Assessing and comparing German and UK transition policies for electric mobility

AbstractThis paper presents a novel policy assessment approach for sustainable transitions using insights from the multilevel perspective (MLP). An analysis of current German and UK policies for sustainable transport is conducted to illustrate its application. For both cases a potential transition pathway, that can satisfy environmental protection and industrial competitiveness goals, is derived from archetypal transition pathways. These are then put in relation to current policies, discussing whether these measures support these pathways. In the UK case, where emission reduction goals and industrial development are pursued together, current policies of promoting the diffusion of electric vehicles as well as industrial niches are supporting the emergence of a reconfiguration pathway. Replacing foreign suppliers, the local automotive industry shall become a significant part of the future regime. In contrast to that, Germany focuses on a careful transformation and conservation of its automotive industry where none of the current actors is left behind

Intrinsic regulation of FIC-domain AMP-transferases by oligomerization and automodification

Filamentation induced by cyclic AMP (FIC)-domain enzymes catalyze adenylylation or other posttranslational modifications of target proteins to control their function. Recently, we have shown that Fic enzymes are autoinhibited by an α-helix (αinh) that partly obstructs the active site. For the single-domain class III Fic proteins, the αinh is located at the C terminus and its deletion relieves autoinhibition. However, it has remained unclear how activation occurs naturally. Here, we show by structural, biophysical, and enzymatic analyses combined with in vivo data that the class III Fic protein NmFic from Neisseria meningitidis gets autoadenylylated in cis, thereby autonomously relieving autoinhibition and thus allowing subsequent adenylylation of its target, the DNA gyrase subunit GyrB. Furthermore, we show that NmFic activation is antagonized by tetramerization. The combination of autoadenylylation and tetramerization results in nonmonotonic concentration dependence of NmFic activity and a pronounced lag phase in the progress of target adenylylation. Bioinformatic analyses indicate that this elaborate dual-control mechanism is conserved throughout class III Fic proteins

Двойственность отношений между артрозом коленного сустава и сердечно-сосудистыми забо- леваниями

IP USMF ,,Nicolae Testemițanu”, Medizin Leipzig University, Faculty of MedicineRezumat Osteoartroza și bolile cardiovasculare (BCV) sunt două condiții patologii predominante în populația în vârstă de peste 70 de ani. Datele de literatură prezintă rezultate controversate cu privire la interrelația dintre osteoartroza și maladiile cardiovasculare, evidențiindu-se o serie de factori de risc comuni (așa ca obezitatea, sedentarismul etc.), precum și verigi patogenetice intercalate. Osteoartroza și BCV se asociază la un număr mare de pacienți din multe motive: factori de risc comuni (îmbătrânirea și obezitatea), etiologia comună (de exemplu, inflamația cronică) și indirect, prin pierderea funcționalității articulare și dizabilitate, precum și utilizarea de analgezice care conduc la creșterea riscului cardiovascular. Complexitatea interacțiunilor dintre aceste patologii rămâne incomplet elucidată și necesită cercetări suplimentare.Остеоартроз и сердечнососудистые заболевания являются два из самых распространенных патологий среди населения в возрасте старше 70 лет. Данные литературы показывают противоречивые результаты, касающиеся взаимосвязи между остеоартрозом и сердечнососудистыми заболеваниями, выделив ряд общих факторов риска (таких как ожирение, отсутствие физической активности и т.д.) и общие патогенические звенья. Остеоартроз и сердечнососудистые заболевания ассоциируются у большинства пациентов, по многим причинам: факторы риска (старение и ожирение) общая этиология (например, хроническое воспаление), как и утерянная физическая функция и инвалидность, а также использование обезболивающих, что приводит к увеличению сердечнососудистого риска. Сложность взаимодействий между этими патологиями остается не полностью изученной и требует дальнейших исследований.Osteoarthritis and cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the two most prevalent conditions in the population aged over 70. Literature data show controversial results regarding the interrelationship between osteoarthritis and cardiovascular diseases, highlighting a number of common risk factors (such as obesity, physical inactivity etc.) and pathogenesis links interposed. Osteoarthritis and CVD are associated to a large number of patients for many reasons: risk factors (aging and obesity), common etiology (eg, chronic inflammation) and indirectly through loss of physical function and disability, and the use of analgesic medication leading to increased cardiovascular risk. The complexity of the interactions between these diseases remains incompletely elucidated and requires further research

Dualitatea relaţiei dintre osteoartroza genunchiului şi maladiile cardiovasculare

Osteoartroza și bolile cardiovasculare (BCV) sunt două condiții patologii predominante în populația în vârstă de peste 70 de ani. Datele de literatură prezintă rezultate controversate cu privire la interrelația dintre osteoartroza și maladiile cardiovasculare, evidențiindu-se o serie de factori de risc comuni (așa ca obezitatea, sedentarismul etc.), precum și verigi patogenetice intercalate. Osteoartroza și BCV se asociază la un număr mare de pacienți din multe motive: factori de risc comuni (îmbătrânirea și obezitatea), etiologia comună (de exemplu, inflamația cronică) și indirect, prin pierderea funcționalității articulare și dizabilitate, precum și utilizarea de analgezice care conduc la creșterea riscului cardiovascular. Complexitatea interacțiunilor dintre aceste patologii rămâne incomplet elucidată și necesită cercetări suplimentare

