Symbolischer Konsens, regionale Kohäsion und das Versagen institutioneller Innovation in Donetsk

Die Ukraine zeichnet sich durch erhebliche regionale Disparität aus, die sich in einander verstärkenden historischen, sprachlichen, kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Unterschieden ausdrückt. Meine Betrachtung konzentriert sich auf den Oblast Donetsk in der Ost-Ukraine, der geprägt ist von sprachlicher und kultureller Russifizierung sowie dem Vorherrschen der Kohle- und Schwerindustrie. Die Region befindet sich in einer tiefen sozioökonomischen Krise, der wenig Innovation und Reform entgegengesetzt werden. Im folgenden möchte ich zwei Formen von Entwicklungsblockaden beschreiben. ..

Der politische Einfluß von Wirtschaftseliten in der Ukraine: nationale und regionale Oligarchen

Gliederung: Tina Kowall: Eine Oligarchie unter Kutschma? Der Einfluß von Wirtschaftseliten auf die Politik (Akteure; Interaktionsmuster politischer Einflussnahme durch Wirtschaftsakteure; Das Netzwerk; Zusammenfassung; Literatur) (5-21); Kerstin Zimmer: "Einheit, Eintracht und Wiedergeburt". Zur Rolle und Relevanz des "Donecker Clans" (Einleitung; Die Region Doneck in Stichworten; Virtuelle Politiker und "die wahren Herren der Region"; Foren der regionalen Machtkonsolidierung; Doneck und Kiew; Was leistet das Arrangement?; Fazit und Ausblick; Literatur) (22-49)

ICoNIK: Generating Respiratory-Resolved Abdominal MR Reconstructions Using Neural Implicit Representations in k-Space

Motion-resolved reconstruction for abdominal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) remains a challenge due to the trade-off between residual motion blurring caused by discretized motion states and undersampling artefacts. In this work, we propose to generate blurring-free motion-resolved abdominal reconstructions by learning a neural implicit representation directly in k-space (NIK). Using measured sampling points and a data-derived respiratory navigator signal, we train a network to generate continuous signal values. To aid the regularization of sparsely sampled regions, we introduce an additional informed correction layer (ICo), which leverages information from neighboring regions to correct NIK's prediction. Our proposed generative reconstruction methods, NIK and ICoNIK, outperform standard motion-resolved reconstruction techniques and provide a promising solution to address motion artefacts in abdominal MRI

Discovery of a multispecies shark aggregation and parturition area in the Ba Estuary, Fiji Islands

Population declines in shark species have been reported on local and global scales, with overfishing, habitat destruction and climate change posing severe threats. The lack of species-specific baseline data on ecology and distribution of many sharks, however, makes conservation measures challenging. Here, we present a fisheries-independent shark survey from the Fiji Islands, where scientific knowledge on locally occurring elasmobranchs is largely still lacking despite the location’s role as a shark hotspot in the Pacific. Juvenile shark abundance in the fishing grounds of the Ba Estuary (north-western Viti Levu) was assessed with a gillnet-and longline-based survey from December 2015 to April 2016. A total of 103 juvenile sharks identified as blacktip Carcharhinus limbatus (n = 57), scalloped hammerhead Sphyrna lewini (n = 35), and great hammerhead Sphyrna mokarran (n = 11) sharks were captured, tagged, and released. The condition of umbilical scars (68% open or semihealed), mean sizes of individuals (±SD) (C. limbatus: 66.5 ± 3.8 cm, S. lewini: 51.8 ± 4.8 cm, S. mokarran 77.4 ± 2.8 cm), and the presence of these species over recent years (based on fishermen interviews), suggest that the Ba Estuary area is a critical habitat for multiple species that are classified as “Near Threatened” or “Endangered.” Specifically, the area likely acts as a parturition ground over the studied period, and potentially as a subsequent nursery area. We identified subareas of high abundance and found that temperature, salinity and depth acted as small-scale environmental drivers of shark abundance. The data suggests a tendency for species-specific spatial use, both horizontally (i.e., between sampling areas) and vertically (i.e., across the water column). These results enhance the understanding of shark ecology in Fiji and provide a scientific basis for the implementation of local conservation strategies that contribute to the protection of these threatened species

Ausweitung des Sojaanbaus in Deutschland durch züchterische Anpassung sowie pflanzenbauliche und verarbeitungstechnische Optimierung

