Genomic screening of high frequency antigens in blood donors

När blodet är slut... När man normalt bestämmer blodgrupper använder man sig av ett antiserum mot den blodgruppen man är intresserad av. Det finns över 30 st blodgruppsystem varav de vanligaste folk känner till är ABO och Rh (Rhesus), det vill säga om man är A, B, O, eller AB och om man är positiv eller negativ i RhD. När man blir gravid eller får en blodtransfusion utsätts man för blod som inte är helt identisk med ens egna blod. Precis som när man blir sjuk reagerar immunförsvaret mot detta främmande blod och kan bilda antikroppar mot blodet så att kroppen bryter ner det snabbare vid nästa tillfälle. Att kroppen bildar antikroppar mot blod är något man vill förhindra för då förlorar det transfunderade blodet sin effekt hos patienten och kan ge allvarliga biverkningar (transfusionsreaktion). Jag har undersökt några mycket vanliga blodgrupper (Kpb, Yta, Coa, HPA-1a, Vel och Sc1) som de flesta människor har men dock inte alla. Om man är ovanlig i någon av dessa blodgrupper så kan det bli ett mycket stort problem för en att få blod och man kan då reagera på alla blod som finns på en blodcentral då blodcentraler inte alltid typar på dessa ovanliga blodgrupper på grund av att reagens är dyrt eller inte finns helt enkelt. Mitt projekt har gått ut på att komma på en snabb, billig och säker metod att bestämma dessa 6 blodgrupper med hjälp av PCR (polymeras kedjereaktion, en metod att kopiera DNA genom att värma och kyla i omgångar) och testa denna metod på blodgivare för att se om vi har någon som lämnar blod som saknar dessa vanliga blodgrupper. Normalt när man använder PCR så börjar man med att extrahera DNA ur cellerna och koncentrera DNAt, en tidsödande process, innan man kan börja. I min metod så använder jag helblod och bara tar itu cellerna med en syra och börjar direkt sen med att kopiera upp dessa gener mha PCR. Genom att göra en mix som innehåller passande DNA för dessa 6 blodgrupper, byggstenar och enzym som klarar av det låga pH:et för att bygga DNA så har jag lyckats kopiera upp dessa områden från givares DNA och kan visa resultatet på en gel där ström har passerat för att dela upp upp blodgrupperna i små band. När ett band saknas betyder det då att givaren saknar den blodgruppen. Handledare: Jill Storry Examensarbete 45 hp i molekylärbiologi 2013 Biologiska institutionen, Lunds universitet Klinisk Immunologi & Transfusionsmedici

Autonomy-enhancing paternalism

We present a form of soft paternalism called "autonomy-enhancing paternalism" that seeks to in-crease individual well-being by facilitating the individual ability to make critically reflected, au-tonomous decisions. The focus of autonomy-enhancing paternalism is on helping individuals to become better decision-makers, rather than on helping them by making better decisions for them. Autonomy-enhancing paternalism acknowledges that behavioral interventions can change the strength of decision-making anomalies over time, and favors those interventions that improve, ra-ther than reduce, individuals' ability to make good and unbiased decisions. By this it prevents ma-nipulation of the individual by the soft paternalist, accounts for the heterogeneity of individuals, and counteracts slippery slope arguments by decreasing the probability of future paternalistic inter-ventions. Moreover, autonomy-enhancing paternalism can be defended based on both liberal val-ues and welfare considerations

CS-FDP: Community-spezifische Forschungsdatenpublikation

Das Kompetenzzentrum Forschungsdaten der Universität Heidelberg, eine gemeinsame Serviceeinrichtung der Universitätsbibliothek und des Universitätsrechenzentrums, unterstützt Wissenschaftler/-innen der Universität Heidelberg beim professionellen Management ihrer Forschungsdaten. Ziel des Projekts „Community-spezifische Forschungsdatenpublikation“ (CS-FDP) ist die Weiterentwicklung des Serviceangebots des Kompetenzzentrums durch den Aufbau eines Pools von generischen Softwarewerkzeugen zur Erstellung dynamischer Publikationsportale für Forschungsdaten, die Entwicklung eines Konzepts zur nachhaltigen Integration der Heidelberger Forschungsdaten in übergreifende Archivierungskonzepte sowie die weitere Professionalisierung des Datenmanagements an der Universität durch die Verankerung des Themas in Forschung und Lehre

Prospektive Kohortenstudie zum Langzeitbeschwerdebild nach Appendektomie

Prospektive Kohortenstudie zum Langzeitbeschwerdebild nach Appendektomie

The context paradox in attitude surveys: assimilation or contrast?

