Together with heroin, crack cocaine has been the joint number one drug in the marginalised drug user´s scene in Frankfurt/Main (Germany) for almost two decades. Bernd Werse and Lukas Sarvary asked in a qualitative study: Why? Many respondents could not refer to particular motives for crack use. Instead, the drug was often described as dominating one´s mind and routine. A majority described staying in the core area of the drug scene (Bahnhofsviertel) as the strongest trigger for use. This perception underlines the significance of social factors for the user´s habits. Public and individual beliefs about the addictive potential of the drug have reinforced each other, leading to the ubiquitous ´motiveless´ use of the drug.

Extracorporeal Circulation in cardiac surgery: One of the unresolved controversies of cardiopulmonary bypass procedures has been whether there are benefits to using pulsatile flow rather than conventional non-pulsatile perfusion. Dr. Akif Ündar (Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center/USA) summarizes the clinical benefits and disadvantages of pulsatile flow (in: Extracorporeal Circulation in Theory and Practice):

The underwater cables that connect nations could go offline for months, the study warns. The sun is always showering Earth with a mist of magnetized particles known as solar wind. For the most part, our planet's magnetic shield blocks this electric wind from doing any real damage to Earth or its inhabitants, instead sending those particles skittering toward the poles and leaving behind a pleasant aurora in their wake.

When critically ill patients receive a donor organ, they have to take immune-suppressing medication for the rest of their lives. However, these immunosuppressants can also prevent a vaccine from triggering the desired response in the patient’s immune system. Professor of Immunology Martina Sester and her team have recently shown that despite the weakened immune response in organ transplant recipients, the different Covid-19 vaccines mobilize the immune defences in these individuals in different ways and that the best immune response is achieved when these vaccines are used in combination.