bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Interaction networks for systems biology
Authors: Bader Samuel , Kühner Sebastian , Gavin Anne-Claude
Published: February 2008

Cellular functions are almost always the result of the coordinated action of several proteins, interacting in protein complexes, pathways or networks. Progress made in devising suitable tools for analysis of protein–protein interactions, have recently made it possible to chart interaction networks on a large‐scale. The aim of this review is to provide a short overview of the most promising contributions of interaction networks to human biology, structural biology and human genetics.
Large‐scale prediction of drug–target relationships
Authors: Kuhn Michael , Campillos Mónica , González Paula , Jensen Lars Juhl , Bork Peer
Published: February 2008

The rapidly increasing amount of publicly available knowledge in biology and chemistry enables scientists to revisit many open problems by the systematic integration and analysis of heterogeneous novel data. The integration of relevant data does not only allow analyses at the network level, but also provides a more global view on drug–target relations. Here we review recent attempts to apply large‐scale computational analyses to predict novel interactions of drugs and targets from molecular and cellular features. In this context, we quantify the family‐dependent probability of two proteins to bind the same ligand as function of their sequence similarity. We finally discuss how phenotypic data could help to expand our understanding of the complex mechanisms of drug action.
Localism, Landscape, and Hybrid Identities in Imperial Germany
Authors: Todd Lisa M.
Published: February 2008

To discuss the connections between place, nature, and identity, and the dilemmas of modern German history that derive from them, James Retallack (University of Toronto) and David Blackbourn (Harvard University) brought together sixteen historians from Canada and the United States for a three-day conference at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto from May 12 to 14, 2005. The meeting was generously sponsored by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (German Academic Exchange Service, or DAAD)/University of Toronto Joint Initiative in German and European Studies, the Departments of History and Germanic Languages and Literatures, and the Jewish Studies Program.
Occupation, Mobilization, and Politics: The Anti-Napoleonic Wars in Prussian Experience, Memory, and Historiography
Authors: Hagemann Karen
Published: February 2008

In the “Year of Prussia” 2001, celebrated in Germany because of the three-hundredth anniversary of Prussia's becoming a kingdom in 1701, the editor of the culture section of Die Welt, Eckhart Fuhr, remarked in a review of recent publications, “The discourse (on Prussia) has long since lost all of its (former) severity, obstinacy, and passion. The Germans today,” he declared, “are perfectly comfortable with the ambiguity of the Prussian legacy.” His colleague, the historian and Die Zeit journalist Volker Ulrich, agreed. He observed that the discussion about Prussia lacked a critical edge and regretted that no “truly sharp anti-Prussian book” had appeared among the many new publications. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld reached the same conclusion in his article, “‘A Mastered Past?’ The West-German Historiography on Prussia after 1945,” published in 2004 in the journal German History. He interpreted as a sign of “normalization” the fact that—unlike thirty years ago—Prussia is no longer the source of sharply formulated historical debates.
France, Prussia, or Germany? The Napoleonic Wars and Shifting Allegiances in the Rhineland
Authors: Rowe Michael
Published: February 2008

The following article focuses on the Rhineland, and more specifically, the region on the left (or west) bank of the Rhine bounded in the north and west by the Low Countries and France. This German-speaking region was occupied by the armies of revolutionary France after 1792. De jure annexation followed the Treaty of Lunéville (1801), and French rule lasted until 1814. Most of the Rhineland was awarded in 1815 to Prussia and remained a constituent part until after the Second World War. The Rhineland experienced Napoleonic rule first hand. Its four departments—the Roër, Rhin-et-Moselle, Sarre, and Mont-Tonnerre—were treated like the others in metropolitan France, and it is this status that makes the region distinct in German-speaking Europe. This had consequences both in the Napoleonic period and in the century that followed the departure of the last French soldier. This alone would constitute sufficient reason for studying the region. More broadly, however, the Rhenish experience in the French period sheds light on the much broader phenomena of state formation and nation building. Before 1792, the Rhenish political order appeared in many respects a throwback to the late Middle Ages. Extreme territorial fragmentation, city states, church states, and mini states distinguished its landscape. These survived the early-modern period thanks in part to Great Power rivalry and the protective mantle provided by the Holy Roman Empire. Then, suddenly, came rule by France which, in the form of the First Republic and Napoleon's First Empire, represented the most demanding state the world had seen up to that point. This state imposed itself on a region unused to big government. It might be thought that bitter confrontation would have resulted. Yet, and here is a paradox this article wishes to address, many aspects of French rule gained acceptance in the region, and defense of the Napoleonic legacy formed a component of the “Rhenish” identity that came into being in the nineteenth century.
Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution. By Bruce T. Moran. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2005. Pp. 210. $24.95. ISBN 0-674-01495-2.
Authors: Dear Peter
Published: February 2008

