Words, words, words: Philology and Beyond: Festschrift for Andreas Fischer on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday

This Festschrift comprises a series of papers written in honour of the philologist Andreas Fischer, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. As in Andreas Fischer s own research, the main focus of the volume is on words: words in modern varieties, such as emergent conjunctions in Australian, American and British English; words in their cultural and historical context, such as English keywords in Old Norse literature; and words in a diachronic perspective, such as Romance suffixation in the history of English. Many contributions are anchored in the philological tradition that has informed much of Andreas Fischer s own scholarship, such as the study of verbal duelling in the late thirteenth-century romance Kyng Alisaunder. Others examine the construction ofdiscourses, such as those surrounding the Black Death. The volume, with its innovative studies,offers fascinating insights into words, discourses,and their contexts, both past and present.

Characterization of the 9L gliosarcoma implanted in the Fischer rat: an orthotopic model for a grade IV brain tumor.

Among rodent models for brain tumors, the 9L gliosarcoma is one of the most widely used. Our 9L-European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) model was developed from cells acquired at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (NY, USA) in 1997 and implanted in the right caudate nucleus of syngeneic Fisher rats. It has been largely used by the user community of the ESRF during the last decade, for imaging, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, including innovative treatments based on particular irradiation techniques and/or use of new drugs. This work presents a detailed study of its characteristics, assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), histology, immunohistochemistry, and cytogenetic analysis. The data used for this work were from rats sampled in six experiments carried out over a 3-year period in our lab (total number of rats = 142). The 9L-ESRF tumors were induced by a stereotactic inoculation of 10(4) 9L cells in the right caudate nucleus of the brain. The assessment of vascular parameters was performed by MRI (blood volume fraction and vascular size index) and by immunostaining of vessels (rat endothelial cell antigen-1 and type IV collagen). Immunohistochemistry and regular histology were used to describe features such as tumor cell infiltration, necrosis area, nuclear pleomorphism, cellularity, mitotic characteristics, leukocytic infiltration, proliferation, and inflammation. Moreover, for each of the six experiments, the survival of the animals was assessed and related to the tumor growth observed by MRI or histology. Additionally, the cytogenetic status of the 9L cells used at ESRF lab was investigated by comparative genomics hybridization analysis. Finally, the response of the 9L-ESRF tumor to radiotherapy was estimated by plotting the survival curves after irradiation. The median survival time of 9L-ESRF tumor-bearing rats was highly reproducible (19-20 days). The 9L-ESRF tumors presented a quasi-exponential growth, were highly vascularized with a high cellular density and a high proliferative index, accompanied by signs of inflammatory responses. We also report an infiltrative pattern which is poorly observed on conventional 9 L tumor. The 9L-ESRF cells presented some cytogenetic specificities such as altered regions including CDK4, CDKN2A, CDKN2B, and MDM2 genes. Finally, the lifespan of 9L-ESRF tumor-bearing rats was enhanced up to 28, 35, and 45 days for single doses of 10, 20, and 2 × 20 Gy, respectively. First, this report describes an animal model that is used worldwide. Second, we describe few features typical of our model if compared to other 9L models worldwide. Altogether, the 9L-ESRF tumor model presents characteristics close to the human high-grade gliomas such as high proliferative capability, high vascularization and a high infiltrative pattern. Its response to radiotherapy demonstrates its potential as a tool for innovative radiotherapy protocols.

Die Untersuchung der Schulter in der Praxis

Liegt die Ursache von Schmerzen oder Funktionseinbussen im Schulterbereich selbst, können diese mit einer präzisen klinischen Untersuchung in den meisten Fällen einer bestimmten anatomischen Struktur zugeordnet werden. Vorwiegend im Bild, mit nur knappem Text, werden die einzelnen Tests dargestellt. Dabei wurde zur besseren Merkfähigkeit die jeweils getestete Struktur mit eingezeichnet. Auch die häufigsten in der Praxis vorkommenden Trigger-Punkte mit der entsprechenden pseudoradikulären Symptomatik werden dargestellt. Ziel dieses Artikels ist die Erleichterung der täglichen Arbeit in der Praxis bei häufigen Schulterproblemen.

Higher plant diversity promotes higher diversity of fungal pathogens, while it decreases pathogen infection per plant

Fungal plant pathogens are common in natural communities where they affect plant physiology, plant survival, and biomass production. Conversely, pathogen transmission and infection may be regulated by plant community characteristics such as plant species diversity and functional composition that favor pathogen diversity through increases in host diversity while simultaneously reducing pathogen infection via increased variability in host density and spatial heterogeneity. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of multi-host multi-pathogen interactions is of high significance in the context of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning. We investigated the relationship between plant diversity and aboveground obligate parasitic fungal pathogen (''pathogens'' hereafter) diversity and infection in grasslands of a long-term, large-scale, biodiversity experiment with varying plant species (1-60 species) and plant functional group diversity (1-4 groups). To estimate pathogen infection of the plant communities, we visually assessed pathogen-group presence (i.e., rusts, powdery mildews, downy mildews, smuts, and leaf-spot diseases) and overall infection levels (combining incidence and severity of each pathogen group) in 82 experimental plots on all aboveground organs of all plant species per plot during four surveys in 2006. Pathogen diversity, assessed as the cumulative number of pathogen groups on all plant species per plot, increased log-linearly with plant species diversity. However, pathogen incidence and severity, and hence overall infection, decreased with increasing plant species diversity. In addition, co-infection of plant individuals by two or more pathogen groups was less likely with increasing plant community diversity. We conclude that plant community diversity promotes pathogen-community diversity while at the same time reducing pathogen infection levels of plant individuals.