bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ethnic Nationalism in the Caucasus∗
Authors: Wixman Ronald
Published: September 2011

The study of ethnic nationalism in the Caucasus is problematic. This situation arises not so much from the extreme ethnic and cultural diversity of this region, but more from the same methodological obstacles and problems encountered when studying ethnic nationalism anywhere in the USSR. Before discussing ethnic nationalism in the Caucasus, then, a brief treatment of some of these problems is presented. It is hoped that this format will make this paper more valuable to those interested in the nationality situation in the Soviet Union in general.
Politics and History in Soviet Ukraine, 1921–1933
Authors: Mace James E.
Published: September 2011

At the end of 1928 Matvyi Iavorskyi, head of historical studies in the Ukrainian Institute of Marxism-Leninism and hitherto considered a sort of court historian of Ukrainian communism, was attacked for allegedly committing “nationalistic deviations” in interpreting Ukrainian history. Iavorskyi was in no sense a “dissident” like Oleksander Shumskyi or Mykola Khvylovyi; he never, so far as is known, questioned the official Party line. Rather, he was a close associate of Mykola Skrypnyk, the political strongman of the Soviet Ukrainian regime, and the hue and cry raised against “Iavorskyism” in historial scholarship was actually an indirect attack upon Skrypnyk. It had the distinction of being the first such attack; it would not be the last.
The Secular Role of the Catholic Church in Present-Day Poland∗
Authors: Chodak Syzmon
Published: September 2011

Many writers, among them Alexis de Toqueville, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Jose Ortega y Gasset and, more recently, Jacques Ellul, have predicted that as a result of technological and political development, the mass societies in which we now live will be fully transformed into distopian regimes by the end of this century. They foresaw the emergence of vast, regimented systems in which people would live lonely, dehumanized lives under the tutelage of all-providing and all-pervading hierarchies made up of functionaries and intellectuals, pitifully subservient to the ruling elite.
Karol Wojtyla, Marxism and the Marxist-Leninists
Authors: Kalvoda Josef
Published: September 2011

Karol Cardinal Wojtyla's encounters with Marxism-Leninism, the official ideology of the Polish state run by the Communist party, have taken place on two levels: theoretical-philosophical and political-practical. As a person living in the country ruled by the Marxist-Leninists, the Cardinal had to be concerned with the reality of his own situation as well as the power structure of the Party-state. As a priest he had to deal with the concept of alienation that is at the center of Marxist anthropology, realizing that the fundamental precondition for abolition of alienation is not abundance of material goods, but an internal improvement of people. As a philosopher Wojtyla had to cope with Marxist concepts of man, nature, society, economics and culture. A neo-Thomist scholar, the present pope believes in human liberty and rejects deterministic philosophies such as Marxism.
The Croatian Spring, 1971: Socialism in one Republic?
Authors: Gruenwald Oskar
Published: September 2011

The Yugoslav critique of Stalinism and the concomitant elaboration of the Titoist model of self-managing socialism continue to bewilder observers East and West, as well as the Yugoslavs themselves. Thus, until recently, Chinese communist criticism that Yugoslavia had sold out to the West and become its Trojan Horse in the communist world was neatly balanced by those Western critiques which see in Titoism a communist Trojan Horse to penetrate Western defenses. Some wonder whether Yugoslavia is really a self-managing democracy or a single-party dictatorship. Others ask themselves whether Yugoslavia's decentralized economy is capitalist or socialist. Many fear for Yugoslavia's territorial integrity and national independence, particularly since Tito's death on May 4, 1980.
The Struggle for Soviet Bashkiria 1917-1923
Authors: Blank Stephen
Published: September 2011

The general picture of early Soviet nationality policy has been one in which Moscow embarked on an inexorable path of centralization immediately after 1917. While there is much truth to this portrait it ignores the persistent rivalries within local party organizations and among the non-Great Russian nationalities. Bashkiria in the years 1917-23 is a case in point. The struggles over the creation and development of a Soviet Bashkiria touched off an intense round of acrimonious conflicts there and in Moscow among Great Russian, Bashkir, and Tatar cadres that was only resolved by the imposition of centralized authority during the twenties. The significance of this experience lies not only in its typifying the complex mosaic out of which Soviet nationality policy evolved, but also in the profound impact the question of Bashkiria had for the development of the Sultangalievist national deviation in the middle twenties.
Modern Tajiki Persian: Gharbzadagi of a Different Kind
Authors: Weryho Jan W.
Published: September 2011

