Post-colonial Berlin? Pieke Biermann\u27s Crime Novels as Globalization Critique

Set in and around Tempelhof Airport, the crime novel 4,5,6 poses the question whether social, cultural, and economic globalization continues and aggravates colonizing practices (as scholars like Miyoshi, Chomsky, and Said have argued), or whether the term describes the social conditions of postcoloniality, beyond superpower domination and the bloc system it created..

Change point detection for clustered expression data

Background: To detect changes in biological processes, samples are often studied at several time points. We examined expression data measured at different developmental stages, or more broadly, historical data. Hence, the main assumption of our proposed methodology was the independence between the examined samples over time. In addition, however, the examinations were clustered at each time point by measuring littermates from relatively few mother mice at each developmental stage. As each examination was lethal, we had an independent data structure over the entire history, but a dependent data structure at a particular time point. Over the course of these historical data, we wanted to identify abrupt changes in the parameter of interest - change points. Results: In this study, we demonstrated the application of generalized hypothesis testing using a linear mixed effects model as a possible method to detect change points. The coefficients from the linear mixed model were used in multiple contrast tests and the effect estimates were visualized with their respective simultaneous confidence intervals. The latter were used to determine the change point(s). In small simulation studies, we modelled different courses with abrupt changes and compared the influence of different contrast matrices. We found two contrasts, both capable of answering different research questions in change point detection: The Sequen contrast to detect individual change points and the McDermott contrast to find change points due to overall progression. We provide the R code for direct use with provided examples. The applicability of those tests for real experimental data was shown with in-vivo data from a preclinical study. Conclusion: Simultaneous confidence intervals estimated by multiple contrast tests using the model fit from a linear mixed model were capable to determine change points in clustered expression data. The confidence intervals directly delivered interpretable effect estimates representing the strength of the potential change point. Hence, scientists can define biologically relevant threshold of effect strength depending on their research question. We found two rarely used contrasts best fitted for detection of a possible change point: the Sequen and McDermott contrasts

Post-colonial Berlin? Pieke Biermann's Crime Novels as Globalization Critique

Set in and around Tempelhof Airport, the crime novel 4,5,6 poses the question whether social, cultural, and economic "globalization" continues and aggravates colonizing practices (as scholars like Miyoshi, Chomsky, and Said have argued), or whether the term describes the social conditions of postcoloniality, beyond superpower domination and the bloc system it created..

Remediating Fassbinder in Video Installations by Ming Wong and Branwen Okpako

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s tackling of race, immigration, and interracial relationships in his early plays and films is often applauded for offering a prescient treatment of topics largely neglected in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His experimentation with and blending of both queer and leftist political styles appeals to contemporary critics and artists grappling with the continuing challenge of ‘decolonizing’ structures of racial feeling. Nonetheless, the politics of race in Fassbinder’s films from the early 1970s, including Whity (1970) and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), has also come under more skeptical scrutiny during the past decade. Critics have assessed Fassbinder’s aesthetic alongside the biographical and social context of his filmmaking career, and in particular, his relationships with men of color who also starred in Whity and Ali, among other films. Some note a troubling tension between the professed antiracist politics of Fassbinder and of some of his film characters, on the one side, and the way in which the camerawork allows and invites racist pleasures, on the other. Perhaps due to their very ambiguity, Fassbinder’s films offer compelling objects of attachment and resignification for contemporary artists of color working in Germany. In this article I discuss two video installations by Ming Wong and one by Branwen Okpako that engage films by Fassbinder as productive intertexts for their own artistic reflections on racial oppression, solidarity, and desire in contemporary Germany. Wong’s Lerne Deutsch mit Petra von Kant (Learn German with Petra von Kant, 2007) considers the consequences of appropriating camp, high melodrama, and masochism for dramatizing race and immigration. Can such an appropriation dismantle national or racialized identities, analogous to Bitter Tears’ dismantling of gender? Angst Essen/Eat Fear (2008) hones in on, and subtly revises, the sources of the film’s troubling political ambiguity. Okpako’s Seh ich was, was du nicht siehst? (Do I see something you don’t?, 2002) contextualizes the masochistic figure of Whity with a discussion of black actors’ working conditions. It thereby complements the parodic subversion of white fantasies with a consideration of the agency exercised by racialized subjects’ contending with racial difference in the art world and in so-called postracial societies more generally. The video installations highlight the aesthetic inventiveness of Fassbinder’s films, but also use the political shortcomings of his works and changes in the contexts of reception as opportunities for imaginative appropriations and creative openings

Influence of artificial digestion on characteristics and intestinal cellular effects of micro-, submicro- and nanoplastics

The production of plastics is rising since they have been invented. Micro, submicro- and nanoplastics are produced intentionally or generated by environmental processes, and constitute ubiquitous contaminants which are ingested orally by consumers. Reported health concerns include intestinal translocation, inflammatory response, oxidative stress and cytotoxicity. Every digestive milieu in the gastrointestinal tract does have an influence on the properties of particles and can cause changes in their effect on biological systems. In this study, we subjected plastic particles of different materials (polylactic acid, polymethyl methacrylate, melamine formaldehyde) and sizes (micro- to nano-range) to a complex artificial digestion model consisting of three intestinal fluid simulants (saliva, gastric and intestinal juice). We monitored the impact of the digestion process on the particles by performing Dynamic Light Scattering, Scanning Electron Microscopy and Asymmetric Flow Field-Flow Fractionation. An in vitro model of the intestinal epithelial barrier was used to monitor cellular effects and translocation behavior of (un)digested particles. In conclusion, artificial digestion decreased cellular interaction and slightly increased transport of all particles across the intestinal barrier. The interaction with organic matter resulted in clear differences in the agglomeration behavior. Moreover, we provide evidence for polymer-, size- and surface-dependent cellular effects of the test particles

Adaptation of the Oxygen Sensing System during Lung Development

During gestation, the most drastic change in oxygen supply occurs with the onset of ventilation after birth. As the too early exposure of premature infants to high arterial oxygen pressure leads to characteristic diseases, we studied the adaptation of the oxygen sensing system and its targets, the hypoxia-inducible factor- (HIF-) regulated genes (HRGs) in the developing lung. We draw a detailed picture of the oxygen sensing system by integrating information from qPCR, immunoblotting, in situ hybridization, and single-cell RNA sequencing data in ex vivo and in vivo models. HIF1α protein was completely destabilized with the onset of pulmonary ventilation, but did not coincide with expression changes in bona fide HRGs. We observed a modified composition of the HIF-PHD system from intrauterine to neonatal phases: Phd3 was significantly decreased, while Hif2a showed a strong increase and the Hif3a isoform Ipas exclusively peaked at P0. Colocalization studies point to the Hif1a-Phd1 axis as the main regulator of the HIF-PHD system in mouse lung development, complemented by the Hif3a-Phd3 axis during gestation. Hif3a isoform expression showed a stepwise adaptation during the periods of saccular and alveolar differentiation. With a strong hypoxic stimulus, lung ex vivo organ cultures displayed a functioning HIF system at every developmental stage. Approaches with systemic hypoxia or roxadustat treatment revealed only a limited in vivo response of HRGs. Understanding the interplay of the oxygen sensing system components during the transition from saccular to alveolar phases of lung development might help to counteract prematurity-associated diseases like bronchopulmonary dysplasia