Nährstoffsalden und Nitratgehalte des Sickerwassers in ökologisch und konventionell bewirtschafteter Ackerflächen

Die Nährstoffsalden ökologisch bewirtschafteter Betriebe lagen bei den Hauptnährstoffen Stickstoff, Phosphat und Kali deutlich unter den Salden konventionell bewirtschafteter Betriebe. Bei Phosphat und Kali wurden negative Salden festgestellt. Bei mittel- und langfristiger Betrachtung werden die pflanzenverfügbaren Bodengehalte sinken. Unter 10 mg/100 g Boden muss im Rahmen der zugelassenen Möglichkeiten eine Erhaltungsdüngung durchgeführt werden, wenn das mögliche Ertragspotential ausgeschöpft werden soll. Die dargestellten Unterschiede der Stickstoffsalden bei konventioneller und ökologischer Bewirtschaftung werden durch Untersuchungsergebnisse hinsichtlich der Nitratkonzentration im Sickerwasser bestätigt. Nach unseren Untersuchungen lag die Nitratkonzentration unterhalb des durchwurzelbaren Raumes unter ökologisch bewirtschafteten Flächen deutlich unter den Gehalten konventionell bewirtschafteter Flächen. Sie lagen aber im Mittel über dem Richtwert für Trinkwasser von 25mg/l

The Role of PPARα Activation in Liver and Muscle

PPARα is one of three members of the soluble nuclear receptor family called peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR). It is a sensor for changes in levels of fatty acids and their derivatives that responds to ligand binding with PPAR target gene transcription, inasmuch as it can influence physiological homeostasis, including lipid and carbohydrate metabolism in various tissues. In this paper we summarize the involvement of PPARα in the metabolically active tissues liver and skeletal muscle and provide an overview of the risks and benefits of ligand activation of PPARα, with particular consideration to interspecies differences

Experiences of family therapists working with parents after the forced removal of children: What can the contextual model tell us?

This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.Parents whose children have been statutorily removed by child protection services are a vulnerable, hard-to-reach, and under-focused group. Their needs are numerous and complex. The Family Counselling Services in Norway are mandated to prioritize and provide emotional support services to this parent group. The study aimed to explore and understand the experiences and needs of family therapists through the lens of the Contextual Model (Wampold, 2015). A national sample of 21 therapists currently providing services to this parent group participated in the study. Data were collected using focus-group interviews. The main categories of the initial bond, the personal relationship, expectations, and therapy-specific ingredients provided a framework to assess what therapists already know and need in the future to provide services to the parent group. Therapists showed great awareness and strength in building a personal relationship with the client. However, they felt that sharpening their generalist knowledge with therapy-specific models would make them more effective therapists. The contextual model provided new concepts and vocabulary that can enrich research and clinical efforts and lift it to a broader audience.publishedVersio

Experiences of family therapists working with parents after the forced removal of children: What can the contextual model tell us?

Parents whose children have been statutorily removed by child protection services are a vulnerable, hard-to-reach, and under-focused group. Their needs are numerous and complex. The Family Counselling Services in Norway are mandated to prioritize and provide emotional support services to this parent group. The study aimed to explore and understand the experiences and needs of family therapists through the lens of the Contextual Model (Wampold, 2015). A national sample of 21 therapists currently providing services to this parent group participated in the study. Data were collected using focus-group interviews. The main categories of the initial bond, the personal relationship, expectations, and therapy-specific ingredients provided a framework to assess what therapists already know and need in the future to provide services to the parent group. Therapists showed great awareness and strength in building a personal relationship with the client. However, they felt that sharpening their generalist knowledge with therapy-specific models would make them more effective therapists. The contextual model provided new concepts and vocabulary that can enrich research and clinical efforts and lift it to a broader audience.publishedVersio

