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Bbil-TX, a PLA(2), was purified from Bothriopsis bilineata snake venom after only one chromatographic step using RP-HPLC on mu-Bondapak C-18 column. A molecular mass of 14243.8 Da was confirmed by -Tof ltima API ESI/ MS (TOF MS mode) mass spectrometry. The partial protein sequence obtained was then submitted to BLASTp, with the search restricted to PLA(2) from snakes and shows high identity values when compared to other PLA(2)s. PLA(2) activity was presented in the presence of a synthetic substrate and showed a minimum sigmoidal behavior, reaching its maximal activity at pH 8.0 and 25-37 degrees C. Maximum PLA(2) activity required Ca2+ and in the presence of Cd2+, Zn2+, Mn2+, and Mg2+ it was reduced in the presence or absence of Ca2+. Crotapotin from Crotalus durissus cascavella rattlesnake venom and antihemorrhagic factor DA2-II from Didelphis albiventris opossum sera under optimal conditions significantly inhibit the enzymatic activity. Bbil-TX induces myonecrosis in mice. The fraction does not show a significant cytotoxic activity in myotubes and myoblasts (C2C12). The infiammatory events induced in the serum of mice by Bbil-TX isolated from Bothriopsis bilineata snake venom were investigated. An increase in vascular permeability and in the levels of TNF-a, IL-6, and IL-1 was was induced. Since Bbil-TX exerts a stronger proinfiammatory effect, the phospholipid hydrolysis may be relevant for these phenomena.
From the Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, the Earth experienced the most significant climatic cooling of the Cenozoic era. The Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT) represents the culmination of this climatic cooling, leading to the onset of the Antarctic glaciation and, consequently, to the beginning of the present-day icehouse world. Whereas the response of deep-sea systems to this climate transition has been widely studied, its impact on the shallow-water carbonate realm is poorly constrained. Here, the sedimentary expression of the EOT in two shallow-marine carbonate successions (Nago and San Valentino, northern Italy) belonging to the Calcare di Nago Formation is presented. The chronostratigraphic framework was constructed by integrating litho-, bio-, and isotope-stratigraphic data (C and Sr isotopes), allowing to correlate these shallow-marine successions with pelagic sections in central Italy (Massignano), Tanzania (TOP Sites 12 and 17), and the Indian Ocean (ODP Site 744). Within several sections in northern Italy, including Nago and San Valentino, a Priabonian (Late Eocene) transgression is recorded. Oxygen isotopes of ODP Site 744 show a coeval negative shift of 0.4 parts per thousand., suggesting a glacio-eustatic origin for this transgression. In the Nago and San Valentino sections, no prominent sequence boundary has been detected that would indicate a rapid sea-level drop occurring together with the positive shift in delta O-18 defining the EOT-1 cooling event. Instead, a gradual shallowing of the depositional environment is observed. At TDP Sites 12 and 17, the EOT-1 is followed by a negative shift in delta O-18 of around 0.4 parts per thousand, which correlates with a relative deepening of the environment in the studied sections and suggests a melting pulse between EOT-1 and the Oligocene isotope event 1 (Oi-1). The positive delta O-18 shift related to the Oi-1 translates in San Valentino into a change in carbonate factory from a photozoan association dominated by larger benthic foraminifera, corals, and red algae to a heterozoan association dominated by bryozoans. The same bryozoan fades occurs in several Italian localities near the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. This fades is interpreted to represent an analogue of modern cool-water carbonates and results from a cooling pulse of at least regional scale, associated to the Oi-1 event.
Background: Standardized examinations of preterm infants are used to identify candidates for early intervention. We aimed to assess the predictive power and concurrent validity of the mental development index of the Bayley scales of infant development II (Bayley MDI) and the Griffiths scales developmental quotient (Griffiths DQ) in healthy term and preterm infants < 1 500 g birth weight without major perinatal complications.
Methods: 137 Infants (89 term, 48 preterm) were examined by both tests at a corrected age of 6, 12, and 22 months, and 114 went on to undergo Bayley assessments at 39 months.
Results: There were significant correlations between Bayley and Griffiths results at 6, 12, and 22 months (r = 0.530, 0.714, and 0.833, respectively, p < 0.001) but Bland Altman plots revealed major systematic bias at 6 months (Griffiths > Bayley, mean differences 14.3 +/- 9.8) and 22 months (Bayley > Griffiths, mean difference 5.2 +/- 13.9) and wide 95% limits of agreement at 6, 12 and 22 months (35.9%, 40.0%, and 52.4%, respectively). The agreement for a presumptive diagnosis of developmental impairment in the group of preterm infants between Bayley examinations obtained at 39 months corrected age (reference) and previous examinations was poor at 6, 12, and 22 months for both Bayley and Griffiths (Cohen's kappa for Griffiths: 0.225, 0.192, 0.369; for Bayley: 0.121, 0.316, 0.369, respectively).
Conclusion: Caution should be exercised when interpreting results from standardized neurodevelopmental examinations obtained during the first 2 years of life in comparatively well preterm infants.
