Individual Fates Research Articles

Molecular characterization of human HSPCs with different cell fates in vivo using single-cell transcriptome analysis and lentiviral barcoding technology.

Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) possess the potential to produce all types of blood cells throughout their lives. It is well recognized that HSPCs are heterogeneous, which is of great significance for their clinical applications and the treatment of diseases associated with HSPCs. This study presents a novel technology called Single-Cell transcriptome Analysis and Lentiviral Barcoding (SCALeBa) to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the heterogeneity of human HSPCs in vivo. The SCALeBa incorporates a transcribed barcoding library and algorithm to analyze the individual cell fates and their gene expression profiles simultaneously. Our findings using SCALeBa reveal that HSPCs subset with stronger stemness highly expressed MYL6B, ATP2A2, MYO19, MDN1, ING3, and so on. The high expression of COA3, RIF1, RAB14, and GOLGA4 may contribute to the pluripotent-lineage differentiation of HSPCs. Moreover, the roles of the representative genes revealed in this study regarding the stemness of HPSCs were confirmed with biological experiments. HSPCs expressing MRPL23 and RBM4 genes may contribute to differentiation bias into myeloid and lymphoid lineage, respectively. In addition, transcription factor (TF) characteristics of lymphoid and myeloid differentiation bias HSPCs subsets were identified and linked to previously identified genes. Furthermore, the stemness, pluripotency, and differentiation-bias genes identified with SCALeBa were verified in another independent HSPCs dataset. Finally, this study proposes using the SCALeBa-generated tracking trajectory to improve the accuracy of pseudo-time analysis results. In summary, our study provides valuable insights for understanding the heterogeneity of human HSPCs in vivo and introduces a novel technology, SCALeBa, which holds promise for broader applications. KEY POINTS: SCALeBa and its algorithm are developed to study the molecular mechanism underlying human HSPCs identity and function. The human HSPCs expressing MYL6B, MYO19, ATP2A2, MDN1, ING3, and PHF20 may have the capability for high stemness. The human HSPCs expressing COA3, RIF1, RAB14, and GOLGA4 may have the capability for pluripotent-lineage differentiation. The human HSPCs expressing MRPL23 and RBM4 genes may have the capability to differentiate into myeloid and lymphoid lineage respectively in vivo. The legitimacy of the identified genes with SCALeBa was validated using biological experiments and a public human HSPCs dataset. SCALeBa improves the accuracy of differentiation trajectories in monocle2-based pseudo-time analysis.

Italian and Polish Mathematicians Face Racial Persecution and Emigration: Backgrounds, Individual Fates and Global Aspects

This paper provides a new analytical perspective on the socio-cultural interactions involving members of two main Italian research communities – the School of Mathematical Logic and the Italian School of Algebraic Geometry – and some of their Polish colleagues (Samuel Dickstein, Wiesław Jezierski, Alfred Rosenblatt et al.). I shall argue that the intricate network of relationships between Giuseppe Peano, Corrado Segre and their protégés paved the way for an intensification of scientific exchanges between Italy and Poland in the 1930s. The climax manifested in visits by Tullio Levi-Civita and Mauro Picone to Warsaw and Krakow. Simultaneously, this network fostered instances of remarkable cross-solidarity when Polish and Italian mathematicians faced a period of severe anti-Semitic persecution and migration. An appendix containing unpublished letters documents Rosenblatt’s role in assisting aspiring Italian refugees in securing positions in Peru.

The role of radiology in provenance research - experiences from the collaboration between radiology and anatomy at the University of Rostock and future perspectives.

