The home that never was: rethinking space and memory in late nineteenth and twentieth-century Jewish history

"Recent research on Jewish migration and 'Jewish spaces' usually asks for the relevance of 'Jewish spaces' in Jewish life. This article looks the other way and examines how the changing conditions of Jewish life altered emigrant's perceptions of their 'old home' in East Europe. It argues that in Jewish memory East Europe functioned as a mythscape which changed from a repressive and revolutionary over a progressive to the lost 'old home'. As a result the article calls to more carefully historicize processes of Jewish memory and spatial semantics as expressions of relations between conflicting groups." (author's abstract

Beyond Genocide: How Refugee Agency Preserves Knowledge During Violence-Induced Migration

Genocide targets lives and also aims to destroy cultures. Hence, refugees do not only save their bare lives, as the common notion of a refugee in need of individual protection assumes; they also engage in various collective practices to safeguard their cultural heritage from destruction. As an expression of self-consciousness against genocidal violence, this process of rescue becomes a part of that very cultural heritage and thus fundamentally alters its meaning. To develop a better understanding of this complex process, this article first develops general thoughts on refugee agency and cultural survival. Secondly, to exemplify the variety of such efforts and their cultural meaning, this article examines how European Jews, and particularly the General Jewish Labor Bund, attempted to save Yiddish culture and material collections on the secular history of European Jews during the 20th century. In conclusion, it argues that in addition to the individualized perception of a refugee, we need to consider collective cultural rescue as an integral part of refugee politics

provably good and practically useful

The lettering of maps is a classical problem of cartography that consists of placing names, symbols, or other data near to specified sites on a map. Certain design rules have to be obeyed. A practically interesting special case, the Map Labeling Problem, consists of placing axis parallel rectangular labels of common size so that one of its corners is the site, no two labels overlap, and the labels are of maximum size in order to have legible inscriptions. The problem is NP-hard; it is even NP-hard to approximate the solution with quality guaranty better than 50 percent. There is an approximation algorithm A with a quality guaranty of 50 percent and running time O (n log n). So A is the best possible algorithm from a theoretical point of view. This is even true for the running time, since there is a lower bound on the running time of any such approximation algorithm of (n log n). Unfortunately A is useless in practice as it typically produces results that are intolerably far off the maximum size. The main contribution of this paper is the presentation of a heuristical approach that has A's advantages while avoiding its disadvantages: 1\. It uses A's result in order to guaranty the same optimal running time efficiency; a method which is new as far as we know. 2\. Its practical results are close to the optimum. The practical quality is analysed by comparing our results to the exact optimum, where this is known; and to lower and upper bounds on the optimum otherwise. The sample data consists of three different classes of random problems and a selection of problems arising in the production of groundwater quality maps by the authorities of the City of München

Transition from van-der-Waals to H Bonds dominated Interaction in n-Propanol physisorbed on Graphite

Multilayer sorption isotherms of 1-propanol on graphite have been measured by means of high-resolution ellipsometry within the liquid regime of the adsorbed film for temperatures ranging from 180 to 260 K. In the first three monolayers the molecules are oriented parallel to the substrate and the growth is roughly consistent with the Frenkel-Halsey-Hill-model (FHH) that is obeyed in van-der-Waals systems on strong substrates. The condensation of the fourth and higher layers is delayed with respect to the FHH-model. The fourth layer is actually a bilayer. Furthermore there is indication of a wetting transition. The results are interpreted in terms of hydrogen-bridge bonding within and between the layers.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Staatsbürgerschaft: Dieter Gosewinkels opus magnum über eine folgenreiche Institution

Dieter Gosewinkel: Schutz und Freiheit?: Staatsbürgerschaft in Europa im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2016. 978-3-518-29767-

Diffusion-limited reactions on a two-dimensional lattice with binary disorder

Reaction-diffusion systems where transition rates exhibit quenched disorder are common in physical and chemical systems. We study pair reactions on a periodic two-dimensional lattice, including continuous deposition and spontaneous desorption of particles. Hopping and desorption are taken to be thermally activated processes. The activation energies are drawn from a binary distribution of well depths, corresponding to `shallow' and `deep' sites. This is the simplest non-trivial distribution, which we use to examine and explain fundamental features of the system. We simulate the system using kinetic Monte Carlo methods and provide a thorough understanding of our findings. We show that the combination of shallow and deep sites broadens the temperature window in which the reaction is efficient, compared to either homogeneous system. We also examine the role of spatial correlations, including systems where one type of site is arranged in a cluster or a sublattice. Finally, we show that a simple rate equation model reproduces simulation results with very good accuracy.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Structure of the axonal surface recognition molecule neurofascin and its relationship to a neural subgroup of the immunoglobulin superfamily

The chick axon-associated surface glycoprotein neurofascin is implicated in axonal growth and fasciculation as revealed by antibody perturbation experiments. Here we report the complete cDNA sequence of neurofascin. It is composed of four structural elements: At the NH2 terminus neurofascin contains six Ig-like motifs of the C2 subcategory followed by four fibronectin type III (FNIII)-related repeats. Between the FNIII-like repeats and the plasma membrane spanning region neurofascin contains a domain 75-amino acid residues-long rich in proline, alanine and threonine which might be the target of extensive O-linked glycosylation. A transmembrane segment is followed by a 113-amino acid residues-long cytoplasmic domain. Sequence comparisons indicate that neurofascin is most closely related to chick Nr-CAM and forms with L1 (Ng-CAM) and Nr-CAM a subgroup within the vertebrate Ig superfamily. Sequencing of several overlapping cDNA probes reveals interesting heterogeneities throughout the neurofascin polypeptide. Genomic Southern blots analyzed with neurofascin cDNA clones suggest that neurofascin is encoded by a single gene and its pre-mRNA might be therefore alternatively spliced. Northern blot analysis with domain specific probes showed that neurofascin mRNAs of about 8.5 kb are expressed throughout development in embryonic brain but not in liver. Isolation of neurofascin by immunoaffinity chromatography results in several molecular mass components. To analyze their origin the amino-terminal sequences of several neurofascin components were determined. The NH2-terminal sequences of the 185, 160, and 110-135 kD components are all the same as the NH2 termini predicted by the cDNA sequence, whereas the other neurofascin components start with a sequence found in a putative alternatively spliced segment between the Ig- and FNIII-like part indicating that they are derived by proteolytic cleavage. A combination of enzymatic and chemical deglycosylation procedures and the analysis of peanut lectin binding reveals O- and N-linked carbohydrates on neurofascin components which might generate additional heterogeneity

Panel #3: Circulating Images: The Production, Distribution & Reception of Visual Culture During the Statehood Era

A panel featuring four presentations: Visualizing Historic Maine: 19th Century Maine Life in Stereophotography (presented in actual 3D), Bernard Fishman Tovookan\u27s Narrative: Depicting Freedom in Maine During the Statehood Era, Martha J. McNamara Popular Print and Visual Culture in Statehood Period Maine, Kevin D. Murphy Rufus Porter in Maine: Art, Spatial Thinking, and the Curious Mind, Justin Wolf