“Of course I was insulted too”: Values and (value) violations in the context of media-mediated communication from the perspective of 12- to 13-year-old adolescents

Mit Blick auf das Medienhandeln Jugendlicher, das sich als digital, online und sozial beschreiben lässt, nimmt der Beitrag aus einer sozialisationstheoretischen Perspektive die Erfahrungen in den Blick, die Jugendliche im Kontext medienvermittelter (Online-)Kommunikation mit (wert-)verletzendem Handeln machen und versteht dabei ihr moralisches Denken, Fühlen und Handeln als Ausgangspunkt der Auseinandersetzung. Vor diesem Hintergrund wurde eine qualitative Befragung mit Jugendlichen im Alter von zwölf und 13 Jahren durchgeführt. Deutlich wird, dass die Jugendlichen das, was sie online sehen, lesen und (mit-)erleben, moralisch reflektieren bzw. beurteilen und sich dabei an gesellschaftlichen, freiheitlich-demokratischen Grundwerten und sozialen Normen orientieren. Erfahrungen mit Verletzungen dieser Werte und Normen und der Umgang damit gehören dabei für die befragten Jugendlichen gewissermassen zu ihrem Medienalltag dazu. Die qualitative Forschung bestätigt zum einen (Wert-)Verletzungen, die bereits in quantitativen Studien zum Medienhandeln Jugendlicher als Herausforderungen und Problembereiche thematisiert werden, und erweitert den Forschungsstand zum anderen um die spezifische Perspektive der Jugendlichen selbst. Der Beitrag liefert damit wichtige Impulse für die medienpädagogische Praxis und Anknüpfungspunkte für weitere Forschungsarbeiten.From the perspective of socialisation theory, this paper focuses on young people’s digital, online and social media behaviour by explicitly considering their experiences with (value-)offending behaviour in the context of media-mediated (online) communication. Thereby, understanding the moral thinking, feeling and acting of adolescents functions as the particular starting point of the discussion. Against this background, qualitative interviews with 12- to 13-year-old adolescents have been conducted. Findings show that the adolescents morally reflect or judge what they see, read and (co-)experience online and in doing so orientate themselves towards social, liberal democratic basic values and norms. To a certain extent, experiences with violations of these values and norms and the practice of dealing with them are part of the adolescents’ everyday media life. On the one hand, the study reaffirms (value) violations that have already been addressed as challenges and problems in quantitative studies on young people’s media behaviour, on the other hand, the findings show (value) violations that expand the state of research to include the specific perspective of adolescents themselves. Thus, the paper provides important impulses for media-pedagogical practice and a basis for further research

Why some airport-rail links get built and others do not : the role of institutions, equity and financing

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 122-129).The thesis seeks to provide an understanding of reasons for different outcomes of airport ground access projects. Five in-depth case studies (Hongkong, Tokyo-Narita, London- Heathrow, Chicago- O'Hare and Paris-Charles de Gaulle) and eight smaller case studies (Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Shanghai-Pudong, Bangkok, Beijing, Rome- Fiumicino, Istanbul-Atatirk and Munich- Franz Josef Strauss) are conducted. The thesis builds on existing literature that compares airport-rail links by explicitly considering the influence of the institutional environment of an airport on its ground access situation and by paying special attention to recently opened dedicated airport expresses in Asia. It is found that sustained government support and a sense of urgency for better airport access are the main motivating forces that need to be present if a dedicated airport express is to be constructed. For these reasons a number of dedicated airport express systems were constructed in Asia (Hong Kong, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Shanghai, Bangkok), where they were conceived simultaneously with the airports they serve. In cases with less focused objectives (Chicago, Paris, Chicago) lengthy planning periods have not yet led to the construction of an airport-rail link. London was the first airport-rail link in the Western world and exhibited strong government support for rail investments during a period of generally favorable conditions, which jointly led to the construction of the Heathrow Express. Five of eight dedicated systems that are studied exhibit underestimation of ridership and underestimation of delivery time. The finding replicates for Asian examples (Hong Kong, Seoul, Bangkok, Shanghai) Flyvbjerg's (2009) observations on UK and US examples that transportation projects tend to systematically overestimate project benefits. The enduring and systematic overestimates of ridership hint at deliberate strategic misrepresentation rather than psychological optimism bias or technical error as reason for the erroneous estimates. Planners are advised to be aware of incentives for strategic misrepresentation among public and private agencies that prepare technical studies as basis for decision making. In a number of systems that have dedicated rail service to an airport and are generally considered successful, fierce competition from buses has emerged recently (Hong Kong, Tokyo, London). It is recommended to planners of airport-rail links today to consider realization through bus rapid transit on dedicated rights-of-way in addition to airport-rail links because of their lower cost, wider scope in dropoff and pick-up destinations and easier scalability of capacity in times of low demand.by Julia Nickel.S.M

