Cruise report AL530, 14.10.2019 – 18.10.2019

Areas of Research: Biological oceanography, Plankton Ecology and Evolution (this was a teaching cruise within the BMARSYS programme at Hamburg University. The main goal was for students to familiarize themselves with the methods associated with the areas of research stated above)

German Postmemory and Ambivalent Home Desires: A Critical Reading of Nora Krug’s (2018) Graphic Novel Heimat: A German Family Album

This review analyses the aesthetic engagement with Nazi atrocities during WWII and belonging in post-war Germany as presented in Nora Krug’s graphic novel Heimat: A German Family Album. The authors employ Marianne Hirsch’s concept of ‘postmemory’ as an analytical tool that helps them locate the complex historical and emotional contexts from which this graphic novel receives its impulses. The concrete scenes from the novel are presented and subsequently related to the field of memory and postmemory scholarship. Wider critical debates on how aesthetic articulations of past atrocities influence the next generations of ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ are examined, to ask: What does it mean to inhabit memories of ghostly narratives about perpetrators and how does it form a feeling of post-home

Modeling microalgae cell mass distributions using the Fokker-Planck equation

The modeling of the cell mass distribution for microalgae growth processes is addressed using the Fokker-Planck equation for a stochastic logistic growth model of a single cell. Relations between the proposed model and the classical Droop model used for mass-balance based modeling of the algae growth are established. The proposed model is evaluated using experimentally obtained cell mass distribution data for the microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtti showing a good correspondence between measurements and model predictions. The obtained model is considerably simpler in comparison to cell mass population balance models used so far to describe the temporal behavior of the cell mass distribution

Forecasting the Air Race Classic: Lessons in Interdisciplinary Aviation Weather Support and Decision-Making

The Air Race Classic (ARC) is an all-female Visual Flight Rules air race held each June. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Daytona Beach (ERAU-DB) has had primarily student race teams participate and frequently place strongly in the ARC since 1996. The ERAU-DB Meteorology Program has provided successful weather support to ERAU-DB race team(s) for the past decade, including as the terminus host institution in 2016. In 2014, the weather support was formalized as a three-credit interdisciplinary summer course, incorporating a mix of aeronautical science (pilot), dispatch, and meteorology students. Using concepts of service and experiential learning, the ARC course has successfully integrated students from varying educational backgrounds into cohesive weather support teams that serve the ERAU-DB air racers. As such, students from primarily aviation backgrounds have had to learn about aviation weather support tools and techniques they were not previously aware of, while students from primarily meteorological backgrounds had to integrate aviation concepts such as fuel burn and service ceiling into their forecasts. The ARC weather support experience has helped to expose students to real-world situations and decision-making, given them an increased sense of purpose and service to the ERAU-DB community, and improved their ability to combine aviation and meteorological thinking for the purpose of real-time aviation weather forecasting

Growth strategies of a model picoplankter depend on social milieu and pCO2

Phytoplankton exist in genetically diverse populations, but are often studied as single lineages (single strains), so that interpreting single-lineage studies relies critically on understanding how microbial growth differs with social milieu, defined as the presence or absence of conspecifics. The properties of lineages grown alone often fail to predict the growth of these same lineages in the presence of conspecifics, and this discrepancy points towards an opportunity to improve our understanding of the factors that affect lineage growth rates. We demonstrate that different lineages of a marine picoplankter modulate their maximum lineage growth rate in response to the presence of non-self conspecifics, even when resource competition is effectively absent. This explains why growth rates of lineages in isolation do not reliably predict their growth rates in mixed culture, or the lineage composition of assemblages under conditions of rapid growth. The diversity of growth strategies observed here are consistent with lineage-specific energy allocation that depends on social milieu. Since lineage growth is only one of many traits determining fitness in natural assemblages, we hypothesize that intraspecific variation in growth strategies should be common, with more strategies possible in ameliorated environments that support higher maximum growth rates, such as high CO(2) for many marine picoplankton

Distributed Parameter State Estimation for the Gray–Scott Reaction-Diffusion Model

A constructive approach is provided for the reconstruction of stationary and non-stationary patterns in the one-dimensional Gray-Scott model, utilizing measurements of the system state at a finite number of locations. Relations between the parameters of the model and the density of the sensor locations are derived that ensure the exponential convergence of the estimated state to the original one. The designed observer is capable of tracking a variety of complex spatiotemporal behaviors and self-replicating patterns. The theoretical findings are illustrated in particular numerical case studies. The results of the paper can be used for the synchronization analysis of the master–slave configuration of two identical Gray–Scott models coupled via a finite number of spatial points and can also be exploited for the purposes of feedback control applications in which the complete state information is required

Blue Boogie / words by John W. Schaum

Cover: caricature of an African American male face; Publisher: Belwin (New York)https://egrove.olemiss.edu/sharris_e/1067/thumbnail.jp