Forschungslandschaft biotische Rohstoffe: Unternehmen und Branchen auf dem Weg zur Nachhaltigkeit (COMPASS)

Sustainable production and the sustainable use of biotic resources have becomeincreasingly significant. This results in the demand by society for a sustainable useof biotic resources especially within the nutrition sector. But also their use for industrial purposes had led research and development being given the task to support our economy with conceptional ideas.In this respect, the Working Group Eco-Efficiency & Sustainable Enterprises at theWuppertal Institute with Dr. Christa Liedtke as head, has developed a research landscape that gives a general overview of the theme of biotic resources - their sustainable production and use. The working group defines aims of research andlists urgent and current research tasks on a macro (politico-economically), meso (branches) and micro (enterprises and production) level. It is necessary to take onthe challenge that a future sustainable development presents for us. That is to realizeecologically, socially and economically a triple gain strategy along the three pillars of sustainability - to save resources, to create wealth and to strengthencompetitiveness.To implement this strategy the Working Group Eco-Efficiency and Sustainable Enterprises has developed the methodology tool of COMPASS (COMPAnies and Sectors' Path to Sustainability). Its aim is the system-embracing optimization ofsingle process chains, of products and services considering ecological, social and economic aspects. This methodology has already been implemented in various otherbranches and enterprises and it is now necessary to further adopt, test andspecifically develop COMPASS as a decision tool in the vast area of production anduse of biotic resources.This is done in a dialogue- and practice oriented way and inclose co-operation with all actors of the corresponding production lines. Generalworking themes that the Working Group will concentrate on in future deal with theproduct lines food products and products from renewable resources as follows:Identification of the ecological, economic and social targets of sustainability and aclassification of frameworks, obstacles and supporting aspects of sustainabledevelopment Identification of main material flows and severest pollution, of areas of highestmaterial turnover and of most significant social impacts within the area ofnutrition and use of renewable resources --

Operator splitting with spatial-temporal discretization

Continuing earlier investigations, we analyze the convergence of operator splitting procedures combined with spatial discretization and rational approximations

Operator splittings and spatial approximations for evolution equations

The convergence of various operator splitting procedures, such as the sequential, the Strang and the weighted splitting, is investigated in the presence of a spatial approximation. To this end a variant of Chernoff's product formula is proved. The methods are applied to abstract partial delay differential equations.Comment: to appear in J. Evol. Equations. Reviewers comments are incorporate

Gebietsheimische Gehölze in Baden-Württemberg : das richtige Grün am richtigen Ort

Sträucher und Bäume in der freien Landschaft zu pflanzen – dafür gibt es viele Gründe: Ufersicherung an Bächen und Flüssen, Böschungsbefestigung, Lärm- und Sichtschutz an Straßen und Wegen, Einbindung von Bauwerken, Belebung der Landschaft, Gliederung der Feldflur, Abschirmung sensibler Biotope oder die Entwicklung von Lebensstätten für Pflanzen- und Tierarten. So unterschiedlich wie die Gründe für eine Gehölzpflanzung, so unterschiedlich sind auch die Anforderungen an die zu pflanzenden Gehölzarten. Im einen Fall sollen es raschwüchsige, Sichtschutz bietende Gehölze sein, im anderen überflutungstolerante, im nächsten sollen Sträucher wichtige Nahrungspflanzen für die Tierwelt sein. Stets gilt aber der Grundsatz, dass die Pflanzung von Gehölzen nicht durch Einbringung naturraumfremder Arten zu einer Beeinträchtigung der heimischen Pflanzen- und Tierwelt führen darf oder die Eigenart der Landschaft verändert wird. Bei der Auswahl der Gehölzarten sind daher andere Aspekte von Bedeutung als im besiedelten Bereich, in Parks und Gärten, wo ästhetische oder individuelle Gesichtspunkte Vordergrund stehen können. Bei Pflanzungen in der offenen Landschaft ist dagegen ein besonderes Augenmerk auf die Verwendung naturraumtypischer Arten und auf die Herkunft des Pflanzguts zu werfen

Bullying girls - Changes after brief strategic family therapy: A randomized, prospective, controlled trial with one-year follow-up

Background: Many girls bully others. They are conspicuous because of their risk-taking behavior, increased anger, problematic interpersonal relationships and poor quality of life. Our aim was to determine the efficacy of brief strategic family therapy (BSFT) for bullying-related behavior, anger reduction, improvement of interpersonal relationships, and improvement of health-related quality of life in girls who bully, and to find out whether their expressive aggression correlates with their distinctive psychological features. Methods: 40 bullying girls were recruited from the general population: 20 were randomly selected for 3 months of BSFT. Follow-up took place 12 months after the therapy had ended. The results of treatment were examined using the Adolescents' Risk-taking Behavior Scale (ARBS), the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI), the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP-D), and the SF-36 Health Survey (SF-36). Results: In comparison with the control group (CG) (according to the intent-to-treat principle), bullying behavior in the BSFT group was reduced (BSFT-G from n = 20 to n = 6; CG from n = 20 to n = 18, p = 0.05) and statistically significant changes in all risk-taking behaviors (ARBS), on most STAXI, IIP-D, and SF-36 scales were observed after BSFT. The reduction in expressive aggression (Anger-Out scale of the STAXI) correlated with the reduction on several scales of the ARBS, IIP-D, and SF-36. Follow-up a year later showed relatively stable events. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that bullying girls suffer from psychological and social problems which may be reduced by the use of BSFT. Expressive aggression in girls appears to correlate with several types of risk-taking behavior and interpersonal problems, as well as with health-related quality of life. Copyright (c) 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel

Prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Validation and ranking of established staging-systems in a large western HCC-cohort.

