459 research outputs found
Our Unswerving Loyalty
The story of the Communist Party of Australia has been told in various ways. Until now, however, archival collections that have borne on this story have been relatively inaccessible to the ordinary, interested reader. This book begins to redress that deficiency by bringing together 85 key documents from the Russian State Archives of Social and Political History (RGASPI), selected from a collection of thousands of documents concerning the relations between the Communist International and the Communist Party of Australia. The selection focuses on the relationship between the CPA and the Comintern because the activities of the CPA are essentially incomprehensible without understanding the international communist context within which the CPA operated. That context was dominated by the newly-created Soviet state and its decision to authorize and utilize a network of communist parties throughout the world. The documents in this work suggest three major propositions about the relationship between the CPA and the Comintern. First, that the Comintern was crucial in the formation of the CPA, via its emissaries, instructions and authority. Second, that the Comintern played a major role in directing the policies of the CPA in domestic matters (not to mention in international matters, where the Comintern’s decisions were supreme). And third, that the leadership of the CPA was, from 1929 onwards, shaped, trained and authorized by the Comintern. With access to the documents, readers now have a chance not just to hear the voices of the times, but to make their own judgements about the relationship between the CPA and Moscow.
The book also includes two extended introductory essays that outline the development of the Comintern and its relations with the CPA, as well as supporting materials that provide information on individuals, organizations and tactics mentioned within the documents themselves
The concept of the proletariat in the work of Karl Marx
In 1844, Marx introduced into his work the concept of the
proletariat. Thereafter, until his death in 1883, he
maintained that the rule of the proletariat would emancipate
humanity from capitalism and from class rule itself. Marx's
formulation of the proletarian mission is one of the
distinctive features of his theory, even though it has
helped to shape our conception of socialism as a working
class project.
A hundred years after Marx’s death, it is clear that
the proletariat has not fulfilled his expectations. Where
they have not been imposed militarily, revolutions made in
Marx's name are chiefly the products of the machinations of
declasse elements, and herald repressive regimes. By
examining the sources and development of Marx's conception
of the proletariat, this work attempts to explain how Marx
was led, wrongly, to regard the proletariat as revolutionary
and the bearers of freedom. It stresses that the concept of
the proletariat was employed by Marx, initially, to meet
certain theoretical requirements - in particular, to play
the role of universal class: the general representative and
saviour of humanity. Marx's conception of universality is
explored and contrasted with Hegel's. The difference
suggests that Marx adopted a simplified solution to what Hegel recognized as a complex problem: how can modern man
feel that he is part of one community?
Marx filled his abstract concept of the proletariat
with economic and social content as his studies of the
material life of civil society demanded. Two important
changes, however, began to occur. First, Marx constructed
an economic and a political model of the proletariat to
supplement his speculative construction, which models
coexisted uneasily with it. Secondly, the proletariat as
the class of freedom, as the reaffirmation of the subject,
was largely supplanted by the proletariat as the bearer of
economic rationality.
For Marx, the limitations of the actual proletariat
posed no threat to his conception: he shifted from one
model to another in order to discount adverse evidence as
being inessential. Furthermore, the increasing importance
of political economy in Marx's work corresponded to a
decline in his appreciation of the role of creative and free
humans in establishing socialism. Marx's early Promethean
vision seems ultimately to be chained to the rock of vast
impersonal forces, a rock which Marx himself created.
Marx misread the workers' struggles of his time; his
concept of the proletariat could not be falsified; and his
expectations of the proletariat simply could not be met
Rapid interstellar scintillation of PKS B1257-326: two-station pattern time delays and constraints on scattering and microarcsecond source structure
We report measurements of time delays of up to 8 minutes in the centimeter
wavelength variability patterns of the intra-hour scintillating quasar PKS
1257-326 as observed between the VLA and the ATCA on three separate epochs.
These time delays confirm interstellar scintillation as the mechanism
responsible for the rapid variability, at the same time effectively ruling out
the coexistence of intrinsic intra-hour variability in this source. The time
delays are combined with measurements of the annual variation in variability
timescale exhibited by this source to determine the characteristic length scale
and anisotropy of the quasar's intensity scintillation pattern, as well as
attempting to fit for the bulk velocity of the scattering plasma responsible
for the scintillation. We find evidence for anisotropic scattering and highly
elongated scintillation patterns at both 4.9 and 8.5 GHz, with an axial ratio >
10:1, extended in a northwest direction on the sky. The characteristic scale of
the scintillation pattern along its minor axis is well determined, but the high
anisotropy leads to degenerate solutions for the scintillation velocity. The
decorrelation of the pattern over the baseline gives an estimate of the major
axis length scale of the scintillation pattern. We derive an upper limit on the
distance to the scattering plasma of no more than 10 pc.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
An exploration of alternative visualisations of the basic helix-loop-helix protein interaction network
Background: Alternative representations of biochemical networks emphasise different aspects of the data and contribute to the understanding of complex biological systems. In this study we present a variety of automated methods for visualisation of a protein-protein interaction network, using the basic helix-loop-helix ( bHLH) family of transcription factors as an example.
Results: Network representations that arrange nodes ( proteins) according to either continuous or discrete information are investigated, revealing the existence of protein sub-families and the retention of interactions following gene duplication events. Methods of network visualisation in conjunction with a phylogenetic tree are presented, highlighting the evolutionary relationships between proteins, and clarifying the context of network hubs and interaction clusters. Finally, an optimisation technique is used to create a three-dimensional layout of the phylogenetic tree upon which the protein-protein interactions may be projected.
