To exist – to relate – to speak to God: Pastoral care in retirement and nursing homes House St. Josef am Inn, Innsbruck

Der Wert und die Würde des Menschen im Alter bestimmen das seelsorgliche Handeln im Seniorenheim. Christliche Seelsorge betrachtete den Menschen in seinem Verhältnis zu Gott, zu den Mitmenschen, zu seiner Umwelt und zu sich selbst. In dieser Bezogenheit wird dem Menschen Sinn und Würde bedingungslos zugesprochen. Grundlegend ist deshalb für jede(n) Seelsorger/in, dass er/sie sich selbst in diesem Glauben verwurzelt weiß, und den praktizierten Glauben selbst als tragend und kostbar erlebt. Zudem ist es wichtig sich selbst, in der je eigenen Biographie und Persönlichkeit, gut zu kennen. So werden die Seelsorger/innen zu echten Zeug/innen der befreienden Botschaft Gottes. Seelsorge im Seniorenheim ist eine heilende Seelsorge, und stellt immer den ganzen Menschen in den Mittelpunkt.Die Seelsorger/innen im Heim St. Josef am Inn verstehen sich zunächst als Brückenbauer zwischen den Bewohner/innen, den Angehörigen und den Mitarbeiter/innen. Es wird auf den kostbaren Moment echter Begegnung besonderer Wert gelegt. Zudem bieten sich die Seelsorger/innen als Gesprächspartner/innen an. Ihr Anliegen ist es, Menschen in ihrer Geschichte und ihrem Ausdruck verstehen zu lernen und sie zu begleiten. Die jeweilige Lebensbiographie wird dabei gewürdigt, ohne diese vorschnell zu bewerten oder gar zu urteilen. Weiters wird gemeinsam auf die spirituellen Ressourcen geblickt. Die jeweiligen spirituellen Bedürfnisse der Bewohner/innen werden ernst genommen und eine Begleitung und Förderung in Form von Gesprächen, Gebet, Gottesdiensten, tröstenden Ritualen und Sakramenten angeboten. Seelsorge als ganzheitliche Begleitung heißt ebenso helfen, dass das Leben – auch am Ende – gelingt, in dem die Heimbewohner/innen sich auch im Prozess des Sterbens gehalten, geliebt und getragen wissen. Seelsorge in Seniorenheimen gilt zudem verschiedenen Berufsgruppen im Haus, deren Freuden und Nöten, Bedürfnissen und Überlastungen. Sie setzt sich für ein humanes Klima, christliche Werte und zwischenmenschliche Kontakte ein und steht zudem auch im Dienste der Weiterbildung. Insgesamt stellt die Seelsorge einen unverzichtbaren Beitrag zu Pflegequalität eines Seniorenheims dar.The dignity of human beings in old age determines pastoral care in retirement homes. Christian pastoral care considers men and women in their relationship to God, to their fellow human beings, to their environment and to themselves. In these relationships dignity is unconditionally attributed to every person. It is therefore fundamental for every pastor and pastoral caregiver to be rooted in this faith and to experience it in concrete practice as a meaningful and reliable foundation. Pastoral care in a retirement home is a healing one and puts the whole person at the centre. The pastoral caregivers at the retirement home “St. Josef am Inn” in Innsbruck, Austria, understand themselves as bridge builders between the elderly home residents, their relatives, and the staff of the home. They emphasize the concrete moment of authentic encounter and offer themselves as conversation partners. It is important to appreciate each individual’s life-story, avoiding premature judgements. Furthermore, they look at spiritual sources together with the elderly people. Their spiritual needs are taken seriously and spiritual accompaniment is offered in form of conversation, prayer, divine services, sacraments, and consoling rites. Pastoral care as integral accompaniment means also to assist a person at the end of their life. Elderly home residents should feel protected, carried, and loved in the process of dying. Pastoral care in retirement homes, finally, has to take care also of the different professional groups who work there, always considering joys and distress, needs and possible overload of the employees. Summarizing, pastoral care in retirement homes stands up for friendly atmosphere, Christians values and good interpersonal relationships. It is an indispensable contributor to a high quality of care in senior-citizens homes

Combined Blockade of ADP Receptors and PI3-Kinase p110β Fully Prevents Platelet and Leukocyte Activation during Hypothermic Extracorporeal Circulation

