Introduction: On Lying

The current edition of Viszeralmedizin addresses the topic of inflammatory bowel diseases with a special focus on the clinical management of these disorders. Inflammatory bowel diseases comprise Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, which are characterized by episodes of abdominal cramping, pain, and chronic diarrhea. The incidence of inflammatory bowel diseases seems to increase in Western countries, and physicians are frequently challenged by the clinical complications of chronic intestinal inflammation in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. Such complications include the presence of strictures, stenoses, abscess formation, fistulas, and the development of colitis-associated neoplasias and cancer. It is therefore not surprising that inflammatory bowel diseases place a significant burden on the health care systems and are associated with augmented morbidity and health care costs. Finally, these diseases may cause a marked impairment of the quality of life in affected patients. The early detection and optimized therapy of inflammatory bowel diseases are of utmost importance for the prevention of complications of the disease. These topics are addressed by the invited articles and the interdisciplinary discussion in this issue of Viszeralmedizin. However, many patients still require surgery for the treatment of complications of these disorders. Surgery has to follow certain principles in order to be successful: In Crohn's disease, operative treatment should be performed in a gut-sparing technique and only in the case of complications. In ulcerative colitis, pouch surgery is the major challenge, especially if complications occur. By special expertise, control can be achieved in most cases, thus providing a normal quality of life postoperatively. The clinical decision making at the crossroad between internal medicine and surgery is still the subject of an ongoing intense and partially controversial interdisciplinary debate, and this topic is reflected by the interdisciplinary team of authors as well as by the interdisciplinary discussion in this special issue. Many improvements in the medical therapy of inflammatory bowel diseases have been accomplished in recent years. Starting with the era of anti-TNF (tumor necrosis factor) agents, additional immunosuppressive or anti-inflammatory biological agents blocking proinflammatory cytokines and signaling or adhesion molecules have been developed and tested for the therapy of inflammatory bowel diseases in the context of randomized controlled clinical trials. As highlighted in this issue of Viszeralmedizin, this has led to changes in many of our guidelines for the therapy of inflammatory bowel diseases. Moreover, new surgical techniques have been developed in order to optimize patient care in those affected by inflammatory bowel diseases. It was therefore the vision of the editors to dedicate this issue to an update on the current medical and surgical management of inflammatory bowel diseases. Key gastroenterological and surgical topics are covered by renowned international experts. We hope to provide a stimulating special issue by covering key clinical aspects of this fascinating field.

The current edition of VISZERALMEDIZIN addresses the topic of pancreatic cancer with a focus on the precursors of this fatal disease. These precursors – when recognized and evaluated correctly – might offer the unique opportunity of preventing pancreatic cancer. Today, the best characterized precancerous lesions of the pancreas are the different cystic neoplasms that are addressed in the invited articles and the interdisciplinary discussion of this issue. Focusing on cystic pancreatic neoplasms, various important aspects regarding diagnosis, surveillance, treatment, clinical and basic research as well as socio-economic relevance need to be considered. Some of these aspects are the subject of an ongoing intense and controversial interdisciplinary discussion and research. Consequently, international consensus statements and guidelines on these entities are still in a constant state of flux. With the widespread use of modern imaging modalities, asymptomatic cystic pancreatic lesions are increasingly found – some of them harmless, some of them showing incipient or already manifest malignancy. This increasing number of cystic neoplasms, which are mainly detected as asymptomatic lesions on advanced imaging, requires an adequate further management of the respective patients which implies education and integration of general practitioners, community hospitals, and tertiary referral centers specialized in pancreatic disease. Regardless of the individual management decision to act on a newly diagnosed cystic neoplasm, significant costs for the health care system may be associated – by lifelong surveillance as well as by surgery and potential additional therapies, e.g. due to consecutive exocrine or endocrine replacement therapy. In this special issue, renowned international experts covering radiological, pathological, gastroenterological, surgical and research topics have contributed their knowledge on cystic pancreatic neoplasms as the fundamental precursors of cancer. The review articles give detailed overviews from different angles while the interdisciplinary discussion summarizes the essential and underlines the current as well as upcoming topics of interest. With this issue, we hope to provide a comprehensive, focused, and interesting update on this fascinating and important field for our colleagues from all disciplines engaged in the clinical management as well as research of cystic pancreatic neoplasms.

