Heimweh - Bilanz einer beruflichen Tätigkeit im Jugendhilfebereich

In dem Beitrag werden alltägliche und verborgene Widersprüche in der Heimerziehung sowie vermiedene Wahrnehmungen und abgebrochene Handlungen aufgedeckt. Dabei geht es um die Form des Umgangs mit der allgegenwärtigen Gesellschaftlichkeit im Feld 'Heim', wobei von der Überzeugung ausgegangen wird, daß eine Veränderung, ein Bewußtsein von unten trotz mächtiger äußerer Bedingungen etwas bewirken kann. Diskutiert wird die Konfrontation des Jugendlichen mit der Realität: Wie kann einem Jugendlichen vermittelt werden, in einer 'schlechten' Gesellschaft 'gut' zu bewerten, zu handeln und sich dabei auch noch gut zu fühlen. Es wird deutlich gemacht, daß in der Heimerziehung Probleme nicht gelöst werden können, sondern daß der Umgang mit Krisen geübt wird. Als Kern der Heimarbeit mit Jugendlichen wird die 'Beziehungsarbeit' genannt. Ein Beziehungsmodell wird entwickelt. Das Problem des Autonom-werdens der Jugendlichen und des Los-lassens durch den Mitarbeiter wird erörtert. Insgesamt führt der Rückblick auf die eigene Tätigkeit im Heim zu der Erkenntnis, daß die pädagogischen und therapeutischen Ziele der Heimpädagogik von gesellschaftlichen Strömungen unterminiert werden. (RW

Insular cortex activity and the evocation of laughter

The insular cortex is fundamentally involved in the processing of interoceptive information. It has been postulated that the integrative monitoring of the bodily responses to environmental stimuli is crucial for the recognition and experience of emotions. Because emotional arousal is known to be closely coupled to functions of the anterior insula, we suspected laughter to be associated primarily with neuronal activity in this region. An anatomically constrained re-analysis of our imaging data pertaining to ticklish laughter, to inhibited ticklish laughter, and to voluntary laughter revealed regional differences in the levels of neuronal activity in the posterior and mid-/anterior portions of the insula. Ticklish laughter was associated specifically with right ventral anterior insular activity, which was not detected under the other two conditions. Hence, apparently, only laughter that is evoked as an emotional response bears the signature of autonomic arousal in the insular cortex

Exploration of the Neural Correlates of Ticklish Laughter by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The burst of laughter that is evoked by tickling is a primitive form of vocalization. It evolves during an early phase of postnatal life and appears to be independent of higher cortical circuits. Clinicopathological observations have led to suspicions that the hypothalamus is directly involved in the production of laughter. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation, healthy participants were 1) tickled on the sole of the right foot with permission to laugh, 2) tickled but asked to stifle laughter, and 3) requested to laugh voluntarily. Tickling that was accompanied by involuntary laughter activated regions in the lateral hypothalamus, parietal operculum, amygdala, and right cerebellum to a consistently greater degree than did the 2 other conditions. Activation of the periaqueductal gray matter was observed during voluntary and involuntary laughter but not when laughter was inhibited. The present findings indicate that hypothalamic activity plays a crucial role in evoking ticklish laughter in healthy individuals. The hypothalamus promotes innate behavioral reactions to stimuli and sends projections to the periaqueductal gray matter, which is itself an important integrative center for the control of vocalization. A comparison of our findings with published data relating to humorous laughter revealed the involvement of a common set of subcortical center

Laughter is in the air: Involvement of key nodes of the emotional motor system in the anticipation of tickling

In analogy to the appreciation of humor, that of tickling is based upon the re- interpretation of an anticipated emotional situation. Hence, the anticipation of tickling contributes to the final outburst of ticklish laughter. To localize the neuronal substrates of this process, fMRI was conducted on 31 healthy volunteers. The state of anticipation was simulated by generating an uncertainty respecting the onset of manual foot tickling. Anticipation was characterized by an augmented fMRI- signal in the anterior insula, the hypothalamus, the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area, as well as by an attenuated one in the internal globus pallidus. Furthermore, anticipatory activity in the anterior insula correlated positively with the degree of laughter that was produced during tickling. These findings are consistent with an encoding of the expected emotional consequences of tickling and suggest that early regulatory mechanisms influence, automatically, the laughter circuitry at the level of affective and sensory processing. Tickling activated not only those regions of the brain that were involved during anticipation, but also the posterior insula, the anterior cingulate cortex and the periaqueductal gray matter. Sequential or combined anticipatory and tickling-related neuronal activities may adjust emotional- and sensorimotor pathways in preparation for the impending laughter response

