Passive Sense Research Articles

ELECTRICALLY CONTROLLED EXTENSION EFFECTS IN SOFT SOLIDS

Some recent work has involved the incorporation of solids into soft matrices in order to acquire an improvement in their mechanical and damping performances [R. S. Lakes et al, Nature, Vol. 410, 565-567]. Other more general analytical works have dealt with the application of electrical and magnetic fields to susceptible materials, usually involving a relatively hard fluid filled sandwich. In the present note the effect of soaking soft porous solids in magneto or electro-rheological fluids (MRF or EFG respectively) on their stiffness is announced. In this case the pores or cells of the carrier soft solid hold polarisable solids. When the resulting composites are excited by a magnetic (MRF) or electric field (ERF) the stiffness of the sections thus produced are increased (in a passive sense) under loading. Unique results are obtained when auxetic MR soft soaked foams are excited – significant magnetostrictive effects are measured.

From Advocates to Terrorists

IntroductionPolitical information, like much of what is comprehended as information, today, is often understood in a rather passive sense of being expressions that are consulted for understanding. This is a liberalist view that sees persons as choosers and consumers of information. In this article, we would like to go beyond this epistemology and discuss from an expressive viewpoint, namely, that of an agent's expressive actions in relation to the State. Our discussion will pass through the topics of ideology, States of exception and States of emergency, and the distinctions between morals and ethics, law and justice. Far from being passive or synonymous with facts, will be understood as expressions by agents, both institutional and personal. Our final discussion in this article will be in regard to the writings of the political theorist and activist Antonio Negri in the context of his imprisonment and trial on terror charges from 1979 to 1983 (the writings issue from 1983-the year in which his case actually began to be tried). Here, we will suggest the dissonance between States and social movements as expressive agents and forces. Here we will see the denial of the ethical by the moral, justice by legal right, and the denial of a more open future for a nation by classes that control a State.Today, these topics could not be more timely. Intellectual and Freedom of information form core value for the Western library tradition, but as I write this the Library of Congress, as well as all other United States government agencies, have been forbidden by the federal government to allow access to U.S. diplomatic dispatches or cables made public by an internet organization named Wikileaks. As I write this, the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has been under legal threat by the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, and several leading politicians in the U.S. have urged his arrest and trial for treason (despite his being an Australian citizen), with several other leading political and media figures also calling for his assassination as a terrorist. The Vice President of the United States, Joseph Biden, on December 19, 2010, referred to Assange on a popular Sunday news program as a hi- tech terrorist1 and the commercial media has largely continued this view of Assange, echoing the dominant government line. The accused leaker of this material, a U.S. Army private, Bradley Manning, has been held for over seven months at the time of this writing in harsh solitary confinement without trial or conviction. Further, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, on December 7, 2010, said that the U.S. Justice Department should extend the investigation of these leaks to the New York Times, which published reports based on the Wikileaks releases.2 While the press coverage of the contents of the leaks has been relatively sparse in the U.S. press, European and other world wide presses have been reporting on the contents since the time of the first release. For the most part, it would not be unfair to suggest that the U.S. media-including the New York Times-in contrast to main European newspapers, have largely focused on the personal and alleged sexual life of the founder of Wikileaks and Swedish criminal investigations related to the latter, rather than upon the contents of the cables. And as I am editing this article, the revelations of the cables have contributed to the overthrow of dictatorial governments in Tunisia and Egypt. The Hosni Mubarak government in Egypt unsuccessfully relied in large part upon the silencing of the Internet and mobile telecommunication media as a means of stopping popular revolt. Meanwhile a bill earlier introduced in the U.S. Senate will be reintroduced by Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins in 2011, giving the executive branch authority, without judicial review, to control crucial parts of the Internet cyber- infrastructure in the case of a national cyberemergency. …

Organizing by Projective Hearing: The Active Use of a Passive Sense

This article aims to show that managers' reactions to employees, based on good listening, combined with a clear vision on what is important in the future, is in fact a strong organizing force. The “projective hearing” concept is introduced to capture this underrated ability that may explain why a strong delivery style is not the highway to effective leadership: what happens interactionally is probably more interesting. Projective hearing with reflexive responding allows for immediate responses in a variety of situations, acknowledges that signals have more influence than messages, and is rooted in daily interactional practices. It fits in with recent planning theory that stresses a flexible response in complex, dynamic environments. It is also linked to the question of how to motivate coworkers and to the media richness theory, stressing and explaining the value of face-to-face encounters.

