Emplotting the Air War: Jörg Friedrich’s Brandstätten (2003)

Jörg Friedrich’s Brandstätten (2003) may be considered the visual counterpart of Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945(2002), a book which sparked a debate about how to properly treat the subject of German air raid victims in historiography. Brandstätten, on the other hand, is a photo book consisting of archival photographs, literary and eyewitness quotes, statistics, as well as excerpts from Nazi propaganda. Though I consider many of the troubling continuities between Der Brand and Brandstätten (e.g., equation of victims of the Shoah and victims of the air war), the main point of analysis in this paper is Friedrich’s emplotment of the air war. Friedrich presents the reader with two protagonists: German culture and the German people. German cultural heritage, in Friedrich’s formulation, is itself reified in the face of the very cities that the air raids destroyed. He emplots the cities (embodiments of historical architecture and cultural artifacts) differently than the German people (conceived according to the idea of the mythical Volksgemeinschaft): the former takes the shape of a Tragedy, the latter that of a Romance. Drawing from Hayden White’s work on historical narrative and figuralism, I conduct a close reading of Friedrich’s Brandstätten (2003) and the narrative strategies he uses in order to emplot the air war according to his own particular, even if semi-recycled, story arc. I illustrate how Friedrich employs montage, chronological-thematic ordering, as well as what Michael André Bernstein calls “backshadowing,” in order to doubly emplot the air war according to Tragic and Romantic story types

Chronotopes of Flight from the Red Army in East and West German Feature Film (1950–1970)

This article investigates the representation of flight from the Red Army (1944/45) in East and West German feature film prior to 1970. Even while refugee figures may abound, the representation of flight appears infrequently in feature film during this period. In order to understand why this is the case as well as how and why flight is actually depicted when it is, I turn to Wolfgang Schleif’s Preis der Nationen/Das Mädchen Marion (Prize of the Nations/The Girl Marion, FRG; 1956) and Martin Eckermann’s television film Wege übers Land (Ways Across the Land, GDR; 1968) and their representations of refugee treks—which, like the other films in this corpus, draw on archival footage and photographs for their own compositions. I consider the refugee trek as a specific subset of what Mikhail Bakhtin calls the “chronotope of the road” and analyze the intersection of the chronotope of the road (of flight) with the photographic index. It is at this intersection that the films negotiate between the competing myths, politics, and collective memories that saturated the socially and politically volatile issue of flight and the ‘lost German East’. What my analysis shows is that cinematic stagings of flight from the Red Army such as those in Preis der Nationen and Wege übers Land challenge, re-frame, or re-purpose the icons of flight in order to diffuse irredentist political messages and to demonstrate the successful integration of Flüchtlinge/Vertriebene ‘refugees/expellees’ and Umsiedler ‘resettlers’ into West and East Germany, according to each state’s respective foundational narrative

The Contribution and Status of Women Inside Directors in Fortune 1000 Companies

My interest in women and corporate boards evolved from a general desire for more information on boards. Being the most senior woman executive in an educations institution, there appeared to be no senior individuals available to assume a role on our board and to illustrate the possible role women executives could play. During my initial research it became obvious there were very few senior women executives who had ascended to positions on their organization\u27s corporate board. there was also very little known about women inside directors, giving me a tremendous opportunity to begin to answer numerous questions. My grand tour questions were to identify how women inside directors were represented on corporate boards and how their status was determined. Questions surrounding representation included the following sub-questions: Do women inside directors sit on larger boards? Do boards with women inside directors have a larger number of inside directors? Do boards with women inside directors have a larger representation of family members who are also directors? The question on status was an issue of determining the influence of women inside directors by identifying their contributions and how they are utilized. the sub-questions surrounding influence included the following: Are women inside directors younger than male inside directors? Do women inside directors have shorter board tenure than male inside directors? How do the salaries of women inside directors compare to male inside directors? How are women inside directors utilized? This research did not vary from this initial intent. These questions are answered, but as with most research, more questions were raised

Appointments, pay and performance in UK boardrooms by gender

This article uses UK data to examine issues regarding the scarcity of women in boardroom positions. The article examines appointments, pay and any associated productivity effects deriving from increased diversity. Evidence of gender-bias in the appointment of women as non-executive directors is found together with mixed evidence of discrimination in wages or fees paid. However, the article finds no support for the argument that gender diverse boards enhance corporate performance. Proposals in favour of greater board diversity may be best structured around the moral value of diversity, rather than with reference to an expectation of improved company performance

Improved control strategy of DFIG-based wind turbines using direct torque and direct power control techniques

This paper presents different control strategies for a variable-speed wind energy conversion system (WECS), based on a doubly fed induction generator. Direct Torque Control (DTC) with Space-Vector Modulation is used on the rotor side converter. This control method is known to reduce the fluctuations of the torque and flux at low speeds in contrast to the classical DTC, where the frequency of switching is uncontrollable. The reference for torque is obtained from the maximum power point tracking technique of the wind turbine. For the grid-side converter, a fuzzy direct power control is proposed for the control of the instantaneous active and reactive power. Simulation results of the WECS are presented to compare the performance of the proposed and classical control approaches.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Adapting Self-Supervised Learning for Computational Pathology

Self-supervised learning (SSL) has emerged as a key technique for training networks that can generalize well to diverse tasks without task-specific supervision. This property makes SSL desirable for computational pathology, the study of digitized images of tissues, as there are many target applications and often limited labeled training samples. However, SSL algorithms and models have been primarily developed in the field of natural images and whether their performance can be improved by adaptation to particular domains remains an open question. In this work, we present an investigation of modifications to SSL for pathology data, specifically focusing on the DINOv2 algorithm. We propose alternative augmentations, regularization functions, and position encodings motivated by the characteristics of pathology images. We evaluate the impact of these changes on several benchmarks to demonstrate the value of tailored approaches.Comment: Presented at DCA in MI Workshop, CVPR 202

Prognostic value of myocardial perfusion imaging after first-line coronary computed tomography angiography:A multi-center cohort study

Purpose: Further diagnostic testing may be required after a coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) showing suspected coronary stenosis. Whether myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) provides further prognostic information post-CTA remains debated. We evaluated the prognosis for patients completing CTA stratified for post-CTA diagnostic work-up using real-world data. Methods: We identified all patients in our uptake area with angina symptoms undergoing first-time CTA over a 10-year period. Follow-up time was a median of 3.7 years [1.9–5.8]. The primary endpoint was a composite of myocardial infarction or death. The secondary endpoint was late revascularization. Results: During the study period 53,351 patients underwent CTA. Of these, 24% were referred for further down-stream testing, 3,547 (7%) to MPI and 9,135 (17%) to invasive coronary angiography (ICA). The primary and secondary endpoints occurred in 2,026 (3.8%) and 954 (1.8%) patients. Patient-characteristic-adjusted hazard ratios for the primary and secondary endpoint using patients with a normal CTA as reference were 1.37 (1.21–1.55) and 2.50 (1.93–3.23) for patient treated medically, 1.68 (1.39–2.03) and 6.13 (4.58–8.21) for patients referred to MPI and 1.94 (1.69–2.23) and 9.18 (7.16–11.78) for patients referred for ICA, respectively. Adjusted analysis with stratification for disease severity at CTA showed similar hazard ratios for patients treated medically after CTA and patients referred for MPI and treated medically after the MPI. Conclusion: In patients completing coronary CTA, second-line MPI testing seems to identify patients at low risk of future events. MPI seems to have the potential to act as gatekeeper for ICA after coronary CTA.</p