable living does make a difference by compiling many individual actions that encourage the protection of biological diversity.

Practice
Distinct trends exist regarding conservation development. The need for conserving land has only recently intensified during what some scholars refer to as the Capitalocene epoch. This era marks the beginning of colonialism, globalization, and the industrial revolution that has led to global land change as well as climate change.

While many countries' efforts to preserve species and their habitats have been government-led, those in the North Western Europe tended to arise out of the middle-class and aristocratic interest in natural history, expressed at the level of the individual and the national, regional or local learned society. Thus countries like Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, etc. had what would be called non-governmental organizations – in the shape of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, National Trust and County Naturalists' Trusts (dating back to 1889, 1895, and 1912 respectively) Natuurmonumenten, Provincial Conservation Trusts for each Dutch province, Vogelbescherming, etc. – a long time before there were national parks and national nature reserves. This in part reflects the absence of wilderness areas in heavily cultivated Europe, as well as a longstanding interest in laissez-faire government in some countries, like the UK, leaving it as no coincidence that John Muir, the Scottish-born founder of the National Park movement (and hence of government-sponsored conservation) did his sterling work in the US, where he was the motor force behind the establishment of such national parks as Yosemite and Yellowstone. Nowadays, officially more than 10 percent of the world is legally protected in some way or the other, and in practice, private fundraising is insufficient to pay for the effective management of so much land with protective status.

Protected areas in developing countries, where probably as many as 70–80 percent of the species of the world live, still enjoy very little effective management and protection. Some countries, such as Mexico, have non-profit civil organizations and landowners dedicated to protecting vast private property, such is the case of Hacienda Chichen's Maya Jungle Reserve and Bird Refuge in Chichen Itza, Yucatán. The Adopt A Ranger Foundation has calculated that worldwide about 140,000 rangers are needed for the protected areas in developing and transition countries. There are no data on how many rangers are employed at the moment, but probably less than half the protected areas in developing and transition countries have any rangers at all and those that have them are at least 50% short. This means that there would be a worldwide ranger deficit of 105,000 rangers in the developing and transition countries.

The terms conservation and preservation are frequently conflated outside the academic, scientific, and professional kinds of literature. The United States' National Park Service offers the following explanation of the important ways in which these two terms represent very different conceptions of environmental protection ethics:

"Conservation and preservation are closely linked and may indeed seem to mean the same thing. Both terms involve a degree of protection, but how that protection is carried out is the key difference. Conservation is generally associated with the protection of natural resources, while preservation is associated with the protection of buildings, objects, and landscapes. Put simply, conservation seeks the proper use of nature, while preservation seeks protection of nature from use."

- United States National Park Service

During the environmental movement of the early 20th century, two opposing factions emerged: conservationists and preservationists. Conservationists sought to regulate human use while preservationists sought to eliminate human impact altogether."

C. Anne Claus presents a distinction for conservation practices. Claus divides conservation into conservation-far and conservation-near. Conservation-far is the means of protecting nature by separating it and safeguarding it from humans. Means of doing this include the creation of preserves or national parks. They are meant to keep the flora and fauna away from human influence and have become a staple method in the west. Conservation-near however is conservation via connection. The method of reconnecting people to nature through traditions and beliefs to foster a desire to protect nature. The basis is that instead of forcing compliance to separate from nature onto the people, instead conservationists work with locals and their traditions to find conservation efforts that work for all.

Evidence-based conservation
Evidence-based conservation is the application of evidence in conservation management actions and policy making. It is defined as systematically assessing scientific information from published, peer-reviewed publications and texts, practitioners' experiences, independent expert assessment, and local and indigenous knowledge on a specific conservation topic. This includes assessing the current effectiveness of different management interventions, threats and emerging problems, and economic factors.

Evidence-based conservation was organized based on the observations that decision making in conservation was based on intuition and/or practitioner experience often disregarding other forms of evidence of successes and failures (e.g. scientific information). This has led to costly and poor outcomes. Evidence-based conservation provides access to information that will support decision making through an evidence-based framework of "what works" in conservation.

The evidence-based approach to conservation is based on evidence-based practice which started in medicine and later spread to nursing, education, psychology, and other fields. It is part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.

title: Nature conservation


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Hypereides

Hypereides or Hyperides (Ὑπερείδης, Hypereidēs; c. 390 – 322 BC; English pronunciation with the stress variably on the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable ) was an Athenian logographer (speech writer). He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace in the third century BC.

He was a leader of the Athenian resistance to King Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great. He was associated with Lycurgus and Demosthenes in exposing pro-Macedonian sympathizers. He is known for prosecuting Philippides of Paiania for his pro-Macedonian measures and his decree in honoring Alexander the Great.

Rise to power
Little is known about his early life except that he was the son of Glaucippus, of the deme of Collytus and that he studied logography under Isocrates. In 360 BC, he prosecuted Autocles for treason. During the Social War (358–355 BC) he accused Aristophon, then one of the most influential men at Athens, of malpractices, and impeached Philocrates (343 BC) for high treason. Although Hypereides supported Demosthenes in the struggle against Philip II of Macedon; that support was withdrawn after the Harpalus affair. After Demosthenes' exile Hypereides became the head of the patriotic party (324 BC).

Downfall
After the death of Alexander the Great, Hypereides was one of the chief promoters of war against Macedonian rule. His speeches are believed to have led to the outbreak of the Lamian War (323–322 BC) in which Athens, Aetolia, and Thessaly revolted against Macedonian rule. After the decisive defeat at Crannon (322 BC) in which Athens and her allies lost their independence, Hypereides and the other orators were captured by Archias of Thurii and condemned to death by the Athenian supporters of Macedon.

Hypereides fled to Aegina only to be captured at the temple of Poseidon. After being put to death, his body (according to others) was taken to Cleonae and shown to the Macedonian general Antipater before being returned to Athens for burial.

Personality and oratorical style
Hypereides was an ardent pursuer of "the beautiful," which in his time generally meant pleasure and luxury. He was a flamboyant figure, unwavering in public in his hostility to Macedon. He was a well-known epicure given to fine food and women. He engaged in countless affairs with prostitutes, some of whom he defended in court. His temper was easy-going and humorous. Though in his development of the periodic sentence he followed Isocrates, the essential tendencies of his style are those of Lysias. His diction was plain, though he occasionally indulged in long compound words probably borrowed from Middle Comedy. His composition was simple. He was especially distinguished for subtlety of expression, grace and wit. Hypereides is known to have owned at least two or three pieces of property: an estate in Eleusis, a house in Athens, and a house in Piraeus, where he kept one of his many women. In around 340 B.C. he is known to have performed only two public services, as trierarch and Chorus producer. It is said he had received money from the Persian King who was alarmed at Macedon's expansion.

