Framing Environmental Migration - An Analysis of Indian Government Policies

Environmental change has the potential to displace people all over the world, particularly those with high exposure to change and low adaptive capacities. In this context, migration is a response to individual and collective vulnerabilities, and thus represents an adaption strategy. Environmental migration can be triggered by environmental change directly, in the form of natural hazards, or indirectly, by negatively impacting people’s livelihoods. Policy responses and the feedback they produce have the power to shape such migratory flows. Underlying notions and normative assumptions behind those policies – ultimately how the issue of environmental migration is framed – are therefore of high significance. Drawing on previous literature on how environmental migration has been problematized, this thesis explores whether India frames environmental migration as a challenge or as an opportunity. More specifically, a qualitative content analysis of five different state level policies directed towards climate action was conducted. It is demonstrated that, based on the state-wise results, the Indian government frames environmental migration as a challenge that needs to be solved by lowering the vulnerabilities of the rural population. Minimizing these vulnerabilities to stem rural-urban migration is a strategy likely to remain high on India’s policy agenda, due to major problems associated with India’s high urbanization rate

Undulation instability in a bilayer lipid membrane due to electric field interaction with lipid dipoles

Bilayer lipid membranes [BLMs] are an essential component of all biological systems, forming a functional barrier for cells and organelles from the surrounding environment. The lipid molecules that form membranes contain both permanent and induced dipoles, and an electric field can induce the formation of pores when the transverse field is sufficiently strong (electroporation). Here, a phenomenological free energy is constructed to model the response of a BLM to a transverse static electric field. The model contains a continuum description of the membrane dipoles and a coupling between the headgroup dipoles and the membrane tilt. The membrane is found to become unstable through buckling modes, which are weakly coupled to thickness fluctuations in the membrane. The thickness fluctuations, along with the increase in interfacial area produced by membrane buckling, increase the probability of localized membrane breakdown, which may lead to pore formation. The instability is found to depend strongly on the strength of the coupling between the dipolar headgroups and the membrane tilt as well as the degree of dipolar ordering in the membrane.Comment: 29 pages 8 fig

Wirkungsweise alter und neuer Antikoagulanzien

Zusammenfassung: Die drei häufigsten Indikationen für eine Behandlung mit Hemmern der plasmatischen Gerinnung sind das Vorhofflimmern, die venöse Thromboembolie und valvuläre Kardiopathien. Aufgrund der Häufigkeit dieser Pathologien kann man davon ausgehen, dass rund 1% der Bevölkerung oral antikoaguliert ist. Ungefähr ein Drittel der auf einer chirurgischen Abteilung hospitalisierten Patienten erhält Vitamin-K-Antagonisten. Somit handelt es sich hierbei um eine Behandlungsmodalität, mit der sowohl Grundversorger und Spezialisten in der Praxis als auch Klinikärzte fortwährend konfrontiert sind. Inhibitoren der Gerinnung haben in vielen Situationen einen großen Nutzen gezeigt, welcher allerdings mit einem erhöhten Blutungsrisiko bezahlt sein will. Diese Gratwanderung zwischen einem Zuviel und einem Zuwenig der antikoagulatorischen Wirkung ist eine wichtige Herausforderung in der klinischen Arbeit mit Patienten. Die Kenntnis der der medikamentösen Gerinnungshemmung zugrundeliegenden Mechanismen ist notwendig, um Indikationen für antikoagulatorische Therapien kritisch evaluieren und deren Management effizient steuern zu können. Im Idealfall muss die Sicherstellung einer ausreichenden Hämostase bei gleichzeitiger Vermeidung thrombotischer Ereignisse das Ziel einer adäquaten Gerinnungshemmung sein. Dieser Artikel soll einen Überblick über das Gerinnungssystem und über etablierte, aber auch neue pharmakologische Angriffspunkte biete

Synthese von 'Push-Pull'-Eninen

Two synthetic sequences towards 'push-pull'-enynes 6 have been investigated starting with ynamines 10 (Schemes 2 and 4). In the successful procedure (scheme 4) Pd(0)-catalyzed coupling of metalated ynamines 11 with 4-bromobutenone or (Z)- and (E)-3-bromoacrylates gives 'push-pull' enynes (E)-6a, (E)-6b, and (Z)-6b (38–63% yields). Crucial spectroscopic data and especially 13C-NMR spectra of 'push-pull' enynes are briefly discussed

Glaubwürdigkeitsverlust durch programmintegrierte Werbung?: Eine Untersuchung zu den Kontexteffekten von Produktplatzierungen im Fernsehen

