Turkish migration to Germany has long been debated as not having been sufficiently documented and given an adequate place in German national archives. But these debates have often reified a static and nationally organized logic of the archive. This essay instead traces the literary figure of the Ausländer as poetically claimed by the writer Semra Ertan and visually staged by media artist Cana Bilir-Meier in order to give an account of the unspeakable experience of racialization as ongoing foreignization in a Germany shaped by labor migration. Based on the discussion of Ertan’s select poems and the textual, visual, and audible material compiled by Bilir-Meier, this article demonstrates how the figure of the Ausländer animates “memory meetings.” Ertan’s words and personal experience are co-produced by Bilir-Meier’s interventions and given out to meet with contemporary intersectional anti-racist activists, who are enabled to make a claim about their own present in which the figure of the Ausländer has been mostly forgotten.

The article makes several claims based on the figure and the workings of the Ausländer in these memory meetings. The first claim is that the figure of the Ausländer allows a conceptualization of race in Germany that is grounded in the experience of alienation—as seeing oneself from a racializing gaze—resulting from unequal labor, institutional abandonment, and the devaluing of migrant-knowledge production. Another claim pertains to the nature of the archive itself. The material collected from various sources, including German and Turkish national media, in which the details about Ertan are rather marginalized or documented to be forgotten, are reorganized by Bilir-Meier from the margins to establish its own center. This archive is situated in migrant-knowledge, particular to the experience of Ertan’s migration and affectively charged, but able to tell a larger story about the racializing experience of migration. Taking these claims together, the article argues that migrant archives are not just dispersed documents waiting to be nationally organized and acknowledged. Rather, the “the migrant archive” is a form of embodied, lived, and practiced knowledge with others in moments of commemoration. The migrant archive then is a dynamic and shifting practice, able to adapt to transnationally moving experiences if it can find a ground for mnemonic interaction regardless of, or even in counter-position to, a nationally sanctioned status.

Translation of "Der den Klang der Worte liebt" by Selim Özdoğan.

This is a proposal to encode the Old South Arabian script in the international character encoding standard Unicode. The script was published in Unicode Standard version 5.2 in October 2009. The script was used from the 8c BCE until 6c CE on the Arabian peninsula, especially in the area of present-day Yemen. It was used to write various southwest Semitic languages of various cultures, such as Minean, Sabaean, Qatabanian, Hadramite, and Himyaritic. Eventually the script was supplanted by the Arabic script.

This dissertation deals with the question of citizenship in contemporary Germany. By taking the field of civic education as a site of inquiry it probes into the educational methods of civic practices geared to train youth and professionals of migrant backgrounds to cultivate a sense of German citizenship. The dissertation demonstrates that the key question of citizenship, as one of tolerant conduct, is framed by the post-Holocaust condition. Thus, the dissertation focuses on civic educational programs funded to combat Islamic extremism and to foster secular tolerance by way of relating to the Holocaust and the murdered Jews. By doing so, the research focuses on programs dealing with the Holocaust as an exceptional event, yet constitutive of liberal democracy and tolerant subjects in the political present. The unit of analysis of the study is the group of civic educators hired to target and work with members from immigrant communities as Muslims. Here the dissertation focuses on how the Muslim subject is produced and bifurcated into tolerant German Muslim vs. Islamic extremist.

The thesis argues that the wider policies aimed at incorporating immigrants as Muslims into the German nation, becomes traceable as racializing effects in civic education. The position of the Muslim is an unstable category at risk to fail to be a recognizably secular citizen. Part of this failure, as it is accounted for throughout the dissertation, is a secularization paradigm applied to Muslims as religious subjects, who are asked to shed their religiosity from public. Secularization in the sense of historicism intersects with the notion of racial historicism, a civilizational betterment of Muslim subjects. Yet the same form of secularization cannot be applied to relating to the Holocaust. Rather, here Muslims have to submit to the Holocaust as “the constitutive exception” for the post-Holocaust episteme and the contemporary political order. The failure to do so, is read by public institutions as signs of Islamic extremism or religious intolerance.

The dissertation accounts for the strategies and moments in which formal German citizens are at risk to be further racialized as Muslims only, without ever fully being perceived as German citizens. Conversely a wider effect of these educational strategies and the discourse around them contributes to a moral superiority of the ethnic German Christian-secularized majority leading up to a sense of rightful owning of the nation and entitled to discriminate against Muslims, because of their assumed religious intolerance. The thesis defines this national superiority as moral nationalism in a reciprocal and co-constitutive relation with the racialized Muslim subject.

