Search

Juvenile Batten Disease is a progressive and terminal neurodegenerative illness that gradually deprives children and adolescents of mental and physical faculties, until they die by the end of their adolescence. This chapter highlights issues for longterm art psychotherapy accompanying young clients through the stages of their illness. It describes how making art facilitates clients unable to speak to express and work through their illness-related fears and complete vital ‘life tasks’ in their remaining years. Addressing the need for an adaptive and active therapist in response to the clients’ physical and mental decline, the chapter discusses the specific countertransference that the illness evokes and how the clients’ art objects constitute lasting mementos of their existence. The juvenile type of Batten Disease, JNCL, affects children from around the age of six. The literature on JNCL seldom addresses whether children are aware that their condition is terminal; as the fatal diagnosis remains undisclosed to many of them, this is a critical concern.

Als die wohl bedeutendsten Institutionen innerhalb des deutschen Wissenschaftssystems waren die Universitaten seit der Novellierung des Hochschulrahmengesetzes im Jahr 1998 und der Europaischen Studienreform im Jahre 1999 einschneidenden Veranderungen unterworfen. Unter den Stichworten „Deregulierung“, „Autonomie“ und „Wettbewerb“ setzten Transformationsprozesse ein, die die Universitaten sowohl hinsichtlich ihrer Organisationsformen und Steuerungsmechanismen als auch in ihren Kernbereichen Forschung und Lehre betrafen und die die Bedingungen, unter denen Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre an ihnen stattfindet und stattfinden kann, auf durchaus fundamentale Weise wandelten.

This pilot study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of an assessor-blind, randomised controlled trial of psychodynamic art therapy for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia, and to generate preliminary data on the efficacy of this intervention during acute psychotic episodes. Fifty-eight inpatients with DSM-diagnoses of schizophrenia were randomised to either 12 twice-weekly sessions of psychodynamic group art therapy plus treatment as usual or to standard treatment alone. Primary outcome criteria were positive and negative psychotic and depressive symptoms as well as global assessment of functioning. Secondary outcomes were mentalising function, estimated with the Reading the mind in the eyes test and the Levels of emotional awareness scale, self-efficacy, locus of control, quality of life and satisfaction with care. Assessments were made at baseline, at post-treatment and at 12 weeks' follow-up. At 12 weeks, 55% of patients randomised to art therapy, and 66% of patients receiving treatment as usual were examined. In the per-protocol sample, art therapy was associated with a significantly greater mean reduction of positive symptoms and improved psychosocial functioning at post-treatment and follow-up, and with a greater mean reduction of negative symptoms at follow-up compared to standard treatment. The significant reduction of positive symptoms at post-treatment was maintained in an attempted intention-to-treat analysis. There were no group differences regarding depressive symptoms. Of secondary outcome parameters, patients in the art therapy group showed a significant improvement in levels of emotional awareness, and particularly in their ability to reflect about others' emotional mental states. This is one of the first randomised controlled trials on psychodynamic group art therapy for patients with acute psychotic episodes receiving hospital treatment. Results prove the feasibility of trials on art therapy during acute psychotic episodes and justify further research to substantiate preliminary positive results regarding symptom reduction and the recovery of mentalising function. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01622166

AIM—To examine possible relation between diabetic maculopathy and various risk factors for diabetic complications in patients with diabetes mellitus type 1 and type 2. METHODS—Cross sectional study of two cohorts of diabetic patients, comprising 1796 patients with type 1 diabetes (mean age 47 years, mean duration of diabetes 24 years) and 1563 patients with type 2 diabetes (mean age 62 years, mean duration of diabetes 16 years). Retinopathy levels (R0-RV) and maculopathy were assessed by fluorescence angiography and fundus photography and binocular biomicroscopy. Diabetic neuropathy was assessed by means of computer assisted electrocardiography and by thermal and vibratory sensory examination. Patients were classified as normoalbuminuric (

