Parameters of Attention at Work (PAW36) - Construction of a Questionnaire

Assessing occupational demands of attention plays a vital role in job analysis which is mandatory to assess and optimize person-job fit. In this article, we aim to contribute to this field by presenting a novel questionnaire, Parameters of Attention at Work (PAW36). It is a German job analysis tool (a yet untested English translation is provided) that enables the differentiated assessment and interpretation of thoroughly derived task-oriented parameters (attentional job characteristics). A stepwise construction, using a pretesting sample (N = 268) followed by the main study with German adults (N = 800), and cross-validation resulted in a final version of 36 items loading on seven subscales that reflect task-oriented attentional demands at work. Initial validation efforts indicate that the PAW36 questionnaire is a useful and generally applicable assessment tool - e.g., in the field of job analysis or job design - both for practitioners and researchers

Old data, new benefit – weed surveys combined throughout Europe

Die Unkrautbekämpfung wird sich in den nächsten Jahren weiterhin verändern, mit geringerem Einsatz von Herbiziden und einem Blick auf alternative Verfahren des Unkrautmanagements. Um diese komplexere Unkrautkontrolle effektiv zu nutzen, wird auch wieder vermehrt breites Wissen der Unkrautökologie benötigt. Dieses Wissen basiert in vielen Fällen auf lokal oder regional erhobenen Daten. Die daraus abgeleiteten Schlüsse können nur mit gebotener Vorsicht verallgemeinert werden. Der Schritt von der lokalen Beobachtung zur generellen Regel ist naturgemäß unsicher. Die Kombination vieler verschiedener Datensätze bietet prinzipiell eine Möglichkeit, diesen Schritt der Ableitung sicherer zu machen, da ein größerer Teil der auf Feldern real vorliegenden Unterschiede abgebildet wird. Das von einem solchen größeren Datensatz abgeleiteten Wissen hat eine breitere Gültigkeit. Hier zeigen wir beispielhaft, wie es funktionieren kann, Datensätze verschiedener regionaler oder nationaler Herkunft zu recherchieren und zu sammeln, und wie die Kombination einen Mehrgewinn an wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis bringt. Im Rahmen der Arbeitsgruppe „Weeds and Biodiversity“ der European Weed Research Society (EWRS) werden Unkrauterhebungen aus verschiedenen europäischen Ländern kombiniert, um die Einflussfaktoren auf das Unkrautauftreten auf der kontinentalen Skala zu analysieren. Wir zeigen aber auch, welche Hürden die Vielfältigkeit der diversen Datensätze mit sich bringt.The weed management of modern agriculture will continue its change to less intense use of herbicides and more prominent use of alternative measures. For an effective use of this more complex weed control, a better knowledge and understanding of weed ecology and of reactions to management measures is necessary. In many cases, this knowledge is based on regionally or nationally collected data. The derived conclusions can only be extrapolated with caution. It is difficult to extract a general rule from local observations, and sometimes not possible. In principal, the combination of different datasets from different regions and times provides the possibility to overcome this problem, because a larger part of the existing differences is addressed. The knowledge generated in this way is more general. We show how we approached such a data collection of European weed data and provide an overview of the data gathered so far. We discuss some of the arising problems caused by the high heterogeneity of the data and how we handle them. The data collection was conducted within the framework of the working group “Weeds and Biodiversity” of the European Weed Research Society” (EWRS) with the aim to analyse the factors influencing the occurrence of weeds

Die Kanzel der Dresdner Schlosskapelle von 1553. Ein in Neukirchen bei Chemnitz wiedergefundenes Prinzipalstück der Hofkunst unter Kurfürst Moritz von Sachsen?

