Adhäsionsverhalten von Staphylokokkus aureus Stämmen von Patienten mit Chronischer Rhinosinusitis und Normalkontrollen an einer immortalen nasalen Epithelzelllinie

Die Chronische Rhinosinusitis (CRS) ist eine chronische Entzündung der Nase und ihrer Nebenhöhlen. Sie äußert sich in Nasenatmungsbehinderung, Kopfschmerzen, Druckgefühl im Gesicht, Riechstörung und Allgemeinsymptomen wie mangelnde Belastbarkeit und Erschöpfung [1, 5-7]. Die Pathogenese der CRS ist bislang ungeklärt. Man nimmt an, dass sie durch langsam progrediente Obstruktion und gleichzeitiger Entzündungsreaktionen in der Schleimhaut bedingt ist [1]. Die Gründe für diese Vorgänge sind allerdings noch weitgehend unklar, man geht jedoch von einem multifaktoriellen Geschehen aus. In diesem Zusammenhang wird die Rolle des Bakteriums S. aureus diskutiert. S. aureus ist eines der am häufigsten nachgewiesenen Bakterien bei CRS-Patienten [17] und scheint über direkte und indirekte Wege die Entzündung der Schleimhaut zu beeinflussen [18-22]. In der hier durchgeführten Studie wurde das Adhäsionsverhalten von S. aureus untersucht. Vergleichend wurden Bakterien von Patienten mit CRS und Bakterien von einem gesunden Kontrollkollektiv untersucht. Hierzu wurde die Zelllinie RPMI 2650 mit verschiedenen S. aureus Stämmen inkubiert und beide mittels Fluoreszenzfärbung angefärbt. Unter dem Mikroskop wurden die Anzahlen von Zellen und Bakterien bestimmt, anschließend statistisch aufgearbeitet und die Ergebnisse verglichen. Der Versuch zeigte keinen signifikanten Unterschied im Adhäsionsverhalten von Bakterien beider Gruppen. Denkbar ist, dass es keinen Unterschied in der Adhäsion gibt, oder dass eine erhöhte Adhäsionsrate nicht durch den bakteriellen Phänotyp begründet ist, sondern von wirtsspezifischen Faktoren beeinflusst wird. Um dieser Frage weiter nachzugehen, wurden erste Versuche unternommen, bei denen das Adhäsionsverhalten an krankheitsspezifischen Epithelzellen geprüft wurde. Hierzu wurden primäre nasale Epithelzellen von CRS-Patienten und einem gesunden Kontrollkollektiv mit gleichen Bakterien inkubiert, um zusehen, ob eine unterschiedliche Adhäsion gezeigt werden kann. Jedoch wäre eine Weiterentwicklung dieses Versuchsansatzes auf Grund festgestellter technischer Probleme ein Projekt für die Zukunft

The Potential of Online Learning in Addressing Challenges in Field Instructor Training

Given the responsibility of faculties of social work to provide accessible education and training opportunities for field instructors, this paper presents the results of a study exploring the potential role of online learning in supporting and training both urban and rural field instructors. While participants preferred face-to-face learning, the reality of time constraints and distance from major centres, as well as increased usage of modern technology, suggest a need for online field instructor training options. Respondents emphasized the importance of face-to-face opportunities for interaction and relationship-building, but expressed a willingness to participate in online field instructor development. The expressed benefits relate to time-saving and financial advantages associated with online education as well as the enhanced accessibility for field instructors living in rural and remote communities

The Returns to Criminal Capital

Human capital theory (Becker 1962; Mincer 1958; Schultz 1960; 1961) posits that individuals can increase their labor market returns through investments in education and training. This concept has been studied extensively across several disciplines. An analog concept of criminal capital, while the focus of speculation and limited empirical study, remains considerably less developed theoretically and methodologically. This paper offers a formal theoretical model of criminal capital indicators and tests for greater illegal wage returns using a sample of serious adolescent offenders, many of whom participate in illegal income-generating activities. Our results reveal that, consistent with human capital theory, there are important illegal wage premiums associated with investments in criminal capital, notably an increasing but declining marginal return to experience and a premium for specialization. Further, as in studies of legal labor markets, we find strong evidence that, if left unaccounted for, non-random sample selection causes severe bias in models of illegal wages. Theoretical and practical implications of these results, along with directions for future research, are discussed

Modus operandi : crime as work

This study, based upon interviews with forty-five experienced property offenders, is intended as an addition to the sparse sociological literature having as its focus the description and analysis of criminal behaviour. Detailed attention is given to the technical and organizational dimensions of property offences. In contrast to much of the available literature on crime, this study does not deal with motivational factors but rather with questions as to how crime is committed. The behavioural dimensions of two crimes in particular, namely safecracking and bank robbery, are described in detail. Although it has long been recognized that a criminal's skills are learned, attention to the details of crime makes it possible to document what it is a criminal learns and how such learning takes place. This study shows that some mechanical skills are learned by way of formal instruction from the more experienced, and how and why some skills are more easily taught and learned in prison than other skills. It is indicated that the method of learning criminal skills does not resemble the system of apprenticeship common in legitimate skilled trades; criminals tend to work with equals, whether experienced or inexperienced. The data also indicates that some of the criminal's skills consist of making relevant and explicit such common-sense knowledge as is routinely used in everyday life—the systematic application of such knowledge being best illustrated in the instance of "casing" procedures. The ability to make profitable, albeit illegal, use of everyday knowledge suggests a continuity in the socialization of criminals and non-criminals which is not developed in other literature. Analysis of various types of crime, such as burglary, safecracking and armed robbery, leads to the development of two analytic units: surreptitious and non-surreptitious crimes. The former category is characterized by the criminal's concern with avoiding the victim, and the need of mechanical skills. Non-surreptitious crimes, in contrast, involve victim confrontation--the requisite skills having to do with organization and victim-management. It is argued that these analytic units are more manageable than those typologies and classificatory schemes which are based upon purely legal and career distinctions. In addition, this distinction is based upon the behavioural dimensions of crime rather than the social and personal characteristics of criminals. In this way the sociology of crime is more fully brought under the rubric of the sociology of occupations and hence of social science in generalArts, Faculty ofSociology, Department ofGraduat

Cosmotechnologies of Community and Collaboration in Vandana Singh's Speculative Architecture

Philosopher Yuk Hui, referring both to climate change and its accompanying social upheavals, writes that 'to confront the crisis that is before us' humans will have to rethink the idea of technological universality and how it constructs our relationship to each other and to the natural world. For the architect, this means considering how much architecture today is constrained by a singular technological paradigm, and how architects can think the many technologies of architecture differently.This essay considers architectural cosmotechnology through discourses in global speculative fiction (SF) – what Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay calls 'co-futures.' These fictions proceed from different cosmologies – ways of understanding and being in the world – to explore the future implications for architecture and other technological practices in contrast to the hegemony of global modernism. The short fiction of SF author Vandana Singh supplies an image of architecture that proceeds from different images of and concerns for the future, and is an exemplary practice in cosmotechnology. She reframes existing technologies and invents new technologies in a mode of practice which centres the experience of diverse cultures in technologies of community and collaboration where architecture becomes central to new ways of being in the world