Bruce Moran's new book forms part of Harvard University Press's series “New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine.” The series is aimed at a general readership rather than a specialized academic market, although its volumes can also serve as basic introductions to scholars in other specialties who need a quick entrée into their fields. In the present instance, however, the location of the precise problematic that the book addresses is historiographically rather complex for such a task.
Nation und Religion. Integrationsprozesse im Bismarckreich. By Siegfried Weichlein. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien, vol. 93. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag. 2004. Pp. 448. €58.00. ISBN 3-7700-5255-2.
Authors: Smith Helmut Walser
Published: February 2008

In 1953, Karl W. Deutsch published one of the most powerful works in the history of the study of nations and nationalism. The book was entitled Nationalism and Social Communication, and it hypothesized that a nation was not the expression of the essence of a people, as nationalists had argued, but of networks of communication. These networks ran along the rails and with the postal service, and were the “steel sinews,” as Bismarck once maintained, of a community that shared and exchanged a common culture. The cultural turn in the study of nationalism, most prominently represented by Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, did not so much refute Deutsch as shift the analytical terrain from an analysis of the infrastructure of commonality to an interpretation of the style in which nations were imagined. Many of Deutsch's insights remained the unspoken assumptions of the historiography of nations.
Artists for the Reich: Culture and Race from Weimar to Nazi Germany. By Joan L. Clinefelter. Oxford and New York: Berg. 2005. Pp. x+182. $74.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). ISBN 1-84520-200-7.
Authors: McClelland Charles E.
Published: February 2008

The law of diminishing returns can arguably be applied to historical research as well as larger economic enterprises. What had previously been described in a few paragraphs and notes of such standard works as those by Paul O. Rave and Hildegard Brenner has now been brought to the light of day in a full monographic treatment of Bettina Feistel-Rohmeder and the Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft (German Art Society). For those attracted by the majestic sweep of Joan Clinefelter's book title, however, a more accurate (if still overstated) description is found in the title of her 1995 Indiana University doctoral dissertation, “The German Art Society and the Battle for ‘Pure German’ Art, 1920–1945.”
Seeing Hitler's Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich. By Kristin Semmens. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2005. Pp. xiv+263. $74.95. ISBN 1-4039-3914-4.
Authors: Fritzsche Peter
Published: February 2008

Between the two world wars, Germany was on the move. The slowdown of the Great Depression notwithstanding, more and more Germans took vacations and enjoyed weekend adventures, and when they traveled, they did so to destinations farther and farther away from home. Along the way, they filled up trains, hotels, and youth hostels. And it was very much Germany that Germans wanted to explore, following as they did quite explicit itineraries of the idealized nation. “Seeing Germany,” as Kristin Semmens puts it, was a way of possessing and occupying Germany. This was quite deliberately the case for the hundreds of thousands of visitors who took special trains to Stahlhelm marches, Reichsbanner demonstrations, and, later in the 1930s, the Nuremberg party rallies, for which more than 700 special trains were pressed into service in 1938. “Seeing Germany” was also at the heart of the new tourist practices the Nazis created: the camp experiences of the Hitler Youth and the rural outposts of the Reich Labor Service. Patriotism required an overnight stay.
Sexuality and German Fascism. Edited by Dagmar Herzog. New York: Berghahn Books. 2005. Pp. 352. $25.00 (paper), $75.00 (cloth). ISBN 1-57181-652-6. Sex After Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany. By Dagmar Herzog. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2005. Pp. 361. $29.95. ISBN 0-691-11702-0.
Authors: Dickinson Edward Ross
Published: February 2008

Dagmar Herzog opens her introduction to Sexuality and German Fascism with a simple question: “What is the relationship between sexual and other kinds of politics?” The essays printed here offer a thought-provoking and sometimes surprising set of approaches to that question. Like most recent research in the history of sexuality, they focus on “deviant” sexualities—homosexual, commercial, interracial, public—and its policing. They are, however, informed also by an awareness of the productive and positive, as well as the prohibitive and repressive functions of the societal regulation of sex.
The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design. By Paul Betts. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2004. Pp. xi +348. $42.99. ISBN 0-520-24004-9.
Authors: Jenkins Jennifer
Published: February 2008

For Ludwig Erhard, West Germany's “legendary” Minister of Economics, mass consumption played a vital role in the country's postwar recovery. Consumer goods, as he stated in 1949, were the “very foundation of our entire economic, social, and national being” (p. 183). In The Authority of Everyday Objects, Paul Betts explores the centrality of mass consumption to West Germany's postwar history, analyzing how industrial design was called upon to create a sense of national identity following the war. Works from several scholars—Erica Carter, Michael Wildt, Kathy Pence, Uta Poiger, Jonathan Wiesen, and others—have explored the centrality of the national economy and mass consumption to postwar reconstruction. To these works, Betts adds a specific emphasis on design. As he states at the start of his study, consumer goods were to have a particular look, and design was given a powerful place in West German society. It became the chosen terrain for creating a revived sense of national identity following the disasters of dictatorship, war, and genocide. In the postwar period, an “elective affinity” was forged between “industrial design and the rehabilitation of the ‘good German’” (p. 1), he writes. In six chapters, he explores in absorbing detail how industrial design, with its single-minded mission to turn “mere” commodities into “cultural objects” (Kulturgüter), was invested with political meaning in postwar West Germany. The new world of consumer goods, supported by official discourses on the social importance of “good design,” both rehabilitated West Germany's image internationally and exhibited a desirable vision of consumer citizenship to domestic audiences.
Confessionalization and Literature in the Empire, 1555–1700
Authors: Lotz-Heumann Ute , Pohlig Matthias
Published: February 2008

