ZIF-Marie-Curie: Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Programme (COFUND)

Beschreibung

Currently the Zukunftskolleg offers two new types of Fellowships; deadline for applications is on 26 August 2012)

Up to fifteen ZIF Marie Curie 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowships (any discipline represented at the University of Konstanz) (Salary Scale 13 TV-L) for researchers in the early stage of their career, to enable them to develop and implement individual and independent research projects. This call for applications is part of the Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Program (ZIF) and is financed by the Seventh Framework Program (FP7) Marie Curie Actions – People (co-funding of regional, national and international programs), the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the University of Konstanz. The rules and ethical principles for the FP7 and the DFG guidelines apply. These Fellowships will begin on 1 March 2013, and end on 28 February 2015.) Up to eight ZIF Marie Curie 5-year Research Fellowships (any discipline represented at the University of Konstanz) (Salary Scale 14 TV-L) to develop and implement individual research projects. This call for applications is part of the Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Program (ZIF) and is financed by the Seventh Framework Program (FP7) Marie Curie Actions – People (co-funding of regional, national and international programs), the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the University of Konstanz. The rules and ethical principles for the FP7 and the DFG guidelines apply. The Fellowships will begin on 1 March 2013, and end on 28 February 2018.

Institutionen
  • FB Biologie
Publikationen
    Schneider, Ralf F.; Rometsch, Sina J.; Torres-Dowdall, Julián; Meyer, Axel (2020): Habitat light sets the boundaries for the rapid evolution of cichlid fish vision, while sexual selection can tune it within those limits Molecular Ecology. Wiley. 2020, 29(8), pp. 1476-1493. ISSN 0962-1083. eISSN 1365-294X. Available under: doi: 10.1111/mec.15416

Habitat light sets the boundaries for the rapid evolution of cichlid fish vision, while sexual selection can tune it within those limits

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Cichlid fishes' famous diversity in body coloration is accompanied by a highly diverse and complex visual system. Although cichlids possess an unusually high number of seven cone opsin genes, they express only a subset of these during their ontogeny, accounting for their astonishing interspecific variation in visual sensitivities. Much of this diversity is thought to have been shaped by natural selection as cichlids inhabit a variety of habitats with distinct light environments. Also, sexual selection might have contributed to the observed visual diversity, and sexual dimorphism in coloration potentially co-evolved with sexual dimorphism in opsin expression. We investigated sex-specific opsin expression of several cichlids from Africa and the Neotropics and collected and integrated data sets on sex-specific body coloration, species-specific visual sensitivities, lens transmission and habitat light properties for some of them. We comparatively analysed this wide range of molecular and ecological data, illustrating how integrative approaches can address specific questions on the factors and mechanisms driving diversification, and the evolution of cichlid vision in particular. We found that both sexes expressed opsins at the same levels-even in sexually dimorphic cichlid species-which argues against coevolution of sexual dichromatism and differences in sex-specific visual sensitivity. Rather, a combination of environmental light properties and body coloration shaped the diversity in spectral sensitivities among cichlids. We conclude that although cichlids are particularly colourful and diverse and often sexually dimorphic, it would appear that natural rather than sexual selection is a more powerful force driving visual diversity in this hyperdiverse lineage.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

    Rütschlin, Sina; Böttcher, Thomas (2020): Inhibitors of Bacterial Swarming Behavior Chemistry - A European Journal. Wiley. 2020, 26(5), pp. 964-979. ISSN 0947-6539. eISSN 1521-3765. Available under: doi: 10.1002/chem.201901961

Inhibitors of Bacterial Swarming Behavior

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Bacteria can migrate in groups of flagella-driven cells over semisolid surfaces. This coordinated form of motility is called swarming behavior. Swarming is associated with enhanced virulence and antibiotic resistance of various human pathogens and may be considered as favorable adaptation to the diverse challenges that microbes face in rapidly changing environments. Consequently, the differentiation of motile swarmer cells is tightly regulated and involves multi-layered signaling networks. Controlling swarming behavior is of major interest for the development of novel anti-infective strategies. In addition, compounds that block swarming represent important tools for more detailed insights into the molecular mechanisms of the coordination of bacterial population behavior. Over the past decades there has been major progress in the discovery of small molecule modulators and mechanisms that allow selective inhibition of swarming behavior. We will here provide an overview of the achievements in the field and identify future directions and challenges.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

