Fertility-relevant social networks: composition, structure, and meaning of personal relationships for fertility intentions

Although the relevance of social interactions or social networks for fertility research has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years, little is known about the channels and mechanisms of social influences on individuals� fertility decision making. Drawing on problem-centred interviews and network data collected among young adults in western Germany the authors show that qualitative methods broaden our understanding of social and contextual influences on couples� fertility intentions, by exploring the phenomenon, taking into account subjective perceptions, analysing interactions within networks as well as the dynamics of networks. Qualitative methods allow for the collection and analysis of rich retrospective information on network dynamics in relation to life course events. This also can be helpful both to complement the still rare longitudinal data on social networks and to develop parsimonious and efficient survey instruments to collect such information in a standardized way.Germany, fertility, qualitative methods, social network

Who is relevant? Exploring fertility relevant social networks

Based on the analysis of qualitative interviews in western Germany we argue that social relationships have a strong impact on individuals´ and couples´ fertility intentions and behavior. We identify relevant others and mechanisms of influences. The core family is an important factor of influences but we are also able to show that social relationships beyond the core family of parents and siblings need to be considered when taking social influence on the family formation of individuals into account.Germany, fertility, influence, social network

Mortar spectral element discretization of the Laplace and Darcy equations with discontinuous coefficients

This paper deals with the mortar spectral element discretization of two equivalent problems, the Laplace equation and the Darcy system, in a domain which corresponds to a nonhomogeneous anisotropic medium. The numerical analysis of the discretization leads to optimal error estimates and the numerical experiments that we present enable us to verify its efficiency

Techniques for organizational memory information systems

The KnowMore project aims at providing active support to humans working on knowledge-intensive tasks. To this end the knowledge available in the modeled business processes or their incarnations in specific workflows shall be used to improve information handling. We present a representation formalism for knowledge-intensive tasks and the specification of its object-oriented realization. An operational semantics is sketched by specifying the basic functionality of the Knowledge Agent which works on the knowledge intensive task representation. The Knowledge Agent uses a meta-level description of all information sources available in the Organizational Memory. We discuss the main dimensions that such a description scheme must be designed along, namely information content, structure, and context. On top of relational database management systems, we basically realize deductive object- oriented modeling with a comfortable annotation facility. The concrete knowledge descriptions are obtained by configuring the generic formalism with ontologies which describe the required modeling dimensions. To support the access to documents, data, and formal knowledge in an Organizational Memory an integrated domain ontology and thesaurus is proposed which can be constructed semi-automatically by combining document-analysis and knowledge engineering methods. Thereby the costs for up-front knowledge engineering and the need to consult domain experts can be considerably reduced. We present an automatic thesaurus generation tool and show how it can be applied to build and enhance an integrated ontology /thesaurus. A first evaluation shows that the proposed method does indeed facilitate knowledge acquisition and maintenance of an organizational memory

Slow breathing reduces sympathoexcitation in COPD

Neurohumoral activation has been shown to be present in hypoxic patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The aims of the present study were to investigate whether there is sympathetic activation in COPD patients in the absence of hypoxia and whether slow breathing has an impact on sympathoexcitation and baroreflex sensitivity. Efferent muscle sympathetic nerve activity, blood pressure, cardiac frequency and respiratory movements were continuously measured in 15 COPD patients and 15 healthy control subjects. Baroreflex sensitivity was analysed by autoregressive spectral analysis and the alpha-angle method. At baseline, sympathetic nerve activity was significantly elevated in COPD patients and baroreflex sensitivity was decreased (5.0+/-0.6 versus 8.9+/-0.8 ms.mmHg(-1)). Breathing at a rate of 6 breaths.min(-1) caused sympathetic activity to drop significantly in COPD patients (from 61.3+/-4.6 to 53.0+/-4.3 bursts per 100 heartbeats) but not in control subjects (39.2+/-3.2 versus 37.5+/-3.3 bursts per 100 heartbeats). In both groups, slow breathing significantly enhanced baroreflex sensitivity. In conclusion, sympathovagal imbalance is present in normoxic chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients. The possibility of modifying these changes by slow breathing may help to better understand and influence this systemic disease

Slow breathing reduces sympathoexcitation in COPD

Neurohumoral activation has been shown to be present in hypoxic patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The aims of the present study were to investigate whether there is sympathetic activation in COPD patients in the absence of hypoxia and whether slow breathing has an impact on sympathoexcitation and baroreflex sensitivity. Efferent muscle sympathetic nerve activity, blood pressure, cardiac frequency and respiratory movements were continuously measured in 15 COPD patients and 15 healthy control subjects. Baroreflex sensitivity was analysed by autoregressive spectral analysis and the alpha-angle method. At baseline, sympathetic nerve activity was significantly elevated in COPD patients and baroreflex sensitivity was decreased (5.0+/-0.6 versus 8.9+/-0.8 ms.mmHg(-1)). Breathing at a rate of 6 breaths.min(-1) caused sympathetic activity to drop significantly in COPD patients (from 61.3+/-4.6 to 53.0+/-4.3 bursts per 100 heartbeats) but not in control subjects (39.2+/-3.2 versus 37.5+/-3.3 bursts per 100 heartbeats). In both groups, slow breathing significantly enhanced baroreflex sensitivity. In conclusion, sympathovagal imbalance is present in normoxic chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients. The possibility of modifying these changes by slow breathing may help to better understand and influence this systemic disease

