Zwischen Vater und Mann. Die Krise von Familie und Männerrolle in Breaking Bad.

In my thesis I examine the crisis of masculinity and family in AMC’s TV series Breaking Bad. In prior research, the protagonist Walter White has been analyzed as a man who wants to escape his responsibilities and the disappointments of his family life. However, in this thesis he will be shown to be simultaneously an advocate for the idealized family as well as for the idealized role of a man. The crisis of the masculinity therefore originates in the incoherency of the new idealized role of father and the idealized role of the man. Following the introduction and the research overview, the first chapter of this thesis is about the family in Breaking Bad. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the conditions of the Whites’ family life and an examination of Walter White’s dissatisfaction with these structures will be given. For this purpose the theories regarding the idealized family, and the change thereof, from Stephanie Coontz, Robert Hettlage, and Christine Zimmermann will be employed. The second chapter will examine Walter White’s break-out from these conditions and how it impacts the family life of the Whites. To this effect, theories about masculinity and power by Heinrich Popitz and Christoph Kucklick will be used to describe and analyse Walter White’s role as a man and why idealized masculinity and the family structures cannot be combined. For the analysis I inquire different scenes from the whole series. I conclude that the crisis of the masculinity in Breaking Bad shows a mutual relation between family and role of the man. On the one hand, the crisis is released because of the non-existence of the idealized family and it therefore destroys the idea of the idealized role of the male. On the other hand, the pursuit of the role of the male destroys the family structures as a whole. Does the insecurity of the man in a time of changing roles turn out to create an “immoral gender”

Jugend und Klimaschutz

Einführung in das Schwerpunktthem

Impact of reduced tillage on greenhouse gas emissions and soil carbon stocks in an organic grass-clover ley - winter wheat cropping sequence

Organic reduced tillage aims to combine the environmental benefits of organic farming and conservation tillage to increase sustainability and soil quality. In temperate climates, there is currently no knowledge about its impact on greenhouse gas emissions and only little information about soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in these management systems. We therefore monitored nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) fluxes besides SOC stocks for two years in a grass-clover ley – winter wheat – cover crop sequence. The monitoring was undertaken in an organically managed long-term tillage trial on a clay rich soil in Switzerland. Reduced tillage (RT) was compared with ploughing (conventional tillage, CT) in interaction with two fertilisation systems, cattle slurry alone (SL) versus cattle manure compost and slurry (MC). Median N2O and CH4 flux rates were 13 μg N2O-N m−2 h−1 and −2 μg CH4C m−2 h−1, respectively, with no treatment effects. N2O fluxes correlated positively with nitrate contents, soil temperature, water filled pore space and dissolved organic carbon and negatively with ammonium contents in soil. Pulse emissions after tillage operations and slurry application dominated cumulative gas emissions. N2O emissions after tillage operations correlated with SOC contents and collinearly to microbial biomass. There was no tillage system impact on cumulative N2O emissions in the grass-clover (0.8–0.9 kg N2O-N ha−1, 369 days) and winter wheat (2.1–3.0 kg N2O-N ha−1, 296 days) cropping seasons, with a tendency towards higher emissions in MC than SL in winter wheat. Including a tillage induced peak after wheat harvest, a full two year data set showed increased cumulative N2O emissions in RT than CT and in MC than SL. There was no clear treatment influence on cumulative CH4 uptake. Topsoil SOC accumulation (0–0.1 m) was still ongoing. SOC stocks were more stratified in RT than CT and in MC than SL. Total SOC stocks (0–0.5 m) were higher in RT than CT in SL and similar in MC. Maximum relative SOC stock difference accounted for +8.1 Mg C ha−1 in RT-MC compared to CT-SL after 13 years which dominated over the relative increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Under these site conditions, organic reduced tillage and manure compost application seems to be a viable greenhouse gas mitigation strategy as long as SOC is sequestered

Technology acceptance of a mobile portfolio app for teacher education: pre-service teachers views on multimedia-based note-taking and mentoring in internships

Mobile technologies are promising tools to scaffold teaching practice. In this study, we developed and tested a mobile app for teacher education. This mobile portfolio enables multimedia-based note-taking, reflection, and discussion with peers and mentors. We conducted two studies to explore the effect of design variants and use scenarios on the app’s acceptance. In the first study with N = 83 pre-service primary school teachers, technology acceptance was higher for those using the app with multimedia note-taking functionality than for those using the same app with this functionality disabled. In the second study with N = 81 pre-service teachers, those using the app together with their mentor teachers reported levels of technology acceptance similar to those who used the app exclusively among themselves. In consequence, a mobile portfolio app would be met with higher acceptance if it builds reflection upon multimedia note-taking both with and without the inclusion of mentors

Konsum junger Menschen: Zwischen Nachhaltigkeit und materialistischen Wünschen

In dem Projekt Zukunft? – Jugend fragen! wurden junge Menschen dazu befragt, was sie über Umwelt- und Klimaschutz denken, wie sie sich engagieren und welche Verhaltensweisen für Nachhaltigkeit ihnen wichtig sind. Dieser Artikel stellt die Einstellungen und Erfahrungen mit nachhaltigem Konsum der 14- bis 22- Jährigen in Deutschland dar

Substandard anti-malarial drugs in Burkina Faso

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Reduzierte Bodenbearbeitung im Biolandbau – Klimaaspekte

Die Umstellung vom Pflug auf eine reduzierte Bodenbearbeitung wird als Möglichkeit zur Minderung des Klimawandels im Zusammenhang mit einer erhöhten Humusanreicherung diskutiert. Ob reduzierte Bodenbearbeitungssysteme im biologischen Landbau zu einer erhöhten Lachgas-Entwicklung (N2O) führen, wurde bisher nur wenig beleuchtet. Im Langzeit-Bodenbearbeitungsversuch des FiBL in Frick wurden daher N2O-Emissionen über zwei Jahre hinweg und die Humusvorräte dreizehn Jahre nach Versuchsbeginn bis in eine Tiefe von 50 cm gemessen und mit weiteren mitteleuropäischen Studien verglichen. Die kürzlich publizierte Studie von Krauss et al. (2017) zeigt, dass es bei den N2O-Emissionen in der Weizen- und Kunstwiesenperiode keine Unterschiede zwischen den Bodenbearbeitungsverfahren gab. Einschliesslich einer Gründüngung waren die N2O-Emissionen während des gesamten Beobachtungszeitraums von zwei Jahren im reduzierten Verfahren leicht erhöht. Nach 13 Jahren Versuchszeit wurde in Frick eine Kohlenstoffanreicherung von 7–8 % in der Profiltiefe 0–50 cm im reduzierten System nachgewiesen. Im Schnitt von fünf mitteleuropäischen Studien zur reduzierten Bodenbearbeitung im Biolandbau wurde hingegen nur eine nicht signifikante Kohlenstoffanreicherung von 3 % berechnet. In allen Untersuchungen wurde eine deutliche Humusumverteilung im Bodenprofil beobachtet. Im System mit reduzierter Bodenbearbeitung und organischer Düngung im Biolandbau wird also wie im konventionellen Direktsaatverfahren Humus an der Oberfläche angereichert, die Bodenschutzziele sind damit erreicht. Wurden im Frick-Versuch die N2O-Emissionen mit der Kohlenstoffanreicherung verrechnet, ergab sich gegenüber dem Pflugverfahren im Schnitt eine Kohlenstoff-Sequestrierleistung von 1,8 t CO2-eq. ha–1 a–1 im reduzierten System und damit eine leicht positive Wirkung in Sachen Klimaschutz

Oligonucleotides suppress PKB/Akt and act as superinductors of apoptosis in human keratinocytes

DNA oligonucleotides (ODN) applied to an organism are known to modulate the innate and adaptive immune system. Previous studies showed that a CpG-containing ODN (CpG-1-PTO) and interestingly, also a non-CpG-containing ODN (nCpG-5-PTO) suppress inflammatory markers in skin. In the present study it was investigated whether these molecules also influence cell apoptosis. Here we show that CpG-1-PTO, nCpG-5-PTO, and also natural DNA suppress the phosphorylation of PKB/Akt in a cell-type-specific manner. Interestingly, only epithelial cells of the skin (normal human keratinocytes, HaCaT and A-431) show a suppression of PKB/Akt. This suppressive effect depends from ODN lengths, sequence and backbone. Moreover, it was found that TGFα-induced levels of PKB/Akt and EGFR were suppressed by the ODN tested. We hypothesize that this suppression might facilitate programmed cell death. By testing this hypothesis we found an increase of apoptosis markers (caspase 3/7, 8, 9, cytosolic cytochrome c, histone associated DNA fragments, apoptotic bodies) when cells were treated with ODN in combination with low doses of staurosporin, a well-known pro-apoptotic stimulus. In summary the present data demonstrate DNA as a modulator of apoptosis which specifically targets skin epithelial cells