scholarly journals Integrative Laser Medicine and High-Tech Acupuncture at the Medical University of Graz, Austria, Europe

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Litscher

At the moment, modernization of acupuncture has a high priority. On the traditional side, acupuncture has only recently been awarded the status of Intangible Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO. On the innovative side, high-tech acupuncture is a registered trademark in Austria. Acupuncture has been used for medical treatment for thousands of years. A large number of empirical data are available but the technical quantification of effects was not possible up to now. Using electroacupuncture, needle, or laser stimulation and modern biomedical techniques, it was possible for the first time to quantify changes in biological activities caused by acupuncture. This paper which serves as introduction for the special issue “High-Tech Acupuncture and Integrative Laser Medicine” of the present journal, focuses on the latest innovative aspects that underline the further enhancement and development of acupuncture. Special emphasis is given to new methodological and technical investigations, for example, results obtained from all kinds of acupuncture innovations (e.g., teleacupuncture) and integrative laser medicine.

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Litscher

The assessment of acupuncture-induced effects on brain function is crucial. Ultrasound-assisted brain function monitoring and bioelectrical methods as well as near infrared spectroscopic procedures and functional magnetic resonance investigations form the basis for the latest scientific examination methods for acupuncture research. The laserneedle acupuncture, which was examined scientifically for the first time in Graz, represents a new painless and non-invasive acupuncture method. In this way, individual combinations of acupuncture points can be stimulated simultaneously according to traditional Chinese medicine. In the context of double-blind studies, effects in the brain could be demonstrated in a reproducible manner for the first time. This second part of the short review article summarizes some of the centrally measured effects of acupuncture obtained at the Medical University of Graz within the last 10 years.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Litscher

Since 1997, the Research Unit of Biomedical Engineering in Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine of Graz Medical University has been dealing with the demystification of acupuncture and examining, using non-invasive methods, how different stimulation modalities (manual needle acupuncture, laserneedle acupuncture and electro acupuncture) affect peripheral and central functions. Laser is also an important instrument for acupuncture. One only needs to mention the treatment of children or of patients with needle phobia. The laserneedle acupuncture, which was examined scientifically for the first time in Graz, represents a new painless acupuncture method for which up to ten laserneedles are glued to the skin, but not stuck into it. This first part of the short review article summarizes some of the peripherally measured effects of acupuncture obtained at the Medical University of Graz within the last 10 years.


Author(s):  
Alexander Chalyi ◽  
Olena Lyubchyk ◽  
Kyrylo Chalyi ◽  
Olena Chaika ◽  
Inna Kryvenko ◽  
...  

This review article discusses some of the problems associated with teaching fundamental medical disciplines «Medical and Biological Physics» and «Medical Informatics» in 10 universities from 7 European countries. A comparison is made of the organization of teaching these natural disciplines (in particular, the volume of classroom hours) at the Bogomolets National Medical University and other European medical universities for the specialty «Medicine». It was found that in the absolute majority of 8 out of 9 European universities (medical faculties) more classroom hours are allocated for the study of obligatory physical disciplines (for some universities 2–3 times more) than at the Bogomolets National Medical University. The discipline «Medical Informatics and Foundations of Scientific Research» is approved in the working curriculum of the Bogomolets National Medical University for the 2021-2022 academic year not as obligatory, but as a variable discipline which students of the 1st year of study can choose with a prior probability that is equal to 0.5. The importance of teaching the disciplines «Medical and biological physics» and «Medical informatics» as an integral part of the medical industry and medical education is emphasized. It is these directions of science and technology as well as academic disciplines (together with biomedical engineering) that provided a reliable basis to create precision and high-tech medical equipment for diagnostics and treatment, ranging from X-ray and cardiography devices and ending at the moment with the Da Vinci surgical robotic system for minimally invasive interventions, as well as medical imaging system using combined positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.


CounterText ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
Norbert Bugeja

In this retrospective piece, the Guest Editor of the first number of CounterText (a special issue titled Postcolonial Springs) looks back at the past five years from various scholarly and personal perspectives. He places particular focus on an event that took place mid-way between the 2011 uprisings across a number of Arab countries and the moment of writing: the March 2015 terror attack on the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, which killed twenty-two people and had a profound effect on Tunisian popular consciousness and that of the post-2011 Arab nations. In this context, the author argues for a renewed perspective on memoir as at once a memorial practice and a political gesture in writing, one that exceeds concerns of genre and form to encompass an ongoing project of political re-cognition following events that continue to remap the agenda for the region. The piece makes a brief final pitch for Europe's need to re-cognise, within those modes of ‘articulacy-in-difficulty’ active on its southern borders, specific answers to its own present quandaries.


Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.