Worldwide, the study and examination of human remains and the circumstances of their acquisition for anatomical collection have received great interest. As part of provenance research projects, a large number of collections are being investigated to determine whether the human remains have been acquired in a correct or unlawful way because the people could have been killed in order to be used as "anthropological objects" for research purposes and to become so-called "specimens". These topics have also been addressed by the Institute of Anatomy at the University Medical Center Rostock. The role of radiology in this interdisciplinary project will be presented using selected examples.The anatomical collection at the University of Rostock includes 40 human skulls, 14 plaster casts, 6 Egyptian mummy heads, and 1 full-body mummy. In addition to the examination by a historian, an anthropologist, and forensic pathologists, additional computed tomography was carried out on nine skulls and the full-body mummy. Micro-computed tomography was also carried out on seven skulls in order to enable a look behind the mummification material and tissue remains.(Micro-)computed tomography was able to close diagnostic gaps and the results presented some rather unexpected findings.Due to interdisciplinary collaboration, individual fates could be determined, which provided information about the individual's life and death circumstances. None of the examined individuals showed evidence of colonial-era injustice or the use of violence that would have led to their inclusion in the collection. (Micro-)computed tomography was a valuable addition to this provenance research project. · Computed tomography enhances interdisciplinary provenance research projects.. · Computed tomography enables a non-destructive examination of human remains.. · The future of research and presentation of human remains will increasingly be virtual.. · Steinhagen I, Brinker U, Kolbe V et al. The role of radiology in provenance research - experiences from the collaboration between radiology and anatomy at the University of Rostock and future perspectives. Fortschr Röntgenstr 2024; DOI 10.1055/a-2303-0312.

Utopian Spaces and Their Everyday Traces in Thomas Stuber’s In den Gängen (2018)

This article examines utopian elements in Thomas Stuber’s 2018 film In den Gängen. Despite the neoliberal forces that constrain a group of supermarket shelf stackers in the former East Germany, the film’s characters exhibit congenial bonds in the face of alienated work. Strikingly, their encounters with machines also convey an other-directedness and improvised conviviality, or energy that enables them to devise bonds in fleeting moments. As much as the film presumes a foreclosed-on socialist utopia, it also depicts a range of contemporary challenges to neoliberalism, including practices of commoning, non-normative forms of relationality, and human-machine interactions that gesture towards a posthumanist selfhood. At the same time, the three main characters’ personal circumstances and histories necessarily impact their ability to benefit from these elements. Both age and gender play crucial roles in their individual fates, and not all of them thrive within their caring, other-directed community. Ultimately, In den Gängen suggests the possibility of mundane existences gesturing towards superlative futures.

Myron Gordon Award Lecture 2023: Painting the neural crest: How studying pigment cells illuminates neural crest cell biology.

It has been 30 (!!) years since I began working on zebrafish pigment cells, as a postdoc in the laboratory of Prof. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. There, I participated in the first large-scale mutagenesis screen in zebrafish, focusing on pigment cell mutant phenotypes. The isolation of colourless, shady, parade and choker mutants allowed us (as a postdoc in Prof. Judith Eisen's laboratory, and then in my own laboratory at the University of Bath since 1997) to pursue my ambition to address long-standing problems in the neural crest field. Thus, we have studied how neural crest cells choose individual fates, resulting in our recent proposal of a new, and potentially unifying, model which we call Cyclical Fate Restriction, as well as addressing how pigment cell patterns are generated. A key feature of our work in the last 10 years has been the use of mathematical modelling approaches to clarify our biological models and to refine our interpretations. None of this would have been possible without a hugely talented group of laboratory members and other collaborators from around the world-it has been, and I am sure will continue to be, a pleasure and privilege to work with you all!

Flagship individuals in biodiversity conservation

Flagship species are an important tool for mobilizing support for conservation. Here, we extend this concept to include individual organisms, whose characteristics, fates, and connections to people can garner public attention, attract conservation support, and spur activism. Flagship individuals typically share a similar suite of characteristics, including (1) species‐level traits associated with charisma; (2) individual traits that are unique or distinctive; (3) a high degree of exposure to humans; and (4) a known, noteworthy life history or fate. The interplay between these characteristics and human agency establishes unique connections between flagship individuals and people, and generates widespread media attention. We discuss how the selection and promotion of flagship individuals can inspire empathy and, ultimately, conservation action. Finally, we identify the limitations of the flagship individual approach, while arguing that, if carefully and strategically implemented, it has the potential to produce substantial benefits for conservation policy and practice.

On the gap between objective and perceived risks of COVID-19.