The leader of the Iranian Revolution Āyat Allāh Rūḥ Allāh Khumaynī has strongly condemned what he considers had been a slavish imitation of the West under the overthrown Pahlavī dynasty and coined the neologismGharbzadagī(literally “Weststrickenness”). He has called for a cultural as well as political emancipation from Western dominance. So far this emancipation has not extended to a purification of the Persian language from the numerous French loanwords which had entered it during the last sixty years. Thus the newspaperJumhūrī-i Islāmī(“Islamic Republic”) has the subtitleUrgān-i Ḥizb-i Jumhūrī-ī Islāmī(“Organ of the Islamic Republican Party”).Urgānis of course Frenchorgane.Even more striking is the use of the termkumītahorkomitehby the revolutionary committees, usually presided by Muslim clergy, which have taken over the functions of local government in Iran. Again,kumītahis the Frenchcomité.While not many Iranianmullahsknow French, or any Western language, they cannot be unaware of the Western origin of these words. We should not be surprised therefore if in the near future we witness a movement to expel from the Persian language the Western loanwords, most of all from official terminology. Most likely they will be replaced by words of Arabic rather than pure Persian origin in view of the regime's identification with Islam rather than ancient Persian culture.
Economic Dilemma of Eastern Europe: Technology, Trade and Forces of Modernization
Authors: Zinam Oleg
Published: September 2011

The purpose of this study is to throw light on the past economic performance of six members of Comecon — Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania — and to assess their prospects for the future. Economic problems of Eastern Europe must be placed in a broad historical perspective containing crucial ideological, political, strategic and technological factors affecting economic functions and processes. Interaction of these factors is expressed within the framework of modernization, the forces of which exert a powerful influence on economic activities.
Slovene Nationalism in Trieste, 1848–1982
Authors: Pirjevec Jože
Published: September 2011

Trieste is located at the extreme end of the northern coast of the Adriatic, where the arm of the sea reaches most deeply into the European continent. By its position Trieste is thus a part of Central Europe no less than of the Mediterranean area — if we take into account the fact that the distance between Vienna and Trieste is less than that between Trieste and Rome. On the other hand, Trieste is in an area where the Apennine peninsula meets the Balkan, where for millenia two cultural spheres have been juxtaposed: the Eastern — Greek, Byzantine and Slavic — and the Western — Latin, Romance and German. The complexity of the geographical and cultural circumstances is further increased by the national heterogeneousness of the inhabitants, Italians and Slovenes. Italians predominate in the town, Slovenes in the countryside.
The Treatment of Activities of Russian and Non-Russian Dissidents by the Soviet Regime: A Comparative Analysis
Authors: Suslensky Yakov
Published: September 2011

Dissent in the USSR has become a phenomenon which cannot be ignored either in the West or in the USSR. The authorities in the USSR, though upset, are compelled to recognize the existence of dissidents in the country and the troubles they cause. The attempts to stifle dissent which are mainly in the form of harsh and repressive measures undertaken by the authorities generally fail to achieve the desired results. The dissidents according to circumstances prevailing change the tactics of their struggle, but the phenomenon of dissent — the resistance to the regime — continues.
Demographic Trends in Latvia
Authors: Dreifelds Juris
Published: September 2011

For most North Americans demography is an esoteric subject more often tied to marketing than to social and political changes. In Latvia, as in most of Eastern Europe and the USSR, demography has long been placed on the forefront of public attention. This wave of attention in the case of Latvia is not a fad of short duration which will be readily displaced by other popular topics. On the contrary, demography has had, is having and will have a tremendous impact on a very broad range of policies and on the long term survival of the Latvian nation. Thus, in order to understand the social and ethnic tensions, the labour squeeze, and the welfare burden of Latvia, it is necessary to understand the multifaceted demographic processes: the real matrix of the political and social environment. This paper reviews the pivotal demographic role of the First and Second World Wars and analyzes population size, sex balance, age structure, urban-rural residence, nuptiality, birth and death rates, migration patterns and ethnic balance.
The First Experiment of National Communism in Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s
Authors: Palij Michael
Published: September 2011

The genesis of “National Communism” is often traced to the Yugoslav dictator Tito, but in reality the only novel aspect about Titoism is that it has succeeded. The ideology of National Communism was manifested in Ukraine in the early 1920's and its pre-eminent leader was Mykola O. Skrypnyk. It was a reaction to the strong centrist policies of the Bolshevik Party, which had many leaders who were committed to a belief in Russian superiority, a belief which was carried over from the Tsarist regime. At the Eighth Party Congress in 1919, Lenin remarked: “Scratch many a Communist and you will find a Great Russian chauvinist.” The traditionalist utterances made by several highly placed Bolsheviks during the first years of the Revolution were certainly indiscrete. Thus did George Piatakov, a Russian Communist, tell a meeting of the Party held in Kyiv on June 17, 1917:
The Impact of the Soviet Imposed Mutual Assistance Pacts on the Governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, 1939
Authors: Crowe David
Published: September 2011

