Ecology profile of the german high-speed rail passenger transport system,ICE

Intention, Goal, Scope, Background, Objectives  Environmental effects caused by the railway transport services have rarely been investigated in depth from a systemic point of view. A screening LCA, called ecology profile, of the German high-speed passenger train system, the ICE, is presented here, based on a study conducted by the University of Halle and the Deutsche Bahn AG, the major German rail operator. In this study, the resource consumption caused by traction, manufacturing and maintenance of ICE trains, as well as construction and operation of the supporting rail infrastructure and buildings, have been evaluated using cumulative energy demand (CED), cumulative material input per service unit (MIPS) and CO₂ emissions as indicators. Methods  Approximately 200 items of inventory data were collected from DB AG experts, manufacturers, site balances and the associated literature. They were allocated in order to derive 100-person-kilometre-related mass and energy consumption figures. The appropriate CED, MIPS and CO₂ factors were applied in order to quantify the indirect efforts associated with the inventory data. Conclusions  For the reference high-speed route investigated, Hanover-Wuerzburg, the railroad infrastructure does not contribute the high share of resource consumption to the life cycle of the transport service which was expected from other studies. For the reference route, the CED of the infrastructure contributes 13% to the total CED per 100 person kilometres, whilst the energy demand of the traction process dominates the life cycle. Within the railway infrastructure, the construction of tunnels and the heating of rail points during winter time are significant primary-energy active components, whereas the energy requirement for maintaining the railway stations is a minor factor in comparison. The environmental impact of new technologies for designing rail tracks have also been analysed. The new ballastless slab track technology investigated needs higher absolute resource inputs in the construction phase compared with the traditional gravel bed, but due to higher life expectancy, it competes favourably at the 100-person-kilometre level, at least in terms of material requirements. Efforts to reduce the traction energy consumption of the ICE train will have the greatest impact on the CED of the transport system. In summary, a total of 48 kg of solid primary resources are needed for a passenger to travel 100 km by ICE. Recommendations/Outlook  The results presented can be used for modelling other high-speed railway transport systems. A comparison of the ecology profiles of the German, French and Japanese high-speed train systems would be of interest in order to identify potential areas for improvement. Additional studies are needed to evaluate the short-hop, commuter train service. Further efforts should be directed to comparing the infrastructure of the high speed train and that of highway road traffic.     

Biomedicine and naturopathic healing in West Germany a historical and ethnomedical view of a stormy relationship

We trace the history of medical pluralism in Germany from the perspective of a clinically oriented medical anthropology. The continuation of naturopathic medicine in both formal and informal health care illumines fundamental epistemological issues. Cultural and social forces in Germany shaped the scientific and technical development of medicine, which continues in a form distinctly different from that of medicine in North America. The construction of clinical reality in German practice is distinctive and edifying for a crosscultural understanding of medical systems of knowledge and praxis.A part of this article draws on Seidler 1983. Maretzki's research was carried out under a grant from the Fulbright Kommission, Germany, We acknowledge with appreciation the encouragement and support by colleagues at Albert-Ludwigs Universitaet, Freiburg, and in other German universities, by physicians in private practice who responded to our request for an interview, by physicians and others in different Kur institutions throughout West Germany, and, importantly, the help of patients in answering questions, We also appreciate the helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article by Atwood Gaines and Charles Leslie, Special appreciation goes to Arthur Kleinman for his stimulating encouragement and patient editorial assistance.     

Purity and Corruption: Chinese Communist Party Applicants and the Problem of Evil

In contemporary China, university students play a key ideological role as the future vanguard of the nation and for this reason they are intensely courted by the Chinese Communist Party. This article addresses the moral ambiguities of this courtship for students, who face the paradox that while the party centre and collectivist authoritarian ideology invariably claims moral superiority, individual party cadres are frequently exposed as morally corrupt. The evil of cadre corruption becomes the nodal point for questioning party morality, a central stake in support of collectivist authoritarian ideology as well as in its denunciation. For students, the problem of evil within the force, representing the collective good is never resolved in either false consciousness or an unmasking of ideology. Doubt instead proceeds as two incommensurable interpretations of party morality persist in suggesting themselves, and this I suggest has important implications for our understanding of political legitimacy in authoritarian states.     

