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.

For many generations, violent conflicts, oppression, persecution and war have characterized people´s lives in the Middle East. Many people are severely mentally traumatized. Professor Jan Ilhan Kizilhan and other psychotherapists wrote the "Trauma Workbook" - to help the helpers to provide the appropriate treatment. The book appeared in three versions: Farsi, English, German.

Numerous attempts to create a uniform classification system for ventilation modes have been unsuccessful. With the new brochure "Understanding and comparing modes of ventilation" Dres. Peter Kremeier and Christian Woll succeeded. To define a useful system of classification, the authors have settled on five categories:

"Despite the perceived benefits of transfusion, research has indicated that exposure of allogeneic blood is associated with increased risks of morbidity and mortality following cardiac surgery. Adverse postoperative clinical outcomes - such as renal failure, stroke, pulmonary dysfunction and infections - have been reported. While these complications have been linked to as few as 1-2 units of donor RBCs, the impact on patient outcome is believed to be dose-dependent. Additionally, the transfusion consequences may extend beyond hosptalization and influence long-term survival," David C. Fitzgerald and Joseph J. Sistino (Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston/USA) report in the new textbook "Extracorporeal Circulation in Theory and Practice".

A new study from Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute revealed that over the last 20,000-50,000 years birds have undergone a major extinction event, inflicted chiefly by humans, which caused the disappearance of about 10%-20% of all avian species. According to the researchers, the vast majority of the extinct species shared several features: they were large, they lived on islands, and many of them were flightless.

GENEVA – UN human rights experts* said today they were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged ‘organ harvesting’ targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China.

Central venous (CV) and arterial catheters present many risks compared to peripheral indwelling

catheters in case of improper handling, both in terms of placement and non-hygienic use. Dr. Peter Kremeier and colleagues explain the placement and hygienic use of such catheters (in the new manual "Ventilation and intensive care therapy for COVID19").