The Soviet Union's decision to force Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to accept its mutual assistance proposals in the fall of 1939 was one of the most dramatic events in modern Baltic history. The new Soviet-Baltic relationship signalled the return of this region to Russia's sphere-of-influence and ended with the total absorption of the Baltic states into the U.S.S.R. the following year. A great deal has been written about the political-diplomatic discussions that led to the Soviet-Baltic mutual assistance pacts. Scholars, however, have paid far less attention to the impact of these new relationships on the various political institutions in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Particularly efforts of these systems to adapt to their new statusvis á visMoscow.
Pleve, Kishinev and the Jewish Question: A Reappraisal
Authors: Lambroza Shlomo
Published: September 2011

Reaction and revolution, so much a part of the reign of Nicholas II, became even more prevalent in the opening years of the twentieth century. The foundation of the Russian Empire had begun its erosion process which would topple the autocracy by 1917. Nicholas and his ministers had to act decisively and aggressively if they hoped to stem the process. To fight the wave of revolution and popular discontent in April of 1902, Nicholas appointed Viacheslav Pleve as Minister of the Interior. Pleve was a careerist who was devoutly loyal to the autocracy. In contemporary terms he might be described as an ‘aparatchick,‘ a party man who towed, and at times shaped, the party line. V. I. Gurko, a colleague, characterized him as “a legal clerk … a very superior clerk it is true, but a clerk nevertheless.” Pleve had also earned the dubious honor of being the autocracy's “most famous policeman,” a reflection of fourteen years of service as Director of the Police Department and Assistant Minister of the Interior.
The Unsung Heroes in Nazi Occupied Europe: The Antidote for Evil
Authors: Oliner Samuel P.
Published: September 2011

As we pick up a newspaper, listen to the radio, or watch the news, the information we get stands out in our minds and brings the sensitive soul a step closer to despair. Although on rare occasions we learn that someone has been kind, unselfish, and even heroic, much reporting vividly projects violence, war, hate, greed, avarice, etc. In this current age of spiritual bankruptcy, loss of community, instant gratification, individual entitlements, “I want-it-all-now,” “me generations,” the possibility of nuclear catastrophy, the rise of neo-nazism, and dozens of hate groups, racial and ethnic polarization, there is an urgent need for efforts to stop this road to social, cultural, spiritual, moral and physical suicide. One possible approach might be to focus on the decent people: those who loved, those who cared, those who gave so much selflessly, those who risked much, including their lives, to save their fellow human beings. With this in mind my purpose here is to describe briefly a few heroic acts in Europe during the Nazi occupation, to suggest some reasons that motivated the rescuers (altruists) who risked so much to help victims, and to draw a profile of the altruist. Altruism, for our purposes is defined as aid given to others who are in great need and which entails very high risk for which the altruist rescuer does not expect any external reward.
Famine in Ukraine in 1921–1923 and the Soviet Government's Countermeasures
Authors: Veryha Wasyl
Published: September 2011

By the end of 1920 the Soviet government achieved victories over all its external enemies. The white Russian armies were pushed out of their stronghold — Crimea. The Ukrainian army, in war against Soviet Russia, was also interned by its former ally — Poland. While external enemies ceased to represent any real menace to the Soviet government the situation on the internal front was far from satisfactory. Disillusioned workers and dissatisfied peasants presented quite a problem for the victorious but weak Soviet government. But an even worse situation existed in Ukraine which, it was hoped, would provide food for the major Russian cities. Although Ukraine was conquered by the Russian Red Army, it was not entirely subdued. It was aflame through numerous uprisings of nationally conscious elements who struggled for Ukrainian independence. The forcible requisition of food products in Ukrainian villages alienated the Ukrainian peasantry and turned its sympathies to the Ukrainian guerillas. Many of the young and able-bodied men joined the underground forces hoping that the tide may yet turn in their favor.
Consociational Dictatorship of Imperium? Non-Russian Political Elites and Central Decision-Making in the USSR
Authors: Farmer Kenneth C.
Published: September 2011

The purpose of this study is to present some preliminary and necessarily tentative results of a larger, ongoing and incomplete quantitative study of ethnic recruitment to and participation in central decision-making institutions in Communist societies. The time frame of the study is the post-Stalin period, more precisely, the 20th through the 25th CPSU Congresses, 1956-76. The concern of the larger study is to develop a model of consociationalism versus imperium as alternative approaches to the governance of multi-ethnic Communist societies. Clearly, a country such as Yugoslavia more closely approximates the former model, and the USSR the latter.
Nationality Composition of the Soviet Population
Authors: Rapawy Stephen
Published: September 2011

The Soviet population comprises numerous nationalities, but there are differences of opinion as to the exact number. One author claims that there are 128 to 132 nationalities or ethnic groups living in the Soviet Union. The last official figure was issued by the Central Statistical Administration in instructions for the 1970 census. At this time the Administration, in consultation with numerous scholarly institutions, determined that 122 nationalities or ethnic groups resided in the Soviet Union. Comparable information for the 1979 census is not available in the West.
National Languages and Soviet Television: A Statistical Report
Authors: Norr Henry
Published: September 2011