This article has a twofold aim: first, to explain the concept of confessionalization that has been developed in recent decades in German historiography as an interpretive tool for the period and to review the main lines of its critique, which raise important questions for the discussion of “confessionalization and literature”; and second, to explore the connections between confessionalization and literature as well as the applicability of the concept of confessionalization to the history of literature, a little-understood but increasingly important question for early modern cultural history. The understanding of the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is greatly enhanced by the cooperation between literary scholars and historians. First, the literature of the age of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation was not yet an autonomous entity in society and therefore requires historical contextualization, particularly with regard to its social origins. Second, Germanists have extended the definition of early modern literature to include all kinds of Gebrauchsliteratur (functional literature), which are often important sources for historians. “Literature” and “confessionalization,” however, are difficult terms representing very complex phenomena. “Literature” is understood here as encompassing all printed works of the period, of which this article can of course only explore a sample; “confessionalization” denotes an interpretive concept, which has been criticized and modified in recent research. Given the exploratory purpose of this discussion, a good many questions will be raised for which we have no clear answers at the present time; we hope above all to further the exchange of ideas between literary scholars and historians working on the confessional age.
“Cruelty of the Worst Kind”: Religious Slaughter, Xenophobia, and the German Greens
Authors: Smith David
Published: February 2008

In 1995, before the Leitkultur debate about a hegemonic German culture to which immigrants might aspire, disputes over the wearing of headscarves, and September 11, a federal German court effectively banned Muslims from slaughtering animals without prior stunning. The court ruled that the practice was not required by their religion and was thus not protected by the constitution's guarantee of freedom of religious expression. In January 2002, however, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the right to freedom of religious expression and choice of occupation did in fact ensure the entitlement of Germany's Muslims, or at least those responsible for their provision with halal meat, to resume stunningless methods for such ends without the threat of legal action. Religious slaughter has been problematic throughout Germany's history and the reemergence of opposition to it late in the twentieth century was not without precedent. The issue throws up numerous areas for possible examination. But what does it have to do with the Greens and with their positions on animals and human society?
On Edge: Building the Border in East and West Germany
Authors: Sheffer Edith
Published: February 2008

How did the inter-German border, created in 1945, become one of the most formidable boundaries in the world by 1952? The early boundary was not fenced, but just years in the wake of National Socialism's “Thousand Year Reich” Germans on both sides broadly accepted and enforced it against other Germans. These early divisions made possible the GDR's physical closure and fortification of the border after 1952. The hastily drawn demarcation line between Allied zones of occupation had rather quickly expanded into a legal, economic, political, and social boundary—in which both East and West developed a stake.
Biostratigraphy and systematics of late Asselian–early Sakmarian (Early Permian) fusulinids (Foraminifera) from southern Turkey
Authors: OKUYUCU CENGİZ
Published: February 2008

The Anatolian Platform, which was a part of the Gondwanan Platform, is mainly characterized by carbonate-dominated deposits ranging in age from Devonian to Permian. The biostratigraphy and systematics of a late Asselian–early Sakmarian fusulinid fauna from the Anatolian Platform including Eastern and Central Taurides have been investigated in three sections: Özbek Hill, Eskibey and Bademli. Twenty-four fusulinid taxa, belonging to twelve genera, were determined in a single fusulinid zone dated as late Asselian–early Sakmarian. Early–middle Asselian fusulinid faunas have not been observed in any of the measured sections throughout the Anatolian Platform. This indicates that lower to middle Asselian deposits are represented by an interval characterized by quartz sandstone overlying upper Gzhelian strata. Five new species (Pseudochusenella anatoliana,Pseudofusulinoides altineri, Pseudofusulinoides convexus,Pseudofusulinoides subglobosusandPseudofusulinoides vachardi) are described in this study. The Early Permian fusulinid fauna correlates very well with the fauna of other sections in the Palaeotethyan realm (Southern Alps, Central Asia, Southern China and Japan).
Hypotensive anaesthesia with remifentanil combined with desflurane or isoflurane in tympanoplasty or endoscopic sinus surgery: a randomised, controlled trial
Authors: Kaygusuz K , Yildirim A , Kol I Ozdemir , Gursoy S , Mimaroglu C
Published: February 2008

Objective:

To compare the effect of remifentanil combined with desflurane or isoflurane on the quality of the operative field and surgical conditions, blood loss, and recovery during tympanoplasty or endoscopic sinus surgery.

