A study of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the rise and fall of the nonviolent civil rights movement

Despite its lack of membership and vague organizational structure, the Southern Christian leadership Conference was the most effective of the various groups which composed the Southern civil rights movement: the SCLC's campaigns in Birmingham and Selma furnished the impetus for the passage of both the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In both campaigns the SCLC extricated the civil rights movement from a tactical impasse, provided it with fresh momentum, and allied it with new sources of white support. The effectiveness of the SCLC had a number of causes. Almost entirely made up of ministers, the Conference was uniquely equipped to draw upon the spiritual and material resources of the black church; its religious roots also gave immense popularity and personal authority to Martin Luther King, Jr., and accorded the tactics of nonviolent direct action an unassailable moral legitimacy. In its application of nonviolent direct action the SCLC exhibited a tactical skill and political sophistication which enabled it to defeat the forces of white supremacy by exposing their violence to the hostile glare of national and international publicity. Aware that a reform of the South required the assent of the white majority, the SCLC solved the dilemma of black powerlessness by Ly-passing the established political and judicial institutions, and appealing directly to Northern public opinion. Possessed of a keen sense of political realism, King and his lieutenants maintained a subtle balance between pressure and persuasion in their use of nonviolent direct action. The SCLC failed to repeat its success in the North because, its demands bitterly opposed by the white majority, it could no longer command significant white support; in Chicago, the federal government was no longer a sympathetic ally. In addition, urban riots, the emergence of Black Power and the war in Vietnam exacerbated both the "white backlash" and the internal disarray of the civil rights movement. After the failure of the Chicago campaign, the principal achievements of the SCLC were the strengthening of the peace movement, the development of the idea of "Poor People*s Power" and the consolidation of the gains won in the South. The bankruptcy of black separatism, and the steady growth of integration and black political power in the South, indicate that the accomplishment of the SCLC and the nonviolent civil rights movement should not be lightly dismissed

Conversational Grammar- Feminine Grammar? A Sociopragmatic Corpus Study

One area in language and gender research that has so far received only little attention is the extent to which the sexes make use of what recent corpus research has termed “conversational grammar.” The author’s initial findings have suggested that the majority of features distinctive of conversational grammar may be used predominantly by female speakers. This article reports on a study designed to test the hypothesis that conversational grammar is “feminine grammar” in the sense that women’s conversational language is more adapted to the conversational situation than men’s. Based on data from the conversational subcorpus of the British National Corpus and following the situational framework for the description of conversational features elaborated in the author’s previous research, features distinctive of conversational grammar are grouped into five functional categories and their normed frequencies compared across the sexes. The functional categories distinguish features that can be seen as adaptations to constraints set by the situational factors of (1) Shared Context, (2) Co-Construction, (3) Real-Time Processing, (4) Discourse Management, and (5) Relation Management. The study’s results, described in detail in relation to the biological category of speaker sex and cultural notions of gender, suggest that the feminine grammar hypothesis is valid

Characterisation of UHMWPE polymer powder for laser sintering

Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) is a thermoplastic semicrystalline polymer that has outstanding mechanical properties, low friction coefficient, excellent wear resistance, and is highly resistant to corrosive chemicals. UHMWPE is found in many applications including artificial joints and filtration. However, UHMWPE parts cannot be produced easily by traditional techniques, such as injection moulding and extrusion because of its very high melt viscosity owing to the extremely long polymer chains. Few attempts were made to process UHMWPE by additive manufacturing, particularly laser sintering. This is due to the lack of understanding of the powder properties of UHMWPE. Therefore, the aim of the powder characterisation process in this study is to gain a better understanding of the material requirements and provide a detailed insight on whether UHMWPE is a suitable material for laser sintering. The characterisation process includes powder morphological and flow characteristics, thermal behaviour and stability, and crystallinity of UHMWPE. The study reveals that the sintering behaviour of polymers is controlled by the morphology of the particles in addition to the viscous flow of UHMWPE. There are still difficulties of processing UHMWPE due to highly agglomerated structure of smaller particles with the presence of fibrils in the UHMWPE particles

Does 1,8-diiodooctane affect the aggregation state of PC71BM in solution?

1,8-Diiodooctane (DIO) is an additive used in the processing of organic photovoltaics and has previously been reported, on the basis of small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) measurements, to deflocculate nano-aggregates of [6,6]-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM) in chlorobenzene. We have critically re-examined this finding in a series of scattering measurements using both X-rays and neutrons. With SAXS, we find that the form of the background solvent scattering is influenced by the presence of DIO, that there is substantial attenuation of the X-rays by the background solvent and that there appears to be beam-induced aggregation. All three factors call into question the suitability of SAXS for measurements on these samples. By contrast, small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements, performed at concentrations of 15 mg ml−1 up to and including 40 mg ml−1, show no difference in the aggregation state for PC71BM in chlorobenzene with and without 3% DIO; we find PC71BM to be molecularly dissolved in all solvent cases. In situ film thinning measurements of spin-coated PC71BM solution with the DIO additive dry much slower. Optical imaging shows that the fullerene films possess enhanced molecular mobility in the presence of DIO and it is this which, we conclude, improves the nanomorphology and consequently solar cell performance. We propose that any compatible high boiling solvent would be expected to show the same behaviour