Current study concepts for refractory ovarian carcinoma

Second-line and recurrence therapy in advanced ovarian carcinoma is at present based more on clinical empiricism than on data from prospective comparative studies. The resulting uncertainty with respect to optimum treatment can only be removed by consistent and systematic clinical research. For this reason, the Ovarian Carcinoma Study Group in the `Arbeitsgemeinschaft Onkologie' (AGO) has decided to offer various studies not only for primary therapy but also for second- and third-line situations where differentiation is made in patients after paclitaxel/platinum pretreatment between women with platinum-refractory carcinomas and recurrence up to 6 months after completion of primary therapy, on the one hand, and patients with platinum-sensitive carcinomas with recurrence later than 12 months after completing primary therapy, on the other hand. In addition, a newly defined group with intermediate prognosis in whom the recurrence occurs between 6 and 12 months after completion of primary therapy has been included, A prospective randomized study is offered for each of these patient groups in which patients with platinum/paclitaxel pretreatment can be enrolled. Only the coherent evaluation of various treatment modalities can lead to an improvement in the quality of therapy in second- and third-line situations

Switzerland: highly concentrated leading news media in austerity and downsizing mode

Switzerland, a small, landlocked country in the centre of Europe, enjoys a remarkably long and continuous tradition of independence, stability, and political neutrality. In early 2020, the Switzerland’s population was 8.6 million residents, about 25 per cent of which were foreigners. Consequently, one key characteristic of this country is its cultural diversity. There are four official languages – German (primary spoken language of 62% of the population in 2018), French (23%), Italian (8%), and Rhaeto-Romanic (0.5%), which more or less also define the land’s four different cultural mentalities. Therefore, issues related to the integration of a big and heterogeneous group of immigrants, and new refugees, often become a controversial topic in the politics of the country. Politically, Switzerland is considered a semi-direct democracy with strong federalism in addition to a high degree of autonomy in its 26 cantons and nearly 2,200 communities

Experimental study of liquid-vapor mass transfer in non-reacting and reacting droplet chains

[EN] The dynamics of liquid-vapor mass transfer largely determines the performance of internal and gas turbine spray combustors. The key mechanisms however typically take place on small spatial scales of less than 100 μm which have been difficult to measure. The present work thus aims at the development and application of an experimental technique for the characterization of droplet evaporation with high spatial resolution. Single chains of monodisperse acetone droplets with diameters of 125 and 225 μm are injected into a channel with a cross-section of 60x60 mm² and quartz glass side walls for optical access. The droplet chains are surrounded by a laminar air flow with velocity and temperature of about 0.1 m/s and 300 K, respectively. The distribution of acetone vapor around the droplets is measured using planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) excited by the 4th harmonic of a Nd:YAG laser at 266 nm. The measurements are performed in thin transversal sections between the droplets in order to avoid signal corruption by halation effects that occur when the laser directly hits the droplets as reported in previous studies. In addition, the spatial resolution of the PLIF setup was enhanced by using proper sheetforming and imaging optics. The resulting in-plane resolution and out-plane-resolution (i.e. thickness of the laser sheet) are both determined to about 20 μm, which thus allows an accurate characterization of the small-scale vapor distribution near the droplets. Using a separate calibration measurement, quantitative acetone concentrations are obtained for non-reacting conditions. As a complementary technique, the droplet evaporation is measured using shadowgraphy droplet sizing. Both non-reacting and reacting droplet chains are studied. The results for the non-reacting cases show that the droplet chains are surrounded by a column of nearly-saturated acetone vapor with a concentration maximum at the centerline. For increasing radial distances, the vapor concentration decays quickly with a half width of 0.5 mm and reaches almost zero for r>1 mm. It is further seen that the width of the vapor column increases with streamwise distance. For the experiment with a reacting droplet chain, which is continuously ignited by a heating wire at the channel inlet, a cylindrical reaction zone around the chain with a radius of about 1.5 mm is observed. The shadowgraphy measurements show that the rate of droplet evaporation is significantly enhanced for the reacting conditions. This is attributed to the high rate of heat transfer from the flame to the droplets and the resulting enhanced acetone mass transfer to the sink at the reaction zone.The contribution of Tobias Biesner to the design and setup of the experiment is appreciated. Financial support from the DLR project R2F is gratefully acknowledged.Stöhr, M.; Werner, S.; Meier, W. (2017). Experimental study of liquid-vapor mass transfer in non-reacting and reacting droplet chains. En Ilass Europe. 28th european conference on Liquid Atomization and Spray Systems. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 738-745. https://doi.org/10.4995/ILASS2017.2017.4767OCS73874