The 4 International Workshop on Organic Photoswitchable Multifunctional Molecules and Materials was held between 25 and 27 October 2009 in East China University of Science & Technology (ECUST), Shanghai. It was a great event for academic circles, and at the same time provided an excellent chance for communication between international scholars from the field of organic photoswitchable functional materials. Along with a successful series of workshops on this topic, such as those held by Japan-France (Shonan, 2006), France-Russia (Saissac, 2007) and France-Japan (Arras, 2008), ECUST (China) and CNRS's GDRI (France) joined together to host this continued workshop on novel photoswitchable multifunctional molecules and materials. This workshop covered all aspects from molecular design to devices using photo-switchable materials, and was intended as a forum for further interdisciplinary discussion and international cooperation. The workshop was presided over by Prof. Yu Pei and Prof. He Tian. During the workshop, more than 50 experts and 50 Ph.D. candidates from Canada, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Singapore, the USA and China presented and discussed the latest research findings, interpretations and ideas relating to organic photoswitchable multifunctional materials. Many famous professors came to the gathering, with the aim of better promoting the development of advanced materials and also mutual understanding. Following the workshop, we have received 17 high quality papers from the scholars for a special issue of Frontiers of Chemistry in China. This issue provides a unique opportunity for scientists in this area to exchange ideas and share in the achievements in the field of organic functional materials, mainly focussing on organic chemosensors and photochromic molecules. As we know, the most convenient way to introduce a photoswitching function into a molecular system is to use photochromic units as photo-functional units. A particularly interesting photochromic unit is diarylethene, which reversibly changes its π-conjugation and structure upon irradiation. In this workshop, many lectures were given on photochromic diarylethenes. Therefore, taking into consideration the requirements of most international participants, we decided to launch another special issue on the topic of photochromic molecules, namelyDyes and Pigments (Guest Editors: Prof. Neil Branda and Prof. He Tian), which will include papers mostly from foreign scientists. Of course, this issue in Frontiers of Chemistry in China should reflect some of the progress in the photochromic field in China. Two research articles by Prof. Yi Chen et al. and Prof. Shou-Zhi Pu et al. report new photochromic diarylethene compounds for holographic optical recording and two-photon absorption, respectively. Owing to their direct toxic effects on human beings, animals and plants, chemical warfare agents (CWAs) and their mimics have become widespread in agriculture and chemical warfare. A short review by Prof. Chun-Hua Yan and his coworkers contains recent reports on the design of fluorescent molecular switches and their advantages in the detection of CWAs. It is believed that extensive interest in this field has accelerated the development of novel fluorescent molecular switches and detection techniques. Seven research articles (from the groups of Yun-Bao Jiang, Xiao-Jun Peng, JianZhang Zhao, Wei-Hong Zhu, Jian-Li Hua, Juan Xie and Yong-Shu Xie) show how to construct new organic fluorescent sensing molecules with highly selectivity and sensitivity and even with a new signal-transduction mechanism. It is interesting to note that a new switching molecule based on ferrocene can be controlled and detected by an aggregation-induced emission (AIE) phenomenon (research article by Dr. Dong Zhang). For organic compounds, switching at the molecular level is important in materials for sensing, separation, and drug delivery. In response to changes in temperature, concentration, media, light, time, and the presence or absence of other ions or molecules, organic compounds can aggregate or deaggregate, which triggers various chemical, physical, and biological phenomena. Prof. Shu Wang and his coworkers prepared a water-soluble conjugated polyfluorene with He TIAN Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Institute of Fine Chemicals, East China University of Science & Technology, Shanghai 200237, China E-mail: tianhe@ecust.edu.cn Front. Chem. China 2010, 5(2): 113–114 DOI 10.1007/s11458-010-0100-1

Deception is a pervasive feature of the online marketplace: from phone calls by fake tech support workers at Microsoft, to fraudulent emails asking for advance fee payment, and fake postings for jobs on employment platforms. Building off interdisciplinary discussions within science and technology studies (STS), this special issue expands research on the underside, illicit, and irregular forms of digital behavior. Our focus is on how scams, fakes, and frauds are embedded in the digital economy. In particular, we look at the institutions shaping online scams, the labor involved in performing and/or navigating them, and the role of platforms in hosting them.

