Sisters! Making Films, Doing Politics : An Exploration in Artistic Research

How does film become a political act? That is the question that the artistic research project Sisters! Making Films, Doing Politics revolves around. Taking Hannah Arendt’s ideas about the constitution of the political arena as its point of departure, this dissertation reflects on the aesthetic mechanisms that underlie contemporary strategies for collective and feminist filmmaking. Sisters! Making Films, Doing Politics draws on the particular historical archive of radical filmmaking and film theory that relates to the British film collectives of the 1970s: The Berwick Street Film Collective, Cinema Action and The London Women’s Film Group. Inspired by a Marxist-feminist tradition, these collectives explicitly sought to involve film in the political discussions and events that at that time took place in British society. In the dissertation’s first chapter, which deals with these film collectives, a theoretical, historical and artistic framework is established that is subsequently developed in four chapters that discuss the film productions that constitute the artistic core of the project: Sisters! (2011), Mutual Matters (2012), Choreography for the Giants (2013) and Conversation: Stina Lundberg Dabrowski Meets Petra Bauer (2010). As the dissertation argues, each of these films productions discloses specific aspects of the relation of politics and film aesthetics. It goes on to identify the precise relationships and the displacements that take place between the historical material, Arendt’s concept of the political act and the production of the films. A the centre of the investigation stands Sisters!, a film project carried out in collaboration with the London-based feminist organisation Southall Black Sisters

Global dataset of monthly growing areas of 26 irrigated crops : version 1.0

A data set of monthly growing areas of 26 irrigated crops (MGAG-I) and related crop calendars (CC-I) was compiled for 402 spatial entities. The selection of the crops consisted of all major food crops including regionally important ones (wheat, rice, maize, barley, rye, millet, sorghum, soybeans, sunflower, potatoes, cassava, sugar cane, sugar beets, oil palm, rapeseed/canola, groundnuts/peanuts, pulses, citrus, date palm, grapes/vine, cocoa, coffee), major water-consuming crops (cotton), and unspecified other crops (other perennial crops, other annual crops, managed grassland). The data set refers to the time period 1998-2002 and has a spatial resolution of 5 arc minutes by 5 arc minutes which is 8 km by 8 km at the equator. This is the first time that a data set of cell-specific irrigated growing areas of irrigated crops with this spatial resolution was created. The data set is consistent to the irrigated area and water use statistics of the AQUASTAT programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/aglw/aquastat/main/index.stm) and the Global Map of Irrigation Areas (GMIA) (http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/aglw/aquastat/irrigationmap/index.stm). At the cell-level it was tried to maximise consistency to the cropland extent and cropland harvested area from the Department of Geography and Earth System Science Program of the McGill University at Montreal, Quebec, Canada and the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, USA (http://www.geog.mcgill.ca/~nramankutty/ Datasets/Datasets.html and http://geomatics.geog.mcgill.ca/~navin/pub/Data/175crops2000/). The consistency between the grid product and the input data was quantified. MGAG-I and CC-I are fully consistent to each other on entity level. For input data other than CC-I, the consistency of MGAG-I on cell level was calculated. The consistency of MGAG-I with respect to the area equipped for irrigation (AEI) of GMIA and to the cropland extent of SAGE was characterised by the sum of the cell-specific maximum difference between the MGAG-I monthly total irrigated area and the reference area when the latter was exceeded in the grid cell. The consistency of the harvested area contained in MGAG-I with respect to SAGE harvested area was characterised by the crop-specific sum of the cell-specific difference between MGAG-I harvested area and the SAGE harvested area when the latter was exceeded in the grid cell. In all three cases, the sums are the excess areas that should not have been distributed under the assumption that the input data were correct. Globally, this cell-level excess of MGAG-I as compared to AEI is 331,304 ha or only about 0.12 % of the global AEI of 278.9 Mha found in the original grid. The respective cell-level excess of MGAG-I as compared to the SAGE cropland extent is 32.2 Mha, corresponding to about 2.2 % of the total cropland area. The respective cell-level excess of MGAG-I as compared to the SAGE harvested area is 27 % of the irrigated harvested area, or 11.5 % of the AEI. In a further step that will be published later also rainfed areas were compiled in order to form the Global data set of monthly irrigated and rainfed crop areas around the year 2000 (MIRCA2000). The data set can be used for global and continental-scale studies on food security and water use. In the future, it will be improved, e.g. with a better spatial resolution of crop calendars and an improved crop distribution algorithm. The MIRCA2000 data set, its full documentation together with future updates will be freely available through the following long-term internet site: http://www.geo.uni-frankfurt.de/ipg/ag/dl/forschung/MIRCA/index.html. The research presented here was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) within the framework of the research project entitled "Consistent assessment of global green, blue and virtual water fluxes in the context of food production: regional stresses and worldwide teleconnections". The authors thank Navin Ramankutty and Chad Monfreda for making available the current SAGE datasets on cropland extent (Ramankutty et al., 2008) and harvested area (Monfreda et al., 2008) prior to their publication