Design:

Randomised, double-blinded clinical study.

Subjects:

Sixty-four patients were scheduled for elective tympanoplasty or endoscopic sinus surgery. The patients were randomly divided into two groups: desflurane or isoflurane. After anaesthesia induction, all patients received a continuous remifentanil infusion of 0.2–0.5 µg/kg/min until a mean arterial pressure of 65–75 mmHg was achieved. Heart rate and mean arterial pressure were recorded throughout anaesthesia. Blood loss was measured at the end of surgery. Achievement of a bloodless operative field was rated on a 100 mm visual analogue scale. Following completion of surgery, the time to extubation and to achievement of an Aldrete score of nine or more was recorded.

Results:

Sixty-three patients were evaluated. The total dose of remifentanil and the total blood loss were similar in both groups (p > 0.05). Time to extubation and to an Aldrete score of nine or more for the desflurane group was significantly less than for the isoflurane group (p < 0.05). No differences were found in the extent of achievement of a bloodless operative field, as assessed via visual analogue scale, comparing the study groups (p > 0.05).

Conclusion:

Although desflurane and isoflurane both enabled good surgical conditions (in terms of quality of operative field) and convenient induction of hypotension for tympanoplasty and endoscopic sinus surgery, the recovery characteristics of desflurane were better than those of isoflurane. Therefore, desflurane may be preferable to isoflurane in such circumstances.
A maternal hereditary deafness pedigree of the A1555G mitochondrial mutation, causing aminoglycoside ototoxicity predisposition
Authors: Bai Y-H , Ren C-C , Gong X-R , Meng L-P
Published: February 2008

Objective:

To characterise the hearing loss, and the frequency of the mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid 12S ribosomal ribonucleic acid A1555G mutation, in a large pedigree of aminoglycoside-induced deafness.

Design:

Hearing loss was clinically assessed. Blood samples were collected from 27 family members (19 matrilinear and eight non-matrilinear) and leukocyte deoxyribonucleic acid was extracted. Mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid fragments, spanning the 1555 location, were amplified by polymerase chain reaction. Polymerase chain reaction products were analysed by restriction fragment length polymorphism and deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing.

Results:

We detected the A1555G mutation in all 19 matrilinear relatives. Of these 19, two exhibited congenital deafness, four had no hearing deficits and the remaining 13 suffered mild to profound hearing loss.

Conclusion:

We confirmed that the A1555G mutation is a ‘hot spot’ associated with non-syndromic, inherited hearing loss. This mutation may play a vital role in the pathogenesis of hearing impairment, and can result in various grades of deafness.
Prospective, case–control study of surgical efficiency of ultrasonic shear (‘harmonic scalpel’) thyroidectomy compared with conventional thyroidectomy
Authors: Kang S K , Kunanandam T , Clark L
Published: February 2008

Objectives and hypothesis:

To evaluate the efficacy of ultrasonic shear (‘harmonic scalpel’) thyroidectomy, compared with conventional thyroidectomy.

Study design:

Prospective, case–control comparison.

Methods:

Twenty-three consecutive patients were recruited over an eight-month period. Patients were divided into two groups according to their thyroidectomy technique, i.e. ultrasonic shear technique (harmonic scalpel)vsconventional technique (scalpel and bipolar diathermy). Surgical time, thyroidectomy type and thyroid specimen weight were recorded by theatre nursing staff. The ratio of surgical time to specimen weight, in minutes per gram, was used to measure surgical efficiency. The unpaired Student'st-test was used for statistical analysis.

Results:

The mean surgical time per specimen unit weight was 2.56 min/g for harmonic scalpel thyroidectomy and 5.99 min/g for conventional thyroidectomy. This difference was statistically significant (p = 0.037). The difference was most evident for procedures involving smaller thyroid glands.

Conclusions:

Our study suggests that thyroidectomy using a harmonic scalpel is more time-efficient than conventional thyroidectomy, especially when operating on smaller thyroid glands.
Management of a catecholamine-secreting tympanicum glomus tumour: case report
Authors: Kouzaki H , Fukui J , Shimizu T
Published: February 2008

Objective:

To report the safe management and treatment of a catecholamine-secreting tympanicum glomus tumour.

Case report:

A 73-year-old women presented with a catecholamine-producing glomus tympanicum tumour, complaining of hearing impairment and left ear pain. Physical examination revealed a red, pulsating swelling in the left tympanic membrane. Computed tomography demonstrated a soft tissue mass filling the entire middle-ear cavity and a partial osteolytic lesion in the internal carotid artery. Angiographic examination revealed a densely contrasting tumour with feeding vessels from the ascending pharyngeal artery. Concentrations of serum noradrenalin and urine vanillylmandelic acid (VMA) were high. The tumour was completely resected using a potassium titanyl phosphate laser, the feeding vessels having been embolised the previous day. Concentrations of serum noradrenalin and urine VMA normalised following the operation.

