Needs of the population in Germany for information about health-related topics – Results from the KomPaS study

Very few investigations have been conducted in Germany into the areas in which the population, including patients, lacks information about health-related issues. However, data from these areas provide crucial supplements to the descriptions and scientific analyses of health information behaviour that are more often available. Data on gaps in the population’s knowledge about health-related issues provide indications of health policy challenges. The Alliance for Health Competence, the German National Health Targets and the German National Health Portal, which was commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Health, have all taken up this issue. The 2017 study ‘KomPaS: survey on communication and patient-safety’ was conducted by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). The KomPaS study used the response categories ‘fairly well’ informed and ‘fairly poorly’ informed to assess how well-informed people feel when it comes to health-related issues. A comparison of the results from the supplementary survey conducted as part of the German Health Update (GEDA) 2009 and those of the KomPas study demonstrate varying degrees of improvement in the population’s level of health information in all areas over a period of almost ten years

Rational redox tuning of transition metal sites : Learning from superoxide reductase

Using superoxide reductase as a model system, a computational approach reveals how histidine tautomerism tunes the redox properties of metalloenzymes to enable their catalytic function. Inspired by these experimentally inaccessible insights, non-canonical histidine congeners are introduced as new versatile tools for the rational engineering of biological transition metal sites

Searching for health information on the Internet – Results from the KomPaS study

Searching for information about health is a key component of health behaviour. It is important because information generally has a significant impact on the outcome of decision-making processes, and this also applies to informed decisions about health-related issues. Representative results from the study ‘KomPaS: survey on communication and patient-safety’, which was conducted by the Robert Koch Institute, demonstrate that the Internet is the most popular choice for women and men who use media to search for health information. However, the results also demonstrate statistically significant differences by sex and socioeconomic status. People in the low socioeconomic status group search less frequently for health information on the Internet than people in the medium and high status groups. Furthermore, women up to the age of 65 use the Internet to search for information about health more frequently than men of the same age do. These differences reverse from the age of 65 onwards

Information extraction from peripheral nerves

Journal ArticleThis work is directed toward providing better rehabilitation for people suffering from somatosensory loss and paralysis due to spinal cord injury, head trauma, or stroke. The goal of this project is to demonstrate that information suitable for controlling prosthetic devices, modulating functional electrical stimulation of muscle, and providing a sense of touch and position from areas of the body suffering sensory loss can be extracted, on-line and in real time, from recordings of sensory activity in peripheral nerves

Direct neural sensory feedback and control of a prosthetic arm

Journal ArticleEvidence indicates that user acceptance of modern artificial limbs by amputees would be significantly enhanced by a system that provides appropriate, graded, distally referred sensations of touch and joint movement, and that the functionality of limb prostheses would be improved by a more natural control mechanism. We have recently demonstrated that it is possible to implant electrodes within individual fascicles of peripheral nerve stumps in amputees, that stimulation through these electrodes can produce graded, discrete sensations of touch or movement referred to the amputee's phantom hand, and that recordings of motor neuron activity associated with attempted movements of the phantom limb through these electrodes can be used as graded control signals. We report here that this approach allows amputees to both judge and set grip force and joint position in an artificial arm, in the absence of visual input, thus providing a substrate for better integration of the artificial limb into the amputee's body image. We believe this to be the first demonstration of direct neural feedback from and direct neural control of an artificial arm in amputees

Most Sub-Arcsecond Companions of Kepler Exoplanet Candidate Host Stars are Gravitationally Bound

Using the known detection limits for high-resolution imaging observations and the statistical properties of true binary and line-of-sight companions, we estimate the binary fraction of {\it Kepler} exoplanet host stars. Our speckle imaging programs at the WIYN 3.5-m and Gemini North 8.1-m telescopes have observed over 600 {\it Kepler} objects of interest (KOIs) and detected 49 stellar companions within $\sim$1 arcsecond. Assuming binary stars follow a log-normal period distribution for an effective temperature range of 3,000 to 10,000 K, then the model predicts that the vast majority of detected sub-arcsecond companions are long period ($P>50$ years), gravitationally bound companions. In comparing the model predictions to the number of real detections in both observational programs, we conclude that the overall binary fraction of host stars is similar to the 40-50\% rate observed for field stars