Empathy’s purity,sympathy’s complexities; De Waal,Darwin and Adam Smith

Frans de Waal’s view that empathy is at the basis of morality directly seems to build on Darwin, who considered sympathy as the crucial instinct. Yet when we look closer, their understanding of the central social instinct differs considerably. De Waal sees our deeply ingrained tendency to sympathize (or rather: empathize) with others as the good side of our morally dualistic nature. For Darwin, sympathizing was not the whole story of the “workings of sympathy”; the (selfish) need to receive sympathy played just as central a role in the complex roads from sympathy to morality. Darwin’s understanding of sympathy stems from Adam Smith, who argued that the presence of morally impure motives should not be a reason for cynicism about morality. I suggest that De Waal’s approach could benefit from a more thorough alignment with the analysis of the workings of sympathy in the work of Darwin and Adam Smith.     

Brain intersections of aesthetics and morals: perspectives from biology, neuroscience, and evolution

For centuries, only philosophers debated the relationship between aesthetics and morality. Recently, with advances in neuroscience, the debate has moved to include the brain and an evolved neural underpinning linking aesthetic reactions and moral judgment. Biological survival emphasizes mate selection strategies, and the ritual displays have been linked to human aesthetics in the arts, in faces, and in various daily decision making. In parallel, cultural human practices have evolved to emphasize altruism and morality. This article explores the biological background and discusses the neuroscientific evidence for shared brain pathways for aesthetics and morals.     

Validation of the German Version of the Social Functioning Scale (SFS) for Schizophrenia

Deficits in social functioning are a core symptom of schizophrenia and an important criterion for evaluating the success of treatment. However, there is little agreement regarding its measurement. A common, often cited instrument for assessing self-reported social functioning is the Social Functioning Scale (SFS). The study aimed to investigate the reliability and validity of the German translation. 101 patients suffering from schizophrenia (SZ) and 101 matched controls (C) (60 male / 41 female, 35.8 years in both groups) completed the German version. In addition, demographic, clinical, and functional data were collected. Internal consistency was investigated calculating Cronbach’s alpha for SFS full scale (α: .81) and all subscales (α: .59-.88). Significant bivariate correlation coefficients were found between all subscales as well as between all subscales and full scale (p <.01). For the total sample, principal component analysis gave evidence to prefer a single-factor solution (eigenvalue ≥ 1) accounting for 48.5 % of the variance. For the subsamples, a two-component solution (SZ; 57.0 %) and a three-component solution (C; 65.6 %) fitted best, respectively. For SZ and C, significant associations were found between SFS and external criteria. The main factor “group” emerged as being significant. C showed higher values on both subscales and full scale. The sensitivity of the SFS was examined using discriminant analysis. 86.5% of the participants could be categorized correctly to their actual group. The German translation of the SFS turned out to be a reliable and valid questionnaire comparable to the original English version. This is in line with Spanish and Norwegian translations of the SFS. Concluding, the German version of the SFS is well suited to become a useful and practicable instrument for the assessment of social functioning in both clinical practice and research. It accomplishes commonly used external assessment scales.     

红光,远红光和植物激素对水稻幼苗生长及CAT,POX活性的影响

红光(R)和远红光(Fr)都抑制水稻胚芽的生长,但对胚芽鞘来说,红光抑制其生长,远红光表现出部分逆转效应。一定浓度单一生长素(IAA)促进水稻胚芽鞘的生长,而赤霉素(GA_3)与生长素作用相反。对于水稻的过氧化氢酶(CAT)、过氧化物酶(POX),红光促进两种酶的活性,远红光则表现出逆转效应。单一10~(-2)ppmIAA、10~(-2)ppmGA_3都促进其活性。照光时,在10~(-2)ppm IAA存在的条件下,红光表现为促进,远红光则表现为抑制;但在10~(-2)ppm GA_3存在的条件下,红光反而对两种酶的活性有抑制作用,远红光则表现为促进作用。     

Assessing the effect of an influenza vaccine in an encouragement design

Many randomized experiments suffer from noncompliance. Some of these experiments, so-called encouragement designs, can be expected to have especially large amounts of noncompliance, because encouragement to take the treatment rather than the treatment itself is randomly assigned to individuals. We present an extended framework for the analysis of data from such experiments with a binary treatment, binary encouragement, and background covariates. There are two key features of this framework: we use an instrumental variables approach to link intention-to-treat effects to treatment effects and we adopt a Bayesian approach for inference and sensitivity analysis. This framework is illustrated in a medical example concerning the effects of inoculation for influenza. In this example, the analyses suggest that positive estimates of the intention-to-treat effect need not be due to the treatment itself, but rather to the encouragement to take the treatment: the intention-to-treat effect for the subpopulation who would be inoculated whether or not encouraged is estimated to be approximately as large as the intention-to-treat effect for the subpopulation whose inoculation status would agree with their (randomized) encouragement status whether or not encouraged. Thus, our methods suggest that global intention-to-treat estimates, although often regarded as conservative, can be too coarse and even misleading when taken as summarizing the evidence in the data for the effects of treatments.     

