Anti-Saccharomyces cerevisiae antibodies in patients with inflammatory bowel disease and their first-degree relatives: Potential clinical value

Anti-Saccharomyces cerevisiae antibodies (ASCA) have been described as specific markers in Crohn's disease and their healthy first-degree relatives. 171 patients with Crohn's disease, their 105 first-degree relatives, 145 patients with ulcerative colitis and 101 first-degree relatives of patients with ulcerative colitis, 50 patients with infectious enterocolitis and 100 healthy controls were tested for ASCA employing the ELISA technique. When compared with the healthy controls (p < 0.0001) and patients with infectious enterocolitis (p < 0.0001) the prevalence of ASCA was significantly increased in patients with Crohn's disease and their first-degree relatives (p < 0.01). Further significant differences concerning the frequency of ASCA within the different groups of our study population were not observed. In particular, ASCA were not found in increased prevalence in infectious enterocolitis. These observations are compatible with a role of ASCA as a marker of genetic predisposition to Crohn's disease. Copyright (C) 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel

Additions- und Cycloadditionsreaktionen von Allenyl-Kationen mit acyclischen 1,3-Dienen

Die Zinkchlorid-Ether-katalysierte Umsetzung von Propargylchloriden 1 mit acyclischen Dienen 2 liefert bei -78°C die linearen Additionsprodukte 3 bzw. 4, die unter Lewis-Säure-Katalyse bei höheren Temperaturen zu den cyclischen Vinylchloriden 5 umlagern. Nur solche Kombinationen aus 1 und 2 liefern dabei 1:1-Produkte, bei denen die Edukte 1 rascher dissoziieren als die Produkte. Andernfalls entstehen höhermolekulare Verbindungen wie z.B. das 2:1-Produkt 6. Die Reaktionsmechanismen der Additionsreaktionen werden diskutiert

Transcending the locality of grassroots initiatives : diffusion of sustainability knowledge and practice through transdisciplinary research

Community-based approaches to natural resource management are being discussed and experienced as promising ways for pursuing ecological conservation and socio-economic development simultaneously. However, the multiplicity of levels, scales, objectives and actors that are involved in sustainability transformations tends to be challenging for such bottom-up approaches. Collaborative and polycentric governance schemes are proposed for dealing with those challenges. What has not been fully explored is how knowledge from local contexts of community-based initiatives can be diffused to influence practices on higher levels and/or in other local contexts. This study explores how theoretical advances in the diffusion of grassroots innovation can contribute to understanding and supporting the diffusion of knowledge and practices from community-based initiatives and proposes a transdisciplinary approach to diffusion. For that aim, we develop an analytical perspective on the diffusion of grassroots innovations that takes into consideration the multiplicity of actors, levels and scales, the different qualities/types of knowledge and practices, as well as their respective contributions. We focus on the multiplicity and situatedness of cognitive frames and conceptualize the diffusion of grassroots innovations as a transdisciplinary process. In this way three different diffusion pathways are derived in which the knowledge and practices of grassroots initiatives can be processed in order to promote their (re)interpretation and (re)application in situations and by actors that do not share the cognitive frame and the local context of the originating grassroots initiative. The application of the developed approach is illustrated through transdisciplinary research for the diffusion of sustainable family farming innovations in Colombia. This conceptualization accounts for the emergence of multiplicity as an outcome of diffusion by emphasizing difference as a core resource in building sustainable futures