In the last two decades the Soviet Union has definitively entered the age of television. Although a Petersburg engineer allegedly “laid the foundation of television” (by designing the cathode ray tube!) as far back as the beginning of the century, and a Russian engineer in Uzbekistan reportedly transmitted the image of a human face in 1928, the Soviets lagged well behind the Western world in the development of the new medium through the 1950s. In 1960, however, the Central Committee of the Communist party declared that “television, along with the press and radio broadcasting, is called upon to play an important role in the education of Soviet people in the spirit of communist principles [ideinost'] and morality, of intransigence toward bourgeois ideology and morality, [and] in the mobilization of the workers …. “ Thereafter, Soviet television progressed at a rapid rate. Between 1961 and 1975, the number of television receivers in the country increased more than eleven-fold. The enormous Ostankino Center in Moscow was built to serve as the main production and transmission base, and a network of cables, relay stations and earth satellites was established to carry broadcasts to the far corners of the Union.
Romanian Views on Bessarabia and Bukovina: A Ukrainian Perspective
Authors: Ciuciura Theodore B.
Published: September 2011

Nicholas Dima, Bessarabia and Bukovina: The Soviet-Romanian Territorial Dispute. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1982. v, 173 pp. Distributed by Columbia University Press. Maria Manoliu-Manea, ed., The Tragic Plight of a Border Area: Bessarabia and Bucovina. American Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences. Humboldt State University Press, 1983. xii, 280 pp.

Here are two good books providing detailed information on Bessarabia, until 1918 a province of the Russian Empire, and, to a lesser extent, on Bukovina, once a province within the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary. They include useful theoretical though somewhat debatable considerations on the history and ethnic nature of both regions. They come to proper conclusions which seem amply justified by the data and analysis which preceded them. However, both books are inadequately edited, especially the second one, and include a few statements either based on superficial generalizations or even tinted with disturbing — though perhaps unconscious — ethnocentrism.
Making geography visible as an object of study in the secondary school curriculum
Authors: Firth Roger
Published: September 2011

This article considers disciplinary‐based knowledge and its recontextualisation and acquisition in the secondary school curriculum. It starts from the premise that teaching disciplinary knowledge is important. The focus is the subject of geography and the increasingly influential realist school of thought in the sociology of education and the endeavour to ‘bring knowledge back’ into education. Social realist theorists emphasise the importance of the explanatory power of specialist or disciplinary knowledge. Basil Bernstein%s ideas of hierarchical and horizontal knowledge structures are being developed in order to bring into view the epistemological principles that underpin the recontextualisation of such knowledge within the school curriculum that can support meaningful learning. The generative capacity of Bernstein%s typology is illustrated by the work of Maton who places knower structures and legitimation codes alongside Bernstein%s knowledge structures. The article outlines this ‘structure of knowledge’ approach before discussing the nature of geographical knowledge. Consideration is then given to how these ideas about the structuring of knowledge might influence thinking about the geography curriculum and pedagogy. In recognising the significance of the social realist approach to knowledge and the link between discipline and curriculum, the article ends with some thoughts about the limitations of social realism as an overarching theory of knowledge for educational purposes. These revolve around the nature of epistemic communities and specifically: the extent to which social realism recognises the socio‐epistemic relation between educational and disciplinary contexts; the under‐theorisation of the field of knowledge production itself; and the fact that social realist theorists tend to ignore a key aspect of the epistemic relation of knowledge – what knowledge is about. Engagement with such issues is necessary to support a model of education centred on the student, the teacher and knowledge and concerned with knowledge orientation as well as knowledge acquisition.
Contesting powerful knowledge: the primary geography curriculum as an articulation between academic and children%s (ethno‐) geographies
Authors: Catling Simon , Martin Fran
Published: September 2011

The argument has been propounded that academic disciplines and school subjects provide a powerful, authoritative knowledge which is key to enabling children to better understand the world in which they live. Inherent in this perspective is that children%s experience, knowledge and understanding are poorly formed and of limited everyday use and value. Yet it is appreciated that children%s naïve knowledge can be a pedagogic starting point to initiate them into academic subjects. While appreciating the purpose and roles of academic subjects, this article challenges these assumptions, arguing that children%s ethno‐knowledges provide powerful learning bases of equivalent authority to subjects. Using the example of younger children%s everyday or ethno‐geography, the case is that children bring to school powerful (geographical) knowledge of their own. This can and should be recognised and valued in dialogue with authoritative (geographical) subject knowledge, not as subservient to it. It is argued that this perspective goes beyond that of the child/subject co‐construction of knowledge to interrelate the developmental nature of children%s everyday (geographical) learning with (geography) sense‐of‐subject evolution. This case is set in the context of geography but is applicable to other school subjects, where children%s and subjects' powerful knowledges can mutually engage with and enhance each other.
Curriculum knowledge and justice: content, competency and concept
Authors: Winter Christine
Published: September 2011

