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Recent advances in microscopy have led to an improved visualization of different cell processes. Yet, this also leads to a higher demand of tools which can process images in an automated and quantitative fashion. Here, we present two applications that were developed to quantify different processes in eukaryotic cells which rely on the organization and dynamics of the cytoskeleton.. In plant cells, microtubules and actin filaments form the backbone of the cytoskeleton. These structures support cytoplasmic streaming, cell wall organization and tracking of cellular material to and from the plasma membrane. To better understand the underlying mechanisms of cytoskeletal organization, dynamics and coordination, frameworks for the quantification are needed. While this is fairly well established for the microtubules, the actin cytoskeleton has remained difficult to study due to its highly dynamic behaviour. One aim of this thesis was therefore to provide an automated framework to quantify and describe actin organization and dynamics. We used the framework to represent actin structures as networks and examined the transport efficiency in Arabidopsis thaliana hypocotyl cells. Furthermore, we applied the framework to determine the growth mode of cotton fibers and compared the actin organization in wild-type and mutant cells of rice. Finally, we developed a graphical user interface for easy usage. Microtubules and the actin cytoskeleton also play a major role in the morphogenesis of epidermal leaf pavement cells. These cells have highly complex and interdigitated shapes which are hard to describe in a quantitative way. While the relationship between microtubules, the actin cytoskeleton and shape formation is the object of many studies, it is still not clear how and if the cytoskeletal components predefine indentations and protrusions in pavement cell shapes. To understand the underlying cell processes which coordinate cell morphogenesis, a quantitative shape descriptor is needed. Therefore, the second aim of this thesis was the development of a network-based shape descriptor which captures global and local shape features, facilitates shape comparison and can be used to evaluate shape complexity. We demonstrated that our framework can be used to describe and compare shapes from various domains. In addition, we showed that the framework accurately detects local shape features of pavement cells and outperform contending approaches. In the third part of the thesis, we extended the shape description framework to describe pavement cell shape features on tissue-level by proposing different network representations of the underlying imaging data.
The paper investigates the question of sustainability of capacity building initiatives by reporting about the multiplication training in the frame of DIES NMT Programme on quality assurance in Uganda and how it could make use of the social capital within the existing quality assurance network to sustain and address challenges during its implementation. The purpose of the article is to explore the nature of networking (social and institutional) which was established by the Ugandan Universities Quality Assurance Forum (UUQAF) and share the strategies used in this training experience for future sustainable capacity building training initiatives in emerging economies. The paper employed a qualitative research method to describe and analyse the training framework based on primary and secondary documents.
Higher education institutions in Guinea face many challenges, including reporting responsibilities, globalisation, and massification. Institutional evaluations of higher education and research institutions in 2013 could not initiate the implementation of change processes within the institutions. Recently, however, various initiatives have been started to change this situation with the purpose to sensitise and raise awareness and capabilities for quality assurance structures in Guinean HEIs. So far, the emphasis has been put on quality enhancement in higher education, especially on teaching evaluation, curriculum development, as well as on establishing quality assurance structures. This article gives an overview of the state of play and takes stock of the activities that have been initiated to set up quality assurance mechanisms in higher education and research institutions, and presents perspectives for further development of the quality approach in Guinea. The project ‘Quality Assurance Multiplication 2017-2018’ serves as an example to describe approaches and activities in setting up stable quality assurance structures, and to strengthen and raise awareness for a ‘quality culture’.
Whilst providing a framework for learning and scientific emancipation, a proposal writing training is confronted with various organisational and didactic challenges, which influence the achievement of the set training objectives. Based on observations made during the workshops for proposal writing organised in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, as part of the NMT Programme, the article raises two main questions: (a) How could these challenges be overcome and successfully addressed in the training? (b) What is the level of learning outcomes of the participants at the end of the training? The article shows that the success of the training lays in the relevance of the employed training approaches. The use of a participatory approach encouraged constructive exchanges between participants, trainers, and experts, and enabled all participants to finalise coherent projects to apply for national and international funding.
This article collected the results of a qualitative study focused on Colombian Higher Education Institutions’ representatives partaking in the training ‘Internationalisation for Peacebuilding 2018’. The selected Higher Education Institutions and representatives were all located in regions acutely affected by the Colombian armed conflict, now experiencing multifaceted challenges and opportunities in a post-conflict scenario. Interviews with participants of the training were conducted to analyse the skills acquired and to identify possible improvements brought about by the training at the institutions. The article further identifies specific needs of the institutions, to be taken into account for future courses on internationalisation for higher education institutions.
