Contemplating the Revolution: Ethics, Culture, and History in German Political Thought, 1789-1815

This thesis examines the important roles played by a range of historical works in German political debates during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. It uses texts across a range of genres and focuses on questions around the nature of ethics, culture, political communities, race, progress, and Enlightenment. Engaging with current controversies concerning these themes in the German Enlightenment, this thesis indicates crucial nuances in the relationships between continuity and innovation in contemporary historiography. In addition, it offers significant new understandings of the work of four leading intellectuals: August Ludwig Schlözer (1735-1809), Christoph Meiners (1747-1810), Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827), and Charles de Villers (1765-1815). The first chapter analyzes conceptions of the historical role of philosophical thought, and especially the disputes surrounding the works of Kant and Fichte. Schlözer, Meiners, Eichhorn, and Villers responded to these debates by emphasizing the politicized nature of different approaches to metaphysics and its history. The second chapter examines ideas about natural law, cultural difference, and the concept of 'race'. As well as reappraising the ideas and intellectual relationships of key thinkers on these subjects, this chapter demonstrates that, contrary to previous claims, notions of cultural difference were often closely linked to theories of natural law. The third chapter considers accounts of the emergence of European modernity. It demonstrates how German thinkers responded to the circumstances of Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe by significantly revising earlier variations of 'the Enlightened narrative'. Examining these debates reveals the significance of ideas about history, ethics, and culture in German political thought during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. By indicating the different ways that these notions could be conceptualized and politicized, this thesis offers new insights into both the diverse meanings of Enlightenment during a period of European crisis, and the major transformations in contemporary German thought

Eine randomisierte Phase-II-Studie mit Capecitabin/Oxaliplatin versus Gemcitabin/Capecitabin versus Gemcitabin/Oxaliplatin bei Patienten mit lokal fortgeschrittenem inoperablem oder metastasiertem Pankreaskarzinom

Diese dreiarmige Phase-II-Studie ist die erste prospektive randomisierte Studie, die drei verschiedene Zweifach-Kombinations-Chemotherapien beim fortgeschrittenen duktalen Adenokarzinom des Pankreas vergleicht. Die Daten zum Zeitpunkt der Auswertung sind insbesondere bezüglich dem primären Zielkriterium Progressfreies Überleben (PFS) und dem sekundären Zielkriterium Gesamtüberleben (OS) und bezüglich der Auswertungen der Nebenwirkungen als reif anzusehen. Die Ausgangskriterien und die Strata sind relativ gut über die drei Arme verteilt. Im Median sind die Patienten 63 Jahre alt. Bei der überwiegenden Mehrheit der Patienten (82%) liegt ein metastasiertes Stadium vor, 68% hatten nachgewiesene Metastasen in der Leber. Ein Großteil der Patienten hat bei Einschluss einen ordentlichen KPS (84% mit KPS ≥80%) aufgewiesen. Keine der drei Kombinationen hat den primären Endpunkt einer Rate des PFS nach 3 Monaten von über 70% erreicht. Das PFS nach 3 Monaten lag aber für die randomisierten Patienten insgesamt mit 60% (95%-KI: 54% - 68%) über dem unter einer Gemcitabin- Therapie zu erwartenden PFS nach 3 Monaten von 50%. Hier schneidet im Trend der CAPGEM-Arm mit 64% (95%-KI: 53% - 77%) und der mGEMOX-Arm mit 60% (95%- KI: 49% - 74%) etwas besser ab als der CAPOX-Arm mit 51% (95%-KI 40% - 65%). Der Median des PFS als sekundäres Zielkriterium wurde im CAPGEM-Arm mit 5,7 Monaten geschätzt. Dies war im Trend besser als unter CAPOX (p=0,42) mit 4,2 Monaten und unter mGEMOX (p = 0,47) mit 3,9 Monaten. Die Gesamtansprechrate (ORR) als weiterer sekundärer Endpunkt war ebenfalls im CAPGEM-Arm mit 25% im Trend besser als die mit jeweils 13% identischen Ergebnisse im CAPOX-Arm und mGEMOX-Arm (jeweils p = 0,11). Beim sekundären Zielkriterium medianes Gesamt-Überleben (OS) besteht zwischen den Behandlungsarmen kein statistisch signifikanter Unterschied, es erreichte 8,1 Monate für CAPOX, 9,0 Monate für CAPGEM und 6,9 Monate für mGEMOX. Insgesamt ist die Effektivität der drei Therapiearme bezüglich der Zielkriterien PFS nach 3 Monaten und OS statistisch nicht signifikant unterschiedlich. Bei den paarweisen Vergleichen ergibt sich aber ein Trend im PFS, in der objektiven Remissionsrate und im medianen Gesamtüberleben (OS) zuungunsten des mGEMOX-Arms. Bei Betrachtung der Sicherheit sind die Häufigkeiten von Grad-3- oder Grad-4-Nebenwirkungen insgesamt mäßig. Alle drei Therapiemodalitäten konnten bei vertretbarer Verträglichkeit gegeben werden. Es konnten jedoch signifikante Unterschiede im Spektrum der Nebenwirkungen beobachtet werden. Die hämatologische Toxizität ist signifikant am geringsten im CAPOX-Arm (p<0,0001). Im CAPGEM-Arm sind die nichthämatologischen Toxizitäten etwas geringer ausgeprägt. Periphere Neuropathien standen in den Oxaliplatin-Armen im Vordergrund. Entgegen der Hoffnungen auf einen guten Surrogatparameter zeigte das CA19-9- Ansprechen definiert über die CA19-9-Kinetik unter Therapie in dieser multizentrischen Studie keine statistisch signifikante Korrelation mit dem PFS oder mit dem OS. Das hier untersuchte modifizierte mGEMOX-Schema ist bezüglich der Effektvität wahrscheinlich anderen Kombinations-Schemata aus Gemcitabin und Oxaliplatin [Louvet at al (2005)] unterlegen. Somit scheint es nicht sinnvoll, es in dieser speziellen Zusammensetzung weiter zu untersuchen. Die Hypothese kann formuliert werden, dass CAPOX in der Primärtherapie mit akzeptablem Nebenwirkungsprofil als eine Alternative zur Gemcitabin-Monotherapie z.B. bei Gemcitabin-Unverträglichkeit dienen kann. CAPGEM scheint mit einem geschätzten medianen PFS von 5,7 Monaten, einer ORR bei 25%, einem OS von 9,0 Monaten, einem 1-Jahres-Überlebensrate von 33%, einem Vorteil bei den nicht-hämatologischen Nebenwirkungen und insgesamt akzeptabler Toxizität eine vielversprechende Kombinationstherapie beim fortgeschrittenen Pankreaskarzinom zu sein. In Zusammenschau mit anderen Untersuchungen zum fortgeschrittenen Pankreaskarzinom könnte CAPGEM eine interessante Therapieoption sein, um als Plattform zur weiteren Verbesserung der Therapie z.B. mit Hilfe von zielgerichteten biologischen Substanzen zu dienen