Conclusion:

Pre-operative embolisation is useful in the treatment of catecholamine-secreting tympanicum glomus tumours, not only for preventing a hypertensive crisis but also for reducing bleeding. The potassium titanyl phosphate laser is useful for complete resection of the tumour.
Dawkins' Infinite Regress
Authors: Montague Roger
Published: February 2008

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins gives, but runs together, two criticisms of the argument from design. One is evolutionary and scientific; the other is a philosophical infinite regress argument. Disentangling them makes Dawkins' views clearer. The regress relies on the premiss that a designer must be more complex than the thing designed. I offer two comments about theists who might accept the regress, citing God's infinity. These comments defend Dawkins: but only by making him, when using his regress argument, an atheist who knows (if his “complexity” premiss holds) that God cannot exist.
Torelli groups, extended Johnson homomorphisms, and new cycles on the moduli space of curves
Authors: MORITA S. , PENNER R. C.
Published: February 2008

Infinite presentations are given for all of the higher Torelli groups of once-punctured surfaces. In the case of the classical Torelli group, a finite presentation of the corresponding groupoid is also given, and finite presentations of the classical Torelli groups acting trivially on homology modulo N are derived for all N. Furthermore, the first Johnson homomorphism, which is defined from the classical Torelli group to the third exterior power of the homology of the surface, is shown to lift to an explicit canonical 1-cocycle of the Teichmüller space. The main tool for these results is the known mapping class group invariant ideal cell decomposition of the Teichmüller space.

This new 1-cocycle is mapping class group equivariant, so various contractions of its powers yield various combinatorial (co)cycles of the moduli space of curves, which are also new. Our combinatorial construction can be related to former works of Kawazumi and the first-named author with the consequence that the algebra generated by the cohomology classes represented by the new cocycles is precisely the tautological algebra of the moduli space.

There is finally a discussion of prospects for similarly finding cocycle lifts of the higher Johnson homomorphisms.
In the Loop: Creativity and Constraint in 8-bit Video Game Audio
Authors: COLLINS KAREN
Published: February 2008

This article explores the sound capabilities of video game consoles of the 8-bit era (c.1975–85) in order to discuss the impact that technological constraints had on shaping aesthetic decisions in the composition of music for the early generation of games. Comparing examples from the Commodore 64 (C64), the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the Atari VCS, and the arcade consoles, I examine various approaches and responses (in particular the use of looping) to similar technological problems, and illustrate how these responses are as much a decision made by the composer as a matter of technical necessity.
Uri Caine’s Mahler: Jazz, Tradition, and Identity
Authors: Heile Björn
Published: February 2008

Although Uri Caine first made his mark as a relatively straight-ahead jazz pianist – ‘roots’ to which he returns regularly – he has, arguably, become most famous with his often controversial versions of works from the ‘classical music’ canon. These recompositions, which often involve a host of other styles from Latin to dub, are usually regarded as examples of postmodern eclecticism. While this view is certainly valid, it needs to be complemented by more detailed analysis of both Caine’s artistic methods and their aesthetic and ideological implications. Among his work on classical composers, Caine’s engagement with Gustav Mahler is the most sustained. The result of this engagement is not an exercise in ‘crossover’ or ‘jazzed-up’ Mahler, but a radical reinterpretation of Mahler’s music that situates it as a Jewish voice within the cultural cross-currents of fin-de-siècle Central Europe. Through this reference to Mahler, Caine constructs a Jewish tradition within jazz that complements but does not compete with jazz’s overwhelmingly African-American heritage. What emerges is a pluralistic subjectivity in which different cultural identities and traditions are negotiated in an equal and open dialogue.
End-of-life care in nursing home settings: Do race or age matter?
Authors: Reynolds Kimberly S. , Hanson Laura C. , Henderson Martha , Steinhauser Karen E.
Published: February 2008

Objective:

One-quarter of all U.S. chronic-disease deaths occur in nursing homes, yet few studies examine palliative care quality in these settings. This study tests whether racial and/or age-based differences in end-of-life care exist in these institutional settings.

Methods:

We abstracted residents' charts (N = 1133) in 12 nursing homes. Researchers collected data on indicators of palliative care in two domains of care—advance care planning and pain management—and on residents' demographic and health status variables. Analyses tested for differences by race and age.

Results:

White residents were more likely than minorities to have DNR orders (69.5% vs. 37.3%), living wills (39% vs. 5%), and health care proxies (36.2% vs. 11.8%; p < .001 for each). Advance directives were highly and positively correlated with age. In-depth advance care planning discussions between residents, families, and health care providers were rare for all residents, irrespective of demographic characteristics. Nursing staff considered older residents to have milder and less frequent pain than younger residents. We found no disparities in pain management based on race.

