Transkulturelle Aspekte in der interkulturellen Praxis am Beispiel der Initiative "Vielfalter 2010"

Die vorliegende Diplomarbeit beschäftigt sich kritisch mit der von Wolfgang Welsch entwickelten Theorie der Transkulturalität und konfrontiert sie mit der sozialpädagogischen interkulturellen Praxis. Anhand von neun ExpertInneninterviews wurden konkrete interkulturelle, pädagogische Projekte untersucht und mittels qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse ausgewertet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass in der Praxis kein Paradigmenwechsel stattgefunden hat, es aber Berührungspunkte zwischen interkulturellen Sichtweisen und transkultureller Perspektive gibt. In ihrem theoretischen Teil bietet die Arbeit einen Überblick über die Begriffsgeschichte von Multi-, Inter- und Transkulturalität und setzt diese Begriffe in Beziehung zueinander (Kapitel 2). Auch wenn sich die Begriffe Multi-, Inter- und Transkulturalität nicht eindeutig voneinander abgrenzen lassen, sind konzeptuelle Unterschiede festzustellen und die historischen Rahmenbedingungen ihrer Einführung und Verwendung zu beachten. Das Konzept der Transkulturalität wurde in seiner Rezeption vielfach kritisiert und hinterfragt. Die wichtigsten Einwände sind begriffliche Unklarheit, begrifflicher Euphemismus, deskriptive Eingeschränktheit, elitäre Ausrichtung, präskriptive Naivität und Homogenisierung. Insbesondere der Konflikt zwischen deskriptiven Aussagen und normativen Forderungen ist im Hinblick auf eine pädagogische Anwendung problematisch (Kapitel 3). Die Arbeit stellt Inter- und Transkulturalität einander gegenüber und arbeitet Stärken und Schwächen der beiden Konzepte heraus (Kapitel 4). Die empirische Untersuchung nutzte ExpertInneninterviews und qualitative Inhaltsanalyse (Kapitel 6), um der Frage nachzugehen, inwiefern pädagogische Ansätze im Rahmen der Initiative „Vielfalter“ (Kapitel 7) inter- und/oder transkulturelle Züge aufweisen. Die Ergebnisse (Kapitel 8) zeigen, dass die pädagogische Praxis sowohl interkulturelle als auch transkulturelle Ansätze umfasst. Es überwiegen Annahmen, die mit Interkulturalität verknüpft sind. Transkulturalität ist hingegen in der Praxis weit weniger verbreitet und wird bestenfalls als ergänzende Sichtweise gesehen

Psychogenic Amnesia: A Case Involving Amobarbital Interview and the News Media

A young man was admitted to an urban general hospital psychiatric unit after being brought from a local shopping mall unable to remember his name or any other personal information. He was alert and oriented and demonstrated no cognitive impairment. He agreed to an amobarbital interview and agreed to letting local news media display his picture in hopes that someone would recognize him. The amobarbital interview yielded information allowing identification of the individual, with the help of the news media. News media coverage also led to the discovery that the individual was wanted for a violent crime in another state and that the amnesia apparently set in after his commission of that crime. Implications for diagnosis and management of amnesia are discussed

Examining the reliability and validity of the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms within the Management of Schizophrenia in Clinical Practice (MOSAIC) multisite national study

The current study sought to expand on prior reports of the validity and reliability of the CAINS (CAINS) by examining its performance across diverse non-academic clinical settings as employed by raters not affiliated with the scale's developers and across a longer test-retest follow-up period. The properties of the CAINS were examined within the Management of Schizophrenia in Clinical Practice (MOSAIC) schizophrenia registry. A total of 501 participants with a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis who were receiving usual care were recruited across 15 national Patient Assessment Centers and evaluated with the CAINS, other negative symptom measures, and assessments of functioning, quality of life and cognition. Temporal stability of negative symptoms was assessed across a 3-month follow-up. Results replicated the two-factor structure of the CAINS reflecting Motivation and Pleasure and expression symptoms. The CAINS scales exhibited high internal consistency and temporal stability. Convergent validity was supported by significant correlations between the CAINS subscales with other negative symptom measures. Additionally, the CAINS was significantly correlated with functioning and quality of life. Discriminant validity was demonstrated by small to moderate associations between the CAINS and positive symptoms, depression, and cognition (and these associations were comparable to those found with other negative symptom scales). Findings suggest that the CAINS is a reliable and valid tool for measuring negative symptoms in schizophrenia across diverse clinical samples and settings

Antiarrhythmic versus antifibrillatory actions: Inference from experimental studies