Evolutionary importance of parental care performance,food resources,and direct and indirect genetic effects in a burying beetle

Indirect genetic effects (IGE) of parental care performance and the direct–indirect covariance contribute substantially to total heritability in domesticated and laboratory mammals. For animals from natural populations empirical estimates of IGE are sparse. Thus, despite recent models relating IGE to evolution, evolutionary interpretations of IGE are limited. To address this deficit, we used a reciprocal cross‐fostering breeding design to estimate environmental influences, direct and indirect genetic effects, and direct–indirect genetic covariances in the burying beetle Nicrophorus pustulatus to determine the evolutionary importance of IGE arising from variation in parental care performance. Carrion size positively affected adult mass and time on carrion, but had no effect on total development time. Males were slightly larger than females. For both mass and development, independent of these environmental influences, direct and indirect genetic effects were of moderate magnitude. Total genetic effects explained 36–50% of the phenotypic variance in mass and size and 27–37% of phenotypic variance in development time. Direct–indirect genetic covariances were zero or close to zero. Thus, for both mass and development time, the response to natural selection arising from environmental variation may be accelerated by the presence of IGE in N. pustulatus. The generality of this pattern and the evolutionary significance of IGE arising from parental care awaits further study of natural populations.     

Erich Wasmann, Ernst Haeckel, and the limits of science

Summary In the late nineteenth century, two German evolutionary biologists, Ernst Haeckel and Erich Wasmann, argued publicly about how to apply evolutionary biology and where its explanatory limits, if any, lay. The German Jesuit evolutionist entomologist Wasmann’s (1859–1931) faith and Jesuit philosophical training intersected to reconcile evolution and Catholicism by delineating the philosophical limits of science: Wasmann demarcated a material and historical world, which science can describe, and the realm of subjective experience and the soul, which it cannot. Wasmann’s evolution contrasted (and conflicted) strongly with contemporary German atheistic and anticlerical monistic evolutionary biology. This paper discusses Wasmann’s very public debates with monism’s prophet, Ernst Haeckel.     

Processing Interrogative Sentence Mood at the Semantic-Syntactic Interface: An Electrophysiological Research in Chinese,German, and Polish

Background

Languages differ in the marking of the sentence mood of a polar interrogative (yes/no question). For instance, the interrogative mood is marked at the beginning of the surface structure in Polish, whereas the marker appears at the end in Chinese. In order to generate the corresponding sentence frame, the syntactic specification of the interrogative mood is early in Polish and late in Chinese. In this respect, German belongs to an interesting intermediate class. The yes/no question is expressed by a shift of the finite verb from its final position in the underlying structure into the utterance initial position, a move affecting, hence, both the sentence''s final and the sentence''s initial constituents. The present study aimed to investigate whether during generation of the semantic structure of a polar interrogative, i.e., the processing preceding the grammatical formulation, the interrogative mood is encoded according to its position in the syntactic structure at distinctive time points in Chinese, German, and Polish.

Methodology/Principal Findings

In a two-choice go/nogo experimental design, native speakers of the three languages responded to pictures by pressing buttons and producing utterances in their native language while their brain potentials were recorded. The emergence and latency of lateralized readiness potentials (LRP) in nogo conditions, in which speakers asked a yes/no question, should indicate the time point of processing the interrogative mood. The results revealed that Chinese, German, and Polish native speakers did not differ from each other in the electrophysiological indicator.

Conclusions/Significance

The findings suggest that the semantic encoding of the interrogative mood is temporally consistent across languages despite its disparate syntactic specification. The consistent encoding may be ascribed to economic processing of interrogative moods at various sentential positions of the syntactic structures in languages or, more generally, to the overarching status of sentence mood in the semantic structure.     

The ultrastructure of somatic neuromuscular junctions in the tick Amblyomma variegatum (Fabr.)