Using multi-attribute tradespace exploration for the architecting and design of transportation systems

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-249).The field of Engineering Systems maintains that fundamental engineering principles exist, which apply across different domains of complex socio-technical systems. In this thesis, a state-of-the art decision and design evaluation method developed using aerospace cases, Multi-Attribute Tradespace Exploration (MATE), is applied for the first time to a transportation design problem. Through the application process across domains, differences between the aerospace and transportation domain are characterized: (1) a "mission objective" has not emerged as a welldefined, integral concept for transportation project planning in the same way it did in the military and space communities; (2) a simple stakeholder structure for the purpose of the analysis is not a reasonable assumption, (3) inheritance (legacy structures and legacy expectations) in transportation planning brings with it the stickiness of the status quo and people's attachment to things they possess; (4) several cost types exist in addition to monetary costs, e.g. harmful effects to life and spending of scarce resources (time, money); (5) decisions about the welfare of stakeholders in transportation planning are inextricably linked to technical decisions. It follows that fundamental engineering systems design principles need to be general enough to encompass these domain differences. Decisions about the welfare of stakeholders (public, future generations, environment) by a legitimized representative decision maker raise the question about the desirability of prescriptive guiding principles for decision making, in order to ensure consideration for the represented constituency when their interests need to be traded off with personal and organizational interests of the decision maker. Decision makers themselves seek such guidance to help them in trading off and justifying decisions about multiple competing goals in complex situations. One established method to provide such guidance is Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). CBA is a central, established, prescriptive evaluation method used in several domains, including transportation. In order to compare insights gained through the emerging method MATE and the established method CBA, two case studies, a Chicago Airport Express and a High-Speed Rail link between Portugal and Spain, are evaluated using those two methods. CBA assumes a broad view over all affected stakeholders, decision making or not, and seeks to ensure that net benefits to society outweigh net costs. MATE seeks to best meet decision makers' expectations for a system. Attributes (tangible and intangible) that are valuable to individual stakeholders, but not to society as a whole, are captured in the value-based approach in MATE. They are purposefully excluded in CBA. A challenge that the value-based approach in MATE brings about are framing issues that can arise when utility theory is applied to decision making stakeholders who have mandates to represent other stakeholders. For both aerospace and transportation domains, political vision and technical understanding of properties of different designs are important for decision making. A real feedback cycle between goal capture and low-fidelity technical modeling of different design options as suggested in MATE does not seem to exist in transportation planning. MATE seems useful as a tool to support improved communication about system expectations and technical options. Future research will need to address how value-based attribute capture can be performed in the typical complex stakeholder structure of transportation systems. Recognizing that problems of equity and value judgments are an inherent part of (some) technical decisions, the question of how to support a decision maker in expressing those attributes (even if difficult and controversial) and understanding different design concepts' impact on technical properties becomes part of the design engineer's job.by Julia Nickel.S.M

Prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Validation and ranking of established staging-systems in a large western HCC-cohort.

HCC is diagnosed in approximately half a million people per year, worldwide. Staging is a more complex issue than in most other cancer entities and, mainly due to unique geographic characteristics of the disease, no universally accepted staging system exists to date. Focusing on survival rates we analyzed demographic, etiological, clinical, laboratory and tumor characteristics of HCC-patients in our institution and applied the common staging systems. Furthermore we aimed at identifying the most suitable of the current staging systems for predicting survival. Overall, 405 patients with HCC were identified from an electronic medical record database. The following seven staging systems were applied and ranked according to their ability to predict survival by using the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and the concordance-index (c-index): BCLC, CLIP, GETCH, JIS, Okuda, TNM and Child-Pugh. Separately, every single variable of each staging system was tested for prognostic meaning in uni- and multivariate analysis. Alcoholic cirrhosis (44.4%) was the leading etiological factor followed by viral hepatitis C (18.8%). Median survival was 18.1 months (95%-CI: 15.2-22.2). Ascites, bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase, AFP, number of tumor nodes and the BCLC tumor extension remained independent prognostic factors in multivariate analysis. Overall, all of the tested staging systems showed a reasonable discriminatory ability. CLIP (closely followed by JIS) was the top-ranked score in terms of prognostic capability with the best values of the AIC and c-index (AIC 2286, c-index 0.71), surpassing other established staging systems like BCLC (AIC 2343, c-index 0.66). The unidimensional scores TNM (AIC 2342, c-index 0.64) and Child-Pugh (AIC 2369, c-index 0.63) performed in an inferior fashion. Compared with six other staging systems, the CLIP-score was identified as the most suitable staging system for predicting prognosis in a large German cohort of predominantly non-surgical HCC-patients

