Hautkrebs – cremen statt schneiden? : Nichtoperative Behandlungen auf dem Vormarsch

»Gönnen Sie Ihrer Haut Zukunft.« Unter diesem Slogan wirbt die Frankfurter Oberbürgermeisterin Petra Roth als Schirmherrin der Deutschen Hautkrebsstiftung (www.hautkrebsstiftung.de) für Maßnahmen zur Prävention von Hauttumoren. Diese Krebsformen nehmen derzeit weltweit in der hellhäutigen Bevölkerung am stärksten zu, wobei aufgrund unserer bereits in frühen Jahren sonnenbelasteten Freizeitgewohnheiten mehr und mehr jüngere Menschen erkranken. Neue Therapieoptionen erlauben es, Krebs sowie Krebsvorstufen früher und effektiver zu behandeln. Dabei spielen insbesondere nichtinvasive Methoden eine immer wichtigere Rolle. Cremen statt schneiden – dies ist nicht immer, aber immer öfter die richtige Lösung

Performance Improvements Based on RFID - Empirical Findings from a Cross-Sectional Study

Based on a cross-sectoral survey among 114 RFID-using companies in Germany, the constitutive factors for performance improvement are evaluated. Analyzing realized target variables such as lead time or production downtime, we can show that the performance-enhancing impact of RFID can be ascribed to the three effects automation, informatization, and transformation. However, automation alone – i.e. a reduction of manual data acquisition activities through RFID – does not systematically contribute to performance enhancement. Rather, we found evidence indicating that it is necessary to exploit improved information about enterprise resources (informatization) and/or to re-engineer business processes (transformation) on the basis of RFID. No matter what sector an enterprise belongs to, investments in RFID technology that are exclusively aimed at an automated acquisition of information are inadvisable. This might be of special interest to companies who are facing a mandate in the near future

Profiling Benefits of RFID Applications

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) enables a contact-free identification of objects either individually or in a bulk mode. The most salient promise of RFID in the realm of logistics is that it reduces object handling costs by automation. However the business potential of RFID reaches well beyond: By providing decision makers with a more detailed, precise, and timely information base, qualitative and indirect benefits can be realized and RFID can be turned into an enabler for farreaching process transformations. This paper derives a classification framework for RFID benefits that can be used for profiling benefits of envisioned RFID initiatives. The profiles are designed to support a targeted selection of benefit measurement approaches as well as for an identification of relevant gaps in the exploitation of the technology. Two complementary case studies are introduced and discussed to illustrate how resulting benefit profiles can be utilized

Fluid shear stress-induced transcriptional activation of the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 gene requires Sp1-dependent DNA binding

AbstractHemodynamic forces play a fundamental role in the regulation of endothelial cell survival. As signaling via the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptor-2 pathway has been previously demonstrated to impact endothelial cell survival, we hypothesized that laminar shear stress may facilitate survival in part by inducing VEGF receptor-2 expression. This study shows a time- and dose-dependent upregulation of endothelial VEGF receptor-2 expression by fluid shear stress in microvascular and large-vessel derived endothelial cells. A functional analysis of the 5′-regulatory region of the VEGF receptor-2 promoter localized the shear stress-response element to a sequence between bp −60 and −37 that encompasses two adjacent consensus Sp1 transcription factor binding sites. Constitutive and shear stress-inducible Sp1-dependent complexes are bound to this element, indicating that fluid shear stress-induced transcriptional activation of the VEGF receptor-2 gene requires Sp1-dependent DNA binding. Together, these results suggest that biomechanical stimulation may lead to endothelial cell survival by upregulating VEGF receptor-2 expression

Reconstruction of Genome-Scale Active Metabolic Networks for 69 Human Cell Types and 16 Cancer Types Using INIT

Development of high throughput analytical methods has given physicians the potential access to extensive and patient-specific data sets, such as gene sequences, gene expression profiles or metabolite footprints. This opens for a new approach in health care, which is both personalized and based on system-level analysis. Genome-scale metabolic networks provide a mechanistic description of the relationships between different genes, which is valuable for the analysis and interpretation of large experimental data-sets. Here we describe the generation of genome-scale active metabolic networks for 69 different cell types and 16 cancer types using the INIT (Integrative Network Inference for Tissues) algorithm. The INIT algorithm uses cell type specific information about protein abundances contained in the Human Proteome Atlas as the main source of evidence. The generated models constitute the first step towards establishing a Human Metabolic Atlas, which will be a comprehensive description (accessible online) of the metabolism of different human cell types, and will allow for tissue-level and organism-level simulations in order to achieve a better understanding of complex diseases. A comparative analysis between the active metabolic networks of cancer types and healthy cell types allowed for identification of cancer-specific metabolic features that constitute generic potential drug targets for cancer treatment