Surviving speeches
Hypereides's speech in trial against Philippides lasted over thirty minutes. In the first speech against Philippides he attacked King Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great. In the second part of the papyrus, he attacks Philippides and his associates and states: Each one of them was a traitor, one in Thebes, another in Tangara, another in Eleutherae, doing everything in the service of the Macedonians. He pleaded Philip's cause and campaigned with him against our country which is his most serious offense. Hypereides detested Philippides pro-Macedonian sympathies. Hypereides exposed Philippides who was known as saying in the Assembly: We must honor Alexander for all those that died at his hand. Seventy-seven speeches have been attributed to Hypereides, of which twenty-five were regarded as spurious by his contemporaries. It is said that a manuscript of most of the speeches survived as late as the 15th century in the Bibliotheca Corviniana, library of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, but was later destroyed after the capture of Buda by the Turks in the 16th century. Only a few fragments were known until relatively recent times. In 1847, large fragments of his speeches, Against Demosthenes and For Lycophron (incidentally interesting for clarifying the order of marriage processions and other details of Athenian life, and the Athenian government of Lemnos) and the whole of For Euxenippus (c. 330 BC, a locus classicus on εἰσαγγελίαι eisangeliai or state prosecutions), were found in a tomb at Thebes in Egypt. In 1856 a considerable portion of a logos epitaphios, a Funeral Oration over Leosthenes and his comrades who had fallen in the Lamian war was discovered.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century further discoveries were made including the conclusion of the speech Against Philippides (dealing with an indictment for the proposal of unconstitutional measure, arising out of the disputes of the Macedonian and anti-Macedonian parties at Athens), and of the whole of Against Athenogenes (a perfumer accused of fraud in the sale of his business).

New discoveries
In 2002 Natalie Tchernetska of Trinity College, Cambridge discovered fragments of two speeches of Hypereides, which had been considered lost, in the Archimedes Palimpsest. These were from two new speeches, the Against Timander and Against Diondas, increasing the quantity of material known by this author by 20 percent. Tchernetska's discovery led to a publication on the subject in the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. This prompted the establishment of a working group under the auspices of the British Academy, which includes scholars from the UK, Hungary and the US.

In 2006, the Archimedes Palimpsest project together with imagers at Stanford University used powerful X-ray fluorescence imaging to read the final pages of the Palimpsest, which contained the material by Hypereides. These were interpreted, transcribed and translated by the working group.

In 2018 a passage of another speech of Hypereides (Against the envoys of Antipater) was discovered in a papyrus from Herculaneum.

Lost speeches
Among the speeches not yet recovered is the Deliacus in which the presidency of the Temple of the Delians claimed by both Athens and Cos, which was adjudged by the Amphictyonic League to Athens. Also missing is the speech in which he defended the illustrious courtesan Phryne (said to have been his mistress) on a capital charge: according to Plutarch and Athenaeus the speech climaxed with Hypereides stripping off her clothing to reveal her naked breasts; in the face of which the judges found it impossible to condemn her.

Assessment
William Noel, the curator of manuscripts and rare books at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland and the director of the Archimedes Palimpsest project, called Hypereides "one of the great foundational figures of Greek democracy and the golden age of Athenian democracy, the foundational democracy of all democracy."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Hypereides


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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a nonprofit organization concerning science and global security issues resulting from accelerating technological advances that have negative consequences for humanity. The Bulletin publishes content at both a free-access website and a bi-monthly, nontechnical academic journal. The organization has been publishing continuously since 1945, when it was founded by Albert Einstein and former Manhattan Project scientists as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago immediately following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The organization is also the keeper of the symbolic Doomsday Clock, the time of which is announced each January.

Background
One of the driving forces behind the creation of the Bulletin was the amount of public interest surrounding atomic energy and rapid technological change at the dawn of the Atomic Age. In 1945 the public interest in atomic warfare and weaponry inspired contributors to the Bulletin to attempt to inform those interested about the dangers of the nuclear arms race they knew was coming and about the destruction that atomic war could bring about. To convey the particular peril posed by nuclear weapons, the Bulletin devised the Doomsday Clock in 1947, with an original setting of seven minutes to midnight.

The minute hand of the Clock first moved closer to midnight in response to changing world events in 1949, following the first Soviet nuclear test. The Clock has been set forward and back over the years as circumstances have changed;, it is set at 90 seconds to midnight. The Doomsday Clock is used to represent threats to humanity from a variety of sources: nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, climate change, and disruptive technologies. In 2015, the Bulletin unveiled its Doomsday Dashboard, an interactive infographic that illustrates some of the data the Bulletin Science and Security Board takes into account when deciding the time of the Clock each year. As of August 2018, the Bulletin Board of Sponsors boasts 14 Nobel Laureates.

In the 1950s, the Bulletin was involved in the formation of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, annual conferences of scientists concerned about nuclear proliferation, and, more broadly, the role of science in modern society.

History
The Bulletin was founded in late 1945 by "scientific men who helped make the A-bomb". The founder and first editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was biophysicist Eugene Rabinowitch (1901–1973). He founded the magazine with physicist Hyman Goldsmith. Rabinowitch was a professor of botany and biophysics at the University of Illinois and was also a founding member of the Continuing Committee for the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In addition to Rabinowitch and Goldsmith, contributors have included: Morton Grodzins, Hans Bethe, Anatoli Blagonravov, Max Born, Harrison Brown, Stuart Chase, Brock Chisholm, E.U. Condon, Albert Einstein, E.K. Fedorov, Bernard T. Feld, James Franck, Ralph E. Lapp, Richard S. Leghorn, J. Robert Oppenheimer (first chairman of the board of the organization), Lord Boyd Orr, Michael Polanyi, Louis Ridenour, Bertrand Russell, Nikolay Semyonov, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, A.V. Topchiev, Harold C. Urey, Paul Weiss, James L. Tuck, among many others.

In 1949, the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science incorporated as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization to serve as the parent organization and fundraising mechanism of the Bulletin. In 2003, the board of directors voted to change the foundation's name to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Purpose
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists began as an emergency action undertaken by scientists who saw urgent need for an immediate educational program about atomic weapons. The intention was to educate fellow scientists about the relationship between their world of science and the world of national and international politics. A second was to help the American people understand what nuclear energy and its possible applications to war meant. The Bulletin contributors believed the atom bomb would only be the first of many dangers. The aim of the Bulletin was to carry out the long, sustained effort of educating people about the realities of the scientific age.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists seeks to educate citizens, policy makers, scientists, and journalists by providing non-technical, scientifically sound and policy-relevant information about nuclear weapons, climate change, and other global security issues. The Bulletin also serves as a reliable, high-quality global forum for diverse international opinions on the best means of reducing reliance on nuclear weapons. Since its inception in 1945, the Bulletin has sought to educate the American public of the continual danger posed by nuclear weapons and other global dangers, most recently adding climate change and disruptive technologies in the life sciences to the list of concerns.

The Bulletin leadership consists of three boards, and it was announced on October 25, 2018, that California Governor Jerry Brown is joining the organization as executive chair.

Board of Sponsors
The Bulletin Board of Sponsors is composed of accomplished science and security leaders from around the world. Members of the Board of Sponsors weigh in on critical issues, including the setting of the organization's Doomsday Clock. As of October 2018, the Bulletin Board of Sponsors lists 14 Nobel Laureates.

Science and Security Board
The Bulletin Science and Security Board is composed of globally-recognized leaders who have specific areas of expertise in nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies. Members of the Science and Security Board provide the Bulletin organization and editorial staff with perspectives on trends and issues in their respective fields. Among their duties is the annual setting of the Doomsday Clock, with input from the Board of Sponsors.

Doomsday Clock
Once the Soviet Union developed atomic weapons, the concern surrounding the world's destruction was a great fear of the scientists working on the Bulletin. The proximity of nuclear devastation was a popular interest and, as a result, Bulletin co-editor Hyman Goldsmith asked landscape artist Martyl Langsdorf to create a cover for the June 1947 magazine. Langsdorf, who was married to Manhattan Project physicist Alexander Langsdorf, first considered using the symbol for uranium but then realized that a clock would better convey "a sense of urgency." The resultant Doomsday Clock, which only has bullets labeling the numbers in the upper left hand corner, has been featured on the cover of the Bulletin many times since its creation.

