Publications

This chapter examines recruitment campaigns for the Chinese military under the current leadership of Xi Jinping (2012-) in the context of China’s attempts to modernize and professionalize its army. The discussion reviews the conscription challenges the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) faces in the 2000s and the steps undertaken to address these challenges, particularly in the media. Drawing on the analysis of conscription videos produced in 2013-18, and of government, military and media publications in China, the chapter explores the forms and content of PLA video ads, with a focus on the messages they use to attract the military’s target population. The analysis shows that alongside traditional appeals to recruits’ sense of patriotism and collective duty, the PLA’s contemporary ads also promote military service as a vehicle for self-fulfilment and personal development. Disseminated through social media sites, this new marketing message attests to the PLA’s ability to adapt and innovate. However, it also carries considerable risks for its recruitment goals as well as its public standing in China.

Frames are indispensable tools for journalists to make sense of unfolding events, but they also constrain their perspective to most readily see what they expect to see. In this study, we examine how pre-established news frames continue to inform journalists’ framing practices despite the ongoing arrival of novel, often contravening information. Specifically, we argue that dominant frames rooted in pre-existing cultural perceptions and strategic elite frame building have the capacity to overpower an open-minded appraisal of available information. In a qualitative, diachronic analysis of US, British and Russian news coverage of the 2013 Syrian Chemical Weapons crisis, we analyze journalists’ strategies for negotiating between pre-established news frames and novel, discrepant claims and observations. We find that most claims that directly contravened existing frames were either ignored or discounted by questioning the credibility of sources. By contrast, unforeseen events effectively challenged the predictive validity of dominant frames, necessitating adaptations with often far-reaching consequences for the frame. Observed patterns were consistent across outlets, despite the different journalistic cultures and embedding media systems and political settings. Our findings illuminate the important role of journalists’ pre-established ideas, which shape their news selection and framing practices, contributing to the maintenance of existing news narratives.

Frames are indispensable tools for journalists to make sense of unfolding events, but they also constrain their perspective to most readily see what they expect to see. In this study, we examine how pre-established news frames continue to inform journalists’ framing practices despite the ongoing arrival of novel, often contravening information. Specifically, we argue that dominant frames rooted in pre-existing cultural perceptions and strategic elite frame building have the capacity to overpower an open-minded appraisal of available information. In a qualitative, diachronic analysis of US, British and Russian news coverage of the 2013 Syrian Chemical Weapons crisis, we analyze journalists’ strategies for negotiating between pre-established news frames and novel, discrepant claims and observations. We find that most claims that directly contravened existing frames were either ignored or discounted by questioning the credibility of sources. By contrast, unforeseen events effectively challenged the predictive validity of dominant frames, necessitating adaptations with often far-reaching consequences for the frame. Observed patterns were consistent across outlets, despite the different journalistic cultures and embedding media systems and political settings. Our findings illuminate the important role of journalists’ pre-established ideas, which shape their news selection and framing practices, contributing to the maintenance of existing news narratives.

This paper characterizes Medieval Hebrew and Aramaic as literary languages, and uses the Aramaic of the Zohar as a test-case to explore this category. The paper seeks to explain how a ‘literary language’ – namely a language used mainly in literary contexts – arises, while utilizing three types of research: comparative philological research, which compares different languages and texts in terms of their vocabulary and grammar; sociolinguistic research, which examines the social functions of language use; and psycholinguistic research, which (in this particular case) examines issues of language acquisition. The paper builds on philological studies of literary languages to explain how the grammar of these languages evolves. It assumes that the acquisition of such languages is similar to second-language acquisition, while taking into account that these languages are both acquired and used in a strictly literary context. The main argument of the paper is that literary languages should be studied the same way as other languages, because ultimately – after making some adjustments motivated by their particular functions – they are compatible with the standard models of second-language acquisition. After concluding my general theoretical discussion, I apply my conclusions therein to the Aramaic of the Zohar (the main text of the Jewish Kabballah), adapting previous studies of Zoharic Aramaic to this theoretical framework, and examining various new issues in the Zoharic grammar.