Evaluating the Manitoba Infant Feeding Database: Linking an infant feeding data repository with total population administrative data

Introduction Breastfeeding during the first two years of life supports optimal maternal and child health. Few linkable databases capture infant feeding data beyond hospital discharge. The Manitoba Infant Feeding Database (MIFD), a novel initiative started in 2015, records infant feeding practices at vaccination visits and is linkable with administrative data. Objectives and Approach Our objective was to evaluate the data quality and staff experiences with implementing the MIFD. The MIFD records whether the infant was exclusively or partially breastfeeding at each visit; it also records the infant’s age when (a) something other than human milk was first introduced and (b) the infant stopped breastfeeding entirely. Personal Health Identification Numbers (PHINs), birthdate, and postal code are used to link infant feeding information with administrative health records. Two authors independently reviewed the proportion of complete data fields and data fields with potential transcription errors. A survey was developed to assess experiences with implementing the MIFD. Results A total of 950 (out of 2500) records were randomly selected and reviewed, equating to 13,258 data fields. Data were 98.5% complete (n=13,064/13,258). Baby’s PHIN, mother’s PHIN, and relationship to the baby had 95.4%, 96.0%, and 97.6% complete data, respectively. Almost all records (95.5\%) had complete data for personal identifiers. Transcription had to be verified in 13.5% of MIFD data fields. The survey response rate was 78.4%. Nearly all felt that the MIFD data collection tool was easy to use (96.6\%). 65\% felt faxing the data to a central office was convenient. Most (93.1%) of respondents were happy to continue with the MIFD system. A 0.7 FTE is required to verify feeding data from all births in the province (N=15,000). Conclusion/Implications The MIFD is a sustainable and viable system for collecting and storing infant feeding information which can be linked with administrative health and social data. Having breastfeeding information after hospital discharge which can be linked with administrative data will facilitate the evaluation of programs aimed at supporting breastfeeding

Hydrogen Utilization Potential in Subsurface Sediments

Subsurface microbial communities undertake many terminal electron-accepting processes, often simultaneously. Using a tritium-based assay, we measured the potential hydrogen oxidation catalyzed by hydrogenase enzymes in several subsurface sedimentary environments (Lake Van, Barents Sea, Equatorial Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico) with different predominant electron-acceptors. Hydrogenases constitute a diverse family of enzymes expressed by microorganisms that utilize molecular hydrogen as a metabolic substrate, product, or intermediate. The assay reveals the potential for utilizing molecular hydrogen and allows qualitative detection of microbial activity irrespective of the predominant electron-accepting process. Because the method only requires samples frozen immediately after recovery, the assay can be used for identifying microbial activity in subsurface ecosystems without the need to preserve live material. We measured potential hydrogen oxidation rates in all samples from multiple depths at several sites that collectively span a wide range of environmental conditions and biogeochemical zones. Potential activity normalized to total cell abundance ranges over five orders of magnitude and varies, dependent upon the predominant terminal electron acceptor. Lowest per-cell potential rates characterize the zone of nitrate reduction and highest per-cell potential rates occur in the methanogenic zone. Possible reasons for this relationship to predominant electron acceptor include (i) increasing importance of fermentation in successively deeper biogeochemical zones and (ii) adaptation of H2ases to successively higher concentrations of H2 in successively deeper zones

project report Promise2007

Das Projekt Promise2007 befasste sich mit der Erstellung und Auswertung einer Statistik zur Mitgliedersituation im Berufsverband Medizinischer Informatiker e.V.. Mit dem Ziel mehr über die Mitglieder und ihre derzeitige Situation zu erfahren wurde das Projekt an der Fachhochschule Hannover initiiert. Statistisch erfasst wurden Fragen zum Beschäftigungsverhältnis, zu Aus- und Weiterbildung, der beruflichen Situation und persönliche Angaben. Die Ergebnisse wurden ausgewertet und daraus wichtige Erkenntnisse für den BVMI e.V. abgeleitet, welche auf die weitere Verbandsarbeit Einfluss nehmen