During the National Multiplication Training in Kenya in 2018, participants raised concerns about attrition, completion rates and quality of PhD programmes in Kenya’s public universities. This led the authors of this article to further examine the question of PhD completion rates. Available data underlined that PhD students across various disciplines in Kenya’s public universities take unnecessarily long to complete their studies due to a myriad of factors that are related to their supervisors, university guidelines for post-graduate studies, or the students themselves. This article examines inertia areas along the PhD training pathway at three public universities in Kenya and provides suggestions on structural and operational changes universities must make to shorten completion periods.
Deans at Institutions of Higher Education are seldom recipients of effective or specific professional management training, institutional mentorship, and coaching despite an increasing demand on them to play a more dynamic leadership role in the face of ever-changing local and global challenges. To address this deficiency, the inaugural Malaysian Chapter of the International Deans’ Course (MyIDC) was held in three parts over 2019 and 2020. In this paper, findings related to feedback on the programme are presented and discussed. Responses from the participants from two sets of surveys, and written feedback provided by two IDC international trainers involved in MyIDC were analysed. These reveal potential areas of improvement for the forthcoming MyIDC programme, such as in terms of planning and organisation, duration, content, and delivery. The article explores the lessons learnt from the MyIDC 2019/2020 training programme and discusses the improvements that can be made arising from the feedback received.
The higher education structure in Malaysia has experienced significant changes since the implementation of the Private Higher Educational Institutions Act of 1996. The unprecedented expansion of the higher education sector and the increasing autonomy conferred to universities have created a huge demand for competent university leadership that supports the development of higher education in Malaysia. This article discusses the very first national multiplication training in Malaysia in 2014 and analyses such out-comes as the identification of good practices for future initiatives and applications in university leadership training.
Though Humboldt’s travels to the Americas have been analyzed from a wide range of viewpoints, there are specific aspects that still await further investigation. Little is written about Humboldt in the field, specifically how he moved between different locations and simultaneously measured and mapped places and phenomena. The aim of this article is to discuss the triad movement-measure-ment-map that led to the development of specific practices of knowledge building on the move. Humboldt’s search for the connections between the watersheds of the Orinoco and the Amazon rivers and the resulting maps and drawings are used as an example to point out his cartographic impulse in his quest to understand and explain the physical world.
This paper analyzes a specific section of Martial’s Apophoreta (Book 14), the ‘list’ of fourteen literary works that the poet-persona suggests to the reader as potentially suitable presents to give to friends on the occasion of the Saturnalia. It focuses strictly on the literary aspects of the poems and their underlying carnivalesque poetics. This includes an assessment of the logic of the poems’ arrangement and alleged inconsistencies. It is suggested that the section be read as a complex statement of Martial’s on various works and genres of Greek and Roman literature. The last couplet of the section (14.196), a certain Calvus’ work ‘On the use of cold water’ (De aquae frigidae usu), which is unidentifiable, receives particular attention, for previous scholarship has wasted a lot of ink on guessing what kind of work this may have been, thereby losing touch with the rich (meta-)poetics the couplet actually conveys.
This article explores childhood discourses in the Jewish society of the Russian Empire. It focuses on images of parents, while exploring the differences between pre-modern and modern narrative types in Jewish autobiographies. In the pre-modern paradigm, mothers are barely present while fathers appear more often, although neither parent demonstrates emotional affection toward the child. In the modern paradigm, parents are either equally present or the mother is more prominent, they engage in the everyday activities with the child, and do not hesitate to show their emotional love. Moreover, the notions of inner world and child’s individuality emerge. These changes correspond to major shifts in discourses shaping the attitude toward children in the European society.
In 1810, Moses Lackenbacher, together with two of his children, Israel and Heinrich, and Moses Löwenstein created the company “Moses Lackenbacher & Compagnie” with headquarters in Nagykanizsa and a branch in Vienna. The main profile of the company was army purveyance. The business activity resulted in a high spatial mobility which led to socio-cultural acculturation and conversions to Christianity within the kinship. This paper explores the connection between kinship and the operation of the company on the basis of the prominent yet little-researched Lackenbachers in the early 19th-century Habsburg Monarchy. Central questions are how the relatives organized a company during the Napoleonic wars, as well as the impact of operating a business; how familial bonds and kinship links were affected, and, in this context, how relatives together evolved into a multi-religious network of kinship.