Significance of results:

To the extent that advance care planning improves care at the end of life, racial minorities in nursing homes are disadvantaged compared to their white fellow residents. Focusing on in-depth discussions of values and goals of care can improve palliative care for all residents and may help to ameliorate racial disparities in end-of-life care. Staff should consider residents of all ages as appropriate recipients of advance care planning efforts and should be cognizant of the fact that individuals of all ages can experience pain. Nursing homes may do a better job than other health care institutions in eliminating racial disparities in pain management.
Bereaved parents' perspectives on their needs
Authors: D'Agostino Norma Mammone , Berlin-Romalis Deborah , Jovcevska Vesna , Barrera Maru
Published: February 2008

Objective:

The loss of a child can be traumatic for parents, given the profound bond established with the deceased child. Parental bereavement and the need for bereavement services are not well understood. This study examined parental perspectives regarding bereavement services from a pediatric oncology treating center.

Methods:

A 2-h focus group of seven parents, audiotaped and transcribed verbatim, was conducted by two facilitators using open-ended questions to generate discussion regarding their views of what services were or would be helpful during early bereavement.

Results:

Parents perceived flexible and continuous bereavement services from the treating hospital as a necessary transition to community services. Talking to other parents with similar experiences and maintaining contact with staff at the treating hospital were considered critical in their healing after the loss.

Significance of results:

Transitional multimodality bereavement services offered by the treating hospital will improve the quality of life of bereaved families.
Evaluating a bereavement support group
Authors: Maruyama Nancy C. , Atencio Clarisa V.
Published: February 2008

Objective:

To assess the feasibility of an 8-week bereavement support group in a general hospital setting.

Methods:

We assessed grief and mood before and after an 8-week bereavement support group and compared dropouts to completers. Forty-seven participants filled out mood and grief questionnaires. Scores were compared with norms, then baseline and follow-up scores were analyzed by pairedttests. Fifteen dropouts' scores were compared with completers' baseline scores.

Results:

Participants' grief improved, as did depression in women but not men. Women dropouts scored significantly higher on Anger, Tension/Anxiety.

Significance of results:

Findings suggest men and women respond differently to bereavement groups. Bereaved individuals with high anger and tension may require interventions addressing their particular needs, with a focus on acceptance of negative emotions.
Clinical evaluation of the Mood and Symptom Questionnaire (MSQ) in a day therapy unit in a palliative support centre in the United Kingdom
Authors: Chapman Elizabeth , Whale Judith , Landy Annette , Hughes David , Saunders Margaret
Published: February 2008

Objective:

To evaluate the use of the Mood and Symptom Questionnaire (MSQ) within a program of structured psychosocial interventions in a Supportive and Palliative Care Center. Palliative care patients have a range of psychological symptoms as well as physical symptoms. Considerable expertise in controlling pain and fear of pain, other physical symptoms, and psychosocial distress has been built up in hospices and palliative care units. This expertise can be used even at late stages in the patient's illness to improve quality of life.

Method:

We evaluated the usefulness of the MSQ to record patient responses, as an aid to patient/staff discussions, and as a staff-training tool. The questionnaire consisted of visual analog scales completed by the patient with a staff member present. Using the tool increased the opportunities for staff and patients todiscussproblematic psychosocial issues. Where possible, we obtained data at two time points and compared the responses.

Results:

The MSQ was rapidly accepted as a clinical tool in the day therapy setting by staff and the patients. Theprocessof completing the questionnaire encouraged patients to face and discuss difficult issues. Discussion of the issues raised on the questionnaire had a wider effect, influencing interactions and communications through the unit and facilitating wider discussion of other nonpain symptoms. The medical psychotherapist associated with the unit used the MSQ responses as a training tool to increase staff awareness and knowledge and understanding of psychological issues related to the patients' total pain experience by discussing the questionnaires with them.

Significance of results:

The use of this tool helped to identify some psychological issues that proved relatively straightforward to address once uncovered. Patients benefited from this opportunity when their remaining time was relatively short. Their quality of life at the end of their lives was improved.
Meaning in adjustment to cancer: A model of care
Authors: Lethborg Carrie , Aranda Sanchia , Kissane David
Published: February 2008

Objectives:

In the clinical setting of cancer, meaning may well have a central role in the life changes the illness experience brings about. As health care professionals working with people with life-threatening illness, we are exposed to one of the major turning points in life and the ways people confront this transition. Meaning can assist coping by offering a framework, perspective, and counterbalance to the challenge of illness. However, the absence of meaning can be a precursor to profound despair.

Methods:

This article brings together the clinical implications of two studies conducted by the authors that explored the role of meaning in adjustment to cancer, presenting a theoretical understanding of the experience of meaning in cancer and identifying some potential approaches to intervention.