    Finkel, Lisa; Schmidt, Katharina; Scheib, Jean P.P.; Randerath, Jennifer (2019): Does it still fit? : Adapting affordance judgments to altered body properties in young and older adults PloS ONE. 2019, 14(12), e0226729. eISSN 1932-6203. Available under: doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0226729

Does it still fit? : Adapting affordance judgments to altered body properties in young and older adults

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Actor-related affordance judgments are decisions about potential actions that arise from environmental as well as bodily and cognitive conditions. The system can be challenged by sudden changes to otherwise rather stable actor references e.g. due to accidental bodily injuries or due to brain damage and resulting motor and cognitive constraints. The current study investigated adaptation to suddenly artificially altered body properties and its reversibility in healthy young versus older adults. Participants were asked to judge whether they would be able to fit their hand through a given horizontal opening (Aperture Task). Body alterations were induced by equipping participants with one hand splint for 24 hours that enlarged the hand in width and height. Participants were tested before and directly after putting the splint on as well as after a habituation period of 24 hours. To assess reversibility, participants were tested again directly after removing the splint and one day later. Judgment accuracy values and detection theory measures were reported. Both, young and older adults judged more conservatively when body properties were altered compared to initial judgments for normal body properties. Especially older adults showed major difficulties in such quick adaptation. Older adults' judgment accuracy as well as perceptual sensitivity were significantly lowered when body properties were suddenly altered. Importantly, lowered judgment performance occurred for both, the splinted as well as the non-splinted hand in older adults. Only after 24 hours of habituation, older adults tended to regain initial performance levels showing adaptive behavior to the altered condition. Removing the hand splint for one day was sufficient to reverse these adaptive effects. Our study results suggest that aging slows down adaptation to sudden bodily alterations affecting actor-related affordance judgments. We propose that these altered processes may go along with uncertainty and a heightened concern about potential consequences of misjudgments. Clearly, future studies are needed to further elucidate the underlying processes of adaptation in affordance judgments. These may reveal major implications for the aging society and its associated problems with an increased risk of falling or stroke related bodily constraints.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

    Beiser, Janina (2019): Targeting the Motivated? : Ethnicity and the Pre-emptive Use of Government Repression Swiss Political Science Review. 2019, 25(3), pp. 203-225. ISSN 1424-7755. eISSN 1662-6370. Available under: doi: 10.1111/spsr.12370

Targeting the Motivated? : Ethnicity and the Pre-emptive Use of Government Repression

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Research on government repression often focuses on the comparison between states over time and provides little insight about the targets of repression within a state. This article unpacks government repression against different ethnic groups. It argues that non‐democratic governments use pre‐emptive and targeted repression against ethnic groups that are discriminated, strong, or have a history of protest or rebellion in order to prevent future ethnic rebellions. For democratic governments, on the other hand, the cost of pre‐emptive repression is too high. The article tests this argument in a quantitative analysis of government‐group dyads. It finds at least partial support for some implications of the argument: Autocratic governments use more repression than democracies against discriminated groups, but only when they are also weak, and against groups with a history of protest. There is little evidence that regimes of either type respond to previous violent mobilization or group strength with repression.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

    Condoravdi, Cleo; Lauer, Sven (2016): Anankastic conditionals are just conditionals Semantics & Pragmatics. 2016, 9, 8. eISSN 1937-8912. Available under: doi: 10.3765/sp.9.8

