Circulation of Coronavirus Images: Helping Social Distancing?

As soon as the SARS-Cov2 disease was recognized by experts to potentially cause a serious pandemic, a three dimensional diagrammatic image of the virus, colored in strong red, conquered public media globally. This study confronts this iconic virus image with a historic image analysis of 33,000 biomedical articles on coronaviruses published between 1968-2020 and interviews with some of their authors. Only a small fraction of scientific virus publications entail images of the complete virus. Red as an alarm color is not used at all by scientists who don't aim for a non-scientific public. Circulation in this case concerns the movement of iconic images from a scientific context into a general public. On the basis of hps-studies on scientific diagrams and especially on color use in scientific diagrams to convey specific messages in public, the paper discusses the role of the claim of public corona-virus diagram as "scientific." It points at relevant differences between most frequent scientific corona-virus images and the diagrammatic image used in public. Both author- and readerships (in science and public) follow contrasting aims and values. Thus, the images meet non-expert readers for whom the images entail very different - and potentially unintended - meanings then to virus experts.

Beschriften, Wiederfinden und Reaktivieren: Die Rolle von Objektträgeretiketten im Auffindsystem am Beispiel von Alzheimers Auguste­D.­Präparaten.

Labeling, Recovering and Reactivating: The Role of Labels on Microscope Slides in the Finding System on the Basis of Alzheimer's Auguste D. Preparations. This study discusses the role of labels in the process of the reactivation (Rheinberger) of preparations. Labels on slides together with corresponding lists on cards or sheets build what is here called a specific finding system. In the sciences of the archive (Daston) the disciplinary memory together with such a finding system are the basis to the ability of the sciences today to reactivate preparations from the beginning of the last century as it occurs with the Auguste D. preparations. The case of Alzheimer's micropreparations of brain parts of Auguste D. - the case that he used to show that hers was a specific brain disease unknown before - serves to describe Alzheimer's writing on the labels. It is compared to slides and labels prepared by other medical researchers between the 1890s and 1920s and the respective finding systems. Being an epistemologicum, micropreparations, as they are data, in their hybrid status of both image and material in one, cross the boundaries between icon and index. This is proven by the reactivation of Auguste D. micropreparations in molecular biological studies over 100 years after their production.

Contested change: how Germany came to allow PGD.

Until recently, German laws protecting the human embryo from the moment of conception were some of the strictest internationally. These laws had previously prevented any manipulation of the embryo, such as in preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and continue to affect stem cell research. In 2011, however, the German parliament voted in favour of allowing PGD in specific cases. While the modification in the law in earlier analysis was interpreted as being in keeping with the usual norms in Germany, this article argues instead that the reasoning behind the partial acceptance of PGD, rather than the legal decision itself, is indicative of a sociocultural change that needs to be accredited. Demonstrating that a significant change occurred, this article analyses the arguments that led to the amendment in law: not only has the identity of the embryo been redefined towards a pragmatic concept but the notions of parenting and pregnancy have also changed. The focus on the mother and the moment of birth has given way to a focus on conception and 'genetic couplehood'. The professional discourse preceding the decision allowing PGD suggested that the rights of the not-yet-implanted embryo should be negotiated with those of the two parents-to-be, a concept that may be called 'in-vitro pregnancy'.

Observing temporal order in living processes: on the role of time in embryology on the cell level in the 1870s and post-2000.

The article analyses the role of time in the visual culture of two phases in embryological research: at the end of the nineteenth century, and in the years around 2000. The first case study involves microscopical cytology, the second reproductive genetics. In the 1870s we observe the first of a series of abstractions in research methodology on conception and development, moving from a method propagated as the observation of the "real" living object to the production of stained and fixated objects that are then aligned in temporal order. This process of abstraction ultimately fosters a dissociation between space and time in the research phenomenon, which after 2000 is problematized and explicitly tackled in embryology. Mass data computing made it possible partially to re-include temporal complexity in reproductive genetics in certain, though not all, fields of reproductive genetics. Here research question, instrument and modelling interact in ways that produce very different temporal relationships. Specifically, this article suggests that the different techniques in the late nineteenth century and around 2000 were employed in order to align the time of the researcher with that of the phenomenon and to economize the researcher's work in interaction with the research material's own temporal challenges.

Freud's "Core of our Being" Between Cytology and Psychoanalysis.

Freud's "Core of our Being" Between Cytology and Psychoanalysis. This article deals with an aspect in the work of Sigmund Freud that lies at the heart of his psychoanalytical theory: the biological underpinnings of the "Kern unseres Wesens" (the core of our being). This is the phrasing Freud used in his first and his last description of the unconscious. Notwithstanding the centrality of this notion for both Freud's work and for the intertwined history of biology, brain research, and psychoanalysis, cytological aspects of 'the core of our being' remained untouched in the growing body of studies on his biological background. Before Freud began his career as a therapist, he spent over a decade working as a medical biologist. First in the laboratory of Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke, in the orbit of Hermann von Helmholtz's thought, and later in neurologist Theodor Meynert's laboratory, Freud focussed principally on the visualisation of (primarily neuronal) cells. Amongst the over 100 articles Freud produced during these years we find a publication that presents pictures for the first time of what would decades later be accepted as 'nuclear motility'. To describe what he observed, Freud used the common cytological term 'Verdichtungen' and introduced another - 'Verschiebungen' - in reference to the 'Zellkern' (the nucleus). These are essential terms which Freud would later use to describe the dreamwork of the unconscious. The fact that Freud presented his work as inspired by Darwin additionally invites investigation of the relationship between his visual experience of the 'Zellkern' and his concept of the "Kern unseres Wesens". Freud's drawings and verbal images as metaphors of the 'Kern' (core) are so intricately connected, that many of his metaphorical expressions could be taken as ontological. Freud consistently sought to contend the assumption that his psychoanalytical models were of material or biological import. Rather than having been driven by his existing biological preconceptions or observations without being aware of them, Freud's involvement in the contemporary debate between plasmatic and nuclear theories of memory suggests his deliberate use of this powerful rhetoric.