Dimethoxymethane (DMM, or OME1) has recently raised significant attention as the archetypal species of the oxymethylene ethers (OME) family, identified as a potential sustainable alternative to diesel fuels. However, so far limited attention has been paid to the sensitizing and inhibiting effects of nitrogen oxides (NOx) on its oxidation chemistry, which may play an important role for combustion with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) systems. In this work, DMM oxidation was systematically studied with and without NO addition through a targeted experimental campaign. Four fuel-oxidizer mixtures were analyzed in a laminar flow reactor, across a range of variable equivalence ratios (0.8 <= <= 2), argon dilution levels (93% and 97%) and NO concentrations (0 and 900 ppm). At the same time, a comprehensive kinetic mechanism was set up, including carbon-nitrogen interactions up to the fuel-NO level. It was found that the dilution level significantly affected the DMM/NO interaction. While the onset temperature of the DMM conversion remained unchanged for a fixed dilution, the addition of NO led to a faster completion of the DMM conversion. The kinetic analysis clarified that the earlier reactivity of DMM at lower dilution triggers C-N interaction both at the fuel level, through the NO-alkoxy reaction inhibiting the low-temperature oxidation, and at a C-0-C-1 level, via the enhanced formation of CH3O, promoting an earlier reactivity (as observed for simpler fuels). Conversely, when the reactivity onset shifted to higher temperatures because of the higher dilution, the interaction was much less emphasized at the fuel level, but mostly controlled by CH3O formation and consumption channels.
Since the 2010s, feminist personal essay writing has gained considerable international visibility. Drawing on feminist theory and movement history, these essays frame lived experience as social critique and use familial memory to show how social conditioning shapes subjectivity and intimacy. They constitute an archive of their own, made like every archive by selection and ordering: opening access to feminist knowledge while also restricting, simplifying, and concealing feminist histories. The article traces this double movement through two key texts of German-language feminist essayism: Lilian Peter's Mutter geht aus (Mother Goes Out Partying, published in 2022) and Margarete Stokowski's Untenrum frei (Liberated from the Waist Down, published in 2016). Peter makes absence and ambiguity central to her poetics yet approaches her family's history obliquely. Stokowski, working in an essayistic self-help idiom, brackets contradictions in favor of coherence yet engages personal memory and experience more directly. Read against each other, these strategies show that such essays enact different epistemic and memorial modes with direct consequences for their feminist aesthetics and politics.
Implicit academic self-concepts and intrinsic values describe students’ automatically activated perceived abilities and attitudes towards school subjects. In the present research, we examined these implicit constructs within the context of a framework that integrates key elements of three prominent theories from the field of educational psychology: expectancy-value theory, dimensional comparison theory, and theory on vocational interests. To this end, we developed four go/no-go association tasks (GNATs) to measure implicit math and German self-concepts and values. Furthermore, we examined the formation and impact of these implicit constructs using cross-sectional data from a sample of 946 ninth- and tenth-graders from German high schools. Guided by three central research questions, we found (1) evidence for the validity of the GNATs to measure students’ implicit self-concepts and values in math, (2) that implicit math self-concepts and values appear to be influenced by dimensional comparisons (where students compare their achievements in different subjects), but not by social comparisons (where students compare their achievements with those of other students), and (3) that implicit math self-concepts predict students’ vocational interests over and above their achievements, explicit self-concepts, and explicit values in math and German. Our research also demonstrated the benefit of combining key elements from different theories of educational psychology to gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between students’ achievements, self-concepts, values, and vocational interests. Moreover, it is of great practical relevance as it highlights the importance of implicit self-concepts and values for students.
Hörsch et al. (2026) developed the COMPASS intervention to foster students’ subject-specific self-concepts by addressing dimensional and temporal comparisons (i.e., comparisons of one’s own performance across subjects and with one’s own past performance) and related beliefs (positive interdependence between mathematical and verbal abilities and changeability of abilities). An assessment conducted immediately after the intervention showed that this intervention was effective in enhancing students’ math and English self-concepts. In the present study, we examined whether these findings could be replicated for a separate waiting-list control group within the same project. Moreover, we tested the long-term effectiveness of the intervention using three-month and six-month follow-ups. A total of N = 600 students (Grades 9 to 11) from German secondary schools (academic track) were assigned to two groups. Group A took part in the intervention between the first and second measurement point, with follow-up assessments after three and six months. Group B (waiting-list group) took part in the intervention between the second and third measurement point, with a three-month follow-up. Baseline change models indicated increases in students’ math self-concept and related beliefs at the immediate post-intervention assessment in both groups, and increases at the follow-ups, particularly in Group A. The effectiveness of the English intervention was demonstrated in Group A immediately after the intervention and at the follow-up assessments. Overall, these results indicate that the COMPASS intervention can sustainably improve students’ math self-concepts and highlight the potential of dealing with comparisons and comparison-related beliefs for the effective promotion of students’ self-concepts.
