Specificity of Socio-Psychological Technologies for Increasing Volitional Self-Regulation of Students-Shooters (On the Example of the Shooting Gallery of the Russian State Social University)

The specificity of socio-psychological technologies for increasing volitional self-regulation of students-shooters of the shooting range of the Russian State Social University has been determined. The socio-psychological technologies used for the development of volitional self-regulation of studentsshooters (information blocks, active forms of work – exercises and games, psychological modeling and playing and analysis of various situations) during the course of classes contributed to the achievement of the goal to an insignificant extent. However, raw scores make it possible to conclude that active forms of work (exercises and games) contribute, first of all, to an increase in the style of self-regulation of behavior and its components such as flexibility, modeling, evaluation of results, planning, programming, and independence.

Monoblock silencers for pistols

This paper presents the stages of development of silencers with monoblock spreaders for pistols. The features of two groups of monoblock silencer designs (with and without a central tube) are identified and described. The use of different materials for different silencer parts is substantiated: the body and the monoblock are made of an aluminium alloy, the covers and the unions are made of a titanium alloy, and the perforated tubes are made of steel or titanium. The paper shows the features of design solutions and describes the design of internal components and their effect on the operating efficiency for different embodiments of theirs. The mamufacture of silencers of this design is less labor intensive in comparison with silences with discrete components (bodies, bushings, etc.), thus offering a lower cost due to the use of advanced technologies in the manufacturing of the silencer components and the silencer as a whole. The paper presents the results of firing range and shooting gallery full-scale tests of monoblock silencers with Glock 17 and Fort 14 pistols using 9х18 mm і 9х19 mm cartridges. The results show that: - in sound suppression efficiency, the silencers compare well with their best foreign counterparts and outperform the standard silencers of Research and Production Company Fort at comparable dimensions and mass. The efficiency of the silencers developed was measured with a precision pulsed sound level meter and verified by comparison tests with basic prototypes developed earlier and foreign silencers. The efficiency proved to be (25 – 36) dB(A). - the silencers do not affect pistol automatics and sustain standard firing regimes, - the silencers do not affect the shot grouping characteristics, and - the silencers do not affect other performance characteristics either. Hence the silencers for Fort or similar pistols developed at the Institute of Technical Mechanics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the State Space Agency of Ukraine are efficient and reliable.

Killing Strangers

A bewildering feature of so much contemporary political violence is its stunning impersonality. Every major city centre becomes a potential shooting gallery; and every metro system a potential bomb alley. Victims just happen, as the saying goes, to ‘be in the wrong place at the wrong time’. Killing Strangers tackles the question of how such violence became ‘unchained’ from inter-personal relationships. It traces the rise of such impersonal violence by examining violence in conjunction with changing social and political realities across Western Europe and North America since the late eighteenth century. In particular, it traces both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors. On the one hand, the rise of the modern state with its titanic bureaucratic resources of monitoring and coercion forced the violence of opponents into niche forms. On the other hand, social and technological changes offered fresh opportunities to cause mayhem in startlingly new ways. Both forces are necessary for any understanding of why contemporary political violence takes the forms that it does.

Promoter scanning during transcription initiation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Pol II in the “shooting gallery”

ABSTRACTBackgroundThe majority of eukaryotic promoters utilize multiple transcription start sites (TSSs). How multiple TSSs are specified at individual promoters across eukaryotes is not understood for most species. In S. cerevisiae, a preinitiation complex comprised of Pol II and conserved general transcription factors (GTFs) assembles and opens DNA upstream of TSSs. Evidence from model promoters indicates that the preinitiation complex (PIC) scans from upstream to downstream to identify TSSs. Prior results suggest that TSS distributions at promoters where scanning occurs shift in a polar fashion upon alteration in Pol II catalytic activity or GTF function.ResultsTo determine extent of promoter scanning across promoter classes in S. cerevisiae, we perturbed Pol II catalytic activity and GTF function and analyzed their effects on TSS usage genome-wide. We find that alterations to Pol II, TFIIB, or TFIIF function widely alter the initiation landscape consistent with promoter scanning operating at all yeast promoters, regardless of promoter class. Promoter architecture, however, can determine extent of promoter sensitivity to altered Pol II activity in ways that are predicted by a scanning model.ConclusionsOur observations coupled with previous data validate key predictions of the scanning model for Pol II initiation in yeast – which we term the “shooting gallery”. In this model, Pol II catalytic activity, and the rate and processivity of Pol II scanning together with promoter sequence determine the distribution of TSSs and their usage.

Imperialism and Class in the Arab World

Ali Kadri, Arab Development Denied (London: Anthem, 2014), 250 pages, $40, paperback.Perhaps nowhere does violence collapse the horizon as it does in the Arab world. Imperial wars have demolished the Libyan state and turned Syria into a charnel house. Yemen, the region's poorest country, was a U.S. drone shooting gallery before Saudi Arabia…attacked it, sending it spiraling into famine. Iraq shudders under ISIS's car bombs after decades of wars and sanctions. And Palestine continues to bleed and resist under the weight of Israeli settler-colonialism.… Why so much violence? The academic mercenaries of counterinsurgency studies fixate on terrorism as a response to material grievance, and Western war as the response. Others ascribe the region's underdevelopment to a mix of institutional inadequacy and democratic deficits, remediable by the application of U.S. power.… Against this tableau, Ali Kadri in Arab Development Denied offers a coruscatingly intelligent account of how the United States has denied Arab development. Through wars, colonialism, and sanctions, it has sought for decades to prevent working-class sovereignty in the region.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.