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Scottish born James Wilson is a significant, but often forgotten American Founder. He played a key role in every stage of the development of the US Constitution, participating in the Constitutional Convention and ratification debates, as well as authoritatively interpreting the US Constitution as a Justice of the Supreme Court. Wilson's contributions in each of these stages were radically democratic. This position is exemplified in his Revolution Principle that enshrines the notion that the people can change their constitution and any aspect of their government at any time and for any reason because they are perpetually sovereign, and hence, their consent authorises governments and law. This principle is also at the heart of Wilson's theoretical explanation of his interpretation of the system of law and governance created by the US Constitution and the philosophy that underpins it, which he presents in his Lectures on Law. This explanation, which I describe as Wilson's Democratic Political Theory, greatly aids in understanding Wilson's contributions to the development of the US Constitution. Wilson formulated this theory partly through extensively and significantly adhering to and developing the Common Sense Philosophy of his fellow Scot, Thomas Reid. Though Wilson's adherence to Reid has been recognised, its true extent has not been fully identified and formulated. Recognising Wilson's adherence to Reid, helps reveal and explain that Wilson saw his theory as commencing something akin to a Newtonian revolution in the science of government, which when realised in practice (as he believed the US Constitution had), would commence a peaceful, progressive, and continuous revolution in the praxis of governance and law. This continuous revolution was the result of Wilson's Revolution Principle and his proposed end of government: the protection and improvement of society. In Wilson's theory, this principle and end, working in concert, would lead to the reciprocal improvement of government and society through the development and application of knowledge. This conception of a continuous revolution predicated on reciprocal improvement exemplifies the progressive nature of his Democratic Political Theory. Given Wilson's significance in the development of the US Constitution and the progressive and radically democratic nature of Wilson's theory, recovering and rehabilitating Wilson supplements and challenges the existing scholarship concerning the early American republic. Furthermore, rehabilitating Wilson also potentially presents an alternative to contemporary conceptions of the Founding and US Constitution, particularly those presented by Originalism and the Founders' Intent Political Ideology. Doing so, could inform and potentially help to address the current American political crisis and the socioepistemological divide that characterises it. This highlights Wilson's significance, revealing his continued neglect in scholarship as a grave oversight, and his absences from popular American conceptions of the Founding and US Constitution as a disservice to the American people.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of nuts, citrus, and dried fruits consumed in Europe and North America came from Mediterranean Europe. Demand for these and other Mediterranean agricultural products rose due to a general demographic growth in importing countries combined with the growing prosperity of middle classes in Western Europe. As a result, agricultural production in Mediterranean Europe intensified. This dissertation analyzes the late nineteenth-century boom of commercial agriculture in Mediterranean Europe and the effects of foreign demand for Mediterranean agricultural products on the region’s environmental condition. With a focus on the case of Greece, I examine a variety of sources including contemporary Greek agricultural journals, the records of companies formed to undertake land reclamation projects, historical maps, census records, and statistical records on agricultural production. I argue that to satisfy Western European demand for Mediterranean agricultural products such as olives and raisins, Greeks made immense changes to their environment, reclaiming wetlands, terracing hills, clearing forests, and digging canals. When demand for these products abated at the end of the nineteenth century, the Greek landscape was left permanently altered to suit the needs of a market that was no longer there. I conclude that these changes hindered Greece’s recovery from its late nineteenth-century crisis by removing resources and by creating homogenous ecologies less suitable to diversification, leading to emigration and landscape abandonment. As a result, the rural economy remained impaired throughout the twentieth century. This dissertation focuses on two case studies, each in a region of Greece where foreign demand for Mediterranean agricultural products remade the landscape. The first case study region is the North and West coasts of the Peloponnese, where growing British and French demand for currant raisins caused lowland wetlands to be drained and hills to be terraced to make the landscape better suited to intensive, specialized currant viticulture. The second case study region is Boeotia in Central Greece, where demand for grains and cotton created the imperative to drain a large lake, Lake Kopaïs, and turn it into an irrigated estate for the intensive cultivation of cash crops.

Traditional methods of teaching magnetic induction with lab investigations using a battery, wire and compass are best reserved for demonstration purposes to introduce this particular topic. The modern student who sits in a physics course also lives in a world filled with an increasing number of small portable devices that will eventually be charged wirelessly using some form of magnetic induction. The topic of magnetic induction needs to be placed in the modern context it deserves since the future of transmitting power will eventually be through wireless means. The wireless power transfer kit described in this report is designed to improve student understanding and the application of magnetic induction in an engaging, relevant manner.

The anther culture response of diploid Solanum chacoense (chc) - S. phureja (phu) hybrids and the regeneration potential of anther-derived monoploids was evaluated. In vivo evaluation of interspecific hybrids was also performed. Three hybrids were anther cultured to observe the effects of reduced nitrogen source on androgenesis. Anthers were distributed to five reduced nitrogen sources. The N concentration was 30 mM. No tested reduced nitrogen source proved superior to the control. Genotype significantly affected embryo production. Eleven monoploid genotypes were included in a leaf disc regeneration procedure utilizing three separate transfers to fresh medium differing by growth regulator composition; six genotypes responded. Silver thiosulfate (STS) at either of two steps in the process proved detrimental to diploid recovery. Hybrids between phu and chc involving six phu clones and eight chc clones or accessions, all resistant to Colorado potato beetle (CPB), were used. No inter-family differences for germination, fruit/pollination, or seed/fruit were observed. Substantial mortality, ascribed to the phenomenon of “hybrid breakdown”, occurred in three families by month four of the study. Field plantings revealed adequate CPB resistance, while Ambush (147 g/ha) application increased total tuber weight per plant and average tuber weight. Hybrids produced less total tuber weight than S. tuberosum (tbr), while chc genotypes produced the smallest average tuber size. Interspecific hybrids produced tuber sizes intermediate between chc and phu. Tbr tubers were the largest. Chc families, regardless of selection for leptine glycolakaloids, suffered the least CPB damage and phu parental clones and hybrid families suffered the most.

There has been no successful chelation of any phosphorus-acetylenic or phosphorous-nitrile ligand. The objectives of this study were to synthesize such ligands and to study their chemistry and chelating tendencies. The best choice appeared to be the preparation of ortho-substituted triphenylphosphines similar to the chelating ligand allylphenyldiphenylphosphine. The Grignard reactions utilized in the preparation of the olefinic compound could not be used in most cases due to the high reactivity of the acetylene and nitrile function Bromobenzene and iodobenzene have been reacted with alkali metal phosphines under conditions that were probably too drastic for the acetylenic and nitrile functions. There has been no mention of any similar reaction with a corresponding chloro compound. The high reactivity of sodium and potassium phosphide compounds and the resulting product mixtures indicated that the corresponding reaction with a lithium compound might be more fruitful. It was decided to pursue the reaction of diphenylphosphino lithium with the ortho substituted chlorobenzenes.