This study is interested in understanding the configurations of knowledge underpinning three examples of curriculum policy texts in the specific case of the school subject of geography. The three policy texts are the 1991 Geography National Curriculum (GNC), the ‘Opening minds’ curriculum and the GNC 2007. I start with the proposal that each selected text promotes a particular type of knowledge, namely: content, competency and concept. I argue that deconstructive reading of three policy texts reveals what are assumed to be legitimate knowledge discourses as well as what is overlooked in each tidy curriculum scheme. I engage the help of the post‐structuralist thinker Jacques Derrida in this deconstructive undertaking. The study demonstrates how the 1991 ‘content’ curriculum privileges a western European view of the world; how the 1999 ‘competency’ curriculum overlooks the politics and ethics of knowledge by focusing on an economistic, outcomes‐driven technical view of knowledge; and how the ‘concept’ curriculum offers opportunities for deconstructive reading while at the same time indicating an unproblematical commitment to conflated and assumedly neutral approaches to knowledge. Opening up curriculum texts to deconstructive reading shows language as insecure and reveals spaces for the incoming of more just ways of thinking about the world.
Articulating student voice and facilitating curriculum agency
Authors: Biddulph Mary
Published: September 2011

Since the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in the UK in 1994 much has been made in education policy of consulting with young people about their educational experiences. This article takes Arnot and Reay%s notion of pedagogic voices to provide a critical framework to examine the different voices produced within a curriculum development project entitled ‘Young Peoples’ Geographies’ (YPG). It discusses the extent to which this initiative has enabled school students to bring their own voices, and their common‐sense knowledge, to one aspect of school, namely the curriculum. I argue that particular and more inclusive pedagogic practices, coupled with developments in the academic discipline, can go some way towards enabling greater degrees of student agency in school life, while at the same time acknowledging that institutional, social and cultural constraints place limitations on both students and teachers.
Inequality of opportunity and the take‐up of GCSE geography
Authors: Weeden Paul
Published: September 2011

This article reports data from a larger study investigating the changing patterns of entry for GCSE geography over the last 20 years, but focuses on the period 2003–7. Entries for geography GCSE have fallen since 1996 but the patterns vary with attainment, type of school and geographical location. It is shown that government policy has both a direct and indirect influence on entries.
Timing and Co-Ordination of Repetitive Bimanual Movements
Authors: Wing Alan M.
Published: September 2011

Similar timing of movements of the two hands has been observed when they are moved to separate targets (Kelso et al., 1979). This was taken as evidence for a low-level, co-ordinative structure that constrains the muscles of the arms to function as a single unit.

An experiment to investigate the relation between voluntary timing control and timing in bimanual movement is described. The task required subjects to make repetitive movements of unequal difficulty for the two hands with the hands arriving synchronously at their respective targets. Estimates of the covariance of successive intervals defined by pairs of left-right responses (arrivals at the targets) were not negative. It is shown that this indicates that the motor delay between the timer regulating repetition rate and the overt responses has no component common to left- and right-responses. Although the co-ordinative structure is described as low-level, in terms of the time sequence of operations associated with each response pair, the data indicate its place is before, not after, the timer.
Stimulus-Response Compatibility and the Motor System
Authors: Bauer David W. , Miller Jeff
Published: September 2011

Three experiments examined stimulus-response (S—R) compatibility relationships with the stimulus array perpendicular to the response array. In Experiments I and II, stimuli indicated right and left positions, while the responses were movements up and down. The mapping right/up and left/down was preferable for the right hand, but the reverse mapping was preferable for the left hand. In Experiment III, the stimuli indicated up and down positions, while the responses were movements to the right and left. In this case, the mapping up/left and down/right was preferable for the right hand, and the reverse mapping was preferable for the left hand. The results are most easily explained by assuming that counterclockwise rotational movements are preferable for the right hand, while clockwise is preferable for the left. These preferences are manifest through combinations of implicit movements towards the stimulus and explicit movements towards the response key. This principle is shown to provide a simpler explanation for some previously reported S-R compatibility effects.
Memory for Routes
Authors: Moar I. , Carleton L. R.
Published: September 2011

