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Aufsatz
Veganism as a Virtue: How compassion and fairness show us what is virtuous about veganism
(Department of Organic Food Quality and Food Culture at the University of Kassel, Germany and Federation of German Scientists (VDW), 2017-10-16)
With millions of animals brought into existence and raised for food every year, their negative impact upon the environment and the staggering growth in the number of chronic diseases caused by meat and dairy diets make a global move toward ethical veganism imperative. Typically, utilitarians and deontologists have led this discussion. The purpose of this paper is to propose a virtuous approach to ethical veganism. Virtue ethics can be used to construct a defense of ethical veganism by relying on the virtues of ...
Aufsatz
Three principles for co-designing sustainability intervention strategies: Experiences from Southern Transylvania
(2019-12-19)
Transformational research frameworks provide understanding and guidance for fostering change towards sustainability. They comprise stages of system understanding, visioning and co-designing intervention strategies to foster change. Guidance and empirical examples for how to facilitate the process of co-designing intervention strategies in real-world contexts remain scarce, especially with regard to integrating local initiatives. We suggest three principles to facilitate the process of co-designing intervention ...
Aufsatz
Mathematical Models in the Description of Pregnane X Receptor (PXR)-Regulated Cytochrome P450 Enzyme Induction
(2018-06-15)
The pregnane X receptor (PXR) is a drug/xenobiotic-activated transcription factor of crucial importance for major cytochrome P450 xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes (CYP) expression and regulation in the liver and the intestine. One of the major target genes regulated by PXR is the cytochrome P450 enzyme (CYP3A4), which is the most important human drug-metabolizing enzyme. In addition, PXR is supposed to be involved both in basal and/or inducible expression of many other CYPs, such as CYP2B6, CYP2C8, 2C9 and 2C19, CYP3A5, ...
Aufsatz
Numerical Solution of Viscoelastic Fluid-Structure-Diffusion Systems with Applications in Ophthalmology
(2019-09-04)
The research of fluid-structure interaction problems is a continuously growing field, especially regarding applications in medicine and biology. We present the coupling of a potentially viscoelastic fluid with multiple hyperelastic structures incorporating chemical processes in the arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian framework. This monolithic formulation allows a robust numerical solution with Newton's method. The discretization is based on the backward Euler scheme for temporal discretization and the Galerkin finite ...
Aufsatz
Three-Dimensional Gradients of Cytokine Signaling between T Cells
(2015-04-29)
Immune responses are regulated by diffusible mediators, the cytokines, which act at sub-nanomolar concentrations. The spatial range of cytokine communication is a crucial, yet poorly understood, functional property. Both containment of cytokine action in narrow junctions between immune cells (immunological synapses) and global signaling throughout entire lymph nodes have been proposed, but the conditions under which they might occur are not clear. Here we analyze spatially three-dimensional reaction-diffusion models ...
Aufsatz
Lenticular Imaging: A New Experimental and Quantitative Analysis of Capsular Dynamics, “Choi-Apple View”
(2019-05)
Purpose: Development of a means for quantitative estimation of lenticular and zonular dynamics by using real-time imaging of human autopsy eyes during implantation of different intraocular lens (IOL) models.
Methods: Isolated lenticular structures from human autopsy eyes were prepared in vitro. The following IOLs were implanted: a one-piece C-loop haptic IOL, a three-piece C-loop haptic IOL, and a one-piece plate-type IOL. The amount of deformation of lenticular structures during implantation was calculated and ...
Aufsatz
PDE/ODE modeling and simulation to determine the role of diffusion in long-term and -range cellular signaling
(2015-10-14)
Background
We study the relevance of diffusion for the dynamics of signaling pathways. Mathematical modeling of cellular diffusion leads to a coupled system of differential equations with Robin boundary conditions which requires a substantial knowledge in mathematical theory. Using our new developed analytical and numerical techniques together with modern experiments, we analyze and quantify various types of diffusive effects in intra- and inter-cellular signaling. The complexity of these models necessitates suitable ...