Im Jahre 1737 wurde die protestantische Schlosskapelle im Dresdner Schloss aufgegeben. Ihre Ausstattung gelangte innerhalb weniger Tage in die nahegelegene Sophienkirche, die neue evangelische Hofkirche. Anders als geplant, wurde die Kanzel dort nicht eingebaut. Ihr Verbleib ist anhand der Akten nicht eindeutig zu klären. Viele Indizien lassen vermuten, dass die ehemalige Kanzel der Schlosskapelle in der Kirche von Neukirchen bei Chemnitz eine zweite Verwendung fand und in einen älteren Altar eingefügt wurde. Beobachtungen lassen die Kanzel als ungewöhnliches Werk der sächsischen Hofkunst wahrscheinlich werden; Befunde sprechen für die bau- und bildkünstlerisch aufwändig inszenierte Schlosskapelle als Ort ihrer ursprünglichen Bestimmung

‘Image‘ Kota Goettingen Dan Sekitarnya Sebagai Salah Satu Tujuan Wisata Alam Dan Rekreasi Luar Ruangan (Study Kasus Menurut Mahasiswa Internasional Di Universitas Goettingen)

Nature tourism/outdoor recreation is one the fastest growing tourism activities in the world. More and more people travel to natural sites due to increased environmental awareness and a high degree of urbanization.The objective of this research was to capture the image of Göttingen and its surrounding area, using a combination of structured and unstructured methods as recommended by previous researchers. The image determination was considered important for positioning and differentiating the destination from other competitors. From a marketing point of view, image determination could increase tourist interest to visit the destination, travel satisfaction, and intention to return. The structured method used image attributes, which were evaluated using a 5-point Likert scale while the unstructured method used three open-ended questions. In addition, the research was also done to identify the nature of outdoor recreation/nature tourism among International students. The study focused on International students, which have certain characteristics that are different from those of domestic students. Data was taken from January to April 2014. 326 respondents delivered useable responses/data. This research revealed that a combination of structured and unstructured methods was able to capture the underlying image dimension of Göttingenand its surroundings. Considering the high propensity for travelling and previous travel experience of the students, it could be interpreted that International students at Göttingen University are one of the prospective nature tourism markets. Therefore, customized marketing strategy could be applied to attract them

‘IMAGE‘ KOTA GOETTINGEN DAN SEKITARNYA SEBAGAI SALAH SATU TUJUAN WISATA ALAM DAN REKREASI LUAR RUANGAN (STUDY KASUS MENURUT MAHASISWA INTERNASIONAL DI UNIVERSITAS GOETTINGEN)

Nature tourism/outdoor recreation is one the fastest growing tourism activities in the world. More and more people travel to natural sites due to increased environmental awareness and a high degree of urbanization.The objective of this research was to capture the image of Göttingen and its surrounding area, using a combination of structured and unstructured methods as recommended by previous researchers. The image determination was considered important for positioning and differentiating the destination from other competitors. From a marketing point of view, image determination could increase tourist interest to visit the destination, travel satisfaction, and intention to return. The structured method used image attributes, which were evaluated using a 5-point Likert scale while the unstructured method used three open-ended questions. In addition, the research was also done to identify the nature of outdoor recreation/nature tourism among international students. The study focused on international students, which have certain characteristics that are different from those of domestic students. Data was taken from January to April 2014. 326 respondents delivered useable responses/data. This research revealed that a combination of structured and unstructured methods was able to capture the underlying image dimension of Göttingenand its surroundings. Considering the high propensity for travelling and previous travel experience of the students, it could be interpreted that international students at Göttingen University are one of the prospective nature tourism markets. Therefore, customized marketing strategy could be applied to attract them

Idebenone Prevents Human Optic Nerve Head Astrocytes From Oxidative Stress, Apoptosis, and Senescence by Stabilizing BAX/Bcl-2 Ratio

Purpose: Oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis of several neurodegenerative diseases including glaucoma. Astrocytes are supposed to play a role in glaucoma pathogenesis. This study investigates the antiapoptotic and cytoprotective effects of idebenone on optic nerve head astrocytes (ONHA) under oxidative stress.Methods: ONHA were treated with 1 to 150 mu M idebenone. Cell viability (MTT assay and live-dead assay), induction of intracellular reactive oxygen species, senescence-associated -galactosidase activity were investigated. In addition, apoptosis (detection of histone-associated DNA fragmentation), and expression of BAX and Bcl-2, and their mRNA were determined after 48 hours and after hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) treatment.Results: Idebenone concentrations from 1 to 50 mu M showed no effects on ONHA viability. Pretreatment with 10 mu M idebenone led to an increase in viability of ONHA after H2O2 treatment. In addition, idebenone pretreatment significantly attenuated the increase of histone-associated DNA fragmentation, induction of senescence-associated -galactosidase, and intracellular reactive oxygen species after treatment with H2O2. When ONHA cells were treated with idebenone and H2O2, real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blot analysis yielded an increased expression of Bcl-2 and a decrease of BAX compared with those cells that were treated with H2O2 only.Conclusions: Idebenone reduced senescence, oxidative stress, and apoptotic cell death in cultured ONHA in vitro. Our results suggest that idebenone may help to protect ONHA in vivo, and therefore might be helpful in preventing the progression of glaucomatous degeneration