Kontextabhängiger Zugriff auf Verteilte und Heterogene Multimedial Daten Quellen

Making multimedia data available online becomes less expensive and more convenient on a daily basis. This development promotes web phenomenons such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. These phenomena and their increased acceptance in society in turn leads to a multiplication of the amount of available images online. This vast amount of, frequently public and therefore searchable, images already exceeds the zettabyte bound. Executing a similarity search on the magnitude of images that are publicly available in the Internet, and receiving a top quality result is a challenge that the scientific community has recently attempted to rise to. One approach to cope with this problem assumes the use of distributed heterogeneous Content Based Image Retrieval system (CBIRs). Following from this anticipation, the problems that emerge from a distributed query scenario must be dealt with. For example the involved CBIRs’ usage of distinct metadata formats for describing their content, as well as their unequal technical and structural information. An addition issue is the individual metrics that are used by the CBIRs to calculate the similarity between pictures, as well as their specific way of being combined. Overall, receiving good results in this environment is a very labor intensive task which has been scientifically but not yet comprehensively explored. The problem primarily addressed in this work is the collection of pictures from CBIRs, that are similar to a given picture, as a response to a distributed multimedia query. The main contribution of this thesis is the construction of a network of Content Based Image Retrieval systems that are able to extract and exploit the information about an input image’s semantic concept. This so called semantic CBIRn is mainly composed of CBIRs that are configured by the semantic CBIRn itself. Complementarily, there is a possibility that allows the integration of specialized external sources. The semantic CBIRn is able to collect and merge results of all of these attached CBIRs. In order to be able to integrate external sources that are willing to join the network, but are not willing to disclose their configuration, an algorithm was developed that approximates these configurations. By categorizing existing - as well as external - CBIRs and analyzing incoming queries, image queries are exclusively forwarded to the most suitable CBIRs. In this way, images that are not of any use for the user can be omitted beforehand. The hereafter returned images are rendered comparable in order to be able to merge them to one single result list of images, that are similar to the input image. The feasibility of the approach and the hereby obtained improvement of the search process is demonstrated by a prototypical implementation and its evaluation using classified images of ImageNet. Using this prototypical implementation an augmentation of the number of returned images that are of the same semantic concept as the input images is achieved by a factor of 4.75 with respect to a predefined non-semantic CBIRn.Multimedia Daten im Internet bereitzustellen wird von Tag zu Tag kostengünstiger und bequemer. Diese Entwicklung fördert Netz-Phänomene wie Facebook, Twitter und Flickr. Dies wiederum führt zu einer Multiplikation der im Internet verfügbaren Bilder. Diese Menge von häufig öffentlichen und darum suchbaren Bildern übersteigt schon heute die Zettabyte-Grenze. Eine ähnlichkeits-Suche auf diese Masse von Bildern, die öffentlich im Internet verfügbar sind, auszuführenundeinhochwertigesResultatzuerzielenisteineHerausforderungdersichdie wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft heutzutage stellt. Um beispielsweise dieses Problem mit Inhaltsbasierten Bilder Suchsystemen (CBIRs) zu lösen müssen Probleme, die durch ein verteiltes Anfrageszenario entstehen, behandelt werden. Damit sind u.a. die Verwendung von unter- schiedlichen Ausprägungen von Metadaten Formaten involvierter CBIRs um ihre Bilder zu beschreiben, so wie ihre ungleiche technischen und strukturellen Informationen gemeint. Oder die individuellen Metriken, die von den CBIRs verwendet werden um die Ähnlichkeit der Bilder zu berechnen, wie auch ihre spezielle Art diese zu kombinieren. Im Großen und Ganzen besteht eine sehr arbeitsintensive Aufgabe darin, unter diesen Umständen gute Resultate zu erzielen. Diese Aufgabe wurde von wissenschaftlicher Seite noch nicht umfassend erforscht. Das Problem das hauptsächlich in dieser Arbeit thematisiert wird, ist das Sammeln von Bildern die einem vorgegebenen Bild ähnlich sind, als Antwort auf eine verteilte Multimedia Anfrage. Der Hauptbeitrag dieser Dissertation ist der Aufbau eines Netzwerks von CBIRs, das die semantischen Konzepte der Anfragebilder nutzen kann, genannt semantisches CBIRn. Das semantische CBIRn ist in der Lage, Ergebnisse von CBIRs zu sammeln und zusammenzufügen, die vom semantischen CBIRn selbst angelegt wurden, und CBIRs, die von spezialisierten externen Quellen integriert wurden. Um in der Lage zu sein, externe Quellen zu integrieren die dem Netzwerk beitreten möchten, jedoch nicht ihre Konfigurationen preis geben möchten, wurde ein Algorithmus entwickelt der diese Konfiguration berechnet. Durch die Kategorisierung der angelegten - wie auch der externen - CBIRs und durch die Analyse einkommender Anfragen, werden inhaltsbasierte Suchanfragen ausschließlich zu den geeignetsten CBIRs weitergeleitet. DieanschließendzurückgegebenenBilderwerdenvergleichbargemachtumimstandezusein, sie zu fusionieren und eine Ergebnisliste zurückzugeben, die dem Eingabebild ähnlich sind. Die Machbarkeit des Ansatzes und die gewonnenen Verbesserungen des Suchprozesses wird durch eine prototypische Umsetzung und einer Auswertung von Tests mit klassifizierten Bilder von ImageNet durchgeführt. Hierbei wurde im Vergleich mit einer vordefinierten nicht-semantischen CBIRn eine Steigerung der Anzahl der rückgegebenen Bilder die dem selben semantischen Konzepts wie das das Eingabebild entsprechen, um den Faktor 4.75, erreicht