Asurvey conducted by the German Socio-Economic Panel during the early phase of the SARS-CoV‑2 pandemic in spring 2020 showed that the perceived risks of SARS-CoV‑2 infection were amassive overestimation of the actual risks. Atotal of 5783 people (2.3% missing data) stated how likely they thought it was that SARS-CoV‑2 would cause alife-threatening illness in them in the next 12months. The average subjective probability was 26%. We consider how such an overestimation could have occurred and how amore realistic risk assessment could be achieved in the population in afuture pandemic. We show that qualitative attributes of the pandemic, the reporting of the media, and psychological features may have contributed to the overestimation of SARS-CoV‑2 risks. In its early stages, the SARS-CoV‑2 pandemic had qualitative characteristics known to lead to an overestimation of risks: The risks associated with the pandemic were new, unfamiliar, perceived as poorly controllable, and were taken involuntarily. Phenomena known from cognitive psychology such as the availability and anchor heuristics can also explain the overestimation of pandemic risks. Characteristics of media coverage such as the focus on individual fates and the associated neglect of the denominator also contributed to the gap between perceived and objective risk. In apotential future pandemic, people need to be vigilant but not in apanic. Better risk communication-for example, with better prepared figures and graphically presented percentages while avoiding the denominator neglect-could help the population to perceive risks of future pandemics more realistically.

Corrosion behavior of a compositionally complex alloy utilizing simultaneous Al, Cr, and Ti passivation

The corrosion behavior of the Al0.3Cr0.5Fe2Mn0.25Mo0.15Ni1.5Ti0.3 compositionally complex dual-phase alloy was explored in a variety of electrolytes. Comparable corrosion resistance to 316L stainless steel and Ni-Cr binaries was observed in NaCl despite lower Cr concentrations. Individual elemental fates during corrosion were identified by combinations of in-situ atomic emission spectroelectrochemistry and ex-situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy with high-resolution surface analysis and depth profiling. A potentiostatically grown passive film was enriched in Al(III), Cr(III), Ti(IV), and Mo(VI). Al-Ti and Cr-Ti layers were suggested but significant Al, Cr, and Ti mixing was present. Proposed benefits of Al-Cr-Ti coexistence are addressed.

Zebrafish pigment cells develop directly from persistent highly multipotent progenitors

Neural crest cells are highly multipotent stem cells, but it remains unclear how their fate restriction to specific fates occurs. The direct fate restriction model hypothesises that migrating cells maintain full multipotency, whilst progressive fate restriction envisages fully multipotent cells transitioning to partially-restricted intermediates before committing to individual fates. Using zebrafish pigment cell development as a model, we show applying NanoString hybridization single cell transcriptional profiling and RNAscope in situ hybridization that neural crest cells retain broad multipotency throughout migration and even in post-migratory cells in vivo, with no evidence for partially-restricted intermediates. We find that leukocyte tyrosine kinase early expression marks a multipotent stage, with signalling driving iridophore differentiation through repression of fate-specific transcription factors for other fates. We reconcile the direct and progressive fate restriction models by proposing that pigment cell development occurs directly, but dynamically, from a highly multipotent state, consistent with our recently-proposed Cyclical Fate Restriction model.

The Slowdown of Growth Rate Controls the Single-Cell Distribution of Biofilm Matrix Production via an SinI-SinR-SlrR Network.

In Bacillus subtilis, master regulator Spo0A controls several cell-differentiation pathways. Under moderate starvation, phosphorylated Spo0A (Spo0A~P) induces biofilm formation by indirectly activating genes controlling matrix production in a subpopulation of cells via an SinI-SinR-SlrR network. Under severe starvation, Spo0A~P induces sporulation by directly and indirectly regulating sporulation gene expression. However, what determines the heterogeneity of individual cell fates is not fully understood. In particular, it is still unclear why, despite being controlled by a single master regulator, biofilm matrix production and sporulation seem mutually exclusive on a single-cell level. In this work, with mathematical modeling, we showed that the fluctuations in the growth rate and the intrinsic noise amplified by the bistability in the SinI-SinR-SlrR network could explain the single-cell distribution of matrix production. Moreover, we predicted an incoherent feed-forward loop; the decrease in the cellular growth rate first activates matrix production by increasing in Spo0A phosphorylation level but then represses it via changing the relative concentrations of SinR and SlrR. Experimental data provide evidence to support model predictions. In particular, we demonstrate how the degree to which matrix production and sporulation appear mutually exclusive is affected by genetic perturbations. IMPORTANCE The mechanisms of cell-fate decisions are fundamental to our understanding of multicellular organisms and bacterial communities. However, even for the best-studied model systems we still lack a complete picture of how phenotypic heterogeneity of genetically identical cells is controlled. Here, using B. subtilis as a model system, we employ a combination of mathematical modeling and experiments to explain the population-level dynamics and single-cell level heterogeneity of matrix gene expression. The results demonstrate how the two cell fates, biofilm matrix production and sporulation, can appear mutually exclusive without explicitly inhibiting one another. Such a mechanism could be used in a wide range of other biological systems.