Two experiments examined the acquisition of cognitive maps of two intersecting routes through an urban area. In the presentation stage of the experiments, slides of the two routes were shown in order to simulate travel along the routes. The number of presentations of the slides was varied. In the test stage, subjects made directional and distance judgements from memory between places on the routes. The results suggest that from the start of acquisition of the spatial layout of the routes, subjects used network schemata in which both routes were combined, rather than a separate scheme for each route which were later combined. During initial acquisitions of the routes, a direction of travel bias was found such that spatial judgements from memory tended to be more accurate in the direction of travel along the routes than in the opposite direction. The findings imply that, at least during early acquisition, the spatial properties of the routes were encoded in terms of sequential associations.
Letter-by-letter Reading: Psychological Descriptions of a Neurologial Syndrome
Authors: Patterson Karalyn , Kay Janice
Published: September 2011

Following a general description of the characteristics of letter-by-letter reading and a summary of previous explanations of this reading deficit in both neurological and psychological models, four single-case studies of patients with this syndrome are presented. One central topic, addressed by experimental investigation, concerns comprehension of written words. Despite the use of multiple techniques, no evidence was obtained for the hypothesis that comprehension of a word could occur prior to or in the absence of the letter-by-letter analysis required for oral reading. It appears that these patients must do sequential letter identification of a word in order both to understand it and to report it. A second central topic, addressed through analysis of reading errors, concerns procedures for word recognition. Two of the four patients showed a “pure” letter-by-letter syndrome, with no difficulty in word recognition once the component letters had been identified. For the other two patients, an additional lexical deficit often prevented a correctly identified sequence of letters from achieving recognition as the correct word. Alternative interpretations of these patterns are discussed in terms of a process model.
Effects of Specificity on the Interpretation of Anaphoric Noun Phrases
Authors: Garnham Alan
Published: September 2011

Reading-time experiments on anaphor resolution have produced conflicting results. Some studies have been taken to support a schema-based theory of text comprehension, which claims that the ease of interpreting an anaphor depends on the schemata that are currently activated. Other studies suggest that more specific factors, such as the amount of new information carried by an anaphor, affect the amount of time needed to understand it. This paper reports an experiment designed to confirm the importance of an anaphor's information content in determining how much processing it requires. The experiment also investigates the role of schemata in anaphor resolution. It provides no evidence for schema-based processing. However, it is difficult to decide whether the materials used in the experiment should produce schematic effects. It is argued that this is a fault of schema theory, and unless this fault is rectified the theory cannot be regarded as a serious contender for an account of anaphor resolution.
Phonological Similarity and Enhanced Auditory Recency in Longer-Term Free Recall
Authors: Gregg Vernon H. , Gardiner John M.
Published: September 2011

The effect of phonological similarity amongst list items on the modality effect was investigated in free recall with distraction activity interpolated before and after each list word. In Experiment 1 the distractor activity involved counting backward silently mouthing each number, and the modality effect was drastically attenuated by high similarity. This outcome is comparable with that found in immediate recall, and it is consistent with an echoic memory interpretation. In Experiment 2 the same backward-counting task was performed with each number being vocalized, and the modality effect was unaffected by phonological similarity. This outcome leads to the stronger conclusion that, under those conditions at least, the modality effect cannot be echoic. Implications of these findings for general theoretical accounts of the modality effect are discussed.
Detection and Resolution of Audio-Visual Incompatibility in the Perception of Vowels
Authors: Summerfield Quentin , McGrath Matthew
Published: September 2011

If audio and video recordings of a talker speaking consonant-vowel syllables containing different consontants are approximately synchronised, observers may fail to detect conflict between the modalities and perceive consonants presented in neither individual modality. The present experiments demonstrate an analogous effect in the perception of vowels. Vision can bias the identity of an acoustical vowel to be more like the vowel presented visually, even when observers detect conflict and are instructed to report only what they hear. The size of the effect is positively related to the size of the physical difference between the visible configuration of the lips and the configuration that would naturally accompany the acoustical vowel. In demonstrating these and other phenomena in audio-visual speech perception, observers behave as if they compute a continuous estimate of the filter function of the vocal tract from both visual and acoustical evidence. If the visual evidence is potent, observers may appear to interpret the acoustical evidence in novel ways. However, these compromises can be predicted from known patterns of acoustical similarity and visual distinctiveness and do not require ad hoc explanations involving categorical levels of perceptual process.
Functional between-Hand Differences and Outflow Eye Position Information
Authors: Honda Hitoshi
Published: September 2011

Pointing accuracy with an unseen hand to a just-extinguished visual target was examined in various eye movement conditions. When subjects caught the target by a saccade, they showed about the same degree of accuracy as that shown in pointing to a visible target. On the other hand, when subjects tracked a moving target by a pursuit eye movement, they systematically undershot when subsequently pointing to the target. The differential effect of the two types of eye movements on pointing tasks was examined on both the preferred and non-preferred hands, and it was found that the effect of eye movements was more prominent on the preferred hand than on the non-preferred hand. The results are discussed in relation to outflow eye position information.
Concurrent Vocal Interference: Its Effects on Kana and Kanji
Authors: Kimura Yuko
Published: September 2011