Modem‐based aids for underwater navigation.

Both autonomous and semi‐autonomous underwater platforms require navigation capabilities. Acoustics have long been the preferred method because all other methods are so limited in range and/or are so costly. Traditional methods have relied on tonal‐based waveforms used with any of three approaches: long baseline (LBL), short baseline, or ultra‐short baseline (USBL). These systems can be highly effective when propagation conditions are “good” but may incur high cost in terms of false and missed detections. The use of wide‐band waveforms can substantially improve performance, but a significant cost is incurred in the complexity required at the receiver. However, given this complexity, consideration should be given to the use of underwater acoustic communications (acomms) as the provider of enhanced navigation aids. We describe three modem‐based navigation aids based, two of which have never exhibited a false alarm, and each of which provides substantial improvement over tonal‐based systems. We describe a spread spectrum signaling method used in LBL navigation, an underwater GPS system in which any number of platforms can obtain accurate geoposition in a completely passive sense, and we describe a physically small, wide‐band modification to conventional USBL. All of these systems provide high accuracy navigation while retaining full acomms links.

A New Approach to Regulating Temporary Agency Work in Ontario or Back to the Future?

In 2009, the province of Ontario, Canada adopted the Employment Standards Amendment Act (Temporary Help Agencies) partly in response to public concern over temporary agency workers’ limited access to labour protection. This article examines its “new” approach in historical and international context, illustrating that the resulting section of the Employment Standards Act (ESA) reflects continuity through change in its continued omissions and exclusions. The article begins by defining temporary agency work and describing its significance, explaining how it exemplifies precarious employment, partly by virtue of the triangular employment relationship at its heart. Next it traces three eras of regulation, from the early 20th to the early 21st centuries: in the first era, against the backdrop of the federal government’s forays into regulation through the Immigration Act, Ontario responded to abusive practices of private employment agencies, with strict regulations, directed especially at those placing recent immigrants in employment. In the second era, restrictions on private employment agencies were gradually loosened, resulting in modest regulation; in this era, there was growing space for the emergence of “new” types of agencies providing “employment services,” including temporary help agencies, which carved out a niche for themselves by targeting marginalized social groups, such as women. The third era was characterized by the legitimization of private employment agencies and, in particular, temporary help agencies, both in a passive sense by government inaction in response to growing complexities surrounding their operation, and in an active sense by the repeal of Ontario’s Employment Agencies Act in 2000. Despite a consultative process aimed, in the words of Ontario’s then Minister of Labour, at “enhanc [ing] protections for employees working for temporary help agencies,” the new section of the ESA adopted in 2009 reproduces outdated approaches to regulation through its omissions and exclusions; specifically, it focuses narrowly on temporary help agencies rather than including an overlapping group of private employment agencies with which they comprise the employment services industry and its denial of access to protection to workers from a particular occupational group (i.e., workers placed by a subset of homecare agencies otherwise falling within the definition of “assignment employees”). Highlighting the importance of looking back in devising new regulations, the article concludes by advancing a more promising approach for the future that would address more squarely the triangular employment relationship as the basis for extending greater protection to workers.

