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The purpose of this paper is to propose a robust method to estimate the parameters of Jiles‐Atherton model of ferromagnetic hysteresis by fitting the model to symmetrical hysteresis loops. The performance of the method is evaluated by both theoretical and experimental data.

Jiles‐Atherton model with five parameters describes the hysteretic behaviour of ferromagnetic materials. To calculate the model parameters, the most common data displaying the hysteresis features are the hysteresis loops stimulated by symmetrical steady state excitations, e.g. sinusoidal sources. Using the characteristic equations at specific points on these hysteresis loops, the Jiles‐Atherton model parameters can be determined by curve fitting and numerical optimized iteration.

Practicality and robustness were not well considered by the conventional parameter estimation method: the initial curve starting from demagnetization is not always available and a direct iterative algorithm to solve the characteristic equations is sensitive to the initial values of the iteration and the evaluation order of the equations because of two main reasons. The first one is that the basic equation group has non‐unique solutions, which is caused by the nonlinearity of the characteristic equations and the fact that there are more unknown quantities (i.e. five model parameters) than the equations available; the second reason is the multimodal feature of the problem, which means that there are many local minima for the iteration algorithm to be trapped in. So curve fitting around the loop tips is proposed before numerical iteration. The goal is to make the initial values, particularly saturation magnetization M_s, not far away from the desired solution to increase the possibility of converging to a physical result. The optimized iterative method with the enhanced ability to avoid local minima and find global roots is then applied to obtain the model parameters.

The proposed method overcomes the difficulties of the other techniques which assume zero remanence. It is also robust as it is guaranteed to converge to physical solutions. The method can facilitate further development and it formed the preliminary basis of our earlier work, where the variation of the Jiles‐Atherton model parameters with different magnetic field strengths was investigated and applied to the simulation of transformer inrush current.

The purpose of this paper is to study the popular educational broadcasting of Julius Sumner Miller and its intersections with contemporary science policy and education.

The paper draws on archival research including resources so far unused by historians of science or of broadcasting and audio-visual resources of Sumner Miller’s broadcasts on Australian, Canadian and American television. It begins by contextualising Sumner Miller as both an academic and broadcaster. The second section interprets the core points of his educational philosophy which he articulated in his written and broadcast works. The final section uses his private papers contextualised by works on the history and philosophy of science to interpret and delineate the disparity between Sumner Miller’s influence as a populariser of science and the prevailing trends in scientific policy and teaching.

This paper proposes that reconstructing the themes and recurring points he asserted in his broadcasts reveals disjunction between Sumner Miller’s high-profile successes and the contemporary trends in both science policy and science education. This paper interprets the circumstance of an internationally known and influential science populariser who was coterminous with but against the grain of the notion of “big science”. He therefore sought to popularise science precisely as it was developing in ways he disparaged.

This paper breaks new ground by interpreting the different sources, audio-visual and written, created by and about an influential television broadcaster.

Although he was widely and internationally known, and the range of his influence on science communication is generally noted, Sumner Miller’s broadcasting and the themes and educational philosophy espoused in it is little researched and contextualised. This paper sharpens understanding of his influence but also his points of intersection and disjunction with scientific culture. Hitherto unused archival resources contribute to this understanding.

How can we account for the vicissitudes of sociological concepts? In a case study of the subject, I asked myself: what is happening to the concepts of folkways and mores? Acting on the impression that these formulations by William Graham Sumner are on the path to extinction, I looked into possible trends in their use by authors and editors of reference works and certain textbooks (including those for courses on symbolic interactionism). A curious pattern of use became evident: while a few types of works showed no decline over the years, most types showed decreasing use. I offer speculations about the differences. Examination of Sumner's writings in the two areas of social change and human conduct in general reveals probable sources of the observed declines. Moreover, another source is probably certain changes in the social characteristics of sociologists.

