3D-Printed Optics for Wafer-Scale Probing

Mass production of photonic integrated circuits requires high-throughput wafer-level testing. We demonstrate that optical probes equipped with 3D-printed elements allow for efficient coupling of light to etched facets of nanophotonic waveguides. The technique is widely applicable to different integration platforms.Comment: Accepted for presentation at European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) 201

To adapt or not to adapt? An experimental test of whether the selection of ethnic minority candidates is affected by interparty diffusion

Although it is widely acknowledged that political parties operate in a system of party interdependence, little is known about whether party selectors’ decisions to select ethnic minority aspirants is affected by previous selection strategies and motives of other parties, a process referred to as diffusion. Drawing on a survey experiment conducted among Flemish local party chairs, this study tests whether party selectors are more likely to select ethnic minority aspirants when they are made aware that doing so has previously yielded electoral benefits for some of their competitors (‘competition’), or that by doing so they adhere to social norms (‘emulation’). Contradictory to research examining the diffusion of female candidacies, only little evidence is found that diffusion affects the selection of ethnic minority candidates. Emulation had a general, but weak, positive effect on the selection of ethnic minority candidates, whereas the influence of competition was restricted to leftist and less electorally successful parties. These limited effects can be explained by the high supply of ethnic minority aspirants provided in the experiment, but also by the specific inclusion dilemmas associated with selection ethnic minorities. These are strongly party- and context-specific, which makes parties less likely to respond to other parties’ strategies

Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy of War and Medicine

Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy of War and Medicine undertakes study of how global conflict and violence shape the entire range of social production, from commodities and culture to social goods and social theory. The research presented in this work draws from cutting-edge theories in body and science studies, in addition to theories of affect and biopolitics to address how war became a problem solving paradigm in medicine. Combat casualties are shown to serve as a material nexus for medical knowledge production. Although the focus here is on medicine and medical innovation in particular, these developments are connected to developments in military science and battlefield strategy and tactics, and so they illustrate how violence organize knowledge across different realms of scientific endeavor. This research situates important developments in medicine within a historical, economic, and political context to show how war and military ideas not only were extended into the social spaces of everyday life, they advanced in such a way as to help determine the conditions of possibility for life, living, and what it means to be human. In thinking through this multi-faceted configuration, I employ Foucauldian genealogical methods, covert ethnographic methods, and archival/historical interpretive methods to assemble case data that allow me to look at war’s impact on the social organization of medicine. Case findings illustrate a non­linear history that documents war\u27s influence on medical innovation. I highlight these developments, but go one step further: I question the centrality of methodological positivism to research methods in the social sciences, which I argue are also a product of war and global conflict. Collectively, the findings support the claim that wounded soldiers have throughout history been used as medical test subjects to facilitate practice innovation and progress. Analysis shows how wounded bodies are produced within a circulating biopolitical economy of relations, where the radical undoing of the body forms the basis of a medical governance of control. This work makes a contribution to theorizing violence and political economy, as it calls attention to the instrumental role played by wounded soldiers to life-saving medical advance; it suggests there is a need to re-think the transcendence of medicine through war and capitalism: wars turn soldiers into human subjects, who cannot ethically consent any more than medicine can ethically be practiced when its advance depends on violence. Key words: Biomedicine, Militarization, Affect, Foucault, Biopolitics, Bodies, Embodiment, Civil War, World War One, World War Two, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Human Terrain System, Military Anthropology, Epistemology, Trauma, War, Violence, Medical Ethic

<i>Alteromonas stellipolaris</i> sp. nov., a novel, budding, prosthecate bacterium from Antarctic seas, and emended description of the genus <i>Alteromonas</i>

Seven novel, cold-adapted, strictly aerobic, facultatively oligotrophic strains, isolated from Antarctic sea water, were investigated by using a polyphasic taxonomic approach. The isolates were Gram-negative, chemoheterotrophic, motile, rod-shaped cells that were psychrotolerant and moderately halophilic. Buds were produced on mother and daughter cells and on prosthecae. Prostheca formation was peritrichous and prosthecae could be branched. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that these strains belong to the γ-Proteobacteria and are related to the genus Alteromonas, with 98·3 % sequence similarity to Alteromonas macleodii and 98·0 % to Alteromonas marina, their nearest phylogenetic neighbours. Whole-cell fatty acid profiles of the isolates were very similar and included C16 : 0, C16 : 1 ω7c, C17 : 1 ω8c and C18 : 1 ω8c as the major fatty acid components. These results support the affiliation of these isolates to the genus Alteromonas. DNA–DNA hybridization results and differences in phenotypic characteristics show that the strains represent a novel species with a DNA G+C content of 43–45 mol%. The name Alteromonas stellipolaris sp. nov. is proposed for this novel species; the type strain is ANT 69aT (=LMG 21861T=DSM 15691T). An emended description of the genus Alteromonas is given