Susceptibility to Fear of Heights in Bilateral Vestibulopathy and Other Disorders of Vertigo and Balance

Aims: To determine the susceptibility to visual height intolerance (vHI) in patients with acquired bilateral vestibulopathy (BVP). The question was whether postural instability in BVP, which is partially compensated for by visual substitution of the impaired vestibular control of balance, leads to an increased susceptibility. This is of particular importance since fear of heights is dependent on body posture, and visual control of balance at heights can no longer substitute vestibular input. For comparison susceptibility to vHI was determined in patients with other vestibular or functional disorders. Methods: A total of 150 patients aged 18 or above who had been referred to the German Center for Vertigo and Balance Disorders and diagnosed to have BVP were surveyed with a standardized questionnaire by specifically trained neurological professionals. Further, 481 patients with other vestibular or functional disorders were included. Results: Susceptibility to vHI was reported by 29% (32 % in females, 25% in males) of the patients with BVP. Patients with vHI were slightly younger (67 vs. 71 years). Seventy percent of those with vHI reported avoidance of climbing, hiking, stairs, darkness, cycling or swimming (84% of those without vHI). Mean age for onset of vHI was 40 years. Susceptibility to vHI was higher in patients with other vertigo disorders than in those with BVP: 64% in those with phobic postural vertigo, 61% in vestibular migraine, 56% in vestibular paroxysmia, 54% in benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, 49% in unilateral vestibulopathy and 48% in Menière's disease. Conclusions: The susceptibility to vHI in BVP was not higher than that of the general population (28%).This allows two explanations that need not be alternatives but contribute to each other: (1) Patients with a bilateral peripheral vestibular deficit largely avoid exposure to heights because of their postural instability. (2) The irrational anxiety to fall from heights triggers increased susceptibility to vHI, not the objective postural instability. However, patients with BVP do not exhibit increased comorbid anxiety disorders. This view is supported by the significantly increased susceptibility to vHI in other vestibular syndromes, which are characterized by an increased comorbidity of anxiety disorders

The Design:Lab as platform in participatory design research

The notion of laboratory or simply ‘lab’ has become popular in recent years in areas outside science and technology development. Learning Labs, Innovation Labs, Usability Labs, Media and Communication Labs and even Art Labs designate institutions or fora dedicated to change and experimentation. Influenced by these currents, we use the expression ‘Design:Lab’ as a shorthand description of open collaborations between many stakeholders sharing a mutual interest in design research in a particular field. Many have reacted to the term ‘laboratory’ or ‘lab’ as foreign and awkward to design, and we as well as others have frequently used other metaphors like workshop, studio or atelier in design research. In this article we will argue that the laboratory metaphor is particularly suitable and useful for the Design:Lab, and we will give examples of how we have worked with the Design:Lab as a platform for collaborative inquiries and knowledge production based on design experiments.

Nuevos narradores en el campo de la cultura argentina. De lo espontáneo a lo profesional

Como fenómeno propio de los fines del siglo XX en muchas de las grandes ciudades argentinas asistimos a un renacer del arte del cuentacuentos. El cuentacuentos de hoy es un performer que se coloca en la encrucijada de otras artes, atrayendo a una audiencia que no suele concurrir a salas teatrales. Solo en el escenario cuenta sus historias dirigiéndose directamente al público, y si bien puede interpretar uno o varios personajes, su principal misión es la de narrar en nombre propio. Al cruzar la barrera de lo espontáneo a lo profesional, y de lo íntimo a lo público el cuentacuentos obtiene su legitimación como tal a través de la enseñanza, la animación cultural, los escenarios y la acción comunitaria. De manera tal ha ido conformando un espacio cultural y social específico dentro del campo cultural argentino que es objeto de nuestra reflexión.In many Argentine cities we assist to the rebirth of the storyteller, a typical character of the end of the XX century. The storyteller is today a performer located at the intersection of other arts. He/she captures the attention of people that seldom attends the theater. The storyteller tells his/her stories addressed to the public all by him/her. Although he/she is able to interpret several characters, his/her main mission is to personally narrate his/her stories. When he/she crosses the barrier between the spontaneous and the professional, the private and the public domains, the storyteller gets his/her legitimization through the teaching, the cultural animation, the scenery and the communitarian action. He/she has been given rise to an artistic and social space within the Argentine cultural field which is the subject of our paper

Phosphorus donors in highly strained silicon

The hyperfine interaction of phosphorus donors in fully strained Si thin films grown on virtual Si$_{1-x}$Ge$_x$ substrates with $x\leq 0.3$ is determined via electrically detected magnetic resonance. For highly strained epilayers, hyperfine interactions as low as 0.8 mT are observed, significantly below the limit predicted by valley repopulation. Within a Green's function approach, density functional theory (DFT) shows that the additional reduction is caused by the volume increase of the unit cell and a local relaxation of the Si ligands of the P donor.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure