Media Philosophy— A Reasonable Programme?

It is beyond any doubt that media have an enormous impact on our media-culture societies. Media in?uence our perception and our knowledge, our memory as well as our emotions. They create public spheres and public opinions and give rise to media realities. Media shape our socialisation and our communality. They transform economy, politics, science, religion and law. “What we know about our society, even about our world we are living in, we know via the mass media.” (Luhmann 1996:9; my translation) Accordingly, “the media” have become a paramount subject of interdisciplinary discourses in the last decades all over the world. All these developments have become topics of scienti?c analyses as well as parts of media programmes. Since decades, various academic disciplines focused on an other-observation (“Fremdbeobachtung”) of the media from an external state, whereas the media increasingly tend to observe themselves as well as one another in order to transform this self-observation into parts of their respective programmes. The other-observation is carried out either by scholars of communication- and/or media theory or by philosophers; but whereas the former are organised in academic disciplines, no established discipline entitled “media philosophy” exists until today. Instead, the various approaches to philosophical analyses of media are heterogeneous and lack a solid theoretical basis as well as a disciplinary organisation. Some scholars even hold the view that media are not even within the province of philosophers. Some people deeply regret this deadlock regarding not only topics and discourses but also future jobs and positions for scholars of a discipline “media philosophy” to come. Others welcome this stalemate which gives room to creative solutions of thematic as well as of organisational matters. Let us have a short look at some of the foreseeable options. One of the actual media philosophical approaches concentrates its efforts on a reformulation of traditional philosophical topics in the framework of media ef?ciencies. The list of such topics is rather long and covers nearly all famous crucial subjects of philosophical discourses, reaching from reality, truth, culture, society, education or politics to time, space, emotion, subject or entertainment. This kind of rethinking or reformulating philosophical topics concentrates upon the question how—in the co-evolution of media systems and society—our daily experiences as well as our theoretical modellings of these topics have changed on the historical way from writing to the Internet

Multiple mRNA isoforms of the transcription activator protein CREB

We have characterized cDNA clones representing mouse CREB (cyclic AMP responsive element binding protein) mRNA isoforms. These include CREBA and CREBa, of which the rat and human homologues have been previously identified. Both encode proteins with CREbinding activity and identical transactivation potential. The additional CREB mRNA isoforms potentially encode CREB related proteins. From the structural organization of the mouse CREB gene we conclude that the multiple transcripts are generated by alternative splicing. Furthermore we show that specific CREB mRNA isoforms are expressed at a high level in the adult testis. Expression of these isoforms is induced after commencement of spermatogenesis. In situ hybridization suggests that this expression occurs predominantly in the primary spermatocytes. Comparison of the CREB gene with the recently isolated CREM (cAMP responsive element modulator) cDNAs illustrates that the two genes have arisen by gene duplication and have diverged to encode transcriptional activators and repressors of the cAMP signal transduction pathway

Survey sampling : a linear game

A linear game consists of two subsets of a vector space with a scalar product. The idea is that players 1 and 2 select, independently, elements of the first and second set, respectively. Then, player 2 has to pay to player 1 the value of the scalar product of the selected elements. We will discuss survey sampling within the framework of linear games with the statistician in the role of player 2. The vector space to be considered is the set of all symmetric matrices of order N x N with a scalar product identical with the usual mean squared error. The subset from which the statistician's selection is to be made is neither convex nor compact. Standard results of the theory of linear games have to be modified appropriately. The existence of minimax strategies will be established. At the same time we hope to improve our understanding of random selection and of the duality between the fixed population approach and model based approaches to the theory of survey sampling

Entwicklung der ärztlichen Versorgung in Bayern unter Berücksichtigung des steigenden Anteils an ausländischen Ärztinnen und Ärzten mit Darstellung der aktuellen Personalsituation anhand einer Befragung bayerischer Krankenhäuser

Der deutschlandweit fortschreitende Ärztemangel ist aktuelles Thema zahlreicher gesundheitspolitischer Diskussionen. Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit der Versorgungssituation und ärztlichen Wanderungsbewegungen im ambulanten und stationären Bereich unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Zuwanderung ausländischer Ärzte nach Deutschland sowie deren Konsequenzen

Tuning porosity and activity of microporous polymer network organocatalysts by co-polymerisation

Microporous polymer networks based on binaphthyl phosphoric acids are suitable heterogeneous asymmetric organocatalysts. Herein we show that the porous characteristics of such networks can be fine-tuned by co-polymerisation. This enables us to investigate the influence of the surface area and porosity in microporous networks on their catalytic performance. In this case, the activity of the polymers in an asymmetric hydrogenation reaction is increased by the use of polymers with higher surface areas.EC/FP7/278593/EU/Organic Zeolites/ORGZEODFG, EXC 314, Unifying Concepts in Catalysi

Aluminum based high temperature thin film electrode system for wireless sensors

Self-sustained, wireless high-temperature stable sensors are developed, which are based on an aluminum alloy as the electrode metallization. Due to its cost-effectiveness accompanied by a high-temperature stability, this alloy substitutes and outperforms the commonly applied expensive Pt- and Ir-based metals. For the first time, a comprehensive structural, electrical and high-frequency characterization of these surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors is shown. They are based on Catangasite (Ca3TaGa3Si2O14, CTGS) in combination with properly structured cover and barrier layers for the metallization. The frequency characteristics is determined up to 700 °C by ex situ and in situ methods. In addition, the morphology of the AlRu electrodes is analyzed after the thermal loadings and the temperature dependent sheet resistance is measured. The results reveal a reproducible and linear correlation between the applied temperature and the sheet resistance as well as the resonant frequency. In addition, hardly any degradation of the electrodes is detected after the thermal loadings. The observed high-temperature stability of the devices up to at least 700 °C demonstrates the large potential of the AlRu based SAW sensors as a cost-efficient alternative to expensive noble metal based sensors in industrial applications for the support of energy efficient operation