Within Europe, there is a tapestry of diverse approaches to art therapy which, as Waller (1998) shows, are quite different from the British model. Germany, Austria and Switzerland constitute a lingual area of approximately 95 million people, big enough to sustain a system of training, practice and publishing that is largely unaware of the developments in Britain and the US, or in neighbouring countries such as France or the Netherlands. Researching the area often felt like mapping a minefield, as terminology was elusive, diverse and contradictory, and some comments between the lines hinted at the hostility, competition and confusion between some German art therapy factions. Even though different approaches could be identified, few have developed into distinct schools; they often overlap and refer to established theory and practice of great variety, and draw from such models as the educational, medical, psychological, psychoanalytic, psychiatric and artistic. This article attempts to screen the la...

The influence of zinc oxide on the kinetics and mechanism of the liquid-phase hydrogenation of maleic anhydride (MA) and intermediates was investigated on copper-based catalysts. No influence of zinc oxide on the hydrogenation of maleic anhydride was observed in previous experiments. The discontinuous hydrogenation of succinic anhydride (SA) resulted in the formation of γ-butyrolactone (γ-BL) and 1,4-butanediol (1,4-BD) on a copper/zinc catalyst. On a zinc-free copper catalyst only γ-butyrolactone was formed while the hydrogenation of γ-butyrolactone to 1,4-butanediol was inhibited. It was observed that succinic anhydride which is adsorbed on the copper surface of the catalyst prevents the adsorption of γ-butyrolactone. On copper/zinc catalysts the reversible adsorption of succinic anhydride on the inactive zinc oxide crystallites, which led to a reversible decrease of the carbon balance, is responsible for a decrease of the succinic anhydride coverage of the copper sites. It appears that the decrease of the succinic anhydride coverage of the copper surface is proceeding by surface diffusion of succinic anhydride to the adjacent zinc oxide crystallites. On this basis two different reaction pathways via succinic anhydride adsorbed on the copper surface and via succinic anhydride adsorbed on the zinc oxide crystallites were proposed for the hydrogenation of maleic anhydride and intermediates. Kinetic modeling of the reaction pathway taking into account both reaction pathways led to good agreement of calculated and experimental results.

The liquid phase hydrogenation of maleic anhydride was investigated in a packed bubble column reactor using different copper-based catalysts. A copper-zinc catalyst was found to be active in the formation of 1,4-butanediol, whereas on zinc-free copper catalysts, mainly succinic anhydride and γ-butyrolactone were formed. At suitable reaction conditions, maleic anhydride hydrogenation over a copper-zinc catalyst gave valuable products with high yield and selectivity whereas succinic anhydride was absent in the reactor outlet. Based on a three-phase reactor model and a kinetic model of the reaction mechanism, the influence of reaction conditions on reactor performance was determined. It was observed that the use of large particles and a high axial dispersion of liquid phase is a necessary condition for the feasibility of a “one-step-hydrogenation” of highly concentrated maleic anhydride feed solutions because of a significant decrease of succinic anhydride formation rate.

The liquid phase hydrogenation of maleic anhydride and intermediates was investigated using copper-based and noble metal catalysts. The experiments were performed in a stirred tank slurry reactor in discontinuous as well as continuous operation. Copper chromites and noble metal catalysts were found to be suitable for the hydrogenation of maleic anhydride. However, the hydrogenation of succinic anhydride proceeded with high selectivity to γ-butyrolactone and 1,4-butanediol on copper zinc catalysts, whereas other copper catalysts revealed no activity in the formation of 1,4-butanediol. Selective sorption interactions of succinic anhydride with the zinc surface were assumed to be responsible for this effect. Starting from γ-butyrolactone all copper catalysts were active in the formation of 1,4-butanediol while noble metal catalysts showed no or little activity. Kinetic models have been proposed for the hydrogenation of maleic anhydride and intermediates on the basis of experimental data obtained in a continu...