The influence of menstrual cycle on ankle proprioception

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the three phases (menstrual, follicular, luteal phase) of the menstrual cycle on active and passive ankle joint position sense. Twenty five healthy women with regular menstrual cycle, not pregnant and no contraceptive using with normal and consistent length of menstrual cycle and bleeding days participated in the study. Blood samples were collected from each subject for determination of hormonal level the phases of menstrual cycle. Ankle joint position sense changes during three different phases of the menstrual cycle were assessed. Active and passive joint position sense of dominant leg of subjects was measured using the Biodex 2 isokinetic dynamometer. The absolute reposition errors from the target angles have been evaluated by repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA) in three hormonally verified phases of menstrual cycle. No significant interaction was observed between ankle joint position sense test and the phases of the menstrual cycle. We did not identify ankle joint position sense alteration across the menstrual, follicular and luteal phases. We suggest that the menstrual cycle does not significantly affect ankle joint position sense.

The effects of muscle fatigue and proprioceptive deficits on the passive joint senses of ankle inversion and eversion

Objective: To investigate whether muscle fatigue of ankle invertors and evertors reduces the ability to detect inversion and eversion angles in subjects with an ankle proprioceptive deficit. Design: A cross-sectional before-after study with repeated measures design. Setting: Research laboratory. Subjects: Thirty young adults with defective passive joint sense of ankle inversion were recruited into this study and compared with 30 similar controls without ankle proprioceptive deficits. Interventions: Muscle fatigue of ankle invertors and evertors was defined as occuring when the maximal isokinetic torque declined to below 50% of the peak torque. Main measures: The absolute differences between the angles detected and assigned, with target angles at inversion 10 ◦ , inversion 20 ◦ , and eversion 10 ◦ trialled in random orders. Results: Proprioceptive deficits and muscle fatigue of ankle inversion and eversion had a significant interaction with the ability to detect small amplitude target angles. Detecting 10 ◦ of ankle eversion and inversion showed significantly greater errors than for 20 ◦ of ankle inversion. Following muscle fatigue or in subjects with proprioceptive deficits there were greater errors in detecting small amplitudes of ankle positions (10 ◦ of ankle inversion and eversion). Conclusions: The potential deleterious effects of fatigue and proprioceptive deficits on the ability to detect the small range of lateral movements of ankle joint was addressed in this investigation.. Fatigue worsens chronic proprioceptive ankle deficits and hence may enhance the risk of injury.

ELECTRICALLY CONTROLLED EXTENSION EFFECTS IN SOFT SOLIDS

Some recent work has involved the incorporation of solids into soft matrices in order to acquire an improvement in their mechanical and damping performances [R. S. Lakes et al, Nature, Vol. 410, 565-567]. Other more general analytical works have dealt with the application of electrical and magnetic fields to susceptible materials, usually involving a relatively hard fluid filled sandwich. In the present note the effect of soaking soft porous solids in magneto or electro-rheological fluids (MRF or EFG respectively) on their stiffness is announced. In this case the pores or cells of the carrier soft solid hold polarisable solids. When the resulting composites are excited by a magnetic (MRF) or electric field (ERF) the stiffness of the sections thus produced are increased (in a passive sense) under loading. Unique results are obtained when auxetic MR soft soaked foams are excited – significant magnetostrictive effects are measured.

