Harmonisches Leben: Überlegung zur Verhältnisbestimmung von Glück und Moral im Anschluss an Immanuel Kant

Die Dissertation ist bei einem Verlag erschienen und in der Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen unter der Signatur 63 A 2296:1 bzw 63 A 2296:2 verfügbar.Die vorliegende Arbeit hat das Ziel, die ethische Verhältnisbestimmung von Glück und Moral im Anschluss an Kants autonomes Moralsystem systematisch darzulegen. Dabei versucht diese Arbeit die folgende These aufzustellen und dafür zu argumentieren: Kant vertritt die dissonante Harmoniethese als plausibelste Antwort auf die fundamentalethische Grundfrage "Ob und inwiefern kann die Moral zum Glück führen?"

Lungenfunktion bei ANCA-assoziierten Vaskulitiden: eine retrospektive Untersuchung zur Spirometrie, Bodyplethysmographie und CO-Diffusionskapazität

Background/Objectives: Pulmonary involvement is common for (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV) but there are only few studies concerning impairment of pulmonary function in those patients. In this work pulmonary function test (PFT) data of patients with granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), microscopic polyangiitis (MPA), and eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) were evaluated to quantify possible changes in lung function. Results were also analyzed for a correlation with findings in diagnostic imaging, clinical course, and disease activity. Methods: Patients with diagnosed GPA (n=81), MPA (n=37), and EGPA (n=29) according to ACR criteria and a valid PFT were identified from the database of our vasculitis center. Cases with acute pulmonary comorbidities unrelated to AAV were excluded. The PFT comprised spirometry including helium dilution technique, body plethysmography, and measurement of diffusing capacity. The collected data among others included forced vital capacity (FVCex), peak expiratory flow (PEF), Tiffeneau-Index (rFEV1), total airway resistance (RAWtot), total lung capacity (TLC), residual volume (RV), and transfer factor for carbon monoxide (TLCO). For the analysis these measures were expressed as percentage of predicted values. Results: For the GPA cohort, FVCex, RV, PEF and TLCO were significantly reduced. However, there was no significant difference between patients with or without pulmonary manifestation. In patients with MPA, distinct reductions of FVCex, TLC and TLCO were observed compared to the standard population. These changes were significantly stronger in MPA patients with pulmonary involvement. For the EGPA group RAWtot and RV were significantly elevated and TLCO was reduced. Lung fibrosis correlated with a decline between 16-39% of FVCex, TLC, RV and TLCO. Patients with scarring showed decreased measures for TLCO and those with consolidations for TLC. Additionally, both signs were connected to an impairment of FVCex. Regarding the disease process no significant difference occurred between first PFT and follow-up. Additionally, there was no correlation found between disease activity and PFT. Conclusion: GPA showed no significance for an impairment in PFT but there were hints for a reduced gas transfer and upper airway lesions. MPA revealed a restrictive ventilatory defect and a reduced diffusion capacity that were both attributable to the AAV and more common in patients with pulmonary fibrosis. As expected, many patients with EGPA had an obstructive ventilatory pattern which is probably related to the accompanying asthma. AAV-patients with scarring seemed to suffer more often from impaired diffusion capacity whereas patients who showed signs of consolidation have had a higher risk for a restrictive pattern. Lacking evidence for changes in PFT over time and no correlation found between PFT and disease activity suggest non-reversible damage. Summing up, PFT should be included in future prospective clinical trials in patients with AAV

Der Einfluss hypnotischer Suggestionen zur Verstärkung des Tiefschlafs auf die Gedächtniskonsolidierung

In dieser Studie wurde an jungen, gesunden hoch suggestiblen Männern im Alter von 18 bis 30 Jahren die Wirkung von Hypnose auf den Schlaf und das Gedächtnis im Rahmen einer Mittagsschlafstudie untersucht. Ziel war es durch Hypnose den Tiefschlaf zu Verstärken und somit einen positiven Effekt auf die Gedächtnisleistung zu erreichen. In zwei Experimentalsitzungen führten die Probanden vor dem Mittagsschlaf den Lerndurchgang von zwei Gedächtnistests durch sowie einen Vigilanztest. Nach dem Lerndurchgang der Tests hörten die Probanden zum Einschlafen einmal eine Hypnosetext zur Verstärkung des Tiefschlafs und in der anderen Sitzung einen neutralen Kontrolltext über Lagerstättenkunde. Während des 90 minütigen Mittagsschlafs wurde dieser mittels EEG, EMG und EOG aufgezeichnet. Bei der Auswertung der einzelnen Schlafstadien zeigte sich unter Hypnosebedingung eine signifikante Verlängerung des Schlafstadiums 4 und des Slow wave Sleeps. Hinsichtlich der Auswertung der Gedächtnistests konnten keine signifikanten Ergebnisse ermittelt werden. In Folgestudien könnte untersucht werden, welche Auswirkung Hypnose und die Verbesserung des Tiefschlafs auf ältere Menschen oder Menschen mit Erkrankungen, wie beispielsweise leichter Demenz, hat. Man könnte untersuchen, ob durch die regelmäßige Anwendung von Hypnose vor dem Nachtschlaf ein therapeutischer Effekt erzielt werden kann, mit dem Ziel die Gedächtnisleistung zu verbessern oder schlafanstoßende Medikamente einzusparen