Genealogical documents offer crucial information on various aspects of Jewish history. They are still underappreciated by many historians, and there is little overlap between academic researchers and the genealogical community, for whom such documents serve a different purpose, as they retrieve individual family histories. The article provides an overview of the material held by Leo Baeck Institute Archives and Library as well as other digital resources for family research today.
Squaring the pedigree
(2020)
Arthur Czellitzer (1872 – 1943) embodies the interdependence between eugenics and genealogy in early 20th-century Germany. He developed widely discussed genealogical recording techniques designed both for studies about human heredity and for the use in historical family research. When he shifted his focus from medical family studies to Jewish family research after World War I, he maintained a eugenic agenda which was now primarily targeted at the preservation of the “Jewish race.”
Populism has fatally weakened the world’s ability to respond to COVID-19, by undermining the capacity of the structures and mechanisms of international law to address the pandemic. The pandemic has exposed as a fallacy a key tenet of populism – to protect the ‘people’ of a nation from external forces, including international law. In fact international law, through the principle of self-determination, enshrines the ability of peoples to determine their own political organization. But this does not preclude agreement at the international level on matters of common interest to humanity as a whole that require community action. The prevention of infectious disease is just such a case, which states have long agreed could not remain solely the preserve of national polities, but requires a common international response. This paper, placing the current crisis in light of the development of international health law, critically examines the response of key populist governments to COVID-19 in order to address the larger issue of the implications of populism for the fate of international law.
Current contestations of the liberal international order stand in notable contrast with the earlier rise of international law during the post-cold war period. As Krieger and Liese argue, this situation calls for assessment of the type of change that is currently observed, i.e. norm change (Wandel) or a more fundamental transformation of international law – a metamorphosis (Verwandlung)? To address this question, this paper details the bi-focal approach to norms in order to reflect and take account of the complex interrelation between fact-based and value-based conceptions of norms. The paper is organised in three sections. The first section presents three axioms underlying the conceptual framework to study norm(ative) change which are visualised by a triangular operation to analyse this change in relation with practices and norms. The second section recalls three key interests that have guided IR norms research after the return to norms in the late 1980s. They include, first, allocating change in and through practice, second, identifying behavioural change with reference to norm- following, and third, identifying norm(ative) change with reference to discursive practice. The third section presents the two analytical tools of the conceptual frame, namely, the norm-typology and the cycle-grid model. It also indicates how to apply these tools with reference to illustrative case scenarios. The conclusion recalls the key elements of the conceptual framework for research on norm(ative) change in international relations in light of the challenge of establishing sustainable normativity in the global order.
For the United States the ‘international law of global security’ is, in a unique sense, synonymous with the entire project of constructing global legal order. Uniquely preponderant power enjoyed since the end of the Second World War has allowed US preferences to manifest not merely in specific rules and regimes, but in purposive development of the entire structure of global legal order to favour American security interests. Perceptions of a recent decline in this order now find expression in advocacy for a ‘liberal’ or ‘rules-based’ international order, as the claimed foundation for global prosperity and security. This working paper seeks to map out the parameters of US contributions to the global security order by uncovering the strategic and political foundations of its engagement with the international law of global security. The paper begins by reflecting on competing US conceptions of the relationship between national security and global order as they evolved across the twentieth century. The focus then turns to three significant trends defining the contemporary field. First are US attitudes toward multilateral institutions and global security, and the ongoing contest between beliefs that they are mutually reinforcing versus beliefs that US security and global institutions sit in zero-sum opposition. Second is the impact of the generational ‘War on Terror’, which has yielded more permissive interpretation and development of laws governing the global use of violence. The final trend is that towards competitive geopolitical interests restructuring international law, which are evident across diverse areas ranging from global economics, to cybersecurity, to the fragmentation of global order into spheres of influence. Looking ahead, a confluence of rising geopolitical competitors with divergent legal conceptions, and conflicted domestic support for the legitimacy and desirability of US global leadership, emerge as leading forces already reshaping the global security order.
