Gangsters or Gandhians? The Political Sociology of the Maoist Insurgency in India

This article combines concepts from political sociology with evidence from newspaper reports, insurgent and state documents, and ethnographic studies in order to understand the nature of the Maoist insurgency in India. The first section argues that the insurgency should be conceptualized as a state building enterprise rather than organized crime. It demonstrates that both insurgent violence and fundraising serve, on the whole, the collective interests of the state building enterprise – i.e., to consolidate insurgent control in their base areas – rather than the private interests of individual insurgents. The second section seeks to understand how Maoist state builders undermine and fragment the Indian state’s monopoly of the means of violence and administration in areas where they operate. In some areas the state is totally absent, while in others the state forms alliances with the insurgents at the local level in order to maintain the semblance of a sovereign and democratic ruler

Graphite as a structural material in conditions of high thermal flux: a survey of existing knowledge and an assessment of current research and development

The state of fundamental knowledge on the subject of graphite and the graphitisation process is reviewed. The principle methods of manufacture may be considered to include (1) conventional graphitisation of a coke filler-binder mix, (2) the compaction at high pressure and temperatures of natural or artificial graphite particles without a binder, (3) pyrolytic graphites derived from gaseous deposition, and (4) conventional graphites impregnated by liquid or gas and re-graphitised. The present state of development of these processes is examined. The erosion of graphite by high velocity gases at high temperatures is due primarily to oxidation effects which occur preferentially at crystallite boundaries. Coatings of carbides and nitrides improve the resistance at temperatures below about 1700 degrees C, but above this, pyrolytic coatings are more successful. The addition of vapourising compounds, iodides and fluorides, or the addition of carbides and nitrides to the graphite mix, are both beneficial, but of little value at very high temperatures. The development of new graphites, either the impregnated type, or those produced by pressure baking, may offer a margin of improvement, as the best surface structure at temperatures of 3000 degrees C and above appears to be simply graphite. Additions may do little to improve the mechanism of erosion, but they may usefully lower the surface temperature. Considerations relating to thermal shock, creep and fabrication are surveyed. Some of the conclusions are: that graphite is of singular importance to high temperature technology; that commercial issues cannot be allowed to impede vigorous development towards more resistant forms; that much is to be gained by viewing graphite from a metals standpoint; that the fundamental theory of the basic crystal mechanics is undeveloped; that the present wide variability in properties should not be regarded overseriously; that non-destructive assessment by damping measurements needs development, that coatings and impregnants are of high priority, and that, of all factors, oxidation is the most serious limitation to use at the present time

A study of The Rock by T.S. Eliot : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University

Chapter I of this thesis is just a brief account of the genesis of The Rock: brief for fear of reproducing what has already been ably said before by Mr E. Martin Browne in his book The Making of T.S. Eliot's Plays. In this section the pageant and music-hall revue, which were the vehicles for this vaguely propagandist work, are treated, and what is so strangely important about the music-hall form of entertainment is that Eliot was very much attracted to it. This chapter, although it just sets the scene, shows the author working at a much more superficial level than ever before. Chapter II deals with the importance of Eliot's socio-religious thinking relative to The Rock in the 1930s. The authoritarian nature and very rigour of his orthodoxy may have been partly the reason why The Rock and After Strange Gods were never republished, but the important point is made clear, through these views on Christian orthodoxy and tradition, that Eliot was to be admired as perhaps the only poet and intellectual of great standing in England in the 1930s who gave his allegiance to something wholly outside himself. In addition, what is made explicit in this chapter, and held implicit throughout, is that Eliot was no turncoat who now gladly and facilely embraced the succour of Mother Church as some critics would have us believe. What is made plain is that this relatively new convert was finding a via media between facile hope and pointless despair - hence the very discipline and rigour of his Anglo-Catholic affirmations. Chapter III is about the requirements of the medium in what was in fact the first time Eliot had moved beyond a coterie audience. The demands and limitations are listed as criteria against which The Rock can only be measured; and although the choruses may be the first bad poetry Eliot had written, it is made clear that he was conscious of the seeming hollowness of ecclesiastical utterances. It may seem paradoxical that Eliot, in this propaganda setting, was actually trying to wring the neck of rhetoric, and the moral is even enforced by his inclusion of a verse-sketch which clearly shows an adulteration through rhetoric. Chapter IV reverberates on the two preceding chapters in its delineation of a return to a purified yet traditional language as well. Although the nobility of language from biblical books is still there, Eliot was for the first time using a democratic, and non-hieratic, language of ordinary man. There is a new distrust of the cunning and rhetorical, as contained in the 'objective correlative' of before, and the author is attempting a personal atone through what seems to be an authenticity and sincerity of tone. The Rock could conceivably exist without the choruses at all but they are important, unlike the prose episodes, because they were written without the various collaborators. Chapter V attempts, very briefly, to establish that The Rock was not a propagandist's hackwork but that the author was consciously groping for new forms of prosody and dramatic techniques preparatory to his later plays and poetry and, as such, the work is seen in the perspective of an important stage midway in Eliot's career as an artist and thinker

Sceloporus olivaceus

Number of Pages: 4Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Crop thinning of merlot - a Queensland perspective

Merlot is one of the major wine grapes planted in Queensland, however with the wine industry in Queensland being relatively new there is limited knowledge of best practice for production of quality fruit for wine production in the state. Timing of crop thinning has been shown to influence grape quality (Filippetti et al. 2007) and this practice is commonly employed by growers in the state to manipulate fruit and wine quality. A trial was thus carried out in the 2008 season to investigate the influence of pea size and véraison crop thinning on yield and fruit quality of Merlot in two commercial vineyards located in Queensland’s Granite Belt and South Burnett

The ALEPH Search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson

A search has been performed for the Standard Model Higgs boson in the data collected with the ALEPH detector in 2000. An excess of 3 sigma above the background expectation is found. The observed excess is consistent with the production of the Higgs boson with a mass close to 114 GeV/c2.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure