Empfehlungen zur Diagnostik und Therapie der behavioralen und psychologischen Symptome der Demenz (BPSD) [Recommendations for diagnosis and therapy of behavioral and psychological symptoms in dementia (BPSD)].

In patients with dementia, Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD) are frequent findings that accompany deficits caused by cognitive impairment and thus complicate diagnostics, therapy and care. BPSD are a burden both for affected individuals as well as care-givers, and represent a significant challenge for therapy of a patient population with high degree of multi-morbidity. The goal of this therapy-guideline issued by swiss professional associations is to present guidance regarding therapy of BPSD as attendant symptoms in dementia, based on evidence as well as clinical experience. Here it appears to be of particular importance to take into account professional experience, as at this point for most therapeutic options no sufficiently controlled clinical trials are available. A critical discussion of pharmaco-therapeutic intervention is necessary, as this patient-population is particularly vulnerable for medication side-effects. Finally, a particular emphasis is placed on incorporating and systematically reporting psycho-social and nursing options therapeutic intervention.

The significant behavioral aspects of adopted children within successful adoption in Romania

The human behavior is giving the entire picture of a person. The behavior is based on a complex combination of personal innate factors, experience and education and the social network within which the individual is integrated. Each moment the complex individual factors face external and internal environmental aspects which in turn, generate proactive and retroactive reactions. The adoption process is an important and challenging social experiment, bringing to the adopted child a new affiliation, social network, experiences and educational standards. This comes in his/her life after the trauma of losing his biological affiliation and social and emotional support. Which are the significant characteristics of the adopted child's behavior? Which are the behavioral characteristics of the adoptive child that guarantee the success of the domestic adoptions in Romania? These are the questions we are going to answer here based on the research done within FISAN(6) project. The 32 children, 11-16 years old, adopted by Romanian families, during the early ages (0-4 years), were evaluated with complex evaluation tools for children and parents. The adoptive families participating in the research live in the Western counties of Romania.Successful adoption is defined as secure attachment of the adopted child. The conclusions emphasize the importance of: the pro-social behavior, the loving behavior showed to the parents, the assertive behavior, the differentiations between parents and people outside the family, and between the two parents, and the humor. These behaviors displayed by the adopted children are the ingredients of a successful integration within the adoptive family.

The effects of physiologically plausible connectivity structure on local and global dynamics in large scale brain models.

Functionally relevant large scale brain dynamics operates within the framework imposed by anatomical connectivity and time delays due to finite transmission speeds. To gain insight on the reliability and comparability of large scale brain network simulations, we investigate the effects of variations in the anatomical connectivity. Two different sets of detailed global connectivity structures are explored, the first extracted from the CoCoMac database and rescaled to the spatial extent of the human brain, the second derived from white-matter tractography applied to diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) for a human subject. We use the combination of graph theoretical measures of the connection matrices and numerical simulations to explicate the importance of both connectivity strength and delays in shaping dynamic behaviour. Our results demonstrate that the brain dynamics derived from the CoCoMac database are more complex and biologically more realistic than the one based on the DSI database. We propose that the reason for this difference is the absence of directed weights in the DSI connectivity matrix.

The adaptive dynamics of niche constructing traits in spatially subdivided populations: evolving posthumous extended phenotypes.

Niche construction, by which organisms modify the environment in which they live, has been proposed to affect the evolution of many phenotypic traits. But what about the evolution of a niche constructing trait itself, whose expression changes the pattern of natural selection to which the trait is exposed in subsequent generations? This article provides an inclusive fitness analysis of selection on niche constructing phenotypes, which can affect their environment from local to global scales in arbitrarily spatially subdivided populations. The model shows that phenotypic effects of genes extending far beyond the life span of the actor can be affected by natural selection, provided they modify the fitness of those individuals living in the future that are likely to have inherited the niche construction lineage of the actor. Present benefits of behaviors are thus traded off against future indirect costs. The future costs will generally result from a complicated interplay of phenotypic effects, population demography and environmental dynamics. To illustrate these points, I derive the adaptive dynamics of a trait involved in the consumption of an abiotic resource, where resource abundance in future generations feeds back to the evolutionary dynamics of the trait.

