By the Sycamore Tree

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/1194/thumbnail.jp

Hannah Dooley

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/3605/thumbnail.jp

Nachhaltigkeitskriterien als essentieller Bestandteil einer novellierten EU-Öko-Basisverordnung

The main goal of this study was to develop sustainability criteria for the advancement of the EU-Eco-Regulations. To achieve this, the authors analyzed 8 international certification schemes for sustainable aspects which could be transferred to existing regulations. By doing so it was possible to abstract 10 sustainability criteria and in the prozess evaluate their value for future developments of the EU-Eco-Regulations. Sustainability of agricultural systems is of the utmost importance for future development of mankind itself. Since ecological agriculture is the most sustainable System we have that works on a large scale (cf. Pick 2009), it is reasonable to suggest that the outline we use for this kind of agriculture – producing best quality with fewest external inputs – is true for sustainable agriculture itself. This work proofed this conjecture to be true. So although the here found sustainability criteria are only partly adopted in the ad-vancement of the EU-Eco-Regulations it can be said that sustainable agriculture of any kind should involve the criteria found in this work

Montaigne, Lear, and the Question of Afterlife

Montaigne, Lear et le problème de la vie éternelle. Tenant le corps de sa fille morte, le vieux Lear croit tout d’un coup s’apercevoir de ce qu’aucun de ce monde ne peut contempler ; « Regarde, ses lèvres, / Regarde là, regarde là », prie-t-il en vain les autres interprètes pendant que l’âme de Cordelia abandonne son corps inanimé pour le ciel. Mais en rapportant ceci à travers la parole d’un homme déséquilibré et mourrant lui-même, Shakespeare invite son public à réfléchir plutôt sur le fait que nous ne voyons rien, et sur l’abîme qui sépare les promesses du salut chrétien d’une part, et de l’autre, l’image d’un univers inhospitalier dépeint tout au long de la pièce. Trois décennies auparavant, Montaigne mettait ce même dispositif en scène dans son essai « De l’exercitation » jouant non seulement les rôles de Lear et de Cordelia, mais aussi celui du spectateur dûment sceptique. Cette communication cherche à placer ces deux mises en scène ambiguës de la « belle mort » chrétienne dans un contexte plus large de l’inquiétude populaire sur le salut et du scepticisme autochtone sur l’immortalité de l’âme. Nous proposons que Montaigne évoque délibérément une tradition de réponses hétérodoxes au problème de la mort, allant du deuxième chapitre de la Sagesse de Salomon jusqu’à l’anabaptisme contemporain. Au lieu de l’au-delà chrétien, Montaigne suggère que son esprit perdurera non pas dans son corps ressuscité mais dans la momie de son livre, relié en vélin et où « Je m’estalle entier : c’est un Skeletos où, d’une veuë, les veines, les muscles, les tendons paroissent » (ii, 6, 379c).Holding his dead daughter, old Lear suddenly believes he sees something given to none of this life to behold; “Look, her lips, / Look there, look there,” he vainly bids the other players, as Cordelia’s soul, heaven bound, issues from her limp body. In making these a dying madman’s words, however, Shakespeare invites his audience to consider rather the fact that we see nothing, and thus to reflect upon the gaping void that seems to lie between Christian promises of salvation and the play’s depiction of a bleak, inhospitable universe. Thirty years earlier, Montaigne staged this same scene, to much the same effect, in his essay “Of exercise,” casting himself not only in the roles of both Lear and Cordelia, but also in that of the duly skeptical spectator. This paper seeks to situate these two ambiguous stagings of the Christian “death” in a wider social context of popular anxiety about salvation and native skepticism over the immortality of the soul. It argues that Montaigne purposely evokes a tradition of heterodoxical responses to the problem of death beginning with the second chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon and stretching to Anabaptism. Instead of a Christian afterlife, Montaigne intimates that his spirit will live on not in his resurrected body but in a mummy, “I expose myself entire: my portrait is a cadaver on which the veins, the muscles, and the tendons appear at a glance (Frame, 274), the mummy, then, of his book, tightly bound in dried pigskin

The influence of general practitioners on access points to health care in a system without gatekeeping: a crosssectional study in the context of the QUALICOPC project in Austria

Aim To assess the rates of specialist visits and visits to hospital emergency departments (ED) among patients in Austria with and without concurrent general practitioner (GP) consultation and among patients with and without chronic disease. Methods The cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted in the context of the QUALICOPC project in 2012. Fieldworkers recruited 1596 consecutive patients in 184 GP offices across Austria. The 41-question survey addressed patients’ experiences with regard to access to, coordination, and continuity of primary care, as well demographics and health status. Descriptive statistics as well as univariate and multivariate regression models were applied. Results More than 90% of patients identified a GP as a primary source of care. Among all patients, 85.5% reported having visited a specialist and 26.4% the ED at least once in the previous year. Having a usual GP did not change the rate of specialist visits. Additionally, patients with chronic disease had a higher likelihood of presenting to the ED despite having a GP as a usual source of care. Conclusion Visiting specialists in Austria is quite common, and the simple presence of a GP as a usual source of care is insufficient to regulate pathways within the health care system. This can be particularly difficult for chronic care patients who often require care at different levels of the system and show higher frequency of ED presentations

The activity of cAMP-Phosphodiesterase 4D7 (PDE4D7) is regulated by protein kinase A-dependent phosphorylation within its unique N-terminus

The cyclic AMP phosphodiesterases type 4 (PDE4s) are expressed in a cell specific manner, with intracellular targeting directed by unique N-terminal anchor domains. All long form PDE4s are phosphorylated and activated by PKA phosphorylation within their upstream conserved region 1 (UCR1). Here, we identify and characterise a novel PKA site (serine 42) within the N-terminal region of PDE4D7, an isoform whose activity is known to be important in prostate cancer progression and ischemic stroke. In contrast to the UCR1 site, PKA phosphorylation of the PDE4D7 N-terminus appears to occur constitutively and inhibits PDE4 activity to allow cAMP signalling under basal conditions

A Study of RO5217790 (HPV Targeted Immunotherapy) in Patients With High Grade Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia Associated With High Risk HPV Infection

Comparative Medicine - OneHealth and Comparative Medicine Poster SessionThis is a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, parallel group multicenter study in women with biopsy confirmed Grade 2 or Grade 3 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). Two hundred patients will be enrolled and randomized in a 2: 1 ratio of RO5217790: placebo. They will be stratified on the basis of their HPV genotyping with stratum 1 consisting of those women with HPV 16 single infection and stratum 2 consisting of those with single or multiple infections with other high risk genotypes. Three injections of RO5217790 (5 x 107pfu) will be administered subcutaneously, each one week apart. Interim colposcopy, cytology and HPV assessments will be performed at Month 3. All patients will undergo conization at Month 6. The primary endpoint is histologic response at Month 6 in HPV 16 single infected patients, as assessed by central pathology review. The secondary endpoints include histologic response in all CIN2/3 patients enrolled regardless of genotype, viral clearance, safety, and immune response (cellular and humoral). After the Month 6 conization, the study will be unblinded and patients will undergo follow-up for an additional 2 years for efficacy and safety. This includes visits at Months 12, 18, 24 and 30 to assess histologic relapse/recurrence and viral re-infection as well as reporting of any serious adverse events. An interim analysis will be conducted when a minimum of 80 patients (at least 20 of whom have single infection with HPV 16 and 20 of whom have infection with HPV 16 plus HPV 16 related genotypes) have undergone conization. NCT0102234