Extracorporeal circulation (ECC) and hypothermia are used to maintain stable circulatory parameters and improve the ischemia tolerance of patients in cardiac surgery. However, ECC and hypothermia induce activation mechanisms in platelets and leukocytes, which are mediated by the platelet agonist ADP and the phosphoinositide-3-kinase (PI3K) p110β. Under clinical conditions these processes are associated with life-threatening complications including thromboembolism and inflammation. This study analyzes effects of ADP receptor P2Y12 and P2Y1 blockade and PI3K p110β inhibition on platelets and granulocytes during hypothermic ECC. Human blood was treated with the P2Y12 antagonist 2-MeSAMP, the P2Y1 antagonist MRS2179, the PI3K p110β inhibitor TGX-221, combinations thereof, or PBS and propylene glycol (controls). Under static in vitro conditions a concentration-dependent effect regarding the inhibition of ADP-induced platelet activation was found using 2-MeSAMP or TGX-221. Further inhibition of ADP-mediated effects was achieved with MRS2179. Next, blood was circulated in an ex vivo ECC model at 28°C for 30 minutes and various platelet and granulocyte markers were investigated using flow cytometry, ELISA and platelet count analysis. GPIIb/IIIa activation induced by hypothermic ECC was inhibited using TGX-221 alone or in combination with P2Y blockers (p<0.05), while no effect of hypothermic ECC or antiplatelet agents on GPIIb/IIIa and GPIbα expression and von Willebrand factor binding was observed. Sole P2Y and PI3K blockade or a combination thereof inhibited P-selectin expression on platelets and platelet-derived microparticles during hypothermic ECC (p<0.05). P2Y blockade alone or combined with TGX-221 prevented ECC-induced platelet-granulocyte aggregate formation (p<0.05). Platelet adhesion to the ECC surface, platelet loss and Mac-1 expression on granulocytes were inhibited by combined P2Y and PI3K blockade (p<0.05). Combined blockade of P2Y12, P2Y1 and PI3K p110β completely inhibits hypothermic ECC-induced activation processes. This novel finding warrants further studies and the development of suitable pharmacological agents to decrease ECC- and hypothermia-associated complications in clinical applications

Large-scale 3D flow investigations around a cyclically breathing thermal manikin in a 12 m³ room using HFSB and STB

Exhalation of small aerosol droplets and their transport, dispersion and (local) accumulation in closed rooms have been identified as the main pathway for indirect or airborne respiratory virus transmission from person to person, e.g. for SARS-CoV 2 or measles (Morawska and Cao 2020). Understanding airborne transport mechanisms of viruses via small bio-aerosol particles inside closed populated rooms is an important key factor for optimizing various mitigation strategies (Morawska et al. 2020), which can play an important role for damping the infection dynamics of any future and the ongoing present pandemic scenario, which unfortunately, is still threatening due to the spreading of several SARS-CoV2 variants of concern, e.g. delta (Kupferschmidt and Wadman 2021). Therefore, a large-scale 3D Lagrangian Particle Tracking experiment using up to 3 million long lived and nearly neutrally buoyant helium-filled soap bubbles (HFSB) with a mean diameter of ~ 370 µm as passive tracers in a 12 m³ generic test room has been performed, which allows to fully resolve the Lagrangian transport properties and flow field inside the whole room around a cyclically breathing thermal manikin (Lange et al. 2012) with and without mouth-nose-masks and shields applied. Six high-resolution CMOS streaming cameras, a large array of powerful pulsed LEDs have been used and the Shake-The-Box (STB) (Schanz et al. 2016) Lagrangian particle tracking algorithm has been applied in this experimental study of internal flows in order to gain insight into the complex transient and turbulent aerosol particle transport and dispersion processes around seated breathing persons

Large-scale volumetric flow studies on transport of aerosol particles using a breathing human model with and without face protections