The recent Building Research & Information special issue titled ‘Comfort in a Lower Carbon Society’ has taken up, with subtlety and diversity, prospects for reducing the energy consumed in creating thermal comfort. As this excellent collection of papers shows, comfort quickly becomes ‘about nearly everything’, so the interdisciplinary discussions such as provided by the special issue are critical to understanding how comfort expectations and comfort provision might change. The following commentary draws out two lines of enquiry from this collection, both relating to everyday experiences of comfort and its acquisition. The first line explores evidence that people are not as thermally comfortable in their places of work as design values specify and as theory assumes. This leads to renewed questions about theory versus design, adaptation, relationships of thermal to other kinds of comfort, and expectations of workers as well as by them. More speculatively, it reflects briefly on how comfort works outside the workplace, in the car and finally at home. The second line explores the theme of expectations about proper conduct, energy-wise and otherwise, in an era of intensified climate change communications and conservation campaigns. Le récent numéro spécial de Building Research & Information intitulé « Le confort dans une société sobre en carbone » s'est intéressé avec subtilité et diversité aux possibilités de réduire la consommation d’énergie en créant le confort thermique. Comme le montre cette excellente série d'articles, la notion de confort recouvre rapidement à peu près tout; aussi, les discussions pluridisciplinaires qui sont reprises dans ce numéro spécial, ont une importance critique pour comprendre comment peuvent changer les attentes en matière de confort et d'offre de confort. Ce commentaire définit deux axes de recherche qui se rapportent tous deux à l'expérience quotidienne du confort et à son acquisition. Le premier axe examine les preuves selon lesquelles les personnes ne jouissent pas d'autant de confort thermique sur leur lieu de travail que le spécifient les valeurs conceptuelles ou que le suppose la théorie. Cela conduit à reposer les questions concernant la théorie face à la conception, l'adaptation, les relations entre le confort thermique et les autres formes de confort et les attentes des travailleurs. De manière plus spéculative, cet axe indique brièvement comment le confort fonctionne à l'extérieur du lieu de travail, en voiture et enfin chez soi. Le second axe analyse le thème des attentes concernant la bonne conduite, sur le plan énergétique et autre, dans une période où s'intensifient les communications sur le changement climatique et les campagnes de préservation. Mots clés: comportement adaptatif, climatisation, changement climatique, confort, satisfaction de l'occupant, lieu de travail

Setting the Space: Creating Surroundings for an Interdisciplinary Discourse and Sharing of (Implicit) Knowledge

The Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg (Limburg Conservation Institute) in Maastricht is a provincial conservation studio founded in 1988 in the monastery of Rolduc in Kerkrade. From 1990 onwards, the main activities of the SRAL take place in Maastricht, after 1995 in the Wiebengahal. The SRAL is divided in two departments, the school of conservation and a conservation studio for paintings on panel and canvas, polychrome sculpture, historic interiors and work on paper. The foundation's clients are museums, other public collections and churches. Conservation and research activities performed for non-profit provincial institutions is partly subsidised by the provincial government. The studios in Kerkrade focus on treatments of canvas paintings of large dimensions especially in the context of conservation of historic interiors. The Rijksdienst voor de Monumentenzorg (Netherlands Department for Conservation, RCE) and the Rijksgebouwendienst (Government Buildings Agency) initials most of these projects. Since 1990 SRAL provides for the post graduate ‘Training Programme in Conservation of Paintings and Painted Objects’. Every third year the SRAL selects new students. Candidates have finished a full academic education in art or architectural history or chemistry. The five-year course, divided in a three-year period in Maastricht and two years of internships in three different Dutch museums, focuses on three disciplines: ‘Easel Paintings’, ‘Modern Art’ and ‘Decorated Historic Interiors’. The foundations of the training programme are formed by: object orientated teaching by SRAL staff supported by a vast selection of specialist guest lecturers, a small number of students and direct interchange of ideas and expertise with the Dutch conservation and research community via professional working groups. The three curricula are integrated and are designed to examine and treat the works of art as a whole and in their cultural-historical context. This concept is followed right from the outset of the programme. The Maastricht conservation course is partly subsidised by the Department of Culture from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage in Amsterdam. The SRAL actively stimulates the exchange of students and teaching staff. The promotion of knowledge transfer and interdisciplinary discussion on themes concerning historic painting materials, techniques and conservation issues is accomplished through contacts with universities and research projects such as the NWO MOLART project. The international network is reinforced by collaboration with conservation schools abroad.