Evaluating the activity of systemic lupus erythematosus

Departamentul Medicină Internă, IP USMF Nicolae Testemițanu, Departamentul Medicină Internă, Neurologie și Dermatologie, Universitatea Leipzig, GermaniaBackground: precise measurement of SLE activity remains a difficult task due to the complex multisystem nature of the disease. Data were collected and analyzed on 72 consecutive patients. The activity of disease was evaluated by SLEDAI and PGA, also Morisky treatment aderence scale. Low disease activity was determined in a third of patients (30.6%), and active disease (63.9%) remains high, in the remission group were 4 patients (5.5%). The professional status evaluation noted that 32% of SLE patients were employed full-time, 22.2% were disabled, 19.5% were unemployed, housekeepers and trainees, 15.3% were partially recruited and 11.1% retired. High level of SLEDAI is a strong and statistically significant predictor of persistence of the disease activity. At the time of the diagnosis, the high activity of SLE predicts maintenance of chronic activity

Expressional analysis of disease-relevant signalling-pathways in primary tumours and metastasis of head and neck cancers

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) often metastasize to lymph nodes resulting in poor prognosis for patients. Unfortunately, the underlying molecular mechanisms contributing to tumour aggressiveness, recurrences, and metastasis are still not fully understood. However, such knowledge is key to identify biomarkers and drug targets to improve prognosis and treatments. Consequently, we performed genome-wide expression profiling of 15 primary HNSSCs compared to corresponding lymph node metastases and non-malignant tissue of the same patient. Differentially expressed genes were bioinformatically exploited applying stringent filter criteria, allowing the discrimination between normal mucosa, primary tumours, and metastases. Signalling networks involved in invasion contain remodelling of the extracellular matrix, hypoxia-induced transcriptional modulation, and the recruitment of cancer associated fibroblasts, ultimately converging into a broad activation of PI3K/AKT-signalling pathway in lymph node metastasis. Notably, when we compared the diagnostic and prognostic value of sequencing data with our expression analysis significant differences were uncovered concerning the expression of the receptor tyrosine kinases EGFR and ERBB2, as well as other oncogenic regulators. Particularly, upregulated receptor tyrosine kinase combinations for individual patients varied, implying potential compensatory and resistance mechanisms against specific targeted therapies. Collectively, we here provide unique transcriptional profiles for disease predictions and comprehensively analyse involved signalling pathways in advanced HNSCC

Bullying girls - Changes after brief strategic family therapy: A randomized, prospective, controlled trial with one-year follow-up

Background: Many girls bully others. They are conspicuous because of their risk-taking behavior, increased anger, problematic interpersonal relationships and poor quality of life. Our aim was to determine the efficacy of brief strategic family therapy (BSFT) for bullying-related behavior, anger reduction, improvement of interpersonal relationships, and improvement of health-related quality of life in girls who bully, and to find out whether their expressive aggression correlates with their distinctive psychological features. Methods: 40 bullying girls were recruited from the general population: 20 were randomly selected for 3 months of BSFT. Follow-up took place 12 months after the therapy had ended. The results of treatment were examined using the Adolescents' Risk-taking Behavior Scale (ARBS), the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI), the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP-D), and the SF-36 Health Survey (SF-36). Results: In comparison with the control group (CG) (according to the intent-to-treat principle), bullying behavior in the BSFT group was reduced (BSFT-G from n = 20 to n = 6; CG from n = 20 to n = 18, p = 0.05) and statistically significant changes in all risk-taking behaviors (ARBS), on most STAXI, IIP-D, and SF-36 scales were observed after BSFT. The reduction in expressive aggression (Anger-Out scale of the STAXI) correlated with the reduction on several scales of the ARBS, IIP-D, and SF-36. Follow-up a year later showed relatively stable events. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that bullying girls suffer from psychological and social problems which may be reduced by the use of BSFT. Expressive aggression in girls appears to correlate with several types of risk-taking behavior and interpersonal problems, as well as with health-related quality of life. Copyright (c) 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel

State filling dependent luminescence in hybrid tunnel coupled dot-well structures

A strong dependence of quantum dot (QD)–quantum well (QW) tunnel coupling on the energy band alignment is established in hybrid 'In''As'/'GA''AS'-'IN IND. x''GA IND. 1-x''AS'/'GA''AS' dot–well structures by changing the QW composition to shift the QW energy through the QD wetting layer (WL) energy. Due to this coupling a rapid carrier transfer from the QW to the QD excited states takes place. As a result, the QW photoluminescence (PL) completely quenches at low excitation intensities. The threshold intensities for the appearance of the QW PL strongly depend on the relative position of the QW excitonic energy with respect to the WL ground state and the QD ground state energies. These intensities decrease by orders of magnitude as the energy of the QW increases to approach that of the WL due to the increased efficiency for carrier tunneling into the WL states as compared to the less dense QD states below the QW energy.MWN - Material World NetworkNational Science Foundation of the U.S. (DMR-1008107)Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Li 580/8-1)Korea Foundation for International Cooperation of Science & Technology (Global Research Laboratory project - K20815000003)

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy

We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI. Supplemental material in the ancillary file