The proximity of the minute hand to midnight has been the Bulletin leadership's way of warning the public about manmade threats to humanity; the Clock is a metaphor, not a prediction. That is, the time on the clock is not to be interpreted as actual time. When it began in 1947, the minute hand was 7 minutes to midnight; in 1953, when the Soviet Union continued to test more and more nuclear devices, it was 2 minutes to midnight. This proximity to midnight of the Doomsday Clock during the early 1950s shows the concern that the Bulletin contributors had about the Soviet Union and the nuclear arms race. The warnings of the Bulletin continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and the focus of the efforts shifted slightly from warning about the dangers of nuclear war to the necessity of disarmament. In 2007, the leadership began taking anthropogenic climate change into account in its Clock discussions. Throughout the history of the Doomsday Clock, it has moved closer to midnight, and farther away, depending upon the status of the world at that time. The Doomsday Clock has been getting closer to midnight since 1991, when it was set to 17 minutes to midnight, after the United States and the Soviet Union reached an agreement on nuclear arms reductions.

the Doomsday Clock stands at 90 seconds to midnight. It is the closest approach to midnight, exceeding that of 1953, 2018 and 2020. The decision to move the hand of the Clock is made by the Bulletin Science and Security Board, which meets in person twice a year, with subcommittees meeting more often; the announcement of the decision is made each January. Each November, just prior to the Science and Security Board's fall discussion, the Bulletin hosts an annual dinner and meeting in Chicago; both events are open to the public. Reflecting international events dangerous to humankind, the Clock's hand has been adjusted 25 times since its inception in 1947, when it was initially set to seven minutes to midnight (11:53pm).

Present
In more recent years, articles of the Bulletin have focused on many topics, ranging from the dangers of radiation following the Chernobyl disaster to the impact of the fall of the Soviet Union. In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, other articles have focused on issues such as military spending and the continued funding of missile defense systems designed to thwart nuclear attacks but that in reality may not work. With the ever-growing number of nuclear power plants and the demand for nuclear energy as a solution to climate change, the publication has focused a great deal on the costs and problems surrounding nuclear energy. In 2015, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists unveiled the Nuclear Fuel Cost Calculator.

Although the arms race and the Cold War, which were focuses of the Bulletin for many of the earlier years, are no longer occurring, the publication still focuses on the nuclear dangers that exist in the world today. As more countries such as Pakistan and India have tested nuclear weapons, the Bulletin has focused on the dangers posed by these countries. The Bulletin bi-monthly "Nuclear Notebook" is written by Federation of American Scientists experts Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda and tracks the number of nuclear weapons in the world by country. Robert "Stan" Norris, who was a founding co-author of the Nuclear Notebook, retired from the Notebook in 2018, although he is still a senior fellow at FAS. In 2015, the Bulletin added the Nuclear Notebook Interactive, an infographic that illustrates which countries have nuclear weapons and when they got them, and how many nuclear warheads they have in any given year. All nine nuclear-armed states are featured: the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France, Britain, Israel, and North Korea.

In the 21st century, articles have covered threats to humanity from a variety of sources. The potential dangers of nuclear weapons and energy, military and political developments in the Post-Cold War world, political unrest in the Middle East (and its attendant potential for proliferation risks of nuclear and chemical weapons), myriad negative consequences of climate change, cyber warfare, and changes wrought by emerging technologies  have all been examined in the Bulletin in the most recent years. Examples include North Korea, Middle East, Syria, Fukushima,  Cybersecurity, and Climate Change.

In January 2015, longtime executive director and publisher Kennette Benedict retired. Rachel Bronson took over as president and CEO of the organization. The editor of the Bulletin is John Mecklin.

Next Generation Initiative
As part of the Bulletin work to engage new audiences in issues related to nuclear threats, climate change, artificial intelligence, and biological threats, the publication launched its Next Generation Initiative to encourage young and emerging scholars to engage on these issues. Programs under the initiative have included writing workshops for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as the Voices of Tomorrow feature, which publishes articles and multimedia projects from emerging scholars and experts working in the Bulletin interest areas. Two Voices of Tomorrow authors, Emma Bastin and Yangyang Cheng, had their work republished in Teen Vogue.

The capstone of the initiative is the Leonard M. Rieser Award, selected each December by the Bulletin's editorial team from among the year's Voices of Tomorrow submissions. The recipient of the Rieser Award receives $1,000 and a subscription to the Bulletin's bi-monthly magazine. In 2018, Erin Connolly and Kate Hewitt shared the award for their article "American students aren't taught nuclear weapons policy in school. Here's how to fix that problem." Recent recipients include Yangyang Cheng, Nikita Perumal and Moritz Kütt.

Online editions
The Bulletin has had a public-access website available online for some years, with a subscription magazine that comes out 6 times per year and is currently published by Taylor & Francis Online. An e-newsletter is also available without charge by signing up via the Bulletin website.

Backfiles of the subscription magazine are available in the John A. Simpson Collection. The backfile from the first (1945) issue through the November 1998 issue of the Bulletin has also been made available free of charge via Google Books.

November/December 2008 was the last print edition of the Bulletin, which became all-digital only that year. SAGE Publications began publishing the Bulletin subscription magazine in September 2010; Taylor & Francis took over from Sage in January 2016.

Indexing
The journal is indexed in the Journal Citation Reports, which states that the journal has a 2016 impact factor of 0.452, ranking it 71st out of 83 journals in the category "International Relations" and 32nd out of 41 journals in the category "Social Issues".

Awards

 * Finalist for 2009 Lumity Technology Leadership Award
 * 2007 National Magazine Award for General Excellence under 100,000 circulation sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
 * 2006 Silver Excel Award for Magazine Excellence, 20,000 or Fewer for the July/August, September/October, and November/December 2005 issues sponsored by the Society of National Publications
 * 2002 Nuclear-Free Future Award
 * 1992 Olive Branch Award for articles by David Albright and Mark Hibbs from the N.Y.U. Center for War, Peace and the News Media
 * 1990 Olive Branch Award from the N.Y.U. Center for War, Peace and the News Media
 * 1989 Olive Branch Award from the N.Y.U. Center for War, Peace and the News Media
 * 1988 Olive Branch Award from the N.Y.U. Center for War, Peace and the News Media
 * 1987 Olive Branch Award from the N.Y.U. Center for War, Peace and the News Media
 * 1987 National Magazine Award
 * 1983 Forum Award for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Ruth Adams, editor sponsored by the Forum on Physics and Society American Physical Society

Notes and references
The records of the Bulletin are kept at the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Chicago Library.

title: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists


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Morton Peto

Sir Samuel Morton Peto, 1st Baronet (4 August 1809 – 13 November 1889) was an English entrepreneur, civil engineer and railway developer, and, for more than 20 years, a Member of Parliament (MP). A partner in the firm of Grissell and Peto, he managed construction firms that built many of London's major buildings and monuments, including the Reform Club, The Lyceum Theatre, Nelson's Column and the replacement Houses of Parliament - commissions which brought him great wealth. The scale of his operations, and that of the workforce needed to undertake them, made him the world's largest employer.

As a partner in Peto and Betts, he then became one of the major contractors in the building of the rapidly expanding railways of the time. Along with a small group of other Master Builders in London he is credited as a founding member of the Chartered Institute of Building in 1834.

