Arginase-1 Is Responsible for IL-13-Mediated Susceptibility to Trypanosoma cruzi Infection

Arginase-1 (Arg-1) is a marker for alternatively activated macrophages (AAM) and is mainly induced by the type 2 cytokines interleukin (IL)-4 and IL-13 through the common IL-4 receptor-alpha (Rα) subunit. Both, Arg-1 and AAM undermine macrophage effector functions against intracellular parasites and are therefore implicated in the susceptibility to infection with Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas' disease. However, the involvement of Arg-1 in promoting intracellular replication of T. cruzi in AAM has not been proven so far in vivo. Because Arg-1 is only moderately expressed in T. cruzi-infected wildtype mice, we elucidated the role of Arg-1 and AAM during infection in IL-13-overexpressing (IL-13tg) mice, which are characterized by an inflammation-induced development of AAM and an accompanied elevated expression of Arg-1. In comparison to wildtype littermates, IL-13tg mice were highly susceptible to T. cruzi infection with enhanced parasitemia and impaired survival. Importantly, T. cruzi-infected IL-13tg mice developed an elevated alternative macrophage activation with increased arginase activity. To proof the hypothesis, that Arg-1 accounts for the increased susceptibility of IL-13tg mice, we blocked arginase activity in infected IL-13tg mice. Because this arginase inhibition resulted in a decreased susceptibility to experimental Chagas disease our study supports in summary the conclusion that IL-13/IL-4Rα-driven Arg-1 expression contributes to the permissiveness of the host to T. cruzi infection

Design by Research - Dokumentation eines studentischen Entwurfsprojektes

Im vorliegenden Buch sind die Ergebnisse eines studentischen Entwurfsprojektes dokumentiert, welches im Wintersemester 2012/13 an der Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar am Lehrstuhl Informatik in der Architektur (InfAR) stattgefunden hat. Das Projekt wurde in Zusammenarbeit mit Psychologen, Kognitions- und Computerwissenschaftlern des DFG geförderten Forschungsprojektes SFB/TR8 „Spatial Cognition“ Bremen/Freiburg konzipiert und durchgeführt

ÖR-Klausurbearbeitung: Grundlagenwissen rund um den Bebauungsplan

Sowohl im ersten als auch im zweiten Examen werden Klausuren rund um den Bebauungsplan gestellt. Oft sind Prüflinge dazu aufgerufen, eine Satzung auf formelle und materielle Fehler zu untersuchen und die richtigen Schlüsse aus den gefundenen Fehlern zu ziehen. Im vorliegenden Beitrag stellen wir die formellen und materiellen Rechtmäßigkeitsvoraussetzungen eines Bebauungsplans dar (I.) und erörtern die Folgen von Rechtsfehlern (II.). Wer sich zusätzlich für einen alternativen Lernansatz interessiert, um einen Überblick über die für die Rechtmäßigkeitsprüfung relevanten Normen zu erlangen, kann einen Blick auf die ebenfalls in diesem Heft abgedruckte Merkhilfe werfen

Discursive design thinking: the role of explicit knowledge in creative architectural design reasoning

The main hypothesis investigated in this paper is based upon the suggestion that the discursive reasoning in architecture supported by an explicit knowledge of spatial configurations can enhance both design productivity and the intelligibility of design solutions. The study consists of an examination of an architect’s performance while solving intuitively a well-defined problem followed by an analysis of the spatial structure of their design solutions. One group of architects will attempt to solve the design problem logically, rationalizing their design decisions by implementing their explicit knowledge of spatial configurations. The other group will use an implicit form of such knowledge arising from their architectural education to reason about their design acts. An integrated model of protocol analysis combining linkography and macroscopic coding is used to analyze the design processes. The resulting design outcomes will be evaluated quantitatively in terms of their spatial configurations. The analysis appears to show that an explicit knowledge of the rules of spatial configurations, as possessed by the first group of architects can partially enhance their function-driven judgment producing permeable and well-structured spaces. These findings are particularly significant as they imply that an explicit rather than an implicit knowledge of the fundamental rules that make a layout possible can lead to a considerable improvement in both the design process and product. This suggests that by externalizing th

Beyond the shortest-path: Towards cognitive occupancy modeling in BIM

Current approaches to simulate occupants' wayfinding in AEC mostly employ direct routing algorithms that assume global knowledge of the navigation environment to compute a shortest path between two locations. This simplification overlooks evidence concerning the role of perception and cognition during wayfinding in complex buildings, leading to potentially erroneous predictions that may hinder architects' ability to design wayfinding by architecture. To bridge this gap, we present a novel simulation paradigm entitled Cognitive Occupancy Modeling in BIM to simulate wayfinding by means of a vision-based cognitive agent and a semantically-enriched navigation space extracted from BIM (Building Information Modeling). To evaluate the predictive power of the proposed paradigm against human behavior, we conducted a wayfinding experiment in Virtual Reality (VR) with 149 participants, followed by a series of simulation experiments with cognitive and direct routing agents. Results highlight a significant correspondence between human participants' and cognitive agents' wayfinding behavior that was not observed with direct routing agents, demonstrating the potential of cognitive modeling to inform building performance simulations in AEC

Motivation moderates gender differences in navigation performance.

Gender differences in navigation performance are a recurrent and controversial topic. Previous research suggests that men outperform women in navigation tasks and that men and women exhibit different navigation strategies. Here, we investigate whether motivation to complete the task moderates the relationship between navigation performance and gender. Participants learned the locations of landmarks in a novel virtual city. During learning, participants could trigger a top-down map that depicted their current position and the locations of the landmarks. During testing, participants were divided into control and treatment groups and were not allowed to consult the map. All participants were given 16 minutes to navigate to the landmarks, but those in the treatment group were monetarily penalized for every second they spent completing the task. Results revealed a negative relationship between physiological arousal and the time required to locate the landmarks. In addition, gender differences in strategy were found during learning, with women spending more time with the map and taking 40% longer than men to locate the landmarks. Interestingly, an interaction between gender and treatment group revealed that women in the control group required more time than men and women in the treatment group to retrieve the landmarks. During testing, women in the control group also took more circuitous routes compared to men in the control group and women in the treatment group. These results suggest that a concurrent and relevant stressor can motivate women to perform similarly to men, helping to diminish pervasive gender differences found in the navigation literature