This study aims to determine the level of Vocational College students on knowledge domain for 21st century. The research design of this study was a survey using questionnaires as research instrument. About 394 students from four vocational colleges were selected by stratified random technique as respondent. They were students from the field of Industrial Machining and Welding Technology. The obtained data were analyzed using mean score, standard deviations, frequency, and percentages. On the other hand, independent t-test and Mann Whitney U test were used to identify the difference in knowledge domain level from the aspect of field of study and gender. The findings shows that all the three knowledge domain for 21st century learning among the students is at moderate level (foundational knowledge, M = 2.819; meta knowledge, M = 2.931; and humanistic knowledge, M = 3.430). The findings also show that there is no significant difference in foundational knowledge domain between Industrial Machining and Welding Technology students. However, there is a significant difference between Industrial Machining and Welding Technology students for meta and humanistic knowledge domain. The findings also shows that there is a significant difference in foundational knowledge domain between male and female students, but there is no significant difference in meta and humanistic knowledge domain. Future study should be focused in identifying factors that influence the level of knowledge domain for 21st century.

Pianos: Playing, Value, and Augmentation

With the ever-increasing demand for spectrum to support wireless innovation, it is critical to understand the fine-grained characteristics of spectrum use in frequency, space and time to facilitate greater spectrum sharing. Contextual information is needed to analyze how the spectrum is being utilized and understand the drivers for spectrum use dynamics. Since human activity often drives spectrum use, understanding this activity can provide significant insight. Analysis of wideband spectrum is extremely time consuming as each band has unique characteristics, domain knowledge and usage drivers. Toward automated analysis, this paper proposes an approach to incorporate contextual information into the analysis utilizing semantic models to capture domain and human activity knowledge. This approach is illustrated through analysis of spectrum measurements of four frequencies licensed to the Chicago White Sox.

Shared practices to assess the diversity of retrieval system results are still debated in the Information Retrieval community, partly because of the challenges of determining what diversity means in specific scenarios, and of understanding how diversity is perceived by end-users. The field of Music Information Retrieval is not exempt from this issue. Even if fields such as Musicology or Sociology of Music have a long tradition in questioning the representation and the impact of diversity in cultural environments, such knowledge has not been yet embedded into the design and development of music technologies. In this paper, focusing on electronic music, we investigate the characteristics of listeners, artists, and tracks that are influential in the perception of diversity. Specifically, we center our attention on 1) understanding the relationship between perceived diversity and computational methods to measure diversity, and 2) analyzing how listeners' domain knowledge and familiarity influence such perceived diversity. To accomplish this, we design a user-study in which listeners are asked to compare pairs of lists of tracks and artists, and to select the most diverse list from each pair. We compare participants' ratings with results obtained through computational models built using audio tracks' features and artist attributes. We find that such models are generally aligned with participants' choices when most of them agree that one list is more diverse than the other, while they present a mixed behaviour in cases where participants have little agreement. Moreover, we observe how differences in domain knowledge, familiarity, and demographics can influence the level of agreement among listeners, and between listeners and diversity metrics computed automatically.

Polymers exhibiting multiple functions are desirable for applications in the biomedical field. Such materials include hydrolytically degradable polymers, which show temporal changes of mechanical properties during degradation, controlled drug release capabilities, or stimuli-sensitivity, which enables a non-invasive external stimulus to trigger a change in a material property in vivo. Increasingly, polymers are designed to mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM), a complex nanostructured multimaterial system. Especially scaffold systems that provide an appropriate environment for mesenchymal stem cells, which can differentiate to chondrocytes, adipocytes, and osteoblasts/osteocytes, fibroblasts, or macrophages, are being prepared from these materials. These polymeric biomaterials must provide the necessary mechanical properties and obviate many of the immunological barriers that are present when applying polymers in a clinical setting. However, upscaling, processing, shape, shelf-life time, and the effects of sterilization on these materials are important and need to be considered when designing any material for medical purposes.1, 2 Collaborative interdisciplinary efforts are becoming increasingly important in the development of polymeric materials for medicine. Polymer scientists must work together with cell biologists, clinicians, physicists, material engineers and others in order to understand and meet the demands of the issues facing the current generation of polymeric materials used in the clinic, such as undesirable or uncontrollable changes that occur during degradation, cell non-specificity, or fibrotic encapsulation. For this reason, allowing an interdisciplinary discussion, sharing ideas, as well as addressing the most pertinent challenges facing scientists, supports scientific progress in this field. The Advanced Functional Polymers for Medicine conference was held at the University of Twente campus in Enschede, the Netherlands, from June 15–17, 2011 and provided such an open environment that enabled younger scientists to discuss with world-renowned scientists, which included some of the pioneers of the field. The topics of the meeting included hydrogels, drug delivery systems, self-assembly, implants and medical devices, cell-material interactions, degradable polymers, and smart materials. This topical issue of Macromolecular Bioscience is dedicated to the same topics. Furthermore, papers presented at the meeting are published in the December 2011 issue of Macromolecular Symposia. A key issue for polymer chemists is appropriately designing the material with respect to the required properties and functions. Michel Vert's article "Not Any New Functional Polymer Can Be for Medicine" (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100224) highlights the challenges of designing macromolecules in the manner most suitable for the application. For example, in vivo degradability or bioresorbability are most desirable functionalities of polymeric biomaterials since they provide a better regeneration opportunity for tissues following implantation, and the long-term presence of foreign residual materials can be best avoided. However, this is a significant challenge to overcome as polymeric materials can often react with certain elements present within the living system. The concept of hydrolytically degradable (co)polymers, which contain pro-metabolites and degrade to non-toxic products that may be metabolized or eliminated through the renal tract, such as poly(lactic acid) or poly(glycolic acid), are established in clinical applications and the lessons learned from applying these materials aid in the design of the next generation of implant materials.3 Other examples, such as poly(L-lysine citramide)s or poly(amino serinate)s, which are poly(amino acid)s that are sensitive to hydrolysis4 and may complex with polyions,5 are discussed as polymers intended for regenerative therapies. Khan et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100324) discuss degradable polymers that derive from amino acids. Poly(amino acid)s, such as those prepared from the reaction between poly(succinimide) and amino alcohols, and micellar constructs exhibit thermosensitivity. The delivery of plasmid DNA via receptor-mediated endocytosis can also be realized by this class of compounds, and the modulation of composition can control the dissociation rates of intracellular plasmid. Materials coated with poly(aspartic acid) or poly(L-lysine) showed improved interactions with osteoblasts and may improve nerve regeneration.6 The hydrolytic degradation behavior of poly(rac-lactide)-b-poly(propylene glycol)-b-poly(rac-lactide) dimethacrylate networks in comparison to other polymeric systems is discussed by Wischke et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100226). A rationale for the design of degradable polymer networks is given, which is based on the degradation characteristics of several polymer network systems containing copolymer chain segments from ε-caprolactone and glycolide. Polymer networks based on triblock segments are introduced as an example of multiphased degradable biomaterials. These networks required 6–12 months to fully degrade under in vitro conditions, whereby the water uptake was relatively low. Moreover, the materials completely degraded without becoming brittle, which is a major disadvantage of clinically established aliphatic (co)polyesters. Polymer networks enable the design of systems with tailorable properties. By only slightly changing the chemical structure/composition of these polymer networks, the bulk material properties can be varied within a wide range. Physically crosslinked (multi)block copolymers were amongst the first polymer systems developed, and systems chemically crosslinked via methacrylates or urethanes have also shown great potential for medical purposes. An increasing number of methods for crosslinking hydrolyzable linear (co)polymers is being developed. Seppälä et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100198) prepared several classes of crosslinked polyesters and poly(ester urethane)s by endcapping hydroxyl-terminated endgroups with methacrylic anhydride and by applying photoirradiation. Poly(ester anhydride)s are degraded by surface erosion and are therefore studied as matrices for controlled delivery systems. Poly(ester anhydride)-based scaffolds can be prepared by salt leaching or other porogenization techniques, and bioactive glass may also be incorporated. Stereolithographic techniques offer the possibility to produce scaffolds with highly defined geometrical precision. Two-photon polymerization techniques allow an even more precise structural resolution to form scaffolds that are structured on the nanoscale. Stereolithographic methods were also applied by Schüller-Ravoo et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100203), who explored this processing technique to prepare poly(trimethylene carbonate) (PTMC)-based porous scaffolds. These flexible and elastic scaffolds possessed porous structures with a gyroid pore network.7 PTMC precursors with number average molecular weights up to 20150 g/mol were synthesized via ring opening polymerization of trimethylene carbonate. The PTMC-based structures obtained from high molecular weight precursors showed increased tensile strength, toughness, and tear-resistance. A non-reactive diluent, propylene carbonate, was added to the liquid precursor and the temperature of the liquid was increased in order to reduce the viscosity of the resin to below the threshold limit (∼10 Pa · s). The completely amorphous crosslinked materials possessed Young's moduli around 4 MPa and an elongation at break values up to 991 ± 40% for dried structures at room temperature. The obtained scaffolds with porosity values around 50–60 vol% had Young's moduli between 20 and 150 kPa at room temperature. Biphasic scaffolds based on an N-methacrylate glycol chitosan phase and a second phase based on an elastomer prepared from poly[(ε-caprolactone)-co-D,L-lactide)] triacrylate, with the second phase being crosslinked photochemically were prepared by Hayami et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100179). The presence of the elastomeric phase increased the Young's modulus from 124 ± 10 kPa to 610 ± 29 kPa or 2103 ± 15 kPa, depending on the volume fraction content and the molecular