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Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Melbourne, School of Physiotherapy, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-116)

The period from 1921 to 1930 saw the Daily Herald come under the direct control of the organised Labour movement - jointly owned by the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress. It seperates an earlier incarnation of independent left radicalism from a subsequent identity as a commercial daily tied to an official political line. It is a period of commercial and competitive failure - the 500,000 circulation constantly evoked as a target was only attained in times of exceptional political or industrial excitement. Reliant on movement subsidies for capital finance it was unable to match the new features and inducements - notably insurance schemes - that competitors provided in a period of rapid expansion and intense circulation battles. Editorially it was torn between the radicalism of its staff, the journalistic instinct to avoid predictability and the desire of Labour's moderate leaders for an automatically reliable supporter in the national press. As leadership pressures mounted it increasingly became the voice of the centre lecturing followers, with debate restricted - but independent instincts were never totally curbed. Failure to attract the desired mass readership cannot be wholly attributed to poverty. Initially developed as the voice of a committed, informed radical political elite it continued to reflect their interests - and would always choose to educate rather than entertain. In the absence of a mass counterculture this left it seeking a popular readership with a serious approach. Realisation that a different approach was needed to win such a readership combined with recognition that this would need capital investment beyond the means of the movement to force the partnership formed with Odhams Press in 1929, ending exclusive movement control.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / This study attempts a systematic survey and comparison of Roman Catholic and Ecumenical Movement (since 1925) doctrines of the state conceived as a universal institution and the political instrument of society. It deals with the theoretical doctrines of each group, and not with either the historical evolution of these concepts, or with the actual practices of these groups in their relations with particular states. Strictly speaking, it is not a comparison of Roman Catholic and Protestant views of the state because the Movement embraces some non-Protestants. [TRUNCATED]

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boston University

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This thesis presents an empirical analysis of the depth cue of motion parallax. The history of research in this area is described and some recent computational models are outlined which show that parallax information can theoretically provide accurate information about the depth structure of the environment. In contrast to previous empirical work, which failed to demonstrate that motion parallax could be used effectively, the experiments reported in this thesis show that it can be an accurate source of information about depth structure. The characteristics of the processing underlying the use of motion parallax were investigated. Sensitivity to depth surfaces specified by relative motion was high, and it varied as a function of the spatial rate of change of depth. Moreover, the sensitivity function was similar to that measured for stereoscopic depth surfaces. The finding of close similarities between motion parallax and stereoscopic depth was a major theme of the thesis. Strong negative aftereffects followed prolonged viewing of depth surfaces specified by either cue and, in addition, large simultaneous contrast effects were also found. Here, the perceived depth of one area was affected by the depth of the surrounding area. These findings suggest that depth processing from both parallax and stereopsis involves extensive spatial interactions. A model of depth processing was suggested where the basic mechanisms had extended receptive fields which extracted changes in depth, specified either by relative motion or disparity, across local areas. The presence of anisotropies in the perception of depth surfaces showed that there was a differential sensitivity to particular local patterns of relative motion or disparity, which might be due to an asymmetric organisation within depth receptive fields. Finally, the motion parallax and stereoscopic depth processing systems were found to interact, indicating that information from the two sources might come together at some stage. Overall, the empirical findings emphasised the importance of extracting information about the local structure of depth surfaces rather than the depths of individual points.

An animal's own behaviour can give rise to sensory stimulation that is very similar to stimulation of completely external origin. Much of this self-induced stimulation has little informative value to the animal and may even interfere with the processing of externally-induced stimulation. A high-level association area in the temporal cortex of macaque (superior temporal polysensory area, STP) which has been shown to participate in the analysis of visual motion was targeted in a series of experiments in order to investigate whether this brain area discriminates externally- and self-induced stimulation in its visual motion processing. Earlier results in somatosensory processing within this same brain area provided grounds for this presumption The cells studied in here were sensitive to the presence of motion but showed no selectivity for the form of the stimulus. 25% of all visually responsive cells in area STP were classified as belonging to this class of cells. This group of cells was further categorized into unidirectional (39%), bidirectional (4%) and pandirectional (57%) cells. Tuning to direction varied in sharpness. For most cells the angular change in direction required to reduce response to half maximal was between 45 and 70 degrees. The optimal directions of cells appeared clustered around cartesian axes, (up/down, left/right and towards/away). The response latency varied between 35.0-126.4 ms (mean 90.9 ms). On average cell responses showed a transient burst of activity followed by a tonic discharge maintained for the duration of stimulation. 83% of the motion sensitive cells lacking form selectivity responded to any stimuli moved by the experimenter, but gave no response to the sight of the animal's own limb movements. The cells remained, however, responsive to external stimulation while the monkey's own hand was moving in view. Responses to self-induced movements were recovered if the monkey introduced a novel object in its hand into view. That the response discrimination between externally- and self-induced stimulation was not caused by differences in the visual appearance of the stimuli was confirmed in the second experiment where the monkey was trained to rotate a handle connected to a patterned cylinder in order to generate visual motion stimulation over a fixation point. 61% of the tested cells discriminated between pattern motion generated by the monkey and by the experimenter. It was shown that the monkey's motor activity as such (turning a handle without visible cylinder rotation) did not affect the cells' spontaneous activity. Some indication was received to suggest that the discriminative mechanism is using not only (motor) corollary discharges but also proprioceptive input. These results also gave evidence of the plasticity of discriminative processing in STP for the animal's life-time experiences. Finally, the cells were studied for their responsiveness for image motion resulting from movements of external objects and movements of the animal's body (self-motion). 84% of the cells responded only to visual object-motion and failed to respond to visual motion resulting from animal's self-motion. The experiments also revealed that area STP processes visual motion mostly in observer- relative terms, i.e. in reference to the perceiver itself. The results provide one explanation for the functional significance of the convergence of several modalities of sensory (and motor) input in the STP. It is suggested that area STP works as a "neural filter" to separate expected sensory consequences resulting from one's own actions from those that originate from the actions of other animals or environmental events.

Extracting a motion signal for a two-dimensional contour requires the human visual system to derive a velocity vector from the spatially limited receptive fields of motion sensitive cortical cells. An individual cell's response may not specify the contour's true velocity. Models of motion often combine the outputs of different classes of receptive fields to generate a reliable motion signal. Their efficacy was tested by comparing their predictions with human psychophysical performance. The perceived speed of co-linear inclined line segments in horizontal translation was subject to a bias in favour of the local components of the contour. Single tilted lines were also subject to a bias in perceived speed. Experiments investigated the effects of grouping, co-linearity, eccentricity, terminator proximity and stimulus uncertainty on perceived speed and clearly showed that the perceived velocity of line segments is not obtained by a simple averaging process of local velocity signals and veridical velocity signals of line terminators. Variation of the spatial position of terminators was sufficient to abolish the bias in perceived speed of horizontally drifting inclined lines. Neither "vector-average" nor "winner-take-all" rules are sufficient to account for this. The method of integration of one-dimensional components into two-dimensional plaid patterns was explored in two experiments recording thresholds for perceived rotation of drifting plaids. Type II plaids are not subject to the oblique effect found for rotation discrimination thresholds for type IS plaids. Plaid rotation induced by a speed change in one of the components showed that direction perception does not follow a strict interpretation of the "intersection of constraints rule". As current models of motion integration fail to provide a full account of the perceived speed and direction of two-dimensional patterns; higher-order attentional processes should be incorporated into models of motion perception.