Summary Injections of large doses of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) into the telencephalon of the squirrel fish (Holocentrus rufus) revealed the first anatomical evidence for a visual thalamo-telencephalic projection in a teleost. The central optic nucleus of the thalamus appears to be the only visual thalamic nucleus projecting to the telencephalon in this species. Since the central optic nucleus has a large tectal input but not a direct one from the retina, it is suggested that a retino-geniculo-telencephalic pathway does not exist in this species. Acknowledgements. The author is grateful to Drs. J. Maldonado, Dietrich Meyer and Henning Scheich for encouragement and support in this endeavor. The study was supported by: National Institutes of Health grant EY-02014 and EY-03264, a NIH grant to Dr. José del Castillo and the German Science Foundation (SFB 45)     

Immuno gold staining (IGS) and immuno gold silver staining (IGSS) for the identification of the plant pathogenic bacterium Erwinia amylovora (Burrill) Winslow et al

For the identification of the plant pathogenic bacterium Erwinia amylovora, the immuno gold staining (IGS) and immuno gold silver staining (IGSS) techniques are tested. The IGS and IGSS methods are at least as sensitive an indirect immunofluorescence and require less primary antiserum. Moreover they have the advantage that the preparations can be conserved permanently and unchanged. The preparation of the IGS can be observed with transmitted light or--with considerable better result--using epipolarization microscopy. The IGSS method deserves special attention because of its high contrast in normal brigth field microscopy with transmitted light.     

Gravitational biology within the German Space Program: goals, achievements, and perspectives

Summary. Gravity plays an important role for the evolution, orientation and development of organisms. Most of us, however, tend to overlook its importance because – due to its constant presence from the beginning of evolution some 4 billion years ago – this environmental parameter is almost hardwired into our interpretation of reality. This negligence of gravity is the more surprising as we all have our strong fights with this factor, especially during the very early and again during the late phases of our lives. On the other hand, scientists have been fascinated to observe the effects of gravity especially on plants and microorganisms for more than a hundred years, since Darwin and Sachs demonstrated the role of the root cap for downward growing plants. Different experimental approaches are nowadays available in order to change the influence of gravity and to study the corresponding influences on the physiology of biological systems. With the advent of spaceflight, a long-term nearly nullification of gravity is possible. Utilisation of this so-called “microgravity” condition for research in life sciences thus became an important asset in the space programs of various space agencies around the world. The German Space Life Sciences Program is managed – like all other space programs and activities in Germany – by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in its role as space agency for Germany. Within the current space program, approved by the German government in May 2001, the overall goal for its life sciences part was defined as to gain scientific knowledge and to disclose new application potential by research under space conditions, especially by utilising the microgravity environment of the International Space Station. Three main scientific fields have been identified in collaboration with the scientific community: integrative human physiology, biotechnological applications of the microgravity environment, and fundamental biology of gravity and radiation responses (i.e., gravitational and radiation biology). In the present contribution, specific goals as well as achievements and perspectives of research in gravitational biology are given. In addition, some information is provided on spaceflight opportunities available. Correspondence and reprints: German Aerospace Center (DLR), Space Agency, P.O. Box 300364, 53183 Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany.     

The Importance of Imports for Household Environmental Impacts

A promising way to reduce environmental impacts of consumer expenditure is through the encouragement of more sustainable consumption patterns. Consumers cause environmental impacts both directly, such as by fuel use in personal cars, and indirectly, by paying for the production of consumables. With increased international trade, the indirect environmental impacts are difficult to determine because a portion of the emissions occurs in different geographical regions. Many previous studies have unrealistically assumed that imports are produced using domestic production technology. For countries with diverging technology and energy mixes the likely errors are significant. This study applies a methodology that explicitly includes technology differences to the case of Norwegian households. It is found that a significant portion of pollution is embodied in Norwegian household imports. Further, a disproportionately large amount of pollution is embodied in imports from developing countries. Overall, as in previous studies, we find that mobility and food are most important in terms of household environmental impacts. By analyzing the imports in more detail we find that for some sectors the majority of emissions occur in foreign regions; in particular, this is true for food, business services, clothing, chemicals, furniture, cars, agriculture, textiles, and most manufactured products.     

Dispersal of the alien raccoon dog Nyctereutes procyonoides in Southern Brandenburg, Germany

The raccoon dog Nyctereutes procyonoides, an East Asian canid species, was introduced into the European part of the former USSR since 1928. Within 50 years (1935–1984), it colonised a territory of 1.4 million km² in Europe. A telemetry study took place in Southern Brandenburg in a 60 km² sized study area with a typical mosaic structured East German agricultural landscape. For catching raccoon dogs, 20 trap boxes were set there in an area of 46 km², and between February 2001 and July 2004, 15 (5 males, 10 females) adult and 46 (25 males, 21 females) juvenile raccoon dogs were eartagged and adults additionally fitted with radio collars (Biotrack, 150–151 MHz). Data on dispersal behaviour was collected by the relocation points of 11 juveniles (6 males, 5 females). Four juvenile males dispersed even more than 40 km from their trapping places. Additionally, dispersal of two adult males could be documented. This behaviour probably indicates that the German raccoon dog population still is in a process of colonising. This canid’s ability for colonising spacious and distant areas during comparative short periods of time and its preference for habitats with richness of water possibly make this species to be an important vector of fox tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis—a very dangerous zoonosis.     