Nachruf auf Michael Schanne. Wissenschafts-, Risiko- und Gesundheitskommunikation als zentrale Forschungsfelder

Michael Schanne (27.6.1948–30. 8. 2021) studierte Soziologie, Publizistikwissenschaft und Politikwissenschaft an der Universität Zürich und schloss sein Studium 1977 mit Lizentiat bei Prof. Peter Heintz in Soziologie ab. Danach war er Assistent am Seminar für Publizistikwissenschaft bei Prof. Ulrich Saxer bis Mitte der 1980er Jahre. 1987 gründete er mit Werner A. Meier die AGK – Arbeitsgruppe für Kommunikationsforschung und -beratung und führte u. a. im Rahmen von Evaluationen zahlreiche Inhaltsanalysen durch sowie qualitative Forschungsprojekte basierend auf Experteninterviews. Von 2001 bis zu seiner Pensionierung 2013 forschte und lehrte er an der ZHAW – Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften zusammen mit Vinzenz Wyss an der Professur für Journalistik

Biological Solid-state NMR at ETH Zurich

Solid-state Magnetic Resonance has been greatly developed over the past decade. Higher field spectrometers and other technical developments are expected to lead to further significant improvements

Effects of pantoprazole 20 mg in mildgastroesophageal reflux disease: Once-daily treatment in the acute phase, and comparison of on-demand versus continuous treatment in the long term

AbstractBackground:Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a chronic disorder,and although effective short-term treatment strategies are known, the rate of relapse within 1 year is as high as 90% despite successful acute treatment. Consequently, most patients with GERD require an effective long-term management strategy to achieve adequate symptom control and maintain mucosal healing.Objective:The present study was undertaken to compare the control ofGERD symptoms during long-term (24-week) treatment with pantoprazole 20 mg used on-demand or continuously in patients with mild GERD after complete relief of acute GERD symptoms.Methods:Patients with endoscopically confirmed Savary/Miller grade 0(normal mucosa) or I (patchy red lesions without white coating or with central white coating) GERD were enrolled in this multinational, multicenter study comprising 2 phases. In the first phase, which was open label, patients were treated with pantoprazole 20 mg QD for 4 weeks. The presence and intensity of the symptoms of heartburn, acid regurgitation, and pain on swallowing were assessed. In the second phase, which was an open-label, 24-week, randomized design, only patients completely free of GERD symptoms after acute treatment were included. During this phase, on-demand treatment with pantoprazole 20 mg was directly compared with continuous treatment. The rate of failure to control GERD symptoms after 24 weeks of treatment was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Subsequently, the difference between treatments (on-demand minus continuous) and its 95% CI were calculated, and the on-demand treatment was tested for noninferiority using a predefined noninferiority margin of 20%. The mean daily symptom loads were compared between the treatment groups using the 1-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test on a 5% α level. The point estimate of the difference was determined using the Hodges-Lehman estimator and the 1-sided 95% CI according to Moses. The number of patients unwilling to continue due to insufficient control of heartburn, acid regurgitation, and pain on swallowing was analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier (time-to-event) analysis. Analysis was performed in the same manner as for the rate of failure to control GERD symptoms, but the 95% CI was interpreted for statistical superiority.Results:A total of 558 patients were enrolled in this study. At the end of theacute phase, 82.1% of patients in the per-protocol (PP) population and 79.1% in the intent-to-treat (ITT) population were relieved of all GERD symptoms, and subsequently entered the long-term phase. After 24 weeks of treatment, analysis of the failure rates revealed that on-demand treatment was noninferior to continuous treatment because the 95% CI was completely below 20% (ITT, 12.1% difference [95% CI, −∞ to 18.9%]; PP, 10.1% difference [95% CI, −∞ to 17.7%]). The higher perceived mean (SD) daily symptom load in the on-demand group (ITT, 1.26 [1.491 vs 0.82 [1.341) was balanced by the reduced tablet intake in that group (PP, 0.51 [0.31 ] vs 0.97 [0.11 ] tablets/d; P < 0.001). With respect to the rate of patients unwilling to continue treatment, no statistically significant difference was observed between the on-demand and continuous groups (ITT/PP, 0.95/1.13 vs 0.95/1.26).Conclusions:In this study of pantoprazole 20 mg tablets in patients withmild GERD, patients receiving on-demand treatment benefited despite their higher symptom load. The similar rates of unwillingness to continue treatment in both groups might suggest that patients were satisfied with the on-demand treatment strategy. On-demand treatment with pantoprazole 20 mg was found to be noninferior compared with continuous therapy with regard to symptom control. Both on-demand and continuous treatments were well tolerated