Antropološki aspekti identiteta junaka "Nečiste krvi" Bore Stankovića

In light that the novel "Impure Blood" by Borisav Stanković covers the events, family and social relations, in the defined area, a small-town in the south of Serbia, at specific time, from 1850 to 1900, so make it possibly to research the aspects of human life as the central point of the turmoil of that time and that space. In interpretations of the parts from the novel "Impure Blood", the writer's attitude towards individual human fates in social situations in Vranje, after liberation from the Turks, can be seen. The anthropological aspect of the problem issue is addressed to the main figures (Effendi-Mita and Landlord /"Gazda"/ Marko) of the social communities given in the novel, urban and rural, but also to their descendants. In this novel, Bora Stanković described a series of tragic fates of the characters who were often in disgrace of unwritten rules of their background and inherited patterns of manners. Bora's characters experienced a drama of identity due to the collapse of merchant families that had a prominent and privileged place in the small-town, but also because of the collision with new times that spreading rural families into town. This led to the mixing of two worlds in which money began to determine social relations and to disrupt self-reliance of personality. Therefore, all these circumstances further complicate the role of an unfinished man looking for his identity, confirming or denying the personal need and experience of ancestors. Stanković's characters are in deep discord with themselves and others, and as such they proved incapable and weak to struggle for their own identity. The paper is also dealing with possible reasons for such choice of the characters.

Criminal Cases of Czechoslovaks – Victims of USSR Repressions

The purpose of the article is, on the basis of documents that relate to Czechoslovaks arrested by the Soviet authorities, executed, or sent to the Gulag, to trace their fate and analyse the base for creating the “image of a criminals”, who was punished despite their origin or views. This work is an attempt to analyse the documents we have, obtained from Ukrainian archives. The research methodology is based on an analytical approach to specific cases, selected for certain periods or types of punishment. In particular, these are the files of Hryhir Krutyi, executed in 1937 in Kyiv, Mikuláš Végh and Chaskel Brückel, who crossed the border into the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II and were sent to the Gulag, Kurt Rosenzweig, one of the Czechoslovak Jews transported to Nisko (Poland), who were forced to cross the border into the USSR at the command of the Nazis, and Volodymyr Pasichnyk, who was arrested after the end of the Second World War in Czechoslovakia by SMERSH and forcibly transported to the USSR. The analysis is based mainly on the texts of archival documents with attention to the reliability of the facts stated in them. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the approach to research – focusing on the content of documents and the evidence part, which rarely attracts the attention of historians. In this context, the files of Czechoslovaks, victims of Soviet repression, have not been studied yet. Conclusions. Based on the analysis, it was possible to trace not only the individual fates, an important part of the common and unknown history, but also the way of making decisions by the Soviet authorities, which sent innocent people to their deaths. Keywords: repressions in the USSR, Czechoslovaks in the Gulag, NKVD, correctional labour camps, death penalty, border crossing, criminal cases.

