A Nineteenth-Century National Prussian Macroseismic Questionnaire

We recently discovered in the regional record office of North Rhine-Westphalia (Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen) in Duisburg (Germany) numerous original documents organized and distributed during the nineteenth century by the Prussian authority. These documents constitute a series of completed surveys very similar to present-day macroseismic questionnaires that were ostensibly used to gather information about felt earthquakes in the Kingdom of Prussia. This article presents an overview of these documents and discusses their importance for broadening the knowledge base of nineteenth-century earthquakes in this part of Europe. Indeed, for some earthquakes, answers to the questionnaires furnish original historical sources that were never scientifically exploited; for other earthquakes, the surveys formed the basic source of information, utilized but not referenced in two nineteenth-century scientific studies. Detailed examination of a small sample from these historical documents definitively demonstrates the necessity for a reevaluation of the nineteenth-century earthquakes

Morphotectonics and past large earthquakes in eastern Belgium

peer reviewe

Predicting Response Trajectories during Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy for Panic Disorder: No Association with the BDNF Gene or Childhood Maltreatment.

BACKGROUND: Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and result in low quality of life and a high social and economic cost. The efficacy of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders is well established, but a substantial proportion of patients do not respond to this treatment. Understanding which genetic and environmental factors are responsible for this differential response to treatment is a key step towards "personalized medicine". Based on previous research, our objective was to test whether the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and/or childhood maltreatment are associated with response trajectories during exposure-based CBT for panic disorder (PD). METHOD: We used Growth Mixture Modeling to identify latent classes of change (response trajectories) in patients with PD (N = 97) who underwent group manualized exposure-based CBT. We conducted logistic regression to investigate the effect on these trajectories of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and two different types of childhood maltreatment, abuse and neglect. RESULTS: We identified two response trajectories ("high response" and "low response"), and found that they were not significantly associated with either the genetic (BDNF Val66Met polymorphism) or childhood trauma-related variables of interest, nor with an interaction between these variables. CONCLUSIONS: We found no evidence to support an effect of the BDNF gene or childhood trauma-related variables on CBT outcome in PD. Future studies in this field may benefit from looking at other genotypes or using different (e.g. whole-genome) approaches.This work was supported by a grant from Carlos III Health Institute/Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (www.isciii.es) to MAF (PI12/00273). The authors of this report would also like to thank the support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity PN 2008-2011 -Carlos III Health Institute/Fondo Europeo de Dessarrollo Regional-(PI1200018; www.mineco.gob.es), Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red - Salud Mental-(www.cibersam.es), and the Universities and Research Secretariat, Ministry of the Vice-presidency and of the Economy and Finance of the Catalan Government (2014 SGR 1636; http://universitatsirecerca.gencat.cat/)