Heavy Metals Need Assistance: The Contribution of Nicotianamine to Metal Circulation Throughout the Plant and the Arabidopsis NAS Gene Family

Understanding the regulated inter- and intra-cellular metal circulation is one of the challenges in the field of metal homeostasis. Inside organisms metal ions are bound to organic ligands to prevent their uncontrolled reactivity and to increase their solubility. Nicotianamine (NA) is one of the important ligands. This non-proteinogenic amino acid is synthesized by nicotianamine synthase (NAS). NA is involved in mobilization, uptake, transport, storage, and detoxification of metals. Much of the progress in understanding NA function has been achieved by studying mutants with altered nicotianamine levels. Mild and strong Arabidopsis mutants impaired in nicotianamine synthesis have been identified and characterized, namely nas4x-1 and nas4x-2. Arabidopsis thaliana has four NAS genes. In this review, we summarize the structure and evolution of the NAS genes in the Arabidopsis genome. We summarize previous results and present novel evidence that the four NAS genes have partially overlapping functions when plants are exposed to Fe deficiency and nickel supply. We compare the phenotypes of nas4x-1 and nas4x-2 and summarize the functions of NAS genes and NA as deduced from the studies of mutant phenotypes

Iron Nutrition, Oxidative Stress, and Pathogen Defense

Adaptation is a challenge that plants have to undergo in order to survive in difficult environments. Nutrient deficiency, stress, and microorganism attack are abiotic and biotic factors that frequently impair plant wellness, which is reflected by low crop yield and quality. Poor crops in turn affect human nutrition. To solve these problems, it is necessary to understand the molecular and physiological mechanisms of nutrient uptake and adaptation to stress. With this knowledge, we may have the possibility to generate new plants, which offer better yield due to their better health. This chapter summarizes and compares iron uptake and assimilation as well as pathogen responses in plants and humans. We also discuss novel approaches for improving crops in the context of human food quality

Heart Rate Turbulence as Risk-Predictor after Myocardial Infarction

Heart rate turbulence (HRT) is the baroreflex-mediated short-term oscillation of cardiac cycle lengths after spontaneous ventricular premature complexes. HRT is composed of a brief heart rate acceleration followed by a gradual heart rate deceleration. In high risk patients after myocardial infarction (MI) HRT is blunted or diminished. Since its first description in 1999 HRT emerged as one of the most potent risk factors after MI. Predictive power of HRT has been studied in more than 10,000 post-infarction patients. This review is intended to provide an overview of HRT as risk-predictor after MI

Az iskolai szociális munka jelentősége

At school children are available, keeping track, all of their problems are perceptible, so the school child protection is a priority matter. In addition, school is member of the warning system; appear as an intermediary between family, authorities and social organizations. The prevention can be done here and the importance of social problem management make justified the presence of a professional helper. However it does not supported in our country. In my research I measured what the participants' experiences in a school that employing social worker. I have been conducted my research in a primary and vocational school in Szeged. I examined for teachers and students too what they know about responsibilities of social workers working there and how feel useful their presence. I analyzed self-administered questionnaires of 90 students and 22 teachers

