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Für Projektleiter gibt es schon länger umfangreiche Aus- und Weiterbildungsprogramme. Das passt. Auch der Projektauftraggeber ist eminent wichtig für den Erfolg eines Projektes. Doch Auftraggeber zu sein bedeutet mehr als «fire and forget». Das Projekt muss auch nach der schriftlichen Auftragsvergabe intensiv begleitet werden. Das braucht Zeit und Engagement. Sei dies in einer 1:1 Situation mit dem Projektleiter oder als Leiter eines Lenkungsausschusses. Zur erfolgreichen Umsetzung gehört also auch ein angemessenes Projektmanagement-Know-how beim Senior Management, das kompakt vermittelt werden kann. In diesem Leitfaden zeigen wir auf, was ein guter Projektauftraggeber mitbringen sollte.

This article describes how recursive spatial multiplexing (RSM) is a closed-loop multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) structure for achieving the capacity offered by MIMO channels with a low-complexity detector. The authors investigate how to make RSM able to provide a bit-error rate performance, which is robust against different types and levels of interference. The interference arising from simultaneous transmission of information signals is taken into account in the RSM scheme at the receiver using a whitening approach. Here, the covariance matrix is estimated and used subsequently for defining the retransmission subspace identifier to be fed back to the transmitter. The performance of this adaptive RSM scheme is compared with standard linear detection schemes like zero-forcing and minimum mean-squared error receivers. It turns out that the adaptive interference whitening substantially improves the bit-error rate performance. Moreover, adaptive RSM leads to a performance being independent of the correlation coefficient of the interference signals.

Sensor network planning poses several challenges including the selection of appropriate locations for the sensors and actuators, for the gateway and possibly for the required repeaters. We use propagation graphs to model indoor wave propagation on the basis of coarse floor plans, and show how the graphs can be used in the scope of network planning. Efficient methods from graph theory are presented for path loss and coverage prediction. These efficient prediction methods facilitate optimal repeater placement.

Zusammenfassung: Extrakorporale Stoßwellen werden definiert als eine Sequenz von akustischen Schallimpulsen, die einen charakteristisch schnellen Druckanstieg auf über 100MPa mit Abfall auf Normaldruck in wenigen Mikrosekunden aufweisen. In den 1980er-Jahren wurde die extrakorporale Stoßwellenlithotripsie (ESWL) erstmals zur Behandlung der Urolithiasis angewandt. Orthopäden setzten anschließend die extrakorporale Stoßwellentherapie (ESWT) zur Behandlung von nicht heilenden Frakturen, Tendinopathien und Osteonekrose ein. Die erste Anwendung von ESWT in der Dermatologie erfolgte zur Behandlung des chronischen Ulcus cruris. Verschiedene Studien der letzten 10Jahre zeigten, dass die ESWT die Angiogenese stimuliert und die Perfusion im ischämischen Gewebe verbessert, die Entzündungsreaktion mindert, die Zelldifferenzierung unterstützt und hiermit die Wundheilung deutlich verbessern kann. Wir setzten die ESWT erfolgreich zur Behandlung eines komplizierten chronischen venösen Ulcus cruris ein. Weiter konnten wir eine Verbesserung des lymphatischen Abflusses nach Applikation von ESWT beobachten. Die ESWT stellt somit eine nebenwirkungsarme und effiziente physikalische Therapiemodalität zur Behandlung von therapieresistenten chronischen Wunden dar

Zusammenfassung: Hintergrund: Das Ulcus cruris ist ein häufiges Symptom einer heterogenen Krankheitsgruppe, das stark belastend ist und aufgrund der langen Abheilungsdauer und aufwendigen Wundversorgung erhebliche Kosten verursacht. Es gibt wenig Information zur Abheilungsdauer und der Notwendigkeit einer Spitalbehandlung bei Ulzera verschiedener Ätiologien. Material und Methoden: In einer retrospektiven Studie wurden die Abheilungsdauer und die Häufigkeit der Hospitalisation von 355Patienten mit Ulcus cruris in der Wundsprechstunde einer universitären Klinik untersucht. Ergebnisse: Bei einer durchschnittlichen Behandlungsdauer von 6,1Monaten für alle Ulzera waren nach 3Monaten 32,0 % und nach 6Monaten 54,2 % abgeheilt. Für die venösen Ulzera waren die Abheilungsraten mit 45,5 und 63,0 % nach 3 respektive 6Monaten höher, während nach 6Monaten lediglich 30,0 % der Patienten mit gemischt arteriell-venösen Ulzera und 35,0 % mit Ulcus hypertonicum Martorell eine Abheilung zeigten. Zudem wurden 71 % der Patienten der letzteren Gruppen mindestens 1-mal hospitalisiert im Vergleich zu 47 % der Patienten mit venösem Ulkus, und die durchschnittliche Hospitalisationsdauer war mit 30 vs. 23Tagen länger. Schlussfolgerungen: Diese Daten zeigen, dass sich die Abheilungsdauer von Ulzera je nach Ätiologie erheblich unterscheidet und insbesondere Ulzera, die durch eine Arteriosklerose mitverursacht sind, eine längere Behandlungsdauer benötigen. Da Letztere auch häufiger und länger hospitalisiert werden, ergeben sich erhebliche soziale und ökonomische Konsequenzen

This work focuses on channel estimation in power line communications (PLC) systems. Considering the IEEE Standard 1901-2010 frame structure, data-aided channel estimation is performed on the preamble sequence. However, resolution of the preamble symbols compared to the Frame Control (FC) symbol and payload symbols (256 vs. 2048 subcarriers) leads to interpolation errors that tend to increase in presence of narrow-band interference (NBI). This work addresses channel estimation in standard IEEE 1901-2010 by re-encoding and re-mapping the FC symbol. The main contribution on this paper is to show that re-estimation of only the noise power spectral density (PSD) (and not the channel frequency response (CFR)) significantly improves system performance by using FC symbol as a new reference. This conclusion provides a feasible implementation in practical systems because the proposed solution does not lead to delays nor additional computational costs. Gain obtained by this update compared to preamble based channel estimation is substantial and system behavior, especially in the presence of NBI, improves considerably. A PLC system according to the standard IEEE 1901-2010 is used to evaluate our proposal. System performance is tested on multipath channels and narrow-band noise.

Background: Painful cutaneous injection site reactions may hamper treatment with interferon β (IFN-β) and glatiramer acetate (GA) in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Objective: To maintain therapy adherence, efficient therapeutic modalities for these subcutaneous inflammatory lesions are urgently needed. We tested the application of local extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT). Methods: We applied 5 sessions of ESWT to 8 patients suffering from MS who had developed painful panniculitis at the injection sites of either IFN-β or GA. Clinical outcomes, i.e. pain reduction and regression of induration, were assessed 3 and 6 months after completion of the ESWT using a visual analogue score. Results: All patients showed both significant pain reduction and reduction of the skin induration in the treated lesions, while in untreated control lesions there was no improvement. Conclusion: ESWT proved to be a non-invasive, safe and efficient physical treatment modality for injection-induced painful cutaneous side effects of disease-modifying drugs in MS.

Background: To evaluate efficacy and cost-effectiveness of a plant-derived wound dressing (ONE), a mixture of hypericum oil (Hypericum perforatum L.) and neem oil (Azadirachta indica A. Juss.), in scalp wounds with exposed bone. Patients and Methods: All patients with scalp wounds with exposed bone, following the excision of skin tumors, and treated with ONE in 2011 were included. Time of healing, wound size, area of exposed bone, ease of handling, pain, and complications were evaluated. Costs of dressings and nursing time were compared with those cited in literature for other treatment modalities. Results: Fifteen consecutive patients with a mean age of 76.87 ± 10.3 years (59-90 years) were analyzed. The mean wound size was 10.9 ± 6.84 cm2 (0.4-22.6 cm2) with 4.8 ± 5.9 cm2 (0.3-20.7 cm2) of exposed bone. The time of complete healing by secondary intention was 8.1 (4-20) weeks. Rapid formation of granulation tissue was observed which after 4 weeks covered the entire exposed bone surface in 11 of 15 cases (73%). Dressing change was simple with no pain reported; no infections or other complications occurred. Using ONE for a mean healing time of 56.7 days resulted in mean costs of EUR 423.73, which is substantially lower than those published for fascia lata, negative pressure therapy, or collagen matrix followed by skin grafting (EUR 1,612.82, EUR 4,411.80 and EUR 1,503.72, respectively). Conclusion: This retrospective, non-controlled analysis supports ONE as a simple-to-use and safe treatment option for scalp wounds with exposed bone. Treatment costs compare favorably to those published for other treatment modalities.