Virtual reality training versus blended learning of laparoscopic cholecystectomy:a randomized controlled trial with laparoscopic novices

This study compared virtual reality (VR) training with low cost-blended learning (BL) in a structured training program. Training of laparoscopic skills outside the operating room is mandatory to reduce operative times and risks. Laparoscopy-naïve medical students were randomized in 2 groups stratified for sex. The BL group (n = 42) used E-learning for laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) and practiced basic skills with box trainers. The VR group (n = 42) trained basic skills and LC on the LAP Mentor II (Simbionix, Cleveland, OH). Each group trained 3 × 4 hours followed by a knowledge test concerning LC. Blinded raters assessed the operative performance of cadaveric porcine LC using the Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills (OSATS). The LC was discontinued when it was not completed within 80 min. Students evaluated their training modality with questionnaires. The VR group completed the LC significantly faster and more often within 80 min than BL (45% v 21%, P = .02). The BL group scored higher than the VR group in the knowledge test (13.3 ± 1.3 vs 11.0 ± 1.7, P < 0.001). Both groups showed equal operative performance of LC in the OSATS score (49.4 ± 10.5 vs 49.7 ± 12.0, P = 0.90). Students generally liked training and felt well prepared for assisting in laparoscopic surgery. The efficiency of the training was judged higher by the VR group than by the BL group. VR and BL can both be applied for training the basics of LC. Multimodality training programs should be developed that combine the advantages of both approaches

A direct RT-qPCR approach to test large numbers of individuals for SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2 causes substantial morbidity and mortality in elderly and immunocompromised individuals, particularly in retirement homes, where transmission from asymptomatic staff and visitors may introduce the infection. Here we present a cheap and fast approach to detect SARSCoV-2 in single or pooled gargle lavages (“mouthwashes”). With this approach, we test all staff at a nursing home daily over a period of three weeks in order to reduce the risk that the infection penetrates the facility. This or similar approaches could be implemented to protect hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions in this and future viral epidemics

Loss of autophagy protein ATG5 impairs cardiac capacity in mice and humans through diminishing mitochondrial abundance and disrupting Ca2+Ca^{\text{2+}} cycling

Aims Autophagy protects against the development of cardiac hypertrophy and failure. While aberrant Ca2+ handling promotes myocardial remodelling and contributes to contractile dysfunction, the role of autophagy in maintaining Ca2+ homeostasis remains elusive. Here, we examined whether Atg5 deficiency-mediated autophagy promotes early changes in subcellular Ca2+ handling in ventricular cardiomyocytes, and whether those alterations associate with compromised cardiac reserve capacity, which commonly precedes the onset of heart failure. Methods and results RT–qPCR and immunoblotting demonstrated reduced Atg5 gene and protein expression and decreased abundancy of autophagy markers in hypertrophied and failing human hearts. The function of ATG5 was examined using cardiomyocyte-specific Atg5-knockout mice (Atg5−/−). Before manifesting cardiac dysfunction, Atg5−/− mice showed compromised cardiac reserve in response to β-adrenergic stimulation. Consequently, effort intolerance and maximal oxygen consumption were reduced during treadmill-based exercise tolerance testing. Mechanistically, cellular imaging revealed that Atg5 deprivation did not alter spatial and functional organization of intracellular Ca2+ stores or affect Ca2+ cycling in response to slow pacing or upon acute isoprenaline administration. However, high-frequency stimulation exposed stunted amplitude of Ca2+ transients, augmented nucleoplasmic Ca2+ load, and increased CaMKII activity, especially in the nuclear region of hypertrophied Atg5−/− cardiomyocytes. These changes in Ca2+ cycling were recapitulated in hypertrophied human cardiomyocytes. Finally, ultrastructural analysis revealed accumulation of mitochondria with reduced volume and size distribution, meanwhile functional measurements showed impaired redox balance in Atg5−/− cardiomyocytes, implying energetic unsustainability due to overcompensation of single mitochondria, particularly under increased workload. Conclusion Loss of cardiac Atg5-dependent autophagy reduces mitochondrial abundance and causes subtle alterations in subcellular Ca2+ cycling upon increased workload in mice. Autophagy-related impairment of Ca2+ handling is progressively worsened by β-adrenergic signalling in ventricular cardiomyocytes, thereby leading to energetic exhaustion and compromised cardiac reserve