Aebi, Adrian, Göldi, Susan, Weder, Mirjam (Hrsg.). «Schrift – Bild – Ton. Beiträge zum multimodalen Schreiben in Bildung und professioneller Kommunikation»

Changes are taking in place academic writing due to the influence of the English-speaking academic community. While these changes are plain to see, they seldom undergo critical examination when it comes to learning how to wield them. Arlene Archer, a South African writing researcher and Director of the University of Cape Town’s Writing Center, studies this very aspect of academic language. As a keynote speaker at the Forum for Academic Writing conference organized in collaboration with the Lucerne School of Business Institute for Communication and Marketing, she was the sole presenter to draw attention to the political dimension of participation in academia. Using the concept of “voice”, which is to be understood approximately as “discursive self”, she highlights the need for a metalanguage in teaching and learning that will bring visibility to certain limitations on discourse. Archer uses social semiotics to always link the production of meaning in writing with social implications. She focuses on two central aspects of “voice”: the recognizability of authorship, which is expressed in various decisions on how content is selected and presented; and citation, which has the ability to open or close the door to academic conversation like a key. The author then presents a matrix of terms that can be used to ascertain “voice” in multimodal texts. Archer's critical examination of conventions in academic writing is recognizably motivated by Identity Politics and serves in part to empower the disadvantaged. Thus, Archer likewise ties didactics into a political mission that is strongly aimed at reflection and not just the use of resources in a semiotic sense

Stress affects the prediction of others’ behavior

Predicting behavior of other people is vital for successful social interactions. We tested whether a stress-induced cortisol increase affects healthy young men’s prediction of another individual’s behavior. Forty-two participants were randomly assigned to a stress or to a control condition. Afterwards, they participated in a modified false-belief task that not only tests false-belief understanding but also the tendency to predict another person’s future behavior based on his former behavior. Subjective ratings and salivary cortisol concentrations revealed a successful stress induction. Stress did not affect participants’ attribution of false beliefs but it increased the probability to predict that a protagonist would act according to his former behavior. Recognizing that stress fosters the interpretation of others’ behavior following their former behavior and not their current goals extends previous research showing that stress fosters our own habitual behavior

Associations between comorbidities, their treatment and survival in patients with interstitial lung diseases – a claims data analysis

Background: Interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) are associated with a high burden of disease. However, data on the prognostic impact of comorbidities and comorbidity-related pharmaceutical treatments in patients with various ILDs remain sparse. Methods: Using longitudinal claims data from a German Statutory Health Insurance Fund, we assessed comorbidity in ILD subtypes and associated drug treatments. Baseline comorbidity was assessed via the Elixhauser Comorbidity Index that was amended by ILD-relevant conditions. Drug treatment was assessed on the substance level using the ATC-codes of drugs prescribed at the time of ILD diagnosis. Subsequently, the comorbid conditions (main analysis) and pharmaceutical substances (secondary analysis) with a meaningful association to survival were identified for the complete ILD cohort and within the subtype strata. For this, we applied multivariate Cox models using a LASSO selection process and visualized the findings within comorbidomes. Results: In the 36,821 patients with ILDs, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), arterial hypertension, and ischaemic heart disease (IHD) were the most prevalent comorbidities. The majority of patients with cardiovascular diseases received pharmaceutical treatment, while, in other relevant comorbidities, treatment quotas were low (COPD 46%, gastro-oesophageal reflux disease 65%). Comorbidities had a clinically meaningful detrimental effect on survival that tended to be more pronounced in the case of untreated conditions (e.g. hazard ratios for treated IHD 0.97 vs. 1.33 for untreated IHD). Moreover, comorbidity impact varied substantially between distinct subtypes. Conclusions: Our analyses suggest that comorbid conditions and their treatment profile significantly affect mortality in various ILDs. Therefore, comprehensive comorbidity assessment and management remains important in any ILD

Datenbank Biomassepotenziale - Erstellung einer Datenbank zur Berechnung regionaler Biomassepotenziale aus dem landwirtschaftlichen Anbau und ausgewählten Reststoffen für den Non-Food-Bereich im Freistaat Sachsen bis zum Jahr 2020