weight of the triacrylated precursor. PKH26 chondrocytes were well distributed within the scaffolds and showed increased metabolic activity after 14 d of culturing period, and the DNA content (cell number) within the scaffolds continuously increased. Additionally, the glycosaminoglycan and collagen production from the cells were quantified in these studies. Overall, this scaffold system is promising as an injectable and in situ crosslinkable cell delivery system, particularly for the repair of load-bearing soft tissues, such as the nucleus pulposus or articular cartilage. An electrospun hydroxyl-functionalized PCL was introduced by Seyednejad et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100229) with the aim of fabricating scaffolds. Such a hydrophilic polymer may be advantageous compared to the more hydrophobic PCL. The hydroxy functionalized polymer was prepared by hydrogenating poly[(benzyloxymethylglycolide-co-(ε-caprolactone)] using a Pd/C catalyst. The hydroxy-functionalized PCL degraded faster in vitro than PCL. Scaffolds could be prepared from these materials by electrospinning, on which chondrocytes were seeded. These cells adhered well and stayed differentiated, as indicated by an increase of glycosaminoglycans and collagen type II. These results indicated that increased hydrophilicity and faster degradation are favorable for materials to be used as cellular encapsulating materials in the field of cartilage tissue engineering. Guarino et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100204) prepared PCL fibers by electrospinning to produce a scaffold system, which is promising for culturing bone marrow derived human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC). By the comparison of electrospun products obtained from polar or apolar solutions, they demonstrated that high permittivity of fluorinated solvents drastically improved the fibre size scale and crystallinity thus determining relevant effects on hMSC interaction. In particular, the balance between a specific fibre morphology and peculiar macromolecular assembly of polymer chains allows influencing adhesion and proliferation kinetics of cells, thus determining the final cell differentiation. Polymeric systems that structure by supramolecular interactions are interesting for their self-assembling capabilities, which may be exploited in vivo or deployed using an external trigger. In this issue, Appel et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100225) show how enzymatic activity can be tailored via quadruple ureido-pyrimidinone (UPy) motif interactions. Bis-(Upy-U)-poly(ε-caprolactone) was incorporated with UPy-urea functionalized S-peptide, which upon incubation forms catalytically active RNase S in the presence of S-peptide α-helix (S protein). By performing the RNase S assay using UPy-U S-peptide and unfunctionalized S-peptide, the efficacy of the UPy interactions could be assessed. The activity of the films containing UPy-U S-peptide was significantly higher compared to films containing non-functionalized S-peptide. Moreover, this peptide-containing system was electrospun to form fibers that may be useful as bioactive meshes since the peptides preserved their function. Murase et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100184) describe a self-driven gel conveyor that uses peristaltic motion generated by the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction to transport mass, while the charge state, hydrophobicity, and the surface roughness of the gels, as well as the ionic strength of the surrounding media were all considered for their effect on the adhesive interactions with the cargo masses. The findings of this study could be used in the development of soft biomimetic actuators. Abulateefeh et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100252) describe how self-assembling thermoresponsive colloids can be used to selectively target tumor tissues. In principle, colloidal systems may be able to enter tumor vasculature because of its higher permeability relative to healthy tissues (i.e., enhanced permeation and retention effect (EPR)). Thermoresponsive colloids can then transport drugs and respond to the mild hyperthermia exhibited by tumor microenvironments (1–2 °C above healthy tissues) by exhibiting a change in state (e.g., solid → liquid) when their transition temperature lies within this narrow temperature range. The authors give examples of micelles that possess a hydrophobic core and a hydrophilic shell containing poly[NIPAM] segments, which can encapsulate drugs such as adriamycin, paclitaxel, doxorubicin, or methotrexate. Other examples, such as degradable micelles, e.g., those made from poly[(L-lactic acid)-b-PEG-b-(L-lactic acid)] triblock copolymers or elastin-like polypeptides, liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles, and inorganic nanoparticles, e.g., magnetic or gold particles, are discussed as possible candidates for delivery an 'on-off' drug release profile in response to a temperature change. Using light irradiation to release molecules, such as DNA, is an exciting method that may be exploited in the clinic. Fischer et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100248) describe hyperbranced polyglycerol-based nanoparticles that possess either bis-(3-aminopropyl)methylamine or pentaethylenehexamine moieties, which would bind to the DNA molecules, with a photo-responsive o-nitrobenzyl linker that can be cleaved upon photoirradiation. DNA with 21 base pairs was used as a model compound and compared with short siRNA sequences to evaluate the binding affinities of the dendritic polyamines, for which the pentaethylenehexamine-terminated dendrimers showed higher binding affinities since at a N/P ratio of 2.8, 50% of ethidium bromide intercalated in the DNA could be replaced for the pentaethylenehexamine dendrimers, while this occurred at a N/P ratio of 4 and 5 for the dendritic polyamines (HEPES saline buffer, 9.4 mM NaCl, pH 7.2). The particles, which ranged from 50–80 nm, showed an efficient release of DNA within 2 min irradiation with monochromatic light (λ = 350 nm) in HEPES saline buffer. Biopolymer-based nanoparticles may also be advantageous for release applications or cellular targeting. Zaki et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100156) compared the cellular uptake of negatively charged hyaluronic acid-coated chitosan/triphosphate nanoparticles with positively charged uncoated particles using phagocytic cells (J774.2 macrophages). The presence of a hyaluronic acid coating slowed down the uptake of the nanoparticles. Molecular recognition and specific cellular recognition may also be achieved by the rational design of targeting moieties and biofunctional groups. Meikle et al. (DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201100267) designed poly(ε-lysine)-based dendrons that possessed WHLPFKC sequences on the outer layer, which are known to form macromolecular complexes with vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). This complexing ability of WHLPFKC with VEGF may be used to inhibit the angiogenic potential of VEFG in the presence of endothelial cells to combat diseases that rely on blood vessel infiltration or propagation (e.g., cancer and tissue degeneration diseases). The poly(ε-lysine)-based dendrons were designed to interact with ECM molecules and serve as an anchor for the blocker sequence WHLPFKC. Surfaces cultured with human umbilical vascular endothelial cell on surfaces of Matrigel containing the blocker-containing dendrons and linear analogs showed cell blebbing, which is a typical feature of cell apoptosis, which indicates that angiogenesis can be inhibited and reverted. Therefore, this peptide has a potential role in combating degenerative diseases that rely on angiogenesis, such as cancer or in treating damaged avascular tissues, such as cartilage or the cornea. The complex requirements of modern medicine demand a variety of multifunctional polymers. In this issue of Macromolecular Bioscience, several promising approaches taken by chemists in realizing such materials are presented. We thank all authors for their interesting and insightful contributions to this special issue of Macromolecular Bioscience as well as Dr. Kirsten Severing from Wiley-VCH, Dr. Karolin Schmälzlin, and Sabine Benner, both from the HZG, for their valuable editorial and administrative support.

