Visualization for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction: Shaping the Future of Our Built World.

Our built world is one of the most important factors for a livable future, accounting for massive impact on resource and energy use, as well as climate change, but also the social and economic aspects that come with population growth. The architecture, engineering, and construction industry is facing the challenge that it needs to substantially increase its productivity, let alone the quality of buildings of the future. In this article, we discuss these challenges in more detail, focusing on how digitization can facilitate this transformation of the industry, and link them to opportunities for visualization and augmented reality research.

First international descriptive and interventional survey for cholesterol and non-cholesterol sterol determination by gas- and liquid-chromatography-Urgent need for harmonisation of analytical methods.

Serum concentrations of lathosterol, the plant sterols campesterol and sitosterol and the cholesterol metabolite 5α-cholestanol are widely used as surrogate markers of cholesterol synthesis and absorption, respectively. Increasing numbers of laboratories utilize a broad spectrum of well-established and recently developed methods for the determination of cholesterol and non-cholesterol sterols (NCS). In order to evaluate the quality of these measurements and to identify possible sources of analytical errors our group initiated the first international survey for cholesterol and NCS.

The Simultaneous measurement of serum testosterone and 5α-dihydrotestosterone by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

Background: Simultaneous measurement of testosterone (T) and 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT) is important for diagnosing androgen deficiency states and hyperandrogenism in males and females, respectively. However, immunoassays used for T and DHT determination suffer from inadequate specificity and sensitivity, while tandem mass spectrometry is expensive and demanding in use.

Methods And Results: We developed a selective gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method for parallel T and DHT measurement.

Rapid Diagnosis of 83 Patients with Niemann Pick Type C Disease and Related Cholesterol Transport Disorders by Cholestantriol Screening.

Niemann Pick type C (NP-C) is a rare neurodegenerative disorder caused by an impairment of intracellular lipid transport. Due to the heterogeneous clinical phenotype and the lack of a reliable blood test, diagnosis and therapy are often delayed for years. In the cell, accumulating cholesterol leads to increased formation of oxysterols that can be used as a powerful screening parameter for NP-C.

Determination of serum cholestane-3β,5α,6β-triol by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for identification of Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) disease.

Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) is a neurological disease caused by an intracellular cholesterol accumulation. Cholesterol oxidation product cholestane-3β,5α,6β-triol (C-triol) serves as diagnostic biomarker for NPC, but its measurement in the routine laboratory remains difficult. We developed an isotope dilution gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method permitting screening for NPC in plasma.