Administration Versus Extermination: The Wehrmacht’s Initiatives Toward Executing the Final Solution Between the Eastern and Western Fronts

This article compares and contrasts the Wehrmacht’s execution of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution to the Jewish Question between the Eastern and Western fronts of the Second World War. It seeks to answer the broader question of why regular Wehrmacht infantry contributed directly to the atrocities of the Eastern Front in Poland and Soviet Russia while the Western Front--France, Belgium, and the Netherlands--remained comparatively quiet, even under German occupation. This article’s thesis concludes that the war in the East was intended as a ‘war of extermination’ against world Jewry while the war in the West was more so an ‘administrative occupation.’ Thus, the Eastern Front--viewed by Hitler as the ‘real’ war-- demanded the participation of frontline soldiers whereas the Western Front was treated more or less as a territorial extension of Germany. This means that Jews in the East were subject to immediate executions by frontline soldiers while those in the West were rounded up by both German and local officials and deported to concentration camps also in the East. This article is further subdivided into several research questions: What were the strategic, ideological differences between the Eastern and Western fronts as well as their underlying importance to National Socialism? Who were the primary or intended perpetrators on each front? What factors curbed the vigor with which the Final Solution was executed in occupied western countries like France? Most importantly, what motivated Wehrmacht troops on the Eastern Front to actively contribute to the Final Solution by routinely rounding up and shooting Jews

Intermittent SBAS (ISBAS) InSAR with COSMO-SkyMed X-band high resolution SAR data for landslide inventory mapping in Piana degli Albanesi (Italy)

In the context of recent advances in InSAR processing techniques to retrieve higher persistent scatterer and coherent target densities over unfavourable land cover classes, this study tests the Intermittent Small Baseline Subset (ISBAS) approach to update the landslide inventory around the town of Piana degli Albanesi (Italy), an area where only 2% of the land appears suitable to generate radar scatterers based on a pre-survey feasibility assessment. ISBAS processing of 38 ascending mode and 36 descending mode COSMO-SkyMed StripMap HIMAGE SAR scenes at 3m resolution allows identification of ~726,000 and ~893,000 coherent and intermittently coherent pixels for the ascending and descending data stacks respectively. Observed improvements in the number of ISBAS solutions for the ascending mode are greater than 40 times compared to the conventional SBAS approach, not only for urban and rocky terrains, but also rural and vegetated land covers. Line of sight ground motion rates range between -6.4 and +5.5 mm/yr in 2008-2011, although the majority of the processed area shows general stability, with average rates of -0.6 mm/yr in the ascending and -0.1 mm/yr in the descending mode results. Interpretation of the ISBAS deformation rates, integrated with targeted field surveys and aerial photo-interpretation, provides a new and more complete picture of landslide distribution, state of activity and intensity in the test area, and allows depiction of very slow and extremely slow landslide processes even in areas difficult to access, with unprecedented coverage of results. © (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only

SAR data and field surveys combination to update rainfall-induced shallow landslide inventory

The Campania region has been recurrently hit by severe landslides in volcanoclastic deposits. The city of Naples, and in particular the Camaldoli and Agnano hills (Phlegraean Fields), also suffered several landslide crises in weathered volcanoclastic rocks as a consequence of intense rainfalls or wildfires. To identify slope failures phenomena occurred in the winter season 2019–2020 an innovative procedure has been proposed. The purpose of this procedure is to highlight areas where major land cover changes occurred within our area of study, which can be potentially related to mass movements. The amplitude of spaceborne SAR images has been exploited for the change detection analysis and the output derived from the segmentation procedure has been compared with field observations. The amplitude-based method has been already applied in the detection of landslides, but never on the event with limited extensions, such as for this application. The achieved outcomes allowed the mapping of 62 new landslides that have been used to update the current landslide inventory database. This type of information is expected to help decision-makers with land planning and risk assessment

Efficient Secretion Of Bioengineered Coagulation Factor Viii Into The Milk Of Transgenic Animals

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106071/1/jth01670.pd

Modelling of an intersubband quantum confined Stark effect in Ge quantum wells for mid-infrared photonics

: In this work we theoretically investigate quantum confined Stark effect of intersubband transitions in asymmetric Ge/SiGe quantum wells for intensity modulation in the mid-infrared. Our calculations show that extinction ratios up to 1 dB and modulation speeds of several tens of GHz could be obtained in 100 µm long waveguides

Dicer1 is required for pigment cell and craniofacial development in zebrafish.