The WTO’s Crisis
(2020)
The perception of the WTO is currently one of an organisation in crisis. Yet, appraisal varies regarding its extent and seriousness: Is it merely a rough time or are we standing on the edge of destruction? The article will trace developments inside as well as outside the WTO in order to assess the magnitude of the crisis. It will be argued that while certain developments inside the organisation, when seen in accumulation would already warrant serious attention, only together with developments taking place outside of the WTO, the two strands of developments unfold their full potential for the crisis. The overall situation renders the WTO in a difficult position, as it is currently unable to adapt to these challenges, while keeping calm and carrying on might similarly further the crisis. While States might improve and further develop their trade relations in bi- and plurilateral agreements, it is only the WTO that reflects and stands for the multilateral post (cold) war order.
The guarantee of judicial independence is undoubtedly one of the most important institutional design features of international courts and tribunals. An independence deficit can adversely impact a court’s authority, create a crisis of legitimacy, and undermine the very effectiveness of an international court or tribunal. It can hardly be denied that for an international court to be considered legitimate, a basic degree of independence is a must. An independent judiciary is a precondition to the fair and just resolution of legal disputes. In the context of interstate dispute settlement where the jurisdiction of courts is based on the principle of consent, in the absence of a basic degree of judicial independence, states may not be willing to submit to the jurisdiction of international courts. Comparing and contrasting the International Court of Justice and the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organisation, I assess whether those international judicial mechanisms possess the basic degree of independence required for a court to be able to maintain its credibility so that it can continue to perform its core function of adjudicating interstate disputes. With both those interstate adjudicative bodies constituting the two leading international courts in terms of participation and the sheer number of cases decided, much may be learned from comparing them. I argue there is a case for bolstering the independence of the ICJ; and without immediate reforms to the Appellate Body’s institutional design, its recent demise may become permanent. I conclude that if a basic degree of judicial independence cannot be guaranteed, it is preferable to let a court vanish for a while than to maintain a significantly deficient one.
Large emissions
(2020)
Pinned Gibbs processes
(2020)
This paper evaluates the construction of the rights of human rights defenders within international law and its shortcomings in protecting women. Human rights defenders have historically been defined on the basis of their actions as defenders. However, as Marxist-feminist scholar Silvia Federici contends, women are inherently politicised and, moreover, face obstacles to political action which are invisible to and untouchable by the law. Labour rights set an example of handling such a disadvantaged political position by placing vital importance on workers’ right to association and collective action. The paper closes with the suggestion that transposing this construction of rights to women would better protect women as human rights defenders while emphasising their capacity for self-determination in their political actions.
Paid parental leave schemes have been shown to increase women’s employment rates but decrease their wages in case of extended leave durations. In view of these potential trade-offs, many countries are discussing the optimal design of parental leave policies. We analyze the impact of a major parental leave reform on mothers’ long-term earnings. The 2007 German parental leave reform replaced a means-tested benefit with a more generous earnings-related benefit that is granted for a shorter period of time. Additionally, a “daddy quota” of two months was introduced. To identify the causal effect of this policy on long-run earnings of mothers, we use a difference-in-difference approach that compares labor market outcomes of mothers who gave birth just before and right after the reform and nets out seasonal effects by including the year before. Using administrative social security data, we confirm previous findings and show that the average duration of employment interruptions increased for high-income mothers. Nevertheless, we find a positive long-run effect on earnings for mothers in this group. This effect cannot be explained by changes in working hours, observed characteristics, changes in employer stability or fertility patterns. Descriptive evidence suggests that the stronger involvement of fathers, incentivized by the “daddy months”, could have facilitated mothers’ re-entry into the labor market and thereby increased earnings. For mothers with low prior-to-birth earnings, however, we do not find any beneficial labor market effects of this parental leave reform.
Using quantile regression methods, this paper analyses the gender wage gap across the wage distribution and over time (1990–2014), while controlling for changing sample selection into full-time employment. Our findings show that the selection-corrected gender wage gap is much larger than the one observed in the data, which is mainly due to large positive selection of women into full-time employment. However, we show that selection-corrected wages of male and female workers at the lower half of the distribution have moderately converged over time. The reason for this development have been changes in the composition of the male full-time employment force over time, which in spite of the rather constant male full-time employment rate, have given place to a small but rising selection bias in male observed wages. In the upper half of the wage distribution, however, neither the observed nor the selection-corrected gender wage gap has narrowed over time.