Early life
Samuel Morton Peto, normally called Morton Peto, was born on 4 August 1809, in Woking, Surrey. As a youth, he was apprenticed as a bricklayer to his uncle Henry Peto, who ran a building firm in London.

Career
When his uncle died in 1830, Peto and his older cousin, Thomas Grissell (who had been a partner to his uncle for five years), went into partnership. The firm of Grissell and Peto (1830–1847) built many well-known buildings in London, including the Reform Club, the Oxford & Cambridge Club, the Lyceum, St James's Theatre and Hungerford Market at Charing Cross. In addition, they built Nelson's Column the new Houses of Parliament (1843) and the vast infrastructure project of the London brick sewer.

Another project, in 1848, was the Bloomsbury Baptist Chapel, the first Baptist church with spires in London. Tradition has it that the Crown Commissioner was reluctant to lease the land to nonconformists because of their "dull, spire-less architecture". Peto is said to have exclaimed, "A spire, my Lord? We shall have two!" The church had twin spires until 1951, when they were removed as unsafe.

Railway works
In 1834 Peto saw the potential of the newly developing railways and dissolved the connection with his uncle's building firm. He and his cousin Grissell founded a business as an independent railway contractor. His firm's first railway work was to build two stations in Curzon Street, Birmingham. Next, the firm built its first line of track, the Hanwell and Langley section of the Great Western Railway, which included the Wharncliffe Viaduct.

Grissell became increasingly nervous about the risks taken by Peto, and in 1846 dissolved the partnership.

Peto and Betts
In 1848 Peto and Edward Betts (who had married Peto's sister Ann) entered into a formal partnership and together they were to work on a large number of railway contracts. Frequently, they also work in partnership with Thomas Brassey.

In 1854 during the Crimean War Peto, Betts and Brassey constructed the Grand Crimean Central Railway between Balaklava and Sevastopol to transport supplies to the troops at the front line.

In February 1855 the British government recognised Peto for his wartime services; he was made Baronet of Somerleyton Hall in the County of Suffolk. King Frederick VII of Denmark honoured Peto for establishing the Flensburg–Husum–Tönning Railway Company and its construction of railways in the Duchy of Schleswig, which led to a growing export/import trade with the port of Lowestoft. Another project abroad was the Homburg Railway built from 1859 to 1860.

The Peto and Betts partnership became insolvent in 1866 due to a combination of the failure of the bank, Overend, Gurney and Company, and their involvement in the failure of the London Chatham and Dover Railway.

Other activities
In 1844, Peto bought Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk. He rebuilt the hall with contemporary amenities, as well as constructing a school and more houses in the village. He next built similar projects in Lowestoft.

In 1846, Peto became co-treasurer of the Baptist Missionary Society. From 1855 to March 1867, he was sole treasurer, resigning after personal financial difficulties. In 1855 took over the lease of The Diorama, Regent's Park and paid for its conversion into a Baptist Chapel.

Peto served for two decades as a Member of Parliament. He was elected a Liberal Member for Norwich in 1847 to 1854, for Finsbury from 1859 to 1865, and for Bristol from 1865 to 1868. During this time he was one of the most prominent figures in public life. He helped to make a guarantee towards the financing of The Great Exhibition of 1851, backing Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace.

In 1855 Peto was made a baronet; but in the 1860s his businesses ran into trouble, so that in 1863 he sold Somerlyton Hall and in 1866 became bankrupt.

After his involvement with the insolvency of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1866, and the failure of the Peto and Betts partnership, Peto's personal reputation as a trustworthy businessman was badly damaged and never fully recovered.

Between 1863-65 the current Embassy of Nepal in Kensington Place Gardens, London W8, designed by the architect James Murray, was built for Peto.

In 1865 he is listed as living at Auchline House at Killin in Perthshire.

In 1868, he had to give up his seat in Parliament, despite having the support of both Benjamin Disraeli and William Ewart Gladstone. He exiled himself to Budapest and tried to promote railways in Russia and Hungary.

When he returned he became the main contractor for the Cornwall Minerals Railway which opened in 1874, but the failure of the related Cornish Consolidated Iron Mines Corporation meant that he sustained heavy losses when iron ore traffic on the CMR failed to live up to expectations. The CMR itself survived and began to recover after it had introduced passenger services in 1876 and was then leased by the Great Western Railway in 1877, but this improvement came too late for Peto.

He died in obscurity in 1889.

Legacy
An extremely unfavourable portrait of Peto is included in the appendix to George Borrow's Romany Rye, where he is described as "Mr. Flamson". When Peto promoted the Lowestoft Railway and Harbour Company in the 1840s, the railway split Borrow's estate at Oulton Broad, just outside Lowestoft. Borrow deeply resented this and bore a grudge against Peto thereafter.

Peto is commemorated by a portrait bust at Norwich railway station by John Pooler. Morton Peto Road, a road in Great Yarmouth, was named after him. There is a road in Lowestoft called "Peto Way" that connects Lowestoft railway station (via Denmark Road, again in connection with Peto's legacy in Denmark) to Normanston.

In Ashford. Kent, Samuel Peto Way is a residential road built upon the old Newtown Railway Works site and was named in his honour.

In Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, Morton Peto Road is located close to the town's railway station.

A portrait of Peto hangs outside the library at Regent's Park College, Oxford, in commemoration of his assistance with the college's move from Stepney to Regent's Park.

Family
In May 1831 Peto married Mary Grissell, one of the sisters of his later partner, Thomas Grissell. They had four children before Mary's death in 1842:
 * 1) Henry (1840–1938) who succeeded as the 2nd baronet in 1899
 * 2) Annie
 * 3) Sophia
 * 4) Mary, who married Penruddocke Wyndham, a grandson of Colonel Wadham Wyndham, in 1852 and had two daughters.

Peto then married Sarah Ainsworth Kelsall, the daughter of Henry Kelsall of Rochdale. Peto and Sarah had many children. Of these:
 * 1) Morton Kelsall (b. 1845)
 * 2) William Herbert (b. 1849.) He was the father of Ralph Peto, maternal grandfather of John Edward Hollister Montagu, 11th Earl of Sandwich.
 * 3) Samuel Arthur (b. 1852)
 * 4) Harold Ainsworth (1854–1933), the celebrated landscape architect. (Source: Mowl, Timothy Historic Gardens of Wiltshire, London: Tempus Publishing, 2004.)
 * 5) Frank Kelsall (b. 1858)
 * 6) Basil Edward Peto (1862–1945), created a baronet in his own right in 1927. His grandson Christopher Peto, 3rd Bt. was a Conservative politician. (Source: 107th edition of Burke, Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, London: 2004).
 * 7) Sarah
 * 8) Maude
 * 9) Edith
 * 10) Emily
 * 11) Helen Agnes, who married Lawrence Ingham Baker, son of the former Liberal MP for Frome; he was a magistrate of Somerset. They lived at Wayford Manor House at Wayford, near Crewkerne, Somerset.

title: Morton Peto


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Oval window

The oval window (or fenestra vestibuli or fenestra ovalis) is a connective tissue membrane-covered opening from the middle ear to the cochlea of the inner ear.