Pathophysiology of the coronary circulation is a major contributor to altering the myocardial substrate, rendering the heart susceptible to the onset of arrhythmias associated with sudden cardiac death. Antiarrhythmic drug therapy for the prevention of sudden cardiac death has been provided primarily on the basis of trial and error and in some instances based on ill-suited preclinical evaluations. The findings of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial (CAST) requires a reexamination of the manner in which antiarrhythmic drugs are developed before entering into clinical testing. The major deficiency in this area of experimental investigation has been the lack of animal models that would permit preclinical studies to identify potentially useful or deleterious therapeutic agents. Further, CAST has emphasized the need to distinguish between pharmacologic interventions that suppresses nonlethal disturbances of cardiac rhythm as opposed to those agents capable of preventing lethal ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation. Preclinical models for the testing of antifibrillatory agents must consider the fact that the superimposition of transient ischemic events on an underlying pathophysiologic substrate makes the heart susceptible to lethal arrhythmias. Proarrhythmic events, not observed in the normal heart, may become manifest only when the myocardial substrate has been altered. We describe a model of sudden cardiac death that may more closely simulate the clinical state in humans who are at risk. The experimental results show a good correlation with clinical data regarding agents known to reduce the incidence of lethal arrhythmias as well as those showing proarrhythmic actions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30443/1/0000066.pd

Implementation and Development of Internal Search Engine for Slovenian Police

The amount of information that modern society receives and processes is, simply said, enormous. Individuals, groups and organizations are faced with the daily overload of information from which they want to extract only the useful and quality information. On the World Wide Web are available many powerful and widely used Web search engines that - at least for the Internet - perform their work well. The data is not only stored on the Internet, but different organizations (banks, insurance companies, government institutions, etc.) have their own private data warehouses on which employees perform many daily queries. The question is whether such queries return quality information in a secure manner? To this end, some software development companies (IBM, Microsoft, etc..) are offering paid solutions that prepare and index this information for fast and efficient searching. Organizations are faced with problems as how to prevent access by unauthorized persons and to ensure a high quality of the returned information. At police we have developed our own internal search engine that is based on two freely available, open source solutions (Apache Lucene and Apache Solr) which already contain the functionality of modern search engines. For the primary source of data we took IBM Lotus Notes databases. We have successfully implemented the authentication of users and the provision of security policy and access to search data. This Master Thesis presents a description of the systems for information retrieval in direct connection with solutions Apache Lucene and Apache Solr, and the development and implementation of an internal search engine into production for use in Police

The optimisation of vehicle routing problem by discarding delivery time windows

Slovenska podjetja so pri uvajanju različnih poslovnih modelov povsem primerljiva s podjetji iz bolj razvitih gospodarstev. Slika je povsem obratna pri implementaciji znanstveno raziskovalnih dognanj strokovnjakov s področja logistike v vsakodnevne aktivnosti podjetij. Področje logistike v večini slovenskih podjetij sodi v okvir nabavnih ali prodajnih oddelkov, pri upravljanju z logističnimi procesi pa je primarni cilj praviloma visok nivo oskrbe, kar je zagotovo ustrezno, vendar največkrat na račun neupravičeno visokih stroškov logističnih storitev. Z izvajanjem različnih projektov optimizacij v podjetjih, sploh pa v luči aktualne gospodarske krize, je nastopilo zavedanje, da je tudi področje logistike, s primernim upravljanjem, vir potencialnih prihrankov. Podjetja največkrat prihranke v logistiki iščejo na račun zunanjih izvajalcev, čeprav so prihranki največkrat dosegljivi v notranjih rezervah, tudi z vzpostavitvijo primernega nivoja oskrbe, ki je lahko v tem trenutku previsok. Opuščanje okna dostave pri sekundarni distribuciji blaga je eno izmed možnih področij optimizacije stroškov logistike skozi notranje rezerve, ravno ta rešitev pa je, z uporabo znanstveno raziskovalnih metod in orodij, predstavljena v pričujočem delu.Slovenian companies are quite comparable with companies from more developed economies when implementing various business models. The image is, however, completely different when it comes to implementation of scientific research achievements done by experts in the field of logistics in the everyday activities of enterprises. Department of logistics in the majority of Slovenian companies is organized within the purchasing and sales departments. In management of logistic processes the primary objec!ive is usually high service level, which is certainly appropriate, but often at the expense of unduly high costs of logistics services. With the implementation of various optimization projects in businesses, especially in light of the current economic crisis, the awareness has arrived that also area of logistics, with proper management, is a source of potential cost savings. Companies often seek savings in logistics at the expense of their outsourcing partners, although the savings are mostly achievable through internal reserves, including in establishing an appropriate service level, which may be too high at observed time. Discarding the delivery time windows in secondary distribution of goods is one of the potential areas of optimization of logistics costs through internal reserves. This solution, along with proper scientific research methods and tools, is presented in this paper