Zusammenfassung: Die vorliegende Studie untersucht, ob sich Produktplatzierungen (Product Placements) in einer informierenden TV-Sendung auf die Glaubwürdigkeit und die globale Bewertung des redaktionellen Programms auswirken. Hierzu wurden zwei Experimente durchgeführt, in denen die Häufigkeit von Produktplatzierungen im TV-Beitrag variierte. Es wurde erhoben, inwiefern die Rezipienten die Placements als Persuasionsversuch erkannten und sich dadurch gestört fühlten. Daneben mussten die Rezipienten angeben, wie sie den Gesamtbeitrag bewerten, wie sie seine Glaubwürdigkeit einschätzen und wie sehr sie in den Beitrag involviert sind. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sich die Rezipienten mit steigender Anzahl der Product Placements der persuasiven Absicht dieser Werbeform bewusst werden. Allerdings stören sie sich nicht am Beeinflussungsversuch, solange das Involvement in den Beitrag groß genug ist. Auf die Glaubwürdigkeit bzw. die Bewertung des Beitrags hat die zunehmende Placementhäufigkeit keinen Einfluss. Somit kann die aktuelle Diskussion um die Gefährdung des Programminhalts durch neue Werbeformen entschärft werde

Führen viele Wege nach Rom?: Berufssituation und Karrierestrategien des promovierten wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses in der Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft

Zusammenfassungen: Im Fach Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft liegen bislang kaum empirische Daten zur Situation des promovierten wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses vor. Diese Studie gibt Aufschluss über Beschäftigungssituation, Berufszufriedenheit, Betreuung sowie Karrierevorstellungen und -strategien der Post-Doktorandinnen und-Doktoranden des Faches. Die Ergebnisse einer Befragung im deutschsprachigen Raum zeigen, dass die Postdocs mit ihrer beruflichen Situation, vor allem mit den Arbeitsinhalten und der Flexibilität der Arbeitszeiten zufrieden sind und eine akademische Karriere anstreben. Die Konkurrenz und die Hürden auf dem Karriereweg werden allerdings als groß wahrgenommen. Zudem scheinen die als vielversprechend eingeschätzten Karrierestrategien wie das Publizieren in internationalen Fachzeitschriften nur schwer umsetzbar zu sein. Einzig jene Postdocs, die von ihrer/m vorgesetzten Professor/in beim Publizieren und beim Aufbau eines Netzwerks unterstützt und betreut werden, schaffen es, viel zu publizieren und international in Erscheinung zu treten. Hingegen sind zwei andere Gruppen weniger erfolgreich in der Umsetzung der eigenen Ziele bzw. verfolgen mit der Habilitation eher traditionelle Karrierestrategie

Drug-related problems: assessments of risk and relevance

Pharmacotherapy is the most frequently used form of treatment intervention. The benefits of the therapy need to be weighed carefully against its risks, as drugs also cause up to 25% of all emergency department visits. Preventable inappropriate prescribing and medication errors, including the patient’s own mishandling, manifest in drug therapy failures and adverse drug events, which subsequently may generate costly hospitalisations. Of the adult Swiss population aged over 65 years, 21% are prescribed a potentially inappropriate medication. Within this setting, medication reviews are a method of assessing the patient’s drug regimen regarding its appropriateness and the patient’s preferences in order to address inappropriate prescribing and prevent medication errors. Medication reviews reduce the number of drug-related problems (DRPs) and decrease drug-related emergency department visits as well as hospital length of stay. But medication reviews are a time-consuming intervention. In a country like Switzerland, where 35.9 full-time equivalents of clinical pharmacists should promote safe, economic, and appropriate medicinal therapies for 1.4 million hospitalisations per year, there is a demand for risk stratification and patient prioritisation. Newly developed algorithms that generate alerts for clinical pharmacists on pooled electronic data, however, do not take into account the patient-centred causes of DRPs. The Drug-Associated Risk Tool (DART) was developed to identify hospitalised patients at greater risk of DRPs and in need of clinical pharmacy services, i.e. medication reviews. As a self-administered questionnaire for patients, the screening tool assesses items concerning the patients’ medical information in combination with their opinions and concerns about the pharmacotherapy whilst not increasing the workload of any caregiver. In this thesis, the DART was validated regarding its ability to discriminate between patients with lower and higher numbers of DRPs. Issues concerning the patients’ current pharmacotherapy were identified with a medication review with pooled data on drug regimens, diagnoses, laboratory values, and structured patient interviews. The medication reviews combined implicit and explicit criteria of inappropriate prescribing to balance the benefits and drawbacks of each approach. This thesis looked into the performance of the criteria used and reports on the number of DRPs identified with each method. The structured patient interview was newly developed by combining a remunerated public pharmacy interview on adherence with questions on concerns about the medication. This thesis describes the benefits of the patient interview by presenting the type of DRPs identified and weighs it against the additional clinical pharmacy resource requirements. The DART validation study also necessitated the use of a tool to estimate the potential relevance of pharmacists’ interventions. With the translation and subsequent reliability testing of the French tool CLEO, this thesis reports on the performance of a validated German version. CLEOde may help German-speaking pharmacists to estimate the potential relevance of their own interventions in three distinct dimensions: Patient-centred clinical, cost-focusing economic, and institution-based organisational. The study focused on interrater and test–retest reliability of CLEOde and presented an overview of clinical pharmacists’ activity within three Swiss-German hospitals. This thesis also critically evaluated the performance of another tool for risk stratification and patient prioritisation concerning one specific drug-related problem: The RISQ-PATH score and its ability to predict drug-induced QT-prolongation and heart arrhythmias. The thesis encompassed the execution of medication reviews, including patient interviews, for 110 geriatric patients within a study period of 10 months, identifying 595 DRPs estimated to be of minor to lifesaving relevance. The performed patient interviews identified over one third of all DRPs with insufficient patient knowledge and incomplete patient documentation as most the prominent and not otherwise identifiable causes. This thesis reports an average time of 16.6 minutes needed for the individual structured patient interviews. The ability of the DART to distinguish between patients with low and high numbers of current DRPs was demonstrated: Cluster analysis and subsequent discriminant function analysis allowed for an item reduction to five questions associated with the number of DRPs. These questions allow targeting patients who would benefit most from direct engagement and bedside interventions. CLEOde was used by 10 clinical pharmacists working in three hospitals during 13 days of routine clinical pharmacy services to estimate the relevance of 324 performed pharmacists’ interventions. The use of CLEOde was seen as appropriate, acceptable, feasible, and precise. Statistical analysis showed good interrater reliability and excellent test–retest reliability for the clinical and economic dimension, whereas the organisational dimension achieved poor interrater and fair test–retest reliability. By critically examining the association between the RISQ-PATH scores and the measured QTc intervals, we identified an already previously present prolonged QTc interval as moderating variable, necessitating subgroup generation for score interpretation. These results also allowed this thesis to articulate a simple code of practice when handling drugs with the potential to prolong the QTc interval. This thesis, entitled “Drug-Related Problems: Assessments of Risk and Relevance,” presents a validated self-administered patient questionnaire to stratify for drug-related risk, a validated assessment to estimate the relevance of drug-related problems, a structured patient interview to identify issues on drug-related adherence, handling, and concerns, and a valid score to detect patients at risk of drug-induced QT-prolongation