The Space of Optimism: State Fantasy and the Case of The Odd Women

It is a commonplace to think of the Victorian period as a hopeful age. Confronted with the life-altering consequences of industrialization, the fluctuations of capitalism and imperialism, and the struggles of gender and class politics, many Victorians devoted themselves to the prospect of social reform. Whether through such measures as philanthropy or legislation, they espoused the belief that their respective solutions could transform collective experience for the better. Meanwhile, for improvement on the individual level, Victorians of all classes often turned to such touchstones of liberal individualism as culture, marriage, enterprise, and religion, which together comprised a kind of bourgeois canon of hope. Appearing in conduct manuals, biographies, Christian tracts, and novels, these touchstones promised in different ways the possibility of achieving a personhood at once fuller and more buoyant—one that could rise above the anxieties, dissatisfactions, and cruelties of everyday life. This essay proposes to investigate specific Victorian objects of optimism and the fantasies in which they unfold by focusing on a rupture in the late-nineteenth-century British popular imaginary. In particular, I will track how this rupture enters the social world of George Gissing's The Odd Women (1893). During this period, placing optimism in objects such as philanthropy and religion was ordinary, if not uncontested. However, by the 1880s and 1890s, these objects' meanings were adjusting to the circulation of a new object of optimism and the fantasy in which it starred: "the State" as a heroic actor. Given the dominance of a nationalist ideology of bourgeois individualism, it is all the more striking that by the end of the century it could become normal to hope that "the State" could transform one's life for the better. In a wide range of late-nineteenth-century British discourses, fiction and nonfiction, writers both statist and anti-statist engaged in hopeful fantasy as they personified governmental social services and [End Page 55] regulatory practices into an acting subject, a kind of meta-liberal individual. The syntax of the sentence "The State ought to x" is the primary enunciatory phenomenon under investigation here. The capitalized "S" of its subject and the ethical imperative contained in its verb refer to the historical fantasy of a monolithic state that could and should intervene in economic and social brutalities. By virtue not only of the transforming powers of the law but also the performative power of its subjects' appeals, the Victorian state in the last two decades of the nineteenth century was garnering a new phantasmatic register, one in which it was imaginatively endowed with the capacity to grant the plenitude that liberal political philosophy and capitalist ideology promised but routinely denied. I refer to this register as "state fantasy." Even critics of state intervention, like Herbert Spencer, were susceptible to it, vilifying and thereby animating this notion of the state. After briefly elaborating what I mean by state fantasy, I will turn to The Odd Women to analyze an instance of its cultural manifestation. Nonfiction genres such as parliamentary speeches and political philosophy attest to increases in interventionist legislation and in references to the state as a kind of person. They also forward arguments about how individuals and their environments are constituted and about how change enters such systems. However, novels not only do the same, but also something else unique to their genre. Committed to representing the everyday, they reveal the uneven paths phenomena such as new laws or municipal innovations take to becoming ordinary: novels model for the citizen-reader how to integrate such phenomena into the experience of daily life. Novels are thus demonstrative, but not in the passive sense to which realist art pretends. Rather, they can demonstrate how historical events shift from being news to becoming taken for granted. In some ways, The Odd Women may not seem like the most obvious of Gissing's novels to select for such a project. Literary critics have...

Writing for readers

A fog has settled on scientific English. Well-written English effortlessly communicates the writer's intent to the reader. Unfortunately, far too often, science is written in a form which renders the content hard to understand, and which makes unreasonable demands on the reader. 1. Hochhauser M. Why are unreadable articles still being written?. Letter, BMJ. 2003; 325: 711 Crossref Scopus (3) Google Scholar , 2. Weeks W.B. Wallace A.E. Readability of British and American prose. Letter, BMJ. 2002; 325: 1451-1452 Crossref Scopus (30) Google Scholar , 3. Albert T. Transatlantic writing differences are probably exaggerated. Letter, BMJ. 2003; 325: 711 Google Scholar , 4. Jacobs A. Misclassification, long words and errors may obscure real differences. Letter, BMJ. 2003; 325: 711-712 Google Scholar English is a very flexible and fault tolerant medium of communication, and good writing is helped by a number of simple rules of structure. These recognise the form in which the human brain is optimised to take in written information. Short, active sentences, concise choice of words and the ruthless elimination of redundancy serve the reader far better than long paragraphs, tortured sentence structure, passive sense and subsidiary clauses.

Hookers and lookers: prostitution and soliciting in late Archaic Thasos

While accepting A. J. Graham's interpretation of the ‘stèle du port de Thasos’ (SEG 42. 785) as presenting regulations aimed at checking prostitution and associated soliciting in late Archaic Thasos, this article seeks to clarify some specific issues in the text. It urges (i) that the correct reading at l. 31 is κατοικιῶν, with the meaning ‘dwelling’; (ii) that θῆς ἓνεκεν (l. 32) should bear a passive sense, ‘for the sake of being seen’, and, likewise, θήσθω (l. 33), which necessarily picks up θῆς ἓνεκεν, should be regarded as conveying not only the idea of looking out but also of being seen by prospective clients; thus ll. 30–3 are to be rendered ‘no one shall go up onto the roof of maisons publiques in order to be seen, nor shall any woman either show herself from the windows’; and (iii) that προïστάσθω (l. 45) is not to be taken in conjunction with ἐσβαλλέτω (ll. 44–5) as governing the object κόπρον, nor as intransitive in the sense ‘solicit as a prostitute’, but rather as transitive middle, with the subject ὁ ἐνοικέων (l. 34), in the sense ‘exhibit women for sale’.