Time-resolved microfluidics unravels individual cellular fates during double-strand break repair

BackgroundDouble-strand break repair (DSBR) is a highly regulated process involving dozens of proteins acting in a defined order to repair a DNA lesion that is fatal for any living cell. Model organisms such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae have been used to study the mechanisms underlying DSBR, including factors influencing its efficiency such as the presence of distinct combinations of microsatellites and endonucleases, mainly by bulk analysis of millions of cells undergoing repair of a broken chromosome. Here, we use a microfluidic device to demonstrate in yeast that DSBR may be studied at a single-cell level in a time-resolved manner, on a large number of independent lineages undergoing repair.ResultsWe used engineered S. cerevisiae cells in which GFP is expressed following the successful repair of a DSB induced by Cas9 or Cpf1 endonucleases, and different genetic backgrounds were screened to detect key events leading to the DSBR efficiency. Per condition, the progenies of 80–150 individual cells were analyzed over 24 h. The observed DSBR dynamics, which revealed heterogeneity of individual cell fates and their contributions to global repair efficacy, was confronted with a coupled differential equation model to obtain repair process rates. Good agreement was found between the mathematical model and experimental results at different scales, and quantitative comparisons of the different experimental conditions with image analysis of cell shape enabled the identification of three types of DSB repair events previously not recognized: high-efficacy error-free, low-efficacy error-free, and low-efficacy error-prone repair.ConclusionsOur analysis paves the way to a significant advance in understanding the complex molecular mechanism of DSB repair, with potential implications beyond yeast cell biology. This multiscale and multidisciplinary approach more generally allows unique insights into the relation between in vivo microscopic processes within each cell and their impact on the population dynamics, which were inaccessible by previous approaches using molecular genetics tools alone.

Context of the emigration of Jewish neurologists (1933-1939)

This article focuses on the historical context of the emigration of "Jewish" doctors during the "Third Reich". The approximately 9000 Jewish physicians, who were still able to emigrate, represented 17% of the German medical profession in 1933. Around three quarters of them left the German Reich by 1939, mainly for the USA, Palestine and Great Britain. Initially, Jewish organizations fueled hopes of atemporary exile; however, in the wake of the events of 1938 ("Anschluss" of Austria, failure of the Evian Conference, establishment of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration headed by Adolf Eichmann in Vienna, maximization of economic plundering etc.) emigration via the intermediate step of forced emigration had turned into alife-saving flight. Scientists could appeal to special aid organizations for support. Among the best known are the Emergency Community of German Scientists Abroad initiated in Zurich, the Academic Assistance Council founded in England, from which originated the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning as well as the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars created in New York. Their help was often subject to criteria, such as publication performance, scientific reputation and age. Promising researchers who were awarded ascholarship before 1933 could rely on acommitment from the Rockefeller Foundation. The historical analysis of options and motivations but also of restrictions and impediments affecting the decision-making process to emigrate, provides the basis for aretrospective approach to individual hardships and fates.

Stranger H: no se recuerda la soledad

I sustained a two-hour conversation with a stranger I met in the library. In this time, we cried twice over the death of his parents and my father. We also agreed to create a present for his daughter which kept us in communication for over a year. The synchronic interconnections and parallels of time and space that emerged between this stranger's life and mine forced me into a dialogue with people, dates, places, objects, and revelations that crystallize in this text. The events that initially felt like parts of individual fates of individual family histories are here rediscovered as entanglements of unexpected invisible bonds and strands of cosmic coincidence.  In Stranger H: We Do Not Remember Alone, I recapitulate this process and grieve my loss by gathering mourning rituals, contagious recalling, audiovisual metaphysics, pseudoscientific relational diagrams, and spiritual strangerhood.    The performative nature of the text continued to grow. I shared this text with a friend and she spontaneously added the memories of her own loss as they emerged while going through it. As I read her notes, I realized that things that we probably wouldn’t have been able to tell each other verbally were shared in a profound reading-conversation. The editable version of the text is now available on request to anyone who has lost a parent and would like to join this conversation. This text has become an in-dialogue reading that acknowledges loss from an aesthetic, philosophical, speculative, and imaginative lense. But most importantly, it is a way to be accompanied in the lonesome process of facing loss. Although the pain of each person is non-transferable and must be overcome individually, the Stranger H: We Do Not Remember Alone holds space and time to reflect one's own experience in the mirror of voices of many others. If you wish to have access to the editable version contact the.stranger.gets.a.gift@gmail.com 

Cross-border cooperation in the border region of Germany, France, and Luxembourg in times of Covid-19

