Musik und Theater in der Badekultur um 1800

Zwar haben Besuche von "großen" Künstlern wie Ludwig van Beethoven in Teplice, Franz Schubert in Bad Gastein oder Johannes Brahms und Anton Bruckner in Bad Ischl bereits die Aufmerksamkeit punktuell auf Badeorte gelenkt. Die vermeintliche geografisch wie kulturell periphere Lage gerade kleinerer Badeorte und deren kaum dokumentierte und aufgearbeitete Musik- und Theatergeschichte haben jedoch dazu beigetragen, eine Beachtung, Rekonstruktion, Analyse und Einordnung in die allgemeine Musikgeschichte zu unterlassen. Am Beispiel des Comödienhauses (heute Kurtheater) im Kurort Bad Liebenstein im ehemaligen Herzogtum Sachsen-Meiningen wird dieser Forschungslücke begegnet, es werden außerdem weitere Anreize geliefert, sich Badeorten als musikhistorischem Sujet intensiver zu widmen. Dabei stehen folgende Fragestellungen im Vordergrund: 1. Für welche musikalischen und theatralischen Aktivitäten wurde das Gebäude genutzt und welchen kulturellen Stellenwert nahm es innerhalb des Kurbetriebes ein, vor allem in Bezug auf die Publikumsstruktur? 2. Wie gestaltete sich das Repertoire in der ersten Saison und welche Vergleichsmomente zu den kulturellen Zentren der Zeit lassen sich hieraus ablesen? 3. Kann man aus dem Repertoire ein bäderspezifisches Theater- und Musikleben deduzieren? 4. Welche Rolle spielte, stellvertretend für zahlreiche Kurtheater deutschlandweit, das Comödienhaus in Liebenstein für die Rezeptionsgeschichte von Oper und Schauspiel im ländlichen Raum um 1800?

Activation of the human body exposed to high radon activity

<p>Radon is newly considered a risk factor for lung cancer. Traditionally, radon is used as a curative in spa. One way of balneation is radon inhalation in mines (eg Bad Gastein in Austria and Boulder mine in USA), where patients are exposed for several tens of minutes to hours to air activity in the order 10^3 to 10^4 Bq m-3 222Rn. Even higher activities can be found in abandoned uranium mines, often in the order 10^4 to 10^5 Bq m-3 222Rn in the poorly ventilated parts. These underground spaces are often visited by mineral collectors and montanists. In two abandoned uranium mines, the progression of surface beta activity of hair during the stay was monitored and the value and shape of the gamma dose-rate field was measured immediately after mine leaving.</p><p>Beta activity increases irregularly, due to the walking between areas with a different radon activity. The highest surface beta activity of hairs was at the end of the stay, with a maximum of 320 Bq cm-2. After leaving the mine, activity decreases exponentially with an effective half-life of about half an hour. Gamma activity was measured after a two-hour stay in an environment with radon activities ranging from 3.7*10^4 to 2.3*10^5 Bq m-3. The gamma field has the shape of a human figure. Especially the lungs and abdominal fat showed increased gamma. The highest gamma dose-rate was measured on hairs, up to 9 µGy h-1. Thus, a combination of surface activation, Rn-product deposition in the lungs, and dissolution of radon in the blood and its redistribution in the body were observed.</p>

Communities of Archaea and Bacteria in a Subsurface Radioactive Thermal Spring in the Austrian Central Alps, and Evidence of Ammonia-Oxidizing Crenarchaeota

ABSTRACT Scanning electron microscopy revealed great morphological diversity in biofilms from several largely unexplored subterranean thermal Alpine springs, which contain radium 226 and radon 222. A culture-independent molecular analysis of microbial communities on rocks and in the water of one spring, the “Franz-Josef-Quelle” in Bad Gastein, Austria, was performed. Four hundred fifteen clones were analyzed. One hundred thirty-two sequences were affiliated with 14 bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and 283 with four archaeal OTUs. Rarefaction analysis indicated a high diversity of bacterial sequences, while archaeal sequences were less diverse. The majority of the cloned archaeal 16S rRNA gene sequences belonged to the soil-freshwater-subsurface (1.1b) crenarchaeotic group; other representatives belonged to the freshwater-wastewater-soil (1.3b) group, except one clone, which was related to a group of uncultivated Euryarchaeota. These findings support recent reports that Crenarchaeota are not restricted to high-temperature environments. Most of the bacterial sequences were related to the Proteobacteria (α, β, γ, and δ), Bacteroidetes, and Planctomycetes. One OTU was allied with Nitrospina sp. (δ-Proteobacteria) and three others grouped with Nitrospira. Statistical analyses suggested high diversity based on 16S rRNA gene analyses; the rarefaction plot of archaeal clones showed a plateau. Since Crenarchaeota have been implicated recently in the nitrogen cycle, the spring environment was probed for the presence of the ammonia monooxygenase subunit A (amoA) gene. Sequences were obtained which were related to crenarchaeotic amoA genes from marine and soil habitats. The data suggested that nitrification processes are occurring in the subterranean environment and that ammonia may possibly be an energy source for the resident communities.