Im Herbst 2015 wurde eine 54-jahrige Patientin in die orthopadische Sprechstunde zugewiesen mit anhaltenden Beschwerden nach etwa zwei Monate zuruckliegender Sprunggelenksdistorsion.

Many Power Line Communication (PLC) systems operate on top of multi-conductor infrastructures, which allows for the adoption of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) techniques. Current channel models for MIMO PLC do not consider terminal conditions and are focused on optimizing the average case. For safety-critical applications, however, the line terminations are important, as system performance has to be guaranteed for any conditions—including the worst case. In this paper, we present an analytical and a SPICE1-simulated channel model based on transmission line theory that is capable of incorporating terminal networks. Further, we evaluate the channel capacity and compare three different systems that could be deployed in a multi-conductor environment: A Single Input Single Output (SISO) system, multiple parallel SISO systems and a MIMO system. With our channel model we show that the terminal conditions have an impact on the overall signal attenuation, but also that they affect the relative cross-talk level compared to direct channels. Although we can confirm existing findings that MIMO techniques do provide performance gains, our results show that this is only true above a certain signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For low SNRs, these gains decrease and in worst case, the gains over a SISO system are lost. Also, parallel SISO systems do not offer robust performance gains over single SISO systems, which discourages their use for safety-critical applications.

Background. The number of families traveling with their children to their country of origin and/or to tropical destinations has increased in Switzerland and includes a changing profile and multinational range of patients. Defining the profile of reported travel-associated illnesses will help to improve the prevention and treatment of such illnesses in children. Methods. This study includes children aged up to 16 years who sought medical advice for a presumed travel-related illness at the emergency room of the University of Zurich Children's Hospital during the period July 2007 to December 2008. Results. We analyzed data on 328 children (58.8% male, mean age: 4.62 y) who presented with travel-associated illness. Our analysis included 155 traditional (mainly tourist) travelers, 162 children who were visiting friends and relatives (VFR), and 11 immigrants. Some 11% were hospitalized. No deaths occurred. The main conditions recorded were diarrheal illness (39%), respiratory (28.7%) and febrile/systemic illness (13.4%). With increasing age, the proportion of children with diarrheal disease increased, while the proportion with respiratory illness declined. There were significant associations between geographic area of exposure and the profile of travel-related disease (p < 0.001). Among 36 children with more serious diseases requiring hospitalization, 12 (3.7% overall) presented with potentially serious diseases: malaria (n = 2), Salmonella typhi (n = 3), Salmonella paratyphi (n = 2), meningococcal meningitis (n = 1), tuberculosis (n = 2), visceral leishmania (n = 1), and hepatitis A (n = 1). Eleven of the 12 children presenting with these potentially serious illnesses were VFR or immigrant children. Conclusion. The main diagnoses for ill-returned Zurich children who presented for emergency care were diarrhea, respiratory, and febrile/systemic illness. A broad spectrum of morbidity was seen including meningococcal meningitis, malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, leishmania, and hepatitis A. Diagnoses varied between geographic regions visited, and VFR child travelers constituted a large proportion of sick-returned children presenting for emergency care.

Background: HP802-247 is a new-generation, allogeneic tissue engineering product consisting of growth-arrested, human keratinocytes (K) and fibroblasts (F) delivered in a fibrin matrix by a spray device. Objective: To identify the preferred dose of HP802-247 based on cell concentration and K/F ratio. Methods: A multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, explorative phase II study of 6 different doses of HP802-247 administered once per week for 12 consecutive weeks in chronic venous leg ulcers. Results: HP802-247 was safe and well tolerated and showed increasing efficacy dependent on cell concentration and K/F ratio, in line with in vitro growth factor release data. The mean complete closure rate at week 12 for all patients treated with HP802-247 was 40%, and for placebo it was 33%. In contrast to placebo, all HP802-247 dose groups improved from week 12 to 24. Conclusion: As an integral part of a rational tissue engineering product development, this explorative trial identified the preferred dose of HP802-247 for further clinical studies.

A frame-splitting (FS) scheme is proposed to exploit spatial diversity in the downlink wireless transmission from a base station (BS) to a mobile station (MS) that has multiple receive antennas. The BS has multiple geographically distributed arrays, each consisting of multiple transmit antennas. The scenario comprises a number of downlink multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) channels from different BS arrays to an MS with mutually independent Rayleigh-fading processes. A data frame from the BS for the MS is split into portions, which are consecutively transmitted from multiple BS arrays. For the FS transmission scheme, the distribution of information capacity is formulated on the basis of the FS fractional lengths of the portions. Analytical evaluation of the outage probability reveals the optimal setting of FS fractional lengths for the maximum diversity advantage based on knowledge of the long-term average signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of the downlink MIMO channels.