ABSTRACT The process of European integration has tended to diminish the significance of borders within the EU. In that respect, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020 was all the greater: 35 years after the signing of the Schengen Agreement, checks and closures suddenly reappeared at many former border crossing points; long queues at crossing points, families and friends cut off from each other, and complex individual fates descended like a pall on European societies. At the same time, the advanced state of integration of borderlands became apparent - a striking example being the SaarLorLux region across the common borders of Germany, France, and Luxembourg. The article inquires into the political response to the impact of the Corona crisis across this border region. The analysis shows that on many levels SaarLorLux is perceived as a tightly meshed integration area in which functional exchange is normal, and that a corresponding ideational shock was felt at all political levels when border controls were reintroduced. However, the situation also had positive effects in terms of cross-border cooperation. Many political actors see the institutionalization of cross-border integration as having grown in the pandemic and are unanimous in wanting future developments in this respect.

SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM OF THE BESSARABIAN POEM BY A. S. PUSHKIN

The article attempts to identify the significant components of the chronotopical continuum of the poem “The Gypsies” based on the interpretation of the chronotope as a phenomenon of M. Bakhtin’s historical poetics. Bessarabia, represented by the poet in various aspects (the territory of the “long battle,” the country of “Russian glory,” the habitat of the “infant” people, the keeper of the poetic traditions steeped in the name of Ovid, the place of A. Pushkin’s own involuntary stay) acts as the dominant real-geographical, historical epoch-making and actually poetic chronotope of the poem. The examined space-time continuum of the work includes the distinctive topoi and loci that determine both the nomadic life of the gypsy camp in general and the individual fates of the characters in particular. The plot-forming role of Aleko’s “wanderings” is described as a process of searching, gaining and, as a result, a loss of himself. The hero’s rejection of civilization predetermined his moral death: his personality turned out to be unable to survive in the natural world outside the cultural and moral forms. Ultimately, the complexly structured constitutive Bessarabian continuum was dominated by the author's chronotope with his pessimistic idea of inevitable fate, which, in turn, was conditioned by the romantic model of the world, which was established in the philosophical and artistic consciousness of the Pushkin era.

A Small Door Set in Concrete: One Woman's Story of Challenging Borders in Israel/Palestine by Ilana Hammerman

Reviewed by: A Small Door Set in Concrete: One Woman's Story of Challenging Borders in Israel/Palestine by Ilana Hammerman Lina Tuschling Hammerman, Ilana. A Small Door Set in Concrete: One Woman's Story of Challenging Borders in Israel/Palestine. Translated by Tal Haran. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. A Small Door Set in Concrete is an intense reminder that although borders may separate people, they need not define them. In her newest book, Israeli writer, translator, and activist Ilana Hammerman gives us a glimpse into her [End Page 433] decades-long activism in the Palestinian Territories. After two losses in her personal life and a period of deep reflection, Hammerman starts traveling to the Palestinian Territories to learn about "the other side," where she generously invests time, effort, and money to aid those living under Israeli military rule. Voices of ordinary people affected by conflicts are often missing from academic scholarship and public discourse; this book tries to change that by giving voice to some ordinary Palestinians trying to make a living, get an education, or raise a family. A forceful counter-narrative to one-dimensional portrayals of both parties to the conflict, Hammerman's book effectively draws on her own experiences while putting the struggles of the Palestinians she encounters at the center of her stories. The book's division into two parts—"The West Bank" and "The Gaza Strip—makes intuitive sense. Throughout the book, we learn how Hammerman meets many Palestinians and how their life stories are intertwined, sometimes for years, at other times just for an hour or two. The book is a series of literary portraits stretching across almost three decades of the author's trips to the Palestinian Territories showcasing her quiet but persistent activism. Her actions are characterized by helping others accomplish seemingly normal things: seeing the sea for the first time; replacing a pair of glasses that broke; finding work for a few days; exploring a nearby city. Yet to accomplish these and other goals, Hammerman has to be resourceful and in some instances break the law, as when she smuggled the father of a family in her trunk to Jerusalem to give him employment for a few days. Or when she takes four Palestinian children into Israel so that they can visit the zoo for the first time in their lives. While her actions are marked by solidarity and compassion, they are acts of civil disobedience and show a fierce commitment to defying stereotypes and enemy narratives. Hammerman's accounts excel at showcasing a mosaic of individual fates that are individually and collectively representative of a whole yet fractured people living under military occupation. She also shows the "other" as regular individuals with hopes, dreams, and everyday struggles, and in doing so she attempts to combat the narrative of "enemy" on both sides of the conflict. Most of all, this book gently forces the reader to realize and evaluate the vastly different realities of everyday live on each side of the border. Most of the book is written in the third person, referring to Hammerman frequently as "the woman." This perspective appears to be utilized in order to emphasize her participation in the narrative while also providing a sense of [End Page 434] distance between the writer and the story, putting the focus on the Palestinian protagonists. Although this stylistic choice may fulfill its purpose for most readers, this reviewer found the frequent use of the third person a bit disconcerting. The nature of the book—a collection of personal experiences that are different yet share a common thread—makes for an easy read that stimulates compassion and even sympathy for the Palestinians we meet through Ham-merman. However, the recounting of personal stories is also the book's greatest weakness. Readers not familiar with the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be left puzzled by or unable to grasp the severity of certain accounts and even underestimate Hammerman's courage. For students and scholars of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and those interested in nonviolent activism, this book amplifies voices rarely covered in typical textbooks on politics in the Middle East or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in...