Die Arbeiten im Sojaforschungsprojekt waren erfolgreich und konnten wichtige Impulse für die Ausweitung des Sojaanbaus in Deutschland geben. So sind die entwickelten Stämme und Kreuzungsnachkommen eine Basis für den Aufbau einer eigenständigen deutschen Sojazüchtung. Die Sorten Korus und Protibus erwiesen sich als besonders geeignet für die Tofuherstellung. Die im Projekt entwickelte Labortofurei ist ein Züchtungsinstrument zur Identifikation vielversprechender Genotypen, mit dem auch die weitere Entwicklung frühreifer Tofusojasorten unterstützt werden kann. In Gefäßversuchen konnte gezeigt werden, dass die Reaktion auf Kühlestress während der Hülsenansatzphase zwischen den Sorten variiert und es tolerante, kompensierende und sensitive Sorten gibt. Die praktische Selektion auf Kältetoleranz war erfolgreich und für die Selektion auf Unkrauttoleranz konnte ein System etabliert werden. Bis auf das Präparat Radicin können die vorhandenen kommerziellen Bradyrhizobienpräparate für den Praxiseinsatz empfohlen werden. Die Hypothese, dass die Selektion des Symbiosepartners auf Kühletoleranz lohnenswert ist, wurde bestätigt. Bei der Sortenprüfung in ganz Deutschland zeigte sich, dass die Anbauwürdigkeit von Soja gut und nur an wenigen der geprüften Standorte nicht gegeben war. Die 00-Sorte ES-Mentor lieferte insgesamt die höchsten Relativerträge sowie den höchsten Rohproteinertrag, bei den 000-Sorten schnitt Sultana besonders gut ab. Eine Variation der Saatzeit sowie verschiedene Verfrühungstechniken erweisen sich nicht als ertragsrelevant. Beim Erfolg der Unkrautregulierung mit Torsionshacke, Fingerhacke und Flachhäufler gab es keine Unterschiede. Im Dammanbau lassen sich Sojabohnen mit gutem Unkrautregulierungserfolg kultivieren. Bei der Sojaaufbereitung sollte eine unnötig hohe Erhitzung der Bohnen bei der Aufbereitung vermieden werden, da durch die Erhitzung neben der Trypsininhibitoraktivität auch Eiweißverdaulichkeit reduziert werden. Mit ausschließlich indirekter, länger einwirkender, trockener Wärme (z. B. Biogasabwärme), ist es schwierig, gute Aufbereitungsqualitäten zu erzielen. Der Wissenstransfer mit Feldtagen und Website www.sojainfo.de war wichtig und erfolgreich zur Steigerung des Interesses am heimischen Sojaanbau

An Improved Canine Genome and a Comprehensive Catalogue of Coding Genes and Non-Coding Transcripts

The domestic dog, Canis familiaris, is a well-established model system for mapping trait and disease loci. While the original draft sequence was of good quality, gaps were abundant particularly in promoter regions of the genome, negatively impacting the annotation and study of candidate genes. Here, we present an improved genome build, canFam3.1, which includes 85 MB of novel sequence and now covers 99.8% of the euchromatic portion of the genome. We also present multiple RNA-Sequencing data sets from 10 different canine tissues to catalog ∼175,000 expressed loci. While about 90% of the coding genes previously annotated by EnsEMBL have measurable expression in at least one sample, the number of transcript isoforms detected by our data expands the EnsEMBL annotations by a factor of four. Syntenic comparison with the human genome revealed an additional ∼3,000 loci that are characterized as protein coding in human and were also expressed in the dog, suggesting that those were previously not annotated in the EnsEMBL canine gene set. In addition to ∼20,700 high-confidence protein coding loci, we found ∼4,600 antisense transcripts overlapping exons of protein coding genes, ∼7,200 intergenic multi-exon transcripts without coding potential, likely candidates for long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) and ∼11,000 transcripts were reported by two different library construction methods but did not fit any of the above categories. Of the lincRNAs, about 6,000 have no annotated orthologs in human or mouse. Functional analysis of two novel transcripts with shRNA in a mouse kidney cell line altered cell morphology and motility. All in all, we provide a much-improved annotation of the canine genome and suggest regulatory functions for several of the novel non-coding transcripts

Identifying core MRI sequences for reliable automatic brain metastasis segmentation