An experiment is reported in which Japanese subjects were asked to judge whether pairs of words written in kana or kanji were or were not related in meaning. It was found that concurrent vocal interference impaired the reading of kana but did not affect the reading of kanji. This was taken as evidence that concurrent vocal interference disrupts prelexical phonological coding in kana. It is argued that this result furthers our understanding of the effects of concurrent vocal interference on reading tasks.
The Effects of Intravenous Diazepam and Hyoscine upon Human Memory
Authors: Frith C. D. , Richardson J. T. E. , Samuel M. , Crow T. J. , McKenna P. J.
Published: September 2011

Diazepam and hyoscine are known to have amnesic effects when administered intravenously. The two drugs are pharmacologically quite different from each other and might be expected to produce qualitatively distinct patterns of impairment in formal memory tasks. Groups of normal volunteers received intravenous administrations of diazepam, hyoscine and saline following a double-blind procedure and were then tested on immediate serial recall. Diazepam and hyoscine produced similar deficits on concrete and abstract words whether scored for ordered recall or item recall. In terms of ordered recall, phonemic similarity produced impaired performance under all three administrations, but semantic similarity did not. In terms of item recall, diazepam and hyoscine produced impaired performance on unrelated words, but the impairment was reduced under conditions of either phonemic or semantic similarity. There were also some interesting differences between diazepam and hyoscine in terms of their effects upon the shape of the serial-position curve and upon the types of intrusion error. The results confirm that both diazepam and hyoscine impair acquisition processes but fail to distinguish the effects of the two drugs upon different categories of encoding operations.
Contextual Validity and the Effects of Low-Constraint Sentence Contexts on Lexical Decisions
Authors: Sanocki Thomas , Oden Gregg C.
Published: September 2011

Subjects made lexical decisions after reading either (a) low-constraint sentence contexts that did not predict the identity or meaning of congruous targets (e.g. “Mary went to her room to look at her XXXX”), or (b) control contexts that were randomly ordered lists of words. The crucial variable was the validity of the contextual information. When the sentence contexts were incongrous with the word targets as often as they were congruous (the “less-valid environment”), the congruous contexts had a slight inhibitory effect on decision latency relative to the baseline condition. In contrast, when the contexts were always congruous with the word targets (“valid environment”), they had a large facilitatory effect on decision latency. These results suggest that (a) the effects of congruous contexts can depend on the validity of the contexts across the entire experimental session, and (b) contextual facilitation may be due in part to sentence level processes.
Computational Theories of Vision
Authors: Morgan M. J.
Published: September 2011

This exciting and original book describes the work of David Marr and his colleagues at MIT on the computational theory of vision, particularly the early stages of shape analysis. Although much of the theorising is frankly speculative and not certain to survive without major modification, it sets new standards of rigour in its formal approach and is certain to have a stimulating effect upon the field. Sadly, Marr's death from leukaemia at the age of 35 means that he will not himself be able to take part in the further development of his ideas, but the book itself will exert an important influence for some time to come. The first point to make, for those who may already have attempted Marr's lengthy and difficult research papers, is that the book is clearly and entertainingly written: It can be tackled by the non-specialist who wishes to see why Marr's work has caused such interest in the vision community. Despite the very difficult circumstances in which the book must have been written, it is carefully put together and gives a fascinating insight into the way in which the author's ideas developed.
The Reminiscence Bump in the Temporal Distribution of the Best Football Players of All Time: Pelé, Cruijff or Maradona?
Authors: Janssen Steve M. J. , Rubin David C. , Conway Martin A.
Published: September 2011

The reminiscence bump is the tendency to recall more autobiographical memories from adolescence and early adulthood than from adjacent lifetime periods. In this online study, the robustness of the reminiscence bump was examined by looking at participants' judgements about the quality of football players. Dutch participants ( N = 619) were asked who they thought the five best players of all time were. The participants could select the names from a list or enter the names when their favourite players were not on the list. Johan Cruijff, Pelé, and Diego Maradona were the three most often mentioned players. Participants frequently named football players who reached the midpoint of their career when the participants were adolescents (mode = 17). The results indicate that the reminiscence bump can also be identified outside the autobiographical memory domain.
Consensus Collaboration Enhances Group and Individual Recall Accuracy
Authors: Harris Celia B. , Barnier Amanda J. , Sutton John
Published: September 2011