Anankastic conditionals are just conditionals

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Since Sæbø (1985, 2001) drew the attention of formal semanticists to the compositionality problems raised by anankastic conditionals like "If you want to go to Harlem, you have to take the A train", a number of authors have proposed analyses tailor-made for such conditionals. We demonstrate that the seemingly puzzling properties of anankastic conditionals in fact show up independently from each other within a wider range of conditionals, which we call ‘near-anankastic’. While they do not have the means-of implication typically associated with anankastics, near-anankastics give rise to their own special additional implications. As a crucial ingredient for a unified account, we provide a new analysis of the semantics of the desire predicate in the antecedent — an issue that has not been adequately pursued in the previous literature. We claim that want has an independently motivated reading on which it predicates the existence of an action-relevant preference (Condoravdi & Lauer 2011, 2012, Lauer 2013). We then show that the semantically determined interpretation of anankastic and near-anankastic conditionals arises, predictably and compositionally, from a range of interacting factors that are at play in the interpretation of conditional sentences more generally. The special implications associated with each kind of conditional arise pragmatically. Anankastic and near-anankastic conditionals alike turn out to be just what they seem: regular, hypothetical, indicative conditionals.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

    Lauer, Sven (2015): Performative uses and the temporal interpretation of modals BROCHHAGEN, Thomas, ed., Floris ROELOFSEN, ed., Nadine THEILER, ed.. Proceedings of the 20th Amsterdam Colloquium. Amsterdam, 2015, pp. 217-226

Performative uses and the temporal interpretation of modals

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Expressions with a modal semantics vary with respect to whether they are suited to ‘performative uses’. Modals like must and have to can easily be used to give a command and hence create an obligation, but the same does not seem to be true for predicates like be obligated to and be under an obligation to. This fact poses a challenge for an otherwise attractive class of analyses that take the ‘performative effect’ (i.e., the creation of an obligation) to arise pragmatically from a claim made with the usual, descriptive modal semantics. Seeing as the different modals are typically assigned the same truth-conditional content, a pragmatic account predicts that there should not be a difference in the availability of performative uses.
In this paper, I will explore possible avenues for meeting this challenge while preserving the attractive features of a pragmatic account. My starting point will be the observation that certain commonly-made assumptions about temporal interpretation in fact block a pragmatic derivation of the performative effect. Then I will consider how this conclusion can be avoided for modals that have performative uses. We either have to assume that these modals have a more liberal temporal interpretation or that the performative effect arises in a different manner than assumed by existing accounts. Quite independently from the issue of anti-performativity, this paper demonstrates that two seemingly independent phenomena—temporal interpretation and performative uses of modals—are in fact intertwined, hence we can shed light on one by studying the other.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

    Lauer, Sven (2015): Biscuits and provisos : providing unconditional information by conditional means CSIPAK, Eva, ed., Hedde ZEIJSTRA, ed.. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 19. 2015, pp. 357-374

Biscuits and provisos : providing unconditional information by conditional means

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Independence-based accounts of biscuit conditionals and the proviso problem are attractive due to their parsimony. This paper spells out the semantic and pragmatic background assumptions underlying such accounts, and raises the issue whether they can be adopted for both phenomena jointly. At first blush, the answer is clearly negative, but there is hope for reconciliation, once an independent Gricean factor is taken into account.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

  Lauer, Sven; Condoravdi, Cleo (2014): Preference-conditioned necessities : detachment and practical reasoning Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. 2014, 95(4), pp. 584-621. ISSN 0279-0750. eISSN 1468-0114. Available under: doi: 10.1111/papq.12049

Preference-conditioned necessities : detachment and practical reasoning

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This article is about conditionalized modal statements whose antecedents concern a preferential attitude of an agent. The focus is on anankastic conditionals or, as they are known in the philosophical literature, hypothetical imperatives. We present a linguistically-motivated analysis of anankastic and related conditionals and use it to address challenges for semantic theories of natural language conditionals motivated by certain philosophical concerns about practical reasoning and the requirements of rationality.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

  Class, Monika (Hrsg.) (2014): Literature and Medicine : Medical Case Histories as Genre

Literature and Medicine : Medical Case Histories as Genre

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This special cluster of articles is dedicated to the examination of the diversity of medical case histories during different periods in the history of Western medicine. Five contributions written by Gianna Pomata, Nicolas Pethes, Monika Class, Meegan Kennedy and Brian Hurwitz open up new questions about the distinct nature of medical case histories as genre and provide new answers about their epistemic and affective implications.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

    Class, Monika (2014): K. P. Moritz's Case Poetics : Aesthetic Autonomy Reconsidered Literature and Medicine. 2014, 32(1), pp. 46-73. ISSN 0278-9671. eISSN 1080-6571. Available under: doi: 10.1353/lm.2014.0000

K. P. Moritz's Case Poetics : Aesthetic Autonomy Reconsidered

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To historians of medicine, Karl Philipp Moritz is known as the founding editor of the Magazine for Empirical Psychology (1783–93), one the oldest psychiatric journals in Europe. In literary theory, Moritz counts as one of the inaugurators of aesthetic autonomy. Combining both fields, this article uncovers that Moritz’s interest in observation, his reservations towards rationality, and his concern for the particular as opposed to the universal helped to shape his concept of “uselessness” in On Creative Imitation of Beauty. From this double perspective, we recognize Moritz’s growing regard for case narrative as an end in itself, independent from plans for a future science of empirical psychology. Moritz’s passionate and compassionate approach to observership helps to revise Foucault’s “medical gaze.” This essay proposes that Moritz was a Wordsworthian figure in medical history, who injected psychiatric writing with the experience of ordinary life expressed in the simple language of non-experts.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

    Class, Monika (2014): Introduction: Medical Case Histories as Genre: New Approaches Literature and Medicine. 2014, 32(1), pp. VII-XVI. ISSN 0278-9671. eISSN 1080-6571. Available under: doi: 10.1353/lm.2014.0007

Introduction: Medical Case Histories as Genre: New Approaches

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This article outlines a number of new approaches in the history of medicine and medical humanities to the study of medical case histories from a genre-theoretical vantage point. Differentiating between morphological and structuralist concepts of genre, the essay proposes the investigation of similarities and differences among specific series of case histories in order to recover evolving, changing, or decaying patterns and practices in texts and communicative acts about human health during different historical epochs, including antiquity, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic and Victorian age. The article highlights the importance of narrative, and thinking in cases, supports the notion of “epistemic genres” and pays special attention to the distinction between example and exemplar. It discerns three interrelated functions of case histories: propaedeutic, instantiative, and singular. The study of case histories as genre helps to overcome disjunctions in the history of literature and medicine and enhances multidisciplinary research.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

Class, Monika (2014): Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England, 1796-1817 : Coleridge's Responses to German Philosophy

Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England, 1796-1817 : Coleridge's Responses to German Philosophy

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the central figure in the transmission of German idealism in England during the first half of the nineteenth century. This book reconsiders Coleridge's engagement with Immanuel Kant's philosophy. The analysis of the Kantian materials in circulation in print culture in 1790s England suggests that when critical philosophy initially arrived, it had a greater impact on native debates than is commonly recognized. Drawing on a range of pamphlets, advertisements and reviews, Class brings to light the socio-political relevance of Kantianism particularly in the English radical milieu around William Godwin and John Thelwall, and highlights the significance of the less well-known disseminators of critical philosophy for Coleridge's life-long study of Kant's philosophy: F. A. Nitsch and Dr Thomas Beddoes. Tracing Coleridge's winding paths from the Quantock Hills over London taverns to Highgate, this monograph dismantles the myth of the single connoisseur of Kantian "moonshine" and contends that Coleridge's assimilation of critical philosophy was part and parcel of the poet's Unitarianism as a young radical.

Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)

Mittelgeber
Name Finanzierungstyp Kategorie Kennziffer
Marie Curie Drittmittel Forschungsförderprogramm 528/12
Weitere Informationen
Laufzeit: 15.05.2012 – 14.05.2017