Quantifying the combustion behavior of polymers by the combustion efficiency with regard to the weighting of fire loads

For assessing fi re loads in industrial buildings it is essential to quantify the burning behavior of materials as accurate as adequate. There for the combustion effi ciency is used. To determine the combustion effi ciency required energies and energy rates can be measured via Cone Calorimeter. Exemplifi ed by two polymers, polyethylene and polymethylmethacrylate, these parameters are determined and analyzed with regard to the calculation of the combustion effi ciency

Diagnostik kardialer Erkrankungen bei Konduktorinnen der Muskeldystrophie Typ Duchenne bzw. Typ Becker-Kiener durch routinemäßigen Einsatz der kardialen Magnetresonanztomographie

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The muscular dystrophy type Duchenne and type Becker-Kiener is an inherited X-chromosomal disease. The lack (DMD) or an insufficient (BMD) expression of dystrophin leads to this disease, because the information for dystrophin lies on the short arm of the X-chromosom (Xp21), therefore basically the male sex is diseased. Coronary failure is the most common cause of death. Not only male patients, but also carriers can show movement disorders and dilatative cardiomyopathies. That’s why it is of crucial importance to examine all carriers. The basic aim of this investigation was to show the incidence and dimension of heart disease in carriers of DMD and DMD based of a noninvasive CMR-examination. METHODS Mothers and sisters of DMD and BMD patients underwent irrespective of their symptoms a cardiological examination which contained amongst others a multiparametic cardiovascular magnetresonanztomography (CMR). Dimension and function of their hearts were evaluated by SSFP- gradient echo sequence. Late enhancement can be determined dy T1-weighted IR-FLASH- gradient echo sequence with gadolinum contrast agent, which indicate fribromatous and adipouse tissue. RESULTS 26 carriers of musculardystrophy (16 DMD,10 BMD) median follow-up of 43 years (range 22-72 years) were examined by ce-CMR. Following results were found: Increased CK (56% DMD, 30% BMD), pathological CMR findings (containing degraded LV- and RV function and/or late gadolinium enhanchement(LGE)) (69% DMD, 20% BMD) and myocardial damage in 56% of DMD carriers, 67% of these had wall motion abnormalities. That means that 50% of all DMD carriers show wall motion abnormalities. All damage is found in subepicardial parts of the inferolateral wall. This is similar to male DMD patients. CONCLUSIONS Coronary failure is the most common cause of death in male DMD and BMD patients. 50% of the examined DMD carriers show pathological CMR findings (as defined by LV- or RV-descent and/or myocardial damage) The damage is similar to findings of DMD/BMD patients . That’s why cardiac sickness could be prognostic relevant. This thesis must be verified in future studies. Frequent cardiac examinations are nessassary to detect early cardial dysfunction and to give sufficient medication. In case of no damage, the patient can be examined every 5 years, in the other case, when there is a damage the patient should be examined every year

Körperlichkeit, Materialität und Gender in Theater und Theaterwissenschaft

In der Theaterwissenschaft wird dem Körper besondere Bedeutung zugeschrieben – über die physische Anwesenheit von Schauspieler*- und Zuschauer*innenkörpern definiert sich die für das Theater konstitutive Dimension der ‚Liveness’ des Geschehens. Körper, Laute, Objekte etc. auf der Bühne werden als temporäre Ergebnisse vielfältiger Materialisierungs- und Verkörperungsprozesse aufgefasst. Unser Beitrag stellt das Verhältnis von Körperlichkeit, Materialität und Gender in Theater und Theaterwissenschaft ins Zentrum der Auseinandersetzung und zielt darauf, die Interdependenz der drei Kategorien herauszuarbeiten und hervorzuheben. Dieser Zusammenhang der drei Begriffe ist in der Theaterwissenschaft durchaus keine Selbstverständlichkeit, im Gegenteil: Während Materialität und Körperlichkeit im Kontext des performative turn eine starke Aufwertung und Zuwendung erfahren haben, ist Gender vergleichsweise marginal geblieben. Im ersten Teil des Artikels soll es um eine begriffstheoretische Erörterung der Kategorien von Materialität und Körperlichkeit in ihrem Verhältnis zur Kategorie Gender gehen, wie sie primär im deutschsprachigen theaterwissenschaftlichen Diskurs der letzten zehn bis 15 Jahre Verwendung finden. Im zweiten Teil stehen drei Strategien des Gegenwartstheaters im Mittelpunkt, welche das Verhältnis von Materialität, Körperlichkeit und Gender verhandeln: Cross-Dressing, Nacktheit und Affektion der Dinge

SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as a catalyst? Development of emotional problems of preschool children of mothers with childhood maltreatment experiences in the course of the pandemic–a longitudinal analysis

BackgroundSARS-CoV-2 pandemic have posed great challenges for all families and children. Health risks and fears associated with SARS-CoV-2 negatively affect the parental mental health and perceived stress, which in turn influence parental coping and thereby impairs the mental health and well-being of their children. Additional risk factors within the parents, such as maternal childhood maltreatment (CM) experiences, may increase the risk of children to develop emotional problems during the pandemic.ObjectiveThe purpose of this longitudinal study is to determine whether preschool children of mothers with CM are at higher risk of developing emotional problems during the pandemic than preschool children of mothers without CM.Method74 mothers from a birth cohort examining pathways to resilience or vulnerability in the transgenerational transmission of CM, provided information on emotional problems of their children (aged 3–7 years) at two measurement time points (t1: May 2020, t2: March 2021) as part of an online “SARS-CoV-2 pandemic” survey. In addition, parents were asked for a retrospective assessment of their children's emotional problems before the pandemic at time t1. Children's emotional problems were assessed using the “emotional problems” scale of the German version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and linked to previously collected data on mothers' childhood maltreatment experiences, which were collected using the German short version of the Trauma in Childhood Questionnaire (CTQ).ResultsOur analyses showed that children's emotional problems increased significantly over the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic [F(1.86, 116.88) = 3.72, p = 0.030 η2 = 0.06] and were rated significantly higher in the group of children of mothers with CM, than in the group of mothers without CM [F(1, 63) = 126.06, p < 0.001 η2 = 0.67]. Furthermore children's emotional problems of mothers with CM increased significantly more and reached a clinically significant value during the pandemic than for children of mothers without CM [F(1.86, 116.88) = 8.89, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.12].ConclusionsChildren of mothers with CM appear to be at increased risk of developing emotional problems during the pandemic. CM therefore needs to be considered as an additional risk factor in the impact of the pandemic on children

LocTree3 prediction of localization

The prediction of protein sub-cellular localization is an important step toward elucidating protein function. For each query protein sequence, LocTree2 applies machine learning (profile kernel SVM) to predict the native sub-cellular localization in 18 classes for eukaryotes, in six for bacteria and in three for archaea. The method outputs a score that reflects the reliability of each prediction. LocTree2 has performed on par with or better than any other state-of-the-art method. Here, we report the availability of LocTree3 as a public web server. The server includes the machine learning-based LocTree2 and improves over it through the addition of homology-based inference. Assessed on sequence-unique data, LocTree3 reached an 18-state accuracy Q18 = 80 ± 3% for eukaryotes and a six-state accuracy Q6 = 89 ± 4% for bacteria. The server accepts submissions ranging from single protein sequences to entire proteomes. Response time of the unloaded server is about 90 s for a 300-residue eukaryotic protein and a few hours for an entire eukaryotic proteome not considering the generation of the alignments. For over 1000 entirely sequenced organisms, the predictions are directly available as downloads. The web server is available at http://www.rostlab.org/services/loctree3

Atypical maternal interaction is associated with elevated levels of hair cortisol in children

