The effect of calcium chloride on air-entrained concrete

The essence of the problem is not fully set forth in the title in that all aspects are not covered. In this case, the term effect means how the compressive strength and the modulus of elasticity vary with the addition of calcium chloride...Many pages will be found concerning the relative merits of plain concrete versus air-entrained concrete. All phases of the problem have been covered thoroughly. Investigations have been conducted on both plain and air-entrained concrete to determine the compressive strength, flexural strength, durability and workability --Introduction, page 1

"Please be professional…!"

Ausgehend von Van Genneps Theorie über Übergangsrituale und damit zu-sammenhängend Turners Konzepte über Liminalität und Communitas wird in vorliegender Diplomarbeit eine Untersuchung des Group Junior Trainee Pro-grammes der Erste Group Bank AG vorgenommen. Dabei werden das Unter-nehmen und das Traineeprogramm, als Maßnahme der Personalentwicklung, grundlegend erläutert, bevor konkret auf die Struktur des untersuchten Trai-neeprogramms eingegangen wird und Parallelen zu Van Genneps Abfolgeord-nung von Übergangsritualen aufgezeigt werden. Darin spielt die Phase der Li-minalität, auch Schwellenphase genannt, eine bedeutende Rolle. In diesem Übergang treten die Trainees als Schwellenwesen, mit besonderen Eigenschaf-ten ausgestattet, auf, verlassen den alten Status als StudentIn und treten in den neuen, als MitarbeiterIn des Unternehmens, ein. Innerhalb dieses Übergangs hat die Communitas, die Gemeinschaft unter Gleichen, neben räumlichen Übergängen und gemeinsamen Mahlzeiten als Binderiten, einen bedeutenden Stellenwert. Hauptfunktion des Übergangsrituals ist in diesem Zusammenhang die Unsicherheitsvermeidung. Der Titel „Please be professional…!“ deutet hier auf den spielerischen Umgang der Trainees mit dem Unbekannten hin.Based on Van Gennep’s theory of rites of passage and Turner’s concepts of liminality and communitas, this diploma thesis deals with research on the Group Junior Trainee Programme of Erste Group Bank AG. First, a basic insight into the company and the trainee-programme as a method of HR and personnel de-velopment overall will be given. Further on, the structure and characteristics of the studied trainee-programme will be analysed in the light of Van Gennep’s sequence order of rites of passage. Within this order the phase of liminality, al-so called transition or “threshold phase” (‘Schwellenphase’), has an important role. As part of the passage, trainees appear as “threshold people" (‘Schwel-lenwesen’) equipped with specific skills, who leave their old status as students behind and enter a new one as employees of the mentioned company. Within this transition communitas, community (‘Gemeinschaft’) among equals, as well as transition in space and common dinners as binding rituals are of important significance. In this context the main function of rites of passage is uncertainty avoidance. The title “Please be professional…!” refers to the playful handling with the unknown from trainees

SU(N) Antiferromagnets and Strongly Coupled QED: Effective Field Theory for Josephson Junctions Arrays

We review our analysis of the strong coupling of compact QED on a lattice with staggered Fermions. We show that, for infinite coupling, compact QED is exactly mapped in a quantum antiferromagnet. We discuss some aspects of this correspondence relevant for effective field theories of Josephson junctions arrays.Comment: 33 pages,latex,Proceedings of "Common Trends in Condensed Matter and High Energy Physics",DFUPG 1/9

Microbial lineages in sarcoidosis. A metagenomic analysis tailored for low–microbial content samples

RATIONALE: The etiology of sarcoidosis is unknown, but microbial agents are suspected as triggers. OBJECTIVES: We sought to identify bacterial, fungal, or viral lineages in specimens from patients with sarcoidosis enriched relative to control subjects using metagenomic DNA sequencing. Because DNA from environmental contamination contributes disproportionately to samples with low authentic microbial content, we developed improved methods for filtering environmental contamination. METHODS: We analyzed specimens from subjects with sarcoidosis (n = 93), control subjects without sarcoidosis (n = 72), and various environmental controls (n = 150). Sarcoidosis specimens consisted of two independent sets of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded lymph node biopsies, BAL, Kveim reagent, and fresh granulomatous spleen from a patient with sarcoidosis. All specimens were analyzed by bacterial 16S and fungal internal transcribed spacer ribosomal RNA gene sequencing. In addition, BAL was analyzed by shotgun sequencing of fractions enriched for viral particles, and Kveim and spleen were subjected to whole-genome shotgun sequencing. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: In one tissue set, fungi in the Cladosporiaceae family were enriched in sarcoidosis compared with nonsarcoidosis tissues; in the other tissue set, we detected enrichment of several bacterial lineages in sarcoidosis but not Cladosporiaceae. BAL showed limited enrichment of Aspergillus fungi. Several microbial lineages were detected in Kveim and spleen, including Cladosporium. No microbial lineage was enriched in more than one sample type after correction for multiple comparisons. CONCLUSIONS: Metagenomic sequencing revealed enrichment of microbes in single types of sarcoidosis samples but limited concordance across sample types. Statistical analysis accounting for environmental contamination was essential to avoiding false positives

