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The glycerol test is an easy‐to‐use instrument to elucidate fluctuations of electrical hearing in patients with Meniere's disease and it might be also used as a therapeutic option.

In article number 2002500 by Katja Schenke‐Layland and co‐workers, the basement membrane protein Nidogen‐1 is shown to promote tissue survival and regeneration in ischemic conditions. Once thought as a simple linker protein, Nidogen‐1 increases heart function and decreases scaring in a myocardial infarction model, rescues pancreatic beta‐cell function in hypoxia, and modulates the immune system, demonstrating the multifaceted effect of Nidogen‐1. [Image: see text]

Polydopamine analogues (PDANAs) extend the prospering field of polydopamine (PDA) considerably. They include additional functional groups providing altered properties interesting for various applications. PDANAs can be obtained by post functionalization of PDA, by oxidative polymerization of dopamine derivatives or by copolymerization of dopamine with dopamine derivatives, other monomers or reactive polymers. This review covers the state of the art and gives insight into the huge potential of the field to be explored in the future. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry

The complete correspondence between C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann was published in 2015. This article attempts to provide insight into the practical task, as well as the theoretical background, of the editing process. The advantages and possibilities of an unabridged edition with an extensive historical contextualization are demonstrated, and compared to the approach of the editors of the Jung Letters and their selection therein of Jung's letters to Neumann. The practical points under consideration include the establishment of the letter corpus, the ascertainment of dates and the chronological arrangement of the letter exchange, as well as the deciphering of handwritten letters. Theoretical aspects under discussion involve the question of the merits of a critical contextualisation and the position of the editor vis-a-vis the research object. The example of the selecting and editing of Jung's letters to Neumann by Aniela Jaffe and Gerhard Adler reveals how drastically the close ties of those editors with Jung, Neumann, and members of the Zurich analytical circles compromised their editorial work at times. The advantage for an editor being able to work from an historical distance is appreciated.

Two Photon Microscopy (2PM) generates microscopic images out of depth of biological samples. Up to now the method is restricted by narrow limitations of the field of view, the imaging depth and the orientation of the image field. A new approach overcomes these boundaries and delivers high resolution images revealing very specific information on clinically and biologically relevant tissue and cell structures. The status of the 2PM technology is critically reviewed and the options are discussed. The advantages of the new approach demonstrated by excellent tissue images.

Adhesion GPCRs (aGPCRs) form the second largest, yet most enigmatic class of the GPCR superfamily. Although the physiologic importance of aGPCRs was demonstrated in several studies, the majority of these receptors is still orphan with respect to their agonists and signal transduction. Recent studies reported that aGPCRs are activated through a tethered peptide agonist, coined the Stachel sequence. The Stachel sequence is the most C-terminal part of the highly conserved GPCR autoproteolysis-inducing domain. Here, we used cell culture-based assays to investigate 2 natural splice variants within the Stachel sequence of the orphan Gs coupling aGPCR GPR114/ADGRG5. There is 1 variant constitutively active in cAMP assays (∼25-fold over empty vector) and sensitive to mechano-activation. The other variant has low basal activity in cAMP assays (6-fold over empty vector) and is insensitive to mechano-activation. In-depth mutagenesis studies of these functional differences revealed that the N-terminal half of the Stachel sequence confers the agonistic activity, whereas the C-terminal part orientates the agonistic core sequence to the transmembrane domain. Sequence comparison and functional testing suggest that the proposed mechanism of Stachel-mediated activation is relevant not only to GPR114 but to aGPCRs in general.

In Canada, the notion of a heritage language ideology is often conceived of as a natural by-product of official multiculturalism. By contrast, Germany has long struggled with its status as a multilingual and multicultural country. By comparing two corpora of interviews with immigrants to each of these two countries (Canadians of German heritage and Germans of Vietnamese heritage), this paper aims to explore to what extent these different language ideologies are reconstructed in the interviews. It will be argued that the interviewees construct different sociolinguistic spaces and take up different positions within them in terms of centre and periphery. Our analysis shows that the German-Canadian interviewees construct public sociolinguistic spaces in which they position themselves as German even when they do not have an active knowledge of their heritage language. By contrast, despite the monolingual habitus in Germany, the German-Vietnamese respondents endorse a heritage language ideology; the space they claim for speaking Vietnamese, however, is restricted to private or family conversations. Eine Herkunftssprachenideologie kann in Kanada als Nebenprodukt einer gesamtgesellschaftlichen Politik der Mulitkulturalitat angesehen werden. In Deutschland hingegen ist die Debatte um den Stellenwert von Herkunftssprachen stark gepragt durch einen ‘monolingualen Habitus’. In einem Vergleich zweier Korpora qualitativer Interviews mit Deutsch-KanadierInnen und Deutsch-VietnamesInnen wird in dem vorliegenden Beitrag untersucht, inwieweit diese vorherrschenden Sprachideologien in den Interviews rekonstruiert werden. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass die Sprechergruppen unterschiedliche Sprachraume fur eine Herkunftssprachenideologie schaffen und sich unterschiedliche Positionen in offentlichen oder privaten Sprachraumen zuweisen. Die Deutsch-KanadierInnen verorten ihre Herkunftssprache vornehmlich in einem offentlichen Raum, in dem sie sich eine zentrale Position zuordnen, auch ohne die Sprache aktiv beherrschen zu mussen. Im Gegensatz hierzu rekonstruieren die Deutsch-VietnamesInnen trotz des monolingualen Habitus in Deutschland eine Herkunftssprachenideologie, ordnen ihre mehrsprachigen Praktiken jedoch nur einem privaten (familiarem) Sprachraum zu.

Laguerre tessellations are suitable models for many polycrystalline materials. In this work, we present a reconstruction-based approach to fit a spatial Laguerre tessellation model to a plane section of a cellular material under the condition that one section of the model resembles the observed section of the material. To account for this special requirement, we introduce a novel Euclidean distance-based criterion for the model fitting. The model fitting itself is based on Simulated Annealing. If the structure under consideration is a Laguerre tessellation, we found a nearly perfect reconstruction of its spatial cell characteristics in the model. Even for a real sample of a sintered alumina the observed section is captured quite well by the model.

The class of adhesion G protein-coupled receptors (aGPCRs), with 33 human homologs, is the second largest family of GPCRs. In addition to a seven-transmembrane α-helix-a structural feature of all GPCRs-the class of aGPCRs is characterized by the presence of a large N-terminal extracellular region. In addition, all aGPCRs but one (GPR123) contain a GPCR autoproteolysis-inducing (GAIN) domain that mediates autoproteolytic cleavage at the GPCR autoproteolysis site motif to generate N- and a C-terminal fragments (NTF and CTF, respectively) during protein maturation. Subsequently, the NTF and CTF are associated noncovalently as a heterodimer at the plasma membrane. While the biological function of the GAIN domain-mediated autocleavage is not fully understood, mounting evidence suggests that the NTF and CTF possess distinct biological activities in addition to their function as a receptor unit. We discuss recent advances in understanding the biological functions, signaling mechanisms, and disease associations of the aGPCRs.