Christians, Jews, and the Other in German Anthropology

National anthropologies, wrote George Stocking, can be seen as little "nations" that develop their own foreign policies, formulating distinctions between "us" and "them." American and German anthropological nations were both built on literary traditions of primitivism and exoticism, and both exalted the idea of culture. But they developed very different policies toward their interior others. The Indian was the romanticized precursor to American civilization, while the sophisticated, and thus more dangerous, other lay outside the borders. German Jews, because they participated in German intellectual life, were sophisticated internal savages and hence the most dangerous enemy.     

Linkage analysis of familial Alzheimer disease, using chromosome 21 markers

Chromosome 21 markers were tested for linkage to familial Alzheimer disease (FAD) in 48 kindreds. These families had multiple cases of Alzheimer disease (AD) in 2 or more generations with family age-at-onset means (M) ranging from 41 to 83 years. Included in this group are seven Volga German families which are thought to be genetically homogeneous with respect to FAD. Autopsy documentation of AD was available for 32 families. Linkage to the 21 q11-q21 region was tested using D21S16, D21S13, D21S110, D21S1/S11, and the APP gene as genetic markers. When linkage results for all the families were summed, the LOD scores for these markers were consistently negative and the entire region was formally excluded. Linkage results were also summed for the following family groups; late-onset (M greater than 60), early-onset (M less than or equal to 60), Volga Germans (M = 56), and early-onset non-Volga Germans (M less than or equal to 60). For the first three groups, LOD scores were negative for this region. For the early-onset non-Volga German group (six families), small positive LOD scores of Zmax = 0.78 (recombination fraction theta = .15), Zmax = 0.27 (theta = .15), and Zmax = 0.64 (theta = .0), were observed for D21S13, D21S16, and D21S110, respectively. The remainder of the long arm of chromosome 21 was tested for linkage to FAD using seven markers spanning the q22 region. Results for these markers were also predominantly negative. Thus it is highly unlikely that a chromosome 21 gene is responsible for late-onset FAD and at least some forms of early-onset FAD represented by the Volga German kindreds.     

Expanding the moral circle: farmed fish as objects of moral concern

Until recently fish welfare attracted little attention, but international and national legislation and standards of fish welfare are now emerging and an overview of these developments is presented in this study. Whereas animal welfare legislation is based on public morality, animal ethics does not automatically accept public morality as normative and elaborates arguments regarding the way humans should treat animals (referred to as moral standards). In this study we present the most common animal ethics theories. For most of these, sentience is considered a demarcation line for moral concern: if an animal is sentient, then it should be included in the moral circle, i.e. receive moral consideration in its own right and some basic welfare should be ensured. As for fish, research has revealed that the sensory system of teleosts can detect noxious stimuli, and that some kind of phenomenal consciousness, allowing the fish to feel pain, seems to be present. This raises the ethical question as to how much evidence we need in order to act on such indications of fish sentience. A simple risk analysis shows that the probability that fishes can feel pain is not negligible and that if they do indeed experience pain the consequences in terms of the number of suffering individuals are great. We conclude that farmed fish should be given the benefit of the doubt and we should make efforts that their welfare needs are met as well as possible. Finally, the way forward is briefly discussed: efforts must be made to understand what fish welfare means in practical fish farming. This will involve the development of research and education, greater accountability and transparency, compliance with and control of policies, and quality assurance schemes.     

Use of the indirect immunofluorescence test in the diagnosis of an infection, caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae

The indirect immunofluorescence test has been used for the serodiagnosis of M. pneumoniae infections in two paired blood sera of patients with acute respiratory diseases and acute pneumonia. The optimum methods for obtaining M. pneumonia antigen, its fixation and storage have been determined. The data on the study of the sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic value of the test are presented. The indirect immunofluorescence test has been shown to be capable of the simultaneous detection of complete (complement-binding) and incomplete (not binding the complement) antibodies to M. pneumoniae. This test may be used in the diagnostic practice as a highly sensitive, specific and sufficiently simple serological method.