Selective pressures on genomes in molecular evolution

We describe the evolution of macromolecules as an information transmission process and apply tools from Shannon information theory to it. This allows us to isolate three independent, competing selective pressures that we term compression, transmission, and neutrality selection. The first two affect genome length: the pressure to conserve resources by compressing the code, and the pressure to acquire additional information that improves the channel, increasing the rate of information transmission into each offspring. Noisy transmission channels (replication with mutations) gives rise to a third pressure that acts on the actual encoding of information; it maximizes the fraction of mutations that are neutral with respect to the phenotype. This neutrality selection has important implications for the evolution of evolvability. We demonstrate each selective pressure in experiments with digital organisms.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, to be published in J. theor. Biolog

The utility of the ‘Arable Weeds and Management in Europe’ database: Challenges and opportunities of combining weed survey data at a European scale

Over the last 30 years, many studies have surveyed weed vegetation on arable land. The ‘Arable Weeds and Management in Europe’ (AWME) database is a collection of 36 of these surveys and the associated management data. Here, we review the challenges associated with combining disparate datasets and explore some of the opportunities for future research that present themselves thanks to the AWME database. We present three case studies repeating previously published national scale analyses with data from a larger spatial extent. The case studies, originally done in France, Germany and the UK, explore various aspects of weed ecology (community composition, management and environmental effects and within-field distributions) and use a range of statistical techniques (canonical correspondence analysis, redundancy analysis and generalised linear mixed models) to demonstrate the utility and versatility of the AWME database. We demonstrate that (i) the standardisation of abundance data to a common measure, before the analysis of the combined dataset, has little impact on the outcome of the analyses, (ii) the increased extent of environmental or management gradients allows for greater confidence in conclusions and (iii) the main conclusions of analyses done at different spatial scales remain consistent. These case studies demonstrate the utility of a Europe-wide weed survey database, for clarifying or extending results obtained from studies at smaller scales. This Europe-wide data collection offers many more opportunities for analysis that could not be addressed in smaller datasets; including questions about the effects of climate change, macro-ecological and biogeographical issues related to weed diversity as well as the dominance or rarity of specific weeds in Europe.Publishe

Functionality and Cell Senescence of CD4/ CD8-Selected CD20 CAR T Cells Manufactured Using the Automated CliniMACS Prodigy® Platform

Clinical studies using autologous CAR T cells have achieved spectacular remissions in refractory CD19+ B cell leukaemia, however some of the patient treatments with CAR T cells failed. Beside the heterogeneity of leukaemia, the distribution and senescence of the autologous cells from heavily pretreated patients might be further reasons for this. We performed six consecutive large-scale manufacturing processes for CD20 CAR T cells from healthy donor leukapheresis using the automated CliniMACS Prodigy® platform. Starting with a CD4/CD8-positive selection, a high purity of a median of 97% T cells with a median 65-fold cell expansion was achieved. Interestingly, the transduction rate was significantly higher for CD4+ compared to CD8+ T cells and reached in a median of 23%. CD20 CAR T cells showed a good specific IFN-γ secretion after cocultivation with CD20+ target cells which correlated with good cytotoxic activity. Most importantly, 3 out of 5 CAR T cell products showed an increase in telomere length during the manufacturing process, while telomere length remained consistent in one and decreased in another process. In conclusion, this shows for the first time that beside heterogeneity among healthy donors, CAR T cell products also differ regarding cell senescence, even for cells manufactured in a standardised automated process