Mapping civil society in former Yugoslavia

From the break up of the New Left into single issue groups at the end of the 1960s came a variety of groups representing the peace movement, environmental movement, student movement, women’s movement, and gay liberation movement. This explosion of new social movement activism has been heralded as the age of new radical politics. Many theorists and activists understand new social movements, as replacing the working class as an agent for progressive social change. Scholars and activists now alike debate the possibilities for revolutionary change in this era of multinational capitalism and new nationalisms. This paper examines some of the above claims in the context of the contemporary Serbian civil society. It explores the relationship between the civil society, activism, and narratives in Serbia. In particular, it examines the anti-Milosevic’ movement Otpor! (Resistance), and its discourse, practice and politics in public spaces, through an analysis of narratives of a set of roughly 20 interviews with Otpor! activists, aged 18-35. In the following discussion, then, I will focus on some of the particular dilemmas of contemporary Serbian popular movements - they are dilemmas to do with the growing complexity of media life in the Serbian spaces. I ground my debate on particular uses of the notion of civil society in the narratives of Otpor! activists, while I focus on the question of how do Otpor! activists relate to Leftist/radical politics and the idea of civil society.

Women, violence and nonviolent resistance in east Timor

A growing literature in peace and conflict studies assesses the relationship between women and nonviolence. Numerous national liberation fronts and academic critiques assess how women participate in nonviolent resistance from Tibet and West Papua to Palestine and Eritrea. However, many liberation struggles that include female nonviolent resistance remain undocumented, and this article aims to delve into one case study in particular. The article examines the nonviolent roles adopted by women in the East Timorese liberation struggle, a national liberation movement in which the participation of female combatants was low but nonviolent participation by women in the resistance movement overall was high. However, the consequences for such women was, and remains, shaped by the overarching patriarchal structures of both the Indonesian occupiers and East Timorese society itself Female nonviolent resistance was met with highly violent responses from Indonesian troops, especially in the form of rape and sexual exploitation. Yet, this study also found that women acting under religious auspices faced less violent responses overall. Interviews with East Timorese women are used to reveal some of the sexual dynamics of nonviolent action and reprisal. This material is placed in the context of theoretical work on gender, violence and nonviolence.

A liberation model for comminution based on probability theory

Mineral processing plants use two main processes; these are comminution and separation. The objective of the comminution process is to break complex particles consisting of numerous minerals into smaller simpler particles where individual particles consist primarily of only one mineral. The process in which the mineral composition distribution in particles changes due to breakage is called 'liberation'. The purpose of separation is to separate particles consisting of valuable mineral from those containing nonvaluable mineral. The energy required to break particles to fine sizes is expensive, and therefore the mineral processing engineer must design the circuit so that the breakage of liberated particles is reduced in favour of breaking composite particles. In order to effectively optimize a circuit through simulation it is necessary to predict how the mineral composition distributions change due to comminution. Such a model is called a 'liberation model for comminution'. It was generally considered that such a model should incorporate information about the ore, such as the texture. However, the relationship between the feed and product particles can be estimated using a probability method, with the probability being defined as the probability that a feed particle of a particular composition and size will form a particular product particle of a particular size and composition. The model is based on maximizing the entropy of the probability subject to mass constraints and composition constraint. Not only does this methodology allow a liberation model to be developed for binary particles, but also for particles consisting of many minerals. Results from applying the model to real plant ore are presented. A laboratory ball mill was used to break particles. The results from this experiment were used to estimate the kernel which represents the relationship between parent and progeny particles. A second feed, consisting primarily of heavy particles subsampled from the main ore was then ground through the same mill. The results from the first experiment were used to predict the product of the second experiment. The agreement between the predicted results and the actual results are very good. It is therefore recommended that more extensive validation is needed to fully evaluate the substance of the method. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Simple texture-based liberation modelling of ores

Mineralogical analysis is often used to assess the liberation properties of particles. A direct method of estimating liberation is to actually break particles and then directly obtain liberation information from applying mineralogical analysis to each size-class of the product. Another technique is to artificially apply random breakage to the feed particle sections to estimate the resultant distribution of product particle sections. This technique provides a useful alternative estimation method. Because this technique is applied to particle sections, the actual liberation properties for particles can only be estimated by applying stereological correction. A recent stereological technique has been developed that allows the discrepancy between the linear intercept composition distribution and the particle section composition distribution to be used as guide for estimating the particle composition distribution. The paper will show results validating this new technique using numerical simulation. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Excitability changes in human forearm corticospinal projections and spinal reflex pathways during rhythmic voluntary movement of the opposite limb