Oral capecitabine in gemcitabine-pretreated patients with advanced pancreatic cancer

Objective: To date, no standard regimen for salvage chemotherapy after gemcitabine (Gem) failure has been defined for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer (PC). Oral capecitabine (Cap) has shown promising activity in first-line chemotherapy trials in PC patients. Methods: Within a prospective single-center study, Cap was offered to patients who had already received at least 1 previous treatment regimen containing full-dose Gem (as a single agent, as part of a combination chemotherapy regimen or sequentially within a chemoradiotherapy protocol). Cap was administered orally at a dose of 1,250 mg/m(2) twice daily for 14 days followed by 7 days of rest. Study endpoints were objective tumor response rate by imaging criteria (according to RECIST), carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) tumor marker response, time to progression, overall survival and toxicity. Results: A median of 3 treatment cycles (range 1-36) was given to 39 patients. After a median follow-up of 6.6 months, 27 patients were evaluable for response: no complete or partial responses were observed, but 15 patients (39%) had stable disease. A CA19-9 reduction of >20% after 2 cycles of Cap was documented in 6 patients (15%). Median time to progression was 2.3 months (range 0.5-45.1) and median overall survival (since start of Cap treatment) was 7.6 months (range 0.7-45.1). Predominant grade 2 and 3 toxicities (per patient analysis) were hand-foot syndrome 28% (13% grade 3); anemia 23%; leg edema 15%; diarrhea 13%; nausea/vomiting 10%, and leukocytopenia 10%. Conclusion: Single-agent Cap is a safe treatment option for Gem-pretreated patients with advanced PC. Further evaluation of Cap in controlled clinical trials of Gem-pretreated patients with advanced PC is recommended. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

The effect of acute vs chronic magnesium supplementation on exercise and recovery on resistance exercise, blood pressure and total peripheral resistance on normotensive adults

© 2015 Kass and Poeira; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Magnesium supplementation has previously shown reductions in blood pressure of up to 12 mmHg. A positive relationship between magnesium supplementation and performance gains in resistance exercise has also been seen. However, no previous studies have investigated loading strategies to optimise response. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of oral magnesium supplementation on resistance exercise and vascular response after intense exercise for an acute and chronic loading strategy on a 2-day repeat protocol. Methods: The study was a randomised, double-blind, cross-over design, placebo controlled 2 day repeat measure protocol (n = 13). Intense exercise (40 km time trial) was followed by bench press at 80% 1RM to exhaustion, with blood pressure and total peripheral resistance (TPR) recorded. 300 mg/d elemental magnesium was supplemented for either a 1 (A) or 4 (Chr) week loading strategy. Food diaries were recorded. Results: Dietary magnesium intake was above the Reference Nutrient Intake (RNI) for all groups. Bench press showed a significant increase of 17.7% (p = 0.031) for A on day 1. On day 2 A showed no decrease in performance whilst Chr showed a 32.1% decrease. On day 2 post-exercise systolic blood pressure (SBP) was significantly lower in both A (p = 0.0.47) and Chr (p = 0.016) groups. Diastolic blood pressure (DBP) showed significant decreases on day 2 solely for A (p = 0.047) with no changes in the Chr. TPR reduced for A on days 1 and 2 (p = 0.031) with Chr showing an increase on day 1 (p = 0.008) and no change on day 2. Conclusion: There was no cumulative effect of Chr supplementation compared to A. A group showed improvement for bench press concurring with previous research which was not seen in Chr. On day 2 A showed a small non-significant increase but not a decrement as expected with Chr showing a decrease. DBP showed reductions in both Chr and A loading, agreeing with previous literature. This is suggestive of a different mechanism for BP reduction than for muscular strength. TPR showed greater reductions with A than Chr, which would not be expected as both interventions had reductions in BP, which is associated with TPR.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu decay channel, where l = e or mu, in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data were collected at the LHC, with the CMS detector, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse femtobarns. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation, and upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production cross section. The presence of the standard model Higgs boson with a mass in the 270-440 GeV range is excluded at 95% confidence level.Comment: Submitted to JHE