Modern medicine and biotechnology: an ethical conflict of interest?

When confronting the issues related to developments in modern medicine and biotechnology, we must repeatedly ask ourselves anew what can and cannot be justified in an ethical sense. For radically new ethical questions seem to arise through innovative techniques such as stem cell research or preimplantation diagnosis — and with them new areas of conflicting interests. If one scrutinizes the previous positions related to this subject, it becomes conspicuous that a multitude of questions has quickly piled up — however, (as in the case of Germany) comprehensive and differentiated views have mostly been lacking. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.     

The effects of late acquisition of L2 and the consequences of immigration on L1 for semantic and morpho-syntactic language aspects

It has been hypothesized that some aspects of a second language (L2) might be learned easier than others if a language is learned late. On the other hand, non-use might result in a loss of language skills in one's native, i.e. one's first language (L1) (language attrition). To study which, if any, aspects of language are affected by either late acquisition or non-use, long-term German immigrants to the US and English native speakers who are long-term immigrants to Germany as well as two additional control groups of native German speakers were tested with an auditory semantic and morpho-syntactic priming paradigm. German adjectives correctly or incorrectly inflected for gender and semantically associated or not associated with the target noun served as primes. Participants made a lexical decision on the target word. All groups of native German speakers gained from semantically and morpho-syntactically congruent primes. Evidence for language attrition was neither found for semantic nor morpho-syntactic priming effects in the German immigrants. In contrast, English native speakers did not gain from a morpho-syntactic congruent prime, whereas semantic priming effects were similar as for the remaining groups. The present data suggest that the full acquisition of at least some syntactic functions may be restricted to limited periods in life while semantic and morpho-syntactic functions seem to be relatively inured to loss due to non-use.     

Connection-Driven Inductive Theorem Proving

We present a method for integrating rippling-based rewriting into matrix-based theorem proving as a means for automating inductive specification proofs. The selection of connections in an inductive matrix proof is guided by symmetries between induction hypothesis and induction conclusion. Unification is extended by decision procedures and a rippling/reverse-rippling heuristic. Conditional substitutions are generated whenever a uniform substitution is impossible. We illustrate the integrated method by discussing several inductive proofs for the integer square root problem as well as the algorithms extracted from these proofs.     

Activation of nociceptin opioid peptide (NOP) receptor impairs contextual fear learning in mice through glutamatergic mechanisms

The present study investigated whether the selective nociceptin opioid peptide (NOP) receptor agonist, Ro64-6198, impairs acquisition of fear conditioning through glutamatergic mechanisms. Systemic administration of Ro64-6198 (0.3 and 1 mg/kg) or the non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist, MK-801 (0.03 and 0.1 mg/kg) prior to conditioning severely impaired contextual but not cued fear learning in C57BL/6N mice. When administered together at sub-effective doses, Ro64-6198 (0.5 mg/kg) and MK-801 (0.05 mg/kg), synergistically impaired contextual fear learning, but left cued fear learning intact. We next used the immediate shock deficit paradigm (ISD) to examine the effects of Ro64-6198 and MK-801 on contextual memory formation in the absence of the foot-shock. As expected, naive mice that were shocked briefly after being placed in the training chamber displayed no contextual fear conditioning. This learning deficit was elevated by prior exposure of mice to the training context. Furthermore, administration of Ro64-6198 and MK-801, either separately at amnesic doses (1 mg/kg and 0.1 mg/kg, respectively) or concomitantly at sub-effective doses (0.5 mg/kg and 0.05 mg/kg, respectively) significantly reduced the facilitating effects of context preexposure. These findings demonstrate the existence of functional antagonism between NOP and NMDA receptors that predominantly contributes to modulation of conditioned fear learning which involves spatial-processing demands.     