Vibrations that contact the tympanic membrane travel through the three ossicles and into the inner ear. The oval window is the intersection of the middle ear with the inner ear and is directly contacted by the stapes; by the time vibrations reach the oval window, they have been reduced in amplitude and increased in force due to the lever action of the ossicle bones. This is not an amplification function, as often incorrectly reported. Rather, it is an impedance-matching function, allowing sound to be transferred from air (outer ear) to liquid (cochlea). It is a reniform (kidney-shaped) opening leading from the tympanic cavity into the vestibule of the internal ear; its long diameter is horizontal and its convex border is upward. It is occupied by the ossicle of the stapes, the circumference of which is fixed by the annular ligament to the margin of the foramen.

title: Oval window


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Edwardian era

In the United Kingdom, the Edwardian era was a period in the early 20th century, that spanned the reign of King Edward VII from 1901 to 1910. It is commonly extended to the start of the First World War in 1914, during the early reign of King George V.

The era is dated from the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901, which marked the end of the Victorian era. Her son and successor, Edward VII, was already the leader of a fashionable elite that set a style influenced by the art and fashions of continental Europe. Samuel Hynes described the Edwardian era as a "leisurely time when women wore picture hats and did not vote, when the rich were not ashamed to live conspicuously, and the sun never set on the British flag."

The Liberals returned to power in 1906 and made significant reforms. Below the upper class, the era was marked by significant shifts in politics among sections of society that had largely been excluded from power, such as labourers, servants, and the industrial working class. Women started (again) to play more of a role in politics.

Perceptions
The Edwardian period is sometimes portrayed as a romantic golden age of long summer afternoons and garden parties, basking in a sun that never set on the British Empire. This perception was created in the 1920s and later by those who remembered the Edwardian age with nostalgia, looking back to their childhoods across the abyss of the Great War. The Edwardian age was also seen as a mediocre period of pleasure between the great achievements of the preceding Victorian age and the catastrophe of the following war.

Recent assessments emphasise the great differences between the wealthy and the poor during this period and describe the age as heralding great changes in political and social life. Historian Lawrence James argued that the leaders felt increasingly threatened by rival powers such as Germany, Russia, and the United States. Nevertheless, the sudden arrival of World War I in the summer of 1914 was largely unexpected, except by the Royal Navy, because it had been prepared and readied for war.

Politics
There was a growing political awareness among the working class, leading to a rise in trade unions, the Labour movement and demands for better working conditions. The aristocracy remained in control of top government offices.

Conservative Party
The Conservatives – at the time called "Unionists" – were the dominant political party from the 1890s until 1906. The party had many strengths, appealing to voters supportive of imperialism, tariffs, the Church of England, a powerful Royal Navy, and traditional hierarchical society. There was a powerful leadership base in the landed aristocracy and landed gentry in rural England, plus strong support from the Church of England and military interests. Historians have used election returns to demonstrate that Conservatives did surprisingly well in working-class districts. They had an appeal as well to the better-off element of traditional working-class Britons in the larger cities.

In rural areas, the national headquarters made highly effective use of paid travelling lecturers, with pamphlets, posters, and especially lantern slides, who were able to communicate effectively with rural voters – particularly the newly enfranchised agricultural workers. In the first years of the twentieth century, the Conservative government, with Arthur Balfour as Prime Minister, had numerous successes in foreign policy, defence, and education, as well as solutions for the issues of alcohol licensing and land ownership for the tenant farmers of Ireland.

Nevertheless, the weaknesses were accumulating, and proved so overwhelming in 1906 that the party did not return to complete power until 1922. The Conservative Party was losing its drive and enthusiasm, especially after the retirement of the charismatic Joseph Chamberlain. There was a bitter split on "tariff reform" (that is, imposing tariffs or taxes on all imports), that drove many of the free traders over to the Liberal camp. Tariff reform was a losing issue that the Conservative leadership inexplicably clung to.

Conservative support weakened among the top tier of the working-class and lower middle-class, and there was dissatisfaction among intellectuals. The 1906 general election was a landslide victory for the Liberal Party, which saw its total vote share increase by 25%, while the Conservative total vote held steady.

Labour Party
The Labour Party was emerging from the rapidly growing trade union movement after 1890. In 1903 it entered the Gladstone–MacDonald pact with the Liberals, allowing for cross-party support in elections, and the emergence of a small Labour contingent in Parliament. It was a temporary arrangement until the 1920s, when the Labour Party was strong enough to act on its own, and the Liberals were in an irreversible decline. Subtle social changes in the working-class were producing a younger generation that wanted to act independently.

Michael Childs argues that the younger generation had reason to prefer Labour over Liberal political styles. Social factors included secularised elementary education (with a disappearing role for Dissenting schools that inculcated Liberal viewpoints); the "New Unionism" after 1890 brought unskilled workers into a movement previously dominated by the skilled workers; and new leisure activities, especially the music hall and sports, involved youth while repelling the older generation of Liberal voters.

Liberal Party
The Liberal Party lacked a unified ideological base in 1906. It contained numerous contradictory and hostile factions, such as imperialists and supporters of the Boers; near-socialists and laissez-faire classical liberals; suffragettes and opponents of women's suffrage; antiwar elements and supporters of the military alliance with France. Nonconformist Dissenters – Protestants outside the Anglican fold – were a powerful element, dedicated to opposing the established church in the fields of education and taxation. However, the Dissenters were losing support and played a lesser and lesser role in party affairs after 1900.

The party also included Roman Catholics, including the notable Catholic intellectual Hilaire Belloc, who sat as a Liberal MP between 1906 and 1910. They included secularists from the labour movement. The middle-class business, professional and intellectual communities were generally strongholds, although some old aristocratic families played important roles as well. The working-class element was moving rapidly toward the newly emerging Labour Party. One unifying element was widespread agreement on the use of politics and Parliament as a means to upgrade and improve society and to reform politics. In the House of Lords, the Liberals lost most of their members, who in the 1890s "became Conservative in all but name." The government could force the unwilling king to create new Liberal peers, and that threat did prove decisive in the battle for dominance of Commons over Lords in 1911.

Boer War
The government entered the Second Boer War with great confidence, little expecting that the two small rural Boer republics in southern Africa with a combined White population smaller than that of London would hold off the concentrated power of the British Empire for $2 1/2$ years and take 400,000 Imperial troops to secure victory. The war split the Liberal Party into anti- and pro-war factions. Great orators, such as Liberal David Lloyd George, who spoke against the war, became increasingly influential. Nevertheless, Liberal Unionist Joseph Chamberlain, who was largely in charge of the war, maintained his hold on power.

When General Kitchener took command in 1900, he initiated a scorched earth policy to foil Boer guerrilla tactics. Captured Boer combatants were transported overseas to other British possessions as prisoners of war. However, he relocated non-combatant Boers—mostly women and children—into heavily guarded internment camps. The internment camps were overcrowded with bad sanitation and meagre food rations. Contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid and dysentery were endemic.

Many of the internees died. Emily Hobhouse visited the camps and was appalled at the living conditions, which she brought to the attention of the British public. Public outcry resulted in the Fawcett Commission which corroborated Hobhouse's report and eventually led to improved conditions. The Boers surrendered, and the Boer Republics were annexed by the British Empire. Jan Smuts—a leading Boer general—became a senior official of the new government and even became a top British official in the World War.

In 1901, the six British self-governing colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia united to form the Commonwealth of Australia, with almost complete control of its internal affairs, but with foreign policy and defence handled by London. Edmund Barton was the first prime minister.