P53 Codon 72 (Arg72Pro) Polymorphism and Prostate Cancer Risk: Association between Disease Onset and Proline Genotype

The tumor suppressor gene p53 plays an important role in the stress response of the cell and is mutated in 50% of all human tumors. The p53 Arg72Pro single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was found to be associated with an increased risk of various malignancies. Biochemical and biological differences between the 2 polymorphic variants of wild-type P53 might lead to distinct susceptibility to HPV- and non-HPV-induced tumors. For prostate cancer, only limited data are available, especially in the Caucasian pop-ulation. Therefore, we determined the distribution of the Arg72Pro SNP in a Caucasian case-control study including 118 prostate cancer patients and 194 male controls without any malignancy using restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. A subset of 33 tumors was tested for HPV infection, and no HPV DNA was found. Cases and controls showed similar distributions of alleles in the SNP (p = 0.720). Regarding the onset of the disease, patients diagnosed at ≤60 years of age and older patients (>60 years of age) showed a significant difference in genotype distribution (p = 0.035); there was also an increased occurrence of risk allele Pro72 in cases aged ≤60 years (p = 0.045). A subset of 64 prostate tumors was stained immunohistochemically for P53. 5 of 64 prostate tumors (7.8%) were positive for P53 expression, indicating integrity of the protein in the majority of cases. Genotype distribution showed no association with the Gleason score or additional histopathological characteristics. This study shows that the overall risk of prostate cancer was not associated with Arg72Pro SNP and HPV infection in our cohort. However, disease onset might be modulated by the p53 Pro72 allele, suggesting an important role of apoptosis regulation in prostate carcinogenesis

The Consensus from the Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP) Conference 2017.

On March 24 and 25, 2017 researchers and clinicians from around the world met at Temple University in Philadelphia to discuss the current knowledge of Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP) and its relationship to human disease. The conference was held because of shared concern that MAP is a zoonotic bacterium that poses a threat not only to animal health but also human health. In order to further study this problem, the conferees discussed ways to improve MAP diagnostic tests and discussed potential future anti-MAP clinical trials. The conference proceedings may be viewed on the www.Humanpara.org website. A summary of the salient work in this field is followed by recommendations from a majority of the conferees

Cytogenetic analysis of HER1/EGFR, HER2, HER3 and HER4 in 278 breast cancer patients

INTRODUCTION: The HER (human EGFR related) family of receptor tyrosine kinases (HER1/EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor)/c-erbB1, HER2/c-erbB2, HER3/c-erbB3 and HER4/c-erbB4) shares a high degree of structural and functional homology. It constitutes a complex network, coupling various extracellular ligands to intracellular signal transduction pathways resulting in receptor interaction and cross-activation. The most famous family member is HER2, which is a target in Herceptin therapy in metastatic status and also in adjuvant therapy of breast cancer in the event of dysregulation as a result of gene amplification and resulting protein overexpression. The HER2-related HER receptors have been shown to interact directly with HER2 receptors and thereby mutually affect their activity and subsequent malignant growth potential. However, the clinical outcome with regard to total HER receptor state remains largely unknown. METHODS: We investigated HER1-HER4, at both the DNA and the protein level, using fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) probes targeted to all four receptor loci and also immunohistochemistry in tissue microarrays derived from 278 breast cancer patients. RESULTS: We retrospectively found HER3 gene amplification with a univariate negative impact on disease-free survival (hazard ratio 2.35, 95% confidence interval 1.08 to 5.11, p = 0.031), whereas HER4 amplification showed a positive trend in overall and disease-free survival. Protein expression revealed no additional information. CONCLUSION: Overall, the simultaneous quantification of HER3 and HER4 receptor genes by means of FISH might enable the rendering of a more precise stratification of breast cancer patients by providing additional prognostic information. The continuation of explorative and prospective studies on all HER receptors will be required for an evaluation of their potential use for specific therapeutic targeting with respect to individualised therapy