Architectural analysis of the Late Cretaceous alveolinaceans of the Caribbean palaeobioprovince has made it possible to separate four genera: Praechubbina, Chubbinella gen. nov., Chubbina and Caribalveolina. The first three genera belong to the family Rhapydioninidae, while the fourth is placed in the family Alveolinidae. Two species, Praechubbina breviclaustra and P. oxchucensis sp. nov., represent the primitive genus Praechubbina, while the species cardenasensis and obesa, previously ascribed to this genus, must be reassigned respectively to Chubbinella gen. nov. and Caribalveolina. The species Chubbina jamaicensis, C. macgillavryi and C. fourcadei sp. nov. complete the inventory of Chubbina. The alveolinid genus Caribalveolina comprises two species, C. obesa and C. michaudi. Caribbean alveolinaceans include two successive assemblages. The lower assemblage is characterized by Praechubbina oxchucensis, P. brevisclaustra, Chubbinella cardenasensis and Caribalveolina obesa. The upper assemblage is represented by the genus Chubbina, with C. fourcadei, C. jamaicensis and C. macgillavryi, and Caribalveolina michaudi. The age of the lower assemblage is uncertain (probably Late CampanianEarly Maastrichtian), while the upper assemblage has been dated by strontium isotope stratigraphy as Late Maastrichtian.
Language can strongly influence the emotional state of the recipient. In contrast to the broad body of experimental and neuroscientific research on semantic information and prosodic speech, the emotional impact of grammatical structure has rarely been investigated. One reason for this might be, that measuring effects of syntactic structure involves the use of complex stimuli, for which the emotional impact of grammar is difficult to isolate. In the present experiment we examined the emotional impact of structural parallelisms, that is, repetitions of syntactic features, on the emotion-sensitive "late positive potential" (LPP) with a cross-modal priming paradigm. Primes were auditory presented nonsense sentences which included grammatical-syntactic parallelisms. Visual targets were positive, neutral, and negative faces, to be classified as emotional or non-emotional by the participants. Electrophysiology revealed diminished LPP amplitudes for positive faces following parallel primes. Thus, our findings suggest that grammatical structure creates an emotional context that facilitates processing of positive emotional information.
Recurrence-plot-based time series analysis is widely used to study changes and transitions in the dynamics of a system or temporal deviations from its overall dynamical regime. However, most studies do not discuss the significance of the detected variations in the recurrence quantification measures. In this letter we propose a novel method to add a confidence measure to the recurrence quantification analysis. We show how this approach can be used to study significant changes in dynamical systems due to a change in control parameters, chaos-order as well as chaos-chaos transitions. Finally we study and discuss climate transitions by analysing a marine proxy record for past sea surface temperature. This paper is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the introduction of recurrence plots.
This paper reports on an elicited production study which investigates prosodic marking of narrow focus in modified noun phrases in varieties of South African English. The acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration in narrow focus is presented and discussed. The results suggest that these three acoustic parameters are manipulated differently in narrow focus in the varieties of English as a Second Language as compared to General South African English. The article compares the results to what is known about prosodic marking of information structure in other varieties of English as a Second Language and underlines the necessity of carefully controlled data in the investigation of phonological and phonetic variation in varieties of English.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) to single visual stimuli were recorded in 7-month-old infants. In a three-stimulus oddball paradigm, infants watched one frequently occurring standard stimulus (either an animal or a furniture item) and two infrequently occurring oddball stimuli, presenting one exemplar from the same and one from the different super-ordinate category as compared to the standard stimulus. Additionally, visual attributes of the stimuli were controlled to investigate whether infants focus on category membership or on perceptual similarity when processing the stimuli. Infant ERPs indicated encoding of the standard stimulus and discriminating it from the two oddball stimuli by larger Nc peak amplitude and late-slow-wave activity for the infrequent stimuli. Moreover, larger Nc latency and positive-slow-wave activity indicated increased processing for the different-category as compared to the same-category oddball. Thus, 7-month-olds seem to encode single stimuli not only by surface perceptual features, but they also regard information of category membership, leading to facilitated processing of the oddball that belongs to the same domain as the standard stimulus.
A polymer analogous reaction for the formation of imidazolium and NHC based porous polymer networks
(2013)
A polymer analogous reaction was carried out to generate a porous polymeric network with N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHC) in the polymer backbone. Using a stepwise approach, first a polyimine network is formed by polymerization of the tetrafunctional amine tetrakis(4-aminophenyl)methane. This polyimine network is converted in the second step into polyimidazolium chloride and finally to a polyNHC network. Furthermore a porous Cu(II)-coordinated polyNHC network can be generated. Supercritical drying generates polymer networks with high permanent surface areas and porosities which can be applied for different catalytic reactions. The catalytic properties were demonstrated for example in the activation of CO2 or in the deoxygenation of sulfoxides to the corresponding sulfides.
Species distribution models are useful for identifying driving environmental factors that determine earthworm distributions as well as for predicting earthworm distribution patterns and abundances at different scales. However, due to large efforts in data acquisition, studies on larger scales are rare and often focus on single species or earthworms in general. In this study, we use boosted regression tree models (BRTs) for predicting the distribution of the three functional earthworm types, i.e. anecics, endogeics and epigeics, in an agricultural area in Baden-Wurttemberg (Southwest Germany).
First, we predicted presence and absence and later earthworm abundances, considering predictors depicting land management, topography, and soil conditions as well as biotic interaction by using the abundance of the other functional earthworm types. The final presence-absence models performed reasonably well, with explained deviances between 24 and 51% after crossvalidation. Models for abundances of anecics and endogeics were less successful, since the high small-scale variability and patchiness in earthworm abundance influenced the representativeness of the field measurements. This resulted in a significant model uncertainty, which is practically very difficult to overcome with earthworm sampling campaigns at the catchment scale.
Results showed that management practices (i.e. disturbances), topography, soil conditions, and biotic interactions with other earthworm groups are the most relevant predictors for spatial distribution (incidence) patterns of all three functional groups. The response curves and contributions of predictors differ for the three functional earthworm types. Epigeics are also controlled by topographic features, endogeics by soil parameters.