The Liberal reforms

The Liberal Party under Henry Campbell-Bannerman rallied Liberals around the traditional platform of free trade and land reform and led them to the greatest electoral victory in Liberal Party history. The Prime Minister was overshadowed by his frontbench, most notably H. H. Asquith at the Exchequer, Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, Richard Burdon Haldane at the War Office and David Lloyd George at the Board of Trade. Campbell-Bannerman retired in 1908 and was succeeded by Asquith. He stepped up the government's radicalism, especially in the "People's Budget" of 1909 that proposed to fund expanded social welfare programmes with new taxes on land and high incomes. It was blocked by the Conservative-dominated House of Lords, but eventually became law in April 1910.

Almost half of the Liberal MPs elected in 1906 were supportive of the "new liberalism", which advocated government action to improve people's lives.

Liberals in 1906–1911 passed major legislation designed to reform politics and society, such as the regulation of working hours, National Insurance and the beginnings of the welfare state, as well as curtailing the power of the House of Lords. Women's suffrage was not on the Liberal agenda. There were numerous major reforms helping labour, typified by the Trade Boards Act 1909 that set minimum wages in certain trades with the history of "sweated" or "sweatshop" rates of especially low wages, because of surplus of available workers, the presence of women workers, or the lack of skills.

At first it applied to four industries: chain-making, ready-made tailoring, paper-box making, and the machine-made lace and finishing trade. It was later expanded to coal mining and then to other industries with preponderance of unskilled manual labour by the Trade Boards Act 1918. Under the leadership of David Lloyd George Liberals extended minimum wages to farm workers.

Conservative peers in the House of Lords tried to stop the People's Budget. The Liberals passed the Parliament Act 1911 to sharply reduce the power of the House of Lords to block legislation. The cost was high, however, as the government was required by the King to call two general elections in 1910 to validate its position and ended up frittering away most of its large majority, with the balance of power held by Labour and Irish Parliamentary Party members.

Ties with France and Russia against Germany
Germany's Chancellor Otto von Bismarck dominated European diplomacy from 1872 to 1890, with a policy of using the European balance of power to keep the peace. There were no wars. Bismarck was removed by an aggressive young Kaiser Wilhelm in 1890, effectively decentralizing the Bismarckian Order that had been shrewdly managed, and empowering French efforts to isolate Germany. With the formation of the Triple Entente, Germany began to feel encircled: to the West lay France, with whom rivalry was awakening after a generation of dormancy following the Franco-Prussian War, to the East sat Russia, whose rapid industrialization worried Berlin and Vienna.

Joseph Chamberlain, who played a major role in foreign policy in the late 1890s under the Salisbury government, repeatedly tried to open talks with Germany about some sort of alliance. Berlin was not interested. Meanwhile, Paris went to great pains to woo Russia and Great Britain. Key markers were the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, the 1904 Entente Cordiale linking France and Great Britain, and finally the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907 which became the Triple Entente. France thus had a formal alliance with Russia, and an informal alignment with Britain, against Germany and Austria. By 1903 good relations had been established with the United States and Japan.

Britain abandoned the policy of holding aloof from the continental powers, so called "Splendid Isolation", in the 1900s after being isolated during the Boer War. Britain concluded agreements, limited to colonial affairs, with her two major colonial rivals: the Entente Cordiale with France in 1904 and the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. Britain's alignment was a reaction to an assertive German foreign policy and the build-up of its navy from 1898 which led to the Anglo-German naval arms race. British diplomat Arthur Nicolson argued it was "far more disadvantageous to us to have an unfriendly France and Russia than an unfriendly Germany".

The impact of the Triple Entente was to improve British relations with France and its ally Russia and to demote the importance to Britain of good relations with Germany. After 1905, foreign policy was tightly controlled by the Liberal Foreign Secretary Edward Grey (1862–1933), who seldom consulted with his party leadership. Grey shared the strong Liberal policy against all wars and against military alliances that would force Britain to take a side in war. However, in the case of the Boer War, Grey held that the Boers had committed an aggression that it was necessary to repulse. The Liberal party split on the issue, with a large faction strongly opposed to the war in Africa

The Triple Entente between Britain, France and Russia is often compared to the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria–Hungary and Italy, but historians caution against the comparison. The Entente, in contrast to the Triple Alliance or the Franco-Russian Alliance, was not an alliance of mutual defence and Britain therefore felt free to make her own foreign policy decisions in 1914. The Liberals were highly moralistic, and by 1914 they have been increasingly convinced that German aggression violated international norms, and specifically that its invasion of neutral Belgium was completely unacceptable in terms of morality, Britain and Germany's obligations under the Treaty of London, and in terms of British policy against any one power controlling the continent of Europe.

Until the last few weeks before it started in August 1914, almost no one saw a world war coming. The expectation among the generals was that because of industrial advances any future war would produce a quick victory for the side that was better-prepared, better armed, and faster to move. No one saw that the innovations of recent decades—high explosives, long-range artillery and machine guns—were defensive weapons that practically guaranteed defeat of massed infantry attacks with very high casualties.

Naval race with Germany
After 1805 the dominance of Britain's Royal Navy was unchallenged; in the 1890s Germany decided to match it. Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930) dominated German naval policy from 1897 until 1916. Before the German Empire formed in 1871, Prussia never had a real navy, nor did the other German states. Tirpitz turned a modest fleet into a world-class one that could threaten the British Royal Navy. The British responded with new technology typified by the Dreadnought. It made every other class of battleship obsolete and, supported by a global network of coaling stations and telegraph cables, enabled Britain to stay well ahead in naval affairs.

Apart from a determination to retain a strong naval advantage, the British lacked a military strategy or plans for a major war.

Economy
The Edwardian era stands out as a time of peace and prosperity. Britain's growth rate, manufacturing output and GDP (but not GDP per capita) fell behind its rivals, the United States and Germany, though the nation still led the world in trade, finance and shipping, and had strong bases in manufacturing and mining. The industrial sector was slow to adjust to global changes, and there was a striking preference for leisure over entrepreneurship among the elite.

However, London was the financial centre of the world—-far more efficient and wide-ranging than New York, Paris or Berlin. Britain had built up a vast reserve of overseas credits in its formal Empire, as well as in an informal empire in Latin America and other nations. It had huge financial holdings in the United States, especially in railways. These assets proved vital in paying for supplies in the first years of the World War. Amenities, especially in urban life, were accumulating—prosperity was highly visible.

Great Unrest: labour upheavals 1910–1914
The working classes were beginning to protest politically for a greater voice in government, especially after 1908, reaching a crescendo known as the Great Unrest in 1910-1914. The extreme agitation included the 1910-1911 Tonypandy riots; the 1911 Liverpool general transport strike; the National coal strike of 1912; and the 1913 Dublin lockout. It was modern Britain's worst labour unrest and compares with the 1926 general strike. The period of unrest was labelled "great" not because of its scale, but due to the level of violence employed by both the state and labourers; including deaths of strikers at the hands of police and sabotage on the part of the workers.

The Great Unrest saw an enormous increase in trade union membership, which affected all industries to varying extents. The militants were most active in coal mining, textiles and transportation. Much of the militancy emerged from grassroots protests against falling real wages, with union leadership scrambling to catch up. The new unions of semiskilled workers were the most militant. The National Sailors' and Firemen's Union directed strike activities in many port cities across Britain. The national leadership was strongly supported by local leaders, for example the Glasgow Trades Council. In Glasgow and other major cities there were distinctive local variations. Glasgow was more unified and coherent than most centres. The long-term result was seen in the strength of waterfront organisation on the Clyde River, marked as it was by the emergence of independent locally based unions among both dockers and seamen.

Social change and improved health
By the late-1880s, the Industrial Revolution had created new technologies that changed the way people lived. The growth of industry shifts in manufacturing factories, special-purpose machinery and technological innovations, which led to increased productivity. Gender roles shifted as women made use of the new technology to upgrade their lifestyle and their career opportunities.

Mortality declined steadily in urban England and Wales 1870–1917. Robert Millward and Frances N. Bell looked statistically at those factors in the physical environment (especially population density and overcrowding) that raised death rates directly, as well as indirect factors such as price and income movements that affected expenditures on sewers, water supplies, food, and medical staff. The statistical data show that increases in the incomes of households and increases in town tax revenues helped cause the decline of mortality.

The new money permitted higher spending on food, and also on a wide range of health-enhancing goods and services such as medical care. The major improvement in the physical environment was the quality of the housing stock, which rose faster than the population; its quality was increasingly regulated by central and local government. Infant mortality fell faster in England and Wales than in Scotland. Clive Lee argues that one factor was the continued overcrowding in Scotland's housing. During the First World War, infant mortality fell sharply across the country. J. M. Winter attributes this to the full employment and higher wages paid to war workers.

Rising status of women
For housewives, sewing machines enabled the production of ready-made clothing and made it easier for women to sew their own clothes; more generally, argues Barbara Burman, "home dressmaking was sustained as an important aid for women negotiating wider social shifts and tensions in their lives." Increased literacy in the middle class gave women wider access to information and ideas. Numerous new magazines appealed to her tastes and helped define femininity.

The inventions of the typewriter, telephone, and new filing systems offered middle-class women increased employment opportunities. So too did the rapid expansion of the school system, and the emergence of the new profession of nursing. Education and status led to demands for female roles in the rapidly expanding world of sports.

Women were very active in church affairs, including attendance at services, Sunday school teaching, fund raising, pastoral care, social work and support for international missionary activities. They were almost completely excluded from practically all leadership roles.

Women's suffrage
As middle-class women rose in status, they increasingly supported demands for a political voice. There was significant support for woman suffrage in all the parties, but the Liberal Party was in control after 1906 and a handful of its leaders, especially H. H. Asquith, blocked it.

There were numerous organisations which did their work quietly. After 1897, they were increasingly linked together by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) led by Millicent Fawcett. However, front page publicity was seized by the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Founded in 1903, it was tightly controlled by the three Pankhursts, Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), and her daughters Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958) and Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960).

It specialised in highly visible publicity campaigns such as large parades. This had the effect of energising all dimensions of the suffrage movement. While there was a majority of support for suffrage in Parliament, the ruling Liberal Party refused to allow a vote on the issue; the result of which was an escalation in the suffragette campaign. The WSPU, in dramatic contrast to its allies, embarked on a campaign of violence to publicise the issue, even to the detriment of its own aims.

Birth control
Although abortion was illegal, it was nevertheless a widespread form of birth control. Used predominantly by working-class women, the procedure was used not only as a means of terminating pregnancy, but also to prevent poverty and unemployment. Those who transported contraceptives could be legally punished. Contraceptives became more expensive over time and had a high failure rate. Unlike contraceptives, abortion did not need any prior planning and was less expensive. Newspaper advertisements were used to promote and sell abortifacients indirectly.

Not all of society was accepting of contraceptives or abortion, and the opposition viewed both as part of one and the same sin. Abortion was much more common among the middle-classes than among those living in rural areas, where the procedure was not readily available. Women were often tricked into purchasing ineffective pills. In addition to fearing legal reprimands, many physicians did not condone abortion because they viewed it as an immoral procedure potentially endangering a woman's life. Because abortion was illegal and physicians refused to perform the procedure, local women provided abortions, often using crochet hooks or similar instruments.

Feminists of the era focused on educating and finding jobs for women, leaving aside the controversial issues of contraceptives and abortion, which in popular opinion were often related to promiscuity and prostitution. The Church condemned abortion as immoral and a form of rebellion against the child-bearing role women were expected to assume. Many considered abortion to be a selfish act that allowed a woman to avoid personal responsibility, contributing to a decline in moral values. Abortion was often a solution for women who already had children and did not want more. Consequently, the size of families decreased drastically.

Poverty among working-class women
The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 defined who could receive monetary relief. The act reflected and perpetuated prevailing gender conditions. In Edwardian society, men were the source of wealth. The law restricted relief for unemployed, able-bodied male workers, due to the prevailing view that they would find work in the absence of financial assistance. However, women were treated differently. After the Poor Law was passed, women and children received most of the aid.

The law did not recognise single independent women, and put women and children into the same category. If a man was physically disabled, his wife was also treated as disabled under the coverture laws, even though coverture was fast becoming outmoded in the Edwardian era. Unmarried mothers were sent to the workhouse, receiving unfair social treatment such as being restricted from attending church on Sundays.

During marriage disputes, women often lost the rights to their children, even if their husbands were abusive. However, women were increasingly granted custody of their children under seven years of age; this tendency was colloquially known as the "tender years doctrine," where it was believed that a child was best left under maternal care until the age of seven.

At the time, single mothers were the poorest sector in society, disadvantaged for at least four reasons. First, women lived longer, often leaving them widowed with children. Second, women had fewer opportunities to work, and when they did find it, their wages were lower than male workers' wages. Thirdly, women were often less likely to marry or remarry after being widowed, leaving them as the main providers for the remaining family members. Finally, poor women had deficient diets, because their husbands and children received disproportionately large shares of food. Many women were malnourished and had limited access to health care.

Female servants
Edwardian Britain had large numbers of male and female domestic servants, in both urban and rural areas. Middle- and upper-class women relied on servants to run their homes smoothly. Servants were provided with food, clothing, housing, and a small wage, and lived in a self-enclosed social system within their employer's house. However, the number of domestic servants fell in the Edwardian era due to fewer young people willing to be employed in this capacity.

Fashion
The upper classes embraced leisure sports, which resulted in rapid developments in fashion, as more mobile and flexible clothing styles were needed. During the Edwardian era, women wore a very tight corset, or bodice, and dressed in long skirts. The Edwardian era was the last time women wore corsets in everyday life. According to Arthur Marwick, the most striking change of all the developments that occurred during the Great War was the modification in women's dress, "for, however far politicians were to put the clocks back in other steeples in the years after the war, no one ever put the lost inches back on the hems of women's skirts".

Fabrics were usually sweet pea shades in chiffon, mousse line de sore, tulle with feather boas and lace. 'High and boned collars for the day; plunging off shoulder décolleté for the evening'. The tea gown's cut was relatively loose compared to the more formal evening gown, and was worn without a corset. The silhouette was flowing, and was usually decorated with lace or with the cheaper Irish crochet.

Long kid gloves, trimmed hats, and parasols were often used as accessories. Parasols are different from umbrellas; they are used for protection from the sun, rather from the rain, though they were often used as ornamentation rather than for function. By the end of the Edwardian era, the hat grew bigger in size, a trend that would continue in the 1910s.