HCC is diagnosed in approximately half a million people per year, worldwide. Staging is a more complex issue than in most other cancer entities and, mainly due to unique geographic characteristics of the disease, no universally accepted staging system exists to date. Focusing on survival rates we analyzed demographic, etiological, clinical, laboratory and tumor characteristics of HCC-patients in our institution and applied the common staging systems. Furthermore we aimed at identifying the most suitable of the current staging systems for predicting survival. Overall, 405 patients with HCC were identified from an electronic medical record database. The following seven staging systems were applied and ranked according to their ability to predict survival by using the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and the concordance-index (c-index): BCLC, CLIP, GETCH, JIS, Okuda, TNM and Child-Pugh. Separately, every single variable of each staging system was tested for prognostic meaning in uni- and multivariate analysis. Alcoholic cirrhosis (44.4%) was the leading etiological factor followed by viral hepatitis C (18.8%). Median survival was 18.1 months (95%-CI: 15.2-22.2). Ascites, bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase, AFP, number of tumor nodes and the BCLC tumor extension remained independent prognostic factors in multivariate analysis. Overall, all of the tested staging systems showed a reasonable discriminatory ability. CLIP (closely followed by JIS) was the top-ranked score in terms of prognostic capability with the best values of the AIC and c-index (AIC 2286, c-index 0.71), surpassing other established staging systems like BCLC (AIC 2343, c-index 0.66). The unidimensional scores TNM (AIC 2342, c-index 0.64) and Child-Pugh (AIC 2369, c-index 0.63) performed in an inferior fashion. Compared with six other staging systems, the CLIP-score was identified as the most suitable staging system for predicting prognosis in a large German cohort of predominantly non-surgical HCC-patients

The TreaT-Assay: A Novel Urine-Derived Donor Kidney Cell-Based Assay for Prediction of Kidney Transplantation Outcome

Donor-reactive immunity plays a major role in rejection after kidney transplantation, but analysis of donor-reactive T-cells is not applied routinely. However, it has been shown that this could help to identify patients at risk of acute rejection. A major obstacle is the limited quantity or quality of the required allogenic stimulator cells, including a limited availability of donor-splenocytes or an insufficient HLA-matching with HLA-bank cells. To overcome these limitations, we developed a novel assay, termed the TreaT (Transplant reactive T-cells)-assay. We cultivated renal tubular epithelial cells from the urine of kidney transplant patients and used them as stimulators for donor-reactive T-cells, which we analyzed by flow cytometry. We could demonstrate that using the TreaT-assay the quantification and characterization of alloreactive T-cells is superior to other stimulators. In a pilot study, the number of pre-transplant alloreactive T-cells negatively correlated with the post-transplant eGFR. Frequencies of pre-transplant CD161+ alloreactive CD4+ T-cells and granzyme B producing alloreactive CD8+ T-cells were substantially higher in patients with early acute rejection compared to patients without complications. In conclusion, we established a novel assay for the assessment of donor-reactive memory T-cells based on kidney cells with the potential to predict early acute rejection and post-transplant eGFR

Analysis of the Paired TCR α- and β-chains of Single Human T Cells

Analysis of the paired i.e. matching TCR α- and β-chain rearrangements of single human T cells is required for a precise investigation of clonal diversity, tissue distribution and specificity of protective and pathologic T-cell mediated immune responses. Here we describe a multiplex RT-PCR based technology, which for the first time allows for an unbiased analysis of the complete sequences of both α- and β-chains of TCR from single T cells. We validated our technology by the analysis of the pathologic T-cell infiltrates from tissue lesions of two T-cell mediated autoimmune diseases, psoriasis vulgaris (PV) and multiple sclerosis (MS). In both disorders we could detect various T cell clones as defined by multiple T cells with identical α- and β-chain rearrangements distributed across the tissue lesions. In PV, single cell TCR analysis of lesional T cells identified clonal CD8+ T cell expansions that predominated in the epidermis of psoriatic plaques. An MS brain lesion contained two dominant CD8+ T-cell clones that extended over the white and grey matter and meninges. In both diseases several clonally expanded T cells carried dual TCRs composed of one Vβ and two different Vα-chain rearrangements. These results show that our technology is an efficient instrument to analyse αβ-T cell responses with single cell resolution in man. It should facilitate essential new insights into the mechanisms of protective and pathologic immunity in many human T-cell mediated conditions and allow for resurrecting functional TCRs from any αβ-T cell of choice that can be used for investigating their specificity

Risk-Stratified Cardiovascular Screening Including Angiographic and Procedural Outcomes of Percutaneous Coronary Interventions in Renal Transplant Candidates

Background. Benefits of cardiac screening in kidney transplant candidates (KTC) will be dependent on the availability of effective interventions. We retrospectively evaluated characteristics and outcome of percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) in KTC selected for revascularization by a cardiac screening approach. Methods. In 267 patients evaluated 2003 to 2006, screening tests performed were reviewed and PCI characteristics correlated with major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) during a follow-up of 55 months. Results. Stress tests in 154 patients showed ischemia in 28 patients (89% high risk). Of 58 patients with coronary angiography, 38 had significant stenoses and 18 cardiac interventions (6.7% of all). 29 coronary lesions in 17/18 patients were treated by PCI. Angiographic success rate was 93.1%, but procedural success rate was only 86.2%. Long lesions (P=0.029) and diffuse disease (P=0.043) were associated with MACE. In high risk patients, cardiac screening did not improve outcome as 21.7% of patients with versus 15.5% of patients without properly performed cardiac screening had MACE (P=0.319). Conclusion. The moderate procedural success of PCI and poor outcome in long and diffuse coronary lesions underscore the need to define appropriate revascularization strategies in KTC, which will be a prerequisite for cardiac screening to improve outcome in these high-risk patients