Unraveling the role of post-translational modification (PTM) patterns is one of the most urgent and unresolved issues facing the scientific community. Attempts to crack the phosphorylation bio-barcode led to significant findings, which suggest that many proteins cannot be regarded as a single entity but exist as several forms which differ in their phosphorylation patterns and their functions. While protein regions that do not contain PTMs can be rather simply mimicked using peptide libraries, heavily phosphorylated regions are much harder to study using the same tools. The differences between the syntheses of simple mono-, di- and tri-phosphopeptides and the synthesis of multiphosphopeptides are dramatic. While simple phosphopeptides can be synthesized using almost standard SPPS strategies, the synthesis of multiphosphopeptides is to date a major synthetic challenge. Synthesis of multiphosphopeptides requires the insertion of several phosphate groups simultaneously or sequentially into various positions on the peptide in the presence of many other potential modification sites. These groups are bulky, unstable and cannot be easily introduced when in close proximity. Moreover, since the same protein region can possess many alternative multiphosphorylation patterns, libraries comprising a large number of peptides with different degrees and positions of phosphorylation are essential. Many strategies have been developed to provide routes to enable the preparation of multiphosphopeptides. These methods are essentially different from the methods used for the preparation of simple phosphopeptides. In this review, we specifically emphasize the challenges and importance of synthesizing multiphosphopeptides and their libraries. The historical perspective and state of the art strategies are described. We demonstrate here how the different synthetic approaches attempt to address the special problems associated with the synthesis of multiphosphopeptides. The advantages and disadvantages of each strategy are discussed in order to provide a roadmap for the synthesis of such libraries. An overview of the existing strategies and some comments regarding future directions are provided. Applications of multiphosphopeptide libraries as tools to study the effect of phosphorylation patterns on the biological function of proteins are also described.

One may plausibly assume that the current academic interest in narrative research stems from a growing awareness that human beings are by their very nature storytellers, and that the stories we make become part of who we are, be it as individuals or groups. Indeed, narrative analysis has gained wide ground in many fields of the humanities and social sciences. This bibliography article is intended primarily for students and scholars of politics, but it can be of use for readers and researchers from other disciplinary backgrounds in the social sciences. While political scholars may not be among the pioneers that embraced “the narrative turn,” the connection between politics and narratives is of very long standing.

This essay aims, first, to describe the under-theorized recent remarkable renaissance of post-Khmer Rouge (KR) cinema generated by women directors, which emerged after the KR regime (1975–79) murdered most of the filmmakers and demolished almost the entire Cambodian film industry; and, second, to analyze first- and second-generation post-traumatic autobiographical (or semi-autobiographical) fiction and non-fiction films that deal with the almost-tabooi-ized issue of perpetratorhood within the family (or symbolic family). Defining the term autogenocide will serve as the basis for an analysis of two prominent films that render narratives of encounters with low-ranking perpetrators in the shadow of the ongoing controversy over the remit of the KR tribunal (ECCC) to try only high-ranking perpetrators. Sotho Kulikar’s fiction film The Last Reel (2014) and Neary Adeline Hay’s non-fiction film Angkar (2018) propose postgenocide ethics embodied on a spectrum of forgiveness from aporetic reconciliation to un-forgiving. It is through this latter inclination towards un-forgiving that secondgeneration women’s cinema subverts the first generation’s reconciled attitude towards the perpetrators, and, most importantly, the perpetrators’ denial and lack of accountability and atonement. Thus, the new wave of Cambodian women’s cinema advances the possibility of cinematic creation of ethical communities, moving Cambodia towards a culture of accountability.

A novel hypothesis is presented to explain the pathogenesis of the multifactorial autoimmune disorder rheumatic fever (RF). It involves a synergistic interaction among streptococcal toxins, their cell wall components, M protein, immune complexes, complement components, cationic histones. These agents can act with cationic histones released by neutrophils during NETosis and bacteriolysis and can function as opsonic agents possessing properties similar to antibodies. Cationic histones can interact by strong electrostatic forces with negatively- charged domains on immune complexes and complement components. This allows their deposition and endocytosis in the myocardium, the heart valves, and in the joints. However, the main cause of cell and tissue damage observed in RF is due to a synergism among the plethora of pro-inflammatory substances released by activated neutrophils and macrophages. Cell damage may be mitigated to some extent by anionic heparins, heparinoids, and by anti-inflammatory drugs such as corticosteroids which counteract neutrophils and macrophage chemotaxis induced by cytokines.