A nudge in a healthier direction: How environmental cues help restrained eaters pursue their weight-control goal

Losing weight is a goal for many people, but it is hard to pursue. However, dieting cues in the environment hold promise for improving individuals' eating behavior. For example, exposure to thin, human-like sculptures by the artist Alberto Giacometti has been found to promote healthy snack choices at a vending machine. Whether health- or weight-related processes drive such effects has not yet been determined. However, a detailed understanding of the content-related drivers of environmental cues' effects provides the first indications regarding a cue's possible use. Therefore, two laboratory studies were conducted. They examined the Giacometti sculptures' effects on unhealthy and healthy food intake (Study 1) and on the completion of weight- and health-related fragmented words (Study 2). Study 1 indicated that the sculptures are weight-related by showing that they reduced food intake independent of food healthiness. Furthermore, the “Giacometti effect” was moderated by restrained eating. Restrained eaters, who are known for their weight-control goal, ate less after having been exposed to the thin sculptures. The results of Study 2 pointed in the same direction. Restrained eaters completed more weight-related words after being exposed to the sculptures. Overall, these studies suggest that the thin sculptures are primarily weight-related cues and particularly helpful for restrained eaters. Environmental weight-control cues such as the Giacometti sculptures could act as a counterforce to our obesogenic environment and help restrained eaters pursue their weight-control goal. In this way, they could nudge food decisions in a healthier direction

Cigarette Smoke Suppresses Type I Interferon-Mediated Antiviral Immunity in Lung Fibroblast and Epithelial Cells

The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of cigarette smoke on innate antiviral defense mechanisms; specifically, we examined the effects of cigarette smoke on the induction of type I interferon (IFN). We observed a dose-dependent decrease in the ability of human lung fibroblast and epithelial cells to elicit an antiviral response against a viral double-strand RNA (dsRNA) mimic, polyI:C, in the presence of cigarette smoke-conditioned medium (SCM). Mechanistically, SCM decreases the expression of IFN-stimulated gene 15 (ISG15) and IFN regulatory factor-7 (IRF-7) transcripts and suppresses the nuclear translocation of key transcription factors, nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) and IRF-3, after polyI:C stimulation. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the intercellular defense strategy against viral infection is also impaired. We observed a decrease in the ability of fibroblasts to elicit an antiviral state in response to IFN-β stimulation. This was associated with decreased nuclear translocation of phosphorylated Stat1 in response to IFN-β treatment. The effects elicited by SCM are reversible and are almost entirely abrogated in the presence of an antioxidant, such as glutathione. Our findings suggest that cigarette smoke affects the immediate-early, inductive, and amplification phases of the type I IFN response