Telemedicin: Et maktperspektiv

Til tross for betydelige statlige investeringer over flere år, er ikke telemedisin en etablert behandlingsform i norsk helsevesen. Lav utbredelse forklares ofte med at leger og andre helseprofesjonelle fungerer som portvakter. Etter vår mening er det behov for å heve blikket og supplere forklaringene på individnivå. I denne artikkelen presenterer vi en empirisk analyse inspirert av Bourdieus maktperspektiv. Vi har brukt intervju, observasjons og dokumentmateriale fra to empiriske case, teleslag og teledermatologi. I begge casene var legene positive til bruk av telemedisin, men løsningene ble lite brukt. Analysen får frem hvordan telemedisin er mer enn nye verktøy for klinkerne, og faktisk trigger diskusjoner om selve kjernen i helsefeltets autonomi; spørsmålet om hva som er den riktige behandling. Vi konkluderer med at mottagelsen av telemedisin i klinisk praksis må forstås i lys av pågående maktkamper i helsefeltet, mellom statlige styringsinteresser på den ene siden og profesjonell autonomi på den andre.Telemedicine; power disruptions in health careAlthough the development of telemedicine has been a priority in Norwegian public health care for over 20 years, only a limited number of applications have been established as routine services. Dominant explanations of slow diffusion points to clinicians and their role as gatekeepers. We argue there is a need to look beyond the ubiquitous accounts of individual influences, and include power structures in the analysis of telemedicine diffusion. In this paper, we present an empirical analysis inspired by Bourdieu’s conceptual framework. The data consist of interviews, observations, and public- and project documents from two case studies; telestroke and teledermatology. In both cases, the clinicians were positive and involved in the implementation of telemedicine. Nevertheless, the services were not developed into routine practice; in fact, they were rarely used. Telemedicine touches upon the core value of health care activity: how to define the best patient treatment. The paper argues telemedicine might disrupt and be disrupted by existing power struggles in the health care sector. We conclude that slow diffusion of telemedicine should be understood in light of ongoing negotiations and power struggles between state regulatory powers on the one hand and health professional autonomy on the other

Autocorrelation in Updating Pure SU(3) Lattice Gauge Theory by the use of Overrelaxed Algorithms

We measure the sweep-to-sweep autocorrelations of blocked loops below and above the deconfinement transition for SU(3) on a $16^4$ lattice using 20000-140000 Monte-Carlo updating sweeps. A divergence of the autocorrelation time toward the critical $\beta$ is seen at high blocking levels. The peak is near $\beta$ = 6.33 where we observe 440 $\pm$ 210 for the autocorrelation time of $1\times 1$ Wilson loop on $2^4$ blocked lattice. The mixing of 7 Brown-Woch overrelaxation steps followed by one pseudo-heat-bath step appears optimal to reduce the autocorrelation time below the critical $\beta$. Above the critical $\beta$, however, no clear difference between these two algorithms can be seen and the system decorrelates rather fast.Comment: 4 pages of A4 format including 6-figure

Maternal angiotensinogen (AGT) haplotypes, fetal renin (REN) haplotypes and risk of preeclampsia; estimation of gene-gene interaction from family-triad data

Background Preeclampsia is a debilitating disorder affecting approximately 3% of pregnant women in the Western world. Although inconclusive, current evidence suggests that the renin-angiotensin system may be involved in hypertension. Therefore, our objective was to determine whether the genes for placental renin (REN) and maternal angiotensinogen (AGT) interact to influence the risk of preeclampsia. Methods Three haplotype-tagging SNPs (htSNPs) covering REN (rs5705, rs1464818, and rs3795575) and another three covering AGT (rs2148582, rs2478545 and rs943580) were genotyped in 99 mother-father-child triads of preeclampsia pregnancies. We estimated relative risks (RR) conferred by maternal AGT and fetal REN haplotypes using HAPLIN, a statistical software designed to detect multi-marker transmission distortion among triads. To assess a combined effect of maternal AGT and fetal REN haplotypes, the preeclamptic triads were first stratified by presence/absence of maternal AGT haplotype C-T-A and tested for an effect of fetal REN across these strata. Results We found evidence that mothers carrying the most frequent AGT haplotype, C-T-A, had a reduced risk of preeclampsia (RR of 0.4, 95% CI = 0.2-0.8 for heterozygotes and 0.6, 95% CI = 0.2-1.5 for homozygotes). Mothers homozygous for AGT haplotypes t-c-g and C-c-g appeared to have a higher risk, but only the former was statistically significant. We found only weak evidence of an overall effect of fetal REN haplotypes and no support for our hypothesis that an effect of REN depended on whether the mother carried the C-T-A haplotype of AGT (p = 0.33). Conclusion Our findings indicate that the mother's AGT haplotypes affect her risk for developing preeclampsia. However, this risk is not influenced by fetal REN haplotypes.publishedVersio