Gewerbliche Schutzrechte nehmen in der nationalen Rechts- und Wirtschaftsordnung sowie auch auf internationaler Ebene stetig an Bedeutung zu. Sie dienen dem Schutz geistigen Eigentums und sind fur jeden Gewerbetreibenden nicht nur im Hinblick darauf von Bedeutung, eigene Rechte zu sichern, sondern auch insofern von Relevanz, dass ein Verstos gegen Rechte Dritter zu vermeiden ist. Zu den gewerblichen Schutzrechten gehoren unter anderem Kennzeichenrechte, Geschmacksmusterrechte sowie die sogenannten technischen Schutzrechte in Form des Patents sowie des Gebrauchsmusters. Die folgenden Ausfuhrungen befassen sich ausschlieslich mit den technischen Schutzrechten und geben eine kurze Einfuhrung in die Voraussetzungen, das Entstehen und den Wegfall sowie in die Wirkungen technischer Schutzrechte. Beleuchtet wird die Situation im Wesentlichen im Hinblick auf nationale technische Schutzrechte, d. h. auf Deutsche Patente und Gebrauchsmuster sowie auf Europaische Patente, die Schutz in Deutschland entfalten. Die Moglichkeit der Erlangung von Schutzrechten im ausereuropaischen Ausland wird nur am Rande gestreift.

Bei mammachirurgischen Eingriffen handelt es sich uberwiegend um planbare Masnahmen. Dies gilt auch fur die Karzinomchirurgie.

We here describe SNNS, a neural network simulator for Unix workstations that has been developed at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Our network simulation environment is a tool to generate, train, test, and visualize artificial neural networks. The simulator consists of three major components: a simulator kernel that operates on the internal representation of the neural networks, a graphical user interface based on X-Windows to interactively create, modify and visualize neural nets, and a compiler to generate large neural networks from a high level network description language.

Three structurally related crown compounds and cryptands have been synthesized that differ by the number and linkage of coronand units and anthracene moieties. The interaction of the fluorescent dyes with sonicated dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine (DMPC) vesicles is characterized by the relative quantum yields, uptake kinetics, binding curves, lifetimes, fluorescence titrations with water- and lipid-soluble quenching agents, fluorescence anisotropy, and equilibrium cooling curves. The most lipophilic compound II, which displays a similar quantum yield as the parent fluorophore 9,10-dimethylanthracene, shows a nearly equal distribution between solid and fluid lipid and is located at the bilayer surface. The least lipophilic compound IV is excluded from the hydrocarbon phase. The anthracenophane cryptand III preferentially partitions into solid-phase lecithins with the highest affinity for the phases L epsilon and L beta. The binding constant to DMPC amounts to (5.4 +/- 1.3) X 10(2) M-1 at 0 degrees C. From fluorescence quenching titrations it is concluded that the average position of the anthracenoyl dye III discontinuously shifts during the gel to liquid crystalline transition from the glycerol backbone to the choline head group. Electron microscopy and NMR experiments revealed that the anthracenophane induces in the liquid crystalline phase the fusion of small unilamellar DMPC vesicles to unilamellar medium-sized vesicles and macrovesicles, which subsequently fuse at the transition temperature to large multilamellar coacervates. Due to its large change of fluorescence intensity, the anthracenophane cryptand is a very sensitive probe for the detection of the pretransition of symmetrically substituted and of the subtransition of asymmetrically substituted phosphatidylcholines.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

In 1986 a project was started by the BMFT and the city of Frankfurt for research into the ongoing forest damage. Accordingly a measuring site with a meteorological tower of 51 m was constructed to record the micrometeorological parameters and thus to establish a diagnosis of the dry deposition of gaseous pollutants. Using a numerical model the evaluation of these micrometeorological data should provide massfluxes and the deposited masses onto the canopy of the Frankfurter Stadtwald.