Communicative Resurrection: Letters to the Dead in the Israeli Newspaper

By studying letters written to the dead published in the popular Israeli press between 1997 and 2014, this paper examines the practices that constitute communicative acts toward a deceased person using interpersonal and mass media, in order to embody the recipiency of the dead. Using an analytical framework that draws on media ecology, communication theory, and discourse analysis, the paper demonstrates how the epistolary and mass media rhetoric operate to reconstruct the performance of the dead as an addressee. By exploring this understudied phenomenon and revisiting core notions of communication in light of written technologies, distance, and death, the paper argues that this communicative constellation, as a whole, is a performative act that offers a “communicative resurrection” to the dead.     

Towards Understanding Directed Evolution: More than Half of All Amino Acid Positions Contribute to Ionic Liquid Resistance of Bacillus subtilis Lipase A

Ionic liquids (ILs) are attractive (co‐)solvents for biocatalysis. However, in high concentration (>10 % IL), enzymes usually show decreased activity. No general principles have been discovered to improve IL resistance of enzymes by protein engineering. We present a systematic study to elucidate general engineering principles by site saturation mutagenesis on the complete gene bsla. Screening in presence of four [BMIM]‐based ILs revealed two unexpected lessons on directed evolution: 1) resistance improvement was obtainable at 50–69 % of all amino acid positions, thus explaining the success of small sized random mutant libraries; 2) 6–13 % of substitutions led to improved resistance. Among these, 66–95 % were substitutions by chemically different amino acids (e.g., aromatic to polar/aliphatic/charged amino acids), thus indicating that mutagenesis methods introducing such changes should, at least for lipases like BSLA, be favored to improve IL resistance.     

An Immobilised Grubbs 2nd Generation Catalyst for Application in Flow‐Through Devices

An improved immobilised Grubbs 2^nd generation catalyst and its application in flow‐through devices, shown for on‐column reaction gas chromatography (ocRGC), has been studied. The coupling of a reaction capillary and a separation column in GC/MS allows direct reaction monitoring and analysis of conversion as well as reaction kinetics. The presented permanently bonded N‐heterocyclic carbene ligand shows a great stability and activity in ring closing metathesis reactions. A salt‐free approach was used to generate the carbene ligand, which can be directly monitored by mass spectrometry. The very flexible design of the immobilised ligand system in reaction channels and capillaries of flow through systems allows the preparation of various catalysts using a broad variety of metal precursors. This strategy of immobilised catalytically active complexes offers a wide range of on‐column reactions combinable with fast reaction screening by high throughput experimentation.

     

Climate impact of biofuels in shipping: global model studies of the aerosol indirect effect

Aerosol emissions from international shipping are recognized to have a large impact on the Earth's radiation budget, directly by scattering and absorbing solar radiation and indirectly by altering cloud properties. New regulations have recently been approved by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) aiming at progressive reductions of the maximum sulfur content allowed in marine fuels from current 4.5% by mass down to 0.5% in 2020, with more restrictive limits already applied in some coastal regions. In this context, we use a global bottom-up algorithm to calculate geographically resolved emission inventories of gaseous (NO(x), CO, SO(2)) and aerosol (black carbon, organic matter, sulfate) species for different kinds of low-sulfur fuels in shipping. We apply these inventories to study the resulting changes in radiative forcing, attributed to particles from shipping, with the global aerosol-climate model EMAC-MADE. The emission factors for the different fuels are based on measurements at a test bed of a large diesel engine. We consider both fossil fuel (marine gas oil) and biofuels (palm and soy bean oil) as a substitute for heavy fuel oil in the current (2006) fleet and compare their climate impact to that resulting from heavy fuel oil use. Our simulations suggest that ship-induced surface level concentrations of sulfate aerosol are strongly reduced, up to about 40-60% in the high-traffic regions. This clearly has positive consequences for pollution reduction in the vicinity of major harbors. Additionally, such reductions in the aerosol loading lead to a decrease of a factor of 3-4 in the indirect global aerosol effect induced by emissions from international shipping.     

Influence of Ni and Cr impurities on the electronic properties of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin film solar cells

Deposition of Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ (CIGS) thin film solar cells on metallic substrate is an attractive approach for development of low cost solar modules. However, in such devices, special care has to be taken to avoid diffusion of impurities, such as Fe, Ni, and Cr, from the substrate into the active layers. In this work, the influence of Ni and Cr impurities on the electronic properties of CIGS thin film solar cells is investigated in detail. Impurities were introduced into the CIGS layer by diffusion during the CIGS deposition process from a Ni or Cr precursor layer below the Mo electrical back contact. A high temperature and a low temperature CIGS deposition process were applied in order to correlate the changes in the photovoltaic parameters with the amount of impurities diffused into the absorber layer. Solar cells with Ni and Cr impurities show a reduction in the device performance, whereas the effect was most pronounced in Ni containing devices. The presence of deep defect levels in the absorber layer was identified with admittance spectroscopy and can be related to Ni and Cr impurities, which diffused into the CIGS layer according to secondary ion mass spectroscopy depth profiles and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Systematic analysis of coverage and usage of conference proceedings in web of science

The role of conference proceedings for scientific communication varies among the different research fields. It is thus difficult to determine how to use them in bibliometric studies that cover all or at least a variety of the research fields without favouring or penalizing observation subjects that are specialized in fields that rely heavily on conference proceedings. Also, the coverage of conference proceedings in bibliometric databases is often unclear. Not only have there been reports of misclassification but also of insufficient coverage. In this study, the Web of Science is used to give an overview of coverage of conference proceedings as well as advantages and pitfalls of their usage in bibliometric analyses. In particular, the focus lies on different citation behaviour of and for conference proceedings and the implications for bibliometric indicators. This is complemented by an investigation of the development of coverage and publication behaviour in conference proceedings which is compared to those of journal publications. Finally, the importance but also drawbacks and opportunities of acknowledging conference proceedings publications for bibliometric studies are summarized.     

Organization of self-knowledge: Implications for recovery from sad mood.

In compartmentalized self-organization, positive and negative self-beliefs are separated into distinct categories (i.e., self-aspects), so that each self-aspect contains primarily positive or primarily negative beliefs. In evaluatively integrative organization, self-aspect categories contain a mixture of positive and negative beliefs. Positive-compartmentalized individuals recovered easily from a sad mood when they could reflect on personally important, pure positive self-aspects. When situational factors maintained the activation of pure negative self-aspects, compartmentalization seemed to perpetuate the negative mood. These studies suggest that people with a positive-compartmentalized self (who usually report high self-esteem and positive mood) have a hidden vulnerability to intense negative states. The advantages of an evaluatively integrated self may require having the opportunity to reflect on (and integrate) positive and negative beliefs about the self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Foam formation mechanisms in particle suspensions applied to metal foams

At first glance, metal foams appear to be peculiar. On the one hand, they show a high stability with life times of minutes up to hours. On the other hand, metal foams should be highly unstable due to capillary forces. Generally, the cell structures show odd cell configurations. In addition, the cell walls are thick, about 100 m, and exhibit pronounced local swellings and indents.In this paper, we show that this apparent discrepancy is a direct consequence of an underlying foam stabilization mechanism for metals which is based on a barrier effect induced by particles confined in cell walls. Numerical simulation based on a lattice Boltzmann model shows how particles get confined within cell walls and induce a repulsive disjoining pressure there. This disjoining pressure is responsible for the high foam stability generally observed. The identified stabilization mechanism also explains the presence of irregular cell structures generally observed for metal foams and represents the basis for further developments.