Exhalation of small aerosol particle droplets and their airborne transport, dispersion and (local) accumulation in closed rooms have been identified as the main pathways for direct and indirect respiratory virus transmission from person to person, e.g. for SARS-CoV-2 or measles (Morawska and Cao 2020) (Chen et al. 2021). Therefore, understanding airborne transport mechanisms of aerosol particles inside closed populated rooms is an important key factor for assessing and optimizing various mitigation strategies (Morawska et al. 2020) (Morawska et al. 2013). Unsteady flow features, which are typically evolving in such mixed convection flow scenarios, govern the respective particle transport properties. Experimental and numerical methods are required which enable capturing the related broad range of scales in such internal flows over many cubic meters in order to provide reliable data for the adaptation of proper mitigation measures (distances, masks, shields, air purifiers, ventilation systems etc.). In the present work we show results of a large-scale 3D Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) experiment which has been performed in a 12 m³ generic test room capturing up to 3 million long lived and nearly neutrally buoyant helium-filled soap bubbles (HFSB) with a mean diameter of dHFSB~ 370 µm as (almost) passive tracers. HFSB are used as fluid mechanical replacements for small aerosol particles dP < 5µm and allow to resolve the Lagrangian transport properties and related unsteady flow field inside the whole room around a cyclically breathing thermal manikin (Lange et al. 2012) with and without mouth-nose-masks and shields applied. Six high-resolution CMOS streaming cameras, a large array of powerful pulsed LEDs and the variable-time-step Shake-The-Box (VT-STB) (Schanz et al. 2016, Schanz et al. 2021) LPT algorithm have been applied in this experimental study of internal flows in order to gain insight into the complex transient and turbulent aerosol particle transport and dispersion processes around a seated and breathing human model

Butyrate and propionate inhibit antigen-specific CD8⁺ T cell activation by suppressing IL-12 production by antigen-presenting cells

Abstract Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), such as acetate, butyrate and propionate, are products of microbial macronutrients fermentation that distribute systemically and are believed to modulate host immune responses. Recent data have indicated that certain SCFAs, such as butyrate and propionate, directly modulate human dendritic cell (DC) function. Given the role of DCs in initiating and shaping the adaptive immune response, we now explore how SCFAs affect the activation of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells stimulated with autologous, MART1 peptide-pulsed DC. We show that butyrate reduces the frequency of peptide-specific CD8+ T cells and, together with propionate, inhibit the activity of those cells. On the contrary, acetate does not affect them. Importantly, butyrate and propionate inhibit the production of IL-12 and IL-23 in the DCs and exogenous IL-12 fully restores the activation of the MART-1-specific CD8+ T cells, whereas IL-23 has no effect. In conclusion, these results point to a pivotal role of butyrate and propionate in modulating CD8+ T cell activation via the inhibition of IL-12 secretion from DCs. These findings reveal a novel mechanism whereby bacterial fermentation products may modulate CD8+ T cell function with possible implications in anti-cancer immunotherapy

Development of new methods for analysis of LPT data and application to high-subsonic jet measurements

Lagrangian particle tracking enables the accurate measurement of the position, velocity and acceleration of particles moving within fluid flows. Beyond the particle positions in each time step, an actual track of the individual particle is available over time. This can be exploited for new analysis methods that use this continuous nature of the tracks to improve binned statistics of the flow. Instead of considering just particle positions at each sampling time instance the movement of the tracked particle between those time steps can provide additional information. In the case of binning based averaging methods this results in better convergence of the statistics for a given amount of data. We apply such methods to a multi-pulse Shake-The-Box (STB) measurement of a Mach 0.84 jet in air and generate high resolution two-point correlation maps of the flow. Coherent structures in the shear layer are further investigated using event orientated conditional averaging based on quadrant analysis. As a novel approach for using the Lagrangian nature of the measurement data, we additionally show a control volume balance based calculation approach, which together with bin based statistics could provide a pathway towards investigating balance equations of flow quantitie

3D flow and deformation measurements of rigid and flexible wings under combined pitching and plunging motions using Lagrangian particle tracking

A dynamic test rig based on a hypocycloid gear has been designed for at DLR for underwater flapping wing applications. Three NACA0012 wings with different flexibility, to be attached to the end plate, have been constructed (half span: 150 mm, chord: 50 mm ). The wings perform a two-dimensional motion, i.e. within the x,z-plane, whereas the pitch axis is constant pointing in the y-direction. Markers with approx. 0.5mm diameter were printed onto the wings with pseudo-random distribution to allow detection of the wing motion and deformation. Lagrangian particle tracking of the markers, together with particles in the flow was performe

Full-volume investigation of moving rigid and flexible wings using Lagrangian Particle Tracking of surface markers and tracer particles

A dynamic test rig based on a hypocycloid gear has been designed at DLR for underwater flapping wing applications. Three NACA0012 wings with different flexibility, to be attached to the end plate, have been constructed (half span: 150 mm, chord: 50 mm). The wings perform a two-dimensional motion, i.e. within the x,z-plane, whereas the pitch axis is constantly pointing in the y-direction. Markers with approx. 0.5mm diameter were printed onto the wings with pseudo-random distribution to allow detection of the wing motion and deformation. A system of eight high-speed cameras captures the flow all around the wings and simulaneously captures the wing deformation by tracking the surface markers