BACKGROUND Many automatic approaches to brain tumor segmentation employ multiple magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences. The goal of this project was to compare different combinations of input sequences to determine which MRI sequences are needed for effective automated brain metastasis (BM) segmentation. METHODS We analyzed preoperative imaging (T1-weighted sequence ± contrast-enhancement (T1/T1-CE), T2-weighted sequence (T2), and T2 fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (T2-FLAIR) sequence) from 339 patients with BMs from seven centers. A baseline 3D U-Net with all four sequences and six U-Nets with plausible sequence combinations (T1-CE, T1, T2-FLAIR, T1-CE + T2-FLAIR, T1-CE + T1 + T2-FLAIR, T1-CE + T1) were trained on 239 patients from two centers and subsequently tested on an external cohort of 100 patients from five centers. RESULTS The model based on T1-CE alone achieved the best segmentation performance for BM segmentation with a median Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.96. Models trained without T1-CE performed worse (T1-only: DSC = 0.70 and T2-FLAIR-only: DSC = 0.73). For edema segmentation, models that included both T1-CE and T2-FLAIR performed best (DSC = 0.93), while the remaining four models without simultaneous inclusion of these both sequences reached a median DSC of 0.81-0.89. CONCLUSIONS A T1-CE-only protocol suffices for the segmentation of BMs. The combination of T1-CE and T2-FLAIR is important for edema segmentation. Missing either T1-CE or T2-FLAIR decreases performance. These findings may improve imaging routines by omitting unnecessary sequences, thus allowing for faster procedures in daily clinical practice while enabling optimal neural network-based target definitions

Impact of radiotherapy and sequencing of systemic therapy on survival outcomes in melanoma patients with previously untreated brain metastasis: a multicenter DeCOG study on 450 patients from the prospective skin cancer registry ADOREG

BACKGROUND: Despite of various therapeutic strategies, treatment of patients with melanoma brain metastasis (MBM) still is a major challenge. This study aimed at investigating the impact of type and sequence of immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) and targeted therapy (TT), radiotherapy, and surgery on the survival outcome of patients with MBM. METHOD: We assessed data of 450 patients collected within the prospective multicenter real-world skin cancer registry ADOREG who were diagnosed with MBM before start of the first non-adjuvant systemic therapy. Study endpoints were progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). RESULTS: Of 450 MBM patients, 175 (38.9%) received CTLA-4+PD-1 ICB, 161 (35.8%) PD-1 ICB, and 114 (25.3%) BRAF+MEK TT as first-line treatment. Additional to systemic therapy, 67.3% of the patients received radiotherapy (stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS); conventional radiotherapy (CRT)) and 24.4% had surgery of MBM. 199 patients (42.2%) received a second-line systemic therapy. Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed the application of radiotherapy (HR for SRS: 0.213, 95% CI 0.094 to 0.485, p1 cm: 1.977, 95% CI 1.117 to 3.500, p=0.019), age (HR for age >65 years: 1.802, 95% CI 1.016 to 3.197, p=0.044), and ECOG performance status (HR for ECOG ≥2: HR: 2.615, 95% CI 1.024 to 6.676, p=0.044) as independent prognostic factors of OS on first-line therapy. The type of first-line therapy (ICB vs TT) was not independently prognostic. As second-line therapy BRAF+MEK showed the best survival outcome compared with ICB and other therapies (HR for CTLA-4+PD-1 compared with BRAF+MEK: 13.964, 95% CI 3.6 to 54.4, p<0.001; for PD-1 vs BRAF+MEK: 4.587 95% CI 1.3 to 16.8, p=0.022 for OS). Regarding therapy sequencing, patients treated with ICB as first-line therapy and BRAF+MEK as second-line therapy showed an improved OS (HR for CTLA-4+PD-1 followed by BRAF+MEK: 0.370, 95% CI 0.157 to 0.934, p=0.035; HR for PD-1 followed by BRAF+MEK: 0.290, 95% CI 0.092 to 0.918, p=0.035) compared with patients starting with BRAF+MEK in first-line therapy. There was no significant survival difference when comparing first-line therapy with CTLA-4+PD-1 ICB with PD-1 ICB. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with MBM, the addition of radiotherapy resulted in a favorable OS on systemic therapy. In BRAF-mutated MBM patients, ICB as first-line therapy and BRAF+MEK as second-line therapy were associated with a significantly prolonged OS

Protective immune trajectories in early viral containment of non-pneumonic SARS-CoV-2 infection

The antiviral immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection can limit viral spread and prevent development of pneumonic COVID-19. However, the protective immunological response associated with successful viral containment in the upper airways remains unclear. Here, we combine a multi-omics approach with longitudinal sampling to reveal temporally resolved protective immune signatures in non-pneumonic and ambulatory SARS-CoV-2 infected patients and associate specific immune trajectories with upper airway viral containment. We see a distinct systemic rather than local immune state associated with viral containment, characterized by interferon stimulated gene (ISG) upregulation across circulating immune cell subsets in non-pneumonic SARS-CoV2 infection. We report reduced cytotoxic potential of Natural Killer (NK) and T cells, and an immune-modulatory monocyte phenotype associated with protective immunity in COVID-19. Together, we show protective immune trajectories in SARS-CoV2 infection, which have important implications for patient prognosis and the development of immunomodulatory therapies