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How to abolish cyberwar (2014)

Myriam Dunn Cavelty

Part III of our series "Cyberpeace: Dimensionen eines Gegenentwurfs" on cyberpeace: Cyberwar is like a discursive plague. After years and years of writing texts about it and against it, the concept is still scary, still spreading, still harmful. Its power is such that it is not simply being used in discourse – but is in fact forcing its specific discursive structures and rules on us. In short, we may keep questioning this concept, but we will never get rid of it...

Georgian spiders : systematics, ecology and zoogeographic analysis (2014)

Tamara Mcheidze

This is the first English edition of Tamara Mcheidze's monograph on the spiders of Georgia (Mcheidze 1997; in alternative transliteration: Mkheidze 1997), containing taxonomic, faunistic and ecological information on 362 spider species recorded by T. Mcheidze in Georgia between the 1920s and 1992. The English edition resembles the original text, with a preface, taxonomic comments and a part with supplementary information on the locations, a location map and an index provided by the editor.

A certified plasmid reference material for the standardisation of BCR–ABL1 mRNA quantification by real-time quantitative PCR (2014)

Helen White Liesbet Deprez Philippe Corbisier Victoria Hall Feng Lin Stéphane Mazoua Stefanie Trapmann Anni Aggerholm Hajnalka Andrikovics Susanna Akiki Gisela Barbany Nancy Boeckx Anthony Bench Mark Catherwood Jean-Michel Cayuela Sandra Chudleigh Tim Clench Dolors Colomer Filomena Daraio Stephanie Dulucq Joanna Farrugia Linda Fletcher Letizia Foroni Ros Ganderton Gareth Gerrard Eglė Gineikienė Sandrine Hayette Hakim El Housni Barbara Izzo Mattias Jansson Petra Johnels Tomas Jurcek Veli Kairisto Aytug Kizilors Dong-Wook Kim Thoralf Lange Thomas Lion Katerina Machova Polakova Giovanni Martinelli Sarah McCarron Pauline A. Merle Ben Milner Gerlinde Mitterbauer-Hohendanner Meital Nagar Guillermina Nickless Josep F. Nomdedéu Dag A. Nymoen Elisabeth Oppliger Leibundgut Ugur Ozbek Tadej Pajič Heike Pfeifer Claude Preudhomme Kadri Raudsepp Giuliana Romeo Tomasz Sacha Rodica Talmaci Tasoula Touloumenidou Vincent H. J. Van der Velden Paula Waits Lihui Wang Elizabeth Wilkinson Gill Wilson Dörte Wren Renata Zadro Janine Ziermann Katerina Zoi Martin C. Müller Andreas Hochhaus Heinz Schimmel Nicholas C. P. Cross Hendrik Emons

Serial quantification of BCR–ABL1 mRNA is an important therapeutic indicator in chronic myeloid leukaemia, but there is a substantial variation in results reported by different laboratories. To improve comparability, an internationally accepted plasmid certified reference material (CRM) was developed according to ISO Guide 34:2009. Fragments of BCR–ABL1 (e14a2 mRNA fusion), BCR and GUSB transcripts were amplified and cloned into pUC18 to yield plasmid pIRMM0099. Six different linearised plasmid solutions were produced with the following copy number concentrations, assigned by digital PCR, and expanded uncertainties: 1.08±0.13 × 106, 1.08±0.11 × 105, 1.03±0.10 × 104, 1.02±0.09 × 103, 1.04±0.10 × 102 and 10.0±1.5 copies/μl. The certification of the material for the number of specific DNA fragments per plasmid, copy number concentration of the plasmid solutions and the assessment of inter-unit heterogeneity and stability were performed according to ISO Guide 35:2006. Two suitability studies performed by 63 BCR–ABL1 testing laboratories demonstrated that this set of 6 plasmid CRMs can help to standardise a number of measured transcripts of e14a2 BCR–ABL1 and three control genes (ABL1, BCR and GUSB). The set of six plasmid CRMs is distributed worldwide by the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (Belgium) and its authorised distributors (https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/reference-materials/catalogue/; CRM code ERM-AD623a-f).