Effects of Extensive Training on Female Teenage Gymnasts’ Active and Passive Ankle-Joint Position Sense

Objective:To compare the ankle-joint position-sense patterns of gymnasts and nongymnasts.Design:Proprioceptive ability was evaluated with active and passive angle-reproduction tests.Participants:40 subjects assigned to 2 groups: group 1 (n = 20), healthy subjects, and group 2 (n = 20), teenage female gymnasts.Measurements:Joint-position sense was actively measured with a Cybex NORM™ isokinetic dynamometer and passively with a proprioception-testing device.Results:A Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the mean values of the gymnasts’ and controls’ ankles. Results revealed statistically significant differences (P < .05) between the 2 groups. No statistically significant difference between the dominant and nondominant ankles in the 2 groups was observed.Conclusions:The results suggest that extensive training might affect ankle-joint position sense, but genetics and natural selection could be the reason. It is thought that athletes are able to develop enhanced neurosensory pathways as a result of long-term training.

Absolute Reactivity of the 4-Methoxycumyl Cation in Non-Acid Zeolites

The reactivity of the 4-methoxycumyl cation in a series of alkali metal cation-exchanged zeolites (LiY, NaY, KY, RbY CsY, NaX, NaMor, and Naβ) in the absence and presence of coadsorbed alcohols and water is examined using nanosecond laser flash photolysis. In dry zeolites, the absolute reactivity of the carbocation is found to be strongly dependent on the nature of the alkali counterion, the Si/Al ratio, and the framework morphology, with the lifetime of the carbocation in Naβ being almost 10000-fold longer than in CsY. The results suggest a mechanism for carbocation decay involving direct participation of the zeolite framework as a nucleophile, leading to the generation of a framework-bound alkoxy species. Intrazeolite addition reactions of alcohols and water to the 4-methoxycumyl cation can be described in terms of both dynamic and static quenching involving molecular diffusion through the heterogeneous topology and rapid coupling between the alcohol and the carbocation encapsulated within the same cavity. The dynamics of the quenching reactions are different from similar reactions in homogeneous solution due to both the passive and active influences of the zeolite environment. In a passive sense, the zeolite decreases the reactivity of the nucleophilic quencher by hindering molecular diffusion. However, the zeolite actively promotes the efficiency of intracavity coupling by enhancing the deprotonation of the oxonium ion intermediate, allowing the reaction to go to completion.

Psychological Aspects of Early Cancer Detection

Most of the psychological approaches to the patient’s attitude toward her health assume the person ‘functions’, meaning she can reasonably process information and set her own goals 1 . In a context of early detection of cancer, however, the mobilization of fear releases a passive sense of doom. Especially in early diagnosis the perception of an intact and unimpaired body is directly threatened by the imagination of possibly detecting invasive therapeutic processes. If an attitude of avoidance or repression has already developed, viz., denying symptoms or even disregarding an early cancer detection examination despite basically knowing its purpose and benefits, then further mechanisms which stabilize this repressive type of behavior will set in. The consequences may be changes within the patient’s subjective concept of the disease as well as her defensive mechanism against her doctor’s information which has undermined her self-confidence. This tendency toward self-protection should not be brushed off as irrational behavior even if it is accompanied by periodic defensive behavior. It is difficult not only for the patients but also for doctors and medical personnel to deal rationally with the diagnosis of cancer. Both groups run the risk of thwarting their own coping strategies by hesitating to accept reality.