Endomyocardial, intralymphocyte, and whole blood concentrations of ciclosporin A in heart transplant recipients

BACKGROUND: In the early phases following heart transplantation a main challenge is to reduce the impact of acute rejections. Previous studies indicate that intracellular ciclosporin A (CsA) concentration may be a sensitive acute rejection marker in renal transplant recipients. The aims of this study were to evaluate the relationships between CsA concentrations at different target sites as potential therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) tools in heart transplant recipients. METHODS: Ten heart transplant recipients (8 men, 2 women) on CsA-based immunosuppression were enrolled in this prospective single-center pilot study. Blood samples were obtained once to twice weekly up to 12 weeks post-transplant. One of the routine biopsies was allocated to this study at each sampling time. Whole blood, intralymphocyte, and endomyocardial CsA concentrations were determined with validated HPLC-MS/MS-methods. Mann–Whitney U test was used when evaluating parameters between the two groups of patients. To correlate whole blood, intralymphocyte, and endomyocardial CsA concentrations linear regression analysis was used. RESULTS: Three patients experienced mild rejections. In the study period, the mean (range) intralymphocyte CsA trough concentrations were 10.1 (1.5 to 39) and 8.1 (1.3 to 25) ng/10(6) cells in the rejection and no-rejection group, respectively (P=0.21). Corresponding whole blood CsA concentrations were 316 (153 to 564) and 301 (152 to 513) ng/mL (P=0.33). There were no correlations between whole blood, intralymphocyte, or endomyocardial concentrations of CsA (P >0.11). CONCLUSIONS: The study did not support an association between decreasing intralymphocyte CsA concentrations and acute rejections. Further, there were no association between blood concentrations and concentrations at sites of action, potentially challenging TDM in these patients

NKp46 defines ovine cells that have characteristics corresponding to NK cells

Natural killer (NK) cells are well recognized as playing a key role in innate immune defence through cytokine production and cytotoxic activity; additionally recent studies have identified several novel NK cell functions. The ability to study NK cells in the sheep has been restricted due to a lack of specific reagents. We report the generation of a monoclonal antibody specific for ovine NKp46, a receptor which in a number of mammals is expressed exclusively in NK cells. Ovine NKp46+ cells represent a population that is distinct from CD4+ and γδ+ T-cells, B-cells and cells of the monocytic lineage. The NKp46+ cells are heterogenous with respect to expression of CD2 and CD8 and most, but not all, express CD16 - characteristics consistent with NK cell populations in other species. We demonstrate that in addition to populations in peripheral blood and secondary lymphoid organs, ovine NKp46+ populations are also situated at the mucosal surfaces of the lung, gastro-intestinal tract and non-gravid uterus. Furthermore, we show that purified ovine NKp46+ populations cultured in IL-2 and IL-15 have cytotoxic activity that could be enhanced by ligation of NKp46 in re-directed lysis assays. Therefore we conclude that ovine NKp46+ cells represent a population that by phenotype, tissue distribution and function correspond to NK cells and that NKp46 is an activating receptor in sheep as in other species

Description of the prehospital emergency healthcare system in Norway

Background: Norway has a long coastline, steep mountains, and wide fjords, which presents some challenges to the prehospital emergency healthcare system. In recent years, the prehospital emergency medical services (EMS) have undergone significant changes, structurally, in terms of professionalisation of the services and in the education level of the personnel. In this article, we aim to describe the current structure for handling prehospital medical emergencies. Methods: For healthcare, Norway is divided into four Regional Health Authorities, consisting of 19 Health Trusts, where 18 have an EMS. There is a dedicated medical emergency number, 113, that terminates in 16 emergency medical communication centres. The use of air and boat ambulances, in addition to traditional ambulances, seeks to meet the challenges in the EMS system. Strengths and limitations: The Norwegian EMS is an advanced system with highly educated staff; however, this level of care comes with an equally high cost. Conclusion: The Norwegian EMS can handle emergencies nationwide, providing advanced care at the scene and during transport. The geography and demography challenge the idea of equal care, but the open publishing of data from national quality registries seeks to identify and address potential differences