The employment practices of major American companies underwent a marked transformation in the fifteen-year period dating roughly from the beginning of World War I to the oncoming of the Great Depression in late 1929 (Jacoby, 1985; Lescohier, 1935). At the start of World War I, the practice of personnel management was unknown in American industry. Instead, employment practices were largely informal, unscientific and administered in a decentralized, often heavy-handed and capricious manner by foremen and gang bosses. Labor was typically viewed as a commodity to be bought for as little possible and used for only as long as needed, leading to an employment relationship that was short-term and insecure. The prevailing methods of management were also highly autocratic and arbitrary, with workers expected to obey whatever orders were given and at risk of being fired for any offense real or imagined.

I would like, in closing, to suggest a few points for your consideration with a view to provoking an interesting discussion, and make the following suggestions:—

“Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of “good” and “evil” as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter… It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil.” Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West, 1975.

In recent years a great deal of information has been collected and published (much of it in this journal) on the perpetually contentious issue of the hypermarket and the superstore — their effect on other forms of retailing, their capacity to reduce operating costs and therefore prices, their impact on the consumer. Many generalisations have also been made about the attitudes of local authorities to these large‐scale units, and some leading hypermarket operators have made bitter accusations against local authorities for endlessly protracted planning negotiations which inevitably lead to increased construction costs. But little information has been gathered up to now (so far as we know) on the precise attitudes of planning authorities, and little attempt has been made to define the highly variable range of responses which they have expressed over the years. This study by Jennifer Sumner and Keri Davies of St David's University College sets out to throw light on this murky area. The broad trend is one of increasing acceptance of the superstore, but not of the hypermarket. In general the attitude to large‐scale retailing developments seems vague and non‐committal, with some councils adopting the attitude of “we won't worry about the problem until it arises.” But the authors believe that trends are changing and that, with further co‐operation between developers and planning authorities, an agreeable compromise could be made.

It is a pleasure to write these lines on the Report of Proceedings under the Diseases of Animals Acts for the year 1934. The report is addressed by the Chief Veterinary Officer to the Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. It is a record of most important duties efficiently carried out by the central veterinary authority and the local veterinary authorities in Great Britain during the aforesaid year. Reading “ between the lines ” of the necessarily formal and official wording of the report it is easy to appreciate the extreme complexity of the scientific, administrative and economic problems these various authorities are confronted with in the course of their work. Problems that have to be quickly and satisfactorily dealt with. Admittedly, we owe much to the fact that we are an island, but this fortunate geographical circumstance would not avail us much unless it were inforced by efficient administration and veterinary knowledge kept up to date by research and collaboration with the veterinary world at home and abroad. It is remarked that no cases of cattle plague have been reported since the year 1877 ; no cases of sheep pox—the Peel's pox of an earlier generation of farmers—since 1850 ; no pleuro‐pneumonia since 1898.

Erving Goffman has been variously interpreted as a symbolic interactionist, a structural functionalist, or an a-structural power-game theorist. However, when considering Goffman’s affiliation with the human ecology (HEC) of Robert Park and Everett Hughes, one is able to shed new light on Goffman’s relationship to the aforementioned sociological paradigms. This chapter will demonstrate that his Darwinist underpinnings and overall implicit evolutionary perspective allowed him to develop a dramaturgical theory that explicates how actors are able to understand, predict, anticipate, accommodate to, and influence others while pursuing one’s own or own group’s interests, through one or more of role “taking,” “playing,” and “making.” Furthermore, Goffman elaborates upon Park’s use of dramaturgy, following him in making more room for competition and inequalities in status and power, and offering new dimensions and categories for specifying when and why different adaptive strategies will be used, within different types and degrees of accommodation. Ecological dramaturgy is the term we give to these interdependent lines of social action within stratification contexts. Such structural concerns ultimately separate Goffman from the more subjective and less deductive elements of traditional symbolic interactionist thought. We argue that Goffman’s much neglected ecological and evolutionary-minded approach to role-taking and its inspired analysis of competitive interactive processes provide a missing link in better understanding his complicated intellectual heritage.