Results:

Our findings point to some specific goals of care as well as a number of therapeutic modalities aimed to meet these goals. We examine four goals of care—acknowledging suffering, encouraging a search for meaning, strengthening connection with others, and ensuring optimal physical care—as foundational in any clinical approach and then examine the key models of therapy that assist the clinician in pursuing these goals.

Significance of results:

Our aim is to create an integrated approach to care provision that locates meaning centrally in any patient's adaptation.
Development of a hospice formulary for psychotropic medications
Authors: Barnhorst Amy , Bourgeois James A. , Macmillan Jack
Published: February 2008

Objective:

The authors describe the concept of hospice formulary as is utilized at the hospice service of a university medical center.

Method:

A periodic review of hospice formulary, focusing on psychotropic medications and delirium prevention, was accomplished in 2006. This effort represents a multidisciplinary effort among hospice nursing, internal medicine, and psychiatry.

Results:

An updated formulary adopting contemporary psychopharmacologic best practices was produced and implemented along with targeted in-service training to nurse clinicians.

Significance of results:

The modern hospice formulary offers opportunities to offer state-of-the-art psychopharmacological care and minimization of delirium through judicious use of psychopharmacological treatments for the psychiatric comorbidities common in terminally ill patients.
New remains and species of the ‘condylarth’ genus Escribania (Mammalia: Didolodontidae) from the Palaeocene of Patagonia, Argentina
Authors: Gelfo Javier N. , Ortiz-Jaureguizar Edgardo , Rougier Guillermo W.
Published: February 2008

The Punta Peligro fauna includes some of the oldest Cenozoic South American mammals, and the oldest ones for Patagonia. In addition to frogs, turtles, and crocodiles, an unusual mammalian assemblage is formed by a mixture of Mesozoic lineages of Gondwanan origin and therians (eutherians and metatherians) derived from Laurasian immigrants. This paper describes new remains of the Didolodontidae ‘condylarth’ genusEscribaniaBonaparte, Van Valen & Kramarz, 1993. The new material includes an isolated right lower third molar with talonid morphology different from the homologous structure of the type speciesEscribania chubutensisBonaparte, Van Valen & Kramarz, 1993, justifying the recognition of a new species. The derived nature of the didolodontid ‘condylarths’ from the Banco Negro Inferior, their differences with the Mioclaenidae Kollpaniinae from the early Paleocene of Tiupampa, and the record ofbona fidelitoptherns in the Banco Negro Inferior (BNI) suggest an early radiation of the panameriungulates.
Vascular birthmarks
Authors: Willenberg  , Baumgartner
Published: February 2008

Vascular birthmarks can be classified into hemangioma and vascular malformations. Hemangioma are frequent tumours of early infancy demonstrating endothelial hyperplasia, a history of rapid neonatal growth and slow involution during later childhood. Treatment of hemangioma is dependent of stage and type of the lesion. Given the current availability of drugs, lasers, and other techniques to treat hemangioma safely, philosophy of "benign neglect" should not be considered anymore. Vascular malformations show a normal endothelial turnover, being present at birth and growing commensurately with the child. Exact diagnosis by employing modern diagnostic means, which are able to differentiate low-flow from high flow lesions is important for further therapeutic management. Beside conservative treatment strategies, use of laser, sclerotherapy, interventional embolization and surgical treatment are possible management options. Patients should receive multidisciplinary care in qualified vascular centres.
Acute aortic dissection – vascular emergency with numerous pitfalls
Authors: von Bierbrauer  , Dilger  , Fink
Published: February 2008

Acute aortic syndrome comprises acute aortic dissection, aortic intramural haematoma and penetrating atherosclerotic ulcers of the aortic wall. It ranks, after acute coronary syndrome, as one of the most frequent acute life-threatening differential diagnoses of chest pain. Chances of survival would probably be good in the large majority of cases, assuming optimal therapeutic management including rapid diagnostic evaluation followed by immediate and appropriate treatment is provided. However, actual mortality rate in these patients is still currently higher than 40%, despite medical and surgical progress. This unfavourable prognosis for the most frequent variant of acute aortic syndrome – aortic dissection – is due to the wide variability of clinical symptoms. These are often initially unspecific and frequently lead to delays in establishing the correct diagnosis, possibly first recognised at autopsy. Even after a timely, correct diagnosis, there is still a considerably high mortality rate following surgery, even with younger patients. Whenever acute aortic dissection is suspected a diagnostic imaging study should immediately be obtained. In addition to CT angiography, transesophageal echocardiography is recommended, due to its flexibility, as the diagnostically most useful tool in this context. Based on three case reports of acute aortic dissection this paper critically discusses the problems in making a correct and timely diagnosis and also provides an overview of the current state of knowledge in the areas of pathophysiology, epidemiology, clinical symptomatology as well as appropriate case-related management and prognosis of acute aortic dissection.
L-arginine plasma levels and severity of idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension
Authors: Beyer  , Kolditz  , Ewert  , Rubens  , Opitz  , Schellong  , Hoeffken  , Halank
Published: February 2008