The 152Sm(p,n) reaction and its astrophysical importance (2014)

Moritz Pohl

Within the nucleosynthetic processes of the slow neutron-capture reaction network (called the s process) the so called branching points, unstable isotopes where different nuclear reactions are competing, are important to understand . For modeling and calculating the nucleosynthesis and compare the resulting abundances to the observed ones, it is indispensable to know the branching ratios as well as the corresponding cross sections. A great challenge in measuring those rates in experiments may be the radioactivity of the isotopes involved, which can make it nearly impossible to manufacture the needed targets. In addition, in stellar environments the excited states of isotopes can be in equilibrium with the ground state, affecting the half-lives and the branching ratios significantly. The isotope 152Eu is such a branching point, with neutron captures and β-decays competing. Those challenges were approached in the s405 experiment performed at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH: the challenge the challenge of the radioactivity can be approached by experiments carried out in inverse kinematics with radioactive beams, solving the problem of unstable targets. Also a reversed reaction was used to access the excited states of the studied isotope. The performed 152Sm(p,n)152Eu is a pioneering attempt to use those methods on heavy ions. The (p,n) reaction was used as a substitute for electron capture, the focus lies on reactions with low-momentum transfers, resulting in the emission of low-energy neutrons. The new developed low-energy detector array LENA was put to test for the fist time in the s405 experiment.

Mathematical modeling of Arabidopsis thaliana with focus on network decomposition and reduction (2014)

Joachim Nöthen

Systems biology has become an important research field during the last decade. It focusses on the understanding of the systems which emit the measured data. An important part of this research field is the network analysis, investigating biological networks. An essential point of the inspection of these network models is their validation, i.e., the successful comparison of predicted properties to measured data. Here especially Petri nets have shown their usefulness as modeling technique, coming with sound analysis methods and an intuitive representation of biological network data. A very important tool for network validation is the analysis of the Transition-invariants (TI), which represent possible steady-state pathways, and the investigation of the liveness property. The computational complexity of the determination of both, TI and liveness property, often hamper their investigation. To investigate this issue, a metabolic network model is created. It describes the core metabolism of Arabidopsis thaliana, and it is solely based on data from the literature. The model is too complex to determine the TI and the liveness property. Several strategies are followed to enable an analysis and validation of the network. A network decomposition is utilized in two different ways: manually, motivated by idea to preserve the integrity of biological pathways, and automatically, motivated by the idea to minimize the number of crossing edges. As a decomposition may not be preserving important properties like the coveredness, a network reduction approach is suggested, which is mathematically proven to conserve these important properties. To deal with the large amount of data coming from the TI analysis, new organizational structures are proposed. The liveness property is investigated by reducing the complexity of the calculation method and adapting it to biological networks. The results obtained by these approaches suggest a valid network model. In conclusion, the proposed approaches and strategies can be used in combination to allow the validation and analysis of highly complex biological networks.

Generalized Uncertainty Principle inspired Schwarzschild Black Holes in extra dimensions (2014)

Marco Knipfer

The Generalized Uncertainty Principle (GUP) arises from Quantum Gravity thought experiments and contains a minimal lenght. In this thesis I calculate Schwarzschild Black Holes that are modified by the GUP. These Black Holes have the property, that their temperature does not diverge for small masses, although they still posses a curvature singularity. I calculate analytically that in more than 3+1 dimensions the temperature diverges again.

Characterization of the two isoforms of cbb3-type cytochrome c oxidase from Pseudomonas stutzeri ZoBell (2014)

Hao Xie

Heme-copper oxidases (HCOs) are the terminal enzymes of the aerobic respiratory chain in the inner mitochondrial membrane or the plasma membrane in many prokaryotes. These multi-subunit membrane protein complexes catalyze the reduction of oxygen to water, coupling this exothermic reaction to the establishment of an electrochemical proton gradient across the membrane in which they are embedded. The energy stored in the electrochemical proton gradient is used e.g. by the FOF1-ATP synthase to generate ATP from ADP and inorganic phosphate. The superfamily of HCOs is phylogenetically classified into three major families: A, B and C. The A-family HCOs, represented by the well-studied aa3-type cytochrome c oxidases (aa3-CcOs), are found in mitochondria and many bacteria. The B-family of HCOs contains a number of bacterial and archaeal oxidases. The C-family comprises only the cbb3-type cytochrome c oxidase (cbb3-CcO) and is most distantly related to the mitochondrial respiratory oxidases.