Transdisziplinarität

Transdisziplinarität als Bewegungsbegriff und Positionierungsbegriff beschreibt eine Forschungsform, die sich jenseits der Disziplinen bewegt und die Disziplinierung der Wissenschaft verändern will. Die Implementierung transdisziplinärer Fallstudien in die universitäre Lehre ist jedoch abhängig von curricularen Freiräumen und Zielkonflikten mit disziplinären Wissensbeständen. Der Transdisziplinaritätsdiskurs hat seit den 2000er Jahren in verschiedenen Forschungsfeldern eine starke Ausbreitung erfahren. Kritische Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Konzept der Transdisziplinarität durch Forscherinnen aus Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika bringen Grenzen der Übertragbarkeit eher technokratisch-szientistischer Ansätze zur Geltung. Der Text zeigt, dass die Sprengkraft des Politischen und die Veränderungen in der Wissensgesellschaft den Transdisziplinaritätsdiskurs dynamisieren. (Herausgeber)Transdisciplinarity as a concept of movement and positioning describes a form of research that moves beyond the disciplines and wants to change the disciplining of science. However, the implementation of transdisciplinary case studies in university teaching is dependent on curricular freedom and conflicting goals with disciplinary bodies of knowledge. Since the 2000s, the transdisciplinarity discourse has experienced a strong expansion in various research fields. Critical engagements with the concept of transdisciplinarity by women researchers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America bring to light limits to the transferability of more technocratic scientistic approaches. The text shows that the explosive power of the political and the changes in the knowledge society dynamize the transdisciplinarity discourse. (Editor

Dimensions of professional competences for interventions towards sustainability

This paper investigates sustainability competences through the eyes of professional practitioners in the field of sustainability and presents empirical data that have been created using an action research approach. The design of the study consists of two workshops, in which professional practitioners in interaction with each other and the facilitators are invited to explore and reflect on the specific knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours necessary to conduct change processes successfully towards sustainability in a variety of business and professional contexts. The research focuses on the competences associated with these change processes to devise, propose and conduct appropriate interventions that address sustainability issues. Labelled ‘intervention competence’, this ability comprises an interlocking set of knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours that include: appreciating the importance of (trying to) reaching decisions or interventions; being able to learn from lived experience of practice and to connect such learning to one’s own scientific knowledge; being able to engage in political-strategic thinking, deliberations and actions, related to different perspectives; the ability for showing goal-oriented, adequate action; adopting and communicating ethical practices during the intervention process; being able to cope with the degree of complexity, and finally being able to translate stakeholder diversity into collectively produced interventions (actions) towards sustainability. Moreover, this competence has to be practised in contexts of competing values, non-technical interests and power relations. The article concludes with recommendations for future research and practice