Author(s):  
Elena Mikhaylovna Chervonenko ◽  
Lina Yurievna Lagutkina

The article describes the process of tench growing (male and female species removed from set gear in the Volga river in the Astrakhan region) using experimental feedstuff "T", taking into account the fact that problems with artificial growing tench ( Тinca tinca ) appear first in the process of feeding when wild sires change to artificial food. The research took place on the base of the department of aquaculture and water bioresources of Astrakhan State Technical University in innovation centre "Bioaquapark - scientific and technical centre of aquaculture" in 2015. Special feed including components of animal origin - mosquito grab and sludge worm as an effective substitute to fish flour, as well as components of vegetable origin (carrot, parsley, pumpkin, wheatgrass) for domestication of tenches are offered for the first time. Food technology has been described. The exact composition of the formula, which is being licensed at the moment, is not disclosed. Feed "T", which has undergone biological analysis and is in accordance with organoleptic and physical standards was used for feeding tench female and male species during domestication period (60 days), along with food "Coppens" (Holland). Feed efficiency was determined according to survival and daily fish growth. Growth rate of females appeared more intensive than growth rate of males fed with experimental food "T". Daily growth changed depending on the types of food: from 0.3 ("Coppens") to 0.47 (experimental food) in females, from 0.25 ("Coppens") to 0.39 (experimental food) with males. Ability to survive among tench species fed with "Coppens" and experimental food made 60% and 100%, correspondingly. Nutricion of tench species with experimental food encouraged their domestication, which allowed using tench species in further fish breeding process in order to get offspring. The project was supported by the Innovation Promotion Fund in terms of the project "Development and implementation of the technique for the steady development of aquaculture: food "TechSA".


2018 ◽  
pp. 47-52

Epimedium elatum (Morren & Decne) of family Berberidaceace is a rare perennial medicinal plant, endemic to high altitude forests of Northwestern Himalayas in India. Ethnobotanically, it has been used as an ingredient for treatment of bone-joint disorders, impotence and kidney disorders in Kashmir Himalayas. Phytochemically, it is rich in Epimedin ABC and Icariin; all of these have been demonstrated to possess remarkable biological activities like PDE-5 inhibition (treatment of erectile dysfunction), anticancer, antiosteoporosis antioxidant and antiviral properties. The present investigation reports its traditional usage, comprehensive distribution and conservation status from twenty ecogeographical regions in Kashmir Himalayas, India. The species was reported from Gurez valley for the first time. Numerous threats like excessive grazing, deforestration, habitat fragmentation, tourism encroachment, landslides and excessive exploitation have decreased its natural populations in most of the surveyed habitats. Consequently, its existence may become threatened in near future if timely conservation steps are not taken immediately by concerned stakeholders involved in medicinal plant research. Moreover, use of plant tissue culture techniques is recommended for development of its in vitro propagation protocols. Therefore, introduction of this medicinal plant in botanical gardens, protected sites and development of monitoring programmes are needed for its immediate conservation in Northwestern Himalayas, India.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mbuzeni Mathenjwa

The history of local government in South Africa dates back to a time during the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. With regard to the status of local government, the Union of South Africa Act placed local government under the jurisdiction of the provinces. The status of local government was not changed by the formation of the Republic of South Africa in 1961 because local government was placed under the further jurisdiction of the provinces. Local government was enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa arguably for the first time in 1993. Under the interim Constitution local government was rendered autonomous and empowered to regulate its affairs. Local government was further enshrined in the final Constitution of 1996, which commenced on 4 February 1997. The Constitution refers to local government together with the national and provincial governments as spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated. This article discusses the autonomy of local government under the 1996 Constitution. This it does by analysing case law on the evolution of the status of local government. The discussion on the powers and functions of local government explains the scheme by which government powers are allocated, where the 1996 Constitution distributes powers to the different spheres of government. Finally, a conclusion is drawn on the legal status of local government within the new constitutional dispensation.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Shannon

Study abroad begins long before students leave their own shores. The moment that children enter daycare, nursery school, or kindergarten for the first time, they are in foreign territory, and all their antennae are out, testing, absorbing, learning. They begin to develop the first of their many multiple identities. They are no longer "Johnny" or "Sarah" whom everyone knows and loves at home, but Johnny or Sarah whom no one knows nor initially cares about, and they have to figure out what kind of a new identity they will develop so the danger zone becomes as safe as home.  Leaving familiar surroundings- the sounds, smells, safety, and food of home- and realizing, quite abruptly, that they must learn to adapt to the demands and needs of strangers, is the first and the most challenging "trip abroad" they will ever take. They will use the same set of skills, more mature, more polished (we hope) when they arrive on a foreign campus and move in with a host family or into an international dormitory.  Learning to make the journey with ease, whether it is on the first day of school or the day a plane drops one in a foreign field, is a necessary accomplishment. We have to make friends out of our peers; we have to gain the respect of our teachers; we have to develop curiosity and concern about the people around us. The stranger they seem, the more there is to learn. To fear diversity is to fear life itself. As the world becomes smaller and more integrated, the more crucial this accomplishment grows. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (23) ◽  
pp. 4403-4434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susimaire Pedersoli Mantoani ◽  
Peterson de Andrade ◽  
Talita Perez Cantuaria Chierrito ◽  
Andreza Silva Figueredo ◽  
Ivone Carvalho

Neglected Diseases (NDs) affect million of people, especially the poorest population around the world. Several efforts to an effective treatment have proved insufficient at the moment. In this context, triazole derivatives have shown great relevance in medicinal chemistry due to a wide range of biological activities. This review aims to describe some of the most relevant and recent research focused on 1,2,3- and 1,2,4-triazolebased molecules targeting four expressive NDs: Chagas disease, Malaria, Tuberculosis and Leishmaniasis.


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