BACKGROUND: Seven prospective studies including 193 patients have been published on high-dose intravenous corticosteroid pulse therapy in alopecia areata (AA).We compare these data with a retrospective analysis of our own consecutive patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Between 1998 and 2002,25 patients with severe AA were treated at the Department of Dermatology, University of Bern, with infusions of 500 mg methylprednisolone on 3 consecutive days.In addition to the inpatient records, in 2004 all patients were followed up by a questionnaire. RESULTS: Four of 10 patients with multifocal AA and 3 of 9 patients with ophiasis-type AA had full re-growth of hair, whereas all 6 patients with AA totalis/universalis failed to respond. CONCLUSION: Intravenous corticosteroid pulse therapy may be helpful in the treatment of multifocal and ophiasis-type AA. Patients with an initial episode of short duration have better chances for success.

We address the demodulation and decoding of array signals in the presence of fluctuating cochannel interference (CCI). The maximum-likelihood decoder is formulated for the case of N receive antennas and stationary, temporally white Gaussian CCI within blocks of K samples, where KgesN. The pair wise error probability (PEP) is utilized to quantify the degradation in performance resulting from the absence of side information about the CCI. For pairs of code words that differ over a large number of blocks, an asymptotic PEP performance degradation of 10log10(K/(K-N)) decibels is found. An iterative maximization of the log-likelihood function leads to an alternative suboptimal receiver with reduced complexity, including a block-wise adaptive beamforming via a sample matrix inversion (SMI) and a nearest-neighbor decoding. From the statistics of the spatially filtered signals we find the asymptotic PEP performance, and see that the presence of the desired signal, which is known to adversely affect the output of SMI-based beamformers with small sample support, is gradually mitigated in the iterative procedure

Die Erkrankung wurde erstmals von H. Gougerot und A. Carteaud im Jahr 1927 beschrieben [2]. Es handelt sich um eine seltene Dermatose, die mit einer samtartigen bis verrukosen Hyperpigmentierung einhergeht. Sie beginnt meist intermammar und interskapular und breitet sich flachig aus.

Follicles of human anagen hair were separated into morphologically distinct compartments (by sequential trypsinization and microdissection) for the biochemical and immunological analysis of keratins as differentiation markers to diagnose the type of epithelial differentiation. While outer root sheath contained throughout the "soft" (cyto)keratins K5, 6, 14, 16, and 17, and hair cortex contained exclusively a set of acidic and basic "hard" alpha-keratins (consistent up to the hair tip), in inner root sheath and hair cuticle peptides related or derived from suprabasal epidermal keratins K1 and 10 were detected. These keratin profiles served as in vivo correlates for the evaluation of type and degree of differentiation achieved by the respective isolated epithelial cells, comparing different growth or culture conditions. Cultures of ORS cells and hair matrix cells (PHS cells) as well as normal keratinocytes were initiated using postmitotic human dermal fibroblasts as efficient feeder cells. On lifted collagen gels populated with HDF ("surface" cultures), ORS and PHS cells formed stratified epithelial expressing epidermal differentiation markers such as keratins K1 and 10, involucrin, and filaggrin. Compared with NEK "surface" cultures, balance between growth and differentiation was better maintained by both follicular cell types. In contrast, epidermal tissue homeostasis was largely normalized in transplants on nude mice regardless of the epithelial cell type, apparent from orderly tissue structure, regular distribution of keratin K10, filaggrin, and involucrin, and distinct continuous deposition of basement membrane components at the epithelium-collagen interface. Embedded in Matrigel (on top of HDF collagen gels) ORS cells and NEK formed spheroids exhibiting inward-directed epidermoid differentiation, increasing with time. All epidermal maturation products found in "surface" cultures were likewise expressed, and again differentiation greatly outbalanced proliferation in spheroids of NEK but not of ORS cells. PHS cells embedded together with HDF in Matrigel produced similar spheroids as ORS cells. Size of spheroids and degree of epidermoid differentiation were dramatically reduced when HDF were replaced by follicular DP cells, demonstrating the crucial role of the mesenchymal "companion" cells.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)