International Standardisation and Local Participatory Dynamics : The INTERNORM Project

This paper presents a pilot project (INTERNORM) funded by the University of Lausanne (2010 - 2013) to support the involvement of civil society organisations (CSO) in international standard setting bodies such as the ISO. It analyses how a distinct participatory mechanism can influence the institutional environment of technical diplomacy in which standards are shaped. The project is an attempt to respond to the democratic deficit attested in the field of international standardisation, formally open to civil society participation, but still largely dominated by expert knowledge and market players. Many international standards have direct implications on society as a whole, but CSOs (consumers and environmental associations, trade unions) are largely under-represented in negotiation arenas. The paper draws upon international relations literature on new institutional forms in global governance and studies of participation in science and technology. It argues that there are significant limitations to the rise of civil society participation in such global governance mechanisms. The INTERNORM project has been designed as a platform of knowledge exchange between CSO and academic experts, with earmarked funding and official membership to a national standardisation body. But INTERNORM cannot substitute for a long- established lack of resources in time, money and expertise of CSOs. Despite high entry costs into technical diplomacy, participation thus appears as less a matter of upstream engagement, or of procedure only, than of dedicated means to shift the geometry of actors and the framing of socio-technical change.

Nitrogen application timing and soil inorganic nitrogen dynamics under no-till oat/maize sequential cropping

The timing of N application to maize is a key factor to be considered in no-till oat/maize sequential cropping. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of pre-planting, planting and sidedress N application on oat residue decomposition, on soil N immobilisation and remineralisation and on N uptake by maize plants in no-till oat/maize sequential cropping. Undisturbed soil cores of 10 and 20 cm diameter were collected from the 0-15 cm layer of a no-till Red Latossol, when the oat cover crop was in the milk-grain stage. Two greenhouse experiments were conducted simultaneously. Experiment A, established in the 10 cm diameter cores and without plant cultivation, was used to asses N dynamics in soil and oat residues. Experiment B, established in the 20 cm diameter cores and with maize cultivation, was used to assess plant growth and N uptake. An amount of 6.0 Mg ha-1 dry matter of oat residues was spread on the surface of the cores. A rate of 90 kg N ha-1 applied as ammonium sulphate in both experiments was split in pre-planting, planting and sidedress applications as follows: (a) 00-00-00 (control), (b) 90-00-00 (pre-planting application, 20 days before planting), (c) 00-90-00 (planting application), (d) 00-30-60 (split in a planting and a sidedress application 31 days after emergence), (e) 00-00-00* (control, without oat residue) and (f) 90-00-00* (pre-planting application, without oat residue). The N concentration and N content in oat residues were not affected during decomposition by N fertilisation. Most of the fertiliser NH4+-N was converted into NO3--N within 20 days after application. A significant decrease in NO3--N contents in the 0-4 cm layer was observed in all treatments between 40 and 60 days after the oat residue placement on the soil surface, suggesting the occurrence of N immobilisation in this period. Considering that most of the inorganic N was converted into NO3- and that no immobilisation of the pre planting fertiliser N occurred at the time of its application, it was possible to conclude that pre-planting applied N was prone to losses by leaching. On the other hand, with split N applications, maize plants showed N deficiency symptoms before sidedress application. Two indications for fertiliser-N management in no-till oat/maize sequential cropping could be suggested: (a) in case of split application, the sidedress should be earlier than 30 days after emergence, and (b) if integral application is preferred to save field operations, this should be done at planting.

Influence of ionization state on the activation of temocapril by hCES1: a molecular-dynamics study.

