Panel-Erhebungen mit Gesundheitsbezug in Liechtenstein, Österreich und der Schweiz

Der Beitrag gibt eine Übersicht über gesundheitsbezogene Panels in Liechtenstein, Österreich und der Schweiz. Von Interesse sind Panelerhebungen, die in den letzten Jahren durchgeführt worden sind und deren Daten somit eine gewisse Aktualität besitzen, deren Daten für die akademische Forschung zugänglich sind und mit deren Daten sowohl sozialwissenschaftliche als auch gesundheitswissenschaftliche Aspekte abgebildet werden können. Erhebungen, die sich auf einzelne Krankheitsbilder beziehen und Follow-up-Erhebungen in Bezug auf das Krankheitsbild darstellen, werden nur in einer kürzeren Beschreibung am Ende des Abschnittes für das jeweilige Land in die Auflistung aufgenommen. Die Auswahlkriterien werden dem gemäß wie folgt festgelegt: (1) Es müssen mindestens zwei Erhebungswellen durchgeführt worden sein. (2) Die letzte Erhebungswelle sollte nicht älter als 10 Jahre sein. (3) Die Stichprobe muss einen gewissen Bezug zur Allgemeinbevölkerung haben, darf nicht nur Fälle/Kontrollen mit einer bestimmten Diagnose enthalten, und das Erhebungsinstrument muss auch einige sozialwissenschaftliche Verhaltens- und Strukturitems einschließen. (4) Die Zugänglichkeit der Daten für die Wissenschaft muss zu erträglichen Kosten gewährleistet sein. (ICG2

Panel-Erhebungen mit Gesundheitsbezug

Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über alle Panelstudien mit Gesundheitsbezug in Deutschland. Dabei wurden vier Kriterien zu Grunde gelegt: (1) Es müssen mindestens zwei Untersuchungswellen durchgeführt worden sein. (2) Die Feldphase der letzten Welle darf nicht länger als zehn Jahre zurückliegen. (3) Die Stichprobe muss einen Bezug auf die Gesamtbevölkerung erlauben und darf nicht nur Befragte mit einer bestimmten klinischen Diagnose umfassen. Das Untersuchungsinstrument muss Verhaltensaspekte berücksichtigen, die für die sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung relevant sind. (4) Wissenschaftler müssen auf die Daten zu akzeptablen Kosten zugreifen können. (ICEÜbers)'The article presents an overview of all health-related panel studies in Germany. Four inclusion criteria were used: 1. a minimum of 2 survey waves were required; a cross sectional survey with a mortality follow-up, for example, would therefore not be included 2. the last wave must have been fielded within about the last ten years; 3. the sample must allow references to the general population in some fashion, may not consist only of respondents with a certain clinical diagnosis, and the survey instrument must include some behavioural items of relevance to social science research; 4. the academic research community must have ready access to the data at acceptable costs for individual researchers.' (author's abstract)

Aerosol Chemistry Resolved by Mass Spectrometry: Linking Field Measurements of Cloud Condensation Nuclei Activity to Organic Aerosol Composition

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Environmental Science & Technology, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b01675Aerosol hygroscopic properties were linked to its chemical composition by using complementary online mass spectrometric techniques in a comprehensive chemical characterization study at a rural mountaintop station in central Germany in August 2012. In particular, atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry ((−)APCI-MS) provided measurements of organic acids, organosulfates, and nitrooxy-organosulfates in the particle phase at 1 min time resolution. Offline analysis of filter samples enabled us to determine the molecular composition of signals appearing in the online (−)APCI-MS spectra. Aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS) provided quantitative measurements of total submicrometer organics, nitrate, sulfate, and ammonium. Inorganic sulfate measurements were achieved by semionline ion chromatography and were compared to the AMS total sulfate mass. We found that up to 40% of the total sulfate mass fraction can be covalently bonded to organic molecules. This finding is supported by both on- and offline soft ionization techniques, which confirmed the presence of several organosulfates and nitrooxy-organosulfates in the particle phase. The chemical composition analysis was compared to hygroscopicity measurements derived from a cloud condensation nuclei counter. We observed that the hygroscopicity parameter (κ) that is derived from organic mass fractions determined by AMS measurements may overestimate the observed κ up to 0.2 if a high fraction of sulfate is bonded to organic molecules and little photochemical aging is exhibited

Atlas registration for edema-corrected MRI lesion volume in mouse stroke models

Lesion volume measurements with magnetic resonance imaging are widely used to assess outcome in rodent models of stroke. In this study, we improved a mathematical framework to correct lesion size for edema which is based on manual delineation of the lesion and hemispheres. Furthermore, a novel MATLAB toolbox to register mouse brain MR images to the Allen brain atlas is presented. Its capability to calculate edema-corrected lesion size was compared to the manual approach. Automated image registration performed equally well in in a mouse middle cerebral artery occlusion model (Pearson r=0.976, p=2.265e-11). Information encapsulated in the registration was used to generate maps of edema induced tissue volume changes. These showed discrepancies to simplified tissue models underlying the manual approach. The presented techniques provide biologically more meaningful, voxel-wise biomarkers of vasogenic edema after stroke

Evidence for a Pathogenic Role of Different Mutations at Codon 188 of PRNP

Clinical and pathological changes in familial Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) cases may be similar or indistinguishable from sporadic CJD. Therefore determination of novel mutations in PRNP remains of major importance

What a Plant Sounds Like: The Statistics of Vegetation Echoes as Received by Echolocating Bats

A critical step on the way to understanding a sensory system is the analysis of the input it receives. In this work we examine the statistics of natural complex echoes, focusing on vegetation echoes. Vegetation echoes constitute a major part of the sensory world of more than 800 species of echolocating bats and play an important role in several of their daily tasks. Our statistical analysis is based on a large collection of plant echoes acquired by a biomimetic sonar system. We explore the relation between the physical world (the structure of the plant) and the characteristics of its echo. Finally, we complete the story by analyzing the effect of the sensory processing of both the echolocation and the auditory systems on the echoes and interpret them in the light of information maximization. The echoes of all different plant species we examined share a surprisingly robust pattern that was also reproduced by a simple Poisson model of the spatial reflector arrangement. The fine differences observed between the echoes of different plant species can be explained by the spatial characteristics of the plants. The bat's emitted signal enhances the most informative spatial frequency range where the species-specific information is large. The auditory system filtering affects the echoes in a similar way, thus enhancing the most informative spatial frequency range even more. These findings suggest how the bat's sensory system could have evolved to deal with complex natural echoes

Operations of and Future Plans for the Pierre Auger Observatory

Technical reports on operations and features of the Pierre Auger Observatory, including ongoing and planned enhancements and the status of the future northern hemisphere portion of the Observatory. Contributions to the 31st International Cosmic Ray Conference, Lodz, Poland, July 2009.Comment: Contributions to the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Poland, July 200

Measurement of the Depth of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers above 10^18 eV

We describe the measurement of the depth of maximum, Xmax, of the longitudinal development of air showers induced by cosmic rays. Almost four thousand events above 10^18 eV observed by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory in coincidence with at least one surface detector station are selected for the analysis. The average shower maximum was found to evolve with energy at a rate of (106 +35/-21) g/cm^2/decade below 10^(18.24 +/- 0.05) eV and (24 +/- 3) g/cm^2/decade above this energy. The measured shower-to-shower fluctuations decrease from about 55 to 26 g/cm^2. The interpretation of these results in terms of the cosmic ray mass composition is briefly discussed.Comment: Accepted for publication by PR