Mainstream works on refugees and religion have underlined the value that religion provides to émigrés [...]

This special issue of Pediatrics honors the critical role that mothers play in their child’s health during 3 important periods: preconception, prenatal, and early childhood. Two general public heath messages are highlighted by the researchers who explored maternal influences during the preconception period: the ongoing challenge of pregnancy-related health promotion among all women of childbearing age, and the implications of increased use of reproductive technology. In studies of the prenatal period, researchers focused on maternal influences such as healthy prenatal behavior and testing for diseases that can be transmitted perinatally. In studies of the early childhood period, researchers focused on what mothers can do to keep infants and young children safe and healthy, including accessing health care and creating a safe and healthy environment at home. Findings in this supplement are based on premier national data sets, including comprehensive health surveys such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, specialized national surveys such as the National Immunization Survey and the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, and national vital statistics data. Also included are findings from a variety of state and local one-time and ongoing projects.In examining on ways that mothers influence the health of their infants and young children, we link 2 key areas of medicine—obstetrics and pediatrics—which have similar objectives but often work independently of each other. We also link numerous content areas and disciplines of public health research that frequently have little collaboration and interdisciplinary discussion, including immunization, birth defects, developmental disabilities, reproductive health, human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome, injury control, chronic disease, nutrition, health education, and psychology. While it may be convenient for operational purposes to divide health care and health research into ever-smaller units, we must remember to step back periodically and examine how these areas tie together—how they influence each other, and ultimately how they influence child health.Physicians and other health care workers know well the role they play in their own field of expertise, but may not always realize the opportunity they have to improve health beyond that scope. For example, in an obstetric practice for example, staff have the opportunity to talk with expectant mothers about the health and safety of their future newborns; preparing a safe home environment; infant’s health care in the hospital, including vaccinations and newborn hearing screening; and breastfeeding. Pediatric health care workers, likewise, could discuss issues such as pregnancy planning and the importance of taking folic acid with women before they become pregnant, as no one is more likely to become pregnant than a woman who has young children.As with physicians and health care workers, public health researchers must take advantage of opportunities to integrate methods and findings to ensure that their research is responsive to public health needs and that the implications for health care are clear. With this in mind, public health researchers throughout the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—and our research partners throughout the United States—were asked to submit articles for this issue.While “maternal influences on child health” brings together research from many different fields, this topic is itself part of a larger picture. Mothers certainly are not the only influence on their children’s health. Fathers, families, friends, physicians, health care workers, teachers, and other community members all have an opportunity to play a role, either directly or indirectly, in the health and well-being of young children. From the point of view of the child, the preconception, prenatal, and early childhood periods focused on in this issue are just the beginning of mothers’ influence, which continues throughout their lives. And while we have focused on the health of children, the maternal/infant relationship can also have a positive impact on mothers’ health. During pregnancy, women are often more health-conscious than usual and receptive to advice from physicians and others. Pregnancy can be a unique opportunity to encourage women to make lasting changes—taking multivitamins, being tested for human immunodeficiency virus, quitting smoking and binge drinking, eating nutritiously, etc—that will improve not only the health of her child, but her own health as well. In the broadest sense, promoting health is just a part of improving the total well-being of individuals, families, and ultimately of society.We hope that this issue will encourage you to step back and search for critical links between your field and others. Building and strengthening these linkages will enable health care providers and researchers to make increasingly practical and valuable contributions to the public’s health. In closing, we would like to wish a “Happy Mothers’ Day” to all those who work to promote the health of mothers and their children.

