Passagierdampfer als Hilfskreuzer: kurze Geschichte der Entwicklung einer Schiffsgattung

To date there is no cohesive historical account of the international development of the auxiliary cruiser, and the scattered investigations of various single aspects of this ship category do not add up to a comprehensive survey. These were the circumstances discovered by the author as, upon request of the editor of this publication, he undertook to provide an introduction to the report by Captain Meyer of the only voyage of the "Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse" as an auxiliary cruiser (see the following article). The first task was thus to gain an overall impression of this history. "Auxiliary cruisers", as defined here, were passenger steamships kept ready for battle by large shipping companies in countries with significant naval power. These ships were technically equipped for the installation of weapons, and their conversion could be carried out within a few days. The auxiliary cruiser was first to put into service by the Russians, who felt threatened by the British Royal Navy after the Russian-Turkish Balkan War. At that time a newly established shipping company, later called the "Russian Voluntary Fleet", bought three steamships from the Hamburg-America Line and had them converted for combat purposes. By the turn of the century, this originally Russian idea had been adopted by all of the world's Iarge navies . This brief study also touches on the various attempt worldwide to incorporate the legal status of the ship type "auxiliary cruiser" into international public and military law. Because of geopolitically based conflicts of interest between the naval powers, these endeavours were only partially successful. ln conclusion the author examines the auxiliary cruiser concept of the Imperial German Navy, whose goal it was to interfere with and impair the enemy's overseas commerce. The express Iiners originally designated for this purpose, however, were for various reasons inconceivably ill-suited to it. As early as 1915 the German Navy proceeded to commission cargo vessels as auxiliary cruisers, as they were inconspicuous and easier to supply. This was then the mode of operation employed by the navy during World War II

Fine-mapping of genetic loci driving spontaneous clearance of hepatitis C virus infection

Approximately three quarters of acute hepatitis C (HCV) infections evolve to a chronic state, while one quarter are spontaneously cleared. Genetic predispositions strongly contribute to the development of chronicity. We have conducted a genome-wide association study to identify genomic variants underlying HCV spontaneous clearance using ImmunoChip in European and African ancestries. We confirmed two previously reported significant associations, in the IL28B/IFNL4 and the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) regions, with spontaneous clearance in the European population. We further fine-mapped the association in the MHC to a region of about 50 kilo base pairs, down from 1 mega base pairs in the previous study. Additional analyses suggested that the association in MHC is stronger in samples from North America than those from Europ

Processing of spatial-frequency altered faces in schizophrenia: Effects of illness phase and duration

Low spatial frequency (SF) processing has been shown to be impaired in people with schizophrenia, but it is not clear how this varies with clinical state or illness chronicity. We compared schizophrenia patients (SCZ, n534), first episode psychosis patients (FEP, n522), and healthy controls (CON, n535) on a gender/facial discrimination task. Images were either unaltered (broadband spatial frequency, BSF), or had high or low SF information removed (LSF and HSF conditions, respectively). The task was performed at hospital admission and discharge for patients, and at corresponding time points for controls. Groups were matched on visual acuity. At admission, compared to their BSF performance, each group was significantly worse with low SF stimuli, and most impaired with high SF stimuli. The level of impairment at each SF did not depend on group. At discharge, the SCZ group performed more poorly in the LSF condition than the other groups, and showed the greatest degree of performance decline collapsed over HSF and LSF conditions, although the latter finding was not significant when controlling for visual acuity. Performance did not change significantly over time for any group. HSF processing was strongly related to visual acuity at both time points for all groups. We conclude the following: 1) SF processing abilities in schizophrenia are relatively stable across clinical state; 2) face processing abnormalities in SCZ are not secondary to problems processing specific SFs, but are due to other known difficulties constructing visual representations from degraded information; and 3) the relationship between HSF processing and visual acuity, along with known SCZ- and medication-related acuity reductions, and the elimination of a SCZ-related impairment after controlling for visual acuity in this study, all raise the possibility that some prior findings of impaired perception in SCZ may be secondary to acuity reductions

Matrix Metalloproteinase-Induced Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition in Breast Cancer

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) degrade and modify the extracellular matrix (ECM) as well as cell-ECM and cell-cell contacts, facilitating detachment of epithelial cells from the surrounding tissue. MMPs play key functions in embryonic development and mammary gland branching morphogenesis, but they are also upregulated in breast cancer, where they stimulate tumorigenesis, cancer cell invasion and metastasis. MMPs have been investigated as potential targets for cancer therapy, but clinical trials using broad-spectrum MMP inhibitors yielded disappointing results, due in part to lack of specificity toward individual MMPs and specific stages of tumor development. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a developmental process in which epithelial cells take on the characteristics of invasive mesenchymal cells, and activation of EMT has been implicated in tumor progression. Recent findings have implicated MMPs as promoters and mediators of developmental and pathogenic EMT processes in the breast. In this review, we will summarize recent studies showing how MMPs activate EMT in mammary gland development and in breast cancer, and how MMPs mediate breast cancer cell motility, invasion, and EMT-driven breast cancer progression. We also suggest approaches to inhibit these MMP-mediated malignant processes for therapeutic benefit

A transcriptome-wide association study among 97,898 women to identify candidate susceptibility genes for epithelial ovarian cancer risk

Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified approximately 35 loci associated with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) risk. The majority of GWAS-identified disease susceptibility variants are located in non-coding regions, and causal genes underlying these associations remain largely unknown. Here we performed a transcriptome-wide association study to search for novel genetic loci and plausible causal genes at known GWAS loci. We used RNA sequencing data (68 normal ovarian-tissue samples from 68 individuals and 6,124 cross-tissue samples from 369 individuals) and high-density genotyping data from European descendants of the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx V6) project to build ovarian and cross-tissue models of genetically regulated expression using elastic net methods. We evaluated 17,121 genes for their cis-predicted gene expression in relation to EOC risk using summary statistics data from GWAS of 97,898 women, including 29,396 EOC cases. With a Bonferroni-corrected significance level of P<2.2×10-6, we identified 35 genes including FZD4 at 11q14.2 (Z=5.08, P=3.83×10-7, the cross-tissue model; 1 Mb away from any GWAS-identified EOC risk variant), a potential novel locus for EOC risk. All other 34 significantly-associated genes were located within 1 Mb of known GWAS-identified loci, including 23 genes at 6 loci not previously linked to EOC risk. Upon conditioning on nearby known EOC GWAS-identified variants, the associations for 31 genes disappeared and 3 genes remained (P<1.47 x 10-3). These data identify one novel locus (FZD4) and 34 genes at 13 known EOC risk loci associated with EOC risk, providing new insights into EOC carcinogenesis