Conclusion: We show that by incorporating secondary genomic, functional or phylogenetic information into network visualisation, it is possible to move beyond simple layout algorithms based on network topology towards more biologically meaningful representations. These new visualisations can give structure to complex networks and will greatly help in interpreting their evolutionary origins and functional implications. Three open source software packages (InterView, TVi and OptiMage) implementing our methods are available
Angular Broadening of Intraday Variable AGN. II. Interstellar and Intergalactic Scattering
We analyze a sample of 58 multi-wavelength, Very Long Baseline Array
observations of active galactic nuclei (AGN) to determine their scattering
properties. Approximately 75% of the sample consists of AGN that exhibit
centimeter-wavelength intraday variability (interstellar scintillation) while
the other 25% do not show intraday variability. We find that interstellar
scattering is measurable for most of these AGN, and the typical broadening
diameter is 2 mas at 1 GHz. We find that the scintillating AGN are typically at
lower Galactic latitudes than the non-scintillating AGN, consistent with the
scenario that intraday variability is a propagation effect from the Galactic
interstellar medium. The magnitude of the inferred interstellar broadening
measured toward the scintillating AGN, when scaled to higher frequencies, is
comparable to the diameters inferred from analyses of the light curves for the
more well-known intraday variable sources. However, we find no difference in
the amount of scattering measured toward the scintillating versus
non-scintillating AGN. A consistent picture is one in which the scintillation
results from localized regions ("clumps") distributed throughout the Galactic
disk, but which individually make little contribution to the angular
broadening. Of the 58 AGN observed, 37 (64%) have measured redshifts. At best,
a marginal trend is found for scintillating (non-scintillating) AGN to have
smaller (larger) angular diameters at higher redshifts. We also use our
observations to try to constrain the possibility of intergalactic scattering.
While broadly consistent with the scenario of a highly turbulent intergalactic
medium, our observations do not place significant constraints on its
properties.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures; AASTeX format; ApJ in pres
All duplicates are not equal: the difference between small-scale and genome duplication
The comparison of pairs of gene duplications generated by small-scale duplications with those created by large-scale duplications shows that they differ in quantifiable ways. It is suggested that this is directly due to biases on the paths to gene retention rather than association with different functional categories
Bcl-XL Inhibits Membrane Permeabilization by Competing with Bax
Although Bcl-XL and Bax are structurally similar, activated Bax forms large oligomers that permeabilize the outer mitochondrial membrane, thereby committing cells to apoptosis, whereas Bcl-XL inhibits this process. Two different models of Bcl-XL function have been proposed. In one, Bcl-XL binds to an activator, thereby preventing Bax activation. In the other, Bcl-XL binds directly to activated Bax. It has been difficult to sort out which interaction is important in cells, as all three proteins are present simultaneously. We examined the mechanism of Bax activation by tBid and its inhibition by Bcl-XL using full-length recombinant proteins and measuring permeabilization of liposomes and mitochondria in vitro. Our results demonstrate that Bcl-XL and Bax are functionally similar. Neither protein bound to membranes alone. However, the addition of tBid recruited molar excesses of either protein to membranes, indicating that tBid activates both pro- and antiapoptotic members of the Bcl-2 family. Bcl-XL competes with Bax for the activation of soluble, monomeric Bax through interaction with membranes, tBid, or t-Bid-activated Bax, thereby inhibiting Bax binding to membranes, oligomerization, and membrane permeabilization. Experiments in which individual interactions were abolished by mutagenesis indicate that both Bcl-XL–tBid and Bcl-XL–Bax binding contribute to the antiapoptotic function of Bcl-XL. By out-competing Bax for the interactions leading to membrane permeabilization, Bcl-XL ties up both tBid and Bax in nonproductive interactions and inhibits Bax binding to membranes. We propose that because Bcl-XL does not oligomerize it functions like a dominant-negative Bax in the membrane permeabilization process
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The stealth episome: suppression of gene expression on the excised genomic island PPHGI-1 from Pseudomonas syringae pv. phaseolicola
Pseudomonas syringae pv. phaseolicola is the causative agent of halo blight in the common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris. P. syringae pv. phaseolicola race 4 strain 1302A contains the avirulence gene avrPphB (syn. hopAR1), which resides on PPHGI-1, a 106 kb genomic island. Loss of PPHGI-1 from P. syringae pv. phaseolicola 1302A following exposure to the hypersensitive resistance response (HR) leads to the evolution of strains with altered virulence. Here we have used fluorescent protein reporter systems to gain insight into the mobility of PPHGI-1. Confocal imaging of dual-labelled P. syringae pv. phaseolicola 1302A strain, F532 (dsRFP in chromosome and eGFP in PPHGI-1), revealed loss of PPHGI-1::eGFP encoded fluorescence during plant infection and when grown in vitro on extracted leaf apoplastic fluids. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) of fluorescent and non-fluorescent PPHGI-1::eGFP F532 populations showed that cells lost fluorescence not only when the GI was deleted, but also when it had excised and was present as a circular episome. In addition to reduced expression of eGFP, quantitative PCR on sub-populations separated by FACS showed that transcription of other genes on PPHGI-1 (avrPphB and xerC) was also greatly reduced in F532 cells harbouring the excised PPHGI-1::eGFP episome. Our results show how virulence determinants located on mobile pathogenicity islands may be hidden from detection by host surveillance systems through the suppression of gene expression in the episomal state
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