Having interviewed Germans who emigrated to Israel and, in most cases, converted to Judaism, I experienced a paralyzing sense of ethical conflict when I began analyzing the first order discourse my participants and I had co-constructed to transform it into the second-order discourse of research publications. So, I set out to rethink the ethics of life-history interview research. My quest into our ethical responsibilities began with rule-based deontological and consequentialist ethics and the guidelines in the social sciences they inform. It led me to reconsider such core notions as informed consent, privacy, and risk-benefit analysis. I came to realize that rule-based ethics are inherently inadequate for addressing the situation-specific and thus unpredictable ethical questions that arise in conducting and analyzing life-history interviews. Next, I turned to the notion of ethical conflict as arising from obligations to trust and truth and rethought it as responsibilities toward participants and audiences. I realized that our responsibilities extend beyond our interview partners, who entrusted us with their life stories, to the audiences, who engage with our analyses. I furthermore reevaluated using research to advocate for disenfranchised participants and argued for transparency and reflexivity regarding how our subject positions impact knowledge construction.

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CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:

One key parameter for assessing the CO 2 fixation in aquatic ecosystems but also for the productivity of photobioreactors is the energy conversion efficiency (PE) by the photosynthetic apparatus. PE strictly depends on a range of different fluctuating environmental conditions and is therefore highly variable. PE is the result of complex metabolic control. At the moment PE can only be determined indirectly. Furthermore, the currently available techniques either capture only short time processes, thus reflecting only parts of the photosynthetic engine, or quantify the total process but only with limited time resolution. To close this gap, we suggest for the first time the direct measurement of the fixed energy combined with respirometry, called photocalorespirometry (Photo-CR). The proof of the principle of Photo-CR was established with the microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii . The simultaneous measurement of oxygen production and energy fixation provides an calorespirometric ratio of −(437.9 ± 0.7) kJ mol −1 under low light conditions. The elevated calorespirometric ratio under high light conditions provides an indication of photo-protective mechanisms. The Photo-CR delivers the PE in real time, depending on the light intensity. Energetic differences less than 0.14% at radiation densities of up to 800 μE m −2 s −1 can be quantified. Other photosynthetic growth parameters (e.g. the specific growth rate of 0.071 h −1 , the cell specific energy conservation of 30.9 ± 1.3 pW cell −1 at 150 µE m −2 s −1 and the number of photons (86.8) required to fix one molecule of CO 2 ) can easily be derived from the Photo-CR data.