The Edwardians developed new styles in clothing design. The Edwardian Era saw a decrease in the trend for voluminous, heavy skirts:
 * The two-piece dress came into vogue. At the start of the decade, skirts were trumpet-shaped.
 * Skirts in 1901 often had decorated hems with ruffles of fabric and lace.
 * Some dresses and skirts featured trains.
 * Tailored jackets, first introduced in 1880, increased in popularity and by 1900, tailored suits known as tailormades became popular.
 * In 1905, skirts fell in soft folds that curved in, then flared out near the hemlines.
 * From 1905 – 1907, waistlines rose.
 * In 1911, the hobble skirt was introduced; a tight fitting skirt that restricted a woman's stride.
 * Lingerie dresses, or tea gowns made of soft fabrics, festooned with ruffles and lace were worn indoors.
 * Around 1913 women's dresses acquired a lower and sometimes V-shaped neckline in contrast to the high collars a generation before. This was considered scandalous by some, and caused outrage among clergy throughout Europe.

Newspapers
The turn of the century saw the rise of popular journalism aimed at the lower middle class and tending to deemphasise highly detailed political and international news, which remain the focus of a handful of low-circulation prestige newspapers. These were family-owned and operated, and were primarily interested not in profits but in influence on the nation's elite by their control of the news and editorials on serious topics.

The new press, on the other hand, reached vastly larger audiences by emphasis on sports, crime, sensationalism, and gossip about famous personalities. Detailed accounts of major speeches and complex international events were not printed. Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe was the chief innovator. He used his Daily Mail and Daily Mirror to transform the media along the American model of "Yellow Journalism". Lord Beaverbrook said he was "the greatest figure who ever strode down Fleet Street". Harmsworth made a great deal of money, but during the First World War he also wanted political power. For that he purchased the highest prestige newspaper, The Times. P. P. Catterall and Colin Seymour-Ure conclude that: "More than anyone [he] ... shaped the modern press. Developments he introduced or harnessed remain central: broad contents, exploitation of advertising revenue to subsidize prices, aggressive marketing, subordinate regional markets, independence from party control."

The arts
The Edwardian era corresponds to the French Belle Époque. Despite its brief pre-eminence, the period was characterised by its own unique architectural style, fashion, and lifestyle. Art Nouveau had a particularly strong influence. Artists were influenced by the development of the automobile and electricity, and a greater awareness of human rights.

In November 1910, Roger Fry organised the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists at the Grafton Galleries, London. This exhibition was the first to prominently feature Gauguin, Manet, Matisse, and Van Gogh in England and brought their art to the public. He followed it up with the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912.

George Frampton's statue of Peter Pan, "erected in Hyde Park in 1912 ... immediately became a source of contention, sparking debate about the role of public statuary and its role in spaces of recreation."

Literature
In fiction, some of the best-known names are J. M. Barrie, Arnold Bennett, G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, John Galsworthy, Kenneth Grahame, M. R. James, Rudyard Kipling, A. A. Milne, E. Nesbit, Beatrix Potter, Saki, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and P. G. Wodehouse. Apart from these famous writers, this was a period when a great number of novels and short stories were being published, and a significant distinction between "highbrow" literature and popular fiction emerged. Among the most famous works of literary criticism was A. C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy (1904).

Music
Live performances, both amateur and professional, were popular. Henry Wood, Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, Arnold Bax, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Thomas Beecham were all active. Military and brass bands often played outside in parks during the summer. The new technology of wax cylinders and gramophone records played on phonographs and talking machines, made live performances permanently available for repetition at any time.

Performing arts
Cinema was primitive and audiences preferred live performances to picture shows. Music hall was very popular and widespread; influential performers included male impersonator Vesta Tilley and comic Little Tich.

The most successful playwright of the era was W. Somerset Maugham. In 1908, he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards. Maugham's plays, like his novels, usually had a conventional plot structure, but the decade also saw the rise of the so-called New Drama, represented in plays by George Bernard Shaw, Harley Granville Barker, and Continental imports by Henrik Ibsen and Gerhardt Hauptmann. The actor/manager system, as managed by Sir Henry Irving, Sir George Alexander, and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, was in decline.

Architecture
Notable architects included Edwin Lutyens, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Giles Gilbert Scott. In spite of the popularity of Art Nouveau in Europe, the Edwardian Baroque style of architecture was widely favoured for public structures and was a revival of Christopher Wren–inspired designs of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The change or reversal in taste from the Victorian eclectic styles corresponded with the historical revivals of the period, most prominently earlier Georgian and Neoclassical styles of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

White City Stadium, used for the 1908 Summer Olympics, was the first Olympic Stadium in the UK. Built on the site of the Franco-British Exhibition, it had a seating capacity of 68,000 and was opened by King Edward VII on 27 April 1908. It was the largest structure of its type in the world at the time, and was designed to be awe-inspiring and thereby enhance the love of large-scale spectacle that characterised Edwardian London.

Film
Filmmakers Mitchell and Kenyon documented many scenes from Britain and Ireland from 1900 to 1907, sports, parades, factory exits, parks, city streets, boating and the like. Their films have survived in very good quality restored from the original negatives.

Science and technology
The period featured many innovations. Ernest Rutherford published his studies on radioactivity. The first transatlantic wireless signals were sent by Guglielmo Marconi, and the Wright brothers flew for the first time.

By the end of the era, Louis Blériot had crossed the English Channel by air; the largest ship in the world, RMS Olympic, had sailed on its maiden voyage and her larger sister RMS Titanic was under construction; automobiles were common; and the South Pole was reached for the first time by Roald Amundsen's and then Robert Falcon Scott's teams.

Sport
The 1908 Summer Olympic Games were held in London. Popularity of sports tended to conform to class divisions, with tennis and yachting popular among the very wealthy and football favoured by the working class.

Football
Aston Villa maintained their position as the pre-eminent football team of the era, winning the FA Cup for the fourth time in 1904–05 and their sixth League title in 1909–10. The club colours of claret and sky blue were adopted by Burnley as a tribute to their success in 1910. Sunderland achieved their fourth league title in 1901–02. The era also saw Liverpool (1900–01, 1905–06), Newcastle United (1904–05, 1906–07, 1908–09) and Manchester United (1907–08) winning their first league titles.

Gender and family

 * Aston, Jennifer, and Paolo Di Martino. "Risk, success, and failure: female entrepreneurship in late Victorian and Edwardian England." Economic History Review 70.3 (2017): 837–858. online
 * Delap, Lucy. "The Superwoman: Theories of Gender and Genius in Edwardian Britain", Historical Journal (2004) 47#1 pp. 101–126 in JSTOR
 * Dyhouse, Carol. Girls growing up in late Victorian and Edwardian England (Routledge, 2012).
 * Liddington, Jill. Rebel Girls: How votes for women changed Edwardian lives (Hachette UK, 2015).
 * Purvis, June. Gendering the Historiography of the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Britain: some reflections (Routledge, 2016).
 * Ross, Ellen. "'Fierce Questions and Taunts': Married Life in Working-Class London, 1870–1914." Feminist Studies 8.3 (1982): 575–602. in JSTOR
 * Sutherland, Gillian. "Self-education, class and gender in Edwardian Britain: women in lower middle class families." Oxford Review of Education 41#4 (2015): 518–533.
 * Tracy, Michael. The World of the Edwardian Child: As Seen in Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia, 1908–1910 (2008) online
 * Tracy, Michael. The World of the Edwardian Child: As Seen in Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia, 1908–1910 (2008) online

Primary sources and year books

 * Read, Donald, ed. Documents from Edwardian England, 1901–1915 (1973) online
 * Annual Register 1901
 * Annual Register 1902
 * Annual Register 1903
 * Annual Register 1906
 * Annual Register 1907
 * Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom annual 1901–1909, online
 * Wall, Edgar G. ed. The British Empire yearbook (1903), 1276pp online

title: Edwardian era