Temocapril is a prodrug whose hydrolysis by carboxylesterase 1 (CES1) yields the active ACE inhibitor temocaprilat. This molecular-dynamics (MD) study uses a resolved structure of the human CES1 (hCES1) to investigate some mechanistic details of temocapril hydrolysis. The ionization constants of temocapril (pK1 and pK3) and temocaprilat (pK1, pK2, and pK3) were determined experimentally and computationally using commercial algorithms. The constants so obtained were in good agreement and revealed that temocapril exists mainly in three ionic forms (a cation, a zwitterion, and an anion), whereas temocaprilat exists in four major ionic forms (a cation, a zwitterion, an anion, and a dianion). All these ionic forms were used as ligands in 5-ns MS simulations. While the cationic and zwitterionic forms of temocapril were involved in an ion-pair bond with Glu255 suggestive of an inhibitor behavior, the anionic form remained in a productive interaction with the catalytic center. As for temocaprilat, its cation appeared trapped by Glu255, while its zwitterion and anion made a slow departure from the catalytic site and a partial egress from the protein. Only its dianion was effectively removed from the catalytic site and attracted to the protein surface by Lys residues. A detailed mechanism of product egress emerges from the simulations.

A filtering method to correct time-lapse 3D ERT data and improve imaging of natural aquifer dynamics

We have developed a processing methodology that allows crosshole ERT (electrical resistivity tomography) monitoring data to be used to derive temporal fluctuations of groundwater electrical resistivity and thereby characterize the dynamics of groundwater in a gravel aquifer as it is infiltrated by river water. Temporal variations of the raw ERT apparent-resistivity data were mainly sensitive to the resistivity (salinity), temperature and height of the groundwater, with the relative contributions of these effects depending on the time and the electrode configuration. To resolve the changes in groundwater resistivity, we first expressed fluctuations of temperature-detrended apparent-resistivity data as linear superpositions of (i) time series of riverwater-resistivity variations convolved with suitable filter functions and (ii) linear and quadratic representations of river-water-height variations multiplied by appropriate sensitivity factors; river-water height was determined to be a reliable proxy for groundwater height. Individual filter functions and sensitivity factors were obtained for each electrode configuration via deconvolution using a one month calibration period and then the predicted contributions related to changes in water height were removed prior to inversion of the temperature-detrended apparent-resistivity data. Applications of the filter functions and sensitivity factors accurately predicted the apparent-resistivity variations (the correlation coefficient was 0.98). Furthermore, the filtered ERT monitoring data and resultant time-lapse resistivity models correlated closely with independently measured groundwater electrical resistivity monitoring data and only weakly with the groundwater-height fluctuations. The inversion results based on the filtered ERT data also showed significantly less inversion artefacts than the raw data inversions. We observed resistivity increases of up to 10% and the arrival time peaks in the time-lapse resistivity models matched those in the groundwater resistivity monitoring data.

Organic material decomposition and nutrient dynamics in a mulch system enriched with leguminous trees in the Amazon

The new techniques proposed for agriculture in the Amazon region include rotational fallow systems enriched with leguminous trees and the replacement of biomass burning by mulching. Decomposition and nutrient release from mulch were studied using fine-mesh litterbags with five different leguminous species and the natural fallow vegetation as control. Samples from each treatment were analyzed for total C, N, P, K, Ca, Mg, lignin, cellulose content and soluble polyphenol at different sampling times over the course of one year. The decomposition rate constant varied with species and time. Weight loss from the decomposed litter bag material after 96 days was 30.1 % for Acacia angustissima, 32.7 % for Sclerolobium paniculatum, 33.9 % for Iinga edulis and the Fallow vegetation, 45.2 % for Acacia mangium and 63.6 % for Clitoria racemosa. Immobilization of N and P was observed in all studied treatments. Nitrogen mineralization was negatively correlated with phenol, C-to-N ratio, lignin + phenol/N ratio, and phenol/phosphorus ratios and with N content in the litterbag material. After 362 days of field incubation, an average (of all treatments), 3.3 % K, 32.2 % Ca and 22.4 % Mg remained in the mulch. Results confirm that low quality and high amount of organic C as mulch application are limiting for the quantity of energy available for microorganisms and increase the nutrient immobilization for biomass decomposition, which results in competition for nutrients with the crop plants.