The quality of maternal caregiving is an important factor in the healthy development of a child. One consequence of prolonged insensitive and atypical maternal interaction behavior (e.g., withdrawing from interactions with the child and role-reversal, i.e., the takeover of the parental role or parts of it by the child) in mother-child-dyads can cause alteration of the child's stress response system. Higher salivary cortisol concentrations were reported in infants and toddlers directly after negative interactions with their parents. However, no study to date has examined the association between atypical maternal interaction behavior and hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) in infants. Here, we studied the association of maternal interaction behavior with HCC of the child. Mother-child dyads (N = 112) participated in the longitudinal study My Childhood—Your Childhood. The AMBIANCE scale and its subscales were used to assess atypical maternal interaction behavior during the Strange Situation Procedure. Chronic stress levels in the child were assessed by HCC of 3 cm hair strands at the age of 12 months. Maternal educational level (operationalized in highest education level) served as a control variable. Robust multiple linear regression analyses revealed that role/boundary confusion was associated with HCC, i.e., the higher atypical interaction behavior of the mother the higher the HCC in the children. By measuring hair cortisol in this study, it is possible to determine the average long-term activity of the child's stress response system.Thus, atypical maternal interaction behavior could be a risk factor for persistent stress in children, contributing to a higher risk for negative health outcomes in later life. The results of this study highlight the importance of early intervention programs that focus on the relationship between mother and child

Optogenetic acidification of synaptic vesicles and lysosomes

Acidification is required for the function of many intracellular organelles, but methods to acutely manipulate their intraluminal pH have not been available. Here we present a targeting strategy to selectively express the light-driven proton pump Arch3 on synaptic vesicles. Our new tool, pHoenix, can functionally replace endogenous proton pumps, enabling optogenetic control of vesicular acidification and neurotransmitter accumulation. Under physiological conditions, glutamatergic vesicles are nearly full, as additional vesicle acidification with pHoenix only slightly increased the quantal size. By contrast, we found that incompletely filled vesicles exhibited a lower release probability than full vesicles, suggesting preferential exocytosis of vesicles with high transmitter content. Our subcellular targeting approach can be transferred to other organelles, as demonstrated for a pHoenix variant that allows light-activated acidification of lysosomes

Novel genetically encoded fluorescent probes enable real-time detection of potassium in vitro and in vivo

Changes in intra-and extracellular potassium ion (K+) concentrations control many important cellular processes and related biological functions. However, our current understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of physiological and pathological K+ changes is severely limited by the lack of practicable detection methods. We developed K+-sensitive genetically encoded, Forster resonance energy transfer-(FRET) based probes, called GEPIIs, which enable quantitative real-time imaging of K+ dynamics. GEPIIs as purified biosensors are suitable to directly and precisely quantify K+ levels in different body fluids and cell growth media. GEPIIs expressed in cells enable time-lapse and real-time recordings of global and local intracellular K+ signals. Hitherto unknown Ca2+-triggered, organelle-specific K+ changes were detected in pancreatic beta cells. Recombinant GEPIIs also enabled visualization of extracellular K+ fluctuations in vivo with 2-photon microscopy. Therefore, GEPIIs are relevant for diverse K+ assays and open new avenues for live-cell K+ imaging

Multi-ethnic genome-wide association study for atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) affects more than 33 million individuals worldwide and has a complex heritability. We conducted the largest meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for AF to date, consisting of more than half a million individuals, including 65,446 with AF. In total, we identified 97 loci significantly associated with AF, including 67 that were novel in a combined-ancestry analysis, and 3 that were novel in a European-specific analysis. We sought to identify AF-associated genes at the GWAS loci by performing RNA-sequencing and expression quantitative trait locus analyses in 101 left atrial samples, the most relevant tissue for AF. We also performed transcriptome-wide analyses that identified 57 AF-associated genes, 42 of which overlap with GWAS loci. The identified loci implicate genes enriched within cardiac developmental, electrophysiological, contractile and structural pathways. These results extend our understanding of the biological pathways underlying AF and may facilitate the development of therapeutics for AF