Integrating dead recoveries in open‐population spatial capture–recapture models

AbstractIntegrating dead recoveries into capture–recapture models can improve inference on demographic parameters. But dead‐recovery data do not only inform on individual fates; they also contain information about individual locations. Open‐population spatial capture–recapture (OPSCR) has the potential to fully exploit such data. Here, we present an open‐population spatial capture–recapture–recovery model integrating the spatial information associated with dead recoveries. Using simulations, we investigate the conditions under which this extension of the OPSCR model improves inference and illustrate the approach with the analysis of a wolverine (Gulo gulo) dataset from Norway. Simulation results showed that the integration of dead recoveries into OPSCR boosted the precision of all demographic parameters. In addition, the integration of dead‐recovery locations boosted the precision of the inter‐annual movement parameter, which is difficult to estimate in OPSCR, by up to 40% in case of sparse data. We also detected a 139–367% increase in the probability of models reaching convergence with increasing proportion of dead recoveries when dead‐recovery information was integrated spatially, compared with a 30–107% increase when integrating dead recoveries in a non‐spatial way. The analysis of the wolverine data showed the same general pattern of improved parameter precision. Overall, our results highlight how leveraging the demographic and spatial information contained in dead‐recovery data in a spatial capture–recapture framework can improve population parameter estimation.

„Daheim [...] war vielleicht noch Österreich“

Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch opens up a multifaceted historical horizon: By unfolding the fictional story of the Trotta family in the crisis-ridden final period of the Habsburg era, he exemplifies cultural diagnosis through individual fates. Starting with contemporary discourse on Austria, the essay analyses the significance of the Heimat myth in Roth’s Radetzkymarsch and its mediation alongside the hero myth, and the Kaiser myth. It examines the strategies the novel uses to satirically counteract these mythological configurations. In the characters’ mentality, defeatism, resignation, and anticipations of doom – extending to apocalyptic visions – are combined with regressive nostalgia for fantasies of home, and ironic scepticism. The result is a revealing panorama of heterogeneous sensitivities in a sociopsychological context. The portrait of the hero of Solferino, who once saved the emperor’s life and through his portrait remains ever-present in the lives of his descendants, has a leitmotif function: Although the obsession with ancestors in the hero myth offers orientation and support to the hero’s son and grandson, it also negatively affects their identity formation. However, it is not only the subject who is affected by the loss of inner stability in the final period of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy before the First World War. Without illusion, the novel radically shows symptoms of a diffusion of consciousness in the aged Emperor Franz Joseph I himself, rendering him unsuitable as a fatherly authority of reassuring sovereignty and strength – despite all the representative staging. The essay examines the novel’s tense web of motifs by analysing the strategies of ironic dismantling that emerge in the oscillation between myth-making and demythologising. Aspects of rhetorical design are also taken into account, as they significantly contribute to the aesthetics of Roth’s epoch novel.