Lost in the move? Secondary task performance impairs tactile change detection on the body

Change blindness, the surprising inability of people to detect significant changes between consecutively-presented visual displays, has recently been shown to affect tactile perception as well. Visual change blindness has been observed during saccades and eye blinks, conditions under which people’s awareness of visual information is temporarily suppressed. In the present study, we demonstrate change blindness for suprathreshold tactile stimuli resulting from the execution of a secondary task requiring bodily movement. In Experiment 1, the ability of participants to detect changes between two sequentially-presented vibrotactile patterns delivered on their arms and legs was compared while they performed a secondary task consisting of either the execution of a movement with the right arm toward a visual target or the verbal identification of the target side. The results demonstrated that a motor response gave rise to the largest drop in perceptual sensitivity (as measured by changes in d′) in detecting changes to the tactile display. In Experiment 2, we replicated these results under conditions in which the participants had to detect tactile changes while turning a steering wheel instead. These findings are discussed in terms of the role played by bodily movements, sensory suppression, and higher order information processing in modulating people’s awareness of tactile information across the body surface.     

Das Asperger-Syndrom bei Erwachsenen

Herr F., 35 Jahre alt, wendet sich per E-Mail an die Kinderklinik mit der Frage, ob eine diagnostische Abkl?rung bei uns m?glich sei, da er im Erwachsenenbereich keine Ansprechperson gefunden habe. Durch eine Internetrecherche sei er auf das Asperger-Syndrom gesto?en. Seit seiner Kindheit habe er sich bereits gefragt, was bei ihm nicht stimme, warum er ,,anders“ sei und warum es seinen Mitschülern immer so leicht gefallen sei auf andere zuzugehen, ,,Small Talk“ zu führen oder Kontakte aufrecht zu erhalten. Er hingegen habe damit immer massive Schwierigkeiten gehabt, habe soziale Zusammenh?nge oft nicht begriffen beziehungsweise die Gedanken, Absichten oder Gefühle anderer nicht entschlüsseln k?nnen. Obwohl er dies erkennt, konnte er es bisher nicht bewusst ?ndern, was in weiterer Folge zu einer depressiven Verstimmung mit Rückzug geführt hat. In der weiteren Exploration stellt sich heraus, dass Herr F. alleine wohnt, aber immer noch finanziell beziehungsweise im Alltag von seinen Eltern unterstützt wird. Derzeit hat er keine Beziehung, die vorangegangene Partnerschaft ging wegen Kommunikationsproblemen in die Brüche, worunter er sehr leidet. Aufgrund seiner speziellen Interessen studierte Herr F. Astrophysik und technische Mathematik und schloss beide Studien mit Auszeichnung ab. Seither hat er in etwa 20 verschiedenen Jobs gearbeitet, die meist nicht seiner Qualifikation entsprachen. Das Arbeitsverh?ltnis wurde jeweils beendet, da Herr F. von den sozialen Anforderungen massiv überfordert war. Seine Freizeit verbringt Herr F. alleine, bet?tigt sich im Internet in Chatrooms, liest Fachliteratur und hat eine vollst?ndige Sammlung an Sportfachzeitschriften seit dem Jahr 1995, die er in einer bestimmten Ordnung aufbewahrt und deren Inhalte er so gut wie auswendig kennt.     

The rhyming skills of deaf children educated with phonetically augmented speechreading

Two experiments investigated whether profoundly deaf children's rhyming ability was determined by the linguistic input that they were exposed to in their early childhood. Children educated with Cued Speech (CS) were compared to other deaf children, educated orally or with sign language. In CS, speechreading is combined with manual cues that disambiguate it. The central hypothesis is that CS allows deaf children to develop accurate phonological representations, which, in turn, assist in the emergence of accurate rhyming abilities. Experiment 1 showed that the deaf children educated early with CS performed better at rhyme judgement than did other deaf children. The performance of early CS-users was not influenced by word spelling. Experiment 2 confirmed this result in a rhyme generation task. Taken together, results support the hypothesis that rhyming ability depends on early exposure to a linguistic input specifying all phonological contrasts, independently of the modality (visual or auditory) in which this input is perceived.