Background: Idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (iPAH) is a rare disease of unknown aetiology characterized by a poor prognosis. Impairment of nitric oxide (NO) synthesis or NO-induced vasorelaxation has been suspected to play a role in the development of iPAH. This study was performed to investigate possible correlations between the plasma levels of the NO-related aminoacids L-arginine, L-citrulline and N-hydroxy-L-arginine (L-NHA) and the severity of iPAH. Methods: In twelve iPAH patients hemodynamics were measured by right heart catheterization, and plasma levels of L-arginine, L-citrulline and L-NHA were determined in blood samples from the pulmonary artery, peripheral artery and peripheral vein by high-performance liquid chromatography analysis. In eight of twelve patients a six minute walk test was performed. Results: Plasma levels of L-arginine strongly correlated to right atrial pressure, cardiac output, cardiac index, mixed-venous oxygen saturation, six minute walk data and NYHA functional class at all sites of blood sampling (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The results suggest a possible role of the NO precursor L-arginine in the pathogenesis of iPAH.
Duplex ultrasound and efficacy criteria in foam sclerotherapy from the 2ndEuropean Consensus Meeting on Foam Sclerotherapy 2006, Tegernsee, Germany
Authors: Breu  , Guggenbichler  , Wollmann
Published: February 2008

Rationale: The spread of foam sclerotherapy has resulted in the renaissance of sclerotherapy as a non-invasive treatment method for varicosis. An expanded European expert committee meeting in Tegernsee in April 2006 was prompted by new findings and continuous further development of the method and worked especially on the topics "The role of (duplex) ultrasound in Foam sclerotherapy" and "Evaluation of therapeutic effects of foam Sclerotherapy". It was felt that these criteria are "non-specific" to foam sclerotherapy and would possibly also be suitable for other endovenous ablative procedures. The organisers of the 2nd European Consensus Meeting on foam sclerotherapy (2nd ECMFS) were then asked to publish these recommendations in this separate publication. The entire recommendations of the 2nd ECMFS are published in an extensive overview in this journal (VASA 2008; 37; Supplement 71: 1–32). Methodology: The 29 participants were sent a comprehensive questionnaire in advance covering all the relevant aspects of foam sclerotherapy. The organisers drew up various preliminary statements on the basis of the results. During the meeting itself the participants revised and/or approved and/or rejected these statements. For the "non-specific" topics, two working groups were given the task of conducting the concluding assessment of these items. Their final results were presented in March and April 2007. Results: For foam sclerotherapy, duplex ultrasound is important in pre-treatment diagnosis, treatment monitoring/guidance, post-treatment efficacy evaluation and surveillance. In the pre-treatment diagnosis of varicose veins, the exact localisation of the insufficient saphenous, communicating and perforating veins is important. Duplex ultrasound is the accepted gold standard for this purpose. The application of ultrasound imaging during foam sclerotherapy increases the safety of accessing the vein in certain indications, and it can help when making a decision concerning the foam volumes to be injected, the patients’ position or specific movements the patients should perform. Following treatment, the findings of duplex ultrasound, the clinical findings and the patients’ symptoms can be arranged according to the recommended definitions. This allows grading of the therapeutic outcome and enables a better comparability between different treatment protocols or different treatments. Besides the evaluation of treatment success, duplex ultrasound is the method of choice to exclude or confirm complications such as deep venous thrombosis or disease progression.
Fieber, Nasenbluten und myalgiforme abdominale Schmerzen
Authors: Leopold M. , Siepmann T.
Published: February 2008

Ein 38-jähriger Mann stellte sich mit seit 5 Tagen bestehendem Fieber, myalgiformen abdominellen Schmerzen, Nasenbluten und akutem Nierenversagen vor. Klinik und Laborparameter (Thrombozytopenie, erhöhtes CRP ohne Leukozytose, Kreatininanstieg, Proteinurie) sind typisch für ein hämorrhagisches Fieber mit renalem Syndrom (HFRS), eine Hantavirus-Infektion vom Typ Puumala. Eine Dialyse ist selten notwendig. In der Regel kommt es zur Spontanremission. Differentialdiagnostisch sind andere Infektionen (z.B. Malaria, Leptospirose, Gelbfieber) aber auch Systemerkrankungen (z.B. Kollagenosen, Vaskulitiden) abzugrenzen.
Long‐term carbon dioxide and water flux database, Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed, Arizona, United States
Authors: Emmerich William E. , Verdugo Charmaine L.
Published: February 2008

We present the carbon dioxide and water flux data along with associated meteorological data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Southwest Watershed Research Center, on the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed from 1997 through 2006. Measurements were collected from a shrub and grass community using the Bowen ratio energy balance systems and were presented in 20‐min time steps. Meteorological and Bowen ratio data were imported into spreadsheets for quality control and calculations of carbon dioxide and water fluxes. The data are available at http://www.tucson.ars.ag.gov/dap/.