Ziele des FuE-Vorhabens waren die Bereitstellung von Daten über die im Freistaat Sachsen bis 2020 regional tatsächlich verfügbaren Potenziale an Biomasse und die Gewinnung von mehr Sicherheit im Hinblick auf die Auswirkungen der Einflussfaktoren, denen diese Potenziale unterliegen. Dazu wurde eine Datenbank zur Berechnung der sächsischen Biomassepotenziale aus der Landwirtschaft und von ausgewählten Reststoffen für den Non-Food-Bereich erarbeitet. Diese ist durch folgende Punkte gekennzeichnet: - Durch die Berücksichtigung von Einflussfaktoren wie regional anzutreffende landwirtschaftliche Standorte, standortabhängige vom Nutzer festzulegende Fruchtfolgen, Ertragsentwicklung, Bevölkerungsentwicklung und verfügbare Ackerflächen werden differenzierte Daten berechnet. - Die Berechnungen können auf drei Ebenen erfolgen: für Sachsen, Regierungsbezirke und je Landkreis. - Es wurden zwei Beispielsszenarien berechnet, an Hand derer die Potenziale bei variierten Annahmen verdeutlicht werden. - Hinweise zur Arbeitsweise der Datenbank wurden in einem Handbuch zusammengestellt. Die Datenbank ermöglicht mit den flexiblen Eingabedaten die Berechnung konkreter regionalspezifischer Daten für das Potenzial aus landwirtschaftlicher Biomasse. Dies verbessert die Voraussetzungen für regionale Planungen von Vorhaben, die Biomasse als Rohstoff beanspruchen, erheblich

iTReX: Interactive exploration of mono- and combination therapy dose response profiling data

High throughput screening methods, measuring the sensitivity and resistance of tumor cells to drug treatments have been rapidly evolving. Not only do these screens allow correlating response profiles to tumor genomic features for developing novel predictors of treatment response, but they can also add evidence for therapy decision making in precision oncology. Recent analysis methods developed for either assessing single agents or combination drug efficacies enable quantification of dose-response curves with restricted symmetric fit settings. Here, we introduce iTReX, a user-friendly and interactive Shiny/R application, for both the analysis of mono- and combination therapy responses. The application features an extended version of the drug sensitivity score (DSS) based on the integral of an advanced five-parameter dose-response curve model and a differential DSS for combination therapy profiling. Additionally, iTReX includes modules that visualize drug target interaction networks and support the detection of matches between top therapy hits and the sample omics features to enable the identification of druggable targets and biomarkers. iTReX enables the analysis of various quantitative drug or therapy response readouts (e.g. luminescence, fluorescence microscopy) and multiple treatment strategies (drug treatments, radiation). Using iTReX we validate a cost-effective drug combination screening approach and reveal the application’s ability to identify potential sample-specific biomarkers based on drug target interaction networks. The iTReX web application is accessible at (https://itrex.kitz-heidelberg.de).Peer reviewe

Prospective evaluation of hydroxychloroquine in pediatric interstitial lung diseases

Background: Interstitial lung diseases in children (chILD) are rare and consist of many different entities that affect the parenchyma of the lungs, leading to a chronic lung disease. The natural course of many of these diseases is connected with a high morbidity and significant mortality. Symptomatic treatment consists of oxygen supplementation, adequate nutrition adapted to the high energy demand generated by the disease due to the increased breathing effort required, as well as immunization against respiratory pathogens to prevent exacerbations through respiratory infections. No proven pharmacological treatments are available to date. This placebo-controlled study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the mid-term use of hydroxychloroquine in chILD. Methods and design: The study is an explorative, prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled investigation of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in chILD. Patients can be included into the trial when diagnosed with a chronic (≥ 3 weeks' duration) diffuse parenchymal lung disease (chILD) (1) genetically defined, (2) histologically defined or (3) diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary hemorrhage (hemosiderosis). The study contains of two different study blocks, a START and a STOP block, which can be initiated in any sequence. Each patient can participate in each block only once. In the START block subjects are randomized to parallel groups for 4 weeks treatment, then the placebo group is switched to the active drug. In the STOP block, subjects taking HCQ are randomized into parallel groups treated with placebo or HCQ. Discussion: This study is the first international, investigator-initiated, prospective and controlled investigation of a pharmacological treatment in chILD. The block design was selected as it has the advantage of accommodating patients who are initiating or withdrawing from HCQ therapy, thus allowing the participation of those who were previously started on off-label HCQ. The cross-over design and selected outcome parameters enables us to include appropriate numbers of patients of all age groups from neonates to adults suffering from these rare diseases. Trial registration: This is an exploratory, Phase 2a, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, multinational study investigating the initiation or withdrawal of hydroxychloroquine in subjects with chILD. Study title: Hydroxychloroquine in pediatric ILD: START randomized controlled in parallel groups, then switch placebo to the active drug, and STOP randomized controlled in parallel groups to evaluate the efficacy and safety of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). Short title: HCQ in pediatric ILD, particularly 4surfdefect. EudraCT, ID: 2013-003714-40. Registered on 2 July 2013. ClinicalTrials.gov, ID: NCT02615938. Registered on 8 November 2015. IZKS trial code: 2013-006; Sponsor: University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich. Responsible Party: Prof. Dr. med. Matthias Griese, University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany