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Generation of advanced glycation end products (AGE) is an inevitable process in vivo and can be accelerated under pathologic conditions such as oxidative stress, e.g. in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This process is mediated by the AGE-specific receptor (RAGE). In this study we analysed the presence of RAGE in RA and osteoarthritic (OA) synovial tissue using immunohistology. Frozen synovial tissue samples from 11 RA patients and 12 OA patients were treated with goat anti-RAGE immunoglobulin G (IgG) and rabbit antigoat IgG. Immunostaining was visualised with streptavidin horse radish peroxidase (chromogen amino-ethyl-carbazole). Cell differentiation was performed with antibodies against CD68, CD45RO, and CD20. In 9/11 RA and 8/12 OA synovial specimens, RAGE was detected in synovial lining, sublining, and stroma. In RA, many T cells (CD45RO(+)) and some macrophages (CD68(+)) showed positive immunostaining for RAGE, whereas B cells were mostly negative. We found no difference in staining patterns between the RA and OA samples. We detected RAGE in RA and OA synovial tissue. The presence of RAGE on macrophages, T cells, and some B cells suggests its role in the pathogenesis of inflammatory joint disease.

Epidemiological and experimental studies suggest that intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) is associated with abnormalities in kidney development which is thought to be linked with alterations causing adult cardiovascular diseases. The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) plays an important role in the development of renal vascular and tubular structures, and is known to be altered by experimentally induced IUGR. These experimental models of IGUR have been criticized because they may have a more severe impact on intrauterine development than that which is normally encountered in humans. Therefore, we asked whether naturally occurring small-for-gestational-age newborn piglets exhibit features of altered RAS activity. We investigated the regional renal expression of angiotensin II type 1 (AT1) and AT2 receptors in normal-weight and IUGR piglets. The AT1 receptor mRNA expression was markedly enhanced in IUGR piglets, in the renal cortex by 64% and in the renal medulla by 52% (p < 0.05, compared with normal littermates). In contrast, mRNA expression for the AT2 receptor was similar in both the normal-weight and IUGR piglets. A significantly higher AT1 receptor protein expression was found in the IUGR piglets (p < 0.05) in the glomeruli, in the proximal and distal tubules, as well as in the collecting ducts by immunohistochemistry. Furthermore, AT2 receptor protein expression was significantly higher in the IUGR piglets (p < 0.05) in the subcapsular nephrogenic zone and in the distal tubules and collecting ducts. Thus, IUGR is accompanied by an upregulation of angiotensin II receptor expression in the kidneys of newborn piglets. This may indicate an alteration of the RAS in newborns suffering from naturally occurring IUGR.

This thesis focuses on gaining linguistic insights into textual discussions on a word level. It was of special interest to distinguish messages that constructively contribute to a discussion from those that are detrimental to them. Thereby, we wanted to determine whether \"I\"- and \"You\"-messages are indicators for either of the two discussion styles. These messages are nowadays often used in guidelines for successful communication. Although their effects have been successfully evaluated multiple times, a large-scale analysis has never been conducted. Thus, we used Wikipedia Articles for Deletion (short: AfD) discussions together with the records of blocked users and developed a fully automated creation of an annotated data set. In this data set, messages were labelled either constructive or disruptive. We applied binary classifiers to the data to determine characteristic words for both discussion styles. Thereby, we also investigated whether function words like pronouns and conjunctions play an important role in distinguishing the two. We found that \"You\"-messages were a strong indicator for disruptive messages which matches their attributed effects on communication. However, we found \"I\"-messages to be indicative for disruptive messages as well which is contrary to their attributed effects. The importance of function words could neither be confirmed nor refuted. Other characteristic words for either communication style were not found. Yet, the results suggest that a different model might represent disruptive and constructive messages in textual discussions better.

With the growth of the Semantic Web in size and importance, more and more knowledge is stored in machine-readable formats such as the Web Ontology Language OWL. This paper outlines common approaches for efficient reasoning on large-scale data consisting of billions (\\(10^9\\)) of triples. Therefore, OWL and its sublanguages, as well as forward and backward chaining techniques are presented. The WebPIE reasoner is discussed in detail as an example for forward chaining using MapReduce for materialisation. Moreover, the QueryPIE reasoner is presented as a backward chaining/hybrid approach which uses query rewriting. Furthermore, an overview on other reasoners is given such as OWLIM and TrOWL.

Calderón's La vida es sueño has often been studied as a play about kingship and political order, but of late its relation to metaphysics, wisdom literature and spirituality has tended to be diminished or even denied. By focussing on the epistemological and ontological questions raised by the central status and role of dreams in this play and its neglected sister, En esta vida todo es verdad y todo mentira , we can glimpse concerns shared by Descartes, and indeed stemming back to Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Yet the notion of engaño and desengaño , suggesting blindness and illumination, hint not only at the depth of Calderón's Catholic vision, but of profound connections to other world wisdom traditions, such as the maya of Hinduism. By applying the insights of the sophia perennis , implicit in these wisdom traditions and articulated by modern scholars such as Coomaraswamy and Nasr, Calderón's views of the dream's role in spiritual enlightenment are clarified through a constellation of close parallels in Buddhist, Taoist, Hopi, Hindu, and Muslim traditions. Against this background, Calderón's plays are seen to transcend the narrow ideological confines in which they are often studied and presented.

This work traces and elucidates the idea of free will as a crucial element in Renaissance and Baroque thought and literature, focussing specifically on the works of three Siglo de Oro authors: St. Teresa of Avila's Libro de la vida, Francisco de Quevedo's Heraclito cristiano, and Pedro Calderon de la Barca's plays La vida es sueno and El magico prodigioso. The relationship between the psychological faculties of intellect, will and appetite is shown to lie at the core of the period's representation of human dignity: every human person is born rational and free, allowing alignment with the image of the angel or of the beast, as Pico and many other thinkers expressed the privilege and burden of humanity. Human wisdom, it is argued, often continued to be viewed in an Augustinian sense, not as rational knowledge alone, but as the confluence and integration of intellect and will, thought and love, imaged as coinciding in the heart as the source of the vital enactment of knowledge. Disjunction or fragmentation of knowledge and love, masculine and feminine, nature and grace, individual and society, are presented as fatal to the achievement of wisdom. The three writers are explored in the context of Spanish Medieval and Renaissance intellectual history, including mysticism, astrology, magic and theological concerns that arise during the Reformation, particularly with regard to Protestant denials of free will. Moreover, their thought is viewed in the light of the Perennial Philosophy, allowing for an exploration of the many parallels in Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist sapiential traditions, as expressed by Coomaraswamy, Nasr, Schuon and Murata. Many analogues are also explored in terms of Jungian psychology. Such traditional views of the will, acknowledging both human power and limitation, are echoed in aspects of modern philosophy and psychology, in particular the Existentialism of Buber and Marcel, and the approach of Assagioli, while standing in direct opposition to the Will to Power that underlies much modern culture. Thus the Siglo de Oro writers, in polyphonic relation with other spiritual traditions, are viewed as posing vital questions for the prevailing culture of consumerism and technological power.

[...]the danger, as Petrarch and Quevedo recognized, is that the beloved, by unveiling a new ontological dimension, will usurp that realm, becoming a tyrannical Cupid: if it takes the entire teeming world of spring to give the lover/poet a voice (34), that joyous humility of nature mysticism is soon threatened by the shadow of the desired one, in which the lover becomes lost (35), engulfed to the point of becoming the beloved's body-at once an act of dissolution and possession: while the lover entering the beloved's gaze may be reduced to \"only a dream,\" by doing so she enters a realm of the other's consciousness both beyond his control and impervious to absence (36). [...]all that is seen and written-the light extinguished, the kiss never exchanged-passes into dream, into the cemetery of remembrance; and yet precisely here do they become fully realized: \"has de quedar aqur (69). Through the illusions of love and the abundance of absence, Recio peels away the layers of shadow and light to offer a presentiment of the pulse and presence of that world that awaits the traveller courageous enough to pass from the dream of desire toward a life of loving and its gift of grief.