Looking to a Digital Future

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is in the midst of significant change as a result of budgetary pressures from the government and the challenge of the oncoming digital age. Lack of funding and dwindling resources have forced the ABC to shut down many of its regional services and to outsource many of its formerly in-house productions. However, there do appear some ways in which the ABC might meet, as the rhetoric goes, "the challenge of the digital era". Traditionally, the role of the ABC has included the provision of comprehensive coverage of, and service for, the whole of Australia, including regions that would be economically unfeasible for commercial operations to penetrate. Recently, however, budgetary cuts have eroded this role substantially, with the axing of state based current affairs and the cessation of Radio Triple J's planned expansion into regional Australia. The Internet has provided a potential, if problematic, stop-gap solution, through the launch of the ABC's online news service. Internet based news solutions have few of the production-end overheads of the television service. There are no expensive studio set ups, no presenters, no cameras, just text that can be quickly keyed into the system and formatted for instantaneous, non-linear delivery. I should note at this point that currently, this "delivery" is in the passive sense of the word: users must search out the content and download it onto their machines. In Internet jargon, this is called "pull" technology. New technologies being developed promise to "push" the content automatically and directly to a user's computer. The ABC's implementation, taking advantage of all these benefits, is text-based, comprehensive, updated constantly, and easy to use. Currently, however, delivery of Internet-based content is tied to the existing phone network, and with most Internet service providers based in state capitals, regional Internet access is hindered by the cost of long-distance calls. The potential exists, nonetheless, for the ABC to achieve truly national coverage by methods that bypass existing structures. The planned shift by Australian TV networks to digital transmission has the potential to enable new possibilities for public broadcasting. A digital infrastructure could allow information and programming to be cheaply produced at the local level, then recompiled centrally and redistributed across the country. The convergence of computer and television will enable a greater variety of content to be sent to the home -- and, possibly, sent back out again in an altered form. Such a transformation of the way we experience television may well alter the concept of public broadcasting beyond recognition, if not render it obsolete. However, these possibilities, although reasonable given projected advances in technology, so far largely remain fantasy due to the debate over regulation between the Federal government and the commercial networks. It remains to be seen whether the ABC will be able to take advantage of the new opportunities. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Nick Caldwell. "Looking to a Digital Future: Thoughts on the New ABC." M/C Journal 1.1 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.media-culture.org.au/9807/abc.php>. Chicago style: Nick Caldwell, "Looking to a Digital Future: Thoughts on the New ABC," M/C Journal 1, no. 1 (1998), <http://www.nedia-culture.org.au/9807/abc.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Nick Caldwell. (1998) Looking to a digital future: thoughts on the new ABC. M/C Journal 1(1). <http://www.media-culture.org.au/9807/abc.php> ([your date of access]).

Soil-Structure Interaction of Spread-Base Integral Bridge Abutments

ABSTRACT To reduce long-term maintenance costs arising from the deterioration of concrete bridges due to leaky expansion joints, integral bridges have been becoming increasingly popular in many countries. Abandoning expansion joints leads to complex soil-structure interaction problems including those caused by cyclic temperature changes in the deck. These have adverse effects on the performance of integral bridges in terms of deformation mechanisms, lateral earth pressures acting on the abutment wall, bending moment and axial stress in the deck. All these are of great concern to engineers. Centrifuge model tests were conducted on spread-base integral bridge abutments to simulate these temperature effects on the soil-structure interaction. Thermal expansion and contraction of the deck were modelled by imposing controlled cyclic displacements at the top of the abutment wall. Substantial horizontal sliding and the rocking of the abutment due to soil densification and “strain” ratchetting were observed. The measured lateral earth pressure increased with the amplitude of the displacements into the fill (in the passive sense) and the number of cycles, but at a decreasing rate. For the ultimate limit state and the 1 in 120 years return event, the measured lateral earth pressure coefficient was 3.7 and 4.2 for the abutment backfilled with dense and loose sand respectively. The measured bending moments varied fairly linearly with depth, rather than varying as a cubic function with depth as would be expected for a relatively flexible wall subjected to a triangular distribution of lateral pressure. The measured value appeared to reach the design bending capacity of the reinforced concrete wall and base for the 1 in 120 years return event.