Developing Non‑Residential Building Stock Archetypes For LCI—A German Case Study Of Office And Administration Buildings

To accomplish the national and international climate goals, building renovation and optimisation of their energy and resource efficiency are essential. Thus, reliable information on the building stock (BS) is necessary. Most previous building typologies are focussing on residential buildings and the operational phase. This paper shows the development of a methodology for generating non-residential building (NRB) typologies for life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) of building constructions. Hereby, archetypes of office, administration and department (OAD) buildings are developed, exemplarily for the German NRB stock

Dominante Strukturen und Akteure der Digitalisierung: von «Digital Divide» auf Mikro-Ebene zu «Digital Inequality» auf Makro-Ebene

Die Beschäftigung mit der Digitalisierung von Öffentlichkeit und Gesellschaft ist bislang in der Kommunikationswissenschaft und speziell in der Medienwirkungsforschung defizitär gewesen. Nicht zuletzt besteht ein Mangel an theoretischer Stringenz und ein Defizit an mediensoziologischen Perspektiven und Analysen auf Makro-Ebene. Ebenso fehlen weitgehend Überlegungen zu den Konsequenzen der Digitalisierung auf der Politik-Ebene. Der folgende Beitrag zum digitalen Strukturwandel fokussiert im ersten Teil aus der Perspektive der klassischen Kommunikationswissenschaft auf Phänomene der sozial ungleichen Diffusion und Aneignung des Internets und der Social Media durch das Publikum der Zivilgesellschaft. Er basiert auf einer qualitativen Meta-Analyse der aktuellen Literatur und bilanziert die mediensoziologische Forschung zum theoretischen Konzept «Digital Divide» auf der Mikro-Ebene bezüglich Forschungsfragen, methodischen Zugriffen und empirischen Befunden. Hingewiesen wird auch auf Defizite bzw. «blinde Flecken» dieses Forschungsfeldes. Wegen der von uns konstatierten Mängel der empirischen «Digital-Divide»-Forschung steht im zweiten Teil die bislang vernachlässigte politökonomische Makro-Perspektive auf Phänomene der digitalen Ungleichheit – engl. «Digital Inequality» – im Zentrum. Analysiert und diskutiert werden die globalen Akteure, Strategien und Effekte des Plattform- und Überwachungskapitalismus im digitalen Strukturwandel der Gesellschaft. Der dritte Teil beschäftigt sich abschliessend mit der aktuellen Plattform-, Medien- und Datenpolitik. Das Ziel besteht darin, eine Governance-Perspektive zu entwickeln, welche auf die Meso- und Makro-Perspektive fokussiert, ohne aber Folgerungen für die Mikro-Ebene zu vernachlässigen