We often remember in groups, yet research on collaborative recall finds “collaborative inhibition”: Recalling with others has costs compared to recalling alone. In related paradigms, remembering with others introduces errors into recall. We compared costs and benefits of two collaboration procedures—turn taking and consensus. First, 135 individuals learned a word list and recalled it alone (Recall 1). Then, 45 participants in three-member groups took turns to recall, 45 participants in three-member groups reached a consensus, and 45 participants recalled alone but were analysed as three-member nominal groups (Recall 2). Finally, all participants recalled alone (Recall 3). Both turn-taking and consensus groups demonstrated the usual pattern of costs during collaboration and benefits after collaboration in terms of recall completeness. However, consensus groups, and not turn-taking groups, demonstrated clear benefits in terms of recall accuracy, both during and after collaboration. Consensus groups engaged in beneficial group source-monitoring processes. Our findings challenge assumptions about the negative consequences of social remembering.
Effects of Visual Cue and Response Assignment on Spatial Stimulus Coding in Stimulus–Response Compatibility
Authors: Nishimura Akio , Yokosawa Kazuhiko
Published: September 2011

Tlauka and McKenna (2000) reported a reversal of the traditional stimulus–response compatibility (SRC) effect (faster responding to a stimulus presented on the same side than to one on the opposite side) when the stimulus appearing on one side of a display is a member of a superordinate unit that is largely on the opposite side. We investigated the effects of a visual cue that explicitly shows a superordinate unit, and of assignment of multiple stimuli within each superordinate unit to one response, on the SRC effect based on superordinate unit position. Three experiments revealed that stimulus–response assignment is critical, while the visual cue plays a minor role, in eliciting the SRC effect based on the superordinate unit position. Findings suggest bidirectional interaction between perception and action and simultaneous spatial stimulus coding according to multiple frames of reference, with contribution of each coding to the SRC effect flexibly varying with task situations.
ISPyB: an information management system for synchrotron macromolecular crystallography
Authors: Delagenière Solange , Brenchereau Patrice , Launer Ludovic , Ashton Alun W. , Leal Ricardo , Veyrier Stéphanie , Gabadinho José , Gordon Elspeth J. , Jones Samuel D. , Levik Karl Erik , McSweeney Seán M. , Monaco Stéphanie , Nanao Max , Spruce Darren , Svensson Olof , Walsh Martin A. , Leonard Gordon A.
Published: September 2011

Motivation: Individual research groups now analyze thousands of samples per year at synchrotron macromolecular crystallography (MX) resources. The efficient management of experimental data is thus essential if the best possible experiments are to be performed and the best possible data used in downstream processes in structure determination pipelines. Information System for Protein crystallography Beamlines (ISPyB), a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) with an underlying data model allowing for the integration of analyses down-stream of the data collection experiment was developed to facilitate such data management.

Results: ISPyB is now a multisite, generic LIMS for synchrotron-based MX experiments. Its initial functionality has been enhanced to include improved sample tracking and reporting of experimental protocols, the direct ranking of the diffraction characteristics of individual samples and the archiving of raw data and results from ancillary experiments and post-experiment data processing protocols. This latter feature paves the way for ISPyB to play a central role in future macromolecular structure solution pipelines and validates the application of the approach used in ISPyB to other experimental techniques, such as biological solution Small Angle X-ray Scattering and spectroscopy, which have similar sample tracking and data handling requirements.

Contact:  leonard@esrf.fr; martin.walsh@diamond.ac.uk
Pybedtools: a flexible Python library for manipulating genomic datasets and annotations
Authors: Dale Ryan K. , Pedersen Brent S. , Quinlan Aaron R.
Published: September 2011

Summary:  pybedtools is a flexible Python software library for manipulating and exploring genomic datasets in many common formats. It provides an intuitive Python interface that extends upon the popular BEDTools genome arithmetic tools. The library is well documented and efficient, and allows researchers to quickly develop simple, yet powerful scripts that enable complex genomic analyses.

Availability:  pybedtools is maintained under the GPL license. Stable versions of pybedtools as well as documentation are available on the Python Package Index at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pybedtools.

Contact:  dalerr@niddk.nih.gov; arq5x@virginia.edu

Supplementary Information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Natural selection. II. Developmental variability and evolutionary rate*
Authors: FRANK S. A.
Published: September 2011

In classical evolutionary theory, genetic variation provides the source of heritable phenotypic variation on which natural selection acts. Against this classical view, several theories have emphasized that developmental variability and learning enhance nonheritable phenotypic variation, which in turn can accelerate evolutionary response. In this paper, I show how developmental variability alters evolutionary dynamics by smoothing the landscape that relates genotype to fitness. In a fitness landscape with multiple peaks and valleys, developmental variability can smooth the landscape to provide a directly increasing path of fitness to the highest peak. Developmental variability also allows initial survival of a genotype in response to novel or extreme environmental challenge, providing an opportunity for subsequent adaptation. This initial survival advantage arises from the way in which developmental variability smooths and broadens the fitness landscape. Ultimately, the synergism between developmental processes and genetic variation sets evolutionary rate.