Unsupervised Representation Learning for Object-Centric and Neuronal Morphology Modeling

A key feature of intelligent systems is the ability to generalize beyond one’s experiences. The process of deriving general rules from limited observations is the principle of induction. Generalizing based on a finite number of observations to future samples requires a priori assumptions. In machine learning, the set of assumptions made by the learning algorithm are called inductive biases. To design successful learning systems, it is essential to ensure that the inductive biases of the system align well with the structure of the data. Conversely, to understand why learning systems fail in a particular way it is integral to understand their inherent assumptions and biases. In this dissertation, we study unsupervised representation learning in two different application domains. We look through the lens of evaluation to unmask inductive biases in object-centric models in computer vision as well as show how to successfully employ inductive biases to integrate domain knowledge for modeling neuronal morphologies. First, we establish a benchmark for object-centric video representations to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of current models. Our results demonstrate that the examined object-centric models encode strong inductive biases such as a tendency to perform mostly color segmentation that work well for synthetic data but fail to generalize to real-world videos. Second, we propose a self-supervised model that captures the essence of neuronal morphologies. We demonstrate that by encoding domain knowledge about neuronal morphologies in the form of the appropriate inductive biases into our model, it can learn useful representations from limited data and outperform both previous models and expert-defined features on downstream tasks such as cell type classification. Third, we employ our model for neuronal morphologies to a large-scale dataset of neurons from the mouse visual cortex and prove its utility for analyzing biological data. We demonstrate that our learned representations capture the morphological diversity of cortical pyramidal cells and enable data analysis of neuronal morphologies on an unprecedented scale. We use the learned embeddings to describe the organization of neuronal morphologies in the mouse visual cortex, as well as discover a new cell type and analyze cortical area and layer differences. Taken together, our findings indicate that identifying the implicit inductive biases in object-centric models is necessary for understanding their failure modes. Conversely, tailored inductive biases, that take the intricacies of the domain into account, enable the successful design of machine learning models for neuronal morphologies

Ergebnisse des Screenings von Empfängerinnen und Spenderinnen zur Uterustransplantation am ersten durchführenden deutschen Zentrum

Für ausgewählte Frauen mit absoluter uteriner Infertilität besteht unter strengen Voraussetzungen die Chance, den Kinderwunsch mittels Uterustransplantation zu erfüllen. Am Department für Frauengesundheit des Universitätsklinikums Tübingen durchliefen 151 potenziellen Empfängerinnen mit 125 interessierten Spenderinnen während der ersten klinischen Studie von April 2016 bis Dezember 2019 ein multidisziplinäres Screening. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war die Charakterisierung des Patientinnenkollektivs anhand anamnestischer und klinischer Parameter. Voraussetzungen und Ausschlussgründe im Lauf des präoperativen Screenings sowie erfolgreiches Durchlaufen des Prozesses wurden erfasst und analysiert

On the Influence of Biological Soil Crusts and Bryophytes on Soil Erosion and the Soil Water Balance in Temperate Forests

Soil erosion is a serious threat to the soil because it impairs the provision of important ecosystem services such as filtering water, providing nutrients and habitat for biology activity, storing carbon, and producing biomass. This also plays a crucial role in forest ecosystems where natural and anthropogenic disturbances expose bare soil to erosion. An important countermeasure is the rapid recolonization by vegetation. Especially in arid regions, biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are known to be pioneer colonizers of disturbed soils and to reduce soil erosion. Bryophytes also protect the soil and can have a positive effect on the soil water balance. However, the influence of bryophytes and biocrusts on soil erosion and the soil water balance in temperate forests is largely unexplored. This thesis investigated how biocrusts and bryophytes influence soil erosion and the soil water balance in skid trails of a temperate forest ecosystem in the Schönbuch Nature Park in South Germany. This included in-situ studies of soil erosion in the skid trails during vegetation succession and ex-situ studies of the influence of combinations of soil substrates and moss species (soil-moss combinations) on soil erosion. In addition, the water absorption and evaporation patterns in the soil-moss combinations were examined, also taking into account the structural traits of the moss species. Within this thesis, it was shown that bryophyte-dominated biocrusts significantly affected soil erosion and that bryophytes not only contributed more to erosion reduction than vascular vegetation, but also positively influenced the soil water balance. Surface runoff and soil erosion were decreased with moss covers, while the amount of percolated water was increased; however, these processes were superimposed by desiccation cracks and water repellency. Moss treatments exhibited lower water contents over time compared to bare treatments, highlighting the strong influence of moss covers and desiccation cracks on the soil water balance. Mosses were no barrier for infiltration in case of high precipitation rates and they did not store much of the applied water themselves, but passed it on to the soil. During desiccation, mosses with high leaf area index (LAI) had lower evaporation rates than mosses with low LAI, and they prevented desiccation of the soil substrates, although even dense moss covers did not completely seal the surface