The multidomain RNase III endoribonuclease DICER is required for the generation of most functional microRNAs (miRNAs). Loss of Dicer affects developmental processes at different levels. Here, we characterized the zebrafish Dicer1 mutant, dicer1sa9205, which has a single point mutation induced by N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea mutagenesis. Heterozygous dicer1sa9205 developed normally, being phenotypically indistinguishable from wild-type siblings. Homozygous dicer1sa9205 mutants display smaller eyes, abnormal craniofacial development and aberrant pigmentation. Reduced numbers of both iridophores and melanocytes were observed in the head and ventral trunk of dicer1sa9205 homozygotes; the effect on melanocytes was stronger and detectable earlier in development. The expression of microphthalmia-associated transcription factor a (mitfa), the master gene for melanocytes differentiation, was enhanced in dicer1-depleted fish. Similarly, the expression of SRY-box containing gene 10 (sox10), required for mitfa activation, was higher in mutants than in wild types. In silico and in vivo analyses of either sox10 or mitfa 3'UTRs revealed conserved potential miRNA binding sites likely involved in the post-transcriptional regulation of both genes. Based on these findings, we propose that dicer1 participates in the gene regulatory network governing zebrafish melanocyte differentiation by controlling the expression of mitfa and sox10

Metabolomic profile of amniotic fluid to evaluate lung maturity: the diaphragmatic hernia lamb model

Background: Tracheal occlusion (TO) stimulates lung growth in fetuses affected with congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) although the processes involved in lung maturation still remain unknown. The objective of this study was to evaluate the metabolomic profile of amniotic fluid (AF) following TO in fetal lamb model in order to obtain an indirect view of mechanisms involved in pulmonary reversal hypoplasia and biochemical maturity in response to fetal TO. Methods: Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry was performed on lamb AF samples at: age I (70 days' gestation); age II (102 days' gestation); age III (136 days' gestation). CDH was induced at age I and TO at age II. Results: Betaine, choline, creatinine were found significantly increased during gestation in the control group. The CDH group showed choline (p =0.007) and creatinine (p =0.004) decreases during pregnancy. In the TO group choline and creatinine profiles were restored. Conclusions: Alveolar tissue and fetal global growth ameliorated after TO. Metabolomics provided usefu information on biochemical details during lung maturation. Metabolomic profiling would help to identify the best time to perform TO, in order to increase survival of CDH affected patients

Combined Cisplatinum and Laser Thermal Therapy for Palliation of Recurrent Head and Neck Tumors

In recent years endoscopically controlled laser-induced thermal therapy (LITT) has been increasingly accepted as a minimally invasive method for palliation of advanced or recurrent head and neck or gastrointestinal cancer. Previous studies have shown that adjuvant chemotherapy can potentiate endoscopic laser thermal ablation of obstructing tumors leading to improved palliation in advanced cancer patients. Eight patients with recurrent head and neck tumors volunteered to enroll as part of an ongoing phase II LITT clinical trial, and also elected to be treated with systemic chemotherapy (cisplatin, 80 mg/m2) followed 24 h later by palliative laser thermal ablation. Laser treatments were repeated in patients with residual disease or recurrence for a total of 27 LITT sessions. Four of the 8 patients treated with laser thermal chemotherapy remained alive after a median follow-up of 12 months. Of the 12 tumor sites treated, complete responses were located in the oral cavity (3), oropharynx (1), hypopharynx (1), maxillary sinus (1), and median survival for these patients was 9.5 months. This initial experience with cisplatinum-based laser chemotherapy indicates both safety and therapeutic potential for palliation of advanced head and neck cancer but this must be confirmed by longer follow-up in a larger cohort of patients

A Cylindrical GEM Inner Tracker for the BESIII experiment at IHEP

The Beijing Electron Spectrometer III (BESIII) is a multipurpose detector that collects data provided by the collision in the Beijing Electron Positron Collider II (BEPCII), hosted at the Institute of High Energy Physics of Beijing. Since the beginning of its operation, BESIII has collected the world largest sample of J/{\psi} and {\psi}(2s). Due to the increase of the luminosity up to its nominal value of 10^33 cm-2 s-1 and aging effect, the MDC decreases its efficiency in the first layers up to 35% with respect to the value in 2014. Since BESIII has to take data up to 2022 with the chance to continue up to 2027, the Italian collaboration proposed to replace the inner part of the MDC with three independent layers of Cylindrical triple-GEM (CGEM). The CGEM-IT project will deploy several new features and innovation with respect the other current GEM based detector: the {\mu}TPC and analog readout, with time and charge measurements will allow to reach the 130 {\mu}m spatial resolution in 1 T magnetic field requested by the BESIII collaboration. In this proceeding, an update of the status of the project will be presented, with a particular focus on the results with planar and cylindrical prototypes with test beams data. These results are beyond the state of the art for GEM technology in magnetic field