Web-GIS Visualisation of Permafrost-Related Remote Sensing Products for ESA GlobPermafrost

The GlobPermafrost project focuses on the accessibility of remote sensing data. This comprises of data product generation as well as on specific infrastructure to give information on and access to data. Further information regarding project status and events are available from www.globpermafrost.info. An online user survey conducted within the project highlights that GIS software is applied by a great deal of the user community. Additionally, data preview was requested by the majority of the survey participants. The Permafrost Information System PerSys will be conceptualized as an open access geospatial data dissemination and visualization portal. PerSys will allow raster and vector products visualisation resulting from GlobPermafrost such as land cover classifications, Landsat/Sentinel Trend datasets, lake and wetland extents, InSAR-based land surface deformation maps, block glaciers’ velocity fields, spatial permafrost model outputs, LST datasets, and many more. The data will be published as WebGIS services relying on OGC-standardized Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) technologies for data display and visualization. The technical WebGIS environment will be hosted at AWI where a geodata infrastructure has been implemented comprising of ArcGIS for Server 10.4, PostgreSQL 9.2 and a browser-driven data viewer unit based on Leaflet (http://leafletjs.com). Independently, we will provide an ‘Access - Restricted Data Dissemination Service’, which will be available to users for testing frequently updated versions of project datasets. In addition, the European Research Council (ERC) funded PETA-CARB project (http://www.awi.de/) developing the Arctic Permafrost Geospatial Centre (APGC) where PerSys will become a core project. The APGC Data Catalogue will contain all final products of GlobPermafrost and links to the derived permanent DOI-based ESA remote sensing products archived in PANGAEA data repository

Circumpolar mapping of permafrost temperature and thaw depth in the ESA Permafrost CCI project

Permafrost is an Essential Climate Variable (ECV) within the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), which is characterized by subsurface temperatures and the depth of the seasonal thaw layer. Complementing ground-based monitoring networks, the Permafrost CCI project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) 2018-2021 will establish Earth Observation (EO) based products for the permafrost ECV spanning the last two decades. Since ground temperature and thaw depth cannot be directly observed from space-borne sensors, we will ingest a variety of satellite and reanalysis data in a ground thermal model, which allows to quantitatively characterize the changing permafrost systems in Arctic and High-Mountain areas. As recently demonstrated for the Lena River Delta in Northern Siberia, the algorithm uses remotely sensed data sets of Land Surface Temperature (LST), Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) and landcover to drive the transient permafrost model CryoGrid 2, which yields ground temperature at various depths, in addition to thaw depth. For the circumpolar CCI product, we aim for a spatial resolution of 1km, and ensemble runs will be performed for each pixel to represent the subgrid variability of snow and land cover. The performance of the transient algorithm crucially depends on the correct representation of ground properties, in particular ice and organic contents. Therefore, the project will compile a new subsurface stratigraphy product which also holds great potential for improving Earth System Model results in permafrost environments. We present simulation runs for various permafrost regions and characterize the accuracy and ability to reproduce trends against ground-based data. Finally, we evaluate the feasibility of future “permafrost reanalysis” products, exploiting the information content of various satellite products to deliver the best possible estimate for the permafrost thermal state over a range of spatial scales

A phenomenological study into the experiences of retrenchment implementers

Thesis (MA(Industrial Psychology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007.Increased globalisation and competition have implications for organisational renewal and change and increasingly cost cutting, by retrenching employees, is part of the search for competitive advantage and sustainability. Within the South African context, retrenchments are no exception. The study explored the experiences of those who are tasked with the role of implementing the retrenchment, the so-called retrenchment implementers. Despite implementers being key to ensuring organisational success and profitability in the aftermath of retrenchment, research on their experiences is limited not only internationally, but also locally. The study was conducted amongst participants employed at various South African organisations. Qualitative data was obtained via semi-structured interviews with the implementers of retrenchments. Following content analysis, three key themes emerged: implementers’ experiences of procedural aspects as per s189 and s189A of the Labour Relations Act 66, of 1995 (as amended); implementers’ personal experiences of performing the retrenchment act and organisational and personal enabling strategies to assist with preparing implementers for the retrenchment task. Results indicate mixed responses in terms of complying with the relevant legislation. Insofar as their personal experiences are concerned, results indicate that while some implementers had found ways to adjust to their managerial function of implementing retrenchments, others experienced discomfort with their role, suffering from amongst others guilt and feelings of responsibility, role conflict, role overload, decreased emotional well being, a sense of isolation, negative self-perceptions and feelings of job insecurity. In the majority of cases, implementers experienced limited organisational emotional support and assistance in dealing with their emotions during the retrenchment conversation. These results support the limited non-South African literature. The results from the present study also added insight into the ways in which implementers are personally prepared for their role as well as ways in which organisations can assist them emotionally for their task