PEG-IFN alpha but not ribavirin alters NK cell phenotype and function in patients with chronic hepatitis C (2014)

Antoaneta A. Markova Ulrike Mihm Verena Schlaphoff Sebastian Lunemann Natalie Filmann Birgit Bremer Thomas Berg Christoph Sarrazin Stefan Zeuzem Michael P. Manns Markus Cornberg Eva Herrmann Heiner Wedemeyer

Background: Ribavirin (RBV) remains part of several interferon-free treatment strategies even though its mechanisms of action are still not fully understood. One hypothesis is that RBV increases responsiveness to type I interferons. Pegylated Interferon alpha (PEG-IFNa) has recently been shown to alter natural killer (NK) cell function possibly contributing to control of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. However, the effects of ribavirin alone or in combination with IFNa on NK cells are unknown. Methods: Extensive ex vivo phenotyping and functional analysis of NK cells from hepatitis C patients was performed during antiviral therapy. Patients were treated for 6 weeks with RBV monotherapy (n = 11), placebo (n = 13) or PEG-IFNa-2a alone (n = 6) followed by PEG-IFNa/RBV combination therapy. The effects of RBV and PEG-IFNa-2a on NK cells were also studied in vitro after co-culture with K562 or Huh7.5 cells. Results: Ribavirin monotherapy had no obvious effects on NK cell phenotype or function, neither ex vivo in patients nor in vitro. In contrast, PEG-IFNa-2a therapy was associated with an increase of CD56bright cells and distinct changes in expression profiles leading to an activated NK cell phenotype, increased functionality and decline of terminally differentiated NK cells. Ribavirin combination therapy reduced some of the IFN effects. An activated NK cell phenotype during therapy was inversely correlated with HCV viral load. Conclusions: PEG-IFNa activates NK cells possibly contributing to virological responses independently of RBV. The role of NK cells during future IFN-free combination therapies including RBV remains to be determined.

Electromagnetic calorimeter for HADES experiment (2014)

Pablo Rodríguez-Ramos Lukáš Chlad Eliane Epple Laura Fabbietti Tetyana Galatyuk Marina Golubeva Fedor Guber Stanislav Hlaváč Alexander Ivashkin Marcin Kajetanowic Behruz Kardan Wolfgang Koenig Greg Korcyl Andrej Kugler Kirill Lapidus Sergey Linev Edward Lisowski Andreas Neiser Herwig Ott Peter-Bernd Otte Oleg Petukhov Jerzy Pietraszko Andrei Reshetin Adrian Rost Piotr Salabura Yuri Gennadievich Sobolev Ondřej Svoboda Andreas Thomas Pavel Tlusty Michael Traxler

Electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) is being developed to complement dilepton spectrometer HADES. ECAL will enable the HADES@FAIR experiment to measure data on neutral meson production in heavy ion collisions at the energy range of 2-10 AGeV on the beam of future accelerator SIS100@FAIR. We will report results of the last beam test with quasi-monoenergetic photons carried out in MAMI facility at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz.

Altered mucosal immune response after acute lung injury in a murine model of Ataxia Telangiectasia (2014)

Olaf Eickmeier Su Youn Kim Eva Herrmann Constanze Döring Ruth Pia Dücker Sandra Voss Sibylle Wehner Christoph Hölscher Julia Pietzner Stefan Zielen Ralf Schubert

Background: Ataxia telangiectasia (A-T) is a rare but devastating and progressive disorder characterized by cerebellar dysfunction, lymphoreticular malignancies and recurrent sinopulmonary infections. In A-T, disease of the respiratory system causes significant morbidity and is a frequent cause of death. Methods: We used a self-limited murine model of hydrochloric acid-induced acute lung injury (ALI) to determine the inflammatory answer due to mucosal injury in Atm (A-T mutated)- deficient mice (Atm−/−). Results: ATM deficiency increased peak lung inflammation as demonstrated by bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) neutrophils and lymphocytes and increased levels of BALF pro-inflammatory cytokines (e.g. IL-6, TNF). Furthermore, bronchial epithelial damage after ALI was increased in Atm−/− mice. ATM deficiency increased airway resistance and tissue compliance before ALI was performed. Conclusions: Together, these findings indicate that ATM plays a key role in inflammatory response after airway mucosal injury.

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