Neuroblastoma is a deadly tumor derived from neuronal tissue for which the molecular drivers remain a mystery. Here we have applied classical genetics, analysis of expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL), and forward insertional mutagenesis to uncover novel pathways in the disease. We showed that liver arginase is a candidate susceptibility gene and interacts with component of the GABA pathway both genetically and biochemically to influence tumor susceptibility, and both of these pathways represent potential therapeutic targets. We then constructed a gene coexpression network in tumors and in sympathetic ganglia to explore novel genetic/functional interactions in both neuroblastoma and normal neurons. In particular, we used the coexpression network to identify novel candidate genes for several hereditary hearing loss loci. In a separate project, we focused on forward genetics utilizing the Sleeping Beauty insertional mutagenesis system. We developed a novel algorithm to predict local insertion site preferences of the vector, and show that the

transposon system does not cause widespread genomic instability. We then generated a novel transgenic line, TH-SB11, to drive tumors in the peripheral sympathetic nervous system. Finally, we explored methods to drive tumors in the mammary gland, and generated a novel knock-in line capable of driving high-level conditional transposase expression in any tissue. This work illustrates the genetic complexity of neuroblastoma,

and has identified novel functional pathways in the disease and a novel therapeutic target. In addition, this work lays the foundation for further gene discovery in neuroblastoma and other tumor types.

This dissertation comes as an application of receive and transmit phased array beamformers on 22 nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator technology. They both use the concept of passive vector modulation for higher linearity. The advantage of the smaller feature size switches was used to implement the design at the Ka-band with minimized losses. The receiver IP-1dB is higher than -20 dBm with a power consumption of 60 mW at typical biasing. The biasing was varied for gain from 11 dB to 18 dB, 5 GHz bandwidth (24-29 GHz), and power consumed from 35 mW to 180 mW. The noise figure is optimized to be at 3 dB while minimizing the power consumption. The phase error standard deviation is less than 4.5 degrees for 6-bit phase shifters. The gain error standard deviation is less than 0.25 dB for the attenuators. The Ka-band transmit channel, beamformer, has an OP-1dB is 15.5 dBm with 12.5 % efficiency of the entire channel. For the QAM-64-100 MHz modulated signal, the efficiency is 7.9 % at EVM of 3.7 % and output power of 13.1 dBm. The gain is 27 dB, and the 3 dB bandwidth extends from 22.5 GHz to 26.8 GHz. The channel 6-bit phase shifters have 5.5-degree phase error standard deviations at the center frequency and 2 degrees at 26.8 GHz. The attenuator's gain error standard deviation is less than 0.4 dB within the transmitter band.

Importance: Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are foundational to the body's ability to mount an effective immune response, especially when confronted with acute inflammatory stress. Their role in rapidly increasing the number of mature effector leukocytes is essential for effective host defense. In the realm of hematological disorders, Myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) presents a significant challenge, primarily due to its effect on HSC function and proliferation.

Objective: Our laboratory previously showed that the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine (N-AC) might have a pivotal role in extending the lifespan of a Jak2V617F knock-in mouse model of MPN. This led to speculations about its protective effects on HSCs, especially against chronic inflammation. This study was consequently formulated with the primary aim to uncover the intricate mechanism by which N-AC shields HSCs from excessive proliferation when faced with inflammation.

Methods: We developed a protocol to examine the cell cycle status of HSCs, particularly after stimulation with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) — a known inflammatory agent. Mice were assigned into two groups randomly: one group received N-AC in their drinking water over a span of ten days, while the control group was given regular water. Mice were injected intra-peritoneally (IP) with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) at 1μg/mouse, and subsequently euthanized 16 hours later. Bone marrow was harvested from the four long bones of the hind limbs. Thereafter, staining procedures were employed to identify HSC-specific surface markers. Advanced techniques, involving the nuclear antigen, Ki67, and the DNA binding dye, DAPI, were used to determine cell cycling.

Results: The inflammation triggered by LPS led to a marked elevation in HSC division, a fact underscored by the surge in the percentage of cells in the G1 phase of the cell cycle. However, a notable observation was that the N-AC administered group exhibited a significant attenuation in this LPS-induced HSC cycling.

Conclusion and Relevance: Our findings illuminate the protective potential of N-AC against inflammation-induced exhaustion in HSCs. With HSCs being fundamental to hematological health, the therapeutic implications of N-AC, particularly for patients grappling with MPN, are profound. This could potentially pave the way for novel therapeutic strategies aimed at preserving the vital functions of HSCs in such patients.