Die Autoren untersuchen mit Hilfe dreier Experimente, unter welchen Bedingungen Antworten auf eine allgemeiner formulierte Frage ähnlicher ('part-whole-assimilation') oder unähnlicher ('part-whole-contrast') in bezug zu den Antworten auf eine folgende spezifischer formulierte Frage werden. Als Experimente sind an der Universität Illinois und Mannheim Befragungen von Studenten zu studentischen Belangen durchgeführt worden. Es wurde vermutet, daß das Fragen mit einer spezifischen Fragestellung die kognitive Zugänglichkeit zur gefragten Information erhöht. Die Antwort auf die nachfolgende allgemeine Frage könnte danach teilweise auf derselben Information beruhen und zur ähnlichen Antwort führen. Es zeigte sich, daß in Übertragung von Prinzipien der Alltagskommunikation, nach denen der Kommunikator Redundanz vermeiden sollte, die spezifische Information oft nicht mitgeteilt wird. Daraus läßt sich folgern, daß, wenn beide Fragen als zusammen gehörend wahrgenommen werden, die Antworten uneinheitlich werden. Die Autoren beschreiben die Bedingungen, unter denen die Effekte identifiziert und experimentell manipuliert worden sind und diskutieren die Fragebogengestaltung. (HN2)'Three experiments were conducted to determine under which conditions responses to a general question become more similar to ('part-whole assimilation') or more dissimilar from ('part-whole contrast') responses to a preceding specific question. The results suggest that asking a specific question increases the cognitive accessibility of the information used to answer it. The answer to the subsequent general question will therefore be based in part on the same information, resulting in similar responses. The highly accessible specific information, however, will not always be used. Most importantly, central principles of conversation urge communicators to be informative and to avoid redundancy. Therefore, if both questions are perceived as belonging together, the previously activated will be disregarded, which results in dissimilar pesponses to the general question. The conditions under which these effects occur are identified and experimentally manipulated, and the implications for questionnaire design are discussed.' (author's abstract

Modeling Emotional Aspects in Human Locomotion

The study of emotional body language has been the effort of many scientists for more than 200 years, from areas such as psychology, neuroscience, biology, and others. A lot of work has focused on the analysis of the kinematics, while the study of the underlying dynamics is still largely unexplored. In this thesis we model human walking as a nonlinear multi-phase optimal control problem to investigate the dynamics of full-body emotional expressions in human locomotion. Our approach is based on rigid multibody dynamics, a highly parameterized mathematical model of the human locomotion system, and the direct multiple-shooting method to analyze the dynamics of recorded kinematic motion capture data. Modeling the dynamics of a human rigid multibody model results in a set of highly complex differential algebraic equations that require automated methods to derive and evaluate. We created a new rigid multibody dynamics software package to model and numerically evaluate kinematic and dynamic quantities of rigid multibody systems expressed in generalized coordinates, including modeling of external contacts and discontinuities arising from contact events. Our package evaluates components of the equation of motion for multibody systems using recursive algorithms that are based on Featherstone's 6-D spatial algebra notation. Our package is specifically tailored for the use in numerical optimal control and carefully designed to exploit sparsities and reduction of redundant computations by selectively reusing computed values. By doing so we are able to achieve and partially exceed performance that is otherwise only available with source code generation modeling approaches. We created a highly parameterized 3-D meta model for the human locomotion system. This rigid multibody model is based on biomechanical data for kinematic and inertial parameters and enables us to create subject-specific dynamic models by adjusting segment dimensions, joint locations, and inertial parameters. To describe the contact between the human model and the ground, we created a non-holonomic rigid body contact model specifically for human walking movements that approximates the foot geometry using a sphere for the heel and a line segment at the ball of the foot during forefoot contact. Transforming motion capture marker data to rigid multibody motion is a difficult problem due to unknown joint centers, redundant marker movements, and non-rigid movement of markers as a result of skin and tissue movement. In this thesis, we developed and implemented a semi-automatic method in which we manually adjust the model to approximate the recorded subject and then compute joint angles by solving a non-linear least-squares optimization problem. Our approach is independent of the used motion capture marker set and directly maps onto the joint space of the model. We formulate two types of multi-phase optimal control problems for human walking: an inverse reconstruction problem and a gait synthesis problem that both have the differential equations of the rigid multibody dynamics as a constraint and can be used for different purposes. The reconstruction problem computes the unknown joint actuations from purely kinematic motion capture data. Applied to the recorded motion capture data, the reconstructed joint actuations show emotion specific features that are also found in the recorded muscle activity. This validates our model and approach to use optimal control problems as a tool to study emotional body language in a new way. Our gait synthesis formulation allows the generation of walking motions solely based on mathematical and physical principles. It can be applied in computer animation, robotics, and predictive gait analysis. We have generated a wide range of motions by adjusting objective function and gait parameters. A long-term goal of this formulation is to investigate optimality criteria of emotional walking motions. For this, we aim to use hierarchical optimal control problems in our future works

Prospektive Kohortenstudie zum Langzeitbeschwerdebild nach Appendektomie

Prospektive Kohortenstudie zum Langzeitbeschwerdebild nach Appendektomie

Host Marking Pheromone (HMP) in the Mexican Fruit Fly Anastrepha ludens

Host marking pheromones (HMPs) are used by insects to mark hosts (usually a fruit) where they have already laid eggs. The compounds serve as a deterrent to conspecifics avoiding over-infestation of hosts (i.e. repeated egg-laying into an already occupied/used host). If these HMPs are sprayed onto commercially valuable fruit they act as deterrents preventing attack by females interested in laying eggs into the valuable commodity. Having no insecticidal or toxic properties, and being natural products (or close derivatives thereof) they could be used as fruit sprays to replace insecticides, or in combination with other products to improve efficacy. This review discusses the isolation, and synthesis of the HMP of the Mexican fruit fly Anastrepha ludens a feared pest of citrus and mangos in Mexico and Central America. This compound is also recognized by females of other pestiferous species in the same genus Anastrepha distributed from the Southern USA to Northern Argentina, including many Caribbean Islands. The synthetic HMP was shown to exhibit strong electrophysiological activity against A. ludens and excellent interspecies cross recognition with other Anastrepha species. Behavioural tests confirmed the HMP deterring effect of the synthetic natural product. Further studies enabled us to drastically simplify the structure of the HMP and obtain a derivative, which we named Anastrephamide, which shows HMP deterring effects very similar to the natural product in laboratory and field tests. The potential use of such HMP derivatives in a crop protection scenario is briefly discussed