"It All Ended in an Unsporting Way": Serbian Football and the Disintegration of Yugoslavia, 1989-2006

Part of a wider examination into football during the collapse of Eastern European Communism between 1989 and 1991, this article studies the interplay between Serbian football and politics during the period of Yugoslavia's demise. Research utilizing interviews with individuals directly involved in the Serbian game, in conjunction with contemporary Yugoslav media sources, indicates that football played an important proactive role in the revival of Serbian nationalism. At the same time the Yugoslav conflict, twinned with a complex transition to a market economy, had disastrous consequences for football throughout the territories of the former Yugoslavia. In the years following the hostilities the Serbian game has suffered decline, major financial hardship and continuing terrace violence, resulting in widespread nostalgia for the pre-conflict era

Effects of Glyphosate and its Formulation, Roundup, on Reproduction in Zebrafish (Danio rerio)

This is an open access article that is freely available in ORE or from the publisher's web site. Please cite the published version.Copyright © 2014 American Chemical SocietyRoundup and its active ingredient glyphosate are among the most widely used herbicides worldwide and may contaminate surface waters. Research suggests both Roundup and glyphosate induce oxidative stress in fish and may also cause reproductive toxicity in mammalian systems. We aimed to investigate the reproductive effects of Roundup and glyphosate in fish and the potential associated mechanisms of toxicity. To do this, we conducted a 21-day exposure of breeding zebrafish (Danio rerio) to 0.01, 0.5, and 10 mg/L (glyphosate acid equivalent) Roundup and 10 mg/L glyphosate. 10 mg/L glyphosate reduced egg production but not fertilization rate in breeding colonies. Both 10 mg/L Roundup and glyphosate increased early stage embryo mortalities and premature hatching. However, exposure during embryogenesis alone did not increase embryo mortality, suggesting that this effect was caused primarily by exposure during gametogenesis. Transcript profiling of the gonads revealed 10 mg/L Roundup and glyphosate induced changes in the expression of cyp19a1 and esr1 in the ovary and hsd3b2, cat, and sod1 in the testis. Our results demonstrate that these chemicals cause reproductive toxicity in zebrafish, although only at high concentrations unlikely to occur in the environment, and likely mechanisms of toxicity include disruption of the steroidogenic biosynthesis pathway and oxidative stress.Natural Environment Research Counci

Characterizing the scent and chemical composition of Panthera leo marking fluid using solid-phase microextraction and multidimensional gas chromatography–mass spectrometry-olfactometry

Lions (Panthera leo) use chemical signaling to indicate health, reproductive status, and territorial ownership. To date, no study has reported on both scent and composition of marking fluid (MF) from P. leo. The objectives of this study were to: 1) develop a novel method for simultaneous chemical and scent identification of lion MF in its totality (urine + MF), 2) identify characteristic odorants responsible for the overall scent of MF as perceived by human panelists, and 3) compare the existing library of known odorous compounds characterized as eliciting behaviors in animals in order to understand potential functionality in lion behavior. Solid-phase microextraction and simultaneous chemical-sensory analyses with multidimensional gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry-olfactometry improved separating, isolating, and identifying mixed (MF, urine) compounds versus solvent-based extraction and chemical analyses. 2,5-Dimethylpyrazine, 4-methylphenol, and 3-methylcyclopentanone were isolated and identified as the compounds responsible for the characteristic odor of lion MF. Twenty-eight volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from MF were identified, adding a new list of compounds previously unidentified in lion urine. New chemicals were identified in nine compound groups: ketones, aldehydes, amines, alcohols, aromatics, sulfur-containing compounds, phenyls, phenols, and volatile fatty acids. Twenty-three VOCs are known semiochemicals that are implicated in attraction, reproduction, and alarm-signaling behaviors in other species

A realistic utopia?: Nancy Fraser, cosmopolitanism and the making of a just world order

Nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War, academics, policy makers and commentators continue to be puzzled by the shape, form and content of contemporary world politics. The fluidity of the post-Cold War era has seen the elevation of largely functional explanations for why things are to a more transcendent set of ideas about how social relations can be made afresh. This shift from ideology to utopia is no idle problem, for what it tends to generate are images which often lie outside historical experience and time and place specificities. This article is an attempt to provide a corrective to at least parts of this malady by carrying out a Zeitdiagnose which questions some of the taken-for-granted assumptions about the current period, in particular the schema offered by the prominent cosmopolitan thinker, Nancy Fraser. The article looks in detail at the historical basis of Fraser's current work, comparing it both to similar visions prevalent in the inter-war years and to contemporary programmes based on the theory of the democratic peace and the policy of democracy promotion. The article develops a construct – realistic utopias – which aims to build from history to mid-range abstractions rather than from general abstractions to events on the ground. As a result, it is argued, a more developed link can be made between theory and practice, abstraction and history, normative project and institutional reality

From switchboard operators to Coca-Cola kids : transformations of the political left in the Films of Dusan Makavejev

This article challenges two areas of common preconceptions about Dusan Makavejev's work: firstly, the one that disqualified his later – especially non-Yugoslav – work and secondly, the one that interpreted his work by yoking it strictly to humanist perspectives. By focusing on Makavejev’s only attempt at Hollywood-type filmmaking in 'The Coca-Cola Kid' (1985), the aim here is to reveal Makavejev as a product of his Yugoslav background and Marxist thinking. Through a close reading of the film, it becomes clear that Makavejev was heavily informed by communist ideas, openly attacking rather than just criticising consumer society as promoted and sustained by rampant American capitalism. Makavejev was hence ideologically closer to philosophers of the Frankfurt School and aesthetically closer to Bertolt Brecht - rather than to Freud or Reich - confirming his status as a militant left radical

Bypassing stroke-damaged neural pathways via a neural interface induces targeted cortical adaptation

手の運動機能を持たない脳領域に人工神経接続システムを使って新たに運動機能を付与することに成功. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2019-10-21.Regaining the function of an impaired limb is highly desirable in paralyzed individuals. One possible avenue to achieve this goal is to bridge the interrupted pathway between preserved neural structures and muscles using a brain–computer interface. Here, we demonstrate that monkeys with subcortical stroke were able to learn to use an artificial cortico-muscular connection (ACMC), which transforms cortical activity into electrical stimulation to the hand muscles, to regain volitional control of a paralysed hand. The ACMC induced an adaptive change of cortical activities throughout an extensive cortical area. In a targeted manner, modulating high-gamma activity became localized around an arbitrarily-selected cortical site controlling stimulation to the muscles. This adaptive change could be reset and localized rapidly to a new cortical site. Thus, the ACMC imparts new function for muscle control to connected cortical sites and triggers cortical adaptation to regain impaired motor function after stroke