Rhythmic movements brought about by the contraction of muscles on one side of the body give rise to phase-locked changes in the excitability of the homologous motor pathways of the opposite limb. Such crossed facilitation should favour patterns of bimanual coordination in which homologous muscles are engaged simultaneously, and disrupt those in which the muscles are activated in an alternating fashion. In order to examine these issues, we obtained responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), to stimulation of the cervicomedullary junction (cervicomedullary-evoked potentials, CMEPs), to peripheral nerve stimulation (H-reflexes and f-waves), and elicited stretch reflexes in the relaxed right flexor carpi radialis (FCR) muscle during rhythmic (2 Hz) flexion and extension movements of the opposite (left) wrist. The potentials evoked by TMS in right FCR were potentiated during the phases of movement in which the left FCR was most strongly engaged. In contrast, CMEPs were unaffected by the movements of the opposite limb. These results suggest that there was systematic variation of the excitability of the motor cortex ipsilateral to the moving limb. H-reflexes and stretch reflexes recorded in right FCR were modulated in phase with the activation of left FCR. As the f-waves did not vary in corresponding fashion, it appears that the phasic modulation of the H-reflex was mediated by presynaptic inhibition of Ia afferents. The observation that both H-reflexes and f-waves were depressed markedly during movements of the opposite indicates that there may also have been postsynaptic inhibition or disfacilitation of the largest motor units. Our findings indicate that the patterned modulation of excitability in motor pathways that occurs during rhythmic movements of the opposite limb is mediated primarily by interhemispheric interactions between cortical motor areas.

Intercepting a moving target: effects of temporal precision constraints and movement amplitude

The effects of temporal precision constraints and movement amplitude on performance of an interceptive aiming task were examined. Participants were required to strike a moving target object with a 'bat' by moving the bat along a straight path (constrained by a linear slide) perpendicular to the path of the target. Temporal precision constraints were defined in terms of the time period (or window) within which contact with the target was possible. Three time windows were used (approx. 35, 50 and 65 ms) and these were achieved either by manipulating the size of the bat (experiment 1a), the size of the target (experiment 1b) or the speed of the target (experiment 2). In all experiments, movement time (MT) increased in proportion to movement amplitude but was only affected by differences in the temporal precision constraint if this was achieved by variation in the target's speed. In this case the MT was approximately inversely proportional to target speed. Peak movement speed was affected by temporal accuracy constraints in all three experiments: participants reached higher speeds when the temporal precision required was greater. These results are discussed with reference to the speed-accuracy trade-off observed for temporally constrained aiming movements. It is suggested that the MT and speed of interceptive aiming movements may be understood as responses to the spatiotemporal constraints of the task.

What's scene and not seen: Influences of movement and task upon what we see

Studies concerning the processing of natural scenes using eye movement equipment have revealed that observers retain surprisingly little information from one fixation to the next. Other studies, in which fixation remained constant while elements within the scene were changed, have shown that, even without refixation, objects within a scene are surprisingly poorly represented. Although this effect has been studied in some detail in static scenes, there has been relatively little work on scenes as we would normally experience them, namely dynamic and ever changing. This paper describes a comparable form of change blindness in dynamic scenes, in which detection is performed in the presence of simulated observer motion. The study also describes how change blindness is affected by the manner in which the observer interacts with the environment, by comparing detection performance of an observer as the passenger or driver of a car. The experiments show that observer motion reduces the detection of orientation and location changes, and that the task of driving causes a concentration of object analysis on or near the line of motion, relative to passive viewing of the same scene.

Megan Henderson and Gay Walkington in Wattle Dance Group, Christmas 1968

Megan Henderson and Gay Walkington in Wattle Dance Group, Christmas 1968. The Wattle Dance Group met every Saturday in the Trades Hall, Brisbane, Australia. They held an concert at the end of each year. Janet Henderson was the mainstay and taught along with a few others. Jean Leary was the pianist. She took over from Eva Bacon.