Vermittlung von Medienkompetenz und medienpädagogischer Kompetenz in der Lehrerausbildung

In diesem Beitrag wird ein Blended-Learning-Konzept zur Vermittlung von Medienkompetenz und medienpädagogischer Kompetenz bei Lehramtsstudierenden in der universitären Lehrerausbildung vorgestellt. Dieses Seminarkonzept beinhaltet die Kombination von Vorlesung, Workshop, Nutzung einer Onlinebibliothek, eines Lernmanagementsystems und selbstgesteuerter sowie selbstorganisierter Gruppenarbeit von Studierenden. Dieses Konzept zeigt Möglichkeiten auf, wie mit großen Studierendengruppen an der Hochschule gearbeitet werden kann. Im Beitrag wird ein Schwerpunkt auf die Workshops und Gruppenarbeit gelegt. Zunächst werden dabei die zugrunde liegenden Theorien und Konzepte vorgestellt. Diese sind die Medienkompetenz, die Schüler und Schülerinnen in der Schule erwerben sollten. Zusätzlich die medienpädagogische Kompetenz, mit der sich Studierende der Bildungswissenschaften in ihrem Hochschulstudium zur Vorbereitung auf ihre lehrende Tätigkeit an Schulen auseinandersetzen sollten. Neben diesen Kompetenzen bedarf es auch bestimmter Voraussetzungen hinsichtlich der Organisationsentwicklung an Schulen. Diese werden in einem Mehrebenenmodell dargestellt. Im Anschluss erfolgt die Darstellung des Blended-Learning-Konzeptes

Die Bedeutung von Factory Outlets aus der Sicht von Herstellern und Kunden

Der Fabrikverkauf hat in Deutschland eine lange Tradition. Schon seit vielen Jahrzehnten bieten Hersteller am Fertigungsstandort überschüssige Produktion oder leicht fehlerhafte Ware zu niedrigen Preisen feil. Neu ist indes die heftige Diskussion über dieses Absatzkonzept. Im Mittelpunkt der öffentlichen Auseinandersetzung stehen die Bedenken des Handels hinsichtlich der Planung großflächiger Factory Outlet Center. Dieser befürchtet, daß hierdurch Kaufkraft aus dem innerstädtischen Einzelhandel abgezogen wird und damit dort Arbeitsplätze verloren gehen. Auch in den herkömmlichen Fabrikverkaufsläden tut sich etwas. Durch die Verbreitung sogenannter Schnäppchenführer haben viele Factory Outlets in Deutschland überregionale Beachtung erfahren. Da diesen aber bislang wenig Aufmerksamkeit in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur geschenkt wurde, besteht Unklarheit über die Beurteilung vorhandener Fabrikverkaufsstellen seitens der Betreiber sowie die zukünftige Entwicklung dieses Absatzkonzeptes. Auch hinsichtlich der Kunden dieser Vertriebsform, der Motive für den Kauf ab Werk sowie der Bewertung von Factory Outlets durch die Konsumenten gibt es noch Wissenslücken. Zur Versachlichung der Diskussion erscheint es daher geboten, diese Aspekte näher zu beleuchten. Im Anschluß an eine Erläuterung der Begriffe Factory Outlet und Factory Outlet Center (FOC) werden Entwicklungstrends auf seiten des Handels sowie der Konsumenten aufgezeigt, die die Bedeutung des Fabrikverkaufs als Absatzkonzept beeinflussen. In Kapitel 4 folgt die Darstellung der Ergebnisse einer empirischen Untersuchung bei Geschäftsführern von Fabrikverkaufsstellen sowie deren Kunden, aus der Empfehlungen für die Betreiber von Factory Outlets sowie den Fachhandel abgeleitet werden