The Ambivalent Potential of Cultural Identity

AbstractDespite the overwhelming prevalence of democratic ideals in contemporary political relations throughout the world, a potent ideological challenge to liberal democratic norms is the recent claim that “differential” rights are essential to foster and protect the identity of individual rights within culturally distinct groups. This article examines the claim that cultural identity confers sufficient normative force upon which to base distinct political rights for specific groups. In what, precisely, does the normative force of “cultural identity” lie? The article challenges the claims that individuals' sense of personal identity can only arise through a “secure cultural context”; that a passive sense of group identity is a “primary good” that equals or even precedes the importance of universal human rights; and that this “politics of inclusion” based upon differential rights for different groups will lead to greater equality and tolerance within the larger political community.

A Strategy of ‘Circumvention’: American Policy Towards the Yugoslav Crisis

US decisions in the Yugoslav conflict have reflected a strategy of ‘circumvention’, calling on allies and international organizations to manage the crisis. The strategy itself emanated from a calculated form of procrastination, which rested on two pillars: first (in a passive sense), the rejection of any unilateral commitment to political and military solutions in the former Yugoslavia; secondly (in an active sense), the recognition that any spill‐over from the conflict is equally unacceptable. Spill‐overs are defined geographically and according to the intensity of military clashes; the latter are themselves defined by the pressures of public opinion, the media, allies or international organizations calling for a more pro‐active, multilateral policy.

Holling's Functional Response Model as a Tool to Link the Food-Finding Mechanism of a Probing Shorebird with its Spatial Distribution

1. Knots Calidris canutus are high-arctic breeding shorebirds which spend the nonbreeding season in intertidal areas where they feed on small buried molluscs which are swallowed whole. We tested whether their intake rate can be adequately described by a functional response model (the disc equation of Holling) assuming prey detection by direct touch. 2. Knots were fed two bivalve species (Macoma balthica and Cerastoderma edule) of different size and at different density and in Macoma at variable depth on small areas of soft Sediment. Five different individuals were used in feeding trials during which six prey were allowed detection and ingestion. 3. Knots perfectly obeyed the two basic assumptions of Holling's disc equation: neither the instantaneous area of discovery nor the handling time changed with variation in prey density. 4. However, two predictions for prey perception by direct touch (that the instantaneous area of discovery is a positive function of shell size and a negative one of prey depth) were rejected. The instantaneous area of discovery was usually also higher than predicted from the area touched by probing knots. 5. Knots may, therefore, use a 'remote sense' to locate buried hard-shelled prey. Gerritsen, van Heezik & Swennen (1983) showed that knots do not use taste to discover bivalves at a distance. We argue that the detection involves a self-induced pressure mechanism rather than a passive sense for vibrations, since it is unlikely that static bivalve prey emit such signals just after experimental handling. 6. Whatever the exact prey detection mechanism, the recorded (high) value for the instantaneous area of discovery of deep-living bivalve prey is in accord with the observation that knots use large areas of intertidal flat in the western Dutch Wadden Sea where bivalve stocks are too low to support knots according to a previous functional response model invoking direct touch.

The Ambiguity of Capacity: A Rejoinder to Trevor Hart

This brief rejoinder challenges Trevor Hart’s suggestion that Karl Barth may have misunderstood Emil Brunner’s notion of ‘a point of contact’, and rejects the claim that Barth’s own theology requires a positing of human ‘capacity’, defined in a passive sense. The essay begins by sketching the broader context of the Barth-Brunner debate, which makes the proposal of mutual misunderstanding between the two less likely. The second section explores Hart’s concept of ‘capacity’, and seeks to show that this is incompatible with Barth’s theology. An exposition of Barth’s doctrine of the incarnation forms the third part of the essay, and is an attempt to demonstrate that what stood at the heart of the debate from Barth’s point of view was divine freedom. Then the rejoinder concludes with a rarely cited account of Barth’s attempt at personal reconciliation with Brunner.