Exploration of the neural correlates of ticklish laughter by functional magnetic resonance imaging

The burst of laughter that is evoked by tickling is a primitive form of vocalization. It evolves during an early phase of postnatal life and appears to be independent of higher cortical circuits. Clinicopathological observations have led to suspicions that the hypothalamus is directly involved in the production of laughter. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation, healthy participants were 1) tickled on the sole of the right foot with permission to laugh, 2) tickled but asked to stifle laughter, and 3) requested to laugh voluntarily. Tickling that was accompanied by involuntary laughter activated regions in the lateral hypothalamus, parietal operculum, amygdala, and right cerebellum to a consistently greater degree than did the 2 other conditions. Activation of the periaqueductal gray matter was observed during voluntary and involuntary laughter but not when laughter was inhibited. The present findings indicate that hypothalamic activity plays a crucial role in evoking ticklish laughter in healthy individuals. The hypothalamus promotes innate behavioral reactions to stimuli and sends projections to the periaqueductal gray matter, which is itself an important integrative center for the control of vocalization. A comparison of our findings with published data relating to humorous laughter revealed the involvement of a common set of subcortical centers

Monitoring bedfast ice in lakes of the Lena River Delta using TerraSAR-X backscatter and coherence time series

Thermokarst lakes and ponds are major elements of permafrost landscapes, occupying up to 40% of land area in some vast thermokarst affected Arctic regions (Grosse et al., 2013). These waterbodies contribute significantly to the exchange of energy and greenhouse gases (GHG) between the land surface and the atmosphere. Deeper lakes (> 2 m) remain typically unfrozen beneath floating ice during winter, leading to the formation of continuously thawed bottom sediments (talik) which facilitate microbial activity and GHG production throughout the year (Langer et al., 2015). Shallower lakes (< 2 m) experience complete freezing down to the bottom which prevents talik formation and strongly limits the length of the GHG production period. Thus, distinguishing floating lake ice from grounded ice is crucial for evaluating the thermal and geobiochemical state of tundra landscapes. Radar remote sensing provides a powerful tool for accomplishing this task through the ability of radar signals to partially penetrate into or through the lake ice. Mostly, a method based on differences between backscatter signatures is used. In case of floating ice, radar signal backscatters from the ice-water interface and return is high in case of rough ice bottom, which is likely for lake ice (Atwood et al., 2015). In case of grounded ice, radar signal penetrates through the ice layer and transmits to the frozen lake bottom due to insufficient dielectric contrast between ice and frozen sediments, resulting in low backscatter. Although the method has been known since 1970’s, the potential of new generation satellite X-band radar imagery such as TerraSAR-X has yet to be evaluated. Interferometric coherence is a parameter which defines the degree of correlation between two radar signals and to a great extent depends on changes in backscattering surface occurred between two radar acquisitions. Interferometric coherence time series are used as a different approach for distinguishing floating lake ice from grounded ice. Coherence is low when the lake ice is growing, because backscattering surface (ice-water interface) changes with every acquisition. Coherence increases significantly when the ice reaches the lake bottom, creating permanent backscattering surface. Our study is based on TerraSAR-X data for the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 winter seasons. We investigated the use of TerraSAR-X backscatter and interferometric coherence time series with high spatial (3 m) and temporal (11 days) resolution for the detection of grounded ice, for monitoring ice growth stages, for the detection of timing of ice grounding and furthermore, for the derivation of the ice thickness in the number of shallow and deep thermokarst lakes in the Lena River Delta. Ice thickness and water depth measurements obtained from these lakes during a field program in the spring of 2015 are used for ground validation. Grosse G, Jones B, Arp C. 2013. Thermokarst lakes, drainage, and drained basins. In Treatise on Geomorphology. Shroder JF (ed). Elsevier: Amsterdam; Vol. 8: 325–353. Langer M, Westermann S, Anthony KM, Wischnewski K, Boike J. 2015. Frozen ponds: production and storage of methane during the Arctic winter in a lowland tundra landscape in northern Siberia, Lena River Delta. Biogeosciences 12, 977-990. DOI: 10.5194/bg-12-977-2015. Atwood D, Gunn G, Roussi C, Wu J, Duguay C, Sarabandi K. 2015. Microwave backscatter from Arctic lake ice and polarimetric implications. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 53(11): 5972-5982. DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2015.2429917