Standardized tests are used to test students as they progress in the formal education system. These tests are readily available and have clear evaluation procedures.Hence, it has been proposed that these tests can serve as good benchmarks for AI. In this thesis, we propose approaches for solving some common standardized teststaken by students such as reading comprehensions, elementary science exams, geometry questions in the SAT exam and mechanics questions in the AP physics exam.Answering these test problems requires deep linguistic (and sometimes visual) understanding and reasoning capabilities which is challenging for modern AI systems. In the first part of this thesis, we explore novel approaches to answer natural language comprehension tests such as reading comprehensions and elementary science tests (chapters 4, 5 and 6). These tests evaluate the system’s ability to understand text through a question-answering task. We present new latent structure models for these tasks. We posit that there is a hidden (latent) structure that explains the relation between the question, the correct answer, and the piece of text. We call this the answer-entailing structure; given the structure, the correctness of the answeris evident. Since the structure is latent, it must be inferred. We present a unified max-margin framework that learns to find these hidden structures given a corpus ofquestion-answer pairs, and uses what it learns to answer questions on novel texts. We also describe a simple but effective extension of this framework to incorporatemulti-task learning on the different subtasks that are required to perform the overall task (chapter 4), a deeper representation of language based on AMRs (chapter5) and how can we incorporate external knowledge in the answer-entailing structure (chapter 6). These advances help us obtain state-of-the-art performance on two well-known natural language comprehension benchmarks. In the second part of this thesis (chapter 7), we tackle some hard reasoning problems in the domains of math and science - geometry questions in the SAT exam and mechanics question in the AP physics exam. Solving these problems requires an ability to incorporate the rich domain knowledge as well as an ability to perform reasoning based on this knowledge. We propose a parsing to programs (P2P) approach for these problems. P2P assumes a formal representation language of the domain and domain knowledge written down as programs. This domain knowledge can be manually provided by a domain expert, or, as we show in our work, can be extracted by reading a number of textbooks in an automated way. When presentedwith a question, P2P learns a representation of the question in the formal language via a multi-modal semantic parser. Then, it uses the formal question interpretation and the domain knowledge to obtain an answer by using a probabilistic reasoner. A key bottleneck in building these models is the amount of domain-specific supervisionrequired to build them. Thus, in the final part of this thesis (chapter 8), we propose a self-training method based on curriculum learning that jointly learns to generate and answer questions. This method obtains near state-of-the-art models on a number of natural language comprehension tests with lesser supervision.