Neural Correlates of Transmitted Light Experience during Meditation: A Pilot Hyperscanning Study

Certain individuals during deep meditative states can transmitt and give out an aura or ‘light, which is perceived by others through some unknown connections, visual, telepathic or other. Despite various anecdotal, historical accounts of such induced light experience (ILE), its underlying neural mechanism is not known. In this pilot study, we investigated the neural correlates of ILE by simultaneously recording the EEGs of an expert Teacher, who is claimed to elicit ILE, and his Pupil (N=2) during joint sessions under various instructions, given separately to the Teacher (transmit/ do not transmit) and to the Pupil (receive/ do not receive). In a further condition both teacher and pupil wear opaque goggles during transmit/receive instruction, limiting the visual/outputinput. We observed a robust increase in the high frequency beta (12-30 Hz) and gamma oscillations (30-70 Hz) in the Teacher’s brain whenever he was instructed to transmit. Electric field tomography analysis localized these effects over several brain regions including the fusiform gyrus, angular gyrus and the cerebellum. Finally, we found that the Teacher’s and Pupil’s brain responses were synchronized, especially in the alpha band (8-12 Hz) during transmit/receive condition, and the information flow was directional, i.e. from the Teacher to the Pupil; interestingly, this enhanced interbrain synchrony disappeared with opaque goggles. These results were interpreted in terms of heightened internally selective attention as manifested by high frequency beta-gamma oscillations and of joint attention as manifested by interbrain alpha synchrony. Altogether, our results provide the first neuroscientific evidence underlying the phenomenological experience of induced light

Microscopic evaluation of tongue dorsum biofilm from halitosis patients: an ex vivo study using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM)

A category of oral biofilm which is still not well understood is the one coating the tongue, although various reports have associated its presence with halitosis in patients (1). The aim of the study was to visualize the three-dimensional bacteria distribution within the biofilm in order to better understand the ecological balance which regulates it. Tongue plaque samples from four halitosis-diagnosed patients and four healthy volunteers were analysed and compared. The biofilm was collected using a 0.1ml sterile inoculating loop. The visualization of the tongue dorsum biofilm was performed combining fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) (2). Eubacteria, Streptococcus spp. and Fusobacterium nucleatum were stained using specific fluorescent genetic probes. Morphological analysis by CLSM illustrated the different distribution of the species which were tracked: Streptococcus spp. appeared immerged within the samples, while F. nucleatum was found in the peripheral areas of the samples. Furthermore, F. nucleatum appeared to exist without the presence of the Streptococcus spp. in the halitosis group. This study showed the architecture of tongue dorsum biofilm by means of imaging techniques, highlighting the distribution of the tracked bacterial species within the biofilm sample of the plaque.The authors are grateful to Dr. A. Zurcher and to Mr. G. Heuzeroth, University of Basel, for their help in the recruiting and sampling procedures

Fast Large-Scale Reionization Simulations

We present an efficient method to generate large simulations of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) without the need for a full 3-dimensional radiative transfer code. Large dark-matter-only simulations are post-processed to produce maps of the redshifted 21cm emission from neutral hydrogen. Dark matter haloes are embedded with sources of radiation whose properties are either based on semi-analytical prescriptions or derived from hydrodynamical simulations. These sources could either be stars or power-law sources with varying spectral indices. Assuming spherical symmetry, ionized bubbles are created around these sources, whose radial ionized fraction and temperature profiles are derived from a catalogue of 1-D radiative transfer experiments. In case of overlap of these spheres, photons are conserved by redistributing them around the connected ionized regions corresponding to the spheres. The efficiency with which these maps are created allows us to span the large parameter space typically encountered in reionization simulations. We compare our results with other, more accurate, 3-D radiative transfer simulations and find excellent agreement for the redshifts and the spatial scales of interest to upcoming 21cm experiments. We generate a contiguous observational cube spanning redshift 6 to 12 and use these simulations to study the differences in the reionization histories between stars and quasars. Finally, the signal is convolved with the LOFAR beam response and its effects are analyzed and quantified. Statistics performed on this mock data set shed light on possible observational strategies for LOFAR.Comment: 18 pages